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Community Project Highlights 2014
Welcome to the first Community Project Highlights! Here's what it's all about:
As a member, you can post an answer to this question with details about a personal project (preferably an ongoing project, since one of the points of this is for you to regularly update your answer with extra details, as your project progresses). You can have multiple answers (thus multiple projects) posted. Said projects should be gamedev related: games, game engines and game libraries are great examples of projects that are on the topic.
It is recommended for everyone to upvote the projects which seem interesting to them. That's because at the end of the year, the most voted project will be declared the most popular and will receive a prize.
This question will be edited as the event progresses. Some things to keep in mind:

Even though you can have multiple answers posted, please don't abuse this permission. Post your most relevant projects only.
You may embed pictures of your projects, but again, don't abuse this permission. Keep the picture count within decent limits. Remember: you can always link to external pictures, if you feel like adding extra stuff.

Great idea. Let's see some more answers.

Was this project discontinued, or do you still plan to declare a winner and hand out a prize?

@rdb I contacted a moderator about this. Hopefully we still have a prize around here :D

For the last year I've focused on creating realistic graphics for my game, mostly for outdoor scenes. Here are some results, running in realtime with Panda3D:
I have also done a Video.

You can find further information here: http://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17050 and here: http://www.panda3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16441

This looks awesome, especially the snowy landscape. How's the performance?

Thanks! The terrain runs at 500fps, when enabling vegetation I get 200fps on my Gtx 670. The sponza scene uses global illumination and therefore runs at 16ms, but when I optimized it it should be arround 8-9ms, so 120fps :)

wow this is beautiful.

The snowy terrain is stunning! Very impressive, well done.

Asteroid Outpost
A 2D, tower-strategy game developed in XNA with a web-UI.

Build solar stations for power, laser miners for minerals, and towers to defend yourself! Power must be transmitted from the power stations to where it is needed through power lines. Keep your laser miners supplied with power, and they will extract a steady stream of minerals from the asteroids that you can use to aid in the construction of various defensive mechanisms. Fend off the alien armada to keep your people safe.
Check out the progression of the game on imgur, follow my dev blog, or read some tweets.
The engine is my own, even though sometimes I wish it wasn't. It has a component-based system that uses JSON to store all the entity information, and very similar JSON to tell the web-UI what's going on. Written in XNA (C#) with a web front end using Awesomium, AngularJS, jQueryUI, and of course: jQuery. This is on the order of 400 commits, and 25k lines of code over the course of many years on and off.

UPDATE
I have chosen to abandon Asteroid Outpost due its massive scale. Asteroid Outpost started as an open source project, and will be again, I will be pushing the latest code back up to Bitbucket. As is tradition, I will also be writing up a full postmortem when I get a chance. It has been fun, but I want smaller projects.

Sad to hear that you're abandoning this, but good on you for opening it up! It would be good to see any design documents and/or concepts, as this would tremendously help anyone possibly picking this up. Looking forward to the post-mortem.

Tallowmere
2D action roguelike platformer being created with Unity for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Tallowmere features randomly-generated rooms, weapons that give your hero unique abilities, enemies with different attacks you must block with your shield, traps you should avoid. Special room types, bosses, potions, stats, passive abilities, dialogue, cutscenes, infinite jumping, dev console, high-score system, permadeath, and lots of blood and gibbing.
I've just started coding and creating different outfits, hats, and shields, then I'll be working on local shared-screen co-op, followed by network co-op, and then more monsters, weapons, story elements, bosses, and room types!
All the code is in Unity's JavaScript language, over 18,000 lines last I checked. Sprites and particles are my own, sound effects created with Bfxr, music created with Figure.
Homepage • IndieDB • Personal Twitter • Official Twitter • YouTube • Infrequent dev blog

This is fun. Play it.

And now it's on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/340520/

Age of Goblins: New Korbly (Demo)
It's my first project using Unity3D. It's a top down space game (3D rendered on a 2D plane of play). Players can build their own ships by snapping components together. For example, adding a bridge component and putting control thrusters on either side is enough to complete a small ship. Player space stations can be built in the same way. Ship and station components can be salvaged by trade, construction from raw materials or salvage (of existing wrecks or ones the player creates). It supports multiplayer as well. Seth assisted with development as well.

It's currently on hold while I finish a writing job. I'll post more updates for it when I get back to working on it in about a month.

Namedroped.  I touched the code, but just barely.

Telling me where my code is bad is pretty much like writing the new code yourself. Also, evidence of teamwork: http://i.imgur.com/F3AlOmy.png

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  I also starred as the clubbed seal in this video.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI2plAXIrXk

Ah yes, the multiplayer testing. I figured out how to make that much smoother too. We shall battle again in the future.

    Get that laptop, DDOS your enemies, Hack the Gibson!
    Pants are Required!

The Team:
The group behind the Malware Tycoon is called the “Game Dev Minor League.” We are composed of 5 members, @hasherr, @Grey, @joapet99, @ChristainCareaga, and myself, Pip. GDML was founded my hasherr, Grey, and I on March 25, 2014, and have progressed since then, inviting new members as long as they meet the requirements: they must be friendly, have frequented the chat, and must be under 18 years old – the “minor” portion of our name. Currently, all members are active, and have contributed. Christain serves as our support, as he has even more experience than I do with our tools.

Target Platforms:
Malware Tycoon is targeted for Windows 7/8, Ubuntu, and Mac OSX, if possible.
Note: It may eventually be operable on other operating systems, if all of our features can be proved compatible.

Programming Language:
Python (version 3.4)
Libraries:
Pygame (version 1.9.2)

Description:
Malware Tycoon is heavily inspired by Game Dev Tycoon, an indie title created by Greenheart Games. You play as a wannabe hacker, and learn how to create and use more and more malware, as the game progresses. You can either take on jobs from a corporation, secretly, or go out on your own, and try to live as a lone wolf. Eventually, a semi-realistic history will be implemented, including major Windows operations systems/versions, different Apple computers, and possibly the use of several different Linux distros.

Awesome :) I'd like to see a demo by the end of the year. Good luck!

I want to try it, too.  Post a build.  Or a link to the read-only repo.

@SethBattin We havn't discussed the releasing of the builds yet, but we will post one as soon as we can all agree that it is good enough, and playable.

@AlexM. I will be sure to notify you also when a demo is released :)

Great Idea @Pip !

Nice logo!!!!!!

Thanks @Jon! I don't know who made it, do you? :P

Demoscene Pinball

Demoscene Pinball is a 3D pinball simulator, which I have been working on as a hobby for the past three years slowly but regularly.
It is now finally completed and can be downloaded from http://demoscenepinball.dy.fi/. This game is also my submission to Assembly 2014 Game development competition.
Gameplay features

Demoscene theme
5 special modes
Multiball
Skill shot
Typical pinball elements such as bumpers, slingshots, kickbacks, 3 flippers, multiple ramps, rails, buttons ...
Online highscores

Technical information

Written in Java 1.7 using OpenGL 3.3 self made renderer
Uses LWJGL - The Lightweight Java Game Library
Physics are created with JBullet - Java port of Bullet Physics Library
Background music has been generated with cgMusic
HDR rendering
Sharp and glossy reflections

I am a programmer and I have created the game alone without any artists, designers or musicians. It has been challenging, but I have managed to create a visual style I'm proud of. The glossy metal shaders reflecting the playfield dynamically has greatly reduced the need for textures. 3D models are procedurally generated mostly by extruding 3D spline curves or Java 2D shapes.
Feel free to try the game and submit your scores to the highscore server. Windows users don't even need Java, as I have used Excelsior JET to compile a native Windows executable and installer. All feedback including bug reports are very welcome.
Update:
Introduction video of the game is now available for download (30MB). There is also a YouTube version, but the framerate is quite poor.
Update2:
I have created Inside Demoscene Pinball, a separate web page explaining the technology behind the game. It gives a deeper insight to the different features of the game than what is observable by just playing it.

Congrats on 4th place!

nIce Suite
Well I enjoy algorithms and math more than the creative aspect of making games, so I decided to make a game engine instead. After 3 months of development (in a 5 month timespan, because school and work get in the way) the engine is functional in a bare bones kind of way. So before I go any farther I've decided to make a few small games like Solitaire and Minesweeper, just to make sure my design is on the right track.

I'm not very far in development yet, but since the engine is ECS based, and scripts are just a component that can be added to anything, it makes it real easy to add fancy transition effects. For example (3 MB gif): http://i.imgur.com/TEryoW8.gif
Also, because I'm a college student just trying to challenge myself, I have no plans to make any money with this project and everything is open source, even if that source is horribly uncommented with no real documentation (yet). Everything is in C# (the One True Language) with the OpenTK library, and most of it should be readable without comments, or so I tried to design it.
Engine source: GitHub
Suite source: GitHub
Windows binaries: IcyDev (My website)

At long last. A C# user! Rejoice brother!

C-Dogs SDL
Overhead run-and-gun with 2-4 local multiplayer, campaigns and deathmatches.

Available for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android and GCW-Zero
Github: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl
C-Dogs SDL is an open source port of a classic DOS game, C-Dogs. It was a pretty decent overhead run-and-gun back in the day. For about a year now I've been hacking away at it, picking up the project from abandonment and implementing new features such as:

Quick play game mode
Static maps and map editor
4-player co-op
Co-op AI

But the bigger gain for me I think is the learning experiences this has provided. Refactoring C code with a 20-year-old legacy was quite an experience! My long term plan is to leave this project in a good state, having implemented network multiplayer (everyone asks for that) and replacing the freeware graphics so it's 100% FLOSS.
As with all open source projects, contributions welcome! Play the game, send me feedback, share your ideas, patches etc.

