Game Development Community

Community support

by Alex Chouls · in Torque X 2D · 06/08/2007 (4:32 pm) · 5 replies

So I really like the idea of TorqueX and have been happy to play with the beta.... however, the lack of even the most basic official response to most forum topics gives me pause. Yeah, it's great to have an engine and editor built on top of XNA, but factor in the official support for XNA (blogs, forums etc.), the larger XNA community, tutorials, books, freely available components... and it almost feels like a wash. Almost. TorqueX still has a bit of an edge... but the temptation to just cut to the chase and use XNA is growing. Maybe the release of 1.0 will improve the official support for the product...
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Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#1
06/09/2007 (12:15 am)
The forums aren't for official support - they're for the community to share ideas and help each other. If employees check the forums it's strictly out of care for and respect for the community. We don't get paid to do it and we aren't expected to post at all. I do check the forums rather frequently and try to answer reasonable questions whenever I can. As a small frame of reference, you have created 4 threads total and gotten 5 employee responses total.

Not to speak for anyone else, but a lot of times I'm just busy and neglect to check back (sometimes for a week or two at a time) or sometimes I'll just skimm and only reply when I see something critical or interesting. I know this to be true of several others here too. When you ask a question on the forums, even though a lot of times an employee will step in and answer, you're asking it to the community. If you have a question that you need an employee answer to, just email one of us. You'll get a reply. If you feel like sharing that information with the rest of the community, post it on the forums. If you feel like there's a thread that needs employee attention, feel free to bring it to our attention. We do care about you guys, we're just busy. :(

Torque Owner Alex Chouls
#2
06/09/2007 (11:29 am)
Fair enough.

May I make a few suggestions that I think will help all parties:

- Please add the ability to search individual forums. It's very hard to search for TorqueX specific info under the current system.

- Forums are great for discussion, but not so good for documenting the outcome. It would be great if topics discussed in the forums were occasionaly added to official FAQs, known bugs, workarounds etc.

- There probably should be an official Bug forum (or other online database) that is monitored by Garage Games employees. Bugs should be marked as confirmed, dismissed, fixed etc. Your user base will appreciate this transparency.

Thanks for listening. I do appreciate the extra effort spent to support the forums - it's a shame Garage Games doesn't pay you to do it ;) An active community that reaches a self sustaining critical mass can often make the difference between a succesful product and a niche tool (although I guess it's a chicken and egg situation). Anyway - best of luck to you!

Torque Owner Matias Kiviniemi
#3
06/09/2007 (11:18 pm)
Second on the forum search. Often times I remember something being discussed, but the only way of finding it is by flipping through conversations.

Torque Owner Josh Butterworth
#4
06/10/2007 (3:21 am)
I agree on the forum search too.


Im sure TDN will be the place for most of the solutions you can currently only get to here, I suppose GG would rather we wait untill the beta phase is over before that gets going though.

Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
#5
06/10/2007 (9:14 pm)
I bitched about the forum search too when I was interning here but until now we haven't really had the resources to make it happen. It's really one of those things that's just plain neccesary on a site like this. The good news is that we recently brought on a bunch of new web doodz, several of whom will eventually be responsible for overhauling this site. At least, that's what I've heard.