text:
Guidelines on asking game industry questions
A lot of non-programming questions on this site are closed because they are "broad" or "open-ended". Game design is not a science and hence there are bound to be multiple answers. There is an informative thread about posting questions about game design questions here
Similarly, the game industry is an ever-changing landscape. There are a lot of variations in how things are done in the industry. Moreover, it is shrouded in mystery for those not working in the industry. Many of the people who answer questions here, already work in the industry (resulting in such a high quality of answers). This is not the case with a lot of the people who primarily ask questions. A naive question gets closed immediately, although tons more might have the same question.
How should industry-related questions be framed in order to restrict their scope and keep them answerable, despite their inherently broad nature? Moreover, should these questions be redirected to a descriptive answer (outside this website) before closing them?

Can you give examples of questions that were closed for posterity?

@Byte56 I assume this is based at least in part on recent activity here.

@JoshPetrie I'm aware of that one, but that's only one. According to this question there are "A lot".

@Byte56 These are some of the ones I find interesting. They are broad, but not chatty, IMO. 1 2 3 Compared to the amount of questions answered, admittedly, the number of questions closed are not a lot. But the percentage of closed questions in these non-coding categories is more. Hence the qstn.

In addition to the question being overly broad, I cast my close vote on that question because it included multiple questions. We ask that "questions" include one question.

1: Like your question, was very broad and asking for a lower level answer. They already listed the typical things and wanted more. That's too broad. 2 Is better for the programmers SE. It's not a question that a game developer could answer better. 3 is just generating a list. Just look at all the answers. They're opinions of how people think levels should be designed. Very few facts. Not the way the site should operate.

We had another discussion on game design and mechanics questions recently, as well.
The guidelines for scoping a question about the professional aspects of the industry are the same as the guidelines for scoping any other question, I'd imagine. Be specific in your needs, focus on an actual problem you are having, et cetera.
Remember that the basis for closing a question isn't how many people want to know the answer to it, it's how answerable the question is within the guidelines of the site. Sometimes the question is just too broad no matter how you toy with the phrasing, and in those cases the question is just not appropriate here -- other venues, such as the chat and sites like GDNet, are probably better.

The GDNet forums do indeed seem like a more beginner friendly place. Thanks for the pointer.


text:
How do we encourage people to NOT put tags in their titles?
I do rather a lot of editing (I'm not sure how much, but I don't have my copy editor badge yet). By and large the main thing I notice and edit is people putting tags in their titles. On Stack Exchange, that's as unnecessary as signing your posts: everywhere your question appears on the site (barring links), its tags are also right there. We can tell whether you're asking about XNA or Unity or Unreal because right beside the question we can see xna or unity or unreal.
There are question titles like: How to create an extensible rope in Box2D? Those are fine, it's a fluid sentence. The case I'm talking about are questions like these (which I've edited) where there's a tag just sitting in the title to be there:

cocos2d rotate sprite to touch
[multiplayer]mouse based movement ?
Unreal Editor (Unreal Tournament 3) Why does the loaction of my vehicle spawner change when I open a matinee?

What can we do so our users won't feel the need to tag their question titles like this?

What can we do so our users won't feel the need to tag their question
  titles like this?

When you edit the post, leave a comment explaining why you removed the tag from the title. There's probably a meta post, either here or from the StackExchange meta, that explains why redundantly including the tag is a bad thing -- you could link to that, I'll see if I can find it.
This will likely only work well with users who stick around, as opposed to the ones that ask one-off questions and never really return, but there's not much to be done about them anyway. Unfortunately I think they're the majority of the population that produces "bad" questions in one form or another since they don't necessarily know this isn't a forum.

You could teach them grammar. Seriously though, I'm not sure this could or even should change. The main tag in title should stay. At least until tags aren't visible in Google search since it allows to quickly identify if a post is somewhat on-topic to what I'm trying to find.
I find myself liking the construct, in fact. Let's look at it this way: this is a left-to-right language so I'd read it in that direction. First words are tags that let me know if I need to go further. Less words = faster filtering. What follows would be the main point of the question, and again - the less grammar I have to parse, the better the experience is for me. I strongly dislike all "how to", "a/an/the", "of/in/with.." when I'm searching for an answer.

I'm not proposing to remove the main tag from the page title (which is incredibly useful for showing results in search engines). I'm talking about people who write out their question's title with tags in it unnecessarily.

@JonathanHobbs The examples are somewhat misleading then. The only difference I see is ".. in [tag]" vs. "[tag] ..".

The examples are exactly what I am talking about, there is nothing misleading about them. Note that the 'cocos2d', the '[multiplayer]' and the 'Unreal Editor (Unreal Tournament 3)' are not the tag that is added to the beginning of the page title so that tags show up in search results. They are a tag written in the question title by the asker, which is unnecessary.

@JonathanHobbs Ah, the page title. Well, it just so appears that few people actually look at it or care about what's written there. When the tab is fighting with 20 more tabs in my browser, this exercise proves to be highly counterproductive.

We're having a complete communication breakdown here. Since we're now both speaking in chat, I'll leave a permalink to our conversation here.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How do we approach not-quite-duplicates?
There is a situation that occasionally arises in GDSE that is captured perfectly with two current questions:

Detecting a ledge in Box2D 2d box2d 2d-physics platformer
Detect Open Space in Farseer xna farseer-physics-engine

Here's the situation:

Both are asking the same basic thing: "I have a ledge. I need to detect when my player has reached that ledge, so my player can hang onto it / pull themselves up."
Both questions have the same basic answer: have a sensor upon the player to detect a collision with a wall, and have one sensor above to detect if there's empty space to ensure it's a ledge. This solution is engine-agnostic.
For whatever reason, the more recent one isn't closed as an exact duplicate - maybe because they cover different engines.

In this case, we should only have one question attached to no particular physics engine:

How do I detect ledges? physics

How should we make it so?
There's no precedent for this as far as I'm aware.
Do I edit the earlier Farseer question to be engine-agnostic? That would seem like it would be hijacking the question, but it would still be helpful to the original asker.
Do I create a new self-answered question and request to have both closed as a duplicate of the more recent one?

Maybe create a new question that the previous questions can be merged into?

My gut feeling is that I'd probably edit one of the questions to divorce it from the irrelevant ties to specific engines or APIs and close the other one as a duplicate, possibly with a comment indicating that the subject is actually technology-agnostic to help curtail any backlash from the asker (who may not know any better).
However, I can see an argument for leaving both and creating a new question to close both as a duplicate of. if the original questions have good titles and keywords for search engines, it may be more useful to the health of the site to keep them untouched and just redirect via a duplicate-close to a technology-independent answer. This would be on the basis that neophytes probably won't realize how their problem is not specific to a piece of technology and will type in to search engines things like "box2d detect edge of platform" or whatnot.

I'm going to go with the new-question approach, then.

The new question is here: How do I detect ledges?

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


text:
How to tell the user to post a new question?
Another form the same issue, answering what the user should have asked?
I often see posts in which the user asks a question, and then provides context that shows they are simply thinking about their problem in the wrong way.  They are essentially asking the wrong question.  Perhaps they don't know what to ask, or perhaps they have been chasing one form of a solution for so long that they ask something too specific.  Most times, asking an open-ended "what completely different thing should I do?" would be considered off topic, but it is nonetheless the right question.
To add to difficulty of these questions, telling someone that they should do something completely different in an answer is, according to the FAQ, not a real answer.  Telling them so in comments results (best case) in a comment discussion and no answer, or (worst case) with the asker ignoring, refuting, or angrily attacking the suggestion.
So, how should those questions be dealt with?

It depends. I don't recognise the situation you're talking about from your description.
If someone is apparently asking about a step, not the goal I generally link them that very section of that page I just linked and ask them to describe the goal, not the step.
If they're asking about how to do something and the answer is "don't do that, do this instead": I say so, and it would seem that's fine. I provided a genuine response to their situation after all, even if I didn't answer their question (which would not have lead them where they wanted to go).


text:
Link Colors for Visited and Non-Visited Links too Similar
I have been browsing gamedev for a while and at first noticed that the color differences between a clicked link and a non-clicked link were rather similar.  I attributed this to my poor eyesight (currently being corrected with -7.25 and -6.25 glasses) and figured I would eventually get used to the similarity.  I have not been able to and I find it rather difficult.
Here is an image of how the site is rendered on my computer with Google Chrome:

Now, I can tell the difference, but it sometimes takes a second look or to pause slightly longer when scanning through a list.
My suggestion would be to either choose a separate color or to improve the contrast/shade.  I am not much of a color person, so I can't make any specific recommendations.

