March 18th, 2009 - State of the Community

[Lavarinth]

As your representative for Campaign Creations, as previously mentioned, I come at your today to update you on the state of the community. I simply use the term community to represent this site, Campaign Creations, as a whole. In reality, the community is typically regarded as the modding community, that being additional sites which also serve the same purpose. However, in this speech, I shall regard it only as this sole site.

First, and foremost, I would still like to continuously thank you all for participating in the forum. The sole-activeness of the forum is my ultimate knowledge of how well we are doing. Hits, visitors, and so forth- None of that means as much to me as reading the community bonding together in a forum.

Although, after multiple discussions with newly-appointed PR, Dread, and widely-known Iskatumesk, I've come to a few realizations thanks to them both. Most of the content for our modders-to-be is absolutely and utterly outdated. Tutorials. Tips. Programs. All outdated. Heck, the WarCraft 3 section doesn't even have tutorials! I suppose now is the time to further reveal what's been occurring in CC during the silence:

Over the course of several months last year, Taeradun had officially stepped into Campaign Creations as the programmer to further enhance the site through CMS. His work helped establish a beta version of the site using Drupal as the engine- And looked identical to the current layout. The only issue however, was a rather large time span between information updates as to what is occurring in the CMS, and eventually utter silence. After the stretch of my patience ended, I took over work on the CMS personally, and have been doing so when time permits.

I'm sure the way I am doing things was not the original system for performing these updates, which is updating all links in each page manually, creating new META content, and so forth. I can admit that it is a long, repetitive, strenuous task, but I have yet to give up, and doubt I will. I can inform you I am near halfway through with the project pages, and anything aside those are already active aside the Resource center, which brings me to my next discussion.

Iskatumesk has made given me quite extensive information in terms of what should be done with the resource section of the site, which has led me to possibly conclude I should launch the new site without the resources until I fully update them. One thing to be aware of is I work much faster under pressure, and the pressure of having the site live without a resource center is by far a large task to want to accomplish. Currently, I can almost fully admit I would doubt if people would even bother to look into the resource section as it is a rather large garble of a mess and fully outdated. I can see how it was effective back in the days of its glory, but those times are long gone.

With that said, I hope to have a few surprises lined up for you all in the upcoming weeks to help pass time while all this is performed in the background. I appreciate your patience and understanding.

I thank you all for reading this post, and any feedback you would like to respond with, feel free to do so. I may have a more free spirited attitude in my posting in other threads, however I do take this position in administration seriously. Thanks again.

Your Administrator.

[AA7Dragoon]

a.k.a

A few surprises coming.

Text summarized.

[Lavarinth]

a.k.a

A few surprises coming.

Text summarized.

a.k.a

TLDR

A few surprises coming.

[Whiplash!]

your talking about a new site launch does that mean we get new layout

[Marco]

At least you didn't use the phrase 'stay tuned'.

[IskatuMesk]

Stay tuned.

[Lavarinth]

Stay tuned.

[Master Jademus Sreg]

More Warcraft 3 content would be nice, but the battle for relevance will concern the site's treatment of StarCraft 2.

[IskatuMesk]

I'm sure ricky will donate his mapping tutorials and I'll think about writing some modding shit up. I may not be as fluent in stuff or as resourceful as the guys at wc3c, but I think that might serve to better these tutorials for the beginner.

[FlyingHat]

I knew Mesk's bible and videos as the only modding resources in existence on this site.

Edit: Found the SC customs section, I the only object I can compare it to is a time capsule.

[Lavarinth]

More Warcraft 3 content would be nice, but the battle for relevance will concern the site's treatment of StarCraft 2.

We are in the progress of adding another project as well as more WarCraft 3 modding-related content, but thanks for the input! Anything else, let us know.

[Mucky]

I could write a JASS tutorial if you want WC3 content. I know they're all over the place, but everyone has their own way of explaining I guess.

[Lavarinth]

I could write a JASS tutorial if you want WC3 content. I know they're all over the place, but everyone has their own way of explaining I guess.

It'd be much appreciated.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

I'm sure ricky will donate his mapping tutorials and I'll think about writing some modding shit up. I may not be as fluent in stuff or as resourceful as the guys at wc3c, but I think that might serve to better these tutorials for the beginner.

In my case, I tend to make my tutorials for the newbies since one of my issues with so many tutorials in various sites is that it presumes you understand many things about the editor in the first place or sometimes that you understand what odd language he is talking about.

Meanwhile, the total newbie that wishes to go somewhere can't go anywhere without having to do the hard way for understanding WorldEdit.

That's why I made my tutorials in maps instead of text so newbies can :
-> see the tutorial
-> see the results when playing the map
-> poke with it to try some modifications themselves on their end
-> try to make the triggers themselves and if it goes wrong, compare to see what's wrong

So after finishing some PS2 game, I guess ill likely do more tutorial work since I guess it does have a silent demand (gave up since barely anyone said anything so I presumed nobody truly cared).

Depending on my state of life when Starcraft 2 is released, I could try to make the same kind of tutorials for SC2.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

God dammit, patch 1.23 sure screwed up for map names after poking my tutorial maps again.

Now Warcraft 3 is even more intolerant of long file paths names than ever (as in won't show in map list) ... now the name "Episode 0-1 Unique Warriors.w3m" (of my tutorial pack) is now apparently too long to be recognized by v1.23 while it was for v1.22 when it is in C:\Program Files\Warcraft 3\maps\TutorialsRicky\Chapter 0\

Now I am stuck to rename my tutorial maps to "Eps0-1.w3m" and stuff like that.