I guess I should be telling you about what's going down with Sumea sponsorship and all that, considering a lot of you have invested a lot of your time and your work in your journals..
Like I wrote on the main page, previous sponsorship interest went nowhere, so I was going to have to cover the site costs myself - which was fine, until I had to pay for a new computer, internet access, and a host of other things I won't bore you with.. My web hosting plan expires in just over 2 weeks, so once that is over, the site will be no more.. Unless I can find a sponsor within a week or two, I suggest that any members who've stored most of their art on the site to start downloading them or it might get lost.
I've had some proposals on Sumea being part of another website - basically, the news will be continued on their site, and you all visit the forum there.. It's better than nothing, but I'd like to hear what you guys think..
quote:Originally posted by Jacana
Will you still be "running the show" over there? Will the journals etc continue?
I don't know how it'll work out - I haven't been able to check my email for the last few days since my webhosts mail server is down, but they (and all of the game news websites that have contacted me) run on PHP/MySQL with their own content management system which probably doesn't cater for journals, and the way Sumea does things (like link news to their developers, and games to their developers). So I'm kinda guessing it'll be their current website with local industry news reports, and sections in their forum for local industry chat, starting from scratch.. Cost to run Sumea for another year would be under $1,000.. Not really comfortable in receiving donations from regulars.. If it all comes down to the worst case scenario, I can just register the domain name, and bring the site back in a few months when I can..
I would hate to see the death of Sumea as it is. I know there are a few people that may be able to serve it, but you may have to port everything to php/mysql (it'd be for the best anyway ;). I am willing to help out where I can (porting, money, etc).
If you need somewhere to store stuff temporarily, I have 70GB free on my drive, and cable.
Don't give up Souri! People are just starting to realise that Sumea is in trouble.
oh... shit
ok, lets think about this objectively.
We could move sumea, possibly to somewhere like gamedev.net... which wouldn't be too bad if the domain name could be kept.
We could all shell out money to keep the thing running, but I don't know how feesable this is...I for one am very poor, though i could put aside about $10/20 a month (thats nearly 1/4 of my operating budget for the month).
Or we could go for outside help, many people here are members of the igda... I'm not sure what else they do, but they might be willing to lend a hand to save one (and the only?) australian gamedev community hub. We could also appeal for the help of people running international communities and the members of these (gamedev, flipcode etc) and ask for their assistance... there are many generous people out there.
No matter the casualties, Sumea must live on!
[img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]ht…]
![http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]ht…](http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2anitroopfish.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2anitroopfish.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2animan7.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2anitroopfish.gif[/img][img]http://www.members.optushome.com.au/hmmklord/g2anitroopfish.gif[/img){kind=link}
- edit
another thing, some studios and development houses (mainly auran) have been promoting game development in australia... they might help or be interested in sponsorship if we contacted them directly.
At first, I was open to the idea of Sumea being part of another website.. but having had a think about it, I am not going to go with that anymore. Mainly because I've put over a year and a half of my time on this website - building and designing all the pages, providing lots of news and other content. I can't really justify throwing it all away. So those people who emailed me (I can access my email now, but all your messages have been lost! Same with anyone who's sent me an email since Wednesday), thanks for the interest, but I'm going to try and keep the site as it is..
Porting the whole site to PHP/MySQL would be a *lot* of work. And to be honest, it's probably a better idea to just redo everything from scratch. But, really, it's taken a year of refinements and changes to get to where the website is at the moment where I don't have to worry about things not working anymore. I don't want to tackle porting the whole website now! [:)]
I think I will go with the plan I had before.. I'll register the domain name, and when I have the funds, I'll put the site back up again. Might take a few months, or even more (depends if I can find a web designer job ;))
Having said that, I'm approaching two places for sponsorship at the moment. One of them doesn't look promising, and I don't know about the other, but I am crossing my fingers.
quote:Originally posted by redwyre
Good to hear you won't give up!How about porting the forum data to a php forum, then the rest of the site can be ported as time permits?
Sumea is starting to get quite popular now, I think forum down-time for such an extended period of time could have a bad effect :/
Long live Sumea!!!
Whatever happens, I feel we need to keep the forum happening, otherwise like Red said it could have a bad effect. I've only just found Sumea in the last few months, and I'm having a great time meeting other aussies interested in game dev. I, like many other people, would seriously be bummed if Sumea shut down. It seems to be the only place like it for aussies...
WELL DONE SOURI NICE WORK !!! AND THANK U SOOOOO MUCH KROME STUDIOS !!! [:D]
Im one of the first people to be in SUMEA and i would not want it to go down when right now it is at its peak !!!! Ive seen souri put in a lot of time programming this site and making it the best site i always go to.... [:D]
This is the only site I think will hopefuly help me land a job in the games industry sometime soon. [:D]
Anyone got idea's for stuff we could send to them? It'd be nice to send one big thing, but i think it would be difficult to get little bits of moeny from everyone, so probably easier just for people to send their own thing. Would be nice if there was a theme or something though, like send a bunch of tasmanian tiger toys, if they aren't sick to death of the little thing already!
It's a pity sumea doesn't have a mascot :P (or does it?)
CYer, Blitz
quote:Originally posted by Souri
If anyone is interested in chipping in money, let me know and I'll add you to our secret forum chat thing where we can discuss 'stuff'.. [;)]
I am uneasy with the idea of a gamedev company sponsoring a mainly educational site like this, and that comment has made me more so :/
While I'm sure I'm just being paranoid, just look at when Auran started pulling strings at Qantm....
But still, thanks Krome.
It's just for discussion on what to give Krome, and how we can cooperate to do it.. it's in a secret area because I want it as a surprise..
I doubt Krome have any agenda other than to support the community here - they haven't asked for anything in return for the sponsorship.. I suggested to them banner ads which I am going to put on sometime this week.
Will you still be "running the show" over there? Will the journals etc continue?
One of the things that I have noticed is in the past month or so a lot of industry types have been coming over here and posting job listings. To me that says that Sumea is being taken as a "serious" site for the industry.
I would hate to see that reputation lost - as its finally getting some solid ground.