Activity has almost hit rock bottom the latest days - very few posts are made, very few levels are released and very few Karma rates are made. The Staff has discussed this for a while, but what matters is not what we think - what's really important is what YOU, the community, wants to see featured on the Interguild.

Are competitions what matters? If so, should they be long or short, contain featured games or all games, should there be multiple competitions at the same time...? Post your opinion.
Do you think that a constant addition of new games are what matters? If so, what kind of games would you like to see? Should we make more games featured, and what can we, as a community, do to make people interested in these games? Should we focus on a few selected games or try to give each of our games the same amount of attention?
Should we focus on writing articles for our games? If so, should we write articles for the featured games, or try to bring attention to the not-so-recognized games? What do you want the articles to contain? Should we write one huge article on everything regarding one game or should we write many smaller articles, each one covering a different subject?

These are very serious questions, so I'd really appreciate if you took your time to think this through and share your thoughts on this. If you think that something other than the things I mentioned should be the focus of our attention, please tell us about it! We need your opinion on this to make sure that the Interguild continues to be an inspiring community.

Thanks.

Well once we create Aeon that will be another game, but that will pretty much replace HATPC in gamestyle. I think we need to find some other really good games with level editors, Knytt stories is a much better game than FR2 in my opinion, but we need some levels for it before we can fully appreciate that, maybe I will release all of my past levels.

I think the problem is that we don't have enough substantial games (that take any time/ have originality) to play other than HATPC and most members have played for quite a while, so basically we need to search for/make some really awesome games (with level editors).

And you do realise by asking the community you are only asking the active members who aren't mods which is about 5-10 of us, right ?

Yes, but that's the problem - we will stay with the community whatever happens, but without members, we're nothing. That's why your input is absolutely essential. Even if we disagree with your stances, we will adapt. However, if you dislike what happens here, you'll move on to another community, and that's something we must avoid.

And even though I also think KS is a more enjoyable game than FR2, KS is hindered by the fact that a good level for it takes very long time, and the level maker is quite hard to understand unless you've read the manual (I posted the link somewhere here, Accel got it saved though).

You could, however, help promote Knytt Stories by releasing more of your levels.

Lol, I agree the activity has sucked lately. I think competitions should be kept short, usually a week long. This will promote a more constant creation of levels. Also maybe we should try to get more then one competition running at a time (like one N comp, one Hatpc comp, maybe even a Fr2 comp). Though we need games that we can bite into more. The last few (Pyro, Gravity Grid, Ambreial Axis) have been good, but there has not been enough possibilitys and room for creativity to have that lasting effect like Hatpc. I don't really find articles important at the current moment, but if some must be made I'd suggest ones to get people interested in some of the less active games or articles that cover lesser known things about already popular. So there, my stimulus plan to save the Interguild.

This would mean that we'd have 2-3 competitions running at the same time, and each competition would be one week? I dunno about that, but if we were to start one when the other one ends...

"Biteable" games that haven't recieved too much attention, include, but aren't limited to, Knytt Stories, Super Mario Flash and possibly also Line Rider. You should try one of those, although I think most of us have tried Line Rider at least once.

Speaking of which, I guess I could upload my Line Rider video that I made ages ago...

I think the first thing we should do is advertise more.  Livio said he was making banners for us that we could put in our siggy on other sites, but he never finished.  I might not know everything about that; maybe he never finished, or you mods decided to stop him.

And, yeah, I think we should always have a comp running, at the very least.  It would give us more levels, and would promote people to try to make a level that would win, instead of not that great levels.

We also need to give more attention to game that don't have any levels, and at least give them a try.  We need to have a little more variety in our games that we make levels for.  Not all games we have will be good for making levels, though.

I think we also need to try to get a comp for at least one per game.  Meaning, we need a comp for just one game.  And we should do that for all games, to encourage members to try them.

Those are my thoughts.

Ah, and I forgot.

Videos.  We should also make more videos for walkthroughs, and even guide to making levels for game.  That's one thing that could be done to help, as well.

I don't have time to comment right now, I'm feeling really bad and will go to sleep now, but just look at these videos for the Knytt Stories Level Editor: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=InTheSewer&view=videos&query=knytt+editor

I agree that competitions should be one week long. That is also what I have been doing. Most of the levels are made in a single day anyway, so one week or two weeks shouldn't make a difference.
I also think judging should last 1 week at longest. If not all judges have finished by then, the results should be based on that judges that have finished.

I'll also take the suggestion into mind about running contests non-stop. We could run a contest while the previous one is being judged.

And in my personal opinion, SeppuKuties is severely underrated. I admit I first admitted it because the game is too funny, but after playing it a bit the game has a wide variaty of unique options. Both the moveable objects and the suicide factor make for very interesting gameplay.

I think levels are the things that bump up the interguild. Mostly very good ones. They are probably what the interguild was mostly made for and what keeps it running. Competitions/videos/guides ect. ect. just adds on to that.

What I would like to see:

- AEON. Come on guys, let Livio work on it more! The site works fine as is. It doesn't need to be perfect.
- More HatPC Articles / Tricks / FaQs / Stuff
- Some HatPC-like game about space travelers. I haven't decided on a name.
- Maybe a "points" system that lets you "buy" electronic prizes? Probably a silly idea, and I probably wouldn't care too much, but it might be fun
- Ah, thought of a name: AEON.

