I started this thread with the intention of asking if anyone knew what was up over at Gamedev.com. They reported having some problems with someone "selfishly" taking down the forums last week, and today the whole site is down. :(

I think over time the forums here could be much more useful to indie developers, but gamedev still has a lot to offer.

And then it occurred to me that I'm always looking for new good (high signal, low noise) sources of info regarding game design, development, the business, etc. So: where do you find your best info online?

Some of my favorites (besides here!) are:

The Gamedev (http://www.gamedev.com) forums for wide-ranging and often good information

The ASP (https://www.asp-shareware.org/) members-only pages and newsgroups (though these have not yet been as useful to me as others have reported).

The AI Depot forums (http://ai-depot.com/Messages/). Also a good source of info is the comprehensive Game AI (http://www.gameai.com) site run by ferretman.

Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com) features and such (sadly, their fora are virtually dead).

Flipcode and Garagegames too sometimes, though they are more specifically oriented at straight programming.

What about you?

I usualy hang out at Gamedev, but latly their
forums seems to have problem with some hacker.
didnt get the story behind it, but i feel :( not being
able to reach my fav. furums

:((

GameDev.net appears to be back online now, but their forums are still down. I also noticed the whole site was down earlier today.

As for the topic at hand, of all online forums I've spent the most time reading the ASP newsgroups, especially during 1999-2001 while I was ASP VP and then President. They're a very valuable resource in terms of marketing and selling online, and it's a great way to keep on top of shareware-related news. I think I've personally referred at least a dozen new members to the ASP just this year, and I've heard a lot of great stories from people who've benefited from it. I don't recall ever seeing the ASP newsgroups as busy as they've been this year. The one downside is that the groups aren't game-specific, so a great deal of info is irrelevant to game developers.

Otherwise, I've found GameDev.net to be a great resource. It's been great meeting many of you there.

But perhaps my biggest resource for GD ideas has simply been direct email contact. One of the things I like about indie developers is how approachable they are. You can generally email the developer directly and have some really interesting discussions.