text:
Link clarity in code tags
Sometimes it is useful to link directly to documentation for a specific function in your questions/answers. And in many cases, one will often want to put the function name in `` tags, like this: "[`FuncName`][1]".
On Stack Overflow, this looks fine; the linked text in the code tags appears blue. On GDSE however, it's impossible to tell the difference between glDrawArrays and glDrawArrays without mouse-overing them. We should use better text coloring to tell the difference.
Is there any movement on this? Or even acknowledgement? Does this need to be asked on MSO?

I agree, this would be a nice fix. I find myself just adding fluff. Like, "use glDrawArrays(link)"

I made a similar complaint several months ago, but it never received much attention. http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/967/link-colors-for-visited-and-non-visited-links-too-similar

Which, if we combine the upvotes from my post and this one, now has a total of 16 people who really do think this change is positive.  In terms of accessibility, GDSE is far too difficult to read effectively with its bland color palette.  This is even worse on Meta because all the colors were made muted/gray, further reducing the value of the colors.

@Byte56: Is there something that can be done to speed a fix like this along?

I'll bring it up to some people with some power.

I've fixed this on dev, the change will be on live after our next production build. I've made the links underlined if they appear inside of a code block(same for code block inside of a link as well)

Looks good, thanks.


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I'm making a simulation of X, and want to know Y about X
What do we think of questions ostensibly about non-game-making topics which are being asked in order to create a game which simulates those topics accurately?
In meta we had a related conversation about a specific question (the characteristics of real-world weapon systems) here, but the discussion there was very specific to the particular question, and maybe isn't a general answer to the question?
We've also recently had a question about the handling characteristics of real world cars, also for use in a game simulation.
Is this sort of "question-about-the-real-world-so-that-I-can-simulate-it-in-a-game" question off-topic for us, or are the answers we'd give to these questions useful resources for future game developers, and therefore worth archiving here?

Sounds off topic to me.

I'm leaning that way too, using boat programming as precedent.  But I'm not convinced, which is why I asked.  Am hoping that people who have strong feelings and/or a larger perspective will post something thoughtful/insightful that makes the correct answer obvious.  Or at least spreads the field somewhat.  :)

I thought that question about real world cars was somewhat off topic. Which is why I answered it in a generic way. I do think that sometimes these questions can be on topic if the answers guide them that way. If I can find a way to give an on topic answer to a somewhat off topic question, I'll try to do that.

I really liked your answer to the question, @Byte56.  It's what made me ask this question rather than vote to close.  :)

Ultimately, this site is a site about game development. That means questions must be about the act of game development, or things directly related to that act. These kinds of research questions are better suited to sites dedicated to researching that information.
Once you have done the required research, then you can bring that information here and say, "here's how the system is supposed to behave; how do I simulate that?" Well actually, that question's probably too broad, but that's the general idea.
Just because a particular piece of research might be used in the course of making a game doesn't make it a question about game development.

I think there are two varieties of this question.  There are the boat questions, and then there are people who are trying to ask "what do I need to model?"  The car steering rotation is a good example of the latter.  The guy didn't get the answer he specifically requested, but he was happy with a good approximation because it will help him with his development.
This question is similar, but the poster is asking directly how to model something.  The guy wants to know how to build a simulation of the real life concept, so he's asking how to model it.  I think the people who ask about the concept itself are asking the same question with different phrasing.
The downside is that each of these questions encourages opiniony answers.  But gamedev is generally more tolerant of discussion questions when they discussion centers around the many ways to implementing some game system.  In my opinion.

I'm not sure what everyone else thinks - but if it can be useful to any wander passer-byer I don't see why we shouldn't archive it here. We shouldn't be talking about random models of cars and discussing bias information - but if someone can give a non-bias resource and authorative resource on handling simulations for various things.. I say.. why not? There's worst things to be living on this site like "Debug my code" or "Help me get started with nothing".

-1: "if it can be useful to any wander passer-byer" That is not the standard that SE uses for what gets put on our various sites.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Curious for a second-opinion: Would this answer pass review?
Got this in the review stack and though it was pretty borderline.  The question asks about a basic implementation of applying an acceleration based on a key press.  Here's the answer:

you need to make the acceleration happens over time (per game tick)
  gradually.
you need to time the acceleration in such that every N seconds, it
  make your character moves faster until a limit is reached.
your while statement make it happen in a single tick, it make no
  difference than assigning X = 1.

It does very little to answer the question, and it's not written in a manner that's very readable, but it is technically answering the question and there is some guidance there about the correct approach (though very little assistance on implementation).  Would this answer pass review for you?

At the very least it should be edited for grammar.

@Tetrad, my grammar correction is pending.  But beyond that?

I rarely delete answers unless its spam or not an answer at all, so I'm pretty lenient when it comes to that kind of stuff.

After obvious edits, I'd call it done. A bad answer is still an answer.
As for how I'd vote:

If there are existing and clearly better answers, I'd downvote for unhelpfulness and explain with a comment.
Else I'd simply not vote. It's not directly harmful, but neither is it directly helpful.

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


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Gamedev causing a memory leak?
Lately I've been noticing very high RAM usage from Chrome. A little investigation points to Gamedev.stackexchange.com being the offending website:

This is found by using Chrome's Task Manager, by pressing Shift+Esc in the browser.
I'll admit I pretty much always have the gamedev tab open, but I restarted it earlier this week because it was up over 800 megs of RAM. I have noticed some changes to the site recently, fancy new notifications, etc.
So I'm wondering if something was introduced that would be eating RAM at a pretty good pace?

What plugins are you running?

I'm just running AdBlock.

@Byte56 you're using the wrong one, apparently http://www.freewaregenius.com/adblock-v-adblock-plus-two-chrome-extensions-compared/

@Lohoris Are you saying you think it's the AdBlock plugin that's suddenly causing the memory leak? Or just making conversation?

@Byte56 one of the issues raised in that article, is that "AdBlock slows down the browser when multiple tabs are opened", and this may or may not be related to the problem you encountered. In general using a shady and opportunistic clone isn't a wise choice, so if any problem arises, switching back to the real thing might be a good thing to test.

I've switched from the "shady and opportunistic clone" (or clone written by an enterprising independent developer, however you want to look at it) with no change in RAM usage.

@Byte56 good to know, thanks for trying, sorry :/

Just an update. This is still happening...

Still happening... Closing the tab and reopening with Shift+Ctrl+T (to reopen last tab) brings back the tab with much less memory usage. In case anyone wants a quick workaround.


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Is it fine to ask what are tools that could solve your problem?
Say you're confronted with a new problem and you don't know what tools exist to solve it. Is it fine to create a question describing your problem and asking what tools are used for that task?

possible duplicate of Are "What should I use to do x?" questions really on-topic and good?

Generally I would think it would be better just to describe the problem you're having.  "What tool should I use" is really just a subset of "which tech should I use" which ends up just being a collections of links.

So I should go on and just ask: "how do I make an animation using programming to coordinate the positions of the objects in function of time?"

@Do Yep! "How do I do X" is an answerable question.


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Should there be a difference between 'state' tags and 'fsm' tags?
Are there any questions that could pertain specifically to a state that are not inherent in an overall fsm (finite state machine)? It seems like any 'state' tag falls under the fsm umbrella because without knowing the context under which the state would be operating is detrimental to any possible information about the state itself.
There was a similar question asked here: tags: security vs. anti-cheat
I guess I'm wondering if questions tagged with 'state' or 'states' are at all different from questions tagged 'fsm' (even though they are clearly a subset). A better way to ask this is: "Are there tags that could be tagged as 'fsm' that would not be able to be tagged as 'state' or 'states' (which are synonyms)?

I'd say the fact that at least N people use the term "state" and actually implement a FSM in their applications, without knowing what a FSM actually is, makes the "state" tag useful.
In most game programming tutorials (that I've seen anyway) there's a lot of talk on states, but very little on finite state machines. A considerable amount of questions may come from readers of such tutorials.
What I mean is, a user who is able to tell that FSM includes state is also able to notice the redundancy (if it exists) of the state tag. A user who is not able to do so, however, will use the state tag and that's perfectly fine from my point of view. A question that asks about FSM related stuff and has the tags <C++> <DirectX> <State(s)> is a lot better than an equivalent tagged as <C++> <DirectX>


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Why can't we see who voted posts?
Pretty much self-explaining. What are the reasons behind not being able to see who upvoted or downvoted posts?

I think a neat feature related to this might be being able to use special callouts to notify those who voted. Something like: "@Downvoters Please check my edits and see if your downvote is still warranted". This would send a notification to anyone who downvoted and they could respond as they wish.

That's great! Have you suggested it? If so, please link here.

I have: http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/909/can-we-implement-communication-with-voters

Voting is anonymous by design (see also this thread), although I'm having some difficulty tracking down an official word or SO meta discussion as to why. I'm fairly certain it has to do with two related things though:

To keep the focus on the site on the questions (and answers) and their quality.
To prevent retaliatory voting and/or comment drama.

