Latest revision as of 17:06, 22 September 2008

PZ Archive Proposal

I propose that in addition to the standard archive for ProZone games, each game would have a wiki article written about it. I expect that PZ games will be fewer in number, and more detailed, than our public server games, so the overhead of the extra wiki page should not be too extreme. Additionally, the level of communication expected of PZ builders is higher than average, so all should be willing to share their thoughts on the game.

The purpose of the wiki article is to provide players with greater detail about the game's purpose, it's problems, and it's potential. By highlighting specific areas of the game, we can use the experience of the builders to educate the community on proper building styles, new concepts, special constructions, and other advanced topics that may not be apparent when loading the savegame. We could discuss how we decided upon the plan, what worked, what didn't, and what changes we had to make to address problems that arose.

For example, let's say that PZ does an ECS game. The plan calls for single drop stations for all cargo types. When the incoming cargo becomes too much for the station (due to a low production rate at that industry), we have to do something else with it. The wiki article will discuss what choices we made, why we made them, and what we might want to try in the future. That way, the next time we do an ECS game, new and old PZ members can have access to this article, learn in advance what kinds of problems arise, and then work to improve upon the previous game.

Each article would contain screenshots of important locations in the game, including new station and track designs, wonderfully (or awfully) made hubs, interesting eye-candy, or anything else worth screenshotting. All builders would be encouraged (and expected) to provide their viewpoint on the game in this article. Of high importance would be a "What I would have done differently?" section, where each builder would provide information on one or more problems they ran across and answer the question.

Thoughts? -- Thraxian 19:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a great idea, Thraxian. It would be simple enough to add an auto-generated link to the template that would go to a dedicated "post mortem" page for that game. If no one objects, I could add that very easily.

However, we still need to know where the pro-zone games will be stored when they are archived. I don't know where the games are so I can't fix the template to link to them. --Rob 17:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)