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The State of the CPC Scene

Started by Gryzor, 12:42, 08 July 20

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reidrac

That's also a good point, but you my find yourself like me that there's nobody around interested, or you may not be able to go to retro events because real life commitments.

For me, it is online communities or nothing  :(

(And, to be fair, the few C64 folks around... I haven't met them in person anyway)
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

Otto

#26
Quote from: reidrac on 14:35, 08 July 20
Seems like a lot of people have moved to FB, Discord or Telegram (or anything else; but these seem to be more popular); and forums aren't a fancy thing anymore. I'm mostly active here and Twitter, but I see other forums in Spanish or French and they are very quiet most of the time.

It's a bad fruit of fragmentation that CPC users don't find all new CPC games from programmers (like you are one) anymore, and the other way round. Because there's no central place to look anymore.

Well, there are central places, like this fine CPCwiki and its forum here. But as you correctly say, modern people tend to desert forums and the like, and move to the data-kraken's social data-traps like Facebook, Discord etc, which Vincent described amusingly but correctly so:
Quote from: VincentGR on 16:49, 08 July 20
A forum is a must, posts don't disappear like farts in the wind (discord, fb, etc)

So it's us users' own behaviour which helps the fragmentation, cutting the users from the programmers and the other way round, so that programmers rightly complain that their work isn't found anymore by the users.

Because our communication disappears in the vast social media channels like farts in the wind.

llopis

Quote from: Otto on 11:06, 09 July 20
Because our communication disappears in the vast social media channels like farts in the wind.
Which to be fair, it's fine for 90% conversations (I'm being generous). That's why I think that each medium has its place.


Telegram and discord channels are like walking in a bar full of people you know who love the CPC as much as you do. You just shoot the breeze and have a good time. Forums are something more permanent for deeper, more interesting discussions.

arkive

I'm interested in all the 8-bit platforms and try to follow all the "scenes". The only way to do this is to track a few main forums for each of them, and it usually works well enough. These forums (eg AtariAge, Spectrum Computing, this one) usually get all the latest info, even if it's sometimes delayed and has to filter through from smaller communities.

I don't think it's possible to avoid fragmentation, since it's a natural state of things, but as long as there is a "main" hub, it's ok. Spectrum also has very strong and independent communities in, say, Russia or Portugal, with their own life, but there are always some representatives who connect these to the English speaking places.

As for drama and infighting, well, it's very sad (especially the latest WoS clusterf**k) but it's us humans after all. We just do what we always do, it's seem to be as unavoidable as fragmentation.

EddieRoyaleWithCheese

Quote from: Otto on 13:46, 08 July 20
Yes, that would be fine, too.
I saw on your forum here that there's already sub-forums in other languages (French and German) and I think it's a great thing to have.
a good thing
yes
but you need to know
each
language to be effective

Shaun M. Neary

Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

Otto

Quote from: dthrone on 19:33, 08 July 20You do all know that Alan Sugar is a regular lurker here don't you?  He likes to watch how his legacy is evolving.  How do you expect him to read your posts unless you write in English?
That's a good point! (Does Sugar really read here, occasionally?)

Otto

#32
Quote from: llopis on 11:11, 09 July 20
Quote from: OttoBecause our communication disappears in the vast social media channels like farts in the wind.
Which to be fair, it's fine for 90% conversations (I'm being generous). That's why I think that each medium has its place.
90%+ on social media channel talk is indeed "farts in the wind".
That's why I prefer the good old motto: But let your statement be Yes, yes or No, no.

One way to get back to quality instead of quantity seems paper+Internet magazines like the 8-Bit Annual 2018 and 2019, where we find bundled information about new 8-bit games and interviews with their makers. I found these nice PDF-files in the linked thread here in the forum. Also CPCwiki-forum user Reidrac was portrayed and several of his nice games reviewed.

norecess464

@Gryzor My personal opinion: there is nothing wrong with multiple communities around the same topic. I think it's quite good to have many sub-forums/communities/sites/discord/youtube/etc whatever the language used: to me, this proves the Amstrad scene in general is in good health. I personally feel it's in a much better shape than 10 years ago.
My personal website: https://norecess.cpcscene.net
My current project is Sonic GX, a remake of Sonic the Hedgehog for the awesome Amstrad GX-4000 game console!