It's not just you. My eyesight is just fine and sometimes I have to pause. I just don't mind doing so - it's not a big deal.

I have edited this to have the [tag:feature-request] tag instead of the [tag:bug] tag, as links are behaving perfectly correctly and as designed, you just want to improve them.

@JonathanHobbs, I couldn't quite figure out which was more appropriate, thanks.

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

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


text:
New Edit Approval process should not lock me out of editing (it does)
Recently, the way suggested edits were handled changed. No longer do I just happen upon that edit (1) link, click it, and hit approve or deny - there now needs to be two approve votes.
This is fine.
The problem is that after I hit approve, if I decide I want to do a further edit... I can't. The edit is pending, and clicking edit (1) just takes me back to a dialog which shows me the suggested edit and tells me I've approved it and it's waiting for one more person. There is nothing I can do at all until someone else comes along to approve the edit at all, because it's based on our review system which locks you into an action, and that doesn't work here.
Here's an example of what I mean. This is the pane I'm presented with after clicking the edit (1) link on a post for which I've approved a suggested edit. Notice the complete lack of any apparent way to further edit the post:

Actually, there is one thing I can do. I can go into the revisions for a question and hit the edit link for a prior version. This feels a bit hackish, because if I can still edit the question, I should be presented that option plain and simple without having to go this long way.
I was surprised to discover this when I was trying to edit this question: there was a suggested edit to remove "(XNA)" from the title, I approved it, then decided I wanted to modify the post further, and found I couldn't, discovering this entire situation. I glanced into revisions and found out I could edit it from there. The edit went through and the suggested edit disappeared (maybe because mine covered it) - and no credit was given in the revision log for the person who suggested it.

Dear site devs,
Please don't lock us out of editing whilst we're waiting for a suggested edit we've acted on to go through - at the very least because apparently we're not locked out of editing anyway.


text:
Why do people think Game Development = Game Programming on this site
This site could be so much more if there were more game design questions asked. I feel when someone says game development they immediately think game programmer.
When developing a game you have to first come up with an idea, implement the idea with some type of prototype( could be paper ), decide if it's worth pursuing, implement a simple digital version, playtest, make changes, test, test, test, add new rules to balance, etc...
All of this is the development of the game. If this site is just going to be about game programming, can we please make a corresponding game design stack exchange because that's the hard part not the programming.

Shouldn't that be "Game Development == Game Programming"? :)

Game programming is part of game development.

The site is what the community makes of it, within the guidelines set in the FAQ. As of this writing, the game-design tag is the 10th most popular tag on the site.
What game design questions do you feel are missing from the site? Ask them. Just make sure they fit into the criteria for a good question set in the FAQ.
As far as the website technology and moderation goes, we're not biased towards programming questions.
If you see an actionable change that could be made, please do suggest it (in the chat, or as a separate meta question tagged feature-request perhaps).
The process for creating a new Stack Exchange site happens in Area 51, if you want to pursue creating a game design stack exchange; but as there's already a shortage of interest in game design Q&A here, I expect you'll have a hard time raising the necessary participation to get a game design stack exchange started. That effort would probably be better spent helping our game development community grow in game design questions and answers.

When developing a game you have to first come up with an idea, implement the idea with some type of prototype( could be paper ), decide if it's worth pursuing, implement a simple digital version, playtest, make changes, test, test, test, add new rules to balance, etc...

Correction: when you're serious about developing a game, you do those things.
Most people on this site are amateurs. And most amateur game developers are programmers first and foremost. They either got into programming in order to make games, or are interested in programming and decided to make a game with their programming skill.
And since most amateurs abandon their projects, this means that the majority of questions you'll see are about the part that amateurs actually do. Namely, programming. Every amateur has their own idea of what game they want to make, but few ever get past that "prototype" stage you mention. Indeed, most don't try; they go straight to the "make a big, complex game engine" part.
Since few ever get to even a functioning prototype, they are never in a position to ask about how to improve some element of their game design.

I think you nailed the hammer on the head. T

This site could be so much more if there were more game design
  questions asked. I feel when someone says game development they
  immediately think game programmer.

I think you're drawing incorrect conclusions; the reason there are fewer game design questions on the site is that they are fewer questions of that type being asked, not because those questions are in any fashion explicitly disallowed or discouraged.
As long as the question fits the scope of the site (reasonably related to game development, not a discussion-oriented question, et cetera), then it can be asked here. People simply haven't asked that many game-design questions relative to the number of programming-oriented ones. If there are questions that should be here, ask them.

If this site is just going to be about game programming, can we please
  make a corresponding game design stack exchange because that's the
  hard part not the programming.

I disagree completely with this assertion that the programming aspect of game development is easy -- all aspects of the process are challenging and which is more challenging for any individual will be impacted significantly by that individual's actual skillset.

I think another reason why we have a lot of programmers and programming questions here is because a lot of programmers already know and use stackoverflow and are therefore used to the format and try the different stack-exchange sites. I'm pretty sure the "programmer to average-user ratio" is pretty high on most (if not all) stackexchange websites.


text:
Game development for children, getting started
I have a "how does one get started..." question, which I see from the FAQ is not one generally accepted here, which is why this is on meta. Please bear with me a few moments, read, and then perhaps direct me to where the right place to ask is. Thanks
My 11 year old son has been asking me how he can create his own video games. A few relatively short search sessions reveals hundreds if not thousands of sites that dedicate at least some significant part of their real estate to this aim. I don't know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
A couple of remarkable (to me) places/products that have floated to the top so far are Sketch and GameMaker. I found GameMaker by following links and discussions from the Gamedev.SE FAQ, and it looks to be a highly polished application with a track record and at least 2 highly reviewed books. Sketch doesn't have polish, but coming from MIT it certainly has cred, and not being a commercial venture it has a certain better-for-you-like-health-food kind of feel. The Sketch comic book intro would certainly go over well, though perhaps a bit on the young side.
I think either or both (and probably the few more I'll hear about after posting this) would engender more than a few hours of delight, entertainment, and learning. I do have some concern that they might be a gift of the kool-aid kind. I don't want to get my child hooked on a product, it's the process I'd like to feed. You know, game development.
So, are Sketch, GameMaker and their ilk islands or stepping stones for budding young would-be game developers?
If islands, where or what are the stepping stones for this age?

Related: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/9460/what-are-some-good-game-development-programs-for-kids

http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/11i1z7/game_development_for_children/
I just added a FAQ section for the best answer I could come up with, since we often get this question: "okay so if I can't ask it here, then where should I ask it?"
In my opinion, though, this question falls under the last bullet point; it seems you've already done some research, so I'd suggest you simply pick one of the tools you think would be good and sit your child in front of it, and see if he likes it. Or try them yourself to see what you think. Everyone will have their own experiences and opinions about the different tools but you're unlikely to get a solid answer, other than your fears about isolation are unfounded and any experience is good experience.
And that, by the way, is why this is not a good fit for our site. :-P

Well it's a bit complicated to explain, self-learning is the only way of learning and if he wants to learn game making then he probably will on whichever environment he can do so.
Of course, some times it might be a bit complicated specially code-wise, but when he starts learning and seeing that he now has the skills to tackle the problems he once had, he will like it much more and keep on learning.
So choose whichever you think it's best and has more compatability and choices and etc.
Happy programming for your kid ;)

direct me to where the right place to ask is

Somewhere not on Stack Exchange.
We are a Q&A site. Your kind of "question" is not about facts. It won't help build a knowledgebase of information (which is what SE is all about). Ultimately, it will just be a bunch of people saying what they think would be a good tool for children to use.
SE is not intended to be all things for all people. At the end of the day, we have to adhere to a specific set of guidelines for questions. And this doesn't qualify.

When I began programming, I started with Batch. This is a horrible idea. Get your child set up with something like basic or simple. Then progress to Python(with a real ide) and then your kid should be able to code with almost anything.


text:
Is this the site for game design related questions?
Game design questions are more closely related to the experience when playing the game.
I was wondering how to address effectively, questions like the following, using the Stackexchange platform.
Who to get the adequate mood?
How to chose the right soundtrack?
The game pace, and so on.

As it is, our current set of active moderators are fairly strict about subjective-style questions and what belongs on the site. If a question doesn't have a real possibility of a strong, well supportable answer then it will probably be closed. But I agree with @Byte56 -> Lets try it out.

See the FAQ about subjective questions.

All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. How do we
  define that? Constructive subjective questions...

inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”.
tend to have long, not short, answers.
have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone.
invite sharing experiences over opinions.
insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references.

The example questions you list are iffy. I would find it difficult to answer those questions with facts and references because those are mostly "it's up to you" type situations to me. But You can always try asking and see where it goes. I believe the answers will be something like: Playtest.

