Platinum Arts Sandbox - Free 3D Game Maker Forum

So I'm trying to get ideas together on what I can do to help advance the Sandbox community to make it as awesome as possible

I mentioned doing a social site a while ago and I want to take more of a look into it especially with the advancements in social networking software. If anyone else wants to help I'd really appreciate feedback and thoughts on what software would be the best and what features would be good to have, etc. These are the main social networking software options I've been looking at:
http://blackboxsocialmedia.com/social-n ... lications/

I think a video blog would be cool but should it also have some kind of gallery format? Also maybe there is a way to integrate it with the front page? hmm.

Resources Page - Maybe do it right on the wiki and link it from the main page?

Any other ideas to help the community grow/communicate are welcome

Take care.
-mike

I would use dolphin if I were you. I have years of experience with it and it is a really good program. You could have something like social.sandboxgamemaker.com for the site
Just an idea

What features about it are so great and also what features about it are good for the Sandbox community? Some key things are would be:
Showing each other maps
Being able to publicly announce a new map/game (is there a way to do global messages?) I can see ways for that idea to backfire but perhaps there is some kind of similar feature. Maybe something like a livesteam?
Safety features for kids aka not having to show real names, info. Private messaging should probably be disabled? I imagine that wouldn't be so hard.
What else? hmm.

All you really have to do is watch the welcome video. It explains all of the features.

I already did watch it but I wanted your expert opinion The demo site seems perfect though with having videos and pictures on the front page. I think I might have to give it a shot! Perhaps you can help me out too if I have questions Take care.
-mike

OK
Thanks Mike!

I suggest live video streaming using UStream, I think it was called. I use it to watch Lil Wayne/YMCMB live videos. It's pretty cool, you just need a good webcam and desktop recording software. You could do some stuff on it like trying out some maps that were user created and submitted. I don't think there are enough videos of Sandbox-created maps out there in the world. If you saw the Quadropolis site, the homepage is stocked with pictures and downloads of user-created maps. To help ease this in, we could create a brand new homepage. All the news that's on the homepage should go into a "News" page, except for the latest info, which should be displayed at the top, right under the navigation bar. I'm sorry for going on and on, but I have some pretty good ideas to help grow the Sandbox Community. If you want more info, I'm on the IRC alot. You can ask me there. Hope this was valid help. .

-Java

Mike wrote:So I'm trying to get ideas together on what I can do to help advance the Sandbox community to make it as awesome as possible

I mentioned doing a social site a while ago and I want to take more of a look into it especially with the advancements in social networking software. If anyone else wants to help I'd really appreciate feedback and thoughts on what software would be the best and what features would be good to have, etc. These are the main social networking software options I've been looking at:
http://blackboxsocialmedia.com/social-n ... lications/

I think a video blog would be cool but should it also have some kind of gallery format? Also maybe there is a way to integrate it with the front page? hmm.

Resources Page - Maybe do it right on the wiki and link it from the main page?

Any other ideas to help the community grow/communicate are welcome

Take care.
-mike

Just out of curiosity... isn't THIS our basic social site?

For a video log, I'd like to see more of the changes Hirato makes in the engine, a "feature preview" kind of thing, I guess.

Also, what do you mean by a "resources page"? If it's like a page full of other sites where you can get content to use in Sandbox, then count me in. I have a ton of sites that people could use. An entire Google Chrome bookmark folder full of them, to be exact.

java.x.beast wrote:I suggest live video streaming using UStream, I think it was called. I use it to watch Lil Wayne/YMCMB live videos. It's pretty cool, you just need a good webcam and desktop recording software. You could do some stuff on it like trying out some maps that were user created and submitted. I don't think there are enough videos of Sandbox-created maps out there in the world. If you saw the Quadropolis site, the homepage is stocked with pictures and downloads of user-created maps. To help ease this in, we could create a brand new homepage. All the news that's on the homepage should go into a "News" page, except for the latest info, which should be displayed at the top, right under the navigation bar. I'm sorry for going on and on, but I have some pretty good ideas to help grow the Sandbox Community. If you want more info, I'm on the IRC alot. You can ask me there. Hope this was valid help.

Beyond the UStream stuff, I agree a lot with java's ideas, including the "user-submitted" maps and such. I'd love to see that. I'm not so sure about the new homepage, because PAS doesn't really need one, but I do believe a repository (OTHER than the forum's upload stuff) would be nice, maybe just a page where all the downloadable content can be stored IN ONE SPOT (not all over a million different forum posts) and organized well. I mean, we would just have content pages for maps, textures, models, music and skyboxes, sorted maybe by date created, version made with, creator, along with a description... Just like Quadropolis, but perhaps easier for people to find what they want, and easier to get to and download.

Personally, I think that BuddyPress (from your link) looks nice, but it's likely because I like Wordpress a lot. Of course, that's just my opinion.

Yes! This is what Platinum Arts Sanbox needs

I really like the idea for something like quad, anyone know what software might be good for it? Also perhaps there is a way to do it through the social networking site? jSoft do you know if it is possible to post actual files to your profile? And if so, is that where we'd want people to have their maps hosted, or should we have both the social site and quad equivalent? Let me know your thoughts Any other ideas to help improve the SB community are more than welcome!! Take care.
-mike