If a user wants to reveal their vote, they can do so in a comment, and it's generally considered polite / good practice to comment on a downvote especially if you are the first person to do so.

This is an unofficial best guess:
Negative votes are not meant to be taken personally but its very easy to do so even without knowing who did it. I think knowing who is down voting something could cause some unneeded drama such as

"@UserWhoDownvotedMe - WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? My post is PERFECT!!!
  Give me 27 good reasons that my post deserves a down vote!!!!"

And all of a sudden its personal all around when really the whole point of downvoting and closing questions is to keep the site on the right track. I think by exposing who is doing what voting there is going to be a lot of negative feelings towards certain users who consistently downvote things for the greater good of the site. These users will undoubtedly receive a lot of negativity from users and then probably just get fed up and leave the site which has a very negative impact on our community.


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Gameplay tag synonym for game-design
I've just gained the privilege edit synonyms (yipeeh!), this gave me an excuse to browse around the synonyms database to see what was going on in there.
Turns out, I'm very surprised that gameplay is a synonym for game-design.
To me gameplay programming at least should be distinguished from game design. Of course the limit is blurry between the two, but in the industry those are often different professions.
So should we have a gameplay-programming tag, and if yes, should gameplay be a synonym for it?
Or am I just nitpicking?
EDIT
In answer to Tetrad's comment, to illustrate my point, here are some questions that would be more about gameplay-programming, more implementation-oriented:

How to develop RPG Damage Formulas?
Profanity filter for an MMO chat
Have any video game designs used non-uniform random numbers in interesting ways?
Is there a way to procedurally generate the history of a world?

And some that would be more about game-design, so more creative-process-oriented:

How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy?
What is the purpose of having lives?
Are there many games involving the manipulation of water?
How do you come up with ideas for new games?

Gameplay-programming feels to broad since we have some pretty good specific tags - see Jumping, Physics, Input, Collision Detection, AI, etc.

Give me examples of questions that would have [tag:gameplay-programming] tag

Well they'll necessary be made up, but it could be job related: What skills are employers waiting from gameplay programmers? Or more technical: Should gameplay code be programmed preferably in script, or C++?

I meant examples of questions that are currently on the site.

Oh, I see. I'll try to find some.

@Tetrad Here you go

No, because it's not meaningful. I'll draw on your comment in two parts. First, the more trivial part:

Or more technical: Should gameplay code be programmed preferably in script, or C++?

Gameplay code in script vs C++ is an architecture question.
Good, that's out of the way. Now for the less trivial part:

Well they'll necessary be made up, but it could be job related: What skills are employers waiting from gameplay programmers?

What the heck is a gameplay programmer? Every programmer working on the game is ultimately programming for the gameplay directly or indirectly, unless you hired a guy only to program the main menu. So, better question: what kind of game programmer isn't a gameplay programer?
The only people in the studio who are programming but not programming gameplay are probably the ones programming some custom tools. We've had some people who ask about how to create a level editor for their game, and that typically gets filed under something like engine programming. We generally don't otherwise get asked about that, presumably because whoever's doing that stuff is advanced enough they don't need us. It's just desktop development to a large extent.
That means at the end of the day: basically every programming question we get is gameplay programming, with the exception of a handful. gameplay-programming might as well just be a synonym of programming.

Well sorry to be persistent but gameplay programmer is really a job title. I used to be one. Wikipedia also lists it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programmer#Gameplay_programmer. That's to make a distinction with more engine-oriented programmers: graphics, audio, UI, network... Now I'm totally convinced that nobody should restrict himself to gameplay programming, it's very important to keep a broad range of skills. But yeah, gameplay is simply the part of games that is specific to one game's mechanics, and that can't get factorized in a game engine.

I hadn't considered that. There is actually a line you can draw there. Thanks, now I have something to think about. :)

Hey, np, I really feel like I'm nitpicking anyway ;) Now you might start to see why this gameplay = game-design thing sounds weird to me. I'm no theorist but to me a game designer and game programmer have the same relationship when creating gameplay than, maybe, an architect and a site foreman when raising buildings. So err... I'd say game design is not gameplay, it's the creative process that leads to it.

The discussion as to whether or not "gameplay programming" is a discipline aside, I do agree that "gameplay-programming" as a tag is too broad to be useful. I'm not thrilled about "gameplay" or "game-design" either.


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Why does my "inform moderator flag" number keep increasing?
Every day I flag some posts... I've only recently started doing that, and I noticed that my flag number 1) resets every day, 2) increases by one for some reason.
My best guess would be that each time a moderator finds the question actually needing of moderator attention, all people that flagged it will get "rewarded" with trust, i.e., more flags.

I think just generally making good flags = you get to make more flags. There was a time I was earning no reputation, flagging a lot, and getting a higher flag limit. There is definitely a reward mechanism there.

I sure I've read somewhere, but I'm not sure where (so if someone finds it they can make an official answer) That if you flag something correctly you get the flag you used back.

Probably, @ToddersLegrande, but I get more back.

This answer (assuming its still accurate) describes how flag count works quite well.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/80117/183356


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Styling broken for close votes on mobile
Simple issue. When casting a close vote, you're told which other votes have been cast.
On the PC, it looks like this:

On a mobile, however, that red background behind the number is missing:

That's all.
The mobile screenshot was taken on an Android using Dolphin Browser, a few hours ago. It's been like that for a while.


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Is this really a good question?
I was looking through the questions and I found this one:
"What are the typical day-to-day tasks of an entry level games programmer?"
After some thought I decided that I wanted to close that question. The question is overly broad. There are hundreds of different task one can perform daily as a games programmer and these task are totally dependent on the game you're building, how far you're in the project, what technology you're using, what department you're at, how big the studio is, etc...
So closing it is. So I clicked the question and saw that it had 45 upvotes, 28 favorites, an accepted answer with 77 upvotes and zero close votes. So I'm confused now. Is this a good question? And if not, what should we do with it when it is so obviously a popular topic.

I think the general consensus about what good questions are has shifted quite a bit over the last 2 years. Some of the old popular questions, such as this have also been closed, despite the massive amount of upvotes.
I think the question you mention is a good candidate to be closed as well.

Me too; I voted as such. We need one more vote.

I know that question is closed, I think the reasoning beyond closing it is flawed.

"There are hundreds of different task one can perform daily as a games
  programmer..."

I think that is entirely dependent of how specifically you categorize tasks. The OP was categorizing them pretty loosely, so I doubt you could come up with a dozen different tasks in that resolution that are common for game programmers.
Since most of my buddies from the university have recently graduated, I noticed there were some common things, true to most programming jobs.
The OP asked if most of the work involves, programming, I think the answer is yes. It is a fair question for a person that is interested in a job and is facing the problem of deciding if game programming is a good course for him.


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Am I missing badges I should have earned?
I believe I am missing 2-3 badges.
For my current reputation of 115 the breakdown looks like this:

1 initial reputation point.
2 post edits.
112 tag wiki edits.

The lone edit was adding a tag to a question, which should qualify me for one or both of Organizer and Editor. The other missing badge is Research Assistant for 56 tag wiki edits.

Edits to Excerpts do not qualify you for the Research Assistant Badge.
Retagging a question does not qualify you for the Editor badge.
It looks like you may qualify for the Organizer badge though, maybe. The actual 'retagging' ability isn't actually available to you until 500 rep, but now that anyone can put in a suggested edit that doesn't matter as much.
Possibly, it has something to do with the question having been migrated, and still missing a proper user account?

Thanks for the clarifications.


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How are consecutive days calculated?
Is it done by checking the server time, if so, which, or is it reset each time my "last seen" gets over 24h? Or a combination of those?

Ok, my ~70 consecutive days have been reset, I'm royally pissed off right now.

"the user did not visit an interior page during UTC time", comment from Jeff Attwood. This is the most official answer I've found. I've found before, that just displaying the front page doesn't set the "visited" counter, you do need to do something (click on a question, check your rep, etc) to register for the day.

Stack Exchange uses Zulu Time (see also, wikipedia on UTC). You need to appear online during consecutive Zulu days, between 00:00Z and 23:59Z.


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Is it OK to ask questions towards developing non-game software?
I am sure this has been asked somewhere here in some form but I couldn't find it so sorry if mine is a duplicate.
For part of the piece of software I need to construct some very game-like mechanisms (for example, a navigable 3D surface with overlays, a HUD, etc.) even though the software is not a game at all. Are these questions appropriate for this website?

If it's programming related, see this question: Programming Questions: Here or "Belongs on Stackoverflow"?  Or more specifically, if you think that it's something a game programmer would be able to answer more correctly than a non-game programmer, it's probably welcome.  If it's "how do I get so and so to talk to a database", it probably isn't.


