From vanevery@blarg.net Thu May 14 23:00:05 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Brandon Van Every Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games Subject: RFD: comp.games.development.* Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <895211921.5078@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 05:58:42 GMT Lines: 165 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10085 news.groups:283204 rec.games.programmer:147019 rec.games.design:23800 comp.graphics.animation:50506 comp.graphics.misc:26109 comp.ai.games:9984 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.gameplay unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.tools (renames rec.games.programmer) This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroups comp.games.development.*. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below. CHANGES from previous RFD: The previous 2 RFD's appeared with the following title: "RFD: rec.games.programmer.* reorganization" rec.games.programmer.* hierarchy was replaced with the comp.games.development.* hierarchy. Appropriate verbiage was added to the rationale for all groups. Softening of comp.games.development.art charter to be more permissive about tools and techniques discussions, but still primarily focused on the creative aspects of game art. Newsgroup lines: comp.games.development.art Artistic visual/audio creativity. comp.games.development.gameplay How to make a GOOD computer game. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.tools Tools used for games projects. RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Efforts to create a hierarchy off of rec.games.programmer.* met with some resistance, because artistic/creative activities are not programmer activities and the nomenclature didn't make sense. With regards to the proposed rec.games.programmer.art, one person said "Nobody's sure what programmer art is, but it is generally agreed that it is bad." Also rec.games.art was deemed inappropriate as it does not specifically imply computer art, much as rec.games.design does not specifically imply computer games. comp.games.development.* is squarely focused on computer games. *.development is also a more general purpose term than *.programmer. Modern commercial games development encompasses artists, musicians, and business people, not just games programmers. Finally, we use comp.games.development.* instead of simply comp.games.* so that non-programmer games newsgroups can be tacked onto the hierarchy later if need be. But at present the existing non-programmer hierarchies such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.* aren't broken, so there's no need to fix them. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual/audio aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.gameplay All the artwork, sound, programming, and marketing in the world do not make a game, let alone a good game. We need a newsgroup to specifically discuss the most critical and intangible aspect of games development, namely: why do we bother to call this thing a *GAME* ? CHARTER: comp.games.development.gameplay Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of games development. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.tools Most of the posts on r.g.p are about technical programming issues. And as much as we'd like "religious" or "advocacy" posts to find their own home somewhere else, cross-posting ensures that they never will. So rather than try to fight the inevitable, we put all the technical programming discussion - good or bad - in 1 newsgroup. This will hopefully steer excessive technical talk away from the *.art, *.gameplay, and *.industry newsgroups. CHARTER: comp.games.development.tools For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming tools used in games development. END CHARTER. PROCEDURE: This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it. Please do not attempt to vote until this happens. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the process. DISTRIBUTION: This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design, comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games Proponent: Brandon Van Every From vanevery@blarg.net Tue May 19 05:15:08 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Brandon Van Every Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games Subject: RFD: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <895579669.5048@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 12:07:49 GMT Lines: 236 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10093 news.groups:283849 rec.games.programmer:147518 rec.games.design:23898 comp.graphics.animation:50595 comp.graphics.misc:26208 comp.ai.games:10002 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) unmoderated group comp.games.development.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.gameplay unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.tools (renames rec.games.programmer) This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of a world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroups comp.games.development.*. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below. CHANGES from previous RFD: Added comp.games.development.algorithms. In light of *.algorithms, modified the rationale for comp.games.development.tools. Clarified its role as an advocacy newsgroup. Extended the "all groups" rationale for comp.games.development.*, explaining why it's a good idea to keep the deeper *.development hierarchy and not simply cut it off at comp.games.*. Added reference to Gamasutra to support the claim that *.art will receive sufficient traffic. No other changes. This is version 4 and we've been discussing for several weeks. This will be my final proposal unless someone comes up with a serious objection to the layout, not just a minor tweak on the style of the hierarchy design. There are many possible ways to put together a hierarchy to cover a set of topics, and thanks to the input of many people, this is at last looking like a reasonable one. This proposal was registered with the Usenet Volunteer Voters (UVV) on May 16, 1998, and a Call For Votes (CFV) will most likely be issued 10 days later. Newsgroup lines: comp.games.development.algorithms Algorithms used in games projects. comp.games.development.art Artistic visual/audio creativity. comp.games.development.gameplay How to make a GOOD computer game. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.tools Tools used for games projects. RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Efforts to create a hierarchy off of rec.games.programmer.* met with some resistance, because artistic/creative activities are not programmer activities and the nomenclature didn't make sense. With regards to the proposed rec.games.programmer.art, one person said "Nobody's sure what programmer art is, but it is generally agreed that it is bad." Also rec.games.art was deemed inappropriate as it does not specifically imply computer art, much as rec.games.design does not specifically imply computer games. comp.games.development.* is squarely focused on computer games. *.development is also a more general purpose term than *.programmer. Modern commercial games development encompasses artists, musicians, and business people, not just games programmers. Finally, we use comp.games.development.* instead of simply comp.games.* so that non-programmer games newsgroups can be tacked onto the hierarchy later if need be. But at present the existing non-programmer hierarchies such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.* aren't broken, so there's no need to fix them. Also, we wish to clearly distinguish between general discussion of computer games, and discussion appropriate to games developers. It is not in the best interest of the games development community to forego the *.development prefix, as the groups would likely be co-opted by advocates of various commercial games. We would be forever explaining to people that it's supposed to be a *development* hierarchy, they would be forever saying "but it's just comp.games.*," and we wouldn't win because there are more of them than us. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.tools isn't the right group, as a question on 3D matrix algorithms is not obviously a "tools" question. *.algorithms is also general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.)=20 CHARTER: comp.games.development.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation, but in the real world of games programming we must always deal with implementation, so discussion of implementation-specific issues is condoned. Please, however, use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms or *.tools. The distinction is sometimes grey, but more often it is not. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" do not belong in *.algorithms. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual/audio aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.gameplay All the artwork, sound, programming, and marketing in the world do not make a game, let alone a good game. We need a newsgroup to specifically discuss the most critical and intangible aspect of games development, namely: why do we bother to call this thing a *GAME* ? CHARTER: comp.games.development.gameplay Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of games development. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.tools Most of the posts on r.g.p are about programming tools issues. Some discussions are fruitful, and others are endless (and IMHO pointless) debates about "whether OpenGL or Direct3D is better," "whether Java should be used in games," "which C++ compiler is better," etc. And as much as we'd like "religious" or "advocacy" posts to find their own home somewhere else, cross-posting ensures that they never will. So rather than try to fight the inevitable, we put all the tools - good or bad - in 1 newsgroup. This will hopefully steer excessive advocacy talk away from the *.algorithms, *.art, *.gameplay, and *.industry newsgroups. *.tools is really our version of an advocacy newsgroup. Because low-quality advocacy discussion always follows any serious discussion of the merits of various tools, there's really no point in trying to create a separate *.advocacy newsgroup.