Update Aug 2014: a port for GCW-Zero was made!

C-Dogs was my favorite game on my old Win95 machine. Forking this ASAP.

Necromonster!

Necromonster is a 2D, topdown RPG. You can read all about the story and game mechanic in Readme of the Github Repo!

Language: Python (2.7)
Required Libs: Pygame, NumPy(for path-finding)
Game Mechanic:
Pretty much the main game mechanic is that you control a monster which goes into dungeons and gets loot for you. There are 2 xp bars, the fast filling monster bar, and slow filling wizard bar. The monster levels like you'd expect, but when it dies, it's a permadeath. The wizard goes on to summon more monsters, who bring back loot from dungeons that make him stronger. Instead of getting classic pre-made weapons and armor in dungeons, you get material(s) for creating new weapons, tools, and armor. These materials can then be used to create new items at a blacksmith. Tools will also be enchantable to give them interesting, unique, and special effect(s).
Features (so far):

Basic Player movement, maploading, enemies, etc.
Inventory (small pop-up window in the corner)
Shadows (for buildings) and Day/Night cycle
NPC's
Takeover (when monsters are killed it is possible to take there shape)
Weapon System (currently being worked on)

If you don't have python, here is the 100th commit build. It is 15 commits behind and a good amount has been added in those 15 commits.

Is this meant to be open source or you're just hosting on Github? There's no license.

Normal US copyright laws apply.

Are you guys still using any of my art? I am not offended either way :P

@Pip most of our current art is placeholder art, we are in need of an artist though!

Haven't tried your game yet but from your readme your gameplay has an interesting twist - you should include it here!

I didn't want to repeat it in 2 places but why not! Thanks @congusbongus

Noice. concept sounds super interesting. BTW, mind if I ask you how you are doing the shadow for the two buildings?

Battery

It's a game I just work on occasionally. There used to be page where I've posted project updates (and some of the algorithms) occasionally. But it's been a long time since my last update. It's basically a 2.5D top-down chasing game, in which you, as circle-shaped robot should run from your hunters, and try to catch your target. So far I've implemented some basic functionalities, such as basic rendering, simple AI, maze generation and local-network communication.
The game is going to feature Online play (up to 64 players in same game), match making, single player (with AI), and if everything goes right, there will be other game modes.
It's not going to be an opensource project, but I might use your suggestions on every aspect of the game.

Platform: Windows (xp or higher), Linux, iPhone, android, ...
I just hate macOSx but I might also add support for it. Also I might consider windows phone, specially if someday MS decides to add OpenGL support.

Language: C++
Engine: currently working with SDL2, but there is an old (working version) of the game written with Esenthel Engine. For the prototype my friend used Game Maker. And for a short period of time, I tried developing it on top of cocos2d-x.

Playable Demos: you can find multiple playable demoes in my one drive folder. while each has it's own unique set of features!

For testing the game as in the above screenshot, check version 0.0.4
For getting an idea how the game will look like in the end check the prototype version.
For testing inputs on mobile devices you can test those apk files, and give me some feedback which one you liked the best.

This looks awesome compared to the initial prototype. Keep it up!

@SpartanDonut the thing it's moving way too slow

CraftPlatform

You have played minecraft, right? You might also have tried some mods for it. The thing is, the modding community is huge even though it's nightmare to create any mods for minecraft. The purpose of this project is to build a platform for minecraft like games and mods. The "vanilla" release will be a mod itself, which can also be modded easily. I do not want to call this a minecraft clone, but a mod platform that can be used to create minecraft clones.
Current planned features:

Highly optimized voxel cube rendering engine
Nice lighting and shadows with deferred shading engine
Full API available to add and modify anything in the game world
Store multiple worlds separate from each other
Client-server approach; single player mode will connect to a local server
Mod based terrain generation

Current features:

Generate a mesh from voxel data and render that with very simple shader
Occlusion culling is now working
Chunks are octrees trying to compress the block data if at all possible (If all node children are the same, mark the node solid and just store the block type the children were storing)
Texturing and material information is sent to the GPU for each block

So what will be in the game without mods? Nothing! Even the basic cubes will be a mod. This enables the mods to do anything. Generate dungeons with final bosses, simulating dwarf fortress, flowing liquids, playing god(s), shoot rockets in space, build space stations. You name it. The world is designed to be seemingly infinite, which is 2147483648 chunks of blocks in every direction. That will take 363913989089 times the age of current universe to visit every chunk. And then you can have more worlds if you run out the first one. ;)
This project is in it's very early stage, so nothing to show yet other than the screenshot above. Also, planned features list will most likely grow as I get more ideas during the development. I have also not yet decided if I'm going to release it open source, but I am not excluding that possibility yet. Time will tell.
Techs used
C#, .net/mono, OpenTK

It would too tough to pick an incomplete project.  Here's a silly one that I actually finished.  (The image is a link.)

The key inputs work.  This surprised my front-end dev fellows; they said they don't associate correct key event binding with terrible styling.
Hit the random button to get an idea of how the url parameters work.  If you want to reduce the number of dimensions, just leave out some of the numbers.
The last number is the random seed, so the same url will generate the same maze.
Hovering shows connected rooms, in case you can't divine the passageways from my "graphics".
The engine (lol) supports any number of dimensions, but the display is limited to only utilize 4 of them.  Previously, I was simply wrapping more and more tables around themselves, but control schemes and visual depictions became a problem.  Also it turns out that 4 dimensions is utterly impossible anyway, so 5 and 6 really aren't needed.

For a more traditional maze, try: http://itsobviously.com/nmaze/?-100-100-10615 (you may need to zoom out your browser window.

based on how you show those mazes, I think it's better if you change Q/A shortcuts to A/D.

@Ali.S You know, that's a pretty good idea; it would allow easy two-handed play.  The current scheme is a relic of when E/D, R/F, etc., were also pairs.

 Mentality

So I absolutely love Magic: the Gathering and similar games like Hearthstone, and have always wanted to create a digital CCG myself. Now that I have acquired enough skills to actually make games, I can finally do that! This is my first large project, after lots of practice with smaller projects.
It's currently very simple and has a terrible interface, but it's still kinda fun to play if you can figure it out. Improvements are on the way! :)
Techs used: Unity (using C#), OpenGUI
Warning: the game is currently kind of really boring. Will be fixed soon(ish).

This sounds absolutely fantastic. Me, as well, wanted to make something like; my own digital card game. Good luck with this project. :D

@Tofu_Craving_Redish_BlueDragon I'm glad to hear that! I'll update this post as the game is improved, though the next update may take a while. The code has become a huge mess, so I'm cleaning that up first. :)

Tarbeyon
The Developer:
Hello all! I am a progressing programmer from the United States. Currently, I am spending time on several projects, including a team voxel engine, using C# and SharpDX, and a trading game called Envio, using C# and Monogame, as well as this one.
Target Platforms:
Tarbeyon is targeted to be playable on Windows (7, 8, 8.1, and possibly others), Linux distros (mainly Ubuntu), and Mac OSX. Other operating systems may work, but don't count on it. As the game is currently being ported to C#, I have no idea which platforms will support it, but this will be updated.
Programming Language:
Tarbeyon is written in the Python 3.x branch of the Python programming language. It uses the Pygame library for graphics and other functionality.
Description:
Tarbeyon is heavily inspired by Terraria and similar games, but is not currently planned to be a sandbox game, although that may change later. It is in a very early stage, mainly because I had to constantly deal with performance issues, so I do not have much time to create new features. Also, Tarbeyon is only an occasional project, and my other game takes priority over it, usually.
Images
Warning...... all art is placeholder and a bit messy!

Downloads:
If you want to try Tarbeyon, you can find it and the (Windows) dependencies here:
https://bitbucket.org/flaminghatgames/tarbeyon/downloads
The dependencies for other platforms should be fairly easy to find (Python here, and Pygame here).
To run, first install the dependencies, then unzip the zip file. After that, run Main.py.
Note: When I can figure out how to create an installer that works, I will post either an installer for an exe or just an exe.

Are you Benjamin Ward, if not what's your relation to him? Seems weird to refer to yourself in the third person otherwise

It is sort of odd to refer to myself in third person, but..... meh. I mostly copied the git repo's README file, and threw this together @congusbongus. This post will get a rework soon.

Kotlin_ThreeJS
BitBucket
I got bored of C#/XNA so I have been looking for a new stack to play with. I really like JetBrains new language Kotlin which targets both the JVM and JavaScript so I decided it would be fun to learn the language and ThreeJS by creating an interop layer.
Current only the getting started and Random Particle example are working.

SquareMaze

Click the image for an older beta test play through by my boss!
SquareMaze is an app made to test your reactions and see how well you can cope in a fast paced scenario. You control a little red square around a randomly generated maze and earn as many points as you can, but it's a little more complicated than that.
This was my first game ever. I had a fun time making it, and getting a brief introduction to the industry. It's a simple side scroll-er, if you get far enough;), made for android, and soon to be ported to other platforms.
Language/Libraries
C#/Unity
Platform
Mobile, at the moment only android.
Release
This game should be release on the Play store soon, and I'll post the link when it happens. Sorry in advance for the ads:(

KaM Remake

The KaM Remake mod is an attempt to reinvigorate the original “Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom” strategy game. Our goals are to make it work on today’s computers and operating systems, implement a fully featured online multiplayer system, as well as to fix the many bugs in the game engine. To do this we have started from scratch, writing our own code for the game engine but still relying on many original resource files. We assume that you own the original KaM game, (the installer checks for it) otherwise you should buy it – it’s available in a number of online gaming stores.
The KaM Remake executable is freeware and is built by enthusiasts. Applications used: Delphi 6, Delphi 7, FastMM4, Lazarus, OpenGL, OpenAL, zLib, PNGImage, MadExcept, libZPlay.