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Game design questions: should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format?
By adhering to a strict non-open-ended, non-chatty, question/answer format, it becomes pretty much impossible to help people to improve their game design. So instead of covering questions that actually distinguish GD from other SE sites, we end up being a somewhat specialized sub-site of SO, with mostly programming related questions. For example, I couldn't find a single question about a specific story or story element, a specific character, or a specific task or obstacle that a player faces in a game.
Here are some examples of questions that I would like to ask and answer:

"How could I change this mechanic X to make it a better fit with my general theme, which is Y?"
"What could be a twist for the hero's call in my particular hero's journey-like story that involves the notion of death? Please consider this plot summary when giving answers ..."
"How could I make this enemy X more engaging in terms of interactivity? Here is a summary of the controls and X's abilities and AI so far: ..."
"I would like to add some peripheral game mechanics to my game that depend on real world data or events. The game mechanics should involve player interaction and underline the concept of greed (or sin in general), which the game is based on. Here is a summary of the other parts of the game: ... Any ideas?"

Personally, I felt discouraged from asking these questions both by the FAQ and by not seeing any similar questions on the site. Just to be sure, I asked in the chat whether or not these questions would be welcome on GDSE, and the reaction was that they would most likely be closed, and that they should rather be discussed on gamedev.net or some other discussion-based platform.
Is this actually common sense among GDSE users? Would you vote for closing any of these example questions? Or do you think that we should be more lax when it comes to SE's question/answer format to see more game design questions like these?
My personal opinion is that all of these questions can be "practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face" (FAQ). True, there is not just one answer for any of these questions, so the pros and cons of any given answer might be debatable. Some questions are also open-ended in the sense that there is no limit to the number of suggestions that people can make. They can even have a tendency to be chatty in the sense that each suggestion can lead to further comments, edits in other answers, or even new answers. Despite these tendencies and slight deviations from a strict question/answer format, I would definitely opt for allowing these questions. They fit in SE's core template of questions, answers, and upvoting interesting questions and helpful answers. And, more importantly, it would make GDSE a much more useful website for game developers in general, and especially for game developers who are not also (or only) programmers.
Edit: Nicol Bolas and Tetrad pointed out that game design questions like the ones I mentioned need to provide sufficient context and specific guidelines as described in this community wiki entry on Writers.SE's meta site: https://writers.meta.stackexchange.com/a/167. I updated my example questions to indicate how context and guidelines could be provided in these cases. The answer is linked in Writers.SE's FAQ. I think we should have something similar for game design questions, including a link in our FAQ. Maybe we should open up a new answer and make it a community wiki in which we can specify our own criteria?

I agree with the need for a set of guidelines for these kinds of questions. The Writers.SE FAQ entry seems a good starting point.

Here are some examples of questions that I would like to ask and answer:

"How could I change this mechanic to make it a better fit with my general theme, which is X?"
"What would be an interesting twist for the hero's call in my particular hero's journey-like story?"
"How could I make this enemy more engaging?"
"I would like to add some peripheral game mechanics to my game that depend on real world data or events. Any ideas?"

The problem is that those aren't questions. Those are titles to questions.
Whether a question is acceptable depends on the content of the question. For example, take, "How could I make this enemy more engaging?"
This might be a reasonable question, assuming that "this enemy" and "more engaging" are suitably well defined. If someone has a clear purpose that a particular enemy is supposed to achieve, and can adequately describe that purpose in their question, then it would be an example of a Good Subjective question (though it is also borderline "too localized").
But the Devil is in the details; if those details aren't present, then it's not particularly constructive. The question could be posed much more nebulusly:

I have an enemy that flies around in my game, shooting at the player. What can I do to make this enemy more interesting?

There's no way to answer this question. Not without knowing a lot more about the game itself. How does the player move, what can the player shoot, how does damage work, etc. Without these details, there's no way to answer this question.
Even with these details, "more interesting" needs to be explicitly stated. How should the enemy be made "more interesting?" What options are on the table? Cloaking, movement modes, etc, what can be suggested that would fit within the game?
Such questions would work rather like questions on Writers.SE: you need context to be able to ask them in an answerable fashion.
Ultimately, Stack Exchange isn't for everything. Speculative design questions are just too indeterminate to be reasonably answers. If you're just bouncing ideas around, you need a forum, not SE.

I totally agree that every of my example questions needs a lot more context to be answerable in any meaningful way. I assumed that this context would be provided at some length at the actual question. You also mention a more fundamental problem, though: Do questions on GDSE have to be wide enough in scope to be potentially applicable to problems of other users as well? If so, all of the questions I mentioned could end up being "too localized", for once the context you talked about is provided, the scope of the question becomes, by definition, quite small.

I think it's worth pointing out that very few questions on this site right now are closed as too localized.  Those that are closed are usually things like "you forgot to put a semicolon here" kind of dumb programming mistakes.   So I wouldn't really worry about it.  Reading the faq and meta discussion on the writers SE is probably a good idea for how to author questions that, by their very nature, are somewhat subjective.

@Tetrad and Nicol Bolas I assume you refer to this answer on Writers' meta site: http://meta.writers.stackexchange.com/a/167. I'll add it to my question to highlight the requirement that game design questions that ask for critique and suggestions have to provide specific guidelines and context.

@Nicol Bolas - regarding the "I have an enemy that flies around in my game, shooting at the player. What can I do to make this enemy more interesting?" example. Of course it is possible to answer that question, but there probably isn't an objective answer to be found. Is the reason such questions are regarded inappropriate that they lend more to subjective discussions and suggestions rather than the kind of objective answer a more specific technical question would get?

@Nicol Bolas - part 2 -
To stick to the example question at hand - you mention the lack of contextual information - but there are implicit contextual information just by the fact that there are several psychological as well as physiological factors that are more or less common to most humans, that could be taken into account when trying to answer what would make something more interesting. But maybe such facts are off-topic regarding what information SE-Game development is about? This is no critique, it is just me wondering about the boundaries of the forum.

"there are implicit contextual information just by the fact that there are several psychological as well as physiological factors that are more or less common to most humans, that could be taken into account when trying to answer what would make something more interesting" Such as? Do you have some literature or references on the subject? What papers or studies have you read concerning the gameplay of "things that fly around and shoot at the player?"

@JmD: More importantly, gameplay does not happen in a vacuum. In a level-based game, what is "interesting" on level 1 is not "interesting" on level 20 anymore. The player's gotten better since level 1 and wants more of a challenge. How many of that kind of enemy has the player seen by now? Do you want it to challenge the player's dodging reflexes or their aim? Or both? I can keep asking about context forever, because context is everything about answering this question in anything even remotely like a meaningful way. Without that context, it's just people blathering about what they like.

@Nicol Bolas - What I'm referring to regarding psychological and physiological factors are things like; too predictable patterns (of for example the behavior and motion of an enemy) tends to get boring whilst a too unpredictable patterns gets frustrating. Small movements in the periphery of the field of vision is something we humans react very fast/hard to. Certain colors have strong signalling functions (they are somewhat dependent on cultural context, but not entirely), certain postures are experienced as more threatening than others etc etc.

@Nicol Bolas - As biological entities in general an mammals in particular we humans are hard coded to react in certain ways to certain stimuli. These are things that can be exploited when trying to achieve specific reactions in different game scenarios. But my question was if this kind of information is beyond the scope of this forum.
And btw - in your second response to my previous comment you have yourself presented an answer to the question you deemed un-answerable; make the the enemy harder to defeat as you progress in the game ;-)

@JmD: "too predictable patterns (of for example the behavior and motion of an enemy) tends to get boring whilst a too unpredictable patterns gets frustrating" But that depends on what you're trying to do with your game. Side-scrolling shooters rely on predictable patterns, because the whole point of the game is for the player to memorize those patterns and react to them. That's how the player gets better, by knowing what's coming and having the best plan in place to deal with it. Context always matters.

@JmD: "in your second response to my previous comment you have yourself presented an answer to the question you deemed un-answerable; make the the enemy harder to defeat as you progress in the game" But that's not a good answer in context. Again, take side-scrolling shooters. Their enemies, by and large, don't change. They get harder by throwing more enemies of different types at you in a predefined pattern. Making an enemy harder in later levels is almost never what they want to do.

@Nicol Bolas - off course the context of the game itself matters, I absolutely agree with you. My point is that there are answers - albeit quite general in nature - we can give based on the non-game-specific context of us being humans with certain species-based behavior. To get more specific answers the Q&A just have to deepen and get more game-specific. What's the harm in that? Or is that kind of progressively narrowing-down type of Q&A not suitable for this forum?

In many cases, context also matters for programming-related questions. In the past few weeks, I posted quite a few OO and database design answers to questions which did not provide much context at all. In these cases, all I could do was to give a relatively generic answer, some pointers as to what they could think about, or links to certain design patterns. Some of these questions could never have been answered authoritatively. In fact, none of my answers ever did. Many could even have led to debates. And yet, none of these questions and none of my answers were ever downvoted or closed.

"How could I change this mechanic to make it a better fit with my general theme, which is X?" << this is a subjective one, and opinion-based.

