Good to "see" you!

[Blue Monkey]

I agree with you @Nanuk - one shortcoming of the CFC forum is that there's not really a good way to socialize. My only concern is that it should complement the forum, not detract. I think it'd be great to get to know each other better.

 

[dragonprobably]

I'm down for just a place to socialize with a place for help if we need it. (i.e. "does this coastline look right to you?", "I can't get this unit to center", etc.)

 

[Blue Monkey]

I'm down for just a place to socialize with a place for help if we need it. (i.e. "does this coastline look right to you?", "I can't get this unit to center", etc.)

The forum.

 

[Quintillus]

Although I'm pretty Zoomed out after the past year, I'd still be interesting in putting a face to the usernames I've known over the years. With the caveat that I have been traveling a lot lately, and not on the forums much, so my participation should be a "great if it happens to work out, but don't bend over backwards trying to make it happen" type of thing.

I agree with Blue Monkey reiscord. The discoverability of information on Discord is a lot lower, and realistically our community is small enough that being able to search for and discover information when people aren't online is really useful. And CFC's search tools aren't that bad if you use the Advanced Search to narrow down by forums, rather than the site-wide Google Search default.

That said, a chat option could be a good thing as long as there aren't 20 of them. I'm not sure how popular it ever was in the Civ3 forums, but back in the day (mid-2000s), the Fiftychat IRC channel was a popular avenue for instant messaging among the Off Topic crowd. I think I still have the login set up on my main computer's oldest browser. For the more casual conversation - "anyone playing any interesting mods?" - it was a good option; for serious discussions "how do I do this tricky thing for a mod?" I'd encourage staying on the forum.

 

[Blue Monkey]

... for serious discussions "how do I do this tricky thing for a mod?" I'd encourage staying on the forum.

As a practical example, there's currently a palette difficulty with the tech tree graphics I'm working on for the updated Lost Worlds scenario. King Arthur & I can probably sort it out (already got some ideas of what to troubleshoot). If not, posting questions here will help. Someone's likely to have dealt with exactly the same problem before, but who knows who the expert is until the images and files are public. And there's likely already posted answers in old threads here.

To be clear, I'm not against chatting on another platform. Discord can handle voice in an easy to understand way as well as text and graphics. When we did the podcast we ended up chatting for at least a couple of hours beyond the recording session. It was wonderful.

 

[Kyriakos]

Although I'm pretty Zoomed out after the past year, I'd still be interesting in putting a face to the usernames I've known over the years. With the caveat that I have been traveling a lot lately, and not on the forums much, so my participation should be a "great if it happens to work out, but don't bend over backwards trying to make it happen" type of thing.

You don't need zoom+ webcam to see my face; it is in my avatar ^_^

 

[dragonprobably]

So on the subject on what to do. I have a few ideas on what we could do:

• Pretend Your Xyzzy (Cards Against Humanity clone you can play online via a web browser)
• Jackbox Party Pack (Party game collections. As long as one of us owns the game, the owner can stream and the rest of us can join via a web browser.)
• Time Wizards (A little more weird and may be a little bit hard to do via a chat but it's a fun stupid TTRPG best played in one session while drunk.)
• Watch/Listen Party (either stream a movie or listen to music together)
• Eat Poop You Cat! (It's not what it sounds like. It's essentially Telephone but with drawings. Could be fun with MS Paint drawings.)

I'd love to do Jackbox. I already own packs 1-4 and would be willing to stream it. The problem is my work schedule, though. I get Monday/Tuesdays off and days I have on I work 4-10 PM PST (GMT -8).

 

[WildWeazel]

Don't forget Among Us

There are already a few active Civ3 Discords out there, if you're just looking to socialize. I agree that it makes a good complement to the forum, but not a place to share or record work. CFC used to have its own IRC channel on the front page which was a nice sidebar for casual conversation.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm back on my desktop now, and sure enough I have fiftychat configured here. Its IRC info is the server of "warrensofthought.com", with the main chat room being "fiftychat". There are also "nes" (never ending story) and "erebus" (not sure what that is) channels.

Was the old CFC IRC channel actually hosted on CFC? By the time I joined fiftychat, I'm pretty sure it was offsite; I was late to the IRC party and mainly used AIM in the first few years after I joined CFC. So by the time I actually signed up for IRC, it was not very popular anymore.

I don't know whether a party type game would really be a benefit or not; I was figuring the one game the target audience likely all plays is Civ III. I did have some fun playing Among Us with colleagues I'd never met last fall, but I can't say that we talked a lot of that I really got to know them any better.

Scheduling could be a challenge. My schedule is super flexible right now but I suspect our time zones are fairly dispersed. I'm technically on U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) right now, although I'm a night owl so it's probably just as well to think of me as being in the Mountain time zone.

 

[WildWeazel]

All I remember was a link on the front page to open the channel in a browser window, and it predated fiftychat.

 

[nick0515]

This is a cool idea

I use Zoom almost daily for work. It's pretty good. I only log into the forum occasionally these days but will try to keep up with this thread.

 

[Tommy Vercetti]

I am up for it

 

[Blue Monkey]

Let's get down to brass tacks ...

• How often to schedule meetings: weekly? monthly? semi-monthly (every other week)?
• When to meet: to allow for varying life schedules and time zones I'd suggest either setting up two different regular day/times or else a long session (several hours) that someone (like me) who usually has a wide open schedule can host. I don't know about other platforms but from what i've seen with zoom it's relatively simple to switch hosts. So it would be possible to have sort of a regular "pub" meet-up where people can easily come and go while there's also some continuity.

 

[Nathiri]

Sounds like fun.

 

[Takhisis]

(arrives late)

…is the Discord group which Nanuk started still a thing?

 

[Nanuk]

It's not very active. There's about 4 or 5 of us civvers in there and then a couple of my own friends, and only Snod is currently working on mods. He posts previews of his work there if you're interested in seeing it, before he posts the completed version. Sometimes we will voice chat. I intend to post previews of my stuff there too, but I've taken a break from working on it for a little while. Life and work have taken up much of my free time, and I recently got back into Star Citizen after taking a long hiatus from that development. I'm producing video content for that now. Drop in if you're interested. It's open to all so long as everyone is respectful. I'll boost it if it ever becomes popular, but I doubt that.

 

[Takhisis]

It's not exactly open: the link's expired.

 

[Nanuk]

Ah gee! I had no idea, haha. Sorry.

https://discord.gg/UtDMrDC6