Guerrilla

SATR wrote: »

Similar to my ship

Not really that similar. Looks faster and meaner to me. Also, did you make this one yourself or was it a commission, because historically this has been an issue?

TLDR: Added option to add the CG apps you use to your profile. Cute little icons will show up in all your posts too!

Haven't added any features in weeks, so it was about time we MySpace the place up a little. I've added something like 50 CG applications for you to display on your profiles and posts to answer all those "what app do you use?" and "what did you render this in?" questions for you. I'm not sure if that's an actual problem that needed solving, but here's a new feature anyway. As an added bonus we get a little visual bling on the posts. To add them, simply go to Edit Profile, scroll all the way to the bottom, and then just check the apps you use. I would prefer you stuck to a few main ones you use daily instead of checking everything you've tried over the years to keep things a little tidier.

If there is something you use missing, reply this thread to let me know. Posting the icon as a square PNG with transparency will move things along more quickly in our end.

Stop. Bumping. This. Old. Thread.

Not a whole lot of BSG work around these days. Always refreshing to see some.

1. What the hell is Vanilla?

Glad you asked. Vanilla Forums is Modern Cloud Based Online Community software that is used by many known brands for their cloud-based community needs. We, however, are not a known brand nor made of money, and we felt like customizing things to a silly degree, so we went with a self hosted open-source version instead.

What's wrong with vBulletin?

Security mostly. We've had a number of severe security incidents on the old site, and while most of them were tidied up in the end, the attack surface remains massive, and difficult to reduce. vB is still one of the most popular forum software suites around, which means it will remain a worthwhile target for attackers. We also felt that ever since version 4, we never really had any use for the new features (and new attack surfaces) that were introduced. We just need a nice lightweight forum that does forum things really well, and leaves the CMS, blogging and other extra features to people who actually need them.

So, why Vanilla?
Actually, I just wanted a forum with a smooth user experience (remember how fun attachments were in vB?), but that still functioned like a traditional forum, where you have topics in forums in chronological order instead of some awful timeline or popularity contest that offered thread thumbnails and embedded major formats easily. Anything else would've been extra baggage.

Also, migrating from vB to Vanilla was supposed to be a pretty straightforward process (it wasn't).

So what's so great about the new forum?
Well, posting images and commenting on them is very straightforward, which is what we're all about in the end. As an added bonus, we have some fun gamification going on (simple points system and some badges). You can like people's posts. Thread thumbnails now work in all topics. You can choose from three themes (Blue, Gold or Red) from your user profile. There is (or rather will be, once I finish it) a proper mobile theme. The new private messaging system is pretty slick (conversations instead of just individual messages). Embedding is really nice. Youtube and Vimeo embed directly, and you can even embed Sketchfab (there's a button) and Marmoset Viewer scenes (you'll need to host Marmoset (.mview file) yourself though). You can @ people, and they get notified of your post. There's a tagging system to make finding things easier. All sorts of little quality of life improvements all over the place.

In addition to these there are a lot new security features and updates, such as proper https all over the site.

What did we bring from the old forums
Lots of things. We left a lot of things behind too.

We brought:

• Users
• Work in Progress forum
• Finished Work forum
• Q&A forum
• Tutorials forum
• Requests forum
• General discussion forum
• Attachments
• Private messages (for the most part)

Additionally we managed to restore the Old Gallery and the Downloads section that had been offline for a couple of years. The gallery has been integrated in the Finished Work forum, and the Downloads have their own sub-forum under Releases.

A lot of users are missing!
That is true. We didn't particularly feel like bringing over thousands of spammers, so we dropped those. Additionally, to keep the members list tidy, and to minimize the amount of personal information we store, we pruned anyone who had no posts and had not visited the site in 5 years or so (at the time of import).

I discovered a bug on your fancy new forum!
Great! You can report it here.

I'd much rather people only posted their own work, but I guess there is no rule against it per se (except for releasing stuff, obviously). Crediting, however, is very much required, just like Rekkert said.

You should take a look at --=Them Rules: Community Guidelines=-- and WIP Forum Info.

I'm a little curious though... Why post the project in the WIP in the first place? The point (as far as I see it) is to show off your work, and get feedback on it, neither of which really applies in this case. A forum with less of a focus on art and modeling and more focus on... uh... the lore might be a more appreciative audience.

As far as comments and views go, I'm afraid there's really only one correct way to improve that. Put in the work. Make things, and put them up on the forums for feedback, and then gradually get better at making them. Help others along, so that when your thread pops up, people recognize it, and come see what you're up to. I don't think anyone on this forum is working on the things they work on just to get popular on the forums. That's just a side effect of putting in the hours.

Here:


Or you could just Google image search for a rocket. I'm pretty sure it'll be on the first page.
(We should really get a new rocket)

Pretty much all our logos are based on scifi shows, movies and games. There's about 30 of them I think.

... things are running smoothly and everyone seems to be more or less settled in, so now seems like a good time to spend a moment asking What do you want?

Is there anything you particularly like? How about dislike? What would you like to see more of? What new features (or old features) would you like to see? Is there something that would totally make you visit more often? Is there something keeping you from visiting more often? Should we use more social media? Less social media? Did you even know we have a bunch of social media accounts? Do you only use the Discord? Do you want challenges? Video content? Live streaming? Podcasts? Reviews?

Basically, let us know, how we're doing, and what we should be doing instead.

Here's the announcement video, since I didn't see it in the thread already

Introducing a feature no one really asked for, but what the heck.

Added Home Page Settings to everyone's Profile. This little plugin lets you choose, whether you want to end up on the Main Index or Recent Posts when you visit https://forums.scifi-meshes.com

Most of you probably have a bookmark or something that does the exact same thing, but the ones that don't... you're welcome.