Time for my rant of the month

Hey guys,

This is just a short message to everyone who visits the forum to let you all know what's going on. I've got some good news and unfortunately a bit of bad new. I don't intend to make this some sort of 'dictatorial monologue', so I've left this post open for now if anyone has any comments (good or bad :P). I'm going to start off with the bad part, then finish up with the good stuff so you end reading this in a hopefully happy mood.

Now onto business. I'm not one to shout people down or berate them, I don't like doing that sort of thing. But there are certain things that need to be said. I've kept relatively quiet up til now about it, and I'm faily tolerable of most of the stuff that goes on here. Nevertheless, I'm in a position of responsibility and that requires an ocassional regurgitation of the rules of this place. The two that I'm most concerned with are keeping on-topic, and giving useful advice when someone asks a question.

The on-topic issue doesn't loom particularly large at the moment, but prevention is better then recovery. Now I know that the topic of a post will always swing in one direction or another, but just make sure it doesn't swing so far out that it no longer relates to the original message. This is merely a simple reminder for everyone that all us people have to yabber off every now and again to make it look like we're doing our jobs :).

The next issue however, is slightly more serious and in a certain sense it ties in with the above. I've seen this too often to let it pass. If you're going to answer a question, please at least put some effort into the answer otherwise there's simply no point. If you can't be bothered spending a few moments typing up a decent reply, then I don't want to see vague, half-assed mumblings junking up my forum. The only thing they contribute to is your postcount and that's not helpful. I don't want to bring out the 'tough-guy' attitude and start cracking heads, but it annoys me and the guys who are asking the questions when people either give false information repeatedly, or (debateably) worse, no information at all that can help the person in need. Also, if someone says something wrong or misleading or unnecessary, it doesn't help if you contribute your two cents into it but don't actually comment on the topic at hand. Saying something like "Hey dude your answer is wrong" is POINTLESS if you don't give an explanation of the right answer, or at least spend a half-second to elaborate on why it's wrong. I'm happy with people pointing out errors from other people as long as they're civilised, but please don't make it the sole objective of your post. Please just use a little more forethought when you're posting is all I'm asking, and if you're not sure, then why not test it out yourself? You may find something interesting along the way that will improve your own knowledge base. Be aware that I'm not singling anyone out here, this is just specific problems for the general audience.


Phew, onto the good stuff. First some general news about the retail Frozen Throne WE that you'll all likely be excited to hear. If any of you have dropped by the Battle.net forums recently you'll have probably already read this, but for those who haven't it has been revealed that there will be spell detection triggers in the new editor in addition to spell editing. Unfortunately buffs will not be editable within the WE Spell/Object editor, nor will you be able to duplicate buffs to make your own. But you will still be able to edit existing buffs the 'old fashioned' way through text files. You will now also be able to replace existing sounds straight through the sound editor, so that's another interesting little tidbit for us to savour while we wait around til July 1. There's plenty more features that are not quite confirmed (advanced tileset editing anyone?) but that's just a couple of things for now.

Now onto forum news. I'm happy to announce that the FAQ Thread is underway and steadily growing. Once we have a significant amount of information pooled, I'll be reshuffling and categorising everything so people can navigate through it all much more easily. When TFT rolls around there'll obviously be a lot of new questions from everyone, and that's when it will really come in handy. Also for some unusual reason in the last few weeks there have been a sudden flurry of new tutorials from people popping up all over the forum. So if you're new and need a hand with something, check out the Tutorials Forum to see if there's a tutorial to suit your needs.

Also in the wake of a wacky idea inspired by a post from Mr. SpectreReturns, I've put together a little trigger competition for anyone who's brave enough to test their "1337 tr1gger1ng skillZ". The competition will be open for several days and at the end, all people with the correct answer will be showered in gifts (Well not really, but there'll be a webpage with your names on it :P). Depending on the relative success of the competition it may become a weekly event. All competitions will be based on normal triggers (ie, no JASS) so everyone can have a go at it. You can find out all about the competition right here.

