Fate of Io: The Project

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(spiff) — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:34:24 GMT

this project is too good to die.

2/3d?

(BioKupo) — Tue, 10 May 2005 04:38:54 GMT

Its been brought to my attention by Temp in another topic that this argument has once again reared its ugly head.

We all know the question, and I thought we'd settled on 3d, and had stuck by it through many trials and tribulations.

Just thought I'd create this so I could garner peoples current opinions regarding this.

Where's this train headin'?

(BioKupo) — Tue, 10 May 2005 03:32:18 GMT

Been having a chat this evening with a foi lurker and it definitly got me thinking.

Whats going on here?
What are we hoping to achieve?
Which direction are we heading?

If we want to attract more people to this project we need to show that we've moved forwards. Best things to show that is one of two things.

1. ART - something people can immediately look at and go - wow, thats cool, I want to be involved with that.
From what I've seen at a VERY brief glimpse, theres been no new artwork, and what there is isn't being show off to its full potential

2. CODE - all you need is something very basic, even if its just a tiny animation, or a model of a weapon rotating or something, that will draw people in. What people see when they walk in, is a lot of text. They need something to wow at, they need something which shows them that this project is still very much alive.

I can't honestly see what direction this project is taking, but I'm willing to put in some backwork to push this train back up to speed. I just need to know what direction you want me to push ;)

And always remember - There ain't no getting offa this train we're on.

RSS - Live Feeds

(Davy boy2000b) — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:28:46 GMT

I would like to suggest inclusion of live feeds for the next version of Project Manager.

For those of you that don't know what it is (I didn't until half an hour ago) you can read a little about it here

Basically, it's a kind of news link in Firefox's bookmark menus that automatically updates with news items, such as slashdot and BBC's website.

It has something to do with the RSS icon on the bottom of the pages.

As far as I know, I click the 'RSS' logo in my Firefox's window in the status bar and it adds it to my browser.

I'm not sure what part of the site would be used for this... The main page? All new topics? New replies?

Well whatever it would show...I just wanted to suggest it's use. Sorry that I can't be more specific on what it is about.

Oh Yea, Fate of Io...

(mystik3eb) — Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:34:32 GMT

I don't know why I decided to do this, but I guess a lack of activity has made me feel like a brainless zombie logging in everyday to simply go somewhere else after seeing an empty activity list.

I'm kinda confused as to why we keep saying to people and ourselves "we will work on it, someday, we're just busy now, we all have our own lives and priorities...this just isn't a high priority really." I realize this to be absolutely true, of course, knowing myself how easy it is to get distracted with anything at anytime of the year. Life does go on. However, I think I'd like to analyze why this project isn't important enough to all of us to actually have at least a group of people always working on (whether it's the same group of people or we rotate groups...something like that).

1. There's the obvious "I like this idea, it's cool, it's fun, it's intriguing, but there are other, more important things in my life than making a game. I'll give it my time when I can spare it" thought, which all of us have. For some of us (myself included) it took a while for that concept to sink in. Really, I support this whole-heartedly. None of us are getting paid to do any of this...many of us are losing money on this project (how I respect you). But does this mean that it should be all the way in the back of our heads? I don't think it should. Not ALL the way back, anyway. Think of this project, think of our goals for it. We want this game to be successful. We want it to be VERY quality, up to par with Warcraft and Zelda games (to the best of our ability, of course). Think of the possible attention from this success. Popular gaming magazines could have interviews of Dev and Temp as the main stories. We could receive so much attention and appreciation that hightens our success, having a little statement like "Assisted in creation of free computer game Fate of Io as ______________ position/contributer" may actually help you a LOT in the long run. Let's not forget this potential we have here to help each other and ourselves...and besides, there's nothing wrong with having another great game in the world.

2. I'm afraid many of us do see this as an impossible feat, and therefore show a lack of commitment and dedication because we see it as pointless and wasteful to give. We've lost some members, many are painful losses (who will be left unnamed). I'll admit, it is hard to believe that we could acheive such an awesome goal with naught but high school and college students, many of whom are incredibly unwise and inexperienced *points at self* as far as most of this material is concerned. My question as to turn heads: so what? Has anyone seen the movie Miracle recently? Was anyone ALIVE during that time? Well...my point is not that we should all hook up and play hockey, my point is that impossible things have happened with enough faith, work and dedication. I think we have awesome people involved in this project, and that we can have a sufficient supply of all those qualities should we choose to apply ourselves thus.