Most of these questions are just opinion-based. Some of them even fit better in worldbuilding.se

I agree that we should welcome design focused questions and I think we do. The problem is that there seem to be much more programmers than designers that know and appreciate the stackexchange sites/format.
While questions focused on design aspects of a game are seldom, they are welcome. Some examples:

Creating meaningful and engaging quests
What are the other three "game dynamics"?
Power, achievement and affiliation games for psychology research project
Do any games have this type of mechanic?
Effects to make a speeding spaceship look faster
Drawing large 2D sidescroller level terrain

I guess the only way to get more quality questions of this type is by attracting game-designers to our site.

Thanks for digging out these questions. Even these do not really qualify for what I'm looking for, though: 1) and 2) are general questions about quests and dynamics, rather than questions about a specific quest or a specific way of achieving a dynamic. 3) and 4) are not about specific game design elements, either; they just ask for references to other games. 5) and 6) are again focused on implementation rather than design (as in game design). 5) comes closest to an actual design question, and the question having a score of 21 shows how much people like it.

@BerndBrot Well, the point was to show that we generally welcome questions other than programming-questions. Maybe you could link to some questions that were unrightfully closed/downvoted by the community? I can't change the fact that there are only a few such questions here...

I agree that the problem is not that interesting quesitons are closed, but that they are not being asked in the first place. Personally, I felt discouraged from doing so by the FAQ. I then asked in the chat whether or not questions like the ones I posted would be welcome on GDSE, and the reaction was that they would most likely be closed. Would you close any of the example questions? Would you be in favor of changing the FAQ to attract more game design questions?

@BerndBrot I think your examples could be good questions. Generally I'd love to see questions that cover the whole range that is game-development and not only programming questions (I think that was the purpose of this site from the very start). You might be right about the FAQ and the general tone around here and it's good you brought this up. Hopefully some more community members will join this discussion.


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Review Lists showing incorrect total

On the review tab I noticed the total next to each option to review.  Then when you actually click on one, surprisingly it would be empty.

It took me a few moments to figure out that this was because it was on the day setting.  To actual match the total you would have to click the "all" button.  Essentially what I am saying is that this behavior is unexpected and maybe a more intuitive way of doing it would be to send the user to the page with "all" selected, therefor you wouldn't default them to seeing 0 posts.


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Can we implement communication with voters?
I agree that votes should be kept anonymous. However, it would be nice to be able to notify voters of changes, particularly down-voters.
For example, say a new user posts a question that's unfortunately worded and appears very off topic. That question would likely be down-voted. Then, later, the question may be updated to fit within the guidelines of the site. However, the down-votes remain.
It would be nice to be able to notify the down-voters of that situation. Perhaps via a comment tag "@Downvoters Please check my edits and see if your downvote is still warranted, thanks". The down-votes are for the question after all, not the user. So when the question is altered, shouldn't it get a chance at being reconsidered?
It has the additional benefit of allowing for clarification. It's unfortunate when I see a post with 2+ down-votes and no comments, especially when the reason for the down-votes might not be obvious to the OP. So someone can say "@Downvoters, can you please comment on why you're down-voting so I can improve the question/answer?"
I suppose we'd have to try it out to see if that creates too much notification spam.
While this does have the potential for abuse (giving angry people a way to yell at down-voters) I think that can be controlled the same way any other uncivil comment is dealt with (and likely more swiftly since people will be alerted to it!).

I believe this is a moot point as many community members up-vote any question they feel is unfairly downvoted. If a question is at -2 and the author rewrites it so that it is a good question it quickly jumps back to neutral.
Anyways leaving a vote should not be a long term investment. Its an judgment of the question at that moment. The asker should just take the time to write it correctly in the first place and if they don't get over the initial down-votes.
So I think it generates spam to try and fix something that is not broken. Anyways do you have an example of a question that was poorly written and and wasn't upvoted back to at least neutral after being fixed?
Stop. Example time.
How can I use WebGL to create a tile-based multi-layer scrolling platform game?
This was originally a bunch of whining about how hard WebGL is with a 2 questions mixed in. It was quickly down voted to -3 or so. It got rewritten a bit and was an ok question and was positive before the bounty was added.
I don't believe the question would have 7 upvotes if originally written as it is in its current state. I believe that 4 of those votes were just people popping in to see if why the question was negative, disagreeing with the current score, and trying to offset the down votes. In other words negative questions get additional upvotes unrelated to the user's individual interest because they are negative.
I see nothing to fix.

I don't have a specific example. I wouldn't call it a moot point even if the question did go back to neutral. If the question was -4/+4, it's at 0 but not receiving the attention a +4 question might. Your second paragraph seems to be implying that the down-votes are punishment for the OP for writing a bad question.

My point is the question wouldn't have gotten those +4 if it it hadn't gotten down to -4. The +4 is people disagreeing with the downvotes not expressing that they like the question.

So you're saying that since people apparently just up-vote to "undo" what they think are "unjust" down-votes, we shouldn't try to find other ways to fix the problem? I'm not sure how you can know the +4 is only people repealing the -4. The example you list was down to -5, then edited by me. Luckily, one of the down-voters replied to my request. That's not always the case. It would have been better to be able to address them directly and ask the reason for the down-votes. It still has -4/+7, netting +3. I think it would get a lot more attention as a +7 than it would as a +3.

"I think it would get a lot more attention as a +7 than it would as a +3." Assuming it would have gotten to +7 if posted as it in now, which I doubt. Its a how do I do the most basic of basics using a technology. +3 is high for such a question because the op can usually (and in this case can) answer his own question with some basic googling.

"So you're saying that since people apparently just up-vote to "undo" what they think are "unjust" down-votes, we shouldn't try to find other ways to fix the problem?" I'm saying there is already too much "moderator" intervention and not to fix what isn't broken. Unless you can convince me something is broken or unfair I see no reason to change things. The guy wrote a very bad question and if got down voted. It got kina fixed (still a bad question imo) and is now positive. What is to fix? I don't see "The Problem".

That's fine, it may not be a problem for everyone. It's simply a request for better communication. It's not required to be used, but I believe I've made the case for the situation where it could be useful.


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Is asking for reason for down vote OK?
The voting system is built around anonymous votes without explanation, demanding one is thus impossible and a waste of time. I try to explain my down votes (but sometimes I don't) and people who down voted a question will most likely not come back later and explain. So I feel that comments by an answerer asking for why his or her answer was down voted are noise.
So would me flagging those comments (as spam?) be an OK thing to do? Or are those comments acceptable?
For me they are a waste of time reading and today I even saw a question asking twice for reasons.

If there are no other comments and you're going to down vote the question/answer, it's polite and useful to post a comment. The FAQ specifically asks you to do so. It's part of the etiquette of the site. Without the comment, the down vote is fairly worthless.
I believe someone asking for a comment to explain a down vote is the same as asking someone to follow the rules of the site.
For example my answer here, currently has two down votes. I have no idea why it's being down voted. How can I improve my answer if I don't know what's wrong? Without knowing how to improve my answer, what's the point of the down vote? I can only assume there's nothing wrong with the answer, and maybe some people just don't like me :)

Matsemann, to address your comments:

I didn't say the rules say you "always must" provide an explanation, I said they specifically "ask" you to do so, and they do: "Add comments indicating what, specifically, is wrong". While my statement in bold is a statement, it's a attitudinal statement (it says "I believe..."). Adding a comment for a down vote is as close to a rule as anything else is in the FAQ. It says to add comments saying what's wrong, I don't know how it can get clearer than that. Just because it's not enforced automatically through the system does not make it less of a rule. Being polite shouldn't be enforced. You should want to do that.
I assume you're referring to the "people don't like me" sentence. I don't take down votes personally. So don't worry, I'm not having a bad time. The smiley face at the end of that sentence indicates humor. See the FAQ: "Bring your sense of humor." ;)
That's your choice. It's a grey area deciding between a down vote and no vote. Since the down vote text says "This answer is not useful", those are typically the answers I reserve the down vote for. If an answer is simply not as good as another answer, I just don't vote on it at all. Though If I were to down vote, since the FAQ asks me to comment, I do. I don't think of it as "tailoring a huge reasoning", just a simple comment will usually do the trick. It doesn't take that much brain power to state why I think an answer is bad. It's also the polite thing to do. We don't have to be anonymous jerks just because the system allows it. Be a known jerk like me :)

If the rules is that you always must provide an explanation for downvoting the system should ask for a reason. Currently that's not the rules and the system does not, so I assume it is okey do down vote without explaining why. Thus your statement is bold is false.

If you take every down vote personally instead of accepting that some people just didn't like your answer you're gonna have a bad time on the internet.

And last: often my reason for down voting is that the answer just isn't good enough. Instead of saying "copy content of nice answer above you to make it correct" I down vote the bad answers and upvote the ones I like. I'm not gonna tailor a huge reasoning every time I down vote when there are other answers that are correct/better.

@Matsemann I really think that is bad practice, wouldn't it be more appropriate to only down vote answers that are wrong and misleading or simply offer no informational value? Besides I tend to agree it is better to "be a known jerk.." because than you welcome the other party to enlighten you, perhaps you misunderstood the answer/question altogether?


