Hi guys,
Apologies if this this is a bit long winded but it’s a 1/3plea for change, 1/3 offer of help, and 1/3 resume/portfolio to justify saidhelp offer lol. The word count merely shows how much I care about your projecthaha! Lone Wolf suggested I post here instead of in the forums. Imade a thread a while back here... https://sourceforge.net/p/freecol/discussion/719661/thread/42b0844f/ ... that discussed the presentation issues of your projectleading to misinformation and confusion. I like so many others thought yourproject was dead due to the freecol.org website not being touched in nearly 5years. The sourceforge page did little to change that view as it offers thesame old version for download and there is no mention of the nightly releasesanywhere. After checking for years I eventually got lucky and saw a threadwhere someone was asking if the project was dead and one of you replied with alink to the nightly releases. I keep seeing others having the same problems andin other communities I’ve seen people say FreeCol has been abandoned for years.Your indiedb page hasn’t been touched in 9 years while your main website and sourceforgefront page lack the crucial information on where to get latest dev builds and helpthe project. This means countless people (eg sourceforge says 500 just this week alone)are downloading an ancient version of your project, not knowing how to help,and thinking your project is abandoned & dead! Last year (when I finally did find the latest releases) Iplayed a huge game of Freecol, had so much fun and fell in love with your project.I also posted number of bugs and feature requests that Mike and others kindlylooked at. I made a nice HD video and took a whole number of sexy HDscreenshots showing off your game that I’ll be posting on the net soon as partof a huge Civ & Col tribute website and youtube series I’m working on. I’d love to help you guys however I’m not a programmer andmy art abilities are limited to simple pixel art stuff (eg I’m the creator ofStar Trek Doom, Quest for Glory IV 3D Hexen, Star Wars Civ2, Heroes of Might& Magic 2 Civ2, C&C Civ2, Red Alert Civ2, & more retro mods) so it wouldseem I’m not much help to you other than testing and maybe the occasional picturealteration. However there is another area I can properly help you with. Thereason I’ve barely finished any of my own mods is because I devote HUGE amountsof time to promoting other people’s fan game & mod projects relating to myfavourite games. I do this on my retro gaming website and youtube channelshere: http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeUnV5Eh4pPQUjeodp7ZZiA In some cases with projects I’m super passionate about I goa step further and directly help out with development feedback and doing theirpromotional work and community admin work (freeing the Devs up to concentrate on the developing instead of wasting time on marketing and customer service). For example I run the indiedb page,twitter, forum and facebook pages for the Starflight Remake project where Icreated detailed dev diaries of the devs work that are posted on the indiedbhomepage brining a lot of attention to the project: https://www.indiedb.com/games/starflight-the-remaking-of-a-legend I created all the promotional media (pics & vids),install guide and run the moddb page, sourceforge page and sourceforge forum forthe Babylon 5 Civ4 mod project (which sadly the dev has gone inactive on): https://sourceforge.net/projects/babylon5mod-for-civ4/ I’ve also helped out and created all the promotional media(pics & vids) for the Starflight Lost Colony and Starflight Heroes of Arthproject moddb/indiedb pages too. I am a moderator of several forums and facebook groups. Ialso created and run a number of facebook groups for gaming communities who’sforums are mostly long gone and needed a new home such as Starflight, Master ofMagic, and Freelancer which now have member bases expanding into the hundreds(& hopefully one day thousands haha). Realising that Colonization is in thesame boat I recently created a new Colonization facebook group too that I planto use as a platform to heavily promote FreeCol and other Colonization relatedgames and fan projects: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ColonizationGame/ If you’re willing to let me I would love to help yourproject similar to how I helped others and fix up your public image a bit. Ifyou make me an admin for the sourceforge page I can do some of this stuffmyself. Either way here are my suggestions below: *1 Sourceforge fixes* - Edit the front page to have similar critical links &info to what’s on your github page here: https://github.com/FreeCol/freecol#contributing As the first thing people should see are links tohomepage/last stable release/github test releases/forum/bug reporting/featurerequests/source files - Update the pictures and add a youtube video as the currentstuff is ancient. I can supply both eg you can see the HD pictures I took here:https://imgur.com/a/lBEsMJB - Add a ‘WELCOME – IMPORTANT INFORMATION & DOWNLOADS’thread to the general discussion forum with a friendly welcome message and onceagain those critical links to homepage/last stable release/github testreleases/forum/bug reporting/feature requests/source files. Then tick the sourceforge‘announcement flag’ to ensure it appears above every forum section, tick thesticky box to also have it near the top of the general discussion just for goodmeasure. I did something similar for the B5 Civ4 sourceforge forum. Whether youallow me admin status or not I am HAPPY to write this up for you. - make an extra download folder and copy the test releasesfrom github into that folder to ensure that people aren’t accidentally downloadingthe old files and also ensuring you have a second backup of all releases. Onceagain this is a boring repetitive task I’d be happy to do for you. I’m alreadya follower of your github so I can set it to alert me whenever you do a releaseand then just copy it over. *2 Homepage WebsiteFixes* Obviously I can’t directly help you with freecol.org myself sothis is more of a plea to whoever has control of it as not touching yourwebsite