XeNTaX

To add to that, out of the thousands of registered members, most just come here to download this or that tool (one time), and then are on their merry way. See also the low number of votes in the polls, compared to the user base, not many people bothered to vote. Yet, there are still many people who think the knowledge base here is unprecedented and substantial. Be that as it may, and I do not doubt that Xentax has a unique thing going on, a community must uphold itself. It has been years since I have been truly the ego-driven maniac that ran this forum, did the PR, wrote tools etc etc, life just catches up on you as priorities shift. I still would hope to think that among the members, there are those who are young that can give the much needed fresh boost and/or approach, with energy and the right priority. Looking at the results of the poll so far, that should definitely be the case.

Yet, perhaps the new adults of this era, are not as keen on this as we were at that age.

The other suggestion I read is to just keep the forum up, and don't do a thing anymore. Led it run as-is, because a lot of people still need it, and it would not cost any time, just a little money.
Of course, that could be done, and to be frank, is already the case for some time, as no substantial changes in terms of the website have been made, apart from the tools blog, and the Let's MultiEx series. We've also gone back to an open forum, and limited rules set.

There IS a lot of talent here, and excellent people, that could do anything if they wanted to. That's where the defined projects could come in, something tangible to put your teeth in and gain fame and glory for all eternity (that's quite a long time, so w00t).

There should be talented people in there as well to lead this forum, I would hope. If not, then after 12 years going strong (steady for years now), I doubt it can sustain itself without guidance.

To clean the population, we can do what we did years ago: purge the forum. We deleted all users that had 0 posts. Just to get the core community a bit more clear. We warned everyone in advance, with a number of reminders, to post at least once in a designated thread. So their post count would at least not be 0, and their account would not be deleted. They could just say:"HI" and it would be okay.

Hi. (kidding)

I have a hard time with the poll. I just got interested in this stuff a few months back and then have been way too busy to look at it again. I guess that means I am not statistically relevant. But, it doesn't mean I have a pattern of not coming here often, or a lack of interest, since there hasn't been enough time to judge either.

.

Mr.Mouse wrote:So does anyone think they are up to it and take over the lead ?

Why though? Is it my understanding that you're concerned the website has not attracted a sufficient community and thus you've decided it's the end? It does seem like there's an awful lot of people who always want help, but perhaps they don't have the knowledge to help themselves. The problem is that the ratio to users that can help is outbalanced significantly by those who can't and just want to request help.

I personally haven't been here due to several reasons, life, other stuff users have mentioned. I just feel that Xentax has lost it's life? I got the impression that everyone got bored, didn't see much staff around etc? Just feels deserted like there's no lead/forum management. I'm bored of writing scripts/code to unpack/view models/archives/textures now. I learnt from one of the most experienced people on this forum and I'm thankful that this forum exists. It would be a huge shame to see this forum go, there's lots of talented people here.

What I dislike though is the outdated layout of this forum (no offense), not many places to discuss specific categories/genres other than the "offtopic". Perhaps the forum could be like re-organised a little bit to give it more of a fresh look? I don't know, but I don't want to see the forum end like this.

Regards.

My work has occasionally required me to reverse-engineer products in order to modify them to fit the desired purpose. This forum has been an excellent resource for learning various techniques and, of course, finding tools. There are not many resources publically available for reversing game-related products, and being able to access this large repository of knowledge has definitely helped my career.

I realize that it's difficult to scrape together enough money to keep the servers running. I am not a businessman, but I suspect that locking content behind a paywall would only serve to discourage people from joining the forum, and piracy would become a large problem. Unfortunately, it's either that, or throwing ads everywhere, or finding a sponsor.

If you do go the ad route, I suggest personally screening them for audio, malware, and popups. Those are the #1 guaranteed way to lose viewers.

Good luck.

I would suggest affiliating with sites who's purpose is modding things but who also have a small number of users. A good example would be Metroid Construction and maybe hcs64. Granted, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but if xentax could be a site that brings all these other nodding communities together, then I think that would introduce a lot of new blood, and could be very helpful. By the way, is it illegal to reverse engineer this stuff or something?