=20 CHARTER: comp.games.development.tools For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming tools used in games development. END CHARTER. PROCEDURE: This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it. Please do not attempt to vote until this happens. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the process. DISTRIBUTION: This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design, comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games Proponent: Brandon Van Every From vanevery@blarg.net Sun Jun 7 20:16:50 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Brandon Van Every Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.music.makers Subject: 6th RFD: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <897275376.16312@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 03:09:37 GMT Lines: 341 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10170 news.groups:286985 rec.games.programmer:150339 rec.games.design:24447 comp.graphics.animation:51058 comp.graphics.misc:26638 comp.ai.games:10173 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:26642 rec.music.makers:69312 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.music unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroups comp.games.development.*. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below. CHANGES from previous RFD: Reinstated *.development.* prefix. Renamed *.audio to *.music. Rewrote the charter for *.music to be more focused on musicians and creativity, rather than sound engineers and programmers. Added verbiage to rationale. Changed newsgroup line to emphasize creativity and be parallel with *.art. Added comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music and rec.music.makers to the RFD distribution so that interested parties will have a chance to read the proposal and vote on it. Slight rephrasing of comp.games.development.programming.misc charter to make it clear that discussion on any games programming topic is condoned. This is what was intended in the previous charter, but the language was slightly unclear. Changed a few newsgroup lines. No other changes. The 1st version of this RFD was posted on May 5th, 1998. This is the 6th version and was submitted for posting on June 5, 1998. Unless serious disagreements surface, a request for a Call For Votes (CFV) will be submitted 10 days hence. Voting will follow soon after. Newsgroup lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.music Creative use of music/sound in games. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.music comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.music A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. They would like a group to call their own. We already have groups covering the technical aspects of sound production such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.*, we don't need to duplicate those offerings here. Instead, this group is intended to have a more creative focus, much like the *.art group. Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of music-related traffic. To quantify the music traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 music articles per day, with a massive increase in music topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.music will get traffic. As *.music is a logical group breakdown, and various music people have complained that they don't want to be lumped under *.art, it seems reasonable to give them their own group. CHARTER: comp.games.development.music For the discussion of music, sound, and/or noise as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, and engineering issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of music and sound, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please keep conversation focused on games, please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion, and please don't turn this into yet-another-programming newsgroup. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. PROCEDURE: This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it. Please do not attempt to vote until this happens. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the process. DISTRIBUTION: This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design, comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games, comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.music.makers Proponent: Brandon Van Every From vanevery@blarg.net Sun Jun 14 19:30:08 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Brandon Van Every Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.music.makers Subject: 7th RFD: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <897877481.15423@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 02:24:42 GMT Lines: 357 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10192 news.groups:287972 rec.games.programmer:151449 rec.games.design:24604 comp.graphics.animation:51230 comp.graphics.misc:26771 comp.ai.games:10247 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:26834 rec.music.makers:69476 REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This is a formal Request For Discussion (RFD) for the creation of world-wide unmoderated Usenet newsgroups comp.games.development.*. This is not a Call for Votes (CFV); you cannot vote at this time. Procedural details are below. CHANGES from previous RFD: Reinstated *.development.* prefix. Renamed *.music to *.audio. Rewrote the charter for *.audio to be evenly balanced between creative and technical concerns, and to include specific mention of speech synthesis, sound effects, and real-time sound synthesis. Changed newsgroup line. Rephrased rationale, added a paragraph about the Computer Games Developer Conference's audio offerings. Clarified in comp.games.development.design RATIONALE that rec.games.design is not being changed or even addressed by this proposal in any way whatsoever. More than one Usenet poster was confused on this point. No other changes. Other than changing *.music to *.audio, nobody had any serious issues. Apparently all major problems with this proposal have been solved, as discussion has almost completely died. The 1st version of this RFD was posted on May 5th, 1998. This is the 7th version and was submitted for posting on June 11, 1998. A request for a Call For Votes (CFV) will be submitted 10 days hence. Voting will follow soon after. Newsgroup lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming. RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. PROCEDURE: This is a request for discussion, not a call for votes. In this phase of the process, any potential problems with the proposed newsgroups should be raised and resolved. The discussion period will continue for a minimum of 21 days (starting from when the first RFD for this proposal is posted to news.announce.newgroups), after which a Call For Votes (CFV) may be posted by a neutral vote taker if the discussion warrants it. Please do not attempt to vote until this happens. All discussion of this proposal should be posted to news.groups. This RFD attempts to comply fully with the Usenet newsgroup creation guidelines outlined in "How to Create a New Usenet Newsgroup" and "How to Format and Submit a New Group Proposal". Please refer to these documents (available in news.announce.newgroups) if you have any questions about the process. DISTRIBUTION: This RFD has been posted to the following newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,rec.games.programmer,rec.games.design,co mp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.ai.games,comp.sys.ibm.pc.sound card.music,rec.music.makers Proponent: Brandon Van Every From neilc@stanford.edu Thu Jun 25 14:45:13 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Reply-To: voting@uvv.stanford.edu Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: CFV: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: poster Message-ID: <898810896.6454@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Expires: 17 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMT Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 21:41:36 GMT Lines: 403 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10235 news.groups:288813 comp.ai.games:10362 comp.graphics.animation:51420 comp.graphics.misc:27021 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27098 rec.games.design:24999 rec.games.programmer:152824 rec.music.makers:69612 FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This CFV is to be distributed only by the votetaker. It is not to be posted to newsgroups, or mailed to mailing lists or individuals, except by the votetaker. Ballots or CFVs provided by anyone else will be invalid. Note on spamblocked addresses: The votetaker for this vote requires a valid return address in order for your vote to be acknowledged and recorded. Easily demunged addresses may be accepted at the votetakers discretion, but it is the voters responsibility to ensure they recieve their vote acknowledgement to know their vote has been recorded. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: READ THIS BEFORE VOTING The purpose of a Usenet vote is to determine the genuine interest in reading the proposed newsgroup, and soliciting votes from uninterested parties defeats this purpose. Do *not* distribute this CFV; intead, direct people to the official CFV as posted to news.announce.newgroups. Distributing specific voting instructions or pre-marked copies of this CFV is considered vote fraud. THIS IS A PUBLIC VOTE: ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES, NAMES AND VOTES WILL BE LISTED IN THE FINAL RESULT POST. THE NAME USED MAY BE EITHER A REAL NAME OR AN ESTABLISHED USENET HANDLE. At most one vote is allowed per person or per account. Duplicate votes will be resolved in favor of the most recent valid vote. Voters must mail their ballots directly to the votetaker. Anonymous, forwarded, or proxy votes are not valid, nor are votes mailed from WWW/HTML/CGI forms (which should not exist). Votes from nonexistent accounts are also invalid, and the votetaker will reject any "munged" address he cannot decipher immediately. Please direct any questions to the votetaker at . HOW TO VOTE: Extract the ballot from the CFV by deleting everything before and after the "BEGINNING OF BALLOT" and "END OF BALLOT" lines. Don't worry about the spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts. Please, DO NOT send the entire CFV back to me! Fill in the ballot as shown below. Please provide your REAL NAME and indicate your desired vote in the appropriate locations inside the ballot. Examples of how to properly indicate your vote: [ YES ] example.yes.vote [ NO ] example.no.vote [ ABSTAIN ] example.abstention [ CANCEL ] example.cancellation DO NOT modify, alter or delete any information in this ballot! If you do, the voting software will probably reject your ballot. When finished, MAIL the ballot to: < voting@uvv.stanford.edu > Just "replying" to this message should work, but check the "To:" line. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your vote within three days contact the votetaker about the problem. You are responsible for reading your ack and making sure your vote is registered correctly. If these instructions are unclear, please consult the Introduction to Usenet Voting or the Usenet Voting FAQ at http://www.stanford.edu/~neilc/uvv. ======== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything before this line ======= .----------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1ST CALL FOR VOTES: comp.games.development.* hierarchy | Official Usenet Voting Ballot (Do not remove this line!) |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Please provide your real name, or your vote may be rejected. Place | ONLY your name (ie. do NOT include your e-mail address or any other | information; ONLY your name) after the colon on the following line: Voter name: | Insert YES, NO, ABSTAIN, or CANCEL inside the brackets for each | newsgroup listed below (do not delete the newsgroup name): Your Vote Newsgroup --------- ----------------------------------------------------------- [ ] comp.games.development.art [ ] comp.games.development.audio [ ] comp.games.development.design [ ] comp.games.development.industry [ ] comp.games.development.programming.algorithms [ ] comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) ======== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything after this line ============== This CFV was created with uvpq 1.0 (Aug 14 1997). PQ datestamp: 980322 -- Voting address: voting@uvv.stanford.edu From neilc@stanford.edu Mon Jul 6 12:30:09 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Reply-To: voting@uvv.stanford.edu Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: 2nd CFV: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: poster Message-ID: <899752945.135@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> Supersedes: <898810896.6454@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Expires: 17 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMT Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 19:22:25 GMT Lines: 409 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10260 news.groups:289791 comp.ai.games:10451 comp.graphics.animation:51647 comp.graphics.misc:27194 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27286 rec.games.design:25207 rec.games.programmer:153905 rec.music.makers:69715 LAST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This CFV is to be distributed only by the votetaker. It is not to be posted to newsgroups, or mailed to mailing lists or individuals, except by the votetaker. Ballots or CFVs provided by anyone else will be invalid. Note on spamblocked addresses: The votetaker for this vote requires a valid return address in order for your vote to be acknowledged and recorded. Easily demunged addresses may be accepted at the votetakers discretion, but it is the voters responsibility to ensure they recieve their vote acknowledgement to know their vote has been recorded. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: READ THIS BEFORE VOTING The purpose of a Usenet vote is to determine the genuine interest in reading the proposed newsgroup, and soliciting votes from uninterested parties defeats this purpose. Do *not* distribute this CFV; intead, direct people to the official CFV as posted to news.announce.newgroups. Distributing specific voting instructions or pre-marked copies of this CFV is considered vote fraud. THIS IS A PUBLIC VOTE: ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES, NAMES AND VOTES WILL BE LISTED IN THE FINAL RESULT POST. THE NAME USED MAY BE EITHER A REAL NAME OR AN ESTABLISHED USENET HANDLE. At most one vote is allowed per person or per account. Duplicate votes will be resolved in favor of the most recent valid vote. Voters must mail their ballots directly to the votetaker. Anonymous, forwarded, or proxy votes are not valid, nor are votes mailed from WWW/HTML/CGI forms (which should not exist). Votes from nonexistent accounts are also invalid, and the votetaker will reject any "munged" address he cannot decipher immediately. Please direct any questions to the votetaker at . HOW TO VOTE: Extract the ballot from the CFV by deleting everything before and after the "BEGINNING OF BALLOT" and "END OF BALLOT" lines. Don't worry about the spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts. Please, DO NOT send the entire CFV back to me! Fill in the ballot as shown below. Please provide your REAL NAME and indicate your desired vote in the appropriate locations inside the ballot. Examples of how to properly indicate your vote: [ YES ] example.yes.vote [ NO ] example.no.vote [ ABSTAIN ] example.abstention [ CANCEL ] example.cancellation DO NOT modify, alter or delete any information in this ballot! If you do, the voting software will probably reject your ballot. When finished, MAIL the ballot to: < voting@uvv.stanford.edu > Just "replying" to this message should work, but check the "To:" line. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your vote within three days contact the votetaker about the problem. You are responsible for reading your ack and making sure your vote is registered correctly. If these instructions are unclear, please consult the Introduction to Usenet Voting or the Usenet Voting FAQ at http://www.stanford.edu/~neilc/uvv. ======== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything before this line ======= .----------------------------------------------------------------------- | 2ND CALL FOR VOTES: comp.games.development.* hierarchy | Official Usenet Voting Ballot (Do not remove this line!) |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Please provide your real name, or your vote may be rejected. Place | ONLY your name (ie. do NOT include your e-mail address or any other | information; ONLY your name) after the colon on the following line: Voter name: | Insert YES, NO, ABSTAIN, or CANCEL inside the brackets for each | newsgroup listed below (do not delete the newsgroup name): Your Vote Newsgroup --------- ----------------------------------------------------------- [ ] comp.games.development.art [ ] comp.games.development.audio [ ] comp.games.development.design [ ] comp.games.development.industry [ ] comp.games.development.programming.algorithms [ ] comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) ======== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything after this line ============== comp.games.development.* hierarchy Bounce List - Please contact me about your vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ldubb@u.washington.edu L. Dubb mkissin@-REMOVETHIS-ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin REMOVE_THIS.Ralf.Schneider@goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider This CFV was created with uvpq 1.0 (Aug 14 1997). PQ datestamp: 980322 -- Voting address: voting@uvv.stanford.edu From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 14 05:39:16 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Reply-To: voting@uvv.stanford.edu Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: 2nd CFV: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: poster Message-ID: <900419934.10582@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> Supersedes: <898810896.6454@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Expires: 17 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMT Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 19:22:25 GMT Lines: 409 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10304 news.groups:290600 comp.ai.games:10511 comp.graphics.animation:51832 comp.graphics.misc:27341 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27414 rec.games.design:25354 rec.games.programmer:155052 rec.music.makers:69831 LAST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This CFV is to be distributed only by the votetaker. It is not to be posted to newsgroups, or mailed to mailing lists or individuals, except by the votetaker. Ballots or CFVs provided by anyone else will be invalid. Note on spamblocked addresses: The votetaker for this vote requires a valid return address in order for your vote to be acknowledged and recorded. Easily demunged addresses may be accepted at the votetakers discretion, but it is the voters responsibility to ensure they recieve their vote acknowledgement to know their vote has been recorded. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: READ THIS BEFORE VOTING The purpose of a Usenet vote is to determine the genuine interest in reading the proposed newsgroup, and soliciting votes from uninterested parties defeats this purpose. Do *not* distribute this CFV; intead, direct people to the official CFV as posted to news.announce.newgroups. Distributing specific voting instructions or pre-marked copies of this CFV is considered vote fraud. THIS IS A PUBLIC VOTE: ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES, NAMES AND VOTES WILL BE LISTED IN THE FINAL RESULT POST. THE NAME USED MAY BE EITHER A REAL NAME OR AN ESTABLISHED USENET HANDLE. At most one vote is allowed per person or per account. Duplicate votes will be resolved in favor of the most recent valid vote. Voters must mail their ballots directly to the votetaker. Anonymous, forwarded, or proxy votes are not valid, nor are votes mailed from WWW/HTML/CGI forms (which should not exist). Votes from nonexistent accounts are also invalid, and the votetaker will reject any "munged" address he cannot decipher immediately. Please direct any questions to the votetaker at . HOW TO VOTE: Extract the ballot from the CFV by deleting everything before and after the "BEGINNING OF BALLOT" and "END OF BALLOT" lines. Don't worry about the spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts. Please, DO NOT send the entire CFV back to me! Fill in the ballot as shown below. Please provide your REAL NAME and indicate your desired vote in the appropriate locations inside the ballot. Examples of how to properly indicate your vote: [ YES ] example.yes.vote [ NO ] example.no.vote [ ABSTAIN ] example.abstention [ CANCEL ] example.cancellation DO NOT modify, alter or delete any information in this ballot! If you do, the voting software will probably reject your ballot. When finished, MAIL the ballot to: < voting@uvv.stanford.edu > Just "replying" to this message should work, but check the "To:" line. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your vote within three days contact the votetaker about the problem. You are responsible for reading your ack and making sure your vote is registered correctly. If these instructions are unclear, please consult the Introduction to Usenet Voting or the Usenet Voting FAQ at http://www.stanford.edu/~neilc/uvv. ======== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything before this line ======= .----------------------------------------------------------------------- | 2ND CALL FOR VOTES: comp.games.development.* hierarchy | Official Usenet Voting Ballot (Do not remove this line!) |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Please provide your real name, or your vote may be rejected. Place | ONLY your name (ie. do NOT include your e-mail address or any other | information; ONLY your name) after the colon on the following line: Voter name: | Insert YES, NO, ABSTAIN, or CANCEL inside the brackets for each | newsgroup listed below (do not delete the newsgroup name): Your Vote Newsgroup --------- ----------------------------------------------------------- [ ] comp.games.development.art [ ] comp.games.development.audio [ ] comp.games.development.design [ ] comp.games.development.industry [ ] comp.games.development.programming.algorithms [ ] comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) ======== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything after this line ============== comp.games.development.* hierarchy Bounce List - Please contact me about your vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ldubb@u.washington.edu L. Dubb mkissin@-REMOVETHIS-ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin REMOVE_THIS.Ralf.Schneider@goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider This CFV was created with uvpq 1.0 (Aug 14 1997). PQ datestamp: 980322 -- Voting address: voting@uvv.stanford.edu From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 14 06:17:59 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Reply-To: voting@uvv.stanford.edu Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: 2nd CFV: comp.games.development.* hierarchy Followup-To: poster Message-ID: <900422278.13889@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> Supersedes: <898810896.6454@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Expires: 17 Jul 1998 00:00:00 GMT Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Mon, 06 Jul 1998 19:22:25 GMT Lines: 409 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10322 news.groups:290623 comp.ai.games:10512 comp.graphics.animation:51838 comp.graphics.misc:27342 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27415 rec.games.design:25357 rec.games.programmer:155059 rec.music.makers:69833 LAST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2) unmoderated group comp.games.development.art unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio unmoderated group comp.games.development.design unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) This CFV is to be distributed only by the votetaker. It is not to be posted to newsgroups, or mailed to mailing lists or individuals, except by the votetaker. Ballots or CFVs provided by anyone else will be invalid. Note on spamblocked addresses: The votetaker for this vote requires a valid return address in order for your vote to be acknowledged and recorded. Easily demunged addresses may be accepted at the votetakers discretion, but it is the voters responsibility to ensure they recieve their vote acknowledgement to know their vote has been recorded. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. IMPORTANT VOTING PROCEDURE NOTES: READ THIS BEFORE VOTING The purpose of a Usenet vote is to determine the genuine interest in reading the proposed newsgroup, and soliciting votes from uninterested parties defeats this purpose. Do *not* distribute this CFV; intead, direct people to the official CFV as posted to news.announce.newgroups. Distributing specific voting instructions or pre-marked copies of this CFV is considered vote fraud. THIS IS A PUBLIC VOTE: ALL EMAIL ADDRESSES, NAMES AND VOTES WILL BE LISTED IN THE FINAL RESULT POST. THE NAME USED MAY BE EITHER A REAL NAME OR AN ESTABLISHED USENET HANDLE. At most one vote is allowed per person or per account. Duplicate votes will be resolved in favor of the most recent valid vote. Voters must mail their ballots directly to the votetaker. Anonymous, forwarded, or proxy votes are not valid, nor are votes mailed from WWW/HTML/CGI forms (which should not exist). Votes from nonexistent accounts are also invalid, and the votetaker will reject any "munged" address he cannot decipher immediately. Please direct any questions to the votetaker at . HOW TO VOTE: Extract the ballot from the CFV by deleting everything before and after the "BEGINNING OF BALLOT" and "END OF BALLOT" lines. Don't worry about the spacing of the columns or any quote characters (">") that your reply inserts. Please, DO NOT send the entire CFV back to me! Fill in the ballot as shown below. Please provide your REAL NAME and indicate your desired vote in the appropriate locations inside the ballot. Examples of how to properly indicate your vote: [ YES ] example.yes.vote [ NO ] example.no.vote [ ABSTAIN ] example.abstention [ CANCEL ] example.cancellation DO NOT modify, alter or delete any information in this ballot! If you do, the voting software will probably reject your ballot. When finished, MAIL the ballot to: < voting@uvv.stanford.edu > Just "replying" to this message should work, but check the "To:" line. If you do not receive an acknowledgment of your vote within three days contact the votetaker about the problem. You are responsible for reading your ack and making sure your vote is registered correctly. If these instructions are unclear, please consult the Introduction to Usenet Voting or the Usenet Voting FAQ at http://www.stanford.edu/~neilc/uvv. ======== BEGINNING OF BALLOT: Delete everything before this line ======= .----------------------------------------------------------------------- | 2ND CALL FOR VOTES: comp.games.development.* hierarchy | Official Usenet Voting Ballot (Do not remove this line!) |----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Please provide your real name, or your vote may be rejected. Place | ONLY your name (ie. do NOT include your e-mail address or any other | information; ONLY your name) after the colon on the following line: Voter name: | Insert YES, NO, ABSTAIN, or CANCEL inside the brackets for each | newsgroup listed below (do not delete the newsgroup name): Your Vote Newsgroup --------- ----------------------------------------------------------- [ ] comp.games.development.art [ ] comp.games.development.audio [ ] comp.games.development.design [ ] comp.games.development.industry [ ] comp.games.development.programming.algorithms [ ] comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) ======== END OF BALLOT: Delete everything after this line ============== comp.games.development.* hierarchy Bounce List - Please contact me about your vote ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ldubb@u.washington.edu L. Dubb mkissin@-REMOVETHIS-ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin REMOVE_THIS.Ralf.Schneider@goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider This CFV was created with uvpq 1.0 (Aug 14 1997). PQ datestamp: 980322 -- Voting address: voting@uvv.stanford.edu From neilc@stanford.edu Thu Jul 16 22:45:13 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <900654085.775@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT Lines: 528 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10402 news.groups:291153 comp.ai.games:10544 comp.graphics.animation:51925 comp.graphics.misc:27404 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27483 rec.games.design:25420 rec.games.programmer:155428 rec.music.makers:69872 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV From neilc@stanford.edu Fri Jul 17 04:24:42 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT Lines: 528 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10415 news.groups:291190 comp.ai.games:10545 comp.graphics.animation:51927 comp.graphics.misc:27410 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27486 rec.games.design:25421 rec.games.programmer:155439 rec.music.makers:69873 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV From neilc@stanford.edu Fri Jul 17 06:35:05 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!feed.nntp.acc.ca!news.uunet.ca!news1.ottawa.cyberus.ca!news.cyberus.ca!news-jammys.net!news.flora.ottawa.on.ca!nntp.igs.net!nott!