Forums are up

Desi dev forums are officially up today and ready to rock.

Website is however still under heavy modifications which will go on for a while without breaking or pausing user traffic and usage.

Here is the Linkie.

http://desigamedevelopers.com

Desi Game Developer Forums V2

After months of endless waiting and umpteen issues with Gamedev forums hosted on Trine Game Studio's servers, we have decided its time to move on for something better and reliable.

I had registered a new domain name and web-hosting plan, been building the new site, testing it on local machine, etc. making sure its going to be absolutely worth moving. Started with just the Forums, but more features. But, it has come a long way out.

Not only tuned for game-developer community, its going to be far bigger in scope than just a bulletin board. In fact, bulletin-boards(forum) will only be a sub-section of the whole site, a part of a full-fledged Community & Social networking portal.

Website domain name is registered as
http://desigamedevelopers.com

Some of the new features are

- Many additional profile fields specific to game-developers

- Members' detailed profile will allow full HTML and can as be flexible as a blog-page.

- Enhanced WYSIWYG text editor.

- Gallery system will allow each member to post as many pictures of their works, and maintain them as Albums. A a discussion can begin as comments to each pic/album ( Similar to a Wiki/CMS)

- While posting, the forum will detect youtube, google-video, links and auto-embed them into the post.

- Bigger attachments, flexible signatures, etc.

- Embed Flash Objects in posts. ( Helpful for Flash-Coders to present their games). It is possible to embed static images, animated GIFs, Flash elements from web. Hot linking is also supported.

- Public Shout-Box and Real time Chat between online members.

- Favourites. Bookmark specific posts or threads.

- Full RSS, to get notification of activity on the forums without having to visit it repeatedly.

A WHOLE LOT MORE... :)




Preview

Here is the Main-page structure of the forums



Forum Structure Expanded to full tree. With description text.


Please post suggestions as comments to this blog-post.

Official Game Developer forums.. Desi GameDev

[UPDATE - 2nd Dec,07] - We are moving the website to a new server. Site is under construction at the moment.

I had to post this a long time back.. Somehow, forgot to.. Anyway..

This is about the launch of GameDev.in.

Apna Own.. Desi Game Developer forums.

Specchum(Arun Nair) came up with this proposal first on IGDA forums. Many youngsters have been posting technical queries and IGDA is definitely not a regular developer forum. I created a phpbb forums for testing and feedback purposes and ran for about two weeks. We found it to be slow and buggy.

Then Sangam Gupta, CEO of Trine Game studio offered to host on one of their Web servers and using vBulletin, the best commercial forums software. Trine already had a license for vBulletin.

I am Co-Sponsor/Adminstrator of the site, while Purple-Blade (Sumit Mehra) and Specchum are the super moderators.

We first announced this on IGDA and was also mentioned in AnimationExpress News.

http://www.animationxpress.com/index.php?file=story&id=1470

Clickie to visit the forums.
http://www.gamedev.in/

All time Greatest Music Videos - Entry 2. So called you are never alone

This is quite a recent music video. Its just amazing. A little bizarre. But, captivating.

All time Greatest Music Videos.. Metallica - One

This is the first of my series to put the Greatest Music/Music Videos here..

Even though, I consider Michael Jackson's Thriller as the greatest music video of all time..
Metallica's One has to be the greatest song and an equally great video with a powerful message for humanity at any point of time of our civilizations..

This song and video are about a soldier who, in an explosion during combat had lost both his arms and legs. The worst part is that he lost his vision, hearing and ability to talk.. leaving his body confined to the hospital bed.. and his mind confined to his thoughts..

• How can he tell the difference if he is dreaming or if is awake ?

• How can even know if he is alive ?

• How can he tell someone that he cant take this and wants to be dead ?

• Should he be left alive on the artificial respirator ?

• Should the doctors pull the plug and free him from the most horrible jail, caged right inside his head ??