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Should this question be reopened as community wiki?
The question, Audio programming resources, was recently closed. Should it instead be reopened as a community wiki? And "reopening as community wiki" even a thing?
I originally answered it since I love audio and audio doesn't get much love. But then I checked back and saw that Byte56 had rightly voted to close since it's unanswerable, and so I made my answer community wiki and voted to close.
The thing is,  I've favorited that question because there's a lot of useful information in the answers, such as book recommendations, Zolomon's GPG table of contents, the FFT articles, and FMOD tutorials.
A closed question discourages users, including those who may have valuable knowledge to share, from contributing. We normally want that. But in some of these cases, it's useful to have some semblance of a wiki that accrues more information about the topic over time. Yes, SE is not a wiki site, and there's GPWiki and others for that, but I'm frustrated by the by how milk-toast the information on those sites are.
What makes SE great is the fact that (even if an answer is marked commuinty wiki) a single individual "owns" an answer. What they write in that answer is based on their experience and what has worked for them given their circumstances (hopefully aligning with the OP's circumstances, but still useful for future readers nonetheless). Valuable perspectives are things that are often out of reach for most wiki-like sites. There can often a little bit of opinion mixed up in a GDSE answer, and that's a good thing.
I realize this can set a dangerous trend for allowing "getting started" questions to flood the site (not to suggest they aren't here already though :P). But isn't the whole point of SE to have one-stop answers for everything? If someone googles "game audio programming," GDSE should be near the top of the results with some sort of "getting started with audio" post. Google is how I found this site in the first place!
Besides, there's already a bunch of questions about graphics, voxels, and components that are essentially this exact same format of question, but are allowed to remain open or have been wikified. I can count the number of audio programming fundamentals questions on one-and-a-half fingers.
The question is definitely "not constructive" by the usual definition, but it's also not useless. If community wiki is out of the question, can we at least say, "Let's not reopen this, but let's also not delete it."
Here's a bunch of questions that are essentially wiki questions that are not closed:

What are some good game programming short courses?
What are some good resources for creating a game engine in XNA?
What are some good resources for building a voxel engine?
Resources to help study of Quake 3 engine
Resources for 2D rendering using OpenGL?
Resources of realistic water simulation?
MMO techniques, algorithms and resources for keeping bandwidth low?

Here's a bunch that have been wikified:

Game programming books that don't teach programming?
Good 3D Math Theory Books
Multi-threaded game (engine) design resources?
Graphic Engine/Programming/Etc resources?
Good resources for JavaScript 2D game programming?
Component-Based System online resources

And these two, incredibly useful, are closed:

Must read game development books
Good resources for learning about game architecture?

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/
In general, if a question feels like it should be a community wiki, in the old definition of the word, then it's a bad question.  That's not to say that it isn't useful, but it doesn't fit the form or purpose of SE sites.  Namely, to provide expert answers to specific questions.
The content that community wiki type questions generate are better relegated to other sources that are not SE sites.  What's the overlap between the results in the closed audio question compared to the first page or two of a relevant Google search?
If you want precedence on other sites, see this question on SO:  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-available-programming-books  Specifically, the lock notice:

This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.

The underlying question implied by your list of questions on the main site that are in varying status of being closed or not is simply due to the fact that the moderators and users have shifted stances over the 2+ years this site has been active, and we just haven't gone through and closed questions that haven't cropped back up to the top of the active list for whatever reason.
In other words, to answer your title question: no.

I actually read that SO blog post before writing this question. If you look in the comments, Grace Note writes, "Nevertheless, it’s understood that sometimes, community wiki is something to be used. It’s a specialty tool, not something to be universally avoided or loathed."

My real implied question, is why can't we maintain some canonical posts about some subjects that better fit CW. Say someone posts yet another get-started-with-iOS question, we can say "read this other question to get started on that. If the new question reveals that the older question needs clarification in the answers, or is out of date, we should go edit that older question." This also leaves room for new users with valuable knowledge to discover these older CW questions and edit the question's answers with the goal of increasing their quality.

Grace Note goes into more detail here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/103419/149294  Specifically, "Your example questions, are polls, not questions, and even for a subjective site, that's not all that useful. A more pertinent blog post for this is Real Questions Have Answers, which can be applied even to a subjective site."  The way that I've been taking that is that any "resources to do X" or "what's the best Y" are off topic questions.

That being said, the canonical example of a "good" CW question is this one on SU: http://superuser.com/questions/100360/computer-is-infected-by-a-virus-or-a-malware-what-do-i-do-now  But even so, I think that CW is kind of pointless now that anybody can propose an edit.  Good questions and good answers deserve reputation.

Also, relevant discussion on a different SE site: http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/questions/697/how-to-kill-off-community-wiki-entries

Thanks for the links, after some reading and following more links, I'm convinced and grok why CW is mostly useless. (This one drove it home with the "can it be transformed?" test: http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/1617/so-what-actually-is-a-game-rec/1841#1841)


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Is a "What is this type of sound called?" question on topic?
Technically, it isn't a programming question, and it isn't necessarily even specific to game development. However, in order to find a certain sound, you'd have to know what it was called. For instance, this is the question I had in mind:

There is a sound typically associated with a bright flash of light,
  which starts with a lower whirring noise, then breaks into a higher
  pitched sound. What is that type of sound called?

So, would that be on topic, or off?

I don't really see a problem with it.

As long as it's a specifically game-related sound, I think it would be relevant.


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Why can't we see who favored a question?
I would like to know why we can't see who favored a question? If the question is interesting, it would be great to see who favored this question to start some discussions.
Some question are really specialized and even if someone do not have an answer (so this person will not answer/comment the question since it's not a place for discussions), it would be nice to have the ability to share knowledge and assumptions somewhere else.

You can see the questions people favorited, so it doesn't seem to be a privacy issue.


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Is asking for a real-world weapon that has specific characteristics on topic for a game development question?
I asked the following question:

In Mechwarrior 2, you had to keep your crosshairs on the enemy for 5 seconds to obtain a lock for LRM missiles.  Is this at all realistic?  What real-world missile barrage requires 5 seconds to obtain a lock?

which generated these comments:
considering that many games are just simulations of the real-word (with certain embellishments, of course), I don't see how it isn't. To simulate a missile barrage system, you'll first need to understand how one operates... – Cypher
So, you're suggesting that any question asking how something works would be on topic, as long as it's because we were trying to simulate it in game? For example: How long does it take for a bailer to bail hay? I'm making a farming simulator. Not only that, but this question is asking about a ficticious weapon and if it would actually apply to real life, which is the opposite of what you're suggesting. – Byte56
Asking if something in an existing game is realistic or not is not constructive or on topic for this site. – Byte56

My take on it is a question is this question is really about games based on real physical systems.  I asked it because I wanted to know the answer.  It's not about bailing hay, that would just be plain boring.  I think enough people develop military simulators that gameplay-related questions would be on topic.

In Mechwarrior 2, you piloted walking robotic bipeds which weighed up to 100 tons, travelled 50 km/h, cost several million "C-bills" to purchase, and were constructed around the year 2700 AD.  I think "realistic" was pretty firmly off the table long before we ever got to the mechanics of a particular missile launcher system in the game, and I'm not sure that it qualifies as a "real physical system", when we're talking about alleged future technology which won't be invented for several hundred years.  :)

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/19871/what-is-realism/19876#19876

31st century combat! :)  It was based on lore/boardgame created in the Battletech series.  The amount of Battletech material out there is actually huge, and they did some very real computations in the books, like finding the line of sight to horizon distance based on planet radius and mech height (you were required to compute this for some reason)

My take on it is a question is this question is really about games based on real physical systems.

But it's not. Ignoring whether MechWarrior constitutes a "real physical system", your question has nothing to do with MechWarrior 2. What you want to know is whether MW2's behavior is consistent with reality. You know what MW2 does, so the only question remaining is this: "Do real-life missiles have lock-on time, and if so, how much?"
Now ask yourself a question: would a game developer be the right person to ask that question to? Of course not. You'd want to go to a military expert. There's a reason why games that want to use actual reality hire experts on the fields of interest as consultants.
This goes back to the "programming boat" meme, where people were trying to say that sticking "for programmers" on the end of any question made it a legitimate SO question. Yes, a videogame did indeed inspire your question. But the question itself is about something that has nothing to do with videogames.

As I left some of the comments, I'll post an answer. I believe it's off topic because it's backwards from what one would expect a game development question to be about.
What the question asks:
How an in game item may actually relate to a possible real world item.
I would expect the question to ask:
How to simulate an actual real world item in game.
My hailbailer comment was about the latter type of question. Your question is more like asking: "I was playing a farming simulator and the bails take a minute to be compacted. Is that realistic? What kind of bailer would take that long?" While it doesn't matter how "boring" the example is to you, the example is still valid. Because people make farming simulators too.
As Arthur said in his comment: "It is kind of like asking what is a believable explosion radius for an Elfen fireball". Most games are based on real physical systems, it doesn't mean they're realistic.
Let me put it another way. With the first type of question (the kind you're asking) you're asking about a real world item and what properties it might have. I'm not sure game developers would be able to better answer questions about the targeting systems of real world missile launchers better than anyone else. Just like they wouldn't be able to better answer what kind of tractor takes a minute to make a full bail of hay. Basically, asking for information about a real world object makes the question outside the scope of the site.
Further, it's not even about a game you're developing, it's about a old game.