Beautiful! Good luck with this.

Nemesis Sidekick
Nemesis Sidekick is a two players, offline, vertical scroller space shooter game. Players control two playable characters, Hero and Sidekick.
The game features two play modes, Nemesis and Sidekick.
Nemesis is a competitive play mode. On this mode, only one player can be the winner of a game. The aim is to complete the objectives of each level and be the last player alive.
Sidekick is a cooperative play mode. On this mode, either both players win or lose a game. The aim is to complete the objectives of each level with both players alive.
The project
The game also features a faction system. Hero is blue, while Sidekick is red. Players can only hard or be harmed by enemies of the opposite color. Purple enemies however are able to damage both players.
Nemesis Sidekick is an open source game made with the Unity Engine in C#. The game code is under a GPLv3 license, and all its assets are under a CC BY-SA license unless explicitly stated otherwise.

A small gallery can be found here.
On a personal level
I have always wanted to do my own videogame. Is just a personal challenge. After trying out tutorials, tools, books etc. I felt that I was just pushing the act of making a game further and further away, so finally one day I got down to it and started coding a game. Sure, its far from perfect, but at least is my own.
On a game design level
I have quite a few ideas for videogames in my head, but this one seems not to be overly ambitious and fit for an opera prima. The specific idea for this game came to my mind one day sitting in a friend house. We were discussing how hard is to find offline cooperative games, where you can just physically sit in the same room as your friends and play together. The I had an idea, what about a game that must be played two players, and where being physically close to each other played a part in the gameplay?.
Little by little this idea took shape in the form of Nemesis Sidekick, and I expanded it a little bit with other interesting gameplay concepts.
First the game is two players only, and both players play in the same keyboard. This forces players to be very close to each other, and this has some implications. As the game was conceived as competitive in nature, I pictured players harassing and messing with each other in order to get an advantage in the game.
In order to make the experience more interesting, I decided to add a second, cooperative game mode, where I could experiment with other mechanics.
In the current iteration, the competitive mode (Nemesis) requires one player to eliminate the other and beat the level (right now only points are counted) to be the winner. The little twist is that when a player dies, he gets a speed and power buff. That means that every time your enemy becomes more and more dangerous, and sort of balances the game.
The cooperative mode (Sidekick) requires both players to survive and beat the level together. The twist here is that friendly fire is enabled, and the death buff is applied to the other player when one dies. So, in the one hand you want your partner to survive in order to beat the level, but on the other you would like that sweet sweet buff.
Current state and future plans
The project has been stale for a month due to me changing jobs, country and not having internet at home. Hopefully I can get back on the road again soon.
The game currently has mostly placeholder graphics and sound/music, and the levels and enemies are just testing prototypes. Also the game hasn't been playtested by anybody else than me, so I didn't had any feedback about the game system. Right now I am more concerned about learning how to make games, and my aim is to put in place some basic system that can be extended to produce a complete game. Of course I am open for anybody who wants to contribute, collaborations are always welcome!.


text:
How should we tag modding questions?
Today, I noticed a few mod questions that didn't really have any tags pertaining or indicating they were mod related. I noticed we already had a description-less "mods" tag, so I edited it to add some information.
Should we tag existing and older questions with the tag "mods" or is there a better way to identify these?
It seems like they are in scope of this site, unless the community has changed their mind. Although, I've noticed they do not receive much attention.

Given that the community has accepted these as a part of our Stack Exchange platform, I believe strongly that it makes sense to categorize these together so that it is clear when the author has identified their question is mod related. In doing so, we can group them all together and get a better idea of the popularity of such questions and how well they fit into the community.
By doing this, we can gain valuable insight and metrics on how well our community is versed in handling these specific types of questions while allowing those who are well versed in mods to look up and answer.
I also propose some synonyms, such as: modding and others that might fit the bill.

Tagging old questions with appropriate tags is generally acceptable and desired (although, as a note to anybody who wants to go tag-crazy, that old questions usually have other problems you should try to address when editing; don't just re-tag if you can also improve other aspects of the question). I squashed modding into mods.

@JoshPetrie Thanks, I made a head start on some of it but I have other stuff to do for now. If nobody else gets around to it tonight, I'll start going through them.
"Skyrim", "Starcraft" and other popular game names are probably a way to start filtering these out.

@JoshPetrie It seems like you killed the description with it, is it possible to restore this?

Ugh. Yeah, that seems to happen (I presume it's a bug). Let me see if I can restore it.

Okay. I think I unbroke it.

@JoshPetrie Thanks, Josh. Seems fixed.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
What should we do about questions that are duplicates off site?
For example, this question:
How do I right-align text?
It already has an answer on StackOverflow as in the comments but marking as duplicate per the close reasons is not an option. The duplicate must exist here. What should we do about these?

If the question is on-topic here, you can flag the off-site question for migration. You can also answer the on-topic question here; if a migration eventually occurs, then we can resolve the duplication or merge the answers as needed.
If the question is off-topic here, flag it or vote for closure here.

What's wrong with just using an answer to link to the offsite question?
That might be the problem with this particular Stackexchange site...
You're over-complicating and adulterating a very simple and welcoming set of rules.

Link only answers are usually discouraged here.

Link-only answers are discouraged on most SE sites. They don't fit easily into the collaborative answering paradigm of the site, since they cannot be directly edited and commentary requires off-site context. They are also subject to link rot or invalidation.

Your negative marking against a reasonable suggestion absolutely sums up the problem with this board. This is an awful developers resource, but an average 'boys' club.

While just linking is rightly wrong, the suggestion could easily become a "copy that answer", which is perfectly fine. Downvoting this was another way of being anal without even trying to understand what was being said.

No. I most certainly meant LINK, because copying an offsite answer, rather than just linking to it, is a heinous thing to do.

Indeed, copying an offsite answer wholesale is very much frowned upon.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Should "joystick hotplug on OSX" be reopened?
Yet another question about what is on-topic.  This question, to me, appears to not be a black-and-white violation of the definition of topicality.  Hotplugging Joysticks And Gamepads On OSX was closed unilaterally and followed by a long string of comments.
Stay tuned for my related meta posts, How to encourage posters of closed questions to improve them rather than reacting defensively. and Why do people get on meta and gripe about moderation instead of actually asking about their closed question?
Is this really a "which tech to use" question?

I believe it is not a "which-tech" question and that it is answerable.  I explained so in comments there after voting to reopen.
My understanding of the spirit of the "which tech" close reason is that it can't be answered in the general case; it can only be answered on a per-project basis.  The specific requirements of a given game, as well as design decisions, will dictate what is best to use.  So there is no singular correct answer.  Anything that attempts to give a general answer would need to answer innumerable questions simultaneously, for all the possible different scenarios.  For reasons of limited space, any answer which attempts to do that would only give several weak answers to a handful of considerations.  That is no good.
But that doesn't mean that specific problems can't be solved by the judicious application of the right library.  For some problems, picking the right tool is the best answer.  The trick is to start with the problem, and then define what constitutes a solution, and then locate it.  If that solution happens to be "use library X" (with justification), that's a good answer.  And specific questions that have good answers should be on-tpoic, IMO.
So, I think this question is an instance of the second case.  Specific problem, asking for preexisting solutions.  Barring that, why does this problem exist, and can it be resolved.

I think without this part: "Are there any cross platform C++ libraries (or even just OSX only libraries) that offer hotplug joystick detection on a Mac?" The post would be on topic. (And an answer explaining why, while also providing information about a 3rd party library that does that, would be fine).

It's gotten a few edits since I closed it, and that bit you highlighted is the big reason I think it should stay closed. Removing it would remove the majority of my objection to the question.

That said, I will note that another aspect of why "which technology" is bad (in the general case) is that it is also implicitly a "list of" question.

I wish you'd just close the question. You've applied more thought to it's applicability than you have to the question itself. What an  awful culture for a Q&A website!!! I've solved the issue btw. Not sure if it's an elegant solution, but it might well be. If this was Stackoverflow, I may have just answered the question myself, and leave a valid breadcrumb for someone else. I'll share the solution elsewhere.

Boards that are justly administered don't usually have such problems... Consider Byte56's idea - 'I think without this part: "Are there any cross platform C++ libraries (or even just OSX only libraries) that offer hotplug joystick detection on a Mac?" The post would be on topic.' - Any good potential technical answer should address the state of the art, and the tools available. That's why a lot of technical questions do address lateral projects and ideas. Do you not agree with that? The sum of my objection to the quality of the moderation here is spot on, I think. So vote as you will.

This event makes me wonder if the mod is just fond of clicking buttons, rather than actually "making the Internet a better place". Maybe clicking some virtual cows would be a better idea than closing legit questions.

@Lohoris that comment isn't constructive or fair.  The question deserved to be closed when Josh voted.  Then the question was improved, and now it's reopened.  The process worked as intended.  All Josh did was expedite the closing part.  The OP took it really hard, but that's their issue, not a moderation problem.

Oops, nevermind, it's at only 4 reopen votes.  It will be reopened shortly, I suspect.

I'm in agreeance with Seth.
I think sometimes we take things a bit too far here. In this case, I think that is the case. This question has a clear intent. It wants to support hotplugging under OSX and is looking for an option to do that. This is a tightly defined criteria. It is not very loose like What game engine should I use? or What can I use to make graphics?. I think when the request is formulated in a very specific way and not targeted towards a specific user, we should answer these.
Knowing where to find libraries that support the operation this user has requested is useful. Even if it's a list. There is no bias in the criteria, as there is an objective desire.
I think that's important to differentiate.