I wonder how many game design professionals we have on the site.  If we have at least a few, I can imagine some really interesting community wiki-style "let's share our experiences with design topic " questions.

I agree with Nicol Bolas, the questions you gave as example are too broad, I don't know where on this site game design related questions belong, but if you are too ask questions about game design anywhere, they would need to be very specific in order to inspire useful answers.
Also, a big part of the problem with questions related to game design is that the majority who ask questions about it seem to not understand what game design actually is. It has less to do with the "mood" of a game or "choosing soundtrack", and more to do with gameplay rules. Game design is very technical.
If an official definition of "game designer" existed I'd like it to be something along this, which I copied from Wikipedia: "A game designer is a person who designs gameplay, conceiving and designing the rules and structure of a game."
Since game design is of course a big (and crucial) part of any game development, and can be very technical, questions about it should actually be well-suited to gamedev.stack, but it's a subject that probably would need heavy moderation, more so than most topics asked about on gamedev.stack. On the other hand a lot of game design decisions has to do with which technology to use, and again, those questions are not allowed here (I learned that with my very first question).
It's difficult trying to come up with some random examples of what I think would be valid questions, as like I said earlier they would have to be very specific. But when talking about game design you can touch on a number of interesting subjects like game theory (no, not the theory of making games), chaos theory, algorithms, game complexity, emergence, decision trees, fuzzy state machines, etc, etc.

At the end of the day, a question like "Who to get the adequate mood?" (I'll assume you meant "how", not "who") is just too broad. Adequate mood for what kind of game? Where in that game would you want that mood?
If you have a specific set of circumstances, including game genre, the intent of the designer, and the circumstances at that point in the game, such a question could be very reasonable. However, if it's nothing more than just "How to get the adequate mood?", it's insufficient.
The classic "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective" post covers this topic in greater detail. A good subjective question needs to provide details, so that it doesn't just become a list of stuff people think. Generally speaking, if your question is not several paragraphs long, if it can be summed up in a single sentence, then it's probably "Bad Subjective", seeking general opinions about a subject rather than solving a specific-though-subjective problem.


text:
Is it possible to restrict who can see a question by requiring a non-disclosure agreement?
As game design related questions are more closer to the user experience when playing the game, one could need to allow access to a playable prototype.
But there is always the problem on how to avoid that information being disclosed.

No.
Any question which is so specific to your situation as to require an NDA and access to one of your builds, would be considered too localised a question for archiving on stack exchange, and would likely be closed for that reason.
Additionally, why would people want to put themselves under a legal obligation to you in order to answer your questions, for no gain to themselves?  If you're in a position where you require people to sign an NDA, you probably need to start actually paying people for their time and effort.

hmm... good point. what if I ask a question and add a link where I require the acceptance of the NDA to download the demo, is this allowed by SE, or could eventually be the question be closed?

Highly discouraged. My recommendation/opinion and general consensus: Questions should stand on their own, and any extra links or material should be totally optional supplementary material (someone who reads and understands the question should be able to answer it without clicking links). I'm not going to say it's disallowed, and closing is generally up to the community users where it's not a clear violation of rules, but I don't think it will be well-received and I expect nobody would sign the NDA. I certainly wouldn't want to be legally bound to something just to answer a question.

Anyway, I also think such an NDA would be extremely hard to enforce. Especially an internet NDA. Why bother with it? We've all seen that game ideas can be copied, just changing assets around (Zynga). Either you're willing to show your demo to people to get an answer, or you should write a question with adequate material (screenshots maybe) that someone can answer the question without playing the demo.


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2013
As it is December 2012, we are now going to reset our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

cool game development related open source apps
the site's twitter account
scripts packs or power tools
project or blogs from notable or just community devs
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 220 x 250 pixels
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting.

It's some weird-shaped fish.

It's a Mola Mola! http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7033/6396143441_a4618299ec_o.jpg

Straight-up copypasta from 2012, posted there by @iamcreasy and upvoted by the community, for good reason.


text:
How it comes I was able to edit someone else question?
Saw a question and noticed it could use some formatting on code, clicked on 'edit' and did the work. Then it occurred to me that I don't have rep enough for this. Checked the reputation list and indeed I would need 2k rep for editing rights.
So is it bugged or did I misunderstand this rules?

How do suggested edits work?
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/02/suggested-edits-and-edit-review/

Got it, thanks.


text:
Generated vs Generation (vs Procedural-Generation and Content-Generation)
Prompted by this question over on main, there seems to be a lot of redundancy/confusion around these tags.  I feel like both 'Generated' and 'Generation' are probably bad tags as neither suggests either what is being generated or how, merely that something is being generated; my inclination would be to throw them both out in favor of the more descriptive 'Procedural Generation' and 'Content Generation' tags.  Any other thoughts on this?

I just went ahead and removed the generated/generation tags from most questions in lieu of procedural-generation.  In the cases where prodecural generation didn't make sense I just removed the tag since it wasn't really descriptive enough.


text:
Chat.SE is down?
I know this isn't a question, but for the time being, chat.stackexchange.com is giving a 500 Internal Server Error, and none of the chatrooms seem to be working correctly. It doesn't appear to be just me, either. Is this due to regularly-scheduled downtime, or is there a problem with chat?

Normally I'd ask about this in chat, but obviously that isn't going to happen. As an aside, http://chat.stackoverflow.com is still up.

This is due to a temporary bad DNS issue; more details are available in the official answer here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/175163/167701


text:
I don't understand the difference between "stackoverflow" and "programmers"
As the title says.
Damn you 30 characters.

Why are you asking on the Game Development Meta SE site? Shouldn't you ask on Meta SO or Meta Programmers?

General rule if the question or answer involves code then it belongs on stackoverflow. If its about programming but not exactly about what letters are needed in a particular situation it belongs on programmers.
But there are FAQs for each site that tell you exactly what is supposed to be posted on each.
https://stackoverflow.com/faq
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/faq

StackOverflow seems to be more inclusive. In the FAQ, SO includes "enthusiast programmers" while P says it is for "professional programmers".


text:
Is this a separate site from gamedev.se?
I notice I have all the rep from my gamedev account, but none of the badges...? I'm confused. Is this (meta.gamedev) a separate site or not?
Is the rep linked all into one?

Reputation is shared between "main" and "meta" versions of a site via (I believe) a process that transfers your main reputation to meta periodically. I've noticed it lags behind a few points sometimes.
Badges, however, are not shared between main and meta sites.
The rationale, in my mind, is that reputation is about what the community thinks of you and main and meta are part of the same community. Badges are for specific actions you've taken on the site interface, however, and thus are distinct. Possible odd exceptions are the Quorom-class badges on the main site, which are directly linked to actions you take on the meta site (and there's no such badge on the meta site itself).

Does it transfer back and forth? (synced)

That's really strange, lol.

Guess it's strange cause I would expect a separate repcount for the meta sites, like meta.SO has.

@ScottW Meta.SO is considered a special place on the network and is treated differently. It is effectively meta for the entire network.


text:
Requesting tag synonyms
Note: I could not already find a question on Meta answering this. If there is one, then please provide a link.
I've been looking through the tags recently, and have seen a few that I think deserve to be synonyms. Of course, I don't have enough rep to suggest synonyms myself, but some tags (e.g. uvw-mapping) are just slightly differently worded tags of others (uv-mapping) and occur just as much. The reason this is really annoying me is because tag wikis written for one are then not used for the other, and IMO this removes the entire point. Is there any way to request a tag synonym?

http://meta.gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/155/the-these-tags-are-useless-thread

Slick and Slick2D should be synonyms too. But it apparently requires a mod. Something about version synonyms.

@Byte56 If you have 5 up votes in either tag, you can suggest the other as a synonym and then it can be voted on.

Well, I'm the top user in both slick and slick2d. I still can't suggest a synonym. Because "Version specific synonyms can only be created by moderators"

@Byte56 What exactly is a 'Version specific synonym'?

Good question. I assume it thinks that Slick and Slick2d are different versions of the same library.


text:
Are programming-game questions acceptable?
I've been trying out an AI programming game lately.  It's not really game development per se, but it is AI programming.  It also happens to be a difficult topic to search for, having only the terms "programming" and "game" to go on.  I could see it being mostly acceptable to post about it on a lot of SE sites.
So what do think, would a question about how to solve a problem for a programming game be acceptable here?  I can't think of an answer other than case-by-case.
Edit:
A question has appeared in the wild.  It's the game I was thinking of, to boot.
Drone targeting

Do you have an example of the type of question you would ask?