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!137.192.241.248!mr.net!data.pa.vix.com!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 545 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10417 news.groups:291208 comp.ai.games:10548 comp.graphics.animation:51930 comp.graphics.misc:27411 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27493 rec.games.design:25430 rec.games.programmer:155474 rec.music.makers:69874 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Control: cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Message-ID: From: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Date: 17 Jul 1998 12:47:38 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.7 Lines: 2 Path: ...!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!rain.fr!194.250.238.3!nntp.HipCrime.new!cyberspam!hipcancel!usenet Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Fri Jul 17 06:35:07 1998 Control: cancel Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 17 Jul 98 13:35:05 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2613780 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Sat Jul 18 16:00:53 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!peer.news.th.u-net.net!u-net!demeter.clara.net!news.clara.net!peer.news.nildram.co.uk!news-peer.netdirect.net.uk!btnet-feed2!btnet!bmdhh222.bnr.ca!bhars12c.bnr.co.uk!bcarh8ac.ca.nortel.com!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: zcarh46f.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail X-Original-Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!137.192.241.248!mr.net!data.pa.vix.com!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 563 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10434 news.groups:291504 comp.ai.games:10555 comp.graphics.animation:51960 comp.graphics.misc:27442 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27535 rec.games.design:25510 rec.games.programmer:155794 rec.music.makers:69890 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Control: cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Message-ID: From: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Date: 17 Jul 1998 12:47:38 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.7 Lines: 2 Path: ...!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!rain.fr!194.250.238.3!nntp.HipCrime.new!cyberspam!hipcancel!usenet Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Path: ...!news-feed.fnsi.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.icm.edu.pl!orion.cst.tpsa.pl!news.tpnet.pl!not-for-mail Control: cancel Subject: cmsg cancel Message-ID: From: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Newsgroups: news.groups X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. Lines: 2 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:19:24 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.133 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 21:19:24 MET DST Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Sat Jul 18 16:00:54 1998 Control: cancel Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 18 Jul 98 23:00:53 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2624542 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Sat Jul 18 16:45:39 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!dallas-news-feed2.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldfeed.gte.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!demeter.clara.net!news.clara.net!peer.news.nildram.co.uk!news-peer.netdirect.net.uk!btnet-feed2!btnet!bmdhh222.bnr.ca!bhars12c.bnr.co.uk!bcarh8ac.ca.nortel.com!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news2.ais.net!jamie!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900654085.775@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 546 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10443 news.groups:291550 comp.ai.games:10556 comp.graphics.animation:51963 comp.graphics.misc:27443 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27536 rec.games.design:25511 rec.games.programmer:155803 rec.music.makers:69891 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Path: ...!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!205.252.116.205!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.icm.edu.pl!orion.cst.tpsa.pl!news.tpnet.pl!not-for-mail Control: cancel <900654085.775@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900654085.775@isc.org> Message-ID: From: HipCrime@bwesjyu.mil Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@bwesjyu.mil Newsgroups: news.groups X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. Lines: 2 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:25:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.133 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 21:25:01 MET DST Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Sat Jul 18 16:45:41 1998 Control: cancel Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 18 Jul 98 23:45:39 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2625058 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Mon Jul 20 04:10:30 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!peer.news.th.u-net.net!u-net!demeter.clara.net!news.clara.net!peer.news.nildram.co.uk!news-peer.netdirect.net.uk!btnet-feed2!btnet!bmdhh222.bnr.ca!bhars12c.bnr.co.uk!bcarh8ac.ca.nortel.com!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: <900933024.20521@isc.org> X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: zcarh46f.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail X-Original-Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!137.192.241.248!mr.net!data.pa.vix.com!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 563 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10466 news.groups:291849 comp.ai.games:10570 comp.graphics.animation:51987 comp.graphics.misc:27461 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27560 rec.games.design:25519 rec.games.programmer:155918 rec.music.makers:69897 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Control: cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Message-ID: <900933024.20521@isc.org> From: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Date: 17 Jul 1998 12:47:38 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.7 Lines: 2 Path: ...!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!rain.fr!194.250.238.3!nntp.HipCrime.new!cyberspam!hipcancel!usenet Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Path: ...!news-feed.fnsi.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.icm.edu.pl!orion.cst.tpsa.pl!news.tpnet.pl!not-for-mail Control: cancel Subject: cmsg cancel Message-ID: <900933024.20521@isc.org> From: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Newsgroups: news.groups X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. Lines: 2 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:19:24 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.133 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 21:19:24 MET DST Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Mon Jul 20 04:10:31 1998 Control: cancel <900933024.20521@isc.org> Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel <900933024.20521@isc.org> Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 20 Jul 98 11:10:30 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2638490 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 00:58:28 1998 Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups Message-ID: <901007906.10168@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT Lines: 528 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10470 news.groups:292095 comp.ai.games:10574 comp.graphics.animation:52011 comp.graphics.misc:27481 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27586 rec.games.design:25529 rec.games.programmer:156125 rec.music.makers:69913 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:50:55 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!dallas-news-feed2.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldfeed.gte.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news-peer.gip.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!demeter.clara.net!news.clara.net!peer.news.nildram.co.uk!news-peer.netdirect.net.uk!btnet-feed2!btnet!bmdhh222.bnr.ca!bhars12c.bnr.co.uk!bcarh8ac.ca.nortel.com!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: <901050638.903@isc.org> X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!news2.ais.net!jamie!ais.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900654085.775@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 546 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10480 news.groups:292173 comp.ai.games:10584 comp.graphics.animation:52020 comp.graphics.misc:27491 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27593 rec.games.design:25542 rec.games.programmer:156244 rec.music.makers:69925 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Path: ...!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!205.252.116.205!