Return of the Drafting Room

[MrBenn]

Hello Foundry-goers,

Now that we're in a 'New(ish) Foundry', you may see some minor changes around the place...


The draft stamp has already seen a return to service in the first of the new breed of SuperSize maps. To accompany the draft stamp, the Drafting Room has also been reopened. Over the next few days and weeks, thenobodies80 and I will move promising ideas from the melting pot into the drafting room while mapmakers can flesh out their map drafts and work towards having a design brief approved.

The Melting Pot and Recycling bin now sit as subforums within the Drafting Room; eventually the Recycling Bin will only contain map threads that have been put on vacation or abandoned, while the Melting Pot will be the breeding ground for suggestions and ideas. For the most part this is the case, but there are plenty of threads in the recycling bin that don;t actually contain the whiff of a map draft!

That's about all for now, although there are one or two other things that are in the pipeline.

--MrBenn

[natty dread]

Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this change. What was wrong with the old system? You're just complicating the forum structure again...

Well, I'll withhold judgement until we see how this new(ish) structure works in practice.

Glad to see the draft stamp back though!

[Victor Sullivan]

Hmm, I feel the same as natty, but it's nice to see the pretty red stamp back in action!

So, I still don't fully understand... What determines what goes from the melting pot to the drafting room?

[MrBenn]

It's primarily a way of distinguishing between projects that are actively being worked on and developed, and those that aren't.

[Victor Sullivan]

It's primarily a way of distinguishing between projects that are actively being worked on and developed, and those that aren't.

Ah, so basically the stickied Melting Pot maps before would be in the Drafting Room instead? Or what, exactly?

[natty dread]

Isn't this basically the same we had in 2009?

[Victor Sullivan]

Is 2011 "Flashback Year" or something, then? I'd love to break out some eighties fashion.

[TaCktiX]

Yes, it is. Thing is, a LOT of time is spent in the mapmaking process in the Gameplay Workshop. Under the Melting Pot system, anything with a couple of decent drafts and a mapmaker who was sticking to it would get first a sticky and then a pass. That was our job. Maps that hit Gameplay were anywhere in a very large range of possible progress, some equivalent to the old Drafting Room, some equivalent to the old Main Foundry, pre-Gameplay stamp. In other words, it was more work for the CA's to sort through twice as many maps in one workshop when having two workshops would put the workload back where it used to be. With the new division of labor is makes more sense to return to the Drafting Room. It's not nostalgia, it's practicality.

[ender516]

If the reorganization makes it easier to find active projects among mere notions of a map, then bravo. Say, if the Recycling Bin has stuff that really has little to no value, perhaps it needs a subforum of its own: the Compost Heap.

[MrBenn]

Identifying and moving threads around is a task that is going to take more time than any of the CAs have available right now, but it's certainly something that is on my list of things to do. I think there are probably lots of ideas within the recycling bin that could be put back into the melting pot - in the long term I see the recycling bin being a place where people can go to revive forgotten or abandoned map projects (a bit like the abandoned tournament forum)

[Victor Sullivan]

Identifying and moving threads around is a task that is going to take more time than any of the CAs have available right now...

Add a temporary volunteer to do the menial tasks that all you other guys are too preoccupied to do. In the words of the Cable Guy, "Get'r done!"

[natty dread]

On the subject of drafting room:

The quick reply function doesn't seem to be working in the drafting room. I hope it can be enabled, I find it convenient when I only need to post shortly & without quotes...

[grifftron]

Well, I MYSELF am very excited to see the return of the drafting room, as i like more stamps! and i think all the men in blue are doing a great job, i have had no complications or problems with any of the men in blue... just do the work, get er done and listen to what people have to say and all else will fall into place.

-griff

[MrBenn]

On the subject of drafting room:

The quick reply function doesn't seem to be working in the drafting room. I hope it can be enabled, I find it convenient when I only need to post shortly & without quotes...

I've been informed that this should be fixed now.

However, I've also discovered that people cannot start new threads in the drafting room - this may explain why there haven't been any new threads started in there since the change!

<goes to feed the monkey some more bananas>

[Victor Sullivan]

On the subject of drafting room:

The quick reply function doesn't seem to be working in the drafting room. I hope it can be enabled, I find it convenient when I only need to post shortly & without quotes...

I've been informed that this should be fixed now.

However, I've also discovered that people cannot start new threads in the drafting room - this may explain why there haven't been any new threads started in there since the change!

<goes to feed the monkey some more bananas>

I thought we weren't supposed to make threads in the Drafting Room anyways. Aren't we supposed to start in the Melting Pot?

[natty dread]

Only if there's no draft ready. Threads with just an idea of a map go to melting pot, threads with a map image can be posted straight to the drafting room.

At least, that's the way it worked before.

[Victor Sullivan]

Ah, okay then. Have the Foundry Guidelines been updated for the "new" system?

[isaiah40]

We are working on things like this, so please be patient as we get things ironed out and so on and so forth. With two of us living in Europe and the rest of us here in different time zones, it will take a little while for us to get together and talk things over and then get things done. But rest assured we are working hard to better your foundry experience!