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Should people who vote to close, answer questions anyway?
I'm not pointing fingers at ANYONE, I promise. I've seen a few multiple instances where people will vote to close and then answer a question, however. Such as this case.
Don't we vote to close because we personally think the question is not suitable to answer currently? I'd like to hear the community thought. To me, it seems odd to vote to close something as "not going to answer" and then PERSONALLY answer it.
I can understand people who choose to answer who voted to stay open or simply had not voted at all. However, when you explicit vote you are expressing your explicit disapproval.

I do it when I think a question is salvageable, or borderline close-worthy.  I consider close votes to be feedback, in the interest of improving the question.  So sometimes I answer the question that I hope it will turn into.  Sometimes the improvement never comes, and sometimes the close votes go another way, regardless.  Bad questions get nothing.  Your example...I probably would have left that one alone.  Philipp thought differently.  No big deal.
Basically, I don't think we have to stick to a specific course of behavior in responding to a question.  Likewise, we don't have to use all available options on a poor question.  For example, I don't refuse to answer, downvote, and then vote to close.
I usually close vote instead of downvoting, for example.  I rarely vote down anything except really crappy answers.  But that happens rarely too, because non-answers (flaggable) happen more often than really bad ones.

It's not a real feedback, since the OP doesn't get notified of the close vote.

They don't?  The question is marked with a notice about the consensus of the voting.  I guess the OP has to actually return and view the question again, but that seems like a reasonable requirement.

You don't get notifications, so you realise that only if you come back, which is not obvious: if I receive no notifications, I usually assume I got no answers. Plus, just casting votes gives no feedback at all until the question gets closed, even if you come back there.

I guess that's less than ideal, but I still think expecting the person to return to their question is reasonable.  The all-votes problem is usually mitigated by interim comments.  If you think the question can be improved, a comment may be warranted, too.  I guess I'm saying that a close vote doesn't have to be the only feedback, but it is certainly part of it.  That's what this meta post is about, isn't it?  Close voting and {other}?

Closing a question only sometimes implies unanswerability. For example, a question that was off-topic here may be on-topic somewhere else, where an answer may be useful when migrated. Others may also disagree with your vote, or the question may be reopened later.
I see no reason to introduce social or technical restrictions where they don't need to exist. If you see reason to both vote and answer, do it.

There is no voting for closing anymore, just voting for keeping questions on hold. There is a subtle but important difference. A question is on hold until its content gets improved enough for the restrictions to be removed.
With these improvements in mind, one can attempt to answer.

Questions are voted on to be put on hold, then once they reach 5 hold votes, they're put on hold. If they're not improved in a week, they're closed.

I am not sure what's the ideal behavior here. But I do answer the question if I understand what the OP wanted to ask and if I can answer it correctly. Most of the time it happens when the question was off-topic. The motto of SE is to solve people's problem by helping them get to the right solution, so why not provide solution if you can. To punish them for asking at wrong place is to either flag it or downvote it. But in the end they need an answer and most of the time it was an honest mistake, which shouldn't wait for the bureaucracy for migration and then answers. That's just my point of view, others might see it differently.
PS: Helping doesn't mean that you should entertain repeat offenders.


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What should we do about questions that involve bugs with 3rd party tools?
Potential Culprits
Xbox Controller Not Connecting in Monogame Project
Can't load vector font in Nuclex Framework
SpriteFont not found in Nuclex Framework
Do we answer these? Do we close them? It doesn't seem to make sense to answer questions for bugs unless we're encouraged to post "work arounds". It seems the workarounds would be far too localized and short lived to be worth much. They're also not worth much in terms of historical significance.

I generally consider most of these to fall into the same bucket as "debug my code for me," they are essentially "solve my problem for me," in many cases and you usually aren't given the information you actually need. But these should still be looked at on a case-by-case basis I think.

I see the excuse too localized or too short lived far too often on this site. This isn't a theoretical game development Q&A. That would warrant questions that should at least be relevant for a few years. Questions regarding specific frameworks and problems with frameworks are on-topic on this site. So why not questions regarding bugs in frameworks?
Another argument is that it is often not known in advance that it is a bug by the user who posted the question or even by us.
This also raises another question, when is something too short-lived. Even bugs known by the developer can stay around for months or years, doesn't that discard all of the arguments against the validity of these questions?
Personally I think we should try to make our community more open, lately too many questions are being closed because the FAQ is interpreted too strictly (IMHO). Apply the FAQ as a general guideline.

I think framework bug questions ought to be permitted, for all the reasons you mentioned.  Shortlived-ness also is not a good close reason; that's what update edit are for.  But too localized is surely still a valid reason.  As Josh said, case-by-case is the way to judge.

I found this relevant Venn diagram in the help of Programmers.SE.  (Can we get this in our help, with "Programmers" crossed out in favor of "Game Developers"?)

Honestly, I think this criterion should be applied for every close reason.  If the question about a 3rd party framework is a common pitfall, or perhaps some frequent gotcha of implementing it, or even a known bug, that's a useful question.  If it's simply being used wrongly, close it.


text:
How can we encourage people who repeat posting low-quality questions?
For example, this user has had many questions closed and of low quality. Yet, they persist on posting. CodeOfGenius, if you're reading this: please read the help center!) This user is obviously not the only offender.
How can we encourage users as a community to read our guidelines better and generate better questions? I think this goes hand in hand tangentially with: How can we get people to ask better questions?

Looking at the comments below the questions of that user, he received a lot of destructive criticism in form of the obligatory "FAQ you!" but not much constructive criticism.
The user is told what not to ask, but no suggestions are made what to ask instead. One notable exception is this comment by Byte56.
It's a well-known fact of psychology that people react defensively when they get told that they behave incorrectly. They usually perceive it as a personal attack and mentally marginalize the argumentation of the other side instead of accepting it. When you really want someone to change their behavior, it is much more useful to tell them how to behave correctly. That's a small but important difference.

There's a reason the on-hold/close banner has explanatory text and a link to the help center though. It's avoid every user who votes-to-close having to repeat the same generic boilerplate comment in order to be helpful.

My linked comment is on a now deleted question, here it is if people would like to emulate it: "There are a lot of ways to do this. It will depend on what technology you're targeting, if you're using any libraries, the goals of your project, etc. I suggest you try out what you think might work, then ask a specific question about any trouble you have. This would give answerers a starting point with which to help you, right now it could start anywhere, making it too broad."

Preface.  I'm quoting words here and there.  Imagine air quotes.  Imagine the phrase "so called" in front of a few...
Take a look at the first 50 questions on the main page.  Lots of zero vote questions, lots of unanswered questions, and lots of questions on hold primarily by the actions of just two moderators.
In fact very few questions that are asked are "good" by the standards of the proverbial "one percent" of us with higher ratings.
I would argue that what this implies is that there is a very high need here - dare I say specifically for "dumb" questions (note quotes).  And as a community, this site is failing to answer that need.
And as such, maybe what the community needs to do is open up a bit, be better at answering beginner questions, and lighten up and be more forgiving.  Treat "dumb" questions as genuine learning opportunities.
There are FAR more "n00b" posters here than real hard hitting challenging askers of questions.  This is reality.  Smart providers of services respond to customer needs.  Foolish ones turn back lines of people waiting at the doors.  Clever ones learn to make those people into proverbial customers.
We have a huge opportunity here to educate people.  Not with the proverbial "ban club", but instead with guidance, mentoring, suggestions, and advice.  Let's take advantage of that opportunity and not curse it.

Guidance, mentoring, suggestions, and advice are good and fine things, and are very important.  But to my mind, they don't fit the stackexchange model.  Such things are better fits for a forum where users can receive immediate, time-specific personalised help, and their threads be deleted after a month or a year, to make space for future conversations.  To my mind, personalised mentoring doesn't make sense for a system where every question and every answer is stored publicly in perpetuity.  The StackExchange sites are designed as almanacs, not as personal advice columns.

Reading https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/04/26/stack-overflow-isnt-very-welcoming-its-time-for-that-to-change/, I could I think argue that it is actually (as of that post) maybe a bit fitting with the stackexchange model.

"Better questions" is not a good choice of words, because one person may read a question and understand/have an idea of what's going on, where anther person may be scratching their head. A better choice of words would be "Posting a question as clear as possible," with an aim to be understandable by the widest group of users possible. Words like "better" is ambiguous, because one person's values may differ from another.
One solution would be to have an few example questions as a template for them to go of so they can structure their question as such. As a compliment to the solution, there should also be a rule that if a user downvote/request to close a question, they should be required to give specifics as to why such should happen. This will force both sides of the equation to exercise their reading/comprehension and critical thinking skills and will help in minimizing narcissistic/trolling behavior among users.

I stand by that better questions is the correct terminology. The target here is those that are clearly off topic and not welcome. It is not about incomprehensibility.

Understood, but what constitutes as "better" is debatable, because in the end, it's all up to interpretation like comparing apples to oranges. It should be a goal to be more precise when stating a question.

I too think better is fine, but it's not about being better, it's about being "good enough to not warrant closing," which is a fairly obvious metric of measurement. We close questions because they're bad questions, by the metric of clarity, answerability, and suitability for the site. Good and bad is clear in that regard.


text:
Clarify off-topic as it pertains to non-game use of game libraries
Right now, questions like

How do I convert a .dds texture to .png bitmap in C#?, and
Mandelbrot generation using custom HLSL shader in XNA

are attracting a handful of close votes.
Questions like these seem fine to me. According to the rules they're acceptable, on the basis that they're about "game-related APIs".
(I am assuming my interpretation of the rules is correct. And that we all agree with the continued validity of that rule. Stop me if I'm wrong.)