I believe the question you may be trying to ask is on topic.  However, the way you have worded your question, and what you have chosen to include [or rather, exclude] makes it iffy.
I would offer the following advice:

The majority of people using GDSE are engineers and developers who are, often times, logical to a fault (myself included).  The words you choose [and thus, the words you don't choose] are often taken quite literally such that if you're not careful, the question you ask will be interpreted exactly as you write it -- even if that interpretation is not what you intended.
GDSE is a Q&A forum about game development, and while your question does mention a game, it really doesn't mention anything about game development.  It may imply that your desire to understand stems from a desire to simulation a missile system in a realistic manner, but it does not say as much.
The focus of your question is in the wrong place.  If you intention was to understand how real missile systems work, and how to simulate them in a game, then that should be the focus of your question while possibly using the MechWarrior 2 LRM system as a point of reference.  As it stands, your question is entirely focused on MechWarrior 2 and whether or not the long-range missile system's targeting implementation is realistic or not, which is, suffice it to say, speculative and argumentative.

I asked it because I wanted to know the answer.

This in and of itself is why StackExchange exists, but it does not make your question, in its current form, a well constructed, and on-topic question for GDSE.
http://mattgemmell.com/2008/12/08/what-have-you-tried/
Check out the above link if you haven't already.  It offers some great advice on not only how to ask technical questions, but when.

Like Byte56 mentioned, the question of whether or not the LRM missile in MW2 and a real missle take a similar time to lock-on to a target is not a game development question. It is a triva question. You do not need any game development knowledge to answer it. You only need to have a specific military background.
I happen to know the answer, nowadays missiles use a variety of technologies, an “imaging infrared" seeker that can “see” the enemy aircraft (think computer vision). They can distinguish between a heat source like a decoy (flare) and a real enemy aircraft. They have wide detection angles so you do not even need to be directly in front of the enemy craft when firing. All it takes is looking at your target through your HMS and then pressing the button. There are also Electro-Optical systems which you can search and read more about in your free time.
Now, did I use any game design related knowledge to answer this? No. Questions that do not require such knowledge to be answered only diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. Like questions about baling hay which is not boring and is programming related.
http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/04/09/baling-hay/


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Music resources question collect,mine
Although people agreed that "asset mines" are OT, there are 3 music licensing questions which are really good and have valuable content.
See here and here and here
The basic question behind these is: "as an indie game developer, (mostly a first-timer), where can I get quality music and avoid being ripped off?"
There are many answers, many paths to go.  I initially tried the independent contractor route and found that frustrating and difficult -- simply because everything the artist pitched to me I didn't like, and I didn't know how to say that--- it's impossible to micromanage a creative and he's always going to, for better or for worse, put his own creative spin on it.  SO, I found, the best way to go is to license existing work for no more than $30/song.  Licensing existing work saves time, frustration, hassle, and you end up with a piece you actually like having paid money for.
(The preceding paragraph explains why such a post is valuable to a game developer!)

I'm a little confused about what you are actually asking -- are proposing that those questions are not off-topic? Only one of them was actually closed.

I'm proposing that we have 1 asset mine for music and music sources, answering the question "Where can I get quality music for my game (small studio)?"

It doesn't make sense. One I hate that people want art for free, it's likely that people want to eventualy sell their game but don't want to pay to make it. Artist put a lot of time and effort into what they do and want to be compensated as well. Not to mention the cost to them to make such art. Music isn't exactly cheap to make. Also, I write music for my games and my friend makes art. I'd love to contract my music out. If someone posts a question about music what's stopping me from going, hey me and my friends make music we'll write whatever you ask for $30.00/track. Seems silly to me.

Content being "valuable" isn't the deciding factor on whether or not content is good for the site.  http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/real-questions-have-answers/
Likewise, your particular experience is, frankly, anecdotal.
I go into more detail about these kinds of questions w.r.t. community wikis here: https://gamedev.meta.stackexchange.com/a/917/51

It's not really anecdotal.  I'm sure other small shops would experience a similar thing -- custom work is expensive and takes more time to actually get than simply listening to a few online libraries.


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Is there a grammatical error in the gamedev faq?
I noticed in the gamedev faq it says:
If you have questions relating to ...

subject 1
subject 2
...

and it is not about...

That sounds like a typo to me.

Thanks for pointing this out; I fixed it. It now reads:

If you have a question relating to ... and it is not about ...

I think it is correct; I read that section as a list of topics that are permissible (game design, for example) followed by a list of question types that are not. It says, if you consider one particular combination of both lists, "if your question is about game design and is not about how to get started in game design, then your question is acceptable."
That isn't to say we couldn't reword it to be more clear, however.
EDIT: Oh, I see I think, you were talking about the plurality/singularity agreement and not the "and" at all. Nevermind!


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Should this question be closed?
How to achieve highly accurate car physics such as Liveforspeed?
I read this question and thought it is definitely about:

"How do I get started"
what language/engine/SDK you should learn next
which technology to use
what technology some particular game used
how to make (or start making) a particular type of game

And this question could require a series of books to answer.

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an
  entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

Should we close this question?

If you think it should be closed, flag it ("It doesn't belong here" is the flag option you want, followed by the reasoning).  For those with enough points to cast close votes directly, just do that.
There's usually no need to ask for consensus on closing a particular question in meta, except when there's a question about (or disagreement with) broader policy, as in your other question.

The reason I'm asking is not in order to close the question, I am wondering about what people think in order to know how the faq reflects in practice.

Watch the question and see what happens over the next day or two, I guess?  I don't really see the point of this question.


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What is a good question about Game industry careers?
I saw this question
' Is this really a good question? '
asking about a game development career related question. The conclusion was the question asked about should be closed. The reasoning was not very objective in my humble opinion. The flaw in the question was supposedly that it was too broad.
Then I saw this question: ' Are questions about the game industry welcome here? 'and thought it was not a terrible question if for some reason that figure was needed.
There are ways to scan the web and get a rough guesstimate of how many game companies and game creators exist.
My question is, since both these questions seem alright to me and they're not, perhaps the faq should be more specific about which Game Industry related questions are good and which do not fit the site. Also if you could share an example of a good question?

Then I saw this question: ' Are questions about the game industry
  welcome here? 'and thought it was not a terrible question if for some
  reason that figure was needed. There are ways to scan the web and get
  a rough guesstimate of how many game companies and game creators
  exist.

Speaking only for myself, I'm not here to invent trivia.  Even if "scanning the web and getting a rough guesstimate" is involved.
I'm just not.
Nope, no interest in doing that at all.
Now, I don't want to speak for anyone else, but I suspect that most of us who have real jobs and/or expertise in the field aren't interested in spending our limited spare time playing Trivial Pursuit with everyone who can manage to cobble together enough vowels to construct a two-sentence, context-free question which isn't in any obvious or explicitly-stated way related to actually making games.
The difference between a good question and a bad question is pretty obvious, it seems to me.

So which questions about the Game Industry are related to making games?


text:
"question feed" link shows up in print layout
If you view the print preview for a question, you'll see that the "question feed" link gets put into the print layout. A rule should be added to the @media print section of the stylesheet so that the link does not get printed.

This will be fixed in the next deploy.


text:
Are questions abut popular game mechanics and gameplay irrelevant?
How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy?
In a casual top-down racing game, should collisions affect the car's engine?
I noticed Byte56 said these questions about gameplay mechanics are unrelated  to this site. I read the faq and I do not remember that asking for advice in regards to game mechanics (rules) and gameplay was mentioned as off-topic.
If this is the case, how is that issue explained in the faq good question guideline?
What it does say is that questions about:
game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)
Are welcome. So how come questions about keeping the gameplay balanced and fun, seem to be inappropriate to some people suddenly?

If the question was even on the border before, it's way into the "polling for ideas" area now that you've edited it. Again, just my opinion.

The biggest problem I see with your question is that it is not just a question, but actually a list of questions. This makes it "chatty" and "open-ended".

@Cypher That actually was the result of reading the http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/
It was actually pretty concise at first, asking only if collisions should affect the (car) engine in a racing game. Then I read the guide which suggested a question should encourage long answers based on personal experience with references, so I decided to elaborate which resulted in multiple questions, some of which asking on what users based their answers on.

I honestly have no sufficient idea on how to pick the best answer. I think that this too is a subjective matter.

I wish we could see MORE of these kinds of questions.  Lately it seems that the question list is all about math and programming details.  There's a lot more to game development than math and programming.

