With the recent introduction of the tag system we need some form of basic standardisation, so this is where we will be discussing ideas for what tags we need.
So far the following tags are in use: game, release, puzzle, action, arcade, demo, open-source, adventure, strategy, platformer, 2-player
@Pharap ⌠could we pretty please broaden the scope of this topic from discussion on (only) tags to discussion (and later wiki) on how to list your game / app thread?
closed-source to me implies the code is unavailable â could we have one more tag for a game with source available but not open-source licensed? Like proprietary or source-available?
On licenses, Iâd just drop the license- prefix, because of readability and consistency (we donât have genre-puzzle, just puzzle, which is how I think tags should generally be).
Also the license tag doesnât have to be mutually exclusive â you can have multilicensing or separate licensing of code and content.
Here my feeling is just go with singleplayer and multiplayer. Specific number of players is too much information to put into tags in my opinion. Maybe these two plus something indicating a âsymmetric multiplayer with AIâ, but thatâs to be considered.
As I see it a tool is something that helps you develop games for Pokitto and runs on PC, is that right?
In which case Iâd suggest adding a (non-game) program tag â something that runs on Pokitto, but isnât a game (like my text editor).
So you mean like âHow to post/publish your gameâ?
If so, shouldnât that be a separate topic?
That sounds more like a âhow toâ guide than a decision-making discussion.
Already ninja-edited source-available just before you hit the submit button. :P
I think proprietary has too many negative connotations, and closed-source is easier to understand as being the opposite of open-source
What are the odds of name clashes?
Iâm not against having a system like genre:puzzle or something if itâs found to be useful.
Iâm not sure it is. I think if people are hosting a âPokitto partyâ or something and theyâre looking for something they can play with lots of people then theyâll get annoyed if they have to dig through all the 2-player games when theyâre looking for 4-player games.
The specific number is often included on the back of game boxes for similar reasons.
Thatâs usually refered to as vs-cpu or something.
(Iâll dig out a few game boxes to have a look at what other games do.)
Thatâs what I was thinking of using tool for.
E.g. an eeprom editor, a file browser.
External tools are a separate issue and probably wonât turn up in the games category.
I think with this youâll soon get into a quite complicated system like Wikipediaâs categories. Tags â as I see them â are a simple navigation helper, and they usually try to be very short, not have hierarchies etc. (e.g. OSGameClones). Anyway, if you want, we can try it, but once we decide to have long tags, it may become hard to read:
Thereâs a fine line â what about other things, like game subgenres? You can argue the same that in order to offer precise searching, we can have subgenres, but in practice youâll be putting a lot of effort into maintaining and standardizing them, while it may save some person a few seconds once a month. Thatâs why Iâd go with just very simple tags to help with a rough search and then let the users browse the games â after all there arenât hundreds of them. But youâre the moderator and tag maintenance will be your burden, so I leave the choice up to you.
Wikipediaâs categories would be useful, but sadly I doubt such a system is available for discourse.
Personally I donât think itâs that much harder to read.
The problem with not having ânamespacesâ/âgroupingsâ is that without them the grouping/hierarchy is implicit rather than explicit.
But the real questions are âhow useful is it?â and âwhat are the chances of name clashes without it?â.
I donât think those are the same thing.
Genres arenât that well defined.
Thereâs no disputing that mit is a licence or that puzzle is a genre, but you could easily argue that text-adventure isnât a subgenre of adventure or that it is a subgenre of adventure - genres are slightly subjective.
ActuallyâŚ
But admitedly those donât all have their own thread (which isnât to say they wonât eventually get one, they might get one someday).
However, just because there arenât hundreds yet, that doesnât mean that one day we wonât be in a position where there are hundreds.
Look at the Arduboy, in eriedâs repo (which doesnât cover every game available) there are over 200 games.
That means there are definitely over 200 game threads to filter through on the forums.
In a few years the Pokitto forums could be in the same situation.
I donât consider it a burden, I actually like that sort of job.
As soon as weâve settled on something Iâd happily go through and handle all the tagging on my own.
(Admittedly I sometimes I put off that sort of maintenance because of the disruption it can cause to other users. For a long time now Iâve been wanting to go through all the unsolved issues in troubleshooting and ask if theyâve been solved, but Iâve been worried about the disruption it might cause.)
