Mission maker collaboration project

[maddogx 13]

Hey there,

I've come up with a really weird but possibly quite cool idea. I don't know if anything along these lines already exists, but here goes anyway:

The idea was sparked a few days ago when a guy from these forums contacted me about voice acting for one of his missions. I accepted and did a couple of voice overs, and it was actually quite fun. It got me thinking though, about how many times I've seen people desperately looking for voice actors or other mission making assistance, such as scripting or custom sounds, etc.

Wouldn't it be cool if we had some kind of open collaboration site, where people could sign up and offer their skills to help other mission makers? Perhaps even with a rating system and stuff like that. So, for example, if someone is looking for some english speaking voice actors for his mission, he could register at the site and look for english voice actors. Or someone needs help with a respawn system so he looks up someone with multiplayer scripting skills.

I don't know about you, but this could really improve the general quality of user made missions, if the participation level is high enough.

I was thinking of just going ahead and creating the site, but since I have a few other projects at the moment, I thought I'd get some feedback on the idea before I waste too much time.

So, does it rock or does it suck?

[Balschoiw 0]

Definately gets a thumbs up from me.

I´m also quite often searching for va´s, script solutions and other stuff while I can provide some nice soundediting/composing, music scores, cutscene scripting, ambience scripting and things like that.

[maddogx 13]

Definately gets a thumbs up from me.

I´m also quite often searching for va´s, script solutions and other stuff while I can provide some nice soundediting/composing, music scores, cutscene scripting, ambience scripting and things like that.

Hmmm.... that last option was supposed to be more of a joke. I guess I'll have to count it as "Yes" now...

EDIT:

You can compose music scores???    What do you use?

[the unknown 0]

Like the Idea, it would be cool if tings like release pages and stuff like that would be added so you can get in contact quickly with people that host missiondatabases etc.

[maddogx 13]

Like the Idea, it would be cool if tings like release pages and stuff like that would be added so you can get in contact quickly with people that host missiondatabases etc.

Yeah, good idea.

[john_webb 0]

The guy mad dog is talking about is me and i would like to say thank you to him for all his help. And yes it would be great idea.

thanks maddog

guys keep your eyes open of the up and coming STD team mission.

[johnwilso007 0]

working on a mission at the moment and i must say that this is a excellent idea. i often find when making missions i need some help, and when ever i ask for voice actors people usually ignore the posts. Im in. Think u should contact a moderator to move this to one of the other forums however as few people come on here. maybe to the User missions side. unless you dont want the group to be too large

[maddogx 13]

working on a mission at the moment and i must say that this is a excellent idea. i often find when making missions i need some help, and when ever i ask for voice actors people usually ignore the posts. Im in. Think u should contact a moderator to move this to one of the other forums however as few people come on here. maybe to the User missions side. unless you dont want the group to be too large

No, I'd rather keep it here for the moment, because I feel more of the serious mission makers hang around here. Although there's already someone who voted "The idea sucks" without even commenting why...

[nubbin77 0]

Once Crashdome finishes his examinations in May, he intends to redevelop the SOW website to accomplish exactly this. He intends to create an open source section where people can collaborate create missions and addons. I think he really wants to make it a complete resource for the community. Hang in a little longer guys and I think this will really come to light.

[johnwilso007 0]

ignore that one they should only be allowed to vote if they comment on why. i dont have too many skills but i do want to learn alot. i was wondering if there was any groups like this already around that i could join.

i understand why you want to keep it here, then only the serious makers would get involved.

[Guest]

I like the idea a lot (voted rocks), the more you bring people needing and offering things together, specially for mission making. The better it is.

However, I can see a downside if people just have to register to get help.

I fear that many will take the service for granted and request everyting they want without actually trying themselves first.

Like reading mission editing tutorials seems to be a waste of time for most people and than wasting many peoples time asking questions found on the first few pages of each tut.

This will cause serious people spending their time on something most certainly never ever being released or used seriously.

Maybe instead of just signing up at the website being able to request anything you could use a different standard.

Maybe like use a "trackrecord", show what you have done/tried and than you get help?

Just my 3 cents (I like this so even when I am dutch I decided to spend 2 cents more than normally )

[maddogx 13]

Once Crashdome finishes his examinations in May, he intends to redevelop the SOW website to accomplish exactly this.  He intends to create an open source section where people can collaborate create missions and addons.  I think he really wants to make it a complete resource for the community.  Hang in a little longer guys and I think this will really come to light.

It probably wouldn't be good to have two competing projects running at the same time, so is it even necessary for me to carry on with this?

[crashdome 1]

MadDog, don't be dissuaded from starting your own idea.. as nubbin states it is true I am trying to create an open collaboration site, but it may not be exactly what you desire.

