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Thank you so much for taking the time to post your kind comments. I am actively developing as I write this. I agree with your suggestion and I think that is good advice. First however, I need to complete the submission functionality for Show & Tell and the Games section, since these are the cornerstones of the GDU system for developers. I think, particularly the regular members (who are lurking or in discord right now), people cannot really see the potential I see since these sections are not fully functional. At the moment they're essentially read-only. First, I intend to ensure that developers can make full use of the Games and Show & Tell sections, and then I will start a campaign of bringing users to the site. My current plan is to get the submission forms working roughly, and then slowly update them with new features. Figuring out what I don't need to implement is a bit challenging. The games section in particular is a completely different system from the old system. That new system is comprised of many sub-systems. The games page itself, blogs, screenshots/videos and downloads and all different post types in themselves and each need their own forms. Lots of work :D

Yes, but I am also hoping that more people come to post content. RPG Maker or not. I hope that the games section and refinery can attract any devs. In particular, the games section has a ton of new community based features, i.e. everything uploaded (downloads, images, videos, refinery posts, blog posts) is a post with it's own comments, likes, etc. I'm also working on having game section downloads part of an e-commerce system so you guys can sell your games. I might get some stuff done since I'm in corono lockdown D:

'ello all I just thought I would post my thoughts while I have a spare moment, and update you guys on the future of GDU. As you will see from the last few announcements, I had decided to close GDU and then suddenly backtrack on that decision in order to move GDU to new software. There was previously another party involved, but you will notice that development had suddenly stopped last year. Indeed, you only have me. Surprisingly / not surprisingly, despite no activity since the move to gdu.one, visitors to GDU have actually increased to their highest levels since April 2018. I had harped on about GDU.one's software and how good it was, and I'm still just so impressed. Damn. There is some brilliant stuff under the hood. I feel like GDU should be an active website, but it is not. Therefore, I do not believe it should be shut down. The content sections don't have submission functionality yet and development on that ceased last year, but was really close to going live..... It's a bit of a shame. I intend to complete it and continue dev, because I strongly believe in the software behind the site and what it can achieve. I admit that all you can use is a forum at the moment...

To take a stab in the dark, I used to make interior maps large with the actual room in the middle so that when I moved around the room, the player always remained in the middle of the screen, rather than moving to an edge.

This looks like a huge, ambitious project. Screenies look great (my favorite style of all the games). Good luck!

It has been years coming, but we have completely revamped the forum structure. The new structure is slimline, sleek, minimalistic and minimal. A huge number of superfluous forums have been culled and replaced with more general forums. There are now general forums for engine talk, support and requests. The whole philosophy behind it is a simplification to make it easier for users to find where to post, which we hope in turn encourages people to post. A number of forums have moved to a public archive containing a combined 13.6k posts. These are forums that are no longer useful, but we still want the topics to be accessible. Let us know what you think!

Hi all New website, boom! All links relating to the forums (which includes the gallery), refinery and games section are now redirecting to the new website. Only the scripts and tutorials sections are left behind, and you will see those links so go to gdunlimited.net. The new sections have been completely rebuilt with modern frameworks and software and the old GDU data has been imported. The forum is obviously much, much newer as well. This has been a really big task, and given the lack of activity on the old website, we made the decision to release the new website in stages. The scripts and tutorials sections will eventually follow, but getting the refinery and games sections up to scratch is the priority. The new software is really exciting and opens a huge number of opportunities for GDU as a social game dev website. For example, development is ridiculously fast and there is already a gigantic network of plugins which work right out of the box. No more me spending weeks and weeks to code something simple! Even right now, the website has the ability to sell your games. One new and really exciting thing we have right now is that all games section image/video uploads and downloads are now “posts” in themselves, and fully commentable! This opens up new ways for feedback and interaction in the games section, and also provides an easy way to promote games… simply by posting. As with before, refinery posts and blogs are the other ways in which you provide the community updates on your game. Cool stuff to come!!

Hi all Welcome to the updated forums! The decision has been made to release parts of the new website part by part. The old website will be up and running until the sections are rebuilt and opened here. Based on activity recently on the forums, I think it made sense to switch now. The forums are a few years more advanced than the old software we were running, and won't be bogged down by hacking integrations. Things work nice and smoothly now, including logins with FB, Google and Twitter. Woohoo! Currently, the Refinery is 85% developed and the Games section is 65%. Until those are ready, the main menu will link back to the old website. If you pop on to the homepage, you can see how the forum will integrate with the forums.

Alright - do it.

Aww man there's tonnnnnnns. That's really annoying to clean up since they're guest accounts. Mistakes were made. Thanks for alerting me.

No back-up plan, other than the sweet release of death.

I was content with it closing down.

My requirements are that the current posts, members, refinery, games etc. are all preserved and publicly available, because that is what GDU is. Otherwise it would be just giving away a name and a logo, and I don't think that works.

We kind of did when we moved to GDU, or at least that was kinda of the intention but probably didn't commit like you're probably saying. Things like the games section and refinery were all non-engine specific attempts to attract general game devs. However, I'm not sure doing this would have helped our cause (not that you said it would). Changing the subject the matter of the website is making it something it wasn't previously, and that's difficult. I think it's easier to pull off something that's really specialised/niche than something that's really, really general.

Proof of concept under development. In other words, can they migrate all of the existing data (my requirement) to a new, modern system. If so, then I would expect GDU to be updated with new software and new management.

Yep, we're all dying out except the top few sites who have the most visitors and focused solely on the latest engine. GDU peaked around the same time RMXP did, just before RPG Maker VX came out. I ran the numbers when making the closing down page, and I was a bit shocked that 2010 was GDU's best year. That was most of its life ago. We didn't adapt.