No.  :|
I guess I meant a coding question, but scoped to the context of the language or script or whatever of that subject game.  If it was framed as an AI question, that would make it easier to accept.

The main site faq has a pretty good rule of thumb.

Would a professional game developer give me a better/different/more specific answer to this question than other programmers?

Depending on the question, use that to determine whether or not it's on topic for here or SO.


text:
How can i earn enough reputation to comment?
I often find that i can answer a question partially, can help steer people in the right direction or provide a link with more information. These things however are almost never good enough for a full answer and are better posted as comments.
However, i don't have enough reputation to comment.
Is there any way for someone like me (good enough to help, but not good enough to give large in-dept answers) to earn more reputation so i can comment on questions?
bear in mind that i don't want to go around asking useless questions just to get this number higher.

Do you have an account on a different stack exchange site, such as super user or stackoverflow? If you create a new account thats linked to that account you automatically get 100 repuation if the parent account has a high enough reputation. Otherwise I think you might be stuck asking and answering questions, but maybe someone else has an alternative.

You can get 2 rep for an approved edit. But don't abuse that... Also, it appears as though your problem has been solved.

Yea seems i was a bit impatient. So is editing the only other way to gain rep?

Other than asking and answering questions, I believe editing is the only way. This is a Q/A site after all. You can also paypal me a good sum of money and I'll put a 500 point bounty on a question you've answered.

Haha if only i had money to paypal. Well i can now comment on things, so i'm  happy with that.


text:
Why was the 'simple snake game' question protected?
This question (which apparently just picked up a new mediocre answer, thus moving to the top of the questions stack) was apparently auto-protected by Community some time back.  My question is why: was it attracting a high level of spam or the like?  Are there deleted answers I'm not seeing that caused some sort of automatic threshold to trigger?  On the face of it it looks like a slightly awkward question with an excellent answer, and it's hard to see any reason why it would have been protected...

You're not seeing it, but there are five answers that have been deleted. I don't know if the protection was automatic or not, but that's likely the reason. The protection was automatic after three new users had their "answers" deleted from the page.
It's a very popular question among new developers and new users to the site. Questions like that will often have people asking for help through the answers (since they can't comment yet and answering is an easy way to abuse that).
Users with 10k or more rep can see deleted questions and answers.

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89532/automatically-protect-questions-with-three-or-more-low-rep-user-deleted-answers


text:
Are the "game-mechanics" and "game-design" tags redundant?
Anything about game-mechanics which is on-topic is by definition game-design. I could not think of a counterexample, so I've proposed a synonym.
Supporting evidence: gameplay is already synonymous with game-design and surely game mechanics are a subset of gameplay.

The example of "How do I implement X mechanic?  I love it in Game Y, and would love to expand upon the idea but I can't find anyone who explains how it is implemented programmatically" does not really touch upon game-design.  It isn't asking why one would use the mechanic, the effect it has on the player or on other systems, or the meaning, or balance, or any other such idea.  It isn't about game design, but is without doubt on the topic of game mechanics and game development.

There is some grey area between game-mechanics and game design, but they touch on slightly different areas of game dev. Design is more narrative and story driven, while mechanics focus on the type of actions the player may take and how the player uses actions to move the narrative. Design also involves guiding the player's decisions through game quest.(I.e.  a red carpet travels to one room, but not an other, or the player hears rumors about a beast in the sewers, so they go there.) Both areas work in tandem to create the player's experience.

I would definitely disagree and say that Design encompasses any design of mechanics.  But the distinction I would make is that Design deals with the user interaction and system interactions of the mechanic, while game-mechanic can also cover the implementation of the mechanic on a code-level.  That is to say that game-mechanic can deal with code questions, but, for the most part, game-design and coding are separate issues.


text:
Question edit view displays same text for two edit descriptions
My edit's very atypical description exactly matches the one for @msell's edit.  Either his description matched mine exactly or automatically duplicated it, or the page is displaying my description twice when it should not.  Or other explanation.

Here's the page: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/posts/54555/revisions

As best I can tell msell made an improve action on your edit rather than just approving it. That automatically copies the edit comment.
It is to avoid bumping the question multiple times, if a mini-mod during review find a small flaw in an otherwise good edit he can fix that flaw before approving, the result in the history looks like two edits at the same time.

I did notice that after a while, that a quick edit would copy the previous edit's description.  Mystery solved.


text:
What is a PR-bomb?
@TrevorPowell said he deleted a lot of this question's details due to a "PR-BOMB".
I'm not sure what he means by "PR-BOMB"

To me that question does appear to have an agenda of some sort.

In some cases it's hard to tell if somebody is bringing up a game/article/whatever because they're curious about it, or if they're astroturfing.
Either way, editing down questions so they're more to the point and succinct is usually a good move.

Astroturfing -- yes that is what that question appears to me as well


text:
Are switching engine questions okay?
I'm considering switching my game over to a different engine. Would it be an acceptable question to explain what I'm going for, what I'm using, why I'm switching, and ask what engine would best suit my needs?

My guess us that it would come across as a "which tech should I use" question and get closed.


text:
There is no point closing something as too localized
I have no doubt that this thread will get many down votes, but lately I often find questions that are closed with "Closed as too localized". What is the point of a Q&A site if questions cannot be answered because a group of fortune-tellers decides it will be not relevant for anyone in the future? Guess what, some of them I actually find relevant and would not think that I am alone with this. On a pure wiki styled site this procedure would make sense, but here, where people come to get answers for their problems I do not think so.
While some finds a question unworthy to even read through and votes to cast it to the seventh hell, others write really good answers for them that actually helps others. (eg. https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/54497/11909)
What makes it worse is the fact that these questions does not even get deleted, simply just prevent others from answering it. I am not saying that the whole closing thing is just bad, there are some really stupid questions out there, but closing something with the cause of it only helps one person is just bad. I do not really come to this site to ask totally irrelevant questions for me that would help others, but to find help for my problem, and if I help others with it, that is just icing on the cake.

I agree, the too localized rule should be loosened.

+1: Very recently I argued that "Too Localized" was the worst of all reasons to close  question and I'd rather we didn't have the option.

The linked question doesn't appear to have ever been closed.  It doesn't even have any close votes right now.  Can you edit the question to include a few examples of the "these questions" which you're saying ought not to have been closed, so that we can have a substantive discussion?

@Tetrad has clarified that the linked question was previously closed, and he reopened it (apparently in a way which left no traces in the moderator tool).  So never mind.  :)

It's always tough for me to determine what to do with pending "too localized" close votes in my review queue. Some questions are clearly "debug my code for me" and ask the Internet as if it was a glorified debugger, but the line is blurry and most of the time I just can't make my mind and skip. Maybe "too localized" is too imprecise.

I think there is a really worthwhile question implied here, RE: what we want to consider to be "too localised" on gamedev.SE.  But I don't think that discussion is going to happen in this meta question, since this question has been written as an angry rant, rather than as a question to be answered.  So people are just responding to the rant (or more commonly, not commenting at all), rather than addressing the underlying question.  Maybe worth phrasing this as an honest question, either as an edit or as a fresh question.

@AlexM.: I would go further, even.  Too Localized doesn't need to be "loosened"; it needs to be removed entirely.  It's the ultimate in arrogance; to say "I don't see how this could apply to other people, therefore there is no way it can apply to other people" is pretty darn close to claiming omniscience.  You don't even know how many times I've been Googling for an answer to some obscure programming problem, found a question on SO that fits the issue perfectly, and then seen it closed as "Too Localized" with no answers.

You didn't list any particular questions as examples (the one question you link to never received a close vote), so I'm going to list some recent "too localized"-closed questions and discuss them.  Here is a list of every question closed as "too localized" during the last 48 hours or so (as of when I posted this answer):

Rectangle collision is not working correctly
creating arcball in cocos 3d
2d array bounds
OpenGL noob: Using VBO to draw a colored triangle
Random AI movement on tiles
My logic in collision detection in diagonal code correct?

