Modcraft community

[XxXGenesisXxX]

Ok, so a few things from my perspective on what has been mentioned so far (read a lot, skimmed some):

The problem I have with both tutorials and especially auto-mated process is that they do not promote lateral thinking, which is more important than having the skill sets required in WoW modding. Yes, if you want to write some code to do something you should learn some programming, that is obvious, but as mentioned there are countless places on the internet to learn that. Same with 3D modelling, texturing and even tool development. However it isn't easy to learn to think laterally without practicing it.

When I started to get into WoW modding back in 2012 there was some documentation and tutorials, but not too much, let alone a time before that when some members of this community came started. The main thing that veterans all have in common is an interest in exploration and learning. About 10% of everything I learned was from tutorials (and that was still a fair bit), the other 90% was from experimentation, exploration and memorizing my own form of documentation in my head based upon what I found. Furthermore, it's motivational to know you figured something out on your own.

That said, I do believe tutorials are a good thing, but to rely on them is a fault. That goes double for automation for people who should be learning (as opposed to people who already know but want to speed up the process).

The second thing I wanted to touch on was Modcraft itself as an identity. I joined this site in 2012. At that time both AC-Web and MMOWNED/OwnedCore were flourishing and highly populated, unfortunately, that was exactly why I came to Modcraft. I never liked AC-Web personally, as to me it was what OwnedCore became; a dumping ground for tutorials. I remember thinking to myself, holy crap if I see another crappy tutorial on how to compile a core I'm going to shoot myself.

Then there was Modcraft. When I joined Modcraft, to me it was where the skill level per member significantly exceeded that of other sites. But more importantly it was almost like a filtered society where people were generally interested in growing the modding community, not just themselves. Well, for the most part at least... I don't mind information for new modders, but I believe we should teach them how to teach themselves, not teach them exactly what to do.

The last thing is more personally towards myself, but I know others are the same. I'm over WoW... I am sick of it, plain and simple. I have played that fucking game since beta. All it has done in my eyes has gone downhill. The modding community was the only good thing it had left. But there is only so much one can enjoy working with a severely limited client. Given the lack of people interested in quality custom content for WoW, it makes me question "why don't I just make my own content in Unity Engine instead?"

A big part of that thinking is that my learning curve has plummeted, I used to be learning so much everyday and so quickly, now I look at the WoW cores and it's all rinse and repeat, or stuff I am simply not interested in. In terms of WoW I am completely without goals or targets to achieve that I am interested in. This wasn't as bad back in the day because I was self-motivated through learning, I would be halfway through completing a goal and would find a new one to do after I was done. Long story short, WoW as a game and evolution of a game is stagnant in my eyes. Feel free to disagree, hell I'd like to be convinced otherwise, I could of course be completely wrong as I am severely out of touch with WoW modding.

ANYWAY! On to the productive side of this post:

I like the idea of a formal tutorial system that would require approval and proper structure before it is accepted and published. If you think about how .wikia pages are structured by default (ignore custom templates), they are simple, clean and force you to structure your content. Something along those principles would be great.

Personally I have gotten used to video tutorials, perhaps video implementation would be nice.

Though it shouldn't be the goal of the tutorials an incentive would be nice. I wouldn't go as drastic as paid Tutorials like Method suggested, but perhaps a competition per month for the best tutorial of the month with a small prize. Promoting quality over quantity.

On the idea of competition, something I would considering coming back into the WoW community for is a challenge competition. For example similar to art forums: Once per month a challenging task is set that everyone can try and see who does the best job at. Perhaps one month it's a best custom boss script (or custom boss), another it is who can find the full limits of the custom factions (there are a few bugs I could never resolve), who can squash a well know bug that many have tried before. Even a who can write the best tutorial on a set topic commonly requested. Basically just some form of challenge and friendly competition that again promotes quality and learning.

Small time collaboration - people collaborating for small projects. So instead of an entire server with custom classes that would take 4 people 6 months to make, why not have 4 people spend 2 weeks developing 1 custom class for release (with documentation for people to learn with).

This is a huge stretch but a suggestion none the less... Why not make a brand new game with an engine like unity? There is so much talent on this site, why not do something more with it. What if Maruum was it's own game? Free from the limitations of the WoW client. That would be incredible.

