I suspect 2021 will be a huge year for communities on Hive. Both in the form of features that will get rolled out to them and by the number of people who end up using them. The Game Development community has recently surpassed 100 subscribers and this has been one of our most active weeks since starting this a couple of months back.
Recently PeakD announced many improvements coming to the community feature. Some of them have been out for a little while now and others have received updates for a better overall user experience.
Today I enabled two of the biggest features: preferred topics (really just a way to help organize posts in a community), and Bee Chat. As more community features get rolled out by PeakD and Hive core developers in general I’ll be evaluating them. Many of the features will be enabled if they look useful and we will give them a try.
Bee Chat
While many when I first started this community expressed wanting a Discord that was just not something I wanted. I did not want just another Discord community where everything happens on Discord and nothing on the actual blockchain itself.
I’m sure we all have endless dead Discords that we have been in the past and things that you wish were on the blockchain such as game development resources, answers to tough questions, and solutions are now lost forever when those discords shut down.
I have many reasons for wanting a Hive-related solution for a chat. Which as many of you know is something called BeeChat. While it is quiet in the early stages it has now been rolled out as an option for communities to enable.
Keep in mind that BeeChat channels are public that anyone with a Hive account can join. They are also not encrypted. You should never post any sensitive data into them.
For those that wanted a place to chat you now have one. You just need to click on the Chat (new) button and it should open the Game Development chat channel. I still need to look into something things regarding it.
Preferred Topics
Despite what the name says they are just a way to help organize up to 10 different tags within a community. They are not required to use. Do expect them to change over time depending on usage and importance to the community.
If you feel there is a more important topic that should be one of the ten listed please let me know along with what tag you think it should replace.
By including one of the tags below in a post you make to the Game Development community it will show up under them. Please only use them if you feel they are relevant to the tag.
Art
While there are several different kinds of tags being used for art-related game development posts. I’m going with a more generic “art” tag. Sorry, I can’t include subcategories as I know there are lots of different styles of art that make up games.
This topic could be used for:
- 2d modeling
- 3d modeling
- Pixel artwork
- Photorealism
- And so on.
Blockchain
With our community being on the Hive blockchain I suspect there will be quite a lot of interest around these kinds of games. Many may be coming here to see what is in development. While others are looking for information on making their own blockchain game.
This topic could be used for:
- Games being developed as blockchain games on Hive or other blockchains
- Information on how to make a blockchain game
Game-design
This is one of those topics where a whole gambit of things could fall under it. As such I’m going to leave it wide open.
Game-release
Over time our community members will get to the development phase of a game being released. As such, I felt it would be nice to have an easy way to find all those games. Along with a way to help promote released games by community members.
This topic could be used for:
- Game release announcements.
Help
Help will be a place to try and get help if you are stuck, have questions, or looking for further assistance regarding game development.
There have been several people when I first announced this community that said they will do their best to help answer game development released questions when they can. This will make it easier for those posts to be found and hopefully get an answer.
This would also be an acceptable place to get help with alpha or beta testing a game. In the past I know we have had some games looking for testers. Hopefully, this will help guide that a little better.
This topic could be used for:
- Asking questions
- Finding alpha/beta testers
Programming
Many have shown interest in wanting to learn more about game development related to programming. Many are also work on just the programming side of game development.
This topic could be used for:
- Talking about/showcasing programming in your game
- C# and other programming languages as it relates to game development
Storytelling
There are a couple of different ways this tag could end up getting used. A big part of many games is the storytelling that goes on in them. The other possible type of post here could be stories regarding being a game developer in general.
This topic could be used for:
- Storytelling in a game
- Real-life stories of being a game developer
Tutorial
With this being a game development community, a place for tutorials to be easily found by community members is something I consider high on the list. Some make this kind of content they might just not be using this tag in their posts.
This topic could be used for:
Game development software
Programming
Game mechanics
How to market a game
Programming guides
And so on
Workinprogress
While I think it’s easy to say most content in this community can be considered work in progress (WIP) as people share their game development journey in their current projects. A tag for people to share and possibly even get feedback if that is something they are looking for seems fittings.
This topic could be used for:
- Unfinished things you are working on in a game
Worldbuilding
This community has several individuals that partake in world-building and sharing their experiences. While most are not using that tag I thought I would give this one a try and see if it’s worth keeping around.
This one will more than likely change as it seems cross-posts do not show up under it. For anyone not in the know, there is already a World building community run by a different group of individuals and we sometimes share/cross-post content. They are however not limited to just game development such as our community.
Note about Preferred Topics
There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using a tag to end up in the preferred topics section.
You still need to be posting in the Game Development community for it to show up under one of the preferred topic tags.
Sadly it seems cross-posts do not currently show up on these topics.
These topics will be subject to change.
You can change a tag on an older post you made in the Game Development community and it will show up under one of the new preferred topic categories.
While I tried to list a couple of examples for each preferred topics category to make it easier to understand possible content that could be under them. It is not an all-inclusive list and there will be lots of content that will fall under them.
Final Thoughts
Thank you to everyone that has chosen to use this community to share the game development-related stuff you are working on. Do expect more community features to be enabled in the future as they become available.
Other Content
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar.
This is pretty cool stuff. Was wondering why those tags were showing up as suggestions in our latest post. 😀
Thank you for creating this community and inviting us to it. It has been a pleasure so far. Very encouraging to see what everyone else is doing as well as getting feedback ourselves.
Hive is always a constantly changing place. Who knows what changes next month will bring.
Thanks for sharing your journey. We seem to be slowly gaining several weekly posters now which is great to see.
That is great. We are really trying to post weekly but it is not so easy. Haha. That is actually what our latest post talks about. Tough to be consistent sometimes.
Hive is a super active platform/community and it is awesome to see. Really enjoying it a lot so far.
Great place to see what games people are working on! :)
Well done especially on the side of differentiating the parts of gamedev beetwen art, programming and showcase. There's so much to it that having a further catagorization might help a lot!
Greetings @enjar, as I have mentioned before and there I agree with you, this will be a big year for our blockchain both in the form of features that will be implemented, but also in the amount of people that end up using them. Success with your work and indeed outside of discord specifically within HIVE more value is given to the platform.