Possibly the rules need to be further clarified or emphasised?
Possibly there needs to be greater community awareness that, actually, these questions are ok? (And how to do that?)

I separated out your answer and question. I did this so, if people don't agree with your answer, they can still vote on the question and provide their own answer. Please revert if you think it's not right.

Sure thing - looks good to me. I've taken it a bit further to make it more "questiony".

That first question getting close votes is particularly annoying, because if the asker had not said that they weren't working on a game, I don't think it would have attracted any close votes at all.
I think that, with the recent drop in question quality (not that those questions are amazing), we shouldn't be tossing out perfectly good questions about DirectX / XNA / MonoGame / Unity / HLSL / OpenGL / etc, just because the person asking them isn't making a game.
If anything, I think we should be welcoming such questions with open arms.
Right now when people go to close such questions, they see:

off-topic because...
This question does not appear to be about game development within the scope defined in the help center.

Followed by:

Programming questions that aren't specific to game development are off-topic here, but can be asked on Stack Overflow. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other programmers?"

I love the rule-of-thumb, I think it's very appropriate. I wouldn't want to change it because it says almost exactly what needs to be said. Maybe it could be bolded or italicised for emphasis?
Maybe "specific to game development" in the first line could be changed to "related to game development"? Not sure it's a big enough change, but it's a start.

I for one think both of those questions are fine.

Don't forget that as the only gold tag-badge holder on the site you now have the mini-mod power of unilateral close and reopen votes.  You can do or undo as many [tag:xna] close votes as you like.

@SethBattin Muhahahahahaha!!!... uh, I mean, "cool".


text:
Why is the question "Certain sound is played after last if within script" on hold?
This is my question: Certain sound is played after last if within script
Did I asked an off-topic question? Does this include off-topic content? Maybe wrong reason to close it? If so, what is the actual reason the question is closed?

It says right in the hold description why your question was put on hold:

Questions about debugging a problem in your project must present a
  concise selection of code and context so as to allow a reader to
  diagnose the issue without needing to read all of your code or to
  engage in extensive back-and-forth dialog. For more information, see
  this meta thread.

Fundamentally your question is asking us to debug your code for you, a process which often involves an extensive back-and-forth discussion and which is unlikely to ever be useful to future visitors. It's not what this site is for.


text:
Why was my off-topic flag declined even though the question was marked as off-topic?
This question was marked as off-topic by me, just because it was not related to games. Although I've answered it too, since it was a question too.
The question was later marked as off-topic and migrated to SO, where it got migration rejected status.(I am not sure about the migration policy here). Later I can see the question as On-Hold, stating the answer as Off-Topic.
So my question here is how come the flag was declined? I was under the impression that the flag automatically get helpful status if the post is closed or migrated.

I saw the question through the review system and voted to keep the question open. This rejected your flag. A few hours later another moderator migrated the question to Stackoverflow. The question was closed as a migration. Later, the migration was rejected, making the question set to closed as off topic here.
So your flag was rejected before the attempted migration and close. As they were two separate events.


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The Summer GameJam! (2014) (Preparations)
The summer gamejam's going to start soon enough (in June), and I wanted to post this question here to ask people about an idea of mine and for any other suggestions they might have.
We did not have a theme restriction during the previous jam. This time, instead of going with another randomly chosen theme approach, I thought about this: each participant chooses a gameplay concept from an existing game, and builds a game around it, trying to give the concept a twist or making it better.
So a submission would look like:

The core concept and the game it originally belongs to.
How it was implemented in the participant's game and, if applicable, what the twist and/or improvement is.
The submitted game itself.

Drop some answers here if you disagree with my idea. Also drop answers with any other ideas you might have about the jam.

<3 buhhereowueh

@MickLH <3 hiya

YES!! ITS HAPPENGINGGNGNG! I MUST WIN GAME JAM BECAUSE I CANT RECEIVE MY T SHIRT THATS BEING TRANSPORTED TO MY US ADDRESS ATM

I'm not sure I understand your idea, could you please give an example? Maybe even an example game? For example, it's not obvious to me what separates the concept from its implementation. Would a game like Portal 2D or Mari0 count?

@congusbongus Portal 2D would count only if you chose 3-dimensional perspective based FPS as a concept. Which is not exactly an interesting choice if you ask me. A 2D portal-like game where... a portal changes your state before teleporting you is a good example. Say, a team-based game where going through a portal changes your team color. Something like that.

I truly love your idea, in a way it's encouraging people to explore and find what's good out there. While preventing people to do exact copies. the only problem I've got with it's time span. can't you wait till July? I mean most students (like me) have final exams during June.

We could start it on the 4th of July, yes.

exam schedule, I think, depends. I am already on my exam week here. The varying exam schedule, I think, is more the case here since many of us are from many different parts of many different country.


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Duplicate [tag:platformer] [tag:platform-game]
Are the tags platformer and platform-games duplicates? If not, what's supposed to be the difference?

I think the platform-games tag description is better written, but clearly the question counts (132 for platformer vs. 46 for platform-games) imply that platformer is the more intuitive usage. Platformer sounds a little informal, but it would be the first noun I'd think of when asked.
So I'd suggest moving the platform-games description over to platformer and merging the two tags.

I've combined the descriptions and merged the tags.

Cool. I'm seeing the merged tags, but not the merged description? The platformer tag still has the old one-line description and four example games (SMB, DK, CV, LBP).

Coming back to this meta post later proves to me how increcibly lacking in clarity and attention span this place is. Every answer has been the same conclusion, merge. But it took a user with 4k rep saying it, to trigger enough cognitive bias to start the same loop with upvotes and their bias.


text:
Can we get a hyperlink style for chat that is less subtle?
I'm open to suggestions as far as whether we should change the color, underline links, or both, but as it is it's a little too subtle for less than perfect monitors and viewing angles.

And while we're at it lets give this feature request a look too ;)

I want dashed underline.

Love the answers providing users with means to implement their own solution; but I feel it is important to note (as I did on the newer duplicate) that to my eyes, the links are fairly distinguishable. May not be the best design implementation, but they certainly are not camouflaged.

Possible duplicate of Could GDSE's low-visibility hyperlinks please be revisited and improved on main, meta and in chat?

Voting to close this as a duplicate of the feature request where this got resolved for our record-keeping purposes.

I've build a simple userstyle to use cause I was annoyed by it:

div.message a {
  color: #d1802a;
}

https://userstyles.org/styles/103649/make-links-identifiable
(One that also does the stars, and every other link in the star list because as far as I can tell there's no other way of telling:)

div.message a, #starred-posts a {
  color: #d1802a;
}

If you want dashed underline you can do it yourself =p

div.message div.content a {
color: #d1802a;
border-bottom:1px dotted;
}

+1 for a lovely work around though I still think we should push for an official solution. I honestly wasn't aware of user styles until now. Awesome!

Hm. Just noticed that this script (at least when used with GreaseMonkey, someone please confirm using Stylish) does not work on links in the stars section.

It does not, I can add a second version which does.

In addition to Kevin's answer, I hacked his snippets into a userstyle that changes the colors of both the stars' links and the rest of them, and also works on all SE sites instead of just GDSE. That part can be edited in the js file.
https://userstyles.org/styles/104670/make-links-identifiable-2-0
Note: This script can be used with GreaseMonkey in FireFox or Stylish. It may work with other tools/browsers.


text:
Problem has two reasons, wich answer should i accept?
First, it's about this question: Drawing cube in SharpDX, wrong perspective. It divided into two parts. Answer1 answered to the first part of the problem, Answer2 to the second part. Now i don't know what i should accept because only both answers together are the full solution of the problem.
Should i write an own answer with reference to the answers? Or should i accept one of them?

The main problem is that you treated the post like a forum thread, and went back and updated it with significant new development information in response to a posted answer. This isn't what you should normally do, and it's why "debug my problem" questions (or in general questions with multiple distinct sub-questions or parts) are generally considered bad.
I removed your edit, so you can accept the answer that corresponds to the original question.

Did you also deleted one answer?

Yes (to prevent users in the future from downvoting it).


text:
Is it OK to update high-traffic community wiki answers?
There are questions that receive huge traffic, because people need the answers. This site rocks in SEO but fails to answer these questions. Should we update questions like this one, or just let them rot?
Where can I find free sprites and images?

I think it is definitely okay to edit the answers to correct dead links, grammar, and other sorts of issues.
I don't think it is okay to edit an answer an expand significantly upon it, adding new information. That's making an end-run around the fact that the question is closed and shouldn't be accepting new answers.


text:
Organizer for the Summer Game Jam
Alex did a reasonable job of organizing the spring jam; however, in light of recent events, he no longer has full access to the community. I don't think it's in the jam's best interests to keep Alex as the lead organizer. The ability to chat with potential contestants and spread the word about the competition is vital to the success of game jams.
I suggest we have a vote for a new jam coordinator. The summer jam's preparations are under way, and the date is tentatively set for the weekend of July 5th-6th, so we only have a few short weeks before things get underway. Get your votes in before June 15th @00:00:00Z.
What we're looking for in a new coordinator is:

Effective communication skills
Involved in the community
Organization skills

If you're interested in becoming the new game jam coordinator, say a few words below.

Uh, I've only been banned from chat, something that never really helped with organizing the jams. But if you feel like taking the lead, please do.

@AlexM. If you feel like you can still run them, post your reasoning as an answer below.