That's six questions closed as "too localized" during the last two days (for comparison, there were eleven others closed for entirely other reasons during the same period).
That percentage does seem higher than maybe it should, so let's look at the questions more closely, one at a time, and decide whether that's valid for each:
Rectangle collision is not working correctly
Maths bug in collision response code.  The asker provides a big block of code to sift through, including reading keyboard input and etc.  On the plus side, the question provides a clear explanation of exactly what is going wrong.
I'm not a huge fan of big code-dumps, personally.  But this one at least is reasonably well formatted and it's easy to skip past the obviously irrelevant bits.  I guess my concern is that fundamentally, this is a "find the math bug in my code" question, rather than one which addresses a concept which can be explained or a technique which can be learned.  See my comments re: discoverability of "solutions to a math bug" questions under the "arcball" question, below.
Has an accepted answer.
creating arcball in cocos 3d
This is another "help me my code isn't working and I don't know why" post.  Which probably isn't tremendously surprising as it involves quaternion math, which isn't a trivial thing for anybody.
The question is a huge code dump, and includes a download link to get even more code.  If this had focused down on "what is the right way to do quaternion math", then I think it could have been a really good and useful question (if there isn't already such a question), but as is, I have trouble mustering enthusiasm to go delving through somebody else's math code just to go searching for an arithmetic bug.
I'm not certain how finding this guy's maths bug and indexing the particular located bug in Google helps the Internet as a whole;  the next guy will presumably have a different maths bug, and we'll just wind up answering this same question again and again, just with different swapped variables or subtracts that should have been adds in each new asker's version of the code.  So I'm inclined to agree with the "too localized" evaluation.  Again, my view is that this isn't somebody asking for something to be explained, or to be taught;  he's just asking us to find his maths error for him.
Maybe that view is a personal failing of mine.
2d array bounds
I have trouble parsing the question, here.  It appears to be another plea for someone to debug their code for them.  Whatever the question actually is, even if someone was motivated to go delving through source code to find the bug, the question is fundamentally unanswerable, because not enough code is provided.  My instinct is that this question, if pursued, would have turned into a "teach me how to program" question.
But I wouldn't have voted "too localized" on this question.  I'd have voted "not a real question", myself.
OpenGL noob: Using VBO to draw a colored triangle
This one doesn't look terrible to me.  At least the problem is well-defined, and the source code has been trimmed down to a somewhat reasonable amount for people to peruse.  Fundamentally, it's still a "I haven't checked for existing learning resources" sort of question, but I think this one could have been salvaged.
The real question from my point of view is whether someone else would ever have found it -- the asker's misunderstanding was regarding the precise usage of glBindBuffer(), which is fair enough.  But none of that shows up in the question text -- there's no way for another user to find it.  Once the real solution was found, I wouldn't have been against someone editing the question to really tighten it up to fit the actual problem, to aid in discoverability.
I suspect that this one was closed due to its very low prose:code ratio, which is usually a strong indicator of questions which are only of use to one person at one moment in time.
Has an accepted answer.
Random AI movement on tiles
I'm having trouble understanding this question.  I'd have asked the poster to rephrase in an edit, and voted "Not a real question" in the meantime.
My logic in collision detection in diagonal code correct?
This one doesn't describe the problem and doesn't explain what needs to be fixed.  The question appears to be "Is it necessary to have a diagonal collision for the wall?", which there's no way for us to know without a lot more context (what the game is, how big the wall is, where it is, how thick it is, how far game objects move in a frame, etc).  I think I'd have gone with "Not a real question" on this one as well;  I don't think the question is defined enough to be "too localized".  (Although I can see an argument that if nobody else can understand the question, its answer is probably not going to be of much use to them, either.)
My conclusion
Just from my examination of the last 48 hours, I guess I'm not really seeing a problem.  Granted that there are some questions which I wouldn't myself have classed as "Too Localized", but many of them I would have voted to close for other reasons.
I was a little surprised that there were only these six "too localized" questions in the last two days -- I've had the same sense as the OP that there have been lots and lots of extremely localized questions being closed on the site, but that doesn't seem to be borne out by this data.  Having only six closed in two days surprises me a lot.  And further investigation suggests that this rate doesn't seem to be unusual -- there were only six closed for that reason in the previous two days, as well.  And even fewer in the two days before that.
It's also interesting that both of the questions which I considered to be potentially answerable did get answers, and the original poster of each accepted those answers, even though the questions were later closed as "too localized".  So the whole "too localized" thing doesn't seem to actually be stopping people from providing personal assistance when the questions asked are truly answerable. (as per my admittedly subjective opinion re: answerability).
Maybe a wider analysis of more data would show a different trend, but just going on the basis of the data from the last 48 hours, I'm not seeing anything particularly alarming in regards to questions closed as "too localized".

Note that I got my numbers and links from the moderator tools, which probably weren't designed for data mining like this, so it's quite possible that I've misinterpreted the tools.  If somebody more familiar with the moderator tools could verify that I haven't missed any "Too Localized"-closed posts over the past 48 hours, I'd be very grateful!

I'm surprised by that data also, especially since there are scenarios like this one. There, the majority close vote was too localized (3 votes) but there was one "not a real question" and my own "not constructive" vote, which killed it. But only the majority reason is displayed. So I'd expect a potentially slightly higher number of "too localized" votes.

I reopened the question he linked to so it removed the close votes.

@Tetrad Okay, that's interesting -- I'd gone into the moderator tools to check that to verify that it hadn't been reopened .  The question doesn't show up in the "Recently reopened" list, for me.  If not everything that's been reopened is showing up in the moderator tools, then it seems likely (or at least plausible) that there are questions being closed that aren't being reported in the "Recently closed" area, too..  So the whole "six across two days" statistic may therefore be completely wrong, for all we know.

While some finds a question unworthy to even read through and votes to cast it to the seventh hell, others write really good answers for them that actually helps others.

No, that's not how it works.
The purpose of every Stack Exchange site is to help build a useable, searchable knowledge base. The fact that a question has "really good answers" is completely useless if the only people who find those answers are the kind of people who sift through a garbage dump looking for a peach pit.
Questions are how users with a problem find the solution (ie: answers). They do a search based on their problem. The search reveals a question that matches their problem. And therefore, the answers to that question will match their problem.
That's how Stack Exchange is supposed to work.
If a question is too localized, then what it means is that nobody's problem description will ever coincide with that question. So even if an answer to that question happens to be the solution of that person's problems, they will never find it.
That's how Stack Exchange stops working.
Basically, answering too localized questions is a waste of time. Nobody's going to find them except the person asking the question.
Just take a look at your example. If I were having timing problems that the accepted answer would solve... do you honestly think a Google search or a GameDev.SE search would ever lead me to this question? Well, it might. It will probably also lead me to about 50 other timing questions that won't help me.
Buried under the avalanche of choices, I don't get helped.
The OP lacks any real detail. He basically said, "I'm having a timing problem. Please debug my code." That's not something Google is going to be able to find.
And that's bad.

What makes it worse is the fact that these questions does not even get deleted, simply just prevent others from answering it.

Closed questions can be automatically deleted if they don't have answers.
Remember: the point of closing a question is to prevent people from wasting their time by answering a question that is currently inappropriate. A question so narrowly stated that it will never be useful for anyone else is inappropriate. To answer it helps only one person, and therefore is a waste of the person's time.
We don't need to delete a question that was answered before it was closed. It can still be here in the off chance that someone decided to look at all 50 of their search results and happened upon useful information by sheer dumb luck. But we don't want to encourage that.

In defense of that OPs example question, it might be better suited to edit the title to make the source of the problem more easily searchable. A lot of people don't get how to write good question titles and simply improving them helps the question dramatically.

I feel that a great counter example is the following question - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8176493/how-do-you-exit-x11-program-without-error I encountered this exact same issue and it has been viewed 1600 times. Why is this closed for being to localized? 'To Localized' always feels like moderator abuse. At the very least closing threads as to localized should only be allowed for threads in the negative vote range.

@NtscCobalt: Two things: 1) You might notice that this question was closed by a single moderator, not 5 people, and thus is more likely to be erronous. 2) Hurray, in all of the five million questions on Stack Overflow, you found one that may have been closed as Too Localized incorrectly. The claim here is that Too Localized is never a good idea. The fact that you found one question that helped you is not proof of anything. 3) It's closed, not deleted.

I agree, people are sometimes a little too gung-ho with that close vote.
Some questions I don't understand why people vote to close. Especially if there isn't really any explanation given or even down votes (question down votes are free these days so it's not like you'd lose rep).
Yes, at the end of the day, most questions are going to involve someone's "code being fixed", but there's a big difference between someone who doesn't understand simple logic or the fundamentals of the programming language they are using and someone showing us their code and describing a "long tail" problem. Having a block of code that needs some changes does not mean the question is too localized.
My guess is that people are using the review queue, see that one person cast a close vote, and see that close vote as legitimate and pile on it so they can get their review badges or something.
Feel free to cast reopen votes or even flag questions you think were unnecessarily closed.

You don't need to actually vote to get the counter to increase for the badge, though -- "Leave Open" still increases your review counter. I do think there's a psychological issue -- I find myself more likely to vote in agreement with questions with 2 or 3 votes, but less likely to vote if I'd be the deciding vote, for example, which probably indicates a bias. It's also really hard to judge what "too localized" means. Perhaps the description in the reason could be improved.