Honestly, I just don't want this site to ever turn into quantity over quality. Quality should always be Modcraft's highest prerogative, be it for releases, learning, tutorials or even collaboration.

[schlumpf]

Personally I have gotten used to video tutorials, perhaps video implementation would be nice.

Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.

[XxXGenesisXxX]

Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.

Bahaha, the funny thing is, your pottery example fits well. I could not see myself learning Autodesk Maya from a wall of text if I was to make 3D model of some pottery. However I feel a video tutorial for a visual medium would make a lot more sense. xD

Although, yeah it's not for everything and some things can be explained in a great deal less time with written text.

[Milly]

Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.

Everyone learns differently. I have a really hard time reading long text...

[schlumpf]

Yes, pottery is the right example. Still, most of modding is not pottery but just plain tech. Learning maya is pottery, but it isn't really part of modcraft, at all. The modcraft part is somehow getting through a shitliads of options and menus to export stuff using write scripts with the right options. That's far from pottery.

I do agree on not having an easy time with learning by reading long text. That's exactly the same issue with these videos though. The hard part is one little checkbox clicked right in a five minute video, or two page text. Both suck. That's why both should be way shorter. With videos, clicking a single checkbox is just laughably stupid though, thus a video is pure overkill, a one paragraph text would be fine.

Keep stuff simple, free of worthless surroundings. Keep stuff technical where it should, explain things instead of saying which checkbox to check (ie what does it do? Why do we need that?)

Tutorials not being on point is one of the worst issues, and videos are often worse at it. I will never understand why you would watch a one minute video of someone entering a cave to find a rare instead of just getting coordinates.

Bonus against videos: language barrier, learning/acting speed differences.

I know that video tutorials, letsplays, quest guides, do it yourself guides, and every little shitty thing gets days of YouTube presence. I have been hoping for that to die since it began.

[schlumpf]

And because I know that an example may help, let's compare:

google: "captain ironbeard tanaan"

result wowhead, comment two: http://www.wowhead.com/npc=93076/captai ... id=2197287

Captain Ironbeard Cave: 37.5,76.0 Rare: 35.6,79.9

result youtube

[media:2ehnqyuo]https://youtu.be/umvhFO9IA-I[/media:2ehnqyuo]

Please, someone tell me which one is easier to follow and faster.

[phantomx]

Finding a rare and an in-depth tutorial for modding are two different things I.E you say text is better for you which is fine everyone is different but most people prefer videos to visually guide them through the process and they can rewind to see what they missed instead of looking at a wall of text most of the time not even well spaced out I.E how I just typed this.

So you say text but most of the world says visual guide also google translate isn't really the best thing to count on for trying to translate walls upon walls of text.

[Skarn]

Sometimes people who write tutorials do not care about the level of their language starting from simple logic and finishing with basic spelling, if you know what I mean. So, sometimes there is only one way to understand it by watching the process. As an example, I would take Alastor's model conversion video tutorials. His language is not perfect and at some point I would guess it would be hard to understand him for people natively speaking English, but they can watch the process, that's why it is good. Though, I personally like the kind of tutorials schlumpf is talking about but it is a waste of time to expect other people to like it, not everyone is the same.

[Chase]

It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Ill just leave this here:
[media:14jw5xa4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzZjl5yB1cw[/media:14jw5xa4]

[Milly]

That was beautiful, Chase. If only every tutorial were so comprehensive.

[Vlad]

Ugh, please, no, no, no and no. Videos are horrible. I will never understand why everyone thinks that doing anything in video helps at all. It always results in 30 seconds of worthless intro, 30 seconds of worthless outro and hugely blown up content, which most of the time is two paragraphs max.

Please, don't do video tutorials. Ever. For anything but pottery.

Bahaha, the funny thing is, your pottery example fits well. I could not see myself learning Autodesk Maya from a wall of text if I was to make 3D model of some pottery. However I feel a video tutorial for a visual medium would make a lot more sense. xD

Although, yeah it's not for everything and some things can be explained in a great deal less time with written text.

Well, look who got resurrected from the dead.