Shaun M. Neary

DISCLAIMER: THE BELOW IS STRICTLY MY OPINION ON WHAT I'VE SEEN IN THE LAST DECADE AND A HALF, AND I LIKE TO THINK I'M DOWN WITH THE KIDS, YO!

I'm with @norecess on this one.

Forums are fine, but they're a pain in the ass to maintain and one persons idea of good moderating / administrating isn't necessarily reflected by other posters. So it's a case of 'our house, our rules, deal with it!', which is why they're slowly dying with the exception of the hangers on, as that's less of an issue on social media platforms (although it can happen!)

It's also a generational thing too. IRC was brought up recently and quite frankly, I haven't used IRC on a regular basis since about 2002-2003! Messengers took it over and the likes of Facebook Groups can have multiple chats, as can google, etc.

Smartphones is what really changed the game for platforms. Forums are a complete pain in the arse on a smartphone, but messengers are a lot easier to manage. As are Facebook groups, and as time has passed, there are more and more people with smartphones and tablets and less and less people with desktops and laptops, and Forums and IRC can't scale as well to modern devices (trust me, I've tried both!).

So it's a combination of generation and technology, but I don't see a problem with having multiple platforms. You'll always find people you like on one, and people who make your skin crawl on another.
It's choice, it's not a competition. The sooner people stop seeing it as the latter, the less it'll bother them.
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

mr_lou

The PlayStation communities shares a lot of content between forums / discords / facebook etc:
Whenever one site writes an article (in whatever language), almost all the other sites follows up, either with a direct copy or a translated version. And then at the end of the post they include a link to the original source.

That way all the PlayStation forums are actually discussing the same topics at the same time, only on different sites and in different groups of people. No one on any site is missing any news, because they all copy from each other - and it's all fine and good because they include the link to the original source, so everyone is ok with it.

Maybe CPCwiki could do something similar? Copy from all sorts of other sources? Translate foreign posts into english?
This is already happening a little bit of course. I think XeNoMoRPH has been pretty good at keeping us updated on what's happening elsewhere. Neil79 was also good at posting from IndieRetroNews once, but it seems he stopped doing that for some reason. Xyphoe also used to post new vids here.
I get it though. Once their own platforms are established they have enough on their hands. But that's not a problem. It merely means that someone else here from the CPCwiki could/should take over for each external source.

I think, to run some defragmentation in the CPC community, each site should allow a lot more linking to each other instead of being so "you're self promoting your own site blah blah", and each site shouldn't be so worried that discussion about a certain production happens on another site instead of their own.
I agree a lot about the whole "stop seeing it as competition but rather as common interest spread across multiple groups of people".

So my suggestion is that we find people from each external source who are also using CPCwiki, and ask them to do the same as in the PlayStation communities: Copy/translate forum posts from external sources to here. It's fine to use Google Translate and then polish it. Doesn't have to be perfect.

roudoudou

Quote from: mr_lou on 06:15, 10 July 20
Maybe CPCwiki could do something similar? Copy from all sorts of other sources? Translate foreign posts into english?
the CPC brings with it a particular state of mind. Not so long ago that was still the "school of secrets"
looks at the recent emulators, how many are opensource?


My pronouns are RASM and ACE

mr_lou

Quote from: roudoudou on 07:35, 10 July 20
the CPC brings with it a particular state of mind. Not so long ago that was still the "school of secrets"
looks at the recent emulators, how many are opensource?

I don't think you can compare those two. OpenSource is something else. Just because something isn't OpenSource doesn't mean the author wants to keep secrets. I'm pretty sure in most cases it's more because he's too lazy to do the work, and doesn't wanna be subject to smartasses online telling him how poor his code is.  ;)

Translating a spanish news article on another forum into English for the CPCwiki forum, and linking to the original source - that's a different category.

Otto

#38
Quote from: mr_lou on 06:15, 10 July 20
I think XeNoMoRPH has been pretty good at keeping us updated on what's happening elsewhere.
You're right, and I would like to thank @XeNoMoRPH and his Spanish CPC-friends here for the fine updates, so we non-Spanish-speakers get information about the Spanish CPC work, too.

