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Original post by BBBI've been thinking of writing an announcement a few time the last two months. However every time I then think "Its not much left anyways, better to just finish it" (which is what I'm doing right now), but then something comes up :\ . What do you guys think? Should I write an announcement or can you survive until christmas? Cheers // BBB, NeHe PR-manager

Either an announcement, or a set of progress bars indicating % of completion for tutorial rewrites, cross-platform submissions, etc, would alleviate the pressure of "there hasn't been an update since XX-XX-XXXX". Not to mention, not everyone interested is reading this forum thread, and would benefit from it immensely.

For my own input on the project, I would highly recommend maintaining the cross-platform ports of the various projects. They've been highly invaluable to me in porting my engine between Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

On that note, hopefully the base framework will address necessary OS-specifics, and the rest of the tutorials will be platform independent (that IS one of the key features of OpenGL!) Or maybe base them on SDL...

I completely agree with the above poster :).

I like the new OO approach to lessons but honestly... This isn't a commercial framework or such.

:'( I want the old NeonHelium back .

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Original post by Anonymous Poster I think the new team should realise that: a.) By not releasing updates you basically have a choke-hold over the website. b.) There's not much point rewriting the existing articles from scratch - they're fine for learning purposes. c.) Whenever you release any code we'll always find bugs (And contribute fixes) regardless of how long you take writing it. I'm sure everyone is relieved to know that you've organised the team but the problem is that it isn't working because there are no results. After the first update is pushed out by your schedule of 'Godknowswhen' will you be taking another unspecified 'while' to push out the next update? Sarcastic, yes. But I think it communicates the important message of letting everyone know just 'when' is. Besides, while the team were inevitably 'fartoobusy' over the festive holidays, should we take it that it was also 'fartoomucheffort' to organise a festive coding competition? You see that's called letting the community contribute. Sarcasm aside, my point is that this is a community driven website, and your current development 'process' is excluding that community. Which I think is the root of the current problem. So, my proposed solutions are: 1.) Give responsibility for updates and maintenance back to Jeff OR 2.) Recruit a new team with a new set of objectives (ie. No rewriting of old material) 3.) Focus more on the community. (Mailing lists, competitions, article submissions, website submissions, comments) 4.) DONT rewrite the website - you're just wasting time.

Have you offered to help?

As to your solutions:

1) We have no control over that.

2) The reason the material is being rewritten is because
(a) There were constant complaints about teaching by cut and paste as opposed to actual learning.
(b) A lot of the old stuff is hopelessly out of date.
This does not mean that it wasn't (and still is) an excellent resource

The fact that the team is made up of professional software developers means that we are putting our spare time into this, and the lack of appreciation of this fact is quite palpable.

3) We have no control over this. The new team is just writing the new lessons + a new SDK.

4) Comments like this mean that I really wonder why we bother.

A huge amount of work that has gone into the new site, and we hope you'll like it when it's done, but the old lessons will not be taken down anyway, so I don't see what the problem is.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster c.) Whenever you release any code we'll always find bugs (And contribute fixes) regardless of how long you take writing it.

Actually bugs are the least of our concerns (other than there can be no obvious mistakes that risk blowing up your computer), getting the base methods right from the beginning is more important since everything else is based on this, this is especially important when your thinking 50-100 lessons ahead.

Re-affirming what lc_overlord stated the beginning tutorials will be much better at teaching the beginners the correct way to do things. The content is quite out of date and therefore some of the stuff that NeHe taught (glaux or display lists for example) is hardly used anymore. Re-writing some/all of this content is essential if you want new users who are looking to persue game development to be performing correctly.

To those working on the new lessons:

I haven't been following this thread well enough to comment on the cause, duration or value of your work, I feel, but it does seem to me that you value your work, at least. In that case, I would encourage you to not let the people criticising you wear down your resolve. Listen to them, and consider their ideas when given, yes, but stay firm, unless of course someone produces a strong enough and reasonable reason to quit.

For myself, I'm looking forward to seeing what the new lessons include, and hope that you make swift progress. I'm glad to hear that you've undertaken this task, and grateful for the time that you're putting into it.

It would be nice if some sort of progress indicator were available (unless I've missed it, at least), so that one could get some idea of how things were going - and doing so might reduce the number of questions regarding your progress as well. Of course, there's little reason to update that indicator every day, I'd say - perhaps every week, or even once or twice a month if you're very busy.

In any case, good luck, and enjoy your work. :)

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Original post by Anonymous Poster That's just bad planing and disrespect of deadlines in my eyes and ears.

There was never a deadline.

How about you show some respect for the guys who are freely volunteering thier limited free time to produce some new content for the site. I understand that it's frustrating that you havn't seen much in the way of visible progress thus far, but as someone with access to what they've been working on I can tell you that a lot of work has been put into trying to create some quality content for the site.

Realistically, updates to the site were few and far between in the time before Jeff stepped down from it as well, and the new team has taken upon themselves a rather large task by starting essentially from scratch and trying to do things right with a clean and modern programming style.

Whining about it isn't going to get the site updated any faster, the only affect it's having (if any) is to demoralise the team. I'd like to ask for just a bit more patience and understanding from people, we do hope to have some of the initial content ready for release soon (but no, we won't be setting a strict date that we may not be able to meet if unforseen circumstances arise).

Just wanted to put up a positive post here, I for one am proud to consider myself part (if a small and relatively new part) of a community where there are people that are willing to donate there effort and spare time for the benefit of the community at large.

Now, with that out of the way, it makes me sad when people that are not willing to lend a hand in a community like this are insulting those that are doing there very best to give the rest of us a quality product out of the goodness of there hearts... I have seen a lot of complaints on this thread when nothing happens, but we now have new news and the page looks like it's picking up it's pace again I see precious little in the "Congrats" department.

Shame on us who do not give our fellows a big pat on the back for all there hard work.