www.shmup-dev.com Launched!!!

A new website, www.shmup-dev.com , which is focused on development of modern shoot 'em Up style games and the innovation of new games related to blowing stuff up. The site is mainly there for discussion on creating them, showcasing them, etc.

As the site is new and just launched today, we're still in the process of modifying the look and feel, applying a new logo, and feedback would be greatly appreciated.

It will be great to see anyone of you guys that are into shooters there, especially if you could drop by a few minutes a day and read up on our latest posts and / or post a message of your own!

I hope to see you there, thanks for reading!!

Umn, no topics or anything?

Umn, no topics or anything? You might want to get some content before you launch this.

yeah and it wont let me register..

All the topics are there.. Maybe they can't be seen by guests? Yavin I activated your account btw.

You might want to make some forums public. People might just turn up and go "heck, this place is a ghost town" and move on.

Thanks Tim, I have made them all public just now.

yeah wot tim said I was gona suggest that also. it lets the guests see what fourms are there and builds up their idea's of what might be found inside.

gives them more of a reason to register.

PS. thanks for activating my account.

We've had about 50 posts since the activation so I think we're off to a good start!! :) Thanks to everyone for stopping by and posting too.

I welcome anyone to post/upload their games over there as well, if they would like to (you can do so in WIP section too) as a bonus for being a member!!

Size limit is 10 Megabytes. So if you need a place to store your game and it isn't too big, you've got a nice little home for it here on www.shmup-dev.com !

How to:

Post your game as a forum thread in either the WIP Section or the Member Games Section, and then click "Additional Options" and then add it as an attatchment.

I like the idea, and it's a good site. But it needs something
to draw people in. Something to "break the ice". Only then will
this site become a place for people to come and have conversations.
I'm not sure what you could do about this though.

And I think the meaning of "Shmup" needs to be explained
somewhere. I only know what it means 'cause you told me.

[edit] For starters, rename the site to anything but "-Index" hehe.

Well, I'm seeing that some people are free to post there, so I just think that in time when more and more topics are about, more and more will be willing to post their 2 cents. Just my hopeful opinion :)

But if it needs more than that, what would you propose?

That's the thing, I'm not sure. Some forums naturally fill up.
These forums have BlitzMax to create conversation and it just
naturally branches out from there to "general forums", "Content creation"
Stuff like that.

You'll probably still get some people who chat in your forums.
They look nice, they're easy to see what everything is (And
now it's open to the public, good move!)
But to really get traffic flowing, you need to actively get people
to come, not just passivley wait for them to find the site.
You know what I mean?

ahh.. Yeah, but there are many sties that are on game development that have essentially nothing but the conversations. Like www.indiegamer.com and www.gamedev.net

Also there is a few other sites (RPG Sites) that are just only conversation and dont really have a product they encircle.

But I do agree that something would increase the traffic. I think that I'll look into it.. Ideas? :)

One thing you could do is look for other sites that have innadequate
forums but related topics to yours and offer your site as a place to chat in.
...maybe?

[edit] I'll do my part. I've joined up!

I've gone to gamedev, indiegamer, and here. What other sites would you recommend?

Hmm. I would say that those places have pretty adequate
forums. You might have to start ...smaller?
For instance, why would an indiegamer regular come to your
site? What's there that isn't at indiegamer? That's what you
need to think of. What seperates your site from every other
forum out there? If you can think of something, then use that
as your selling point.

Ahh, honestly what seperates my site from others is that it is a niche site, basically its only about one thing, instead of a bunch of things. Since I think that shmuppers are scattered, I think that it would be good to put all of us into making shmups in one place :)

[EDIT] Also, I love to visit multiple forums a day! So I was thinking it would be for those who like to visit many diff forums for a few mins a day.

Ok. Sell that! We'll see what happens from here.

The Site is doing pretty good so far.. In 24 hours we got 20 members, and are averaging 10 guests per hours (currently 20+ guests on right now)

The stats says:
26,726 Hits
12,225 Files
3,068 Pages
287 Visits

www.codersworkshop.com

Thanks grey, hope to see you on there sometime :)

I just registered! :-D

you will see me I#m sure, it's just Christmas Day today and the kids need attention, gotta go!

More exciting news!!

Our daily hits have been increasing steadily, on a graph it looks like walking up a mountain.

We are now averageing 30 different users per hour (mostly guests) and I'm very excited to tell you guys about it!! :)

I'm expecting it to plateau soon.. I'll keep you posted!

[EDIT] UPDATE!! Just Hit over 50 Users in an hour!!

Later,
Matthew A McFarland

Today (and we stil have some time left) www.shmup-dev.com managed to get 100 new posts!! All in one day!! Wow!!! I am very excited to tell everyone this!!

Thanks to everyone who has visited.

According to our forum stats (which seem to be more conservative then the webalizer stats) - We've had about 30,000 hits in 7 days, We've had nearly 500 unique posts in 7 days, and We've gained 100 members. The first week has been very good. I'm glad that people are joining up, because I really think that this site could help push the shmup genre forward into a whole new level.

My goal is to bring a positive spin to shmup's by putting everyone that likes to make them together. We'll talk business, we'll network with each other, we'll help each other out, and in return the market will have better shmups on the shelves. With better shmups on the shelves, portals that are more into arcade / action games can expect more sales and everyone has nothing but benefit coming out of this.

If anyone is trying to improve the inventory of the casual market it is me!! ;) (I know just about everyone here wants to do the same thing, right?)