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.icm.edu.pl!orion.cst.tpsa.pl!news.tpnet.pl!not-for-mail Control: cancel <900654085.775@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900654085.775@isc.org> Message-ID: <901050638.903@isc.org> From: HipCrime@bwesjyu.mil Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@bwesjyu.mil Newsgroups: news.groups X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. Lines: 2 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:25:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.133 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 21:25:01 MET DST Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:50:58 1998 Control: cancel <901050638.903@isc.org> Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel <901050638.903@isc.org> Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 21 Jul 98 19:50:56 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2651620 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:51:55 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!peer.news.th.u-net.net!u-net!demeter.clara.net!news.clara.net!peer.news.nildram.co.uk!news-peer.netdirect.net.uk!btnet-feed2!btnet!bmdhh222.bnr.ca!bhars12c.bnr.co.uk!bcarh8ac.ca.nortel.com!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: <901050690.1103@isc.org> X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: zcarh46f.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail X-Original-Message-ID: X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!137.192.241.248!mr.net!data.pa.vix.com!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 563 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10488 news.groups:292181 comp.ai.games:10585 comp.graphics.animation:52021 comp.graphics.misc:27492 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27594 rec.games.design:25543 rec.games.programmer:156245 rec.music.makers:69926 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Control: cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Message-ID: <901050690.1103@isc.org> From: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Date: 17 Jul 1998 12:47:38 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.7 Lines: 2 Path: ...!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!rain.fr!194.250.238.3!nntp.HipCrime.new!cyberspam!hipcancel!usenet Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Path: ...!news-feed.fnsi.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!news.icm.edu.pl!orion.cst.tpsa.pl!news.tpnet.pl!not-for-mail Control: cancel Subject: cmsg cancel Message-ID: <901050690.1103@isc.org> From: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@hgfwhx.edu Newsgroups: news.groups X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. Lines: 2 Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 19:19:24 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.133 NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 21:19:24 MET DST Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:51:58 1998 Control: cancel <901050690.1103@isc.org> Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel <901050690.1103@isc.org> Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 21 Jul 98 19:51:55 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2651655 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:52:25 1998 Path: news.isc.org!data.pa.vix.com!sonysjc!sanjose-news-feed1.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news.idt.net!feed.nntp.acc.ca!news.uunet.ca!news1.ottawa.cyberus.ca!news.cyberus.ca!news-jammys.net!news.flora.ottawa.on.ca!nntp.igs.net!nott!bcarh189.bnr.ca!nrchh45.us.nortel.com!hipcancel!despams.ocunix.on.ca!resurrector!not-for-mail Message-ID: <901050729.1495@isc.org> X-Reposted-By: dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca X-Original-Path: ...!news3.bellglobal.com!news1.bellglobal.com!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!137.192.241.248!mr.net!data.pa.vix.com!news.isc.org!bounce-back From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: REPOST: RESULT: comp.games.development.* hierarchy all pass Followup-To: news.groups X-Original-Message-ID: <900674675.22512@isc.org> References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Organization: Usenet Volunteer Votetakers Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 05:41:27 GMT X-Comments: DtR Repost: The following Usenet article was cancelled, X-Comments: more than likely by someone other than the original poster. X-Comments: Please see the end of this posting for a copy of the cancel. X-Comments: Dave the Resurrector can be contacted at dave@ferret.ocunix.on.ca Lines: 545 Xref: news.isc.org news.announce.newgroups:10493 news.groups:292186 comp.ai.games:10586 comp.graphics.animation:52022 comp.graphics.misc:27493 comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music:27595 rec.games.design:25544 rec.games.programmer:156247 rec.music.makers:69927 RESULT unmoderated group comp.games.development.art passes 148:17 unmoderated group comp.games.development.audio passes 139:19 unmoderated group comp.games.development.design passes 159:14 unmoderated group comp.games.development.industry passes 140:21 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.algorithms passes 146:20 unmoderated group comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer) passes 143:24 Yes No | 2/3 >100 | Pass | Group ---- ---- | --- ---- | ---- | ------------------------------------------- 148 17 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.art 139 19 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.audio 159 14 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.design 140 21 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.industry 146 20 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.algorithms 143 24 | Yes Yes | Yes | comp.games.development.programming.misc There were 181 valid ballots and 3 invalid ballots A five day discussion period follows this announcement. If no serious allegations of voting irregularities are raised, the moderator of news.announce.newgroups will create the groups shortly thereafter. Newsgroups lines: comp.games.development.art Creative use of visual art in games. comp.games.development.audio Music, sound, speech production. comp.games.development.design Designing gameplay and rules systems. comp.games.development.industry Biz news, project management, jobs. comp.games.development.programming.algorithms Abstract algorithms for games. comp.games.development.programming.misc General info on programming games. The voting period closed at 23:59:59 UTC, 16 Jul 1998. This vote was conducted by a neutral third party. Questions about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent. Proponent: Brandon Van Every Votetaker: Neil Crellin RATIONALE: all groups The venerable newsgroup rec.games.programmer is given to heavy volume in excess of 200 posts per day. Informal proposals for a rec.games.programmer.moderated newsgroup have failed because nobody wants to moderate such a volume of posts. It is hoped that the new hierarchy will constructively diffuse the energy of eager posters, and that the rationale for the hierarchy will diminish cross-posting. Rec.games.programmer is also, clearly, in the wrong place. It was instituted in the hey-day of the back-bedroom programmer when *all* aspects of games development were handled by one or two people at most. It was placed under the "rec.*" banner mainly because most programmers in the 1980s were hobbyists -- the 'professional' games programmer was a very rare occurrence back then. Today, the industry has grown up, and specialisation rules supreme. Programmers no longer draw the graphics. Nor do programmers create music or sound effects. Thus we need new, clearly related newsgroups that can cope with the modern division of labour. And the only way to avoid tortured names like "rec.games.programmer.art" is to rectify the mistake that placed r.g.p in its present hierarchy. In the future, we anticipate that non-development games newsgroups may be merged into comp.games.*. We use the prefix *.development.* to distinguish the development-oriented newsgroups. The abbreviation *.dev.* was rejected by Usenet admins on the grounds that it's an abbreviation, and the precedent in other groups is to spell out the full word "development." *.maker.* was suggested, but it is not as strong a bulwark against non-developmental posts as *.development.*. Having 2 separate *.development.* and *.programming.* hierarchies was suggested, but when Usenet admins activate or filter a related set of newsgroups, they prefer to control related groups with only 1 wildcard charcter. Also *.design needs to be at the same hierarchical level as *.programming, to reinforce the fact that *.design is not a programming newsgroup. For example, a future hierarchy might look like the following. [THIS IS NOT A PROPOSAL AT THE PRESENT TIME!] comp.games.action comp.games.adventure comp.games.flight-sim comp.games.development.art comp.games.development.audio comp.games.development.design comp.games.development.industry comp.games.development.programming.algorithms comp.games.development.programming.misc comp.games.marketplace comp.games.misc comp.games.naval comp.games.rpg comp.games.sports comp.games.strategic comp.games.war-historical RATIONALE: comp.games.development.art Programmers are only half of what make a games project come together, artists are the other half. Artists are often put off by "boring" discussions of langauges and compiler speeds, this is a forum for creativity in games development. rec.games.art was not chosen because the focus is on computer and console games development, whereas hierarchically rec.games.art would also imply board games, card games, miniatures, etc. Admittedly, *.art has not previously been discussed much in r.g.p. However, it is extensively discussed at Gamasutra, a commercial and quite popular website that discusses the art and science of games development. The structure of comp.games.development.* is in fact meant to duplicate the major elements of the highly successful Gamasutra model. Gamasutra has basically re-invented the concept of newsgroups using a clumsy web interface for reading and replying to posts, and many of us would rather use Usenet. Please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com for evidence that *.art traffic will in fact occur. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.audio A handful of game musicians/composers have informed me that they feel they are often forgotten in games production. Furthermore, the Computer Game Developers Conference hosts a well-attended and successful Audio Track every year, alongside their other tracks covering Programming, Visual Arts, Production, Business and Legal, and Game Design. Since *.audio is a logical grouping of tasks essential to games production, it seems reasonable to give the audio people a group of their own. Will the group get enough traffic? Despite the existence of other *.music, *.sound, and *.audio newsgroups in the Usenet hierarchy, rec.games.programmer is known to carry a reasonably significant volume of audio-related traffic. To quantify the audio traffic, I searched DejaNews for the keywords "music OR sound OR audio" for the past year. To see if traffic is sporadic, I searched each month individually. An average over the entire year would cover up peaks and lows in traffic. Each month was searched from the 1st to the 31st, to cover the varying lengths of all months. The results are: month articles ------------------------ Jun97 267 Jul97 324 Aug97 291 Sep97 296 Oct97 262 Nov97 248 Dec97 305 Jan98 391 Feb98 376 Mar98 395 Apr98 1700 May98 6000 So, rec.games.programmer has been averaging 8..12 audio articles per day, with a massive increase in audio topics in April..May 1998. This is sufficient evidence that comp.games.development.audio will get traffic. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.design There is already a newsgroup called "rec.games.design" which covers *all* games, not just those that run on computers. I.e.: discussions of board games, chess, Go, role-play games, etc. are perfectly legitimate. It is not specifically aimed at computer games design, yet it is currently being swamped by such discussions. Unfortunately, this invasion of the computer games designers gives newbies the impression that *any* aspect of computer games can be discussed in r.g.d. -- witness the current threads asking about "Compile errors in Visual C++...". ANd other non-design-related posts abound, such as the technical details of isometric graphics, the salary of musicians in the games industry, etc. This is a mess that must be cleared up, if only to prevent the outbreak of war. There are even discussions in r.g.d about the feasibility of creating a separate "rec.games.design.board" newsgroup. This is a sad state of affairs. By moving the computer-games-specific posts to a dedicated home, we can kill two birds with one stone. NOTE: this proposal has NO BEARING WHATSOEVER on the name or charter of rec.games.design. comp.games.development.design is being created as a completely separate group, we are not proposing a rename or any change whatsoever to rec.games.design. However, it is expected that in practice, most of the computer games design traffic will be diverted to comp.games.development.design. As outlined above, this is viewed by many as A Good Thing (tm). Still, some people worry that this will "harm" rec.games.design, or more particularly, that it's against the best interests of computer game designers. A number of non-computer game designers feel that computer games are essentially similar to non-computer games, and that computer game designers would do well to pay more attention to their non-computer counterparts. However, the computer game designers mostly feel that their chosen medium has unique properties worthy of special attention. In any event, there is nothing stopping people from subscribing to both comp.games.development.design and rec.games.design if they want to hear both perspectives. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.industry Recently, serious discussions of game project management have been among the most civil and widely praised of rec.games.programmer's offerings. Programmers often pay too much attention to the technologies they develop, and not enough to the business environment in which they create them. Control over the strategy of a project can make or break a programmer's career, so timely discussion of business issues is a service to the game programming community. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms r.g.p is full of questions about how to implement 2D scrollers, 3D matrix transforms, scripting languages, and AI path finders, despite the fact that many other Usenet newsgroups exist to discuss these topics. We can't stop people from posting these questions, they need a group. *.algorithms is general-purpose enough that we needn't worry about duplicating the rest of the Usenet hierarchy. Whereas if we handled each algorithmic concern on a case-by-case basis, i.e. *.3d, *.2d, *.scripting, *.ai, we'd have an explosion of duplicate groups. (That said, if if *.algorithms ever carries enough traffic to warrant subgroups, we can worry about it later.) Also, r.g.p is full of advocacy posts about operating systems, compilers, and APIs. These things are NOT algorithms. We make the *.algorithms newsgroup so that the OS/language/API advocates will hopefully leave us alone. In the event that they do not, we will either beat them about the head with the charter, or propose a moderated newsgroup at some point in the future. RATIONALE: comp.games.development.programming.misc A number of folks don't want to see rec.games.programmer changed at all. And aside from *.algorithms, people can't agree on a breakdown of *.programming topics. Rather than try to solve these issues now, we molest rec.games.programmer as little as possible, and simply rename it to comp.games.development.programming.misc. This is a compromise that will hopefully make the most people happy, and that still allows us room to solve any problems later. CHARTER: comp.games.development.art For discussion of visual aesthetics and techniques in computer and console games development. The primary focus is upon the creative aspects of game artistry, although discussion of tools and technical issues is condoned. Please try to keep discussion relevant to art, and try not to turn it into a bunch of programming mumbo jumbo. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.audio For the discussion of music, sound, sound effects, noise, speech synthesis, and real-time audio synthesis as applied to games production. This includes aesthetic, compositional, engineering, and programming issues as they arise in real-world commercial games production. Please keep conversation focused on games, and please be aware that other music newsgroups exist for non-games discussion. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.design Why is a given computer/console game fun to play? Why are some games great, and others suck? These perplexing and intangible questions are the essence of game design. In this newsgroup we attempt to answer these questions, believing that a great game is more than the sum of its artistic, technical, and business components. This group is solely for the discussion of GAME design. Programming, marketing, artwork, and audio all have their own design criteria, but none of these result in a good game in and of themselves, and they should not be discussed here. Game design is focused upon the rules systems of games and the "play value" of games, i.e. how fun it is to play, and how long the fun will last. Tools that assist in the game design process (design documents, storyboarding, physical prototypes, even pencil-and-paper) may be discussed, but this group is NOT for discussion of programming, art, and/or audio tools in general. Please take such discussion to the relevant groups. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.industry For discussion of business news and trends in the games industry. Game project management, the marketing and financing of game projects, and the impact of business strategies on the success/failure of game products are all topical. This is the preferred group for job offers, discussions of salary/compensation/royalties, the importance of getting a C.S. degree, breaking into the industry, and so forth. Full text of conference announcements is encouraged. Full text of game product announcements is discouraged; instead, give an EXCEEDINGLY BRIEF (4 lines of text) pointer to a web page about the product. *.industry is not for *.advocacy discussion of games products, and that's what full-text announcements tend to generate. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.algorithms For the discussion of computational algorithms used in games development, including but not limited to 2D display, 3D display, sorting, numerical optimization, parsing, and AI approaches. "Algorithms" in the computer science sense of the term are generally regarded as being independent of underlying hardware implementation. However, in the real world algorithms must always be optimized, and optimization is always hardware-specific. Therefore, discussion of hardware-specific optimization techniques is condoned. Please use judgement as to whether a discussion belongs in *.algorithms. Operating systems, APIs, languages, and compilers are NOT algorithms. Posts about "which 3D API is better," or "which language/compiler/OS should I use" are off-topic, post them elsewhere. END CHARTER. CHARTER: comp.games.development.programming.misc For the technical discussion of operating systems, platforms, consoles, languages, libraries, and other programming methodologies used in games development. Discussion upon any games programming topic is condoned. Please take non-programming topics to other groups. END CHARTER. comp.games.development.