Ultimately meta was the primary tool in organizing the jam itself, but I'd argue that chat was a tool that we used to contribute real time feedback about the jam and its meta posts before and after the posts were made. Certainly meta alone can be used to organize the jam but you can't disagree that the feedback you received in chat was useless.

Honestly, I could go either way on this as long as a jam does get organized. :)

I will volunteer to organize these game jams. I've competed in every jam to date, and I'm frequently available in chat.
Considering my jam success, it could be a little weird for me to also run the jams. Please consider this before voting for me. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm altering the jams in my favour.

the jam itself is almost run by community. I mean the coordinator doesn't have any special privileges, well, maybe except picking a random theme based on the highest voted themes. But that's no big deal! I can trust you, picking the random theme. besides that we are all equal!

Yeah, it comes to picking the theme, making sure everyone knows when it starts, creating the thread(s), etc.

+1 I trust you. Electing an authority curbs diffusion of responsibility and ensures all the important things get done.


text:
Why are certain questions put on hold?
I was just looking at this question,
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/77354/where-actually-did-they-spend-money
And thinking that while it is very broad, could still have an answer.
I will point out that there is a person that needs help there, and that instead of getting a useful answer which they indeed could have got on this forum, then nobody is able to answer him because it is "on hold".
That is just one example, but it is the best one I could find.
IMO, people should either be able to vote to have a thread unheld, or they should not be held in the first place. While there are threads that are not 100% ontopic for this site, I will point out that they are still people who need advice, and I think it is mean not to give it to them especially when the question is ontopic in my above example even though it is broad.
They are people. They need help. So why is GameDev denying them that help that they require?
I obviously support the locking of questions that are terrible, badly written, badly thought-out, no time taken, etc.

People with sufficient rep can vote to unlock the thread. However this question is not really a good fit for our Q&A format so it was put on hold as such.

The purpose of this site is not to help everyone with any problem.

The purpose of this site is harmed when a strict application of alleged "rules" serves to quash participation and the reputation of the site itself.  I've seen many questions put "On hold" for seeming "Too Broad" or "Off-Topic", though I personally thought an appropriate answer could be given.  Being a little gentler with newcomers and the like is hardly "helping ANYONE with ANY problem"

@Attackfarm Clearly people are being helped. We have lots of good questions with lots of good answers. As Josh said, we're not here to help everyone with any problem. Limiting the scope of the site is critical to keeping the quality of the site high. Just because this tool is great for one thing, doesn't mean we should try to change it so it can work for another thing to. If you want an example of a Q&A site where the rules are very lax, take a look at Unity Answers.

@Byte56 I didn't say the site isn't helpful.  Nor did I say the scope shouldn't be limited.  I said that there is harm in strictly enforcing a single interpretation of what is and is not "on topic".  There are benefits and detriments.  Be aware of the detriments.
Not to mention, as I said, I've seen many questions put "On Hold" that I thought were well within the site's guidelines.  It's much more subjective than your comment implies.

Hard to define what should actually change then. How, precisely, would you change the guidelines of the site? It sounds like you agree that there are some subjective aspects to how the rules should be enforced, and you want us to still be subjective, but in a different way. Define exactly what "gentler" means, why it should only apply to newcomers and how it would help change things and maybe the we can actually change something. Ranting against "alleged 'rules'" is just noise unless you're suggesting a real alternative.

I have a bigger problem with how the site's guidelines are interpreted than with what the guidelines explicitly say.  Questions I find I could answer are put on hold because they are "off topic", when they seem to be about game development, or they are "too broad" and supposedly subjective even though my first thought for an answer is an objective, fact-based one.  I've just noticed various questions over the last year or so, maybe a bit longer.

As to the newcomer point, they are very specifically far more likely to leave and never return because some small way they phrased their question or answer didn't meet a moderator's criteria.  Sometimes I see a comment pointing out the problem, sometimes not.  But someone with 400 reputation is more likely to try to stay and figure out what happened, while someone with < 10 is far more likely to decide the site is "crazy" or "mean".  And I'm of the mind that the more perspectives there are, the better off the site is.

And, actually, a much bigger complaint than the subjective strictness is that of the hilarious number of mechanics of the site that encourage cognitive biases.  However, I believe these are an ingrained aspect of StackExchange itself, rather than anything that could be changed with gamedev.SE.  Specifically, many aspects of the site encourage information cascades, bandwagon effect, halo effect, confirmation bias, and probably a few others.  But, again, it's nothing that could be changed to my knowledge.

The help answers this already:

Why are some questions marked "on hold"?
Questions that need
additional work or that are not a good fit for this site may be put on
hold by experienced community members. While questions are on hold,
they cannot be answered, but can be edited to make them eligible for
reopening.

And no, just because an answer is possible doesn't mean the question should remain open to accept answers. There are plenty of questions that would be fun to speculate on, or provide a single instance of what the answer might be. However, that's not what this site is about. People come here for real answers, asking questions that don't have correct answers means we don't get real answers. There's a reason that the stackexchange sites are a great place to look for answers to your questions, and that's the rules that are in place for maintaining a high quality question.

The mods of this site might want to not so quickly dismiss such criticisms.  There are plenty of problems that arise when so carefully and consistently gatekeeping anything that isn't fitting within a very strict interpretation of "On-Topic" questions.  I've seen plenty of questions that are hardly "Speculative" that are put on hold, while no one tries to format the question in a more appropriate manner.


text:
Questions about L4D2 game variable modifications
I'd like to play with some game variables of L4D2's weapons, items and others, but I don't know which vars do what, how to properly extract the official var files from game libs, create a steam workshop submission and make it work on someone else's computer other than mine properly.
Example questions:

How do I change weapon clip capacity in L4D2?
How do I change the number of pellets fired from a shotgun in L4D2?
How to make grenade launcher projectile sticky and timed in L4D2?
What behavior parameters do zombies have in L4D2?
Is there a way to change boomer bile effect duration in L4D2?
I made a new weapon script, how do I add it to L4D2?

Are these kinds of questions acceptable here?

This site is for asking questions about the gamedev SE site itself. Beyond that your question here likely wouldn't be a fit for the main site since it's very broad and essentially asking for someone to write a tutorial for you. I suggest you check out some modding guides for L4D2.

@Byte56 I was meaning to ask if these types of questions are ok on gamedev, but didn't find an "allowed-questions" tag on this meta, so it may have looked like I was actually asking all that here.

Mod questions are allowed, but as I said, your questions is very broad and not a good fit. If you can be more specific about your question that would be great. Just because the topic is allowed doesn't mean any questions in that topic are allowed. They still need to be reasonably scoped.

I just added some example question titles which should be narrow enough on their own. What do you think, could someone answer them here?

I'm the wrong person to ask. Personally, I think that only very rarely does a modding question fit here. I think they're better suited for a forum about modding that game. I think all the question titles you've added look too broad. The best way to find out if a question is a fit is to ask the question on the main site.


text:
The 2014 GDSE Summer Game Jam
Congratulations, everyone!
The jam has ended, and the voting has started already. Check out the answers to this question and the games inside them, and vote them up if you think they deserve it. Downvotes are fine if that's how you want to vote, but at least leave a comment so the creators know how they should improve.
The voting will end on Sunday, July 13th, at 00:00 UTC (7 days after the end of the competition, minus a few hours so that I can be awake to close it)
If you wanted to participate but didn't have the chance, don't be sad! There will be another jam in the fall!
Original text:

Time
The summer Game Jam will take place between July 4th
  5am
  and July 7th
  7am
  UTC.
Rules
We're going to keep the same rules as before:

Participants are allowed to write games for any platform.
All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed. All publicly available creation tools (e.g. Photoshop or 3DS Max) are
  allowed.
The entrant is allowed use any premade assets as long as they're freely available on the web and the licenses allow them to be used in
  an open source project (e.g. opengameart.org).
Assets created by the entrant during the game jam may also be used.
The forming of teams is not allowed.
Each entrant may ask questions on the main gamedev.stackexchange site, as long as the questions are on-topic as per normal site rules.
  Alternatively, the chatroom may also be used.
Each entrant must release their game as open source after attaching a license of their choice.

Theme
The theme will be a bit different this time: each participant chooses
  a gameplay concept from an existing game, and builds a game around it,
  trying to give the concept a twist or make it better.
A submission would look like:

The core concept and the game it originally belongs to.
How it was implemented in the participant's game and, if applicable, what the twist and/or improvement is.
The submitted game itself.

Some examples would be: Flappy
  Golf
  where they've taken Flappy Bird concept and moved it to a golf course.
  I would argue that both 2D Portal and Mari0 also fit the bill.
  Questions about the theme should be asked over
  here,
  or in chat.
When your game is complete, add an answer here with a link to a
  playable version, a link to the source, a screenshot or two, and how
  your game fits the theme. Have fun!

It's happening!!!!!!

A wild logo appears! (No jam in it this time, because it's ice cream hunting season and my favourite flavour is game development.)

Super excited for this, it'll not only be my first jam with GDSE, but my first jam EVER! Good luck to everyone and may the best game win.

Same here. 1st GDSE Jam. 1st Jam. So say we all.

Added to compohub: http://compohub.net/jams/2014/2014-gdse-summer-game-jam/
Good luck everyone and make sure you submit a game, don't be shy!

Awesome turnout!

Woo, this is awesome. Congratulations to all who finished.