I like the point made in the "long tail" post : "That’s why we actually don’t mind having several versions of every question, where there are variations in wording or circumstances. The more chance that someone types a question into Google and finds their exact question already answered, the better a job we’ve done." We should almost promote a certain level of localisation when it comes to questions

I think this happens to mostly 2 classes of questions.
1)  The longwinded "do it for me" type questions, where they post [pages] of code and kinda shrug their shoulders and ask "So what's wrong with it?"  Or, they post just a smidgen of code, then ask something which nobody could know without browsing the whole codebase. (The latter question type comes from noobs who think because "You know C++" you have a mind-body connection with every CPU register on the planet).
These types of postings are from possible help vampires, anyway, so methinks we do well to close them.
2)  The other type of "closed as too localized" happens I think somewhat wrongly.  It happens to these "wrongheaded" questions that seem to promote some kind of agenda/have an element of show-offness ("Imma program in C!") and possibly unsettles the moderator folks.  I don't think we need to close those, as an answer responding to the underlying bad assumption or misunderstanding the OP has, is a lot more productive there.
Closed as vampiric

Generally when parsing a question I rely heavily on first impressions - I'm a busy person and don't have time to disentangle what looks on the surface like an awful question to see if there is anything of value in it.  The responsibility is on the person asking the question to make it a good one.
Like the others answering here, I tend towards "too localized" for "please debug my code for me" questions.  These questions generally have many (but not necessarily all) of the following features:

A very poor text-to-code ratio, often with a huge code dump that one must scroll through to find the the relevant parts.
Little in the way of indication that the person asking has tried anything themselves to resolve the problem; they may have hacked and slashed at the code a bit, but that would be the limit.
Little in the way of any coherent description of what the problem actually is - often not much more than "this doesn't work".  No indication of how it doesn't work, what the OP expects to happen, what actually happens.
Code that's poorly formatted, frequently inconsistently formatted, and appears to have been copy/pasted from several different sources (it's occasionally possible to actually track down some of those sources).
Some fundamental misunderstandings about how what they're trying to do actually works.
A "just give me the code!" attitude; I recall one from some years ago where the person asking literally said "don't give me concepts, give me code!"
Sometimes an insistence on use of an inappropriate solution for or approach to the problem they're trying to solve (if that problem can be even determined from the question).

On they're own any one of these is probably salvagable from the "too localized" bin, and may even become a good question with heavy reworking, but when they come together it becomes difficult to see much hope.  The ultimate arbiter of whether or not such a question goes into "too localized" is therefore: "is any possible answer going to be of any possible use to any possible person besides the person asking the question and in the very specific circumstances they are in now?"
If the only answer to that is "no" then it's "too localized" for me.


text:
How can I discuss opinion-based questions with the GDSE community?
I have many topics I wish to discuss with other game programmers. The problem is that these topics are completely opinion-based, and not question-answer based, and therefore not apt for this site, such as every question on the top voted questions list that has been closed as "non-constructive".
However, I find it a bit wasteful to go somewhere else to do this, because I actually want to discuss this stuff with the people in this site (whose community is the best I've seen). I don't want to join a second community in ye olde forums where the signal to noise ratio is worse than even SO.
I know there's supposed to be a chat option, but honestly, chat is a third class citizen in SE, and is heavily unused, not to mention that conversations will fade into the ether as time passes.
It would be really nice to have a subsite (similar to meta) where discussion based topics are welcome and encouraged. There's so much stuff I'd like to ask the rest of the people in this site, that I simply can't because there's no supported way to do so...
Where should I take these topics, so I can discuss them with the very same users who lurk this site?

I don't know which chat you're visiting. The GD.SE chat is very active and has a lot of people from different backgrounds and experience levels.

@William'MindWorX'Mariager at this precise moment, there are exactly four people in the GD chat. We clearly have very different opinions on what "active" and "a lot of people" mean, especially when considering SE is one of the biggest and most active sites on the internet.

I think you'll have a hard time finding a place that has chat that is active 100% of the time while at the same time keeping quality to you expected levels. You can see from the activity graph which hours the chat is mostly active and chime in then.

That's precisely why I think chat is not what I'm looking for

But from what you wrote, chat is exactly what you want. You want discussions. Stack Exchange is QA format. Forums doesn't really fit either. The chat allows you to have conversations with people, and you can bookmark conversations for later. They'll stay around for as long as this site runs.

No, in my opinion, the QA format is perfect (look at the top voted closed questions). The "only directly answerable questions are okay" restriction is arguably a good one that keeps the site focused, but is definitely arbitrary. Chat, on the other hand, is disorganized, and is only visited by a small subset of the people in this site (only 92 people have the "talkative" badge, compared to 2005 "nice answer" badges). If it were me, I'd have three QAs per site: main, discuss and meta.

Major reason why I joined this community was the discussion oriented questions that attracted good opinions and insight. I'm not saying disallowing those as a poor fit for this site was a wrong move, but I believe it is one reason why the site has been weakened over time.

Where should I take these topics, so I can discuss them with the very
  same users who lurk this site?

The chat. Your requirements are unrealistically harsh, but the best possible answer given those requirements is the chat:

The chat is for open-ended discussion, on- and off-topic.
The chat is part of this site and so more likely to contain users from this site than some other entirely different site.

It seems there's no evidence you've actually sat down and tried joining the chat for a few days to see what it's actually like. Why don't you try that instead of blithely dismissing what everybody else is telling you. You're not likely to find a better option given your initial requirements.

True, I'm not active in the chat, so I would like to ask you: do you think that if this question had been asked on chat instead of the main site, it would have gotten as many, or even more awesome answers?

It would have gotten fewer, almost certainly, because the audience in the chat is smaller. I don't see why it matters since that question is not appropriate for the site anyway, so maybe you want to adjust your requirements to include sites with different communities? My point is that nothing satisfies your stated requirements, and the chat here is the closest I think you'll get.

My point is that those questions are useful, and it's a shame that they're closed. But it's also true that they're not appropriate for the site, so my proposal is to have three subsites instead of just two: main, discussion and meta. I doubt such a proposal would ever even be considered for more than a nanosecond though...

I see. If you are proposing creating such a third site 9which isn't obvious from your current question), you really want to be having that discussion on meta.stackoverflow.com I think.

Thanks, but I'll pass. Even though gamedev is one of the best communities I've seen on the internet, the one at meta.so is one of the most aggressive, and least welcoming I've ever seen. I just wanted to know if there was a canonical place apart from the chat to do this, but it seems there isn't, so I'll mark your answer as correct

And I came up with the idea of creating that site, much later than when I wrote the question. It was just a proposed solution. I genuinely thought for a moment that there was a canonical "right" place for such questions.

I would like to entirely disagree on this:

chat is a third class citizen

I am in there every day, as are 10 regulars that I can name right off the top of my head (including @WilliamMindWorXMariager who commented), new comers every day and questions posted for not only their technical relevance but their opinionated relevance as well. I highly recommend giving chat a visit and seeing how you feel after even the first ten minutes.
Challenge us with your opinions! Excite us with some Game Dev discussion, we are in that chat because we love to talk about game development and we honestly would love to talk about it with you too.
As an edit: Discussion based sites are actually being worked on by Jeff Atwood and his team over at Discourse. They are making the Stack Exchange of discussion and forums, trying to make the polar opposite essentially whilsts still making it feel intuitive and fluid to promote the sort of discussion you are looking for. It is in Alpha->Beta stage right now and you can try the sandbox. It will be available in much the same way that SE is. Take a look.

you say "10 regulars" as if that were a lot? I just checked the chat. In the entire SE network (one of the biggest and most active communities in the internet), there are "50 users in 40 rooms". I'd hardly call that "active". And even so, the discussions will fade as time passes, so I think it's hardly a good format for serious time lasting discussions.

10 Regulars could be 11 if you simply tried. I haven't seen you in the chat and you haven't asked any questions or been in any SE room according to http://chat.stackexchange.com/users/63649/panda-pajama?tab=general So why not try it, what do you lose from joining us and talking?

You're missing the point of my question. I think chat may be useful for many things, just not for open ended opinion-based questions which can be reviewed years after they have been started. I'm talking about stuff like those on the top voted questions list that are marked as closed. I can't imagine discussing such stuff on chat.

In which case I can simply answer with this: http://www.discourse.org/about/
I edited my answer to add this in, take a look.

You can lead a horse to water...