My biggest quesiton is: what ARE we waiting for? It doesn't appear like there really WILL be a time later on that will promise more open schedules for most (or any) of us, so we might as well try to find some way to get at least a certain amount of time in and work done on this project within a certain time period. I think we could, if we really wanted, put our heads together and try to make some consistent actions.

Something specific that I was just thinking of that could solve much of this problem: we could figure out how to finally work our newsletter, involving the leadership's input. This doesn't have to be all the time, but it should be at least monthly, with input from Dev, Temp and whoever else they deem worthy to put things in. This will be official FoI information, with a specific sender, time of sending, etc etc etc. Just an idea as to a way we could actively get people involved in the project by putting in things that need to be done, who to be done by, and all that jazz.

Well...that's my attempt at a motivational speech at 7:30 in the morning. Just a little info on me these days: I graduated from high school (barely, but I pushed it and made it through) and was accepted into BYU (which was a major schock with my GPA) where I'll attend starting september. Though I may not have the internet in my apartment there, they do have the internet in the library, and I'm sure I could help contribute in some of my free time. In fact, I will make a priority if enough of us do so to the point where getting myself involved will actually be a good way to spend my free time (which I'll have little of, let me tell you now). I spent the first two weeks of June back in Cali, and had a blast. I'm currently visiting family up in NH and will be here for the next couple weeks. I return to Utah (to who knows where right now, hehe, still figuring that out) the beginning of August and, as I said, begin school the last day or two of August. In BYU, I will be majoring in Computer Science and minoring in music (at LEAST a minor), so I will be enhancing my skills to help us out in both those areas.

Ok...hope to hear from everyone! I hate when it gets too quiet like this and I always have a feeling there's something I can do about it...maybe this will help.

One year of v4

(Temporal) — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 02:17:01 GMT

The v4 database which we are using today was first initialized on Oct 31, 2002 at 8:17 PM CST. It is now a year old. Despite moving from MS SQL Server to PostgreSQL (and from Windows to Linux, even) during its lifetime, it has had no major problems. Yay!

Minor v4 update

(Temporal) — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 00:28:20 GMT

Added the following features/fixes:

Finally gave in and decided to not automatically log someone out if their IP address changes. It seems that a number of ISP's cause this to happen automatically. In particular, SlipT5 had lots of problems with this one when he accessed the site from school, and FattyMatty reported a similar problem today. Although the solution means making the site a little less secure, it would still take some impressive hacking skills to hijack someone's session.
Added banning at the v4 level. Previously, to ban people I simply had my friend configure his firewall to ignore any network packets coming from their IP. Thus, to those people it appeared as if the site no longer existed. However, the server is now on my network and my current firewall doesn't have such features. So, I have now modified v4 itself such that banned users can still log in and read stuff, but cannot post nor register new users. If they try to do either, they will receive a descriptive error message.

I only took the time to do these because they were both of critical importance. The former one was preventing certain people from using the site. The latter has proven itself to be necessary in the last week. Sadly, it seems that there are those who think it is fun to deface our site, and thus such defenses are necessary.

Test

(Temporal) — Wed, 29 Oct 2003 00:05:12 GMT

this is a test

What a Pain!

(mystik3eb) — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 20:28:04 GMT

I hope you can imagine how it is for people who come back after a while and see a MILLION things in their recent activity thing. Now, imagine that someone signs in and only has a minute. They don't remember everything they haven't checked and they're forced to scavenge around until they find it (assuming not every one will be responded to some more after they sign in). This is a problem, especially for me. Any ideas? I was thinking of something like new emails: always identified as unread until read.

Cafepress

(Davy boy2000b) — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 21:15:24 GMT

I'm in a bit of a phase atm where I hunt all sorts of strange, random and impressively unique tops on the net such as Flying Bear jerseys and Rustboy tees that are sold from websites through the cafepress service. I was wondering if Fate of Io could take advantage of this whole thing?

Advertising and a neat buck in the profits? You won't sell many atm but I'd definately buy a shirt! The logo would look pretty cool on one side of a plain white tee with the website address on the shoulder blades.

There would of course be mouse mats, baseball caps, mugs, calenders and posters but I think clothing would be more effective!

(I understand that Phant suggested shirt-printing ages ago. You don't need to remind me. Difference is, he only suggested having individual shirts to make the staff feel proud - my idea would benefit the site itself and the people who runs it. It would help pay the server as well as give Temp a lickle smile for all his coding time =P not to mention double the size of Dev's head when imagining sumbody walkin past him with one!)