Well that about wraps it up from me for now (apparently it wasn't as short as I thought :P). As I said in the beginning, if you want to comment on anything I've said, feel free to. If you want to comment on my performance in this forum so far, feel free to. Even if it's constructive criticism I'm still willing to listen, I have a tough skin protecting my ego so it can take a bit of a beating :P.

~kharma

your an exelent mod. no need to bruse that skin protecting you ego ://// . ill try and stay ontopic, altho if i fell like it, i will post some off topic stiff aslong as the post has ontopic/helpfull info.

keep up the good work :D

HI well i Denfinataly looking foward to TFT along with the new Editor. also you did go a bit long but no problem but anyways i agree with what you said. although i have noticed something why do so many people have the Goul for there Avatar at firt i thought i oly had it in 1 day have found 4 people with it.:reallyang

Thanks for the positive remarks guys. And Duroth65, you'll likely find that if someone has a good avatar, it'll mysteriously appear with half a dozen other people quite quickly :P.

~kharma

I have to disagree with one thing, reading your second -point...
See, if someone (mostly EF, no offence to you, tho), types up the wrong or misleading information, it would be wise to swiftly tell the guy asking the question not to do this/that. Then wait for someone else to actually correctly answer it, if you did not know the answer yourself.

Repeated replies saying the person who tried to help is wrong is, however, a problem. One post is enough, if the right answer hasn't already been given.

Update1: Kharma, I would like you to note that there is a site (with me and another guy as current admins) starting up. It will gather all kinds of tutorials, for every least bit of things you could ever imagine. It will be newb guides as well as Pro-guides, to next-to every aspect of the game. Soooooo... The FAQ Thread is kinda funny ;)

Regards
Dead-Inside

I think you may have missed a part. I agree to a certain extent of what you're saying, but I also mentioned that if you don't know what the answer is, at least try a spend a second or so to say why it won't work. Even if it's a reference to another post. If there truly isn't any knowledge about why something behaves incorrectly that's obviously fine. But I was refering to the greater portion of responses I noted rather then those isolated incidents.
The funnier part is that I've heard that idea so many times it's almost sad now. I mean no offence to you, of course -- lord knows it would be great if someone actually finished it for once. But I've heard people say they were going to create a site with the exact description you just gave so many times without any result that it seems like a cursed idea. I certainly hope you and your friend are able to free yourselves from that loop, as I'm sure it would be of a great assistance to the community as a whole.

~kharma

Oooh, hehe... No, the site is going to be built with time. It wont be open for at least a month. We need tutorials as of now. It only started a few days ago. This means I have 2 sites starting up.

But, it (as far as we know, Cide and I (Don't know if he is registered here)) there wont be a forum. It's just a massive archive of tutorials. See, the layout is already planned, and there are currently three people working with the sites tutorials. Cide, me and Pac)Man from W3P.

The whole point of the site is that, as I am now, going trough 3 sites per day. But it will relieve people of the need to go to these kind of forums, at least briefly. If it isn't in there, they may post a suggestion on a tutorials (This will be fixed later), and they will then be linked to another site, here, or somewhere else, to resolve their question.

The layout covers all aspects of WC3 editing, it even covers altering WC3... Now I need to find people willing to write these tutorials.
We have a basic and an advanced trigger tutorial section.
But first of all, we have the newb run-trough.
Tool - Interface - Where to begin (An idea for a map, ect) - Planning work - Gathering a team for a map <-- The current newb steps.

Regards
Dead-Inside (Nice how you missed to remove it -- haha)

Sounds Good make sure to tell me when your site is up and running. :D Good Luck

I find it hilarious that your thread didn't attract many responses when it was stickied, but now that it's floating loosely it's becoming popular.

I also find it hilarious that I have nothing important to add to the discussion, but I'm posting anyway. Thus leading to the problem that you're attempting to address.

But worry not, this is not normal for me.
Good day! :hammer:

Panto,

I tend to not read stickied posts ... They don't attract my attention.

On a side note, would you be able to write any kind of tutorials? (Basicly any kind of tutorial is needed atm)