I like how at this very moment there are 18 people in chat and he's still not here.


text:
Tag suggestion: Reverse-Engineering
I often see questions where a user is interested not in copying a game as a whole but in pulling apart a particular game mechanic in order to better understand how it works and apply this to their own development.
In these cases questions can tend towards being subjective if a user is asking "How can I make a game like Diablo 3?" and doesn't meet our FAQ criteria. However if the user is trying to understand how a specific mechanic works more directly such as "How does a character sheet store and implement character stats for use in skills and items such as Diablo 3?" then we can apply a "Reverse-Engineering" tag (if there is something similar I was unable to find it.)
This means the question promotes non subjective discussion about how to create a mechanic. The tag allows the asker to show that they are trying to pull apart an existing example from a known game but showing any viewers they understand not to ask "How can I make X game?".
Unlike Arqade we do not use tags for labelling a particular game (for example "Diablo-3") but we should be encouraging people to try and pull apart how existing games were made so they can reverse engineer for their own benefit and learning.
This is why I believe a reverse-engineering tag or similar would work well for these situations.

The game-mechanic tag covers, at least, your example well.  And I have a hard time imagining what question would be similar but wouldn't be inquiring about a specific mechanic.

You can create new tags if you have enough reputation. I don't think you have to ask anybody for permission to do that.

It was more to see if it had a place and to ask people their thoughts on the tag itself - I was unsure on if the grounds or reverse engineering a feature would be against our Q&A guidelines.

How about if you create the tag and see what happens? I think the general idea of this site is just like wikipedia: be bold

"Reverse-engineering" would be a meta tag;  it's not talking about the question content, but about the method which is desired to be used to arrive at an answer.
Stack Overflow has a policy about meta tags:  "From this point on, meta-tagging is explicitly discouraged."

If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.

+1 Best explanation I've seen so far as to if it would (or in this case wouldn't) fit on the site.

Not so sure it would be a metatag. If that were true, then "Java", "3D", or "DirectX" would all be metatags when they don't work as the only tag for a question. I'm actually for a "reverse-engineering" tag, as a useful one.

@PandaPajama "Java", "3D", and "DirectX" each can be used to describe a question's subject matter.  When used correctly, they identify the context of a question so that the questions can be searched for and found more easily by future visitors.  Which is the whole point of tagging.  My interpretation of the policy I linked to is that tagging a question with "reverse engineering" or other meta tags doesn't say anything about what the question is actually about, and so doesn't aid in filtering or improve discoverability.

I'm not particularly fond of the idea, for a few key reasons:

It presupposes a particular solution to another similar problem is what somebody else has already done (usually because that somebody else is a "professional") and can result in a case of tunnel vision for the question-asker, who could be missing better solutions to their specific problem as a result. I'd rather see us guide the asker to solutions that are tailored to their specific problem they're having in the development of their game (and if they're not actually developing a game, the question is off-topic).
Tags are useful for searching questions, and so should reflect the content of the question and the problem it's presenting. A "reverse-engineering" doesn't reflect the question (unless that question is off-topic), it reflects a potential solution.
There are some aspects of reverse-engineering that are a legal grey area.

Your one example doesn't even fall into a category I'd consider 'reverse engineering' at all. The poster wants to implement a mechanic that looks and feels like a mechanic in another game, but he's not actually decompiling the Pokemon binaries and examining their compiled machine code, or anything like that. He's just using it as a model; this is exactly the kind of scenario where I think the tag is damaging (or at best, not useful).
(Note that I'd already removed it, along with overbroad "state" tag.)

I don't agree that reverse-engineering requires something akin to decompiling binaries.  One might simply analyze the output in enough detail to understand the underlying structure that built it.  I don't think the tag is necessary for other reasons, but the definition covers a more general output-oriented analysis, at least in theory.


text:
Sides of tags show through error message
I accidentally clicked downvote on a question and observed this:

This bug is unique to GameDev, due to having triangles on the side of tags here:

This has been fixed and will go out in rev. 1340.


text:
Shouldn't [audio] and [sound] be merged together?
I'm talking about sound and audio here.
sound has the following description:

Audio (heard) output of a game.

audio has this:

The audio component of a game, representing what the player will hear. Comprised of dialogue, music, and sound effects.

From my point of view, I see them colliding therefore splitting questions of same nature in two separate categories.
Shouldn't these both be synonymized together?
I see that it requires quite some "achievements" in the field to propose such change. Could someone take the initiative?

I tried, but for some stupid reason you have to have a score of 5 in the tag and it's not something that is unlocked via the 20k gate. Maybe a diamond moderator can do it.

I suggested the synonym. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms Of course it's going to take a mod anyways...


text:
In-content [tag]'s have a CSS, margin issue
Through out the whole site, where [tag:something] is used, or where framework inherits the same behavior, there is a problem with CSS.
Check thismechanics (before the tag, the letter s is hid, but the spacing after the tag is enormous).
I see in CSS, it lacks margin-left property:
margin: 2px 15px 6px 0!important;

That translates to:
margin-top: 2px !important;
margin-right: 15px !important;
margin-bottom: 6px !important;
margin-left: 0 !important;

What it should be though, is something like this:
margin: 2px 8px 6px 8px!important;

Giving some margin to left, and subtracting from right, resulting in a very nice looking tag.


text:
Why doesn't "trusted user" apply to tag synonyms? Is this a bug?
I'm curious of anybody knows the rationale for excluding the tag synonym suggestion feature from the set of features trusted users are allowed to perform?
It seems particularly odd to me that, as a trusted user, I am able to edit tag wikis with impunity, but I'm not allowed to set up or even suggest synonyms. I have to go through the same scores gates as everybody else (having a score of five or more in the tag).
I don't think one needs to be an "expert" in the tag in know that, for example, the d3d and direct3d tags are synonyms. The fact that only diamond moderators can perform some of these tags operations means they are more of a bottleneck and it's harder for the community to facilitate the cleanup of less-popular tags in the system.
If this isn't a bug, I'd really like to see it implemented or at least get an explanation as to why it's such a restricted feature.
(Perhaps this is a better question for the SO meta in general? It sort of seems like they'd prefer you to ask on the site-specific meta first, but I'm unclear.)

Personally, I think that suggesting a tag synonym ain't such a big deal. It's also pretty hidden away, in order to spawn a lot of false-positives. Well, maybe a moderator should accept the synonym as valid to be voted for. Something like flag system.

Sometimes there are super obvious tag synonyms (that should be there, but apparently are not at the moment), so creating a meta post about it in order to create it, especially for users with tons of rep, doesn't seem logical.

Also, you should post this on SO meta, since this applies to all sites.

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79151/add-the-ability-to-create-any-tag-synonym-to-the-trusted-user-privileges

http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/103211/can-we-allow-7-5k-users-to-suggest-tag-synonyms-without-a-score-of-5-in-the-tag


text:
Downvoting shouldn't be so easy
This is something I (luckily) rarely have to deal with, but a lot of times I stumble upon very interesting question here, which get good or not so super-precise or explicitly detailed answers.
Often in life, a simple meme (original meaning) is enough to lead someone to the goal he strives for, but those answers won't be tolerated in this community and that's honestly a shame.
Users in this community tend to rate answers down. The ratio of upvote/downvote seems like some of our users are just out to stone somebody.
Downvoting a question is too easy. It's just a click.
The reason why people downvote is often because of missing details or explanations, but ironically downvoting requires none explanation at all.
You basically kill some, that killed someone, because you're against killing.
I really wish that downvoting should be not so easy or only open for veterans.
Downvoting with no reason should be paid with reputation.

This isn't a question.

Bad questions and answers create a terrible noise. My only complaint is that they aren't culled quick enough.

"Users in this community tend to rate answers down." They do? Where? Oh, we downvote garbage answers (such as here and here, but in general, the ratio of downvotes to upvotes is staggeringly in favor of upvotes.

"You basically kill some, that killed someone, because you're against killing." ... what? I don't even see the logic there. Posting a crap question and downvoting are two different things. Posting a crap question harms the site as a whole; downvoting a post only hurts that post. So your analogy doesn't even work.

"only open for veterans" 125 rep is not hard to get, even here. Granted, if you can't contribute useful answers or decent questions, it will be hard to get. But that's only because you're not being very useful to the site, not because you're not a "veteran".

Downvoting answers costs reputation. Downvoting questions used to, but was recently changed. You're better off having this discussion over there.

From the link it was clear what you meant, but thought I should fix the text.  :)

lol >_< thanks.


text:
Can my question be improved?
NPC AI articles for walking and fighting?
I'm still looking for how to implement a walking non-player character which I think is on-topic. I don't really think that the question should have been closed, or that it can be improved for reopening. I need a good algorithm for NPC AI.