Itâs not up to just me or you, we need more than just two opinions before we set anything in stone.
(And even if it was a moderator decision, weâd still need more than just me.)
I (and/or someone else) could set up a âHow to publish your gameâ thread/wiki later on.
At the moment it would just have âprefix with [Game], [Demo] or [WIP]â and âput it in the games categoryâ, but later it would be edited with âhere are how the tags workâ when weâve settled on how tags should work
Okay, would be nice to vote in some way now⌠but how? A single poll wonât be enough. Should we vote on how to vote? If you ask me, Iâd be okay with some authority (you, Jonne, âŚ) deciding this undemocratically â once we feel we have discussed it enough â and then just let the system evolve.
I think it would if we narrowed things down to several alternatives first.
I think the easiest way to do things would be to:
propose all the ideas/alternatives
rule out some of the ideas
settle a handful of alternative systems
decide which system stays, either by vote or by decision from a single person
Iâd be fine with this too.
If we went down this route Iâd probably say leave it to Jonne.
I donât think I have the authority to make decisions like that.
Hopefully some other people will take an interest in this thread soon so we can get some more opinions.
Otherwise I might just have to start summoning people to give their ideas.
Iâd especially like to see some opinions from people who arenât usually involved in arguments and decision making.
I feel that we often end up with the same pool of regulars leading the discussion when handling the big decisions.
(E.g. me, you, Jonne, FManga, sometimes Hanski.)
Not to say having that group of particularly active people leading things is a bad thing,
itâs good to have a group of âleadersâ/âfigureheadsâ,
but at the same time I donât want people to feel like âIâm not important enough to comment on thisâ.
Decisions like this this affect everyone so itâs good to hear a number of opinions,
even if those opinions are just âI agree with what so-and-so already saidâ,
otherwise decision making happens in a bubble/ivory tower.
What âreleaseâ invokes in me: version 1.0 (or possibly other presentable version) of the game, not necessarily in binary format.
Just a related sidenote on the Wiki category system: pdf presentation showing how complex/complicated of a beast Wikimedia Commons category system is, also mentions tag systems.
gameboy, gamebuino,gamebuino-meta and arduboy are no-brainers,
but the mention port ends up back at the licence issue,
i.e. arduboy-port vs port:arduboy vs just arduboy
Do we need to tag the language?
Weâd end up having to put c++ on 90% of everything, so it might look a little redundant.
(And weâd also probably need to increase the tag limit again.)
I can imagine cases where people might want to search for some of the supplementary languages if theyâre looking for examples to learn from, but Iâm not sure how common that would be.
It might be worth holding off on this one until we have more languages in use.
I think Iâd vote micropython because the implementation is officially âMicroPythonâ,
but then the language itself is actually just âPythonâ and âMicroPythonâ is the implementation.
Isnât that still the opposite of âwork-in-progressâ (wip) though?
Or would that cover games that are still a work-in-progress, but have prerelease binaries available?
Perhaps we need wip, release and prerelease?
Or maybe wip, alpha/beta and release?
I think we should encourage people to make binaries available, be that on the thread itself or on a GitHub releases area.
Thatâs an argument against how itâs turned out for Wikipedia et al rather than an argument against hierarchichal category systems as a whole.
Is it worth having separate alpha and beta tags, or should we just have beta tags or just prerelease tags?
I think prerelease might be better because I find most people who make games as a hobby donât bother with the alpha/beta distinction because most games just have an open beta as soon as it makes sense to do so.
Hobbyists donât usually have to worry about the kinds of things that motivate companies to have in-house alpha testing.
(Although when we made Dark&Under for the Arduboy we had a single alpha tester rather than an open beta. We didnât call it an âalphaâ though.)
In that case probably wip, prerelease and release would be best. wip to indicate "this is still just an idea, thereâs no .bin", prerelease to indicate âthis isnât finished, but there are some functional .bins availableâ (i.e. the pre-v1.0.0 versions in semver) and release to indicate âthis game is officially released nowâ (i.e. v1.0.0 onwards).
Donât forget that some people might choose to just link to a GitHub releases page instead of editing the thread every time they make a new release, so the scripts will have to be able to figure that out somehow.