I have been reading and writing at this Game Design forum for quite some time now, and I noticed that recently more and more people are totally and utterly newbies that just pop up out of nowhere ask a question like "How do I make a great game and become famous?", or "I have a great idea. I will not tell because it is so great you will steal it, but if you want to program it for my and give me money, please contact me!", or more recently "I want to make a 3D isometric game. What do I do?" and so on endlessly. The world is becoming more and more crowded with gamers and therefore also with people that want to make their own games. Some don''t have clue about how to do it (witness this fact by noticing how Microsoft had to build in Visual Basic support into DirectX 7.0) and just seem to be wasting everybody''s time when there is several good books on the subject for beginners. I was wondering - is this what we want with this forum, or is it supposed to be more serious? Maybe ghowland could moderate it more strictly and keep this kinds or postings out. Am I alone here or does anybody agree with me? Should we work for purity in the game design forum? Jacob Marner

These types of posts seem to go in cycles. They come and go. When this happens, more moderation is required by the moderator of the forum. I''ll start paying more attention to this forum for these types of posts as well.

Kevin

I don''t want to start a debate about vb vs c++, but VB is a serious language, and can be very useful for game programming (though some more intensive effects such as alpha blending are done better through an assembly dll etc.) So the addition of vb support into dx7 wasn''t just something for newbies; there are quite a few good game programmers that have wanted dx support since version 3!

I think there should be a ''newbie-only'' type forum, where these types of people should be confined to And, a general FAQ list would be nice, covering the stupid questions like "How do I make a game?" and stuff like that

David

Couldn''t agree more Felonius.

Although we all have been newbies once, I''m getting the feeling that more and more newbies today want to much at start and aren''t really capable of learning things to themselves.

Jaap Suter

Yah I like the idea of having a newbie corner. With a good faq. Maybe listing the top 20 books to buy and some links to begginer tutorials, etc... That way we wouldn''t have to post to 50 "Where to start programming" questions.

I think that''d be a good idea. I also find sometimes that I''ll get 6 replies to a post and only 1 or 2 are actually any good or even valid.

- Ben

I thought we already had a FAQ here (''start here...''?).

Maybe you could have all people at the ''initiate'' ranking automatically have their question searched for before the new topic is posted so they are forced to look around for similar questions by other people that have already been answered.


Lack

Christianity, Creation, metric, Dvorak, and BeOS for all!

Well, even if it was, is that really that big of a problem? As soon as everyone is helped out, there''ll be no more newbies

If you code it, they will come...

Commander M
http://commanderm.8m.com
cmndrm@commanderm.8m.com

I don't mind seeing a posts here and there about newbie stuff, the thing I hate the most is that some people don't even read your replies sometimes. They continue to add to the same thread saying "someone please reply I really need help, anyone? anyone?"

I once posted an answer to someones question, which was a link to an article on this site that explained exactly what he/she asked, and wouldn't you know it a few hours later there was a reply in that thread saying, "would someone please help... soon?"

I guess what I'm saying is just because someone doesn't post pure code as an answer to a question, it doesn't mean the answer they gave is wrong. You need to look into it if it sounds reasonable.

Edited by - ao on May 20, 2000 8:17:44 PM