* hierarchy Final Voter list comp.games.development.programming.misc (renames rec.games.programmer)--------+ comp.games.development.programming.algorithms -------+| comp.games.development.industry ------+|| comp.games.development.design -----+||| comp.games.development.audio ----+|||| comp.games.development.art ---+||||| |||||| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gmurphy * riot.com.au Glen Murphy YAYYAA n3072129 * bohm.anu.edu.au Daniel Noll YYYYYY l.cameron2 * ugrad.unimelb.edu.au Levi Cameron YYYYYY house * usq.edu.au Ron House YYYYYY eyal * eyal.emu.id.au Eyal Lebedinsky YYYYYY jasmine * fl.net.au Jasmine Taylor NNNNNN andrew * one.net.au Andrew Maizels YYYYYY phaywood * aardvark.apana.org.au Peter Haywood YYYYYY stg * stg.com.br Luiz Marques YYYYYY chriseb * nortel.ca Chris Ebenezer YNYNNY tapio.vocadlo * sympatico.ca Tapio Vocadlo YYAAYY jmcgarry * uoguelph.ca James McGarry YYYYYY r.blum * advertainment.com Robert Blum YYYYYY dmitry * alex-ua.com Dmitry Kuzmenko YYYYYY FltLin * aol.com Joseph MacGonegal AAYAAA lucfrench * aol.com Luc French YYYYYN MatthewWM * aol.com Matt Marshall YYYYYY sforsell * aol.com Scott Forsell YYYYYY cdt * audiophile.com Chris Trumbore AAAAAA kevin * trixie.kosman.via.ayuda.com Kevin O'Gorman YYYYYY kimdv * best.com Kim DeVaughn YYYYYN stainles * bga.com Dwight Brown NNNNNN dkirby * bigfoot.com Dave Kirby YYYYYY wtiger * bigfoot.com Khairul Azhar AAYAYY erikh * caravelsoftware.com Erik Hermansen YYYYYY craighea * citilink.com Matt Craighead YYYYYY pkasieck * cognex.com Philip T. Kasiecki YYYAYY clover * crl.com Alex D'Angelo YYYYYY rhofmann * crl.com Kyle R. Hofmann YYYYYY andy * crystald.com Andy Wright YYYYYY fche * cygnus.com Frank Ch. Eigler NNYYYY GGrasso * darkearth.com Gabriel Grasso YNYYNN GHeliou * darkearth.com Gwen Heliou YYYYYY JFRoulon * darkearth.com Jean Francois Roulon YYYNNN MDonnain * darkearth.com Marc Donnain YYYYNN DasBuro.Com!mfx * DasBuro.Com Markus Freericks YYYYYA booda * datasync.com Martin H. Booda YYYYYY guymacon * deltanet.com guymacon@deltanet.com (Guy Macon) YYYNYA ric * digital-animations.com Richard Cooper YYYYAA ron * dorianresearch.com Ron Levine YYYYYY bob149 * efortress.com Bob Blanchard NNNNNN ehsmalu * ehpt.com Mattias Lundstrom YYYYYY jeffsj * execpc.com Jeffery S. Jones YYYYYY david * farrar.com David Farrar NNYYNY jason * gaydeceiver.com Jason Steiner NNNNNN jamul * hamumu.com Mike Hommel YYYYYY menright1 * home.com Mike Enright NNNNNN celticwiccan * hotmail.com Peter Byron NNNNNN msimpson * hotmail.com Michael Simpson YYYYYY rayb * shofixti.fc.hp.com Raymond G. Bingham YYYYYY abell * uk.ibm.com Aaron Bell YAYAYY gregfra * iname.com Greg Franklin YNYYYY richard_damon * iname.com Richard Damon YYYYYY mikemaz * interlog.com Mike Linkovich YYYYYY astapp * io.com Acy James Stapp YYYYYY chris * kzim.com Christopher Robin Zimmerman AAAAAN christopher.j.roy * lmco.com Christopher J. Roy YYYYYY rmenninger * lucent.com Richard Menninger YYYYYY mmanyen * meyerglass.com Mark Manyen YYYYYY cipher * mindspring.com Cipher YYYYYY olav * viking.mv.com Olav Nieuwejaar NNNNNN millette * my-dejanews.com Robin Y. Millette YYYYYY mqj * ix.netcom.com Mandel Q. Johnson YYYYNN simpson * netcom.com Bob Simpson YYYYYY tgm * netcom.com Thomas G. McWilliams NNNNNN shinton * netdoor.com Stephen Hinton YYYYYY rava * netrevolution.com Jean-Francois Richard YYYYYY christer * neversoft.com Christer Ericson YYYYYY ed * u170a.newbourbon.com Edd Twilbeck YYYYYY keegansj * perkin-elmer.com Stephen Keegan YYYYYY carl * pinder.com Carl L. Pinder YYYNYY bbrandt * pobox.com Brian Brandt YYYYYY greg.stelmack * redstorm.com Greg Stelmack YYYYYY qduffy * relic.com Quinn Duffy AAYYAA GNorth * columbus.rr.com Gloria North YYYYYY jjszucs * rochester.rr.com John J. Szucs YYYYYY brennan * Rt66.com Brennan Underwood YYYYYN buzzard * world.std.com Sean Barrett YYYYYY ulrich * world.std.com Thatcher Ulrich YYYYYY csehy * Stormfront.com Chris Sehy YYYYYY dclemons * Stormfront.com David Clemons YYYYYY fbertrand * Stormfront.com Francois Bertrand YYYYYY gsabatini * Stormfront.com Gregory Sabatini YYYYYY JoeS * Stormfront.com Joe Straitiff YYYYYY rstevenson * Stormfront.com Randall Stevenson YYYYYY slee * Stormfront.com Shawn D. Lee YYYYYY swaits * stormfront.com Stephen Waits YYYYYY Thomas.Granvold * Eng.Sun.COM Thomas Granvold YYYYYY arielle * taronga.com Stephanie da Silva YYYYYY daver * teleport.com David Reynolds NNNNYY pmonte * trecision.com Pietro Montelatici YAYYAA TimS * tai.uk.com Tim Skipper YAYYYN Jay * valvesoftware.com Jay Stelly YYYYYA Ralf.Schneider * goeppingen.netsurf.de Ralf Schneider YYYYYY jdibbelt * on-luebeck.de Julian Dibbelt YYYYYY naddy * mips.rhein-neckar.de Christian Weisgerber NNNNNN hsauer * marnie.teuto.de Henning Sauer YYYYYY draettig * ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de Dirk Raettig YYYYYY sbo * psy.med.uni-muenchen.de Boris Schaefer AAYYYY infernal * bre.winnet.de Florian Schacht YYYYYY erw * dde.dk Erwin Andreasen YYYYYY breese * imada.ou.dk Bjorn Reese AAYAYY GNALLE * MMF.ruc.dk Niels L Ellegaard YYYYYY jlevenbe * math.berkeley.edu Josh Levenberg YYYYYY dkass * cco.caltech.edu David Kass AAYAYY newcombe * mordor.clayton.edu Dan Newcombe YYYYYY mj2q+ * andrew.cmu.edu Mark A Jensen YYYYYY will+ * cs.cmu.edu William Uther YAYYYY hikaru * r39h52.res.gatech.edu David Hsu YYYYYY k95dl01 * cc.kzoo.edu Dan Lawson AAAAAN jsbrown0 * elbert.Mines.EDU Jeff Brown YYYYYY mpslon01 * morehead-st.edu Michael Slone YYYYYY mortlock * nmt.edu Justin Hooper YYYYYY rmiller * cis.ohio-state.edu Ryan Miller YYYYYY lpsmith * owlnet.rice.edu Lucian Smith YYYYYY rick * bcm.tmc.edu Richard Miller NYYNNY kamikaze * kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu Mark Hughes YYYYYY llopis * zonker.ecs.umass.edu Noel Llopis YYYYYY msn * Glue.umd.edu Mat Noguchi YYYYYY rufinus * mbe.ece.wisc.edu J Rufinus YYYYYY ahm * tid.es Alberto Hernandez Marcos YYYYYY jpaaso * cc.helsinki.fi Juha Paaso YYYYYY Pierre.Bru * spotimage.fr Pierre Bru YAYAYY guerry * robot.uvsq.fr GUERRY YYYYYY jhorneman * wanadoo.fr Jurie Horneman YYYYYY vadik * cs.huji.ac.il Vadim Vygonets YYYYYY brisker * actcom.co.il Tomer Brisker YYYYYY choocy * hitech.com.my Choo Chi Yen YYYYYY mikeshlz * animal.blarg.net Michael Scholz YYYYYY vanevery * blarg.net Brandon Van Every YYYYYY wal * blarg.net wayne a. lee YYYYYY obi * clara.net Andy J Buchanan YYYYYY thomas * clark.net Mark Thomas NNNNNN bhall * cyberhighway.net Brian Hall YYYYYY mking * dnc.net Matthew King YYYYYA hipbone * earthlink.net Charles Cameron YYYYYY pbern7 * earthlink.net Paul Bernhardt YYYYYY jwilloug * gate.net Jason Willoughby AAYYYY dwrobel * globalserve.net David Wrobel YYYYYY marty44 * gmx.net Martin Boehme YYYNYY sean.duffy * bbs.goldengate.net Sean Duffy AAAAAA vpdura * hiwaay.net vic dura NNNNNN newsd * troubled.hypermart.net Colin Charles YYYYYY hildahlk * incentre.net Kendall Hildahl YYYAAY dmckay * dfw.nationwide.net Dairin Mckay YAAAAA babybasset1 * ntr.net Geoff Howland YYYYYY bndwgn * pacbell.net Ron Hiler YYYYYY marquez * pacbell.net Aaron Marquez NNNNNN alexdawson * pemail.net Alex Dawson YYYYYY wakelyn * pinn.net N. T. Wakelyn AAAANN random * visi.net Michael Bosley YYYYYY DaRiuS * darius.demon.nl Jeroen Janssen AAYAYY wscheeps * worldonline.nl Walter Scheepens YYYYYY perimath * sn.no Per I Mathisen NNNNYY antony * ihug.co.nz Antony Simmonds YYYYYY mkissin * ihug.co.nz Michael Kissin YYYYYY daniel * pharos.co.nz Daniel Johns AAYAYY donkiely * computer.org Don Kiely YYYYYY dave * bureau42.ml.org David E. Smith YYYYYY henrik.treadup * swipnet.se Henrik Treadup YYYYYY nisbjl97 * student.umu.se Niklas Bjornestal YYYYYY j.macgill * geography.leeds.ac.uk James Macgill YAYAYY stb * stimarco.cix.co.uk Sean Timarco Baggaley YYYYYY russ * algorithm.demon.co.uk Russ Williams YYYYYY avatar * arkane.demon.co.uk Alistair J. R. Young AAAAAY Raven * arpeggio.demon.co.uk Paul Hodgson YYYAAY Hammy * croila.demon.co.uk Hamish Bell YYYYYY abnixon * dmension.demon.co.uk Andy Nixon YYYYAA neil * englewood.demon.co.uk Neil Adamson YYYYYY otto * gizmo1.demon.co.uk Simon Lamont YYYYYY glenn * home-pc.demon.co.uk Glenn Davies YYYYYN lwithers * lwithers.demon.co.uk Laurence Withers YYYYYY nigel * manmusic.demon.co.uk Nigel Street YYYYYY rob * mhairi.demon.co.uk Rob Alexander YYYYYY stephen.news-a * six-pine-trees.demon.co.uk Stephen Wright AYYYYY Voting * valdena.demon.co.uk AST YYYNAA leovdb * dircon.co.uk Leo van der Borgh YYYYYY kol * strater.force9.co.uk Nikolaus Strater YYYYYY jamess * gremlin.co.uk James Sutherland YYYYYY AlexS * Probe.co.uk Alex Syrichas YYYYYY htrd * tcp.co.uk Toby Dickenson YYYYYY Invalid ballots ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- krenske * namosp.usq.edu.au Paul Krenske ! Undeliverable address ldubb * u.washington.edu L. Dubb ! Undeliverable address Nick.Burcombe * psygnosis.co.uk ! No votemark in ballot -- Neil Crellin, UVV ========= WAS CANCELLED BY =======: Control: cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Subject: cmsg cancel <900674675.22512@isc.org> Message-ID: <901050729.1495@isc.org> From: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Sender: Neil Crellin Approved: HipCrime@uclogrd.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Date: 17 Jul 1998 12:47:38 GMT X-No-Archive: Yes Organization: HipCrime International, unLtd. NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.237.253.7 Lines: 2 Path: ...!howland.erols.net!newspeer.monmouth.com!rain.fr!194.250.238.3!nntp.HipCrime.new!cyberspam!hipcancel!usenet Cancelled by HipCrime's NewsAgent. From neilc@stanford.edu Tue Jul 21 12:52:27 1998 Control: cancel <901050729.1495@isc.org> Path: news.isc.org!bounce-back Message-ID: From: Neil Crellin Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.ai.games,comp.graphics.animation,comp.graphics.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard.music,rec.games.design,rec.games.programmer,rec.music.makers Subject: cmsg cancel <901050729.1495@isc.org> Followup-To: news.groups References: <894334369.29231@isc.org> <894502511.10739@isc.org> <895211921.5078@isc.org> <895579669.5048@isc.org> <896676305.4204@isc.org> <897275376.16312@isc.org> <897877481.15423@isc.org> <898810896.6454@isc.org> <899752945.135@isc.org> Supersedes: <899752945.135@isc.org> Approved: newgroups-request@isc.org Archive-Name: comp.games.development Date: 21 Jul 98 19:52:25 GMT Lines: 2 Xref: news.isc.org control.cancel:2651670 Unapproved article for news.announce.newgroups auto-cancelled by daemon on behalf of moderator.