Trap it!
Base Game: Pathery, Max and the magic marker
Platform: jsfiddle?
twist: way too much to explain!
Source Code, Licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0
I've started developing this game, based on grids, and thinking of bomberman but after a little while I thought why grids? so anyway, this is how it turned out!
By the way jsfiddle seems to fail, way more than my code. so if you want to test it on older browsers you've got to patch things together yourself!
edit: changed a rules a little bit, so they'll be more sane!
edit2: fixed a bug that caused an upper bound on the score (you couldn't get higher than 5056)

Pretty fun. An indication of how much line is left, or how soon you're going to get more line would help a lot.

@JohnMcDonald check again, changed the rules a little bit!

5065! I think I can do better though... very fun! :D

@SpartanDonut that's actually a good high score!

I cheated and got out my stylus. I found with the mouse I kept failing to close my circles around the first few that would pop up.

Woop! Got 5114. Very nice concept.

I got up to almost 5360 myself. after the bug fix of course.

Awesome, the new mechanic is great! Good job!

Neat stuff here!

mic drop

Congratulations! You have won the 2014 Summer Game Jam!

Participant: Kevin van der Velden
Platform: Python 3 and libTCOD
Based on game: Magicka from Paradox Interactive
Hey people, my first game I made for a game jam! :D
I liked the mechanic in Magicka where you could combine elements to create different spells, but I thought it could be improved a bit. You press the buttons 1 through 4 to create an orb (Water, Fire, Earth, Air). You launch these orbs by clicking where you want them to go.
If they collide with an enemy, the enemy get's hurt. If they collide with you... so do you!  But if they collide with a different orb there's a reaction, Fire and Air hitting each other creates Lightning orbs, Lightning and Earth hitting each other... destroys both of the orbs.
This is a turn based game, think about where to send your orbs and where to step to avoid getting hit, it gets hectic quite fast.
The objective of the game is to... survive, your orbs aren't peculiar about who they hurt and your HP is limited, try to get a high score! - I can't really get over 200.
(Full version: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0d21C.gif)
There's plenty more orb options to build in, and a lot of tidying up, which I might get to sometime after the jam, but for now I think it's done.
The py2exe windows version is available via Dropbox, nothing extra required, just unzip somewhere and run the .exe:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1193507/MagiOnslaught.zip
I've put the code on github and if anyone wants to help they're welcome: https://github.com/KevinVDVelden/MagiOnslaught
The version on github uses cygwin and has version 1.5.2 of libtcod, the py2exe version uses the MSVC build of libtcod which is version 1.5.1. The github version should work on linux if you install libtcod.

it's way too slow on my laptop, any ideas?

If you run it from the command line there's a --profile flag that'd  show you where time is spent, if you could post that I might be able to do some optimization.

I'm pretty sure this won't help, but still here is my console log:
C:\Users\Ali\Desktop\MagiOnslaught>MagiOnslaught.exe --profile
24 bits font.
key color : 0 0 0
24bits greyscale font. converting to 32bits
Aborting merge.
Trying to remove entity [Entity 384 {Renderable 15}/{Position 450/71}/{Renderable 15}/{SpellComponent 0x4C282B}] but it's not in the list
Aborting merge.
Trying to remove entity [Entity 384 {Renderable 15}/{Position 450/71}/{Renderable 15}/{SpellComponent 0x4C282B}] but it's not in the list

Uuh weird, that's not the profile log (that's just the "This is a gamejam PRINT DEBUG ALL THE THINGS" output) - I may have removed the profile option =[

Skippy Fish

Play Now
Base Game: Flappy Bird
Concept Used: Tap to stay in the air? Punishing, but quick
Twist: Instead of obstacles, well-timed taps are required to stay up
Source Code, Licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0
All art and sound assets were created by me, specifically for this project. I used Inkscape for the graphics, and a glass of water, a straw, some popsicle sticks, my own voice, and Audacity for the audio. I have uploaded all of these assets to opengameart.org under more permissive licenses than the game.
Libraries used: CraftyJS, TweenJS, jQuery, Bootstrap, and jQueryUI.
Lobster font from Google's Free Font Library
Known issue: Sound may not function properly in IE11, use Chrome or Firefox.

I kinda can't figure out when should I press the button? I mean when entering the water, or before it?

@Ali.S, sorry, I guess it's obvious to the designer. I've added instructions on the play page now: Press or release the left mouse button as Skipper gets close to the surface of the water to skip. The goal is to stay out of the water as long as possible. Perfect > Great > Good > Poor. Perfect is somewhere just below the water's surface, and it goes out from there.

The Dungeon

Click to play!
Game Description
The Dungeon is a 2D Action RPG taking after the 2D Zelda Games. This game is but a fraction of what I actually wanted to do but I bit off more than I could chew. That said I feel like I managed scope / cut features appropriately and ended up with this, which for the moment, I am quite proud of.
The bulk of the art assets were taken off of OpenGameArt.org including the main tilesets and the music. Sound Effects and other art assets were created by me. The game was developed using Unity3D and its built in 2D features using C# as the programming language.
Base Game:
The Legend of Zelda
Concept Used: Core 2D Action RPG gameplay mechanics
The Twist: The whole game is a single dungeon adventure
Platform: Web / Unity
Source: http://git.intellisenseless.com/SpartanDonut/the-dungeon/tree/master
Credits / License: http://git.intellisenseless.com/SpartanDonut/the-dungeon/blob/master/LicenseAndCredits.txt
Thanks for playing!

For what its worth, the boss fight is the highlight. If you think you fought the boss but aren't sure it was probably just a miniboss as there are a few throughout the dungeon (more like big minions than mini bosses actually). The room leading up to the boss fight makes it pretty clear what you are about to get yourself into. When you defeat the boss you will be awarded with a victory screen and music!

Those of you struggling (or bored) trying to reach the end I've added a secret to rush you to the boss. In the first 4 door room, right when you enter the dungeon, knock on the north door 5-10 times and it should open right up for you. If it's not opening and you played the game before, you might have a cached version before this was added.

This is quite fun :D

Aes0p
Core game: Frogger
Twist: Time manipulation
Description: You play as a hare trying to make your way through as many levels of roads and rivers as possible. Along the way, you'll be able to collect hourglasses which activate 'TURTLE TIME,' turn into a tortoise, and rip apart time by slowing most objects down.
Source: github
Tech used: Java 7, LibGDX, Paint.NET
Run instructions:
NOTICE: You MUST have Java 7 or higher to run this game.

Download .zip file, unzip at preferred location
Open file, click on GDSESummerJam2014_jar.jar, it will run and start the game

Alternate

Download .zip file, unzip at preferred location
Open command prompt, cd into location of .jar
Type java -jar GDSESummerJam2014_jar.jar

Credits

Dishes, Please

Concept: My concept is based off of the processing of passport documents under a time constraint in Papers, Please.
Implementation: In Dishes, Please, you process dirty dishes by washing as many as you can during your shift. You need to watch the clock to know when your 12:00 to 6:00 shift will end.
Known Issues:

Dish rotation is clunky and overly difficult to operate.

Play Now
Source on Github

I had weird input issues when trying the game (space bar didn't rotate and the water wasn't doing a good job at removing anything) but I enjoy the concept. :)

@SpartanDonut Thanks for playing my game! Dish rotation is known to be clunky, but should still be usable. Were you holding down space bar and moving the mouse?

Oooooooh. That's much better lol.

Well done! The concept really travels well from Papers Please.

Resident Zombies

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXgVbNnlb7s
PC Installer (Source Code)
.
Base Game: The Binding of Issac
Concept Used: I've always felt the game-play in BoI was sluggish/clumsy and I figured it would be fun to merge the rouge like elements with traditional shoot-em-up gameplay.
Twist: Instead of plodding along slowly trying to dodge projectiles with odd pats, collision is obvious and you can move very quickly.
Source Code, Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
All the artwork was described as free to use and scrounged together from across the internet.

All character sprites were created by DoubleLeggy (A) (B)
The room Tiles Set was created by Daniel Cook (A)
Sound effects thanks to as3sfxr
Background music by Crazy Games (Song Used)

Libraries used: Ruminate Framework, MicroStar
Known issue: No way to restart in game. Have to relaunch it I'm afraid. No gamepad support :'(

Needs gamepad support ;)

Very true. I think I will make make another pass at the game soon to add some of the basics I skipped for times sake.

Flap To The Future (click here to play)

Concept : one button "flappy bird" flying game.
Twist : Right mouse button now undos your action; you can rewind back.
All the art assets, except the main character from the game Braid are created by me.
Playform : Unity
Source : https://github.com/kyung01/GameJam_FlapToTheFuture
Thought :
Flappy bird is known for its forgiving gameplay style. Many people seemed to be frustrated by the gameplay. Since this Jam is to give twist/improve a gameplay concept, I decided to make Flappy bird "easier" by combining the flappy bird game with more forgiving game play concept.

I lost 10 minutes of precious time of working to just laughing hysterically at your sound effects. 10/10. Thank you.

Jesus the sounds... they're just too much :P

@hasherr ty hehehe glad you enjoyed it.

@Blue lol yes. Sound makes almost half of the game lel. :P

Where can I download the soundtrack?

@AlexM. All the sound files used in game are available here : https://github.com/kyung01/GameJam_FlapToTheFuture/tree/master/Assets/Audio For more information, and if you are interested in the artists work, contact The Mighty BlueBug.

Bond That Atom

Concept: SpaceChem and Solar. It started off as reverse SpaceChem (let's make everything chaotic instead of logical!), and picked up Solar's concept of a floating entity picking up other floating entities.
Technologies used: Unity, OpenGUI.
Source: you can find the source code here.
All art except the GUI was created by me. You can find the GUI here. So yeah, my first jam game ever! I think it turned out decently, especially for my first jam. It was a very fun experience, and I learned a surprising amount of things. And in case you missed the one in the title, here's another download link.

you should change the way you hint players what to build. I mean I don't know which atom should be connected to which

@Ali.S I have updated the downloads with a small in-game helpdesk. It probably won't make much sense never took chemistry classes, but it might refresh your memory if you did. In case updating the game a few hours after the deadline disqualifies my game, I can still revert it to the original build.