Also I'm thankful to @roudoudou and his French fellow-developers that they regularly bring new information about their fine work to this important CPCwiki and its forum.

Keep up the good work, CPC friends.

P.S. Let's also not forget that aside the important CPCwiki forum here, the CPC-Wiki itself is an important information centre where we can find tons of well organized and valuable information about how to use the CPC and how to develop for it. I wished we had such information back then in the 1980'ies. :-)

roudoudou

Quote from: Otto on 08:06, 10 July 20
You're right, and I would like to thank @XeNoMoRPH and his Spanish CPC-friends here for the fine updates, so we non-Spanish-speakers get information about the Spanish CPC work, too.
thanks to @XeNoMoRPH indeed
My pronouns are RASM and ACE

Otto

#40
While we're talking about work-in-progress (WIP) and related discussions, there's another important website which regularly and since years reports about the fruits of this work, the old and new CPC games themselves. And so it too helps that CPC friends keep an unfragmented overview of what's there and what's not: @Nich 's cool CPC Game Reviews. Thanks Nich, too! It's great that guys like you are active also here on Gryzor's fine CPCwiki and forum web-site.

GUNHED

Quote from: norecess on 15:50, 09 July 20
@Gryzor My personal opinion: there is nothing wrong with multiple communities around the same topic. I think it's quite good to have many sub-forums/communities/sites/discord/youtube/etc whatever the language used: to me, this proves the Amstrad scene in general is in good health. I personally feel it's in a much better shape than 10 years ago.
Very, true! As long as we have diversity it's alive. As soon as we have one big thing, it's nearly dead. Disc mags were a great example for that. First there were many, then they fused, had one last fusion issue and... died eventually.
http://futureos.de --> Get the revolutionary FutureOS (Update: 2023.11.30)
http://futureos.cpc-live.com/files/LambdaSpeak_RSX_by_TFM.zip --> Get the RSX-ROM for LambdaSpeak :-) (Updated: 2021.12.26)

Gryzor

Quote from: GUNHED on 14:38, 10 July 20
Very, true! As long as we have diversity it's alive. As soon as we have one big thing, it's nearly dead. Disc mags were a great example for that. First there were many, then they fused, had one last fusion issue and... died eventually.

...or maybe you could argue that "many" was not sustainable and the whole thing collapsed because of that, and you could even consider that nobody said a single, monolithic community (that is, the extreme opposite) is argued for, but oh well.

ComSoft6128

A diverse CPC ecosystem is best for all of us - BUT - maybe each element of that ecosystem should have a map showing the links to everywhere else.

arkive

Quote from: ComSoft6128 on 15:45, 10 July 20
A diverse CPC ecosystem is best for all of us - BUT - maybe each element of that ecosystem should have a map showing the links to everywhere else.
It'd be nice but also a mammoth task to maintain :) I think search engines compensate for that though.

ComSoft6128

Quote from: arkive on 15:58, 10 July 20
It'd be nice but also a mammoth task to maintain :) I think search engines compensate for that though.


Mmm, One page of links with the creation date - "information valid as of....." with a note to users to report any dead links to Admin shouldn't be too hard. And search engines are fine if you know exactly what you are looking for. :)

arkive

You said "each element of that ecosystem" and that's what I was refering to. Imagine every little blog, fb page etc etc trying to maintain links to everybody else...nah, not gonna happen :)

It could be useful here though, for sure. Many other sites have similar resources thread or FAQ page.

Bryce

#47
It's great to offer areas within this forum for other languages, although I tend to agree that the post count is too low to need separate subforums. The problem will always be that if you want an audience, whether to answer an issue you have or to announce your product, english is always going to reach the largest audience.

If poeple really don't speak english, I can answer in German or French too, but I don't always have the answer.   :-[

Bryce.

Johnny Olsen

Quote from: Otto on 13:07, 08 July 20

P.S. Just today I watched Roudoudou's video about sub-pixeling from the new race-game thread. The video is in French. It was all Greek to me. I got some ideas from the English comments in his source codes and from his desktop he shared in his video, but I thought: what a pity that despite our same interests (CPC) and same operating system (hehe) and living only a few hundreds of kilometers away, I can't extract the valuable infos he wanted to share. Oh yes, a pity.

You have the option to add subtitles and change them to another language.

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