I think the FAQ is either contradicting itself or it needs clarification.:

Game Development - Stack Exchange is for professional and amateur
  video/computer game developers. If you have a question relating to ...

game design (level design, gameplay, mechanics, etc)
asset pipelines (creation, storage, editing, etc)
game-specific programming issues (engine architecture, game-related APIs, networking, tools, etc)
project management (testing, team management, scheduling, publishing,
  etc)
game industry (careers, trends, technology, etc)

Contradicts (IMO)

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual
  problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the
  usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

Because "Design" by its very nature is subjective which can lead to very open ended, discussion oriented questions. I feel something here needs fixing.
Do we break the SE way and allow open ended questions (within reason - will need to nail down the rules here) or do we narrow the scope of the types of game design questions allowed so that they don't end up open ended or discussion oriented?

The first quoted section is written and editable by us, the moderators, on behalf of the community. The rest is Stack Exchange-wide, including the one from the second quote. We may choose to disallow game design questions, but we may not choose to allow chatty questions. Also the important thing here is not necessarily asking whether a question is chatty and open-ended in itself, but if the question diminishes the usefulness of our site.

I really like your point about the important thing being that these questions diminish the usefulness of the site. I always knew that that was the point but I never really thought about it I guess. If you put the emphasis on that and away from the chatty / open ended / discussion oriented parts of the statement then it really makes sense because you can have useful chatty, open ended, discussion oriented questions. This gives me much better perspective on bad versus good questions. Thanks for enlightening me.

"Subjective" isn't the guiding factor about whether or not something is good for the site.  There's a blog post that goes into more detail here: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/  Basically "does the question require expertise to properly answer" is likely a better summation on whether or not it's a good question (among other factors).

I think the general rule that should be applied here is the one wherein if it is reasonable to expect a game developer would be able to give a better answer to the question than somebody in another field (for which there is a StackExchange domain), then the question belongs here.
For example, an economist may have lots of insight into preventing inflation, but an economist operates in the real world where we don't create and destroy monetary value in quite the same way as we do in MMOs, and as such a game developer may have some unique insight into that problem space.
Personally I think the MMO economy question can be argued with science and numbers, but that the other two questions under discussion here are a bit subjective and hard to argue with concrete facts and thus might be ill-suited to this site for those reasons.

We moderators do our best to minimize inconsistencies, but the spectrum is full of shades of gray. Pointing out another question that is just as bad as yours doesn't really help defend your question, as much as it just uncovers a question that might have slipped under the radar. Which then complicates the matter further, because we have to decide if it's even worthwhile to close a really old question that obviously doesn't have any activity, making closing the question a pointless activity only for show and consistency.
There's also a bit of a slippery slope effect here, especially when comparing one question to another to determine whether it should be closed or not.
The underlying problem here is not whether your question is about game development - because clearly it is - but whether it is too subjective for our site. Quoting from the "not constructive" close reason:

We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

My opinion on this question is that it does not meet the criteria to be closed, and is a valid question. It clearly won't solicit debate, arguments, or extended discussion (unless someone is really passionate about these penalties :) ), but the issue is whether this is polling, and I don't believe it is, at least not in the sense that we intend by that close text.
Some examples of true polling/discussion questions that should absolutely be closed:

What game engine should I use for X?
What is the best language for game development?
What should I use to add networking to my game?

Gray-area examples of what I'd consider "good" polling game design questions, in the sense that they are asking for answers backed by examples and reasoning:

Expiring timed actions a good idea?
Low dexterity game development
Practical balance of “chance” video game mechanics

None of these questions is purely answerable. But you're not really going to find that in a game design question, because design is subjective by nature.
Please also refer to "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective" on the Stack Exchange blog - specifically, it presents a set of criteria that you can use to judge for yourself whether a question is too subjective for our site.
Arthur: given all this information, I think there is room to improve the wording of your question. Instead of defending it, could you try editing it to make it a perfect, shining example of a great subjective game design question, that we could point to in the future?

While this is all good information, I struggle with the FAQ speaking in absolutes which is what all new users are pointed to when they post a bad question. This in itself leads to great confusion as to why one question is closed and another isn't as there is no grey area defined in the FAQ.  I wouldn't expect a new user to hunt down this blog post and only then understand why their question was closed and another wasn't. There should be additional clarification in the FAQ at least and probably a link to the Good Subjective, Bad Subjective blog post as well.

The FAQ is a set of guidelines, and I think it is nicely worded in that context. It uses words like "should", "probably", and "avoid" instead of "can", "definitely(?)", and "don't". The majority of questions that are closed, especially from new users, are clearly out of bounds, and the FAQ is often the only thing we have to point them to (other than suggesting other avenues, e.g. linking them to our chat). Users are certainly welcome to point to other questions to ask for explanation though. It leads to good discussion and clarification.

I can see that. I also see now that the "What kind of questions should I not ask here" section is expandable and has a link to that blog post. I recall seeing the question examples before but not the link - though that doesn't mean I hadn't just missed it. I've got mixed feelings about it being tucked away until the user clicks the section but I'm glad its there at least!

@ToddersLegrande Also, if you link someone to a specific section (expand the section and right-click the "link" link and copy its URL, and then link to it), then when that person views the link, it shows them the expanded section at the top of the page. You can try it yourself if you copy the URL, then open a new tab/window and paste it. It doesn't do it if you just click the "link" link. (this comment is confusing...)

Semantics... We meet again.

I disagree with Byte 56 here as well. Almost half of questions is like this, 2 more examples:
MMORPG game balancing
How to discourage micromanagement in strategy games?
Nearly another half are specific questions, that sometimes are moved to SO as being more of a programming than game mechanics (sic!) issue.
Here's what's written in Area51 FAQ:
Don't worry about whether a question might be asked on another site. Your goal is to make the best possible site for this community.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq
Anyway, it looks like Game Development is a community being squeezed from many sides (SO, code review, programmers, and SO's rules not allowing general questions) to a point where it's no longer needed at all!

The Area51 FAQ pertains to bootstrapping new sites, it doesn't really apply to sites that exist already, in my opinion.

It also applies more to questions on other sites that should be asked on your specific community. For example the game-development tag on Stack Overflow still gets questions to this day, despite the fact that some of them might be better suited for our community. In the early days, we did indeed panic a little at the idea that valuable questions were being asked on other sites that could be asked here, to give us more value in the eyes of the Stack Exchange gods. I think that's what the FAQ is addressing.

I disagree. You've linked two questions with high level questions, which are not the same as low level question like the one being debated. Then you go on to say we don't need gamedev at all...

Byte56, I love gamedev, I just don't see a difference between a valid and invalid question sometimes. I wonder, if Arthur described his problem with more background ("at this moment, a player who completely ignores walls and never releases UP acceleration key is always winning with a player racing more skillful") would make the question better? Because I think what I added in parentheses is obvious enough not to write it down (but maybe I'm wrong)

I'm not really sure how the question would be modified to make it better. Since it's asking about specific gameplay elements instead of bigger picture design, I don't think there's a way to ask for different ideas about specifics without being off topic.

@MarkusvonBroady: "if Arthur described his problem with more background [...] would make the question better?" Yes it would. Then, the question would be about a specific game, with a specific designed intent and specific mechanics. Not "racing games" in general. It'd be like if someone said, "Should an FPS be linear or non-linear?" The answers will be solely based on the preferences of the answerer. The only correct answer is, "It depends; do you want the player to have a linear or non-linear FPS game?"

Here's my take on them:
How do you prevent inflation in a virtual economy?
Needs improvement. Why? Because of nebulous phrasing like, "your typical MMORPG". What "typical MMORPG" are you talking about? Who decides what a "typical MMORPG" is? Is that some code-language for "WoW-like"?
The question as stated is too broad to really deal with. It needs to be revised to adequately explain the specific mechanics at play, which ones are flexible and which aren't, etc. Otherwise, it's all left up to the person answering it to decide what it really is all about.
Should collisions affect the car engine in a racing game?
Also a bad question. Why? Because it's purely opinion based. Here's what I mean.
If I'm making Mario Kart, collisions affecting car performance is a really bad thing. However, if I'm making Gran Turismo, collisions affecting performance is a really good thing.
But your question doesn't state what kind of racing game. It makes the incredibly ridiculous assumption that there is one correct answer for every possible racing game. There are a multitude of different styles of racing game. What is appropriate for your game depends entirely on what you're trying to do.
In short, it's not specific enough. What you're asking is for people to say which gameplay they like better. Maybe they'll explain why, and maybe they won't. But ultimately, you're not going to convince anyone to change their mind on their preferences, and in the end, the answers will help no one.
If I'm looking to make a Mario Kart-style racing game, you're not going to find an argument that will convince me that it's a good idea to include collision damage. And if I'm making Gran Turismo, you won't convince me to take collision damage out of the game. Thus, nobody comes away with any actual wisdom or knowledge, and it was all just one big waste of everyone's time.

Game design questions should not be so theoretical. They should be about practical design problems: "I have a game that works like this. Players of that game seem to be doing X. I want them to be doing Y. How do I make that happen?"
Game design is about problem solving. How do you make each element of the game fun and interesting in the way you want it to be. GameDev.SE is not about high-level conceptual questions. Design questions should be about the nitty-gritty of actually designing a game from front to back.
Of course, the problem is that most hobbyist game developers will never get that far. And since they seem to be the majority on the site, we get a bunch of high-level garbage questions that never get enough close votes to die.