It seems I introduced a bug which causes the timer to progress 3x faster, making the game extremely difficult. That's fixed now. :)

Super Bounce

Play Now (download)
Use the following email to register Coherent when it pops up:

registercoherent@superbouncegame.com

Core Concept and Game: Halo 2, Super Bouncing. Land on a mesh edge to with a "crouch" to soar to incredible heights
Implementation: No twist, just an awesome implementation of the original mechanic.
Source: GitHub
Built from the awesome Unity reference project Radius that I authored.

Jumping Flash!

Participant: joapet99
Platform: Unity Web Player
Based On Game: Goat Petting Simulator on GameJolt.com
Open Source License: CC BY 3.0

Hey Guys! I wasn't really aware of this jam before just some days before it began. I really didn't know what to make. That night I watched a youtuber play a ton of simulator games and with them Goat Petting Simulator. I suddenly got the idea of basing my game jam entry on that game. Goat Petting Simulator is just about petting a goat, there is no goal or winning or losing. In the beginning I felt like it was going to be really stupid, but it turned out to be an acceptable game called Box Petting Simulator. I have gotten nice comments on it and the developer of Goat Petting Simulator himself has commented that my game is better.
There are way this and the original game is made is alike. Both are made in unity. And the concept is there. The thing is that in my game there is some improvements :D You have six boxes. You get one petting point by petting it gently. If you are not gently you destroy it. The game is over when all the boxes are "killed". You can submit the highscore as a user at gamejolt, as a guest or don't submit at all.
The controls are really easy. Move with WASD or arrow keys. Move the arm by moving the camera. And if you need more explanation you can click buttons which appears and write in textareas.
And now the moment you all have been waiting for! The link:
http://gamejolt.com/games/other/box-petting-simulator/29271/
For those who are interested in what I used I have a dropbox folder here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jxc89x4vlgqiffp/AAB5OKKuhwUPtUWtv7JbajVva
I have used a unitys Standard Assets and a hand asset too. I can't post link to hand asset since I don't have enough reputation for that.

I wanted to love it because it sounded hilarious but I didn't manage to get a single point. I really struggled to properly gauge at what depth the arm was at. I kept smashing into the boxes even though it didn't look like I should :(

i managed to get a personal best high score of 4! but i think the addition of some in game "guide" or instructions would go a long way. just explaining the logic on a box kill verses a box pet

Sound effects would take this to the next level. A pair of simple sounds would really make this game pop: a "successful petting" sound (like a pleasant goat bleat), and a "you killed me!" sound (something like a goat scream). This could really one-up the comedy in the game.

@Joe I have said this in the entry:  You get one petting point by petting it gently. If you are not gently you destroy it.
Isn't that enough to decribe?

@JohnMcDonald There is sound effects!

How did I miss those!?! Awesome

so i guess i was curious if 'pet' was defined by a physics force, or if i had to make contact with multiple faces, or some other definition.  i will admit i did not play for hours but i did 5 or so games, and i couldn't figure out "the trick" to the mechanic.

LOL @Joe it is in an OnCollisionExit method that it triggers

This game needs a sprint feature. As of right now it takes forever to explore the world. -1

"Continuum" - PLAY NOW

This learning exercise was based on the time travel concept from the game Braid.
Built using the unity2d game engine and C# scripting (both firsts for me)
My ultimate goal was to learn something about game dev and after many trials and tribulations, came up with a plan to try and attempt a "big boss fight" platformer on top of that time travel mechanic.

Sadly i did fall quite short of my super ambitious goal for my first game, still plenty of bugs, and incomplete features.  overall i consider this attempt quite incomplete, but still a success! the list of things i learned in this process has been enormous.
So i learned a ton in this process and just wanted to give a big thanks to everyone in the chat for lending a hand! GDSE you all have been a huge help! can't wait until the next jam!
Controls:

WASD - Player Movement
SPACE - Jump (multi jump enabled presently)
Left Click - "Shoot" (still broken sadface)
Left Shift - Holding this will Reverse Time

the Repository - Continuum Github Repo


text:
Why was my question about non-standard projections closed?
The question I've asked:
projection and matrices
was meant for me to get a head start on some of the more exotic aspects of game programming: the problem of projections, that can't be represented by matrices. After obtaining an answer I thought I'd go on and research some literature about the indices I'd obtain. Of course, an over-zealous moderator reacted to a flag by a user, who is perfectly content with orthographic and linear perspective projections. I've edited the question and flagged the moderator as per stackoverflow instructions. The response I've got from the moderator was this:

I've tried to fix my question. I don't need a novella answer, just
  some examples, so I get starting points to look through the
  literature. – user1095108 21 hours ago   declined - flags should only
  be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their
  intervention

Meaning he did not understand (or even cared), why I flagged him at all. His further comment reinforces this view:

@JoshPetrie This is what moderator flags are for. First the flag, then
  the meta-site. –  user1095108 35 mins ago    No, it isn't. Moderator
  flags are for content that requires moderator intervention. Reopening
  a post due to an edit does not, there is a system in place for the
  community to do that. That's why I have rejected both of your flags
  against this post. Please don't flag it again. –  Josh Petrie♦ 33 mins
  ago

Showing he's unaware of stackoverflow policies, further he's trying to dissuade from flagging again. I've given him a link to the relevant web page and he commented:

You flagged the question twice. Your first flag was rejected,
  explaining that this is not a scenario where moderator intervention is
  necessary (particularly since your edits did not make the question
  less broad). Your subsequent flag was rejected because you are just
  flag-spamming at that point. If you would like to discuss this
  further, please post on Game Development Meta. –  Josh Petrie♦ 24 mins
  ago

Inflating my gross misconduct of flagging the question twice to "flag spamming". Now questions: is my question really too broad and why? Could it be salvaged? My view is, that the moderator closed impulsively.

As another moderator, I would have done the same.

Here's a very similar question which isn't nearly as broad. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/77914/are-there-3d-projections-other-than-orthographic-and-perspective/77915

@MickLH Thanks for the link, it answers everything I wanted to know.

Your question (currently) reads:

Can you please provide some examples of such projections and why they
  might be used in a game application?

This question is too broad. Full stop. It's asking for a list of answers, each of which are equally viable options (or alternatively a single answer which contains all possible alternative projections, which is impractical to compile). Your original question was actually slightly better, or at least heading in a better direction, because it mentioned the idea of a Camera class supporting atypical projections. But not a single one of the edits made to the question as of this posting corrects its "too broad" nature.
So, you flagged the post after you edited it, asking to get it re-opened. This itself is not really a problem, although it's not a particularly good use of a moderator flag since editing a question puts it into the re-open review queue.
(I am aware of the guidelines that you linked, but (a) that does not mandate that all such flags must be acted on by re-opening the question and (b) I suspect those guidelines were written prior to the more-recent change that automatically puts edited questions into the re-open queue, or at least are less relevant now since that feature exists.)
Regardless, your edit did not make the question re-openable, and as such I rejected the flag, choosing one of the (pre-defined) reasons available to me. There are several such pre-defined options, a few of which were potentially applicable. I chose "doesn't require intervention" simply because your edit wasn't sufficiently good enough to warrant re-opening by unilateral vote. I did not elect to use the custom decline reason field because I didn't think it was warranted here; perhaps I was wrong in that respect.
Then you flagged the question again, with effectively the same reason; that isn't appropriate use of the flag system. "Spamming" in that context did not mean you are flagging too many times, it meant you are re-flagging without sufficient further action or change, which is not appropriate.
I did not close the question impulsively (on a whim). In fact, I saw it in its original form and left it alone for a while to think about how it could be tweaked to make it more appropriate. When I came back, you'd edited it to make it more broad, so I closed it then. It was hardly a snap decision; I rarely make snap decisions when closing questions, unless they are spam.
There's really no way to make a question asking for a list salvageable here. It's just not the appropriate venue. However, your original question had some mention of implementing non-standard projections in camera classes, and a question that proposed a specific non-standard projection and asked about how you might represent the parameters to that projection in a Camera that also supported a "typical" projection might be interesting.

Well, the closing smelled of "2 projections are enough in practice" to me and in many cases this way of thinking is probably right - we have to eat first and think later. What is wrong in providing a few examples of projections, that can't be represented by matrices and are used in games? I didn't require all such projections to be provided. Further, the requirement "used in game applications" narrows the range of projections I wanted.

It really just isn't a good format for a Stack Exchange / Q&A site. If three people each post one example each, which example is the more correct answer? This is why list questions get closed.

"Two projections are enough" is definitely not why it was closed. It's purely because asking for lists makes questions too broad, in general. You didn't ask for all projections, but all projections are the potential domain of the answer(s). That makes it hard for a single, objectively correct answer to exist ("correct isn't just about "does it help you," it's also about the question's utility for future searchers). SE is about compiling those objective correct Q&A pairs. The [help] lists some other gamedev forums that could be a better option for your original question.

And yet the question that MickLH references wasn't closed. There's a list there, we can all see it. It is probably not exhaustive; each of us can think of a new projection. Ah, well, you can close my question as a duplicate then, the referenced question serves as an answer very well to me.

Unfortunately not every off topic question gets closed (policy also changes over time); sometimes questions fall through the cracks. Generally nobody digs back through history to find old questions; I usually only re-evaluate such questions if they are brought to my attention.