It was closed as not construtive, probably it was deemed to broad.

Check out the [FAQ], there's a list of sites there that have more open policies for asking open-ended questions like the one you want answered.

Step 1, answer the question, what have you tried.
You should fully delineate what you want your AI to do to the best of your ability, solve all the problems you think you can solve, and only then come to us when you have something specific that you need help with.
As is, it doesn't seem like you have tried anything.

Your question is asking us to be your version of Google. You want links to stuff.
That's not what Stack Exchange sites are for. If you have a specific question, then ask that specific question. Don't ask a question that's a request for links.


text:
Why is my recent "retag" privilege not available?
At 500 reputation, one earns the privilege of retagging.  It is allegedly an alternative to editing a post (which requires edit approval), yet I have never seen this retagging option.  The "Retag" page claims there is a "retag" menu option under the post.  There is none for me, nor anywhere else I can see (below tags, on the edit page, above the post, near the profile picture).
So my question is... is this a bug?  Am I missing some obvious option (in my profile, say) to enable this functionality?  Is my 546 reputation not enough to enable this privilege I've received notifications claiming I should have?
To be perfectly clear, this question is not the problem I'm encountering, as I can see "edit" on every post, but never "retag".  This question is also not the problem, as I understand there should be a "retag" option, but all that appears is "share", "edit", and "flag".

Kill the Retag option, use just Edit

Retag is gone. It has ceased to be. The "please go back and click the retag link instead of edit" message is gone. We will (not) miss it.
Editing tags only will result in the same behavior as retag, except
  for the message (low enough rep will put it in review queue for
  suggested edits, having the retag questions privilege will make it a
  regular edit.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/179401

Thank you!  The description of the privilege just hasn't been updated to reflect that change, then, which is really confusing.  Thanks for the explanation!

Haven't figured out how to change the page.

I am not sure, what might be the case. But I always use "edit", then I simply add or remove tags.. Works for me :)

I was under the impression that using "edit" requires approval, while the "retag" option does not.  At least, this is what the specific privilege page says here:  http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/privileges/retag-questions

Today I have edited a question, adding an additional tag. Haven't known that it wasn't approved. My bad :)

Quite all right.

The retag option is hidden until you hover over the tags themselves.  It's not in the section at the bottom.

At least, that's for me.

Shucks, I was hopeful this was the problem, but it wasn't.  =(   Unless I'm hovering "incorrectly" (is that even possible?), this doesn't seem to be the case for a non-mod, or at least not for me.  Hovering simply shows a small black box with the Wiki summary, link to the faq, top users, etc.  No "edit tags" option.

You need 10000 reputation for this.


text:
Bounty Award button misaligned
Creating my first bounty on SE today, I noticed that the Bounty Award Button is slightly misaligned. Maybe I'm just OCD about it but I think it should be fixed. Just centered and a nice space between the downvote button.

oh wow. good eye.


text:
Removing sock puppet accounts
Lately we've been experiencing a sock puppet issue. This person has multiple accounts, they create poor answers and poor questions. It appears they're now upvoting poor questions (or it's another sock puppet in the making, or they're trying to confuse their trail by upvoting accounts that aren't theirs, 6 votes in 6 minutes on a question like that is a dead give away). When I make comments they just use his accounts to flag my comments enough to get automatically removed. A moderator can confirm the deleted comments on the question I linked.
Do we not have a better way to track down people abusing the site like this?
Obviously it's not going to be a long term problem for this one person, since they'll get bored of the trolling. But it would be nice to remove users like this when they are potentially disrupting legitimate users questions/answers.

I think I've either deleted or destroyed most of the sock puppet accounts already.

Based on the activity today, I'd have to disagree :) My comments were being flagged and auto removed in less than a minute. I assume one account doesn't have that kind of control.

Looks like there's something very fishy going on with that account. See these reputation events...

The same account mentioned above by @AndrewRussell has been causing some problems today as well, on the GD.SE Community Moderator Nominations page. They've flagged several of Byte56's posts to the point of auto-deletion.

Perhaps the sock puppet user can post a question on meta about the issues they have with the site. Listing evidence of where they think new users were wronged, and how they propose the issue be solved. It would be far more effective than the activity that's been taking place.

I'm seeing more of this (?) at the moment... the OP clearly stated that they didn't want to hear about chunking (see edit), yet the upvotes keep coming to a useless answer on an otherwise new account. http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/103067/how-do-game-engines-mitigate-cpu-cost-for-many-trigger-zones-entities/103085#103085


text:
Could we embed small games in the site theme?
Assuming we had the means and permission to go way beyond the SE norms, could we insert a functional 256x256 square, like so?

I'm not married to Tetris.  But surely we could insert some google-doodle caliber interactive widget.  A rotating selection of 8-bit classics with high score lists would be ideal.

I enjoy this idea but I don't see it happening... But I'd be happy to be wrong :P

To what purpose? This feels more like it should be on Arqade.

@JoshPetrie You may be right.  When the idea formed in my head, I liked it for the exercise of crafting these things.  Some sort of display of user-uploaded creations.  The code could be freely visible, as an example for requests like "how to make pong?"  Obviously, that notion quickly spiraled even further outside feasibility.  But the game widget part stuck.

@JoshPetrie makes a valid point as usual. The gamer nerd inside me was to excited to realize the obvious he so kindly pointed out.

Did you need to make the mock up include "Byte56 is totally trolling you"? :p It could be like the photography SE, where user images are featured in the theme. Users could submit their little games they made, to be featured as you show in the mock up.


text:
How does meta reputation work, especially when I get reputation removed in main?
So today I get a boost to reputation and then it was taken back. Looks like it has something to do with sock puppet accounts mentioned in another question: Removing sock puppet accounts
I visited meta before and noticed that I have the same reputation as in main. Now after the reputation on main got removed, I still have the higher number here in meta.
How does reputation on meta work? Is it the maximum reputation ever reached? Asking out of sheer curiosity.

OT, feel free to ignore: Also I noticed that stackoverflow meta has separate login from main. So I guess the reputation there works differently?

From my understanding they try to stay in sync but it takes a while for changes on main to migrate to meta.

Relevant Blog Post : http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/new-per-site-metas/
Like Tetrad said in his comment, it takes about a day, there are processes that run that sync data across. The point is that the higher your involvement in the main site, the greater your stake and your meta reputation should reflect that.
Meta StackOverflow is a bit different though

For now we are leaving meta.stackoverflow.com grandfathered in, as-is, with no changes; it’s still a standalone community with a standalone reputation system. We think Stack Overflow is large enough to justify this, and it just so happens that Stack Overflow is also the name of the company, too. Meta Stack Overflow will serve as the “National Capital” where we process feedback not just for Stack Overflow but for the core engine itself — while the smaller meta sites are akin to regional or state capitals. So, in a nutshell:

Of course, this is in the process of changing as well : The future of meta.stackoverflow and meta.stackexchange

The blog made it quite clear. Thanks


text:
Missing whitespace for title in tag wikis

The image explains it all - feels like it needs some padding / margin from top.
The only concern I have, is, whether this whitespace is lost due to the information box about priviledges below.


text:
Policy on trolling
How to implement artificial intelligence and gravity for enemies in a platformer?
We've got someone using a famous meme username posting rather clear "meant to cause someone a headache" questions and respected members of the community apparently falling for it.  It's not a huge or disruptive problem so I figure voting to close and/or downvoting should be enough, but there isn't a clear policy I can see on the site here.  Maybe it's better for the community to flag the questions for deletion and the account for suspension.
Some existing Meta posts from other SE sites on the topic I found:

How should "humorous" trolling be handled?
SOFU definition of "Troll"
https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3037/what-to-do-about-troll-users

What should our policy here be?

Huh, I didn't feel like I was falling for a troll. Felt like most beginners with strong opinions on things they know nothing about.  :)

@Byte56: Yeah, I think that's his goal.  Just plausible enough to sound like an inexperienced student but just ridiculous/cocky enough to make you want to smash your head into your desk.  Maybe I'm more prone to beating my head into things than you are, though. :)

The easiest policy is to just judge the questions as they come in. Downvotes and close votes (where appropriate) will suffice. A ban is bound to kick in pretty soon for real trolls. Even more so if the questions come in rapid succession.
If the user is particularly abusive you could flag for moderator attention, perhaps using the "other" option to explain the situation. But I would reserve that for particularly persistent users (those would create new accounts for example, after being banned) and any situation the community really can't handle. Generally they will run out of steam however. Particularly when you don't engage them or egg them on.
So I don't think there is a need for a separate policy, other than "evaluate like you normally would".