PATTERN LANGUAGE FOR GAME DESIGN
How to Register an Account, Fill Out a Profile, and Join/Manage Groups
How to use the Pattern Library website, Part 3
If you are ready to begin contributing to the Pattern Library, then you will need to register for an account. To create an account, click on the ‘Login’ link in the top right of the Pattern Library or Games Reference pages. This will take you to the Login/Register page. If you don’t have an account yet, click on the red “Switch To: Register New User” button. Enter an email address and password. This email address is your new username. It will never be used for contact purposes, but it may be verified as a valid email address and accounts with invalid email addresses may be removed.
After you submit your registration, you will be logged in and you will see a new button in the navigation. This button reads ‘Create Profile’ next to a person icon.
Click this button to open your profile panel, then click the ‘edit’ button at the bottom to change your information. You can enter your full name, the handle you want to use on the site and optionally a contact email.
You can also choose to join a group. When you are in edit mode, you will see the ‘Join a Group’ and ‘Create New Group’ buttons at the bottom of your profile. If you click the ‘Join a Group’ button, a group entry will appear. You can select the group you want to join from the dropdown. You must also select your role in the group. You may join more than one group. After you have added all of the groups that you wish to join, you must click the ‘Update User Details’ button to save your changes.
If the group(s) you wish to join are set up to auto-approve new members, then you will immediately be able to participate in that group by associating patterns you create with it or looking at patterns that are set for review in that group. If the group is private and requires new user approval, your membership will be set to pending until a group manager for the group approves your membership.
You may remove yourself from a group by clicking the red ‘x’ next to the group name when in edit mode.
If you click the ‘Create New Group’ button, you will see a new group element appear. You must fill out a group name, select a group type and uncheck the ‘New members can join automatically’ checkbox if you want to make the group private. When you create a group, you are automatically made the group manager.
If you are the manager of a group, you will see the names of the group members when you look at your user profile. Active members of the group will appear in green, Pending members will appear in light blue, and Inactive members will appear in light grey. You can approve pending members by clicking on their name. You can then toggle members between active and inactive by clicking on their names. You might want to make members inactive at the end of a class, or if they leave a development team or studio. Their contributions to the group will remain, but they will no longer be able to create new patterns in the group or see patterns that are available for review.
Next to your name, you will see a solid star, which indicates that you are a group manager. Next to any other members will be an outline of a star. You can make a group member a manager by clicking on the star, or remove that privilege in the same way. Groups may have any number of managers. If all managers are ever removed, the next member to modify their group profile (by changing role) will be made the new manager.
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Below you will see links to other articles talking about how to use other features of the site:
