FreeGameDev

The second picture is the main menu which has an a new icon; Get involved aka STK contributions. I am not very good with Gimp, so the five icons are not evenly spaced.

Clicking "Get involved" takes you to a new tabbed window (the first picture). Each includes a brief explanation about how STK is made by a company, but a team working for free and by volunteer contributors. Another option would be the first tabbed window that is open is the explanation about STK development, the team, and about the other windows that would encourage people to look around. The sections for contributions (that I could think of) are; Art (blender icon), SFX and voice acting (music note), Level Design (track), Programming (the tab that's opened in the window), and Quality assurance (bugtesting, helping solve problems on the forums, keeping wiki things updated, writing tutorials, making high def trailers and playthroughs, etc). At the bottom of the page you'll see the button now takes the person to the STK website (the relevant section of the website for each different contribution). In retrospect I should have include a "donations" tab. Let me know what you think. We could recommend other FOSS programs that can be used for the art and sfx categories.

The wording is a little heavy handed, but you get the idea. Anyone who downloads the game can understand more about how it is made and that they can help improve it. We could have check marks for accomplished tasks and then parenthesis with a (thanks TuxFan37). That way volunteers are rewarded with recognition.

I personnaly think we have to consider the idea ! This is a great to make the game progress (but not there in the menu, a small button is enough ! )
I approve this

Thanks toto. Yeah, it could be one of the smaller icons down at the bottom like the wrench for the setting. Do other people think it's a bad idea?

I prefer the small button over the big one. If we used a big button, it would be on the same level as selecting a game, which is the wrong semantics. Also, if it's too much in your face, people will get annoyed.

Agreed, that the giant button is too bold. However, I'm fairly certain many people who play the game aren't aware of how's it developed or that they can submit their own works, so I think making the nature of the project more visible within the game (well, menus) will raise awareness, participation, and hopefully some donations for the devs.

Wow, good idea and a fine concept art! Personally, I would make the button smaller and put it in the task bar, as it's not an essential element for users (here: gamers), even if it won't get THAT attention down there

IMO this option doesn't fit in the menu. The icon looks nice but it comes from google image. Just remember we cannot accept images from unclear licences

A heart icon would be better I think.

antoine {l Wrote}:The second picture is the main menu which has an a new icon; Get involved aka STK contributions. I am not very good with Gimp, so the five icons are not evenly spaced.

Not sure about this idea. The problem I see is that we might get flooded with beginners, which would cost us either a lot of time (often then with no gain as beginners might get frustrated and quit early), or we become known as the unfriendly and unresponsive project

I think we should try to target experienced people more.

We can always add a message to the news entries (then again, not sure how many people read these messages).

Cheers,
Joerg

@Samuncle
Yes, they are just google searched images. I'm not an artist, you don't want to see my artwork It was just to express the idea.

@LordW
The heart idea is good, maybe it could have a GPL in the center " " or a " "?

@hiker
I agree, but those beginners could become valuable contributors down the road. A solution could be to revise the forums (whose subforums are very sparse IMHO). In general, the forum could use more subforums to organize things. Look at Red Eclipse's forum viewforum.php?f=53 or OpenMW's https://forum.openmw.org/, it really helps people find the threads they are interested in.

I'm suggesting two contributors subforums. One for new/beginners contributors and one for experienced developers. The beginner forum would allow new people to share their works, share resources and learn from each other. A sticky at the top of the forum that says, "Thanks for joining the community. Please help answer the questions other users have, because the developers are also volunteers and the more time they are helping users, the less time they have to improving the game. Take a look at our resource lists to find tutorials on making art assets and sound design". The could be an additional subforum or stickied thread for a list of resources and tutorials for all the various art aspects and, importantly, links to forums for various tools where they can asks questions, like to blender artists, etc.

To post on the experienced contributors, users would have to have been granted the authority via the STK team after proving themselves by submitting work on the new/beginner forum. Anyone could view the experienced forum, but they wouldn't be able to post new threads without permission.

I am offering my help setting up the beginner forum. And yeah, I don't think as many people read those posts.

I don’t like the proposed icon because it includes an English text which can’t simply be translated with Poedit. Unless you really want to create a new icon for each language. I oppose a heart as symbol as this symbol is already in the addons with a different meaning. It clearly would break the consistency if you’d use a heart.
I am not sure what icon could best describe the “help wanted” thing without text. It is not easy. What we needed is some kind of metaphor …

I have no comments on the rest of the proposal.