Bmwsu and Dekudude, what I meant was things that can be easily fixed at the spot, by either the community as a whole or by the staff. Still, it's interesting and important that you do bring this up. Banners could always be done by the community by some graphically experienced persons, while Aeon might be harder to contribute to at the moment for the vast majority of us.

The idea of a constant competition does sound appealing - I think it will give at least a temporary increase in activity, but I also think that after a while people will get bored with constantly trying to make quality caves each week. Some tweaking might have to be done, but the idea is good whatever happens.

Jell has tried almost every game here, the 5 most recent ones (except for Pyro II) have all been flooded with new levels, and some have been tried by other users, most notably Jazz who has made some Super Mario Flash levels every now and then.

I agree that we should have a competition for almost all games, but I'm doubtful of some: SuperTux? It's very much a Super Mario Bros. ripoff and the sharing of levels is complicated. Exorbis 2? The puzzles are very limited due to the low size available. Still, the idea is good.

Yeah, videos...introductions to different games could be very useful. An introduction to Shift or Gravity Ball could be useful for those who have no idea what that is.

Judging isn't as important to focus on now IMO, but it's still a good suggestion.

Levels is of course what the Interguild is built on, but what can we do to make people create and construct better levels? That's one of the main questions.

As said, there's not much we as a community can do to make Aeon go faster, nor can we construct a shop system, but your opinion might help Livio when prioritizing. We did have a shop system on the previous page, and the general consensus was that it was pretty bad. It might just have been because you could only buy background colors to your posts, which looked horrible.

There's already a lot of HatPC "stuff", at least there was before we moved to the new site. We could of course take some time to rewrite this, but it could take a lot of time and it would bring additional focus to HatPC when we might want to bring focus to more games than one.  

"More HatPC Articles / Tricks / FaQs / Stuff"
I want the Interguild and HATPC articles more than anything. The Interguild articles would really help with people understanding what the site is about and how to use its features. I was thinking that, when a new member joins, they could get redirected to a "Welcome" article that briefly explains all the functions and links to articles about them that'll contain more detailed information. Since we're at least 90% an HATPC site, it weird that we actually don't have particularly much information about it. I mean, we know all these tricks, and they're not really written down anywhere. And it's quite shameful that we don't even have a walkthrough (I need to get back to that).

"Maybe a "points" system that lets you "buy" electronic prizes?"
Fuchsia backgrounds. Good times....

I'd like to see the Interguild Olympics Results finally released, for starters.

Definitly, forget all the crap we just mentioned, I wanna here the results for a comp that almost happened 2 monthes ago.

The thing is - we're only waiting for Livio to release them! Everything's set, he just refuses to release them.

@ Livio If He Ever See This:

yes, i have to agree with all this. This site started as a HatPC community and is still it; the other games are like expansion packs for a game - cool, but not as cool as the original game is. when i have time i'll try to write some more articles too; we need to get this done.

I think I might try writing some too. I may not be the best cave maker, but I can still contribute. I also have a school break for two weeks at the end of this week, so I should have a bunch of free time.

yeah! that logic will bring our site down...yes there is! Run everything on the site while I work on Aeon. Think of it like I'm taking some sort of super-extended vacation and if you want the Interguild to survive, you'll have to do everything yourself. Including the weekly updates

that's actually not a bad idea, though....

yeah, not only that but our article system really stinks. I want to revamp it so that we could make it much easier to manage hundreds of articles in the system. Users would have to be able to easily search through articles, maybe with a sort of tag system. It'd have to be really easy to submit and edit articles. Maybe the ability to assign non-mods to article projects, where they too can easily edit and update some articles. It should also be like wikipedia where you can link to everything. I think that each major section of an article should be logged almost as its own search result, and then you can easily link to that. Man, I think I should revamp the article system before the video archive now.....

Anyway, back to the actual topic, which I am surprised that I just read every single post (and not just skimmed) when I was in the middle of releasing the IO results........

I remember days when I would think: "I probably shouldn't go onto the Interguild today, because if I do, then I'll never log off and I will never get my homework done (or something)" One of the biggest reasons why the site is dead is because the site is dead! There's almost no one here lately, and what kept most of us online were the conversations that we had with each other. That's probably because with the school season, people don't have too much time anymore, and they don't even make too many levels in the little free time they have. We need to somehow get people back here, which will in turn get more people back, and etc..

I like the mini-comp ideas a lot. Maybe instead of naming them as "N Comp #1" and "HATPC Comp #32112", maybe we should start a new series, like "Mini Comp #1", or maybe name it after the time of year, like "Fall Comp #1" or "September Comp #1". Or maybe get rid of all these crazy series names and just call them by their theme? The one-week, one-comp-after-another style could be the new standard for competitions, and anything longer will be declared as a "Special Comp" or something. Now this sounds like a good idea.....

And since comps are so short, we can do them on any game. So we could hold a red remover comp if we wanted to. Would've been great to have a one-week red remover comp at the height of the red remover popularity. I'll have to make a quick edit in the add comps page for mods, though, b/c not all games are shown in that list of games...

I think that the key to getting back members is in doing several things throughout our site all at once. The biggest things we need is: competitions (already happening, thanks to jell), articles (especially for the intimidating games so people can get into them), and Aeon (yes, Aeon!). But since Aeon isn't coming around really soon, the best thing we can do is try to figure out how to become more efficient so that it can come sooner. By the way, I have a 3-day weekend this weekend. Maybe I'll have enough time to make some great progress on something...