Edit: What was Noesis? People are talking about it like it was legendary.

I like this forum, if nothing else it's a great read, my suggestions would be some sort of advertising to get in fresh blood, talking to/ incorporating other communities into the base forum, stuff like daggerfall tools could bring in a pool of new people that can then spread to non df-tools parts and create a feedback effect. of course DF tools already has a community, and xentax charges for membership so my next idea would be bounties and the like, unfortunately I have no money for any of that stuff. sorry I'm not very helpful

zaykho wrote:

Mr.Mouse wrote:So does anyone think they are up to it and take over the lead ?

I will be interested, I already have my own forum (young forum, started in April 2015), using PHPbb too (but we are switching to a new board soon, a new board created from scratch, phpbb have too many flaw). Gravitrek Discovery

......

Off course, I'm not a native english speaker, sorry if I did some grammar/vocabulary mistake.

1. Hey Zaykho, I remember you, we were both Doax maniacs!

2. A lot of people grab tools/models and then they disappear. This is due to the legality around reverse engineering....

I made a fully functional Doax-like game thanks to the help of the people on the forums, Noesis and all that good stuff!
However their is that fear which with good practice can prevent trouble brewing such as no Nude releases etc.

As all of you know their is a lot of talent here, so much talent that if we combine it we can achieve anything....

I always wondered if their are people here this much talent we could make a Imagination recording machine if we really wanted!

3. Forum cost aside from donation, I wouldn't object to ads but again if we combined our efforts we could make medium sized video games or tools or whatever and some of the proceeds could go to keep the site running. Point is we have talent and theirs nothing to do with it. Theirs also the "maybe this provider is ripping us off thing, maybe its time to look at others".

4. I found this forum because I had a passion for seeking it out, and I helped others where I could also.
I agree on the purging users who don't post....I also want to mention I would not have known about this post had I not been given an email from the admins, I actually like getting emails from admins here as I can't be expected to browse the whole forum by myself and just find magic....theirs a lot of posts here so organizing it further can help....

5. I believe we shouldn't be worried about reaching out, if we reach out we will probably find more people who just want to take but not give and aren't passionate, just trust that the right people will come if we make the right changes here.

OFFTOPIC:

Uikri wrote: Edit: What was Noesis? People are talking about it like it was legendary.

Noesis: http://richwhitehouse.com/index.php?con ... hp#prjmp91
Was hosted for years here : http://oasis.xentax.com/
This is the main discussion thread: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=4582

The forum is *free* for registration by the way. Every once in a while, the donations were required, but it has been free for most of its existence.

I mainly come here for reading material when TCRF gets stale. It's great to see what people can find out about old games. I'm a lurker by nature so I don't often post but I might start posting more now.
Also, use something like Google Forms for polls next time... 5 threads for 5 questions is a little clunky

.

Quackmatic wrote:Also, use something like Google Forms for polls next time... 5 threads for 5 questions is a little clunky

Right, but there's a lot of participation now. Way to stimulate

I don't think I can add anything that hasn't already been mentioned.
I think this is the second most interesting forum for me. I will admit that I came here initially to leech downloads, but I stayed to mainly lurk. Which... Isn't much better. But I lack intelligence to commit much else, haha.

I'm a game developer myself, and I'm always curious of game internals and it's a joy to see other developers' wonderful artworks.
It used to be very difficult for me to reverse a unknown binary format without a debugger util I found this site, I learnt a lot here. Although this forum is not very active, the old posts here forms a very huge and valuable database. Those who are good at learning will sure be benifit from this site.

It is really very lucky that we have a forum dedicated to game resource file reverse engineering. Hope this site will go on.

i do not come here so very often,and i dont post much,more of a lurker,but to see this dissapear would be a real bummer
most things are already said in here,which i think about the same way
btw i did like your vids on youtube,trying figuring out formats and useing mexscript

maar je moet gewoon doen wat je moet doen,meneer muis
ik wil je in ieder geval bedanken voor het creëren van de site
heb er (heel) veel dingen van opgestoken

gegroet een landgenoot