[MountainLion]

EDIT: Sorry for the long read but it's worth it

Tutorials are essential. Written or Video. Take this from someone that -not even a year ago, roughly- had no clue what he was doing at all and is now scripting... Learning (thanks Steff, Valk, Google <3)

What has been helpful? Lateral thinking (as Genesis said), motivation and of course... Tutorials.

Here's how it's gonna go down, in order:

For starters...

From now on, no one has the ability to demand/complain about something from someone unless you yourself are willing to help, assist or contribute, in some way or another (no, opinions are not enough sadly) and even then it's still not cool. Is this not you? Good, we're on the right track. You see someone doing this though and that should raise some alerts.

Take Steff's Noggit-Introduction-Tutorial. It's good, it's great... It's English is poor due to language barriers perhaps.

Solution? I personally will proof-read it again and again, rewrite it in perfectly good English and ship'er away.  (I have translated for Valkryst's -to my knowledge- Bugtracker Tool for reference, feel free to request on that as well) (yup tools* as well if you'd like)

Why? Simple. I used it at some point (as well as will use other ones at some point no doubt), I even still go back to it when I forget a thing or two (yea people still and will use it, e.g. newcomers)... and because I care. I care about being on the Effort-Team.

On that same note, feel free to send me ANY type of written tutorial, guide, walkthrough and I will 'check it' for you. Want me to translate it as well? Of course I can, please, anytime.

Moving on...

How do you keep new people interested? How do you get more people into the scene? Should you care?

Short answer is, no. No you should not care, because THEY should care. Not your job so no worries... Heck I got lucky when I found this home lol

BUT... this does not mean you can't or that you don't 'need' to help. You can if you want to. Although, this is not to be confused with literally solving people's problems for them. Instead, you help them learn or in other words "help them teach themselves". That is how people stay for a longer run. At least the one's that matter or earn it, right? and it should mean -at the very least- that it's something they really want.

It's quite simple really; You point the people in the right direction. They will ask you "how to do this... and that" and you will show them the way straight to school. Because tools equals school, tutorials equals school and everyone has to go to school, if they wish to learn that is. If not then what a sad story but oh well!

Learning, is up to them, not you... But you already did what you could and that's a good job done. Give them 'The Links' (choir:Ahh's)

*Leechers rekt

Moving on again...

Bottom line, content is 3.3.5 and WoD. Period. If you want support for these, you will guaranteed find it. No need for further detail on this one.

Is it a problem that even everyones' grand'ma have done the same type of server and sadly that just keeps dividing the community? Mmm yeah. A solution? :

- noobert poopert asks: "Hey I want to do this and that and it's gonna be so awesome... Gimme gimme candy!"
- cool guy says: "Sure thing bro. Go here, here and here. Goodluck and if you want to practice what you learn and actually start getting good and get some progress, you might want to join this, this or this project which could be a good learning experience for you and at the same time, you'd be helping them out as well. Happy modding bro! "

*coolguy walks away with a smile, he takes a glimpse back and can see a now motivated newcomer... get's motivated as well why not

I have offered to become a moderator. I'll try my best to give my time to the new community in return for nothing but lot's of happy modders. That's my endgame.

I too, am busy with lifes' priorities but the effort can be made.

You should join the effort team if you can as well

Lion out

[spik96]

Bottom line, content is 3.3.5 and WoD. Period. If you want support for these, you will guaranteed find it. No need for further detail on this one.

Yes, yes, there is.
I get most used versions should be 3.3.5 and WoD, perfect. But do you have in mind to forbid every question about other versions ? What's the problem with non "guaranteed" answers ?

[XxXGenesisXxX]

Bottom line, content is 3.3.5 and WoD. Period. If you want support for these, you will guaranteed find it. No need for further detail on this one.

Yes, yes, there is.
I get most used versions should be 3.3.5 and WoD, perfect. But do you have in mind to forbid every question about other versions ? What's the problem with non "guaranteed" answers ?

I wouldn't mind them if I knew before I was clicking on the thread. If it was titled "[4.xx] Insert keyword summary here" , then I would know not to click on it as I would most likely have no idea.

[Steff]

version tags are a good idea.  also stickys. but people sadly don´t use and don´t care about most rules.
So we need to force them  What means more active moderation.