Shout out: Thanks!

[Bruce]

Guys,

I just wanted to thank the Glest community for giving my students support and assistance as they work through their project at school. I've got half of the class working on an RTS simulation (the other half have chosen FPS or an animation production) and they'll be asking a few questions I imagine over the next few months. So far the responses have been helpful and they do appreciate your knowledge of the game.

The course will run for the next, well, few years at least, and so you'll get new guys joining every 6 months or so. Over time this should be a boost to the community, particularly if they choose to stick around as players down the track (and some of them likely will).

I'll also contribute where I can to the dev side of things - a consistent update to any Mac ports would help no doubt. I've got 3.2.3 working (sort of), and once I sort out the last few issues I'll throw it up for download somewhere.

Again, thanks for the warm welcome

[ultifd]

No problem, even though I haven't done anything  much , but thanks for spreading Glest...I wish I was in your class...    

Keep us updated on the mac build.
Thanks, and Good Luck.  

[ElimiNator]

Yes, No prob. Got a question just ask. 

[Pigy]

sure ask away

[Hectate]

Bruce,

I appreciate your efforts to develop the creative minds of the next generation. Thank you for being an educator and a guide.

For everyone else, new minds will undoubtedly have fresh outlooks on what Glest is, and what it can be. This also means that they'll ask all the "obvious" questions that we've answered a hundred times. Remember, they only ask because they don't know. Keep your facts and FAQs handy. ;-D

Edit: Bruce, out of curiosity, what engine/game are the FPS modders using?

[John.d.h]

New members would do well to read the Forum FAQ:

https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4435.0

I think you'll find this to be a friendly, welcoming, and helpful forum.  We do try to keep things somewhat orderly, so just a few things to keep in mind:

• If you're going to post something, make sure it's related to the topic you're posting in.  It's not a huge issue, but it has gotten to be a problem sometimes.  Off-topic threads are generally accepted here if they're related to game development or something similar, but the title should be preceded by "OT".  For example: "OT - Omega's game 'End of the World'".  If you want to talk about something completely unrelated to Glest (baseball, for example), post it in the Off-Topic thread here: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=4101.0.  This keeps the board clean and organized.
  
• Feel free to introduce yourself, but don't post a new thread to do it, or the forum would get flooded with people saying hello.  Instead, post your introductions here: https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?topic=3012.0
  
• Try to avoid obnoxious/offensive avatars and signatures.
• This forum does not support image uploading, so if you want to post a screenshot, you have to use an image hosting service.  Probably the best way is to upload the picture to Image Shack and use the forum thumbnail code (which includes a link to the full-sized image).
  
• If you want to share a file, the best sites to upload it to are MediaFire and Filefront.
  
• If you're sharing a big file (more than a couple megabytes), compress it.  Some of us have lousy internet and using compression saves a lot of time/bandwidth.  7z format is pretty standard around here because it compresses really well.  To use it, you need 7-zip, which you can get for free here.

[Little Helper]

What school do you teach at?

[-Archmage-]

You know........I don't think it would be such a good idea for him to say...

[Hectate]

Yes, it's probably best that he didn't. It could possibly voilate some privacy laws, since it's an educational institution serving minors - several of which we already have met here on the forums.

Do you really want everyone here (as well as any random stranger, guest, and search bot) to know where you go/went to school? Where you live? How old you are? Ecetera ad infinitum.

[ultifd]

What school do you teach at?

I agree...private info. 
If you really had to know, there is email and PMing.... 

[Omega]

That's true. You're welcome to volunteer the information about yourself if you wish, but avoid asking people. It scares them away.

Perhaps asking what subject they teach is better (and what does knowing the school help for anyway?).

[Bruce]

Edit: Bruce, out of curiosity, what engine/game are the FPS modders using?

They're using the Unreal 1 engine - I told them I wanted them to use a cross-platform engine that was highly customisable and freely available. They also needed to make sure that using it at school wouldn't breach any licensing arrangements - since its non-commercial use they're ok. I also warned them to choose something that wouldn't be overly complex - I don't want them trying to learn the engine for 15 weeks then trying to squash the development of the game into 3! I'll be interested to see how all of the groups go.

As has already been covered (re: school I teach at), what I will say is that it's a school in Australia. I'm lucky enough to have the flexibility to build a curriculum that is focussed on processes rather than content, so I can use this kind of task in IT to teach stuff like syntax, modelling and animation techniques, plot development, team balancing (which is highly mathematical in an RTS) - a whole range of useful things - and do so within a context they enjoy working in.

John d.h. - I'll make sure they know they need to read FAQs etc before asking questions. If they do ask something that has been asked before, then I'm sure the guys here know to link them to an appropriate thread to point them in the right direction. Hopefully they'll keep that to a minimum.

[Hectate]

Unreal 1 sounds like a good choice. I never did much modding on it myself because the map editor confused me (I was used to the BSP mapping styles of Quake and derivatives) but they should have fun with it. As you said, not too advanced to make it difficult.

I wonder, will everyone's projects be online afterward? I'm sure we'll see the Glest mod around here of course. 

[ElimiNator]

Yes I made tones of maps in BSP when we switched to X real The editor was a bit different.