in nearly 5 years is a BIG problem because right now when people typeFreeCol into google your old website takes the first 3 spots, then Wikipedia,then your sourceforge. Which means you can bet good money that nearly everyoneis going to your website and going “oh this is so dead”. Does the currentactive team still have access to this website? If not do you have a way tocontact the person who used to run it? As clearly whoever controls it doesn’thave time anymore to work on it which is fine as life happens lol, HOWEVER itat least needs one more update by that person to future proof it so they don’thave to work on it again. Suggested updates are: - Update the front page and change the 0.11.6 download linkto say something like ‘last stable release’ (with no version number to futureproof) presumably linking to the sourceforge downloads section (not a specificfile to future proof) and ALSO the latest test releases github page (once againno version numbers or specific file links to future proof). I would also onceagain recommend you include those other critical links sourceforge forum/bugreporting/feature requests/source files on the main page for all to see aswell. - Add a new update to the news section saying that allproject activities have moved so this site will not be updated much and onceagain list the critical links sourceforge/last stable release/github testreleases/forum/bug reporting/feature requests/source files. - Remove “The the current version of FreeCol is 0.11.6.”from the About FreeCol/Current Status section to future proof. The line belowit about sourceforge is PERFECT on its own. - Update the Downloads section to have a link to the latesttest releases page right at the top above all the old stuff. Maybe even removeall the old stuff and just replace it with the similar link to a generic futureproof ‘last stable release’ like I suggested for the homepage. - not essential but I’d also recommend updating the Screenshotsand also the Screenshots/MoreScreenshots sections (the last ones in there areversion 0.7.0 from 2007!!!!) with more modern ones similar to what I suggestedon the sourceforge front page. Once again you can use my HD ones if you want. Having a video section with embedded videos of youtube reviews (there's a number of them out there & I'm about to release mine) would help too! *IndieDB Fixes* https://www.indiedb.com/games/freecol This page has not been touched since 2010 and when I try toview the dev group controlling it it says the group has been deleted. This isnot good. IndieDB/ModDB are very important for project promotion asthousands of people use those sites. I’ve brought a huge amount of attention tothe projects I help out on or made myself by utilising this place. What alsomakes them awesome is that they can host copies of your files too (you don’teven have to upload, you just give them the download link from your other siteand they copy it across). I’ve been creating regular dev diaries based on the dev logsfor multiple projects on there and articles always end up on their homepage forall to see which brings in so many new visitors. So the big question is who controlled that page?are they long gone? and can they even still access it if their control groupwas deleted? If control is lost then maybe a request can be put in to indiedbadmins to regain control. Then you can add me to the control group and I’llhappily update it for you. And if all else fails the good news is that whoever set itup left the ‘allow others to post pics/vids/file/articles’ button tickedmeaning anyone (eg like me) can still post content there such as HD pics &vids, latest releases, and I could post an article with said content and thosecritical links talked about above. The only thing we can’t touch (without full control) is the summaryinfo section everyone sees when they first visit the page which is a shame asthat really needs all the critical links too. *Conclusion* I realise maybe some of these things are being held off forthe big 2.0 release however by not dealing with it now you’re actually hurtingyour pre 2.0 development as you’ve got literally thousands of people (over 500 a week implies thousands over months and years) downloadingthe old 11.6 release from the freecol website and sourceforge instead of thelatest test releases which risks inaccurate feedback. However you’re probably notgetting as much of that feedback as you could as people either don’t know where to post the feedback or they think the project is long dead so there’s no point inbothering. The bottom line is most people are ignorant andimpatient lol, if you want their help and support you have to hold their handsthrough every possible opportunity. Eg Ihad a guy swearing at me yesterday because I didn’t verbally say in my youtubevideo where to download a Civ4 mod from that I reviewed, he didn’t even think to read the vid descriptionwhere all the links were, he had to be friggin verbally told the link in aformat he couldn’t click on.. wowzer lol. That’s why all the above changes toinclude critical links across ALL your frontline sections is so important (covering every crazy different place a visitor can think of to look) ifyou want this project is stay healthy and grow. More media attention, morefans, more testers, more helpers, more programmers, more everything if peoplecan see how much the game has improved (by updated media content) and wherethey need to go to download things and help (critical links in all prominent locations). If you don’t want to grant me admin controls anywhere thenit would at least be great if the people in control of these 3 places comeforward and let me work with you update these things. I can write up all the cr*p,give pics and vids etc, I’m happy to do all the hard write up stuff then allyou gotta do is push a few buttons it put it out there lol. OMG over 2000 words and I’ll probably be ignored again anywaylol. Oh well.. I hope to hear from someone that cares. Feel free to reply to mehere, or in that forum thread I linked at the start or to my email at d_blake...@yahoo.com Regards Blake
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