Make MFGG More Wonderful

[Q-Nova]

I know this may be old news, but I'd like to say some things:

Make the site less Windows-centric: Something I'm working on!

Is this saying that the site should be mobile-friendly? Because I think non-Windows desktop computers (e.g. Linux) would be able to browse MFGG alright, unless if it's referring to the games, which are indeed pretty Windows-centric, mainly because of the dominance of Clickteam and GameMaker.

Make queued submissions viewable: I don't think it makes sense to make other users' queued submissions publicly visible, unless I'm misunderstanding this suggestion

I know VGMusic allowed you to view queued submissions, although I think it works there in part because the submissions are just MIDI files. Meanwhile, in MFGG, if submissions were publicly visible, someone could upload a game filled with malware and easily wreck hundreds of computers, or upload NSFW sprites. Not sure what the likelihood of that happening is, though.

A generator of game ideas: That would be interesting to see

Back in the phpBB era, Cap'n Coconuts made an awesome Mario fangame idea generator along with a crossover game equivalent. It's no longer up unfortunately, but I'd love to see someone bring it back, and maybe even make it part of the MFGG domain! I remember people (myself included) getting some surprisingly neat ideas from those generators.

Game design tutorials: We have a lot of those, but we don't get a lot of those nowadays - I don't see one newer than 2021

They might be referring to tutorials that are more in-depth and give you a step-by-step guide on how to do something, rather than just offer you a project file to look into. Might be something like what the tutorials the old YoYoGames Sandbox website had. RetroX's GML guide on MFGG is also a good example of that. Could also be tutorials on how to make a good game, like what the first tutorial in the aforementioned website is about (which is actually pretty well-written I must say), although I'm not sure how easy that would be to make considering the broadness of game design. Personally, I have trouble coming up with stuff to say in this forum's Game Design Discussion Thread. That might just be me, though.

I hope that having more events and competitions will help stimulate activity on the forums. They're not exactly hopping, but we've made progress since last year, when one month had a grand total of four posts!

I hope the events won't stop! You guys had them going for a while there, and activity on the forums was doing alright, but now it seems that events have come to a halt for the most part.

Someone suggested putting tutorials on the forums. There's nothing stopping people from sharing tutorials and game design advice on the forums, and if there's anything that can be done to make the forums more conducive to that purpose, please speak up!

I feel like one of the downsides of switching forum software and not migrating the posts is losing the tutorials and guides. The phpBB forum had plenty of good tutorials, such as Guinea's fangame FAQ, Cap'n Coconuts' review guide, and Mit's spriting dictionary. I guess one could just post them in this forum with the author credited, and maybe have some touch-ups. It doesn't hurt to have new tutorials, however, even if it's an already covered subject!

Iso Collab

It would be fun to do another one! The last one turned out pretty well, although I kinda wish it was bigger, with more tiles.

Mario vs. the World

I sometimes wonder when will this event come, assuming it will ever happen.

Themed competitions based on anniversaries or birthdays (for example, a Super Show-themed drawing comp if it was Lou Albano's birthday)

This sounds like an interesting idea. For example, we could've done a Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door-style competition this year, since it's the 20th anniversary of that game, not to mention the Switch remake came out pretty recently!

While I don't do too much with MFGG anymore, I hope my not-very-secret secret project will help breathe some new life into the mainsite.

Is this the browser game implementation you've done recently? Or do you have something else in the works?

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!