It actually does state 'casual' so it is leaning more towards Mario Kart than Gran Turismo which I suspect is more of a simulation than a casual game. - I know it's subjective and opinion based. It does say in the faq gameplay questions are welcome and I personally believe they are subjective by nature. - The distinction you brought up is a good one. If we are thinking of a 'stun' negative effect in rpg games, this is an effect that needs to be used sparingly and only in certain situations and the player should have ways to mitigate it. Now back to casual racing, I wanted to hear opinions.

I wanted to hear opinions, sure there is no black and white and I completely respect the way some people prefer to stick to factual answers. I still feel that since the faq says 'Gameplay' is welcome and that is less of a precise science, I could ask about penalties for careless behavior in a racing game I am working on. I would post a link though I felt that would make the question too localized. My question is pretty specific, I want people to put an 'effort' into avoiding walls while still keeping the game fun and addictive. I want a learning curve where the player skill influences success.

@Arthur: "I wanted to hear opinions" is not a reason to ask any question on any Stack Exchange site. Even the more subjective ones. Remember: the purpose of the SE model is to build a useable knowledge base for people. The presentation of random opinions ranked by popularity is not helpful in that regard. That's why we don't generally allow poll questions.

@Arthur: "It actually does state 'casual'" No, it doesn't. Neither the title nor the 3 sentences of question text mention "casual". It used to, but you removed all of the useful details, which made it an inappropriate question for this site. Good subjective questions should not be 3 sentences long.

Well, I expected opinions to be backed by reference of games that use this system and it works to create fun gameplay. So lets say I want to hear educated opinions based on facts. I understand what you say about how changing the question lessened it's value for the site, I was referring to the original question in my comment. I should have said 'did' instead of 'does'.

I changed the question slightly based on your recommendations. I think it wasn't clear enough without sharing some details about the game vibe and sub-genre.

After reading your answer and thinking about it, I feel you might benefit from reading this article - the part about being a genius.
http://www.cracked.com/article_17061_reminder-5-things-you-think-will-make-you-happy-but-wont_p2.html
It is intended as a compliment with a dash of some lighthearted insight to what you described. "Of course, the problem is that most hobbyist game developers will never get that far. And since they seem to be the majority on the site, we get a bunch of high-level garbage questions that never get enough close votes to die."

I think the two questions are at different levels of development. Preventing virtual inflation is a big picture. What specific penalties are is little picture. If the virtual economy question had already decided on money sinks and was then asking "What kind of money sinks could I implement?" Then I think it would be off topic as well.
If your question were to ask something like: "How can I discourage unskilled racing? i.e. drivers running into obstacles, other cars, ect." Or "How can I encourage racers to avoid obstacles, other cars, etc.". Then I think it would be more inline with the virtual economy question.

So coding questions should be specific, and design questions wide?

Both can vary depending on what's being asked.


text:
Is it alright to downvote for a localized answer?
I saw this question:
How do I implement deceleration for the player character?
Asking how to implement this code In a short and elegant way:
 if speed > 0 then
    speed = speed - 20 * dt
    if speed < 0 then
        speed = 0
    end
end
if speed < 0 then
    speed = speed + 20 * dt
    if speed > 0 then
        speed = 0
    end
end

This was my answer:
sign = (speed >= 0? 1 : -1);
speed -= sign * 20 * dt // 20 is the rate of deccelaration
if(sign != (speed >= 0? 1 : -1)) speed = 0;

It seems to meet the criteria presented by the question and it could be useful in platformers where you wish to deccelerate the chracter on the x- axis and control y-axis with gravity.
It is also semantically identical to what the OP requested in the question.
Some people felt the answer was too localized to 1-d games and decided to downvote on that account.
Is that really a bad thing in answer, that it's written to best suit the question without adding more advance tecniques that were not required by the asker?

People are free to use their negative votes as they see fit; competitive or retributive down-voting, when it occurs, is generally "policed" by the fact that the community as a whole can sway the score of a question or answer much more than one individual can.


text:
Is it bad to paste a big code block in an answer?
There was a question asking for a cross platform timer, and I had written one a while ago, so I just pasted it as an answer with a little bit information how to use that code. but that I'm wondering is it a good practice? or is there any other (presumably better) way to share that code? side note: I really don't mind sharing that code on codeproject or any other site like that, I just don't feel like creating an account there!

In my opinion, if you're pasting code and it's going to end up as a big snippet/answer - I would see if I could condense it down into psuedo-code and let the person asking the question do the actual implementation.

in that case I'm not pretty sure if it was possible, since he was asking for the code itself.

If it's a good answer to the question, then go right ahead. Just ensure that the code doesn't do things besides answer the question. For example, if someone was asking how to check a certain type of collision and you pasted your entire collision handling library, that wouldn't be a very good answer; you should post only the relevant part.
In the case of your example, your timer module probably had several platform-specific timer bits, wrapped in if statements checking what platform the code is running on, right? So in this case, your answer could have been several code blocks, each one handling a different platform, and then an example of checking the current platform. Together it would be all the code you pasted anyway, but it's probably a more helpful answer since it walks them through step-by-step instead of just throwing a bunch of code at them and relying on them to either figure it out or just copy-paste it into their code without any thought as to how it works.

Example answer for inspiration
Here is code to check the time in Windows:
[some code]

Here's how to do it in Mac:
[some code]

And here's how to check the platform:
[some code]

I implemented that in a single method that I called getCurrentTime(), and then I implemented a Timer class which used that method to track differences in time, ......
I pasted the full source of my Timer class in this pastebin. Consider it public domain. If you want to use it in your project, you will need the foo and bar libraries.

You're also welcome to put your code elsewhere and link to it, but I would still recommend you include at least the most vital parts of your code in your answer, or maybe pseudocode for what you did or how you came up with the algorithm. Links elsewhere aren't guaranteed to last as long as this site, and maybe you're familiar with the feeling of clicking a link that promised to solve all your problems and hitting a 404 -- I certainly have. It's sad. Semi-relevant XKCD.
Personally, I like to store bits of code like this in a Gist, if they don't deserve their own repository. Besides being a typical Pastebin-type website, a gist can have multiple files with filenames, you can do a git clone on it and push changes back into the gist, download it (all files) as a tar.gz, and I trust Github to last a long time. But there are many pastebin websites out there, and other technologies that also allow you to store and share files (Dropbox public folder, Amazon S3, etc.).
See also this question from Meta SO: Best way of pasting a lot of code into a question or answer?

I've had a couple of times i have wanted to share a file from a private repo of mine and found the easiest solution is to use http://pastebin.com/.

the problem is none of those code sharing sites save your code permanently or at least I don't know any that provide the link. this means my answer might get usefulness without anything happening to this site. still it's not a very bad idea.

I think it is fine to share a lot of code. It is more readable to explain how the code works and share the actual code as a link unless it is very short and self commented. Pasting a lot of code in the answer makes scrolling to other answers more difficult.


text:
Is it useful and acceptable to reframe a more math oriented question in game terms?
I saw this question in the review queue for closing:
The distance to a line from a point, find the constant values?
It's phrased as a pure math question, but the applications for gamedev are obvious. The question can easily be rephrased as something like, "How do I detect how close a game entity is to the line between two waypoints?" Suddenly, on-topic! Assuming there are no questions already about this (there don't seem to be in this case).
EDIT
More explicitly asked: Should we actually edit questions such as these so that they reflect the purpose of the site better, or is it better to let these get closed and wait for somebody to post the question in game terms?

I agree with this statement "@Marton, i don't want an answer on "paper" (yes it's easy), i want the answer on "code" and it's not the same. (equation on paper or code)". However, it still would fit SO better.
I don't agree about 'reframing' it. Adding an artificial game context, just for the question to suit the site is without sense, because the context would normally be used to eventually suggest another, easier solution, e.g. using a physics framework instead of making collision detection from scratch.

The way it is asked is somewhat odd here: there's "java" and "actionscript-3" in tag list, however nothing in the post itself refers to either of those. Also, there is a much more straightforward (in terms of programming effort) way to calcuate the solution to the problem (distance to straight line*) which was cut off the answer list because he said "I must use this equation:..".
To sum up what I said previously: no, it's not "suddenly" on-topic (it takes effort to be consistent and clear) and yes, I think these questions should be reframed in game terms.

I've removed the Java and ActionScript 3 tags; they are after all irrelevant to the question and the answer.

The point you bring up about how there is a straightforward way to do it - but they won't use it because they must involve a particular equation for some reason - makes me uneasy. It's either an asker unnecessarily complicating the issue, or homework help. It makes it localised - nobody else cares about using that equation!

@JonathanHobbs and snake5: I'd like select an answer on here, but before I do a prudent followup question would be: should we actually edit these questions (hopefully with collaboration from the OP) to be framed in game terms? Question updated to reflect this point.