First, I am not looking to post resumes of people who can accomplish certain things with certain skills. The problem with this idea is that it does not account for the time the person has available or if that person is still available at all. What good is looking through a list of names/recruitments when you have no idea how many are around anymore (i.e. OFPEC)

Rather, instead I am approaching from the opposite end. I am looking for a place where people can post their "projects" in a basic structured manner and allow people to browse through them. They can post desires such as "Modeller needed" on their projects which will hopefully be read by people browsing through the projects - similar to the recruitment depot at OFPEC except it will tie directly to a manifested project rather than the hundreds of non-existant "ideas" people post there. Consequently, the "projects" will *hopefully* offer basic project management such as ability to assign tasks to people, leave notes, and more importantly have a project lead with which people can contact. I would like to add file storage but I wonder if it is truly needed. It seems most people can perform this without the need to "check in and check out" file versions. Think of it as a "Source-Forge Super-Lite."

Anyways, I am looking forward to a more low-key website where a few of the more advanced projects can find a home when people cannot provide one themselves. The added benefit is if someone loses interest or leaves, it can be further advanced by others who come along.

Think of my idea as like a laboratory where you can walk from room to room checking in on things and offering help when needed.

Also, the ability to post projects will not be publicly open to just anyone. Sure, the public can browse through whats going on, whats needed, and so on... but in order to start a project, one must exhibit a certain amount of skill. Otherwise, I would end up with hundreds of useless unfinished projects that users would have to wade through.

I still have 3 days left of the semester and of course I work full-time so it might be mid-summer before I am fully running.

that is IF I can provide these without spending countless hours and money. I am trying though!

[EDIT] If you just want to post your capabilities and offer your services.. the best place is OFPECs recruitment depot. I am not sure if it is running, but you may even get them to add the features you are looking for.

[String 0]

This idea Rocks...

I like the idea because it means there is an area that will be mercilessly controlled (for example, the FAQ thread where rule one was No asking questions, just answering, hundreds of questions were asked!! making searching for answers so much easier.

I hope that I learn enough from a resource like this to contribute back!

String

[sander 14]

Hi,

Any inititiave that stimulates the production of high quality missions gets my vote. Mission making often does not get the attention and recognition it deserves.

Regards,

Sander

[maddogx 13]

Hey CrashDome!

Your project sounds cool, but like you said, it's the total opposite approach to mine.

I was thinking more along the lines of allowing people with projects to look for help themselves, rather than wait for people to come to them. Obviously, there should be some limitations and some customization possibilities, for example if someone doesn't have much time to help others, they could flag themselves as busy, or they could set up their options so that they can only take one job at a time. There are a lot of possibilities to make it more user friendly.

I think both of our ideas should be very helpful to the community.

Since the general feedback on the idea is positive, I guess it's a go-ahead. I have a long weekend coming up, so I should find the time to at least get it started (if I can get SWAF-ACF finished beforehand).

Web-space is not a problem, just need to come up with a name and get the appropriate domain registered.

[hardrock 1]

Amazing. It seems I'm not the only one.

I am planning to build nearly exactly what you just proposed for already a couple of months. Since my calendar is pretty full until summer and I am doing webdesign as profession, I didn't start yet. Also, I was looking for support since starting such a project all alone is quite difficult if you don't have a couple of months that you can fully spend on it. Of course, it all depends on the featureset and the richness of the site.

My idea was quite similar to the ones posted above: A community platform where mod teams are able to register and get some private space for project development and self presentation. This space would include actual projects of the mod, but should be really easy to manage, so that people don't need to spend a lot of time on their project sections and rather can focus on developing. Some sort of very basic forum could do well for internal and external team communication and a basic groupware/project management part of the site should help for a rapid development.

User profiles should include user skills, maybe bundled with a skill level (beginner, advanced, prof), so that other users are able to browse a list of developers with the desired skill. An advanced voting mechanism (maybe splitted into a few categories) for users would help getting an idea about a person's reputation, misleading or fake vote results should be prohibited. I also imagined that every mod team should have some basic blog to post updates and PR on.

The daily results of all blogs could be used for a self-organizing news page, where daily news of different mod teams would appear without the need of additional news posters. All in all the site I imagined should realize three needs: First of all, a platform for easy and rapid project organization, so that developers don't spend valueable time on designing websites, setting up and administrating forums etc. Second, the platform would support inter-mod communication, exchange of resources or finding people for different tasks. And third, the site should help presenting a mod's work to the public without requiring doing complicated or non-streamlined tasks from the developers.

I was planning to build the site in PHP5 using the excellent Symfony Framework, which speeds up the development of middle to large scale websites for larger audiences. It is pretty easy to use, has frequent release cycles and has already passed version 1.0.0 stable. The frameworks provides a lot of components that are definitely needed in the development of such sites.

I would appreciate a collaboration on this project, although I won't be able to work on it until beginning of July.

[crashdome 1]

Hey CrashDome!

Your project sounds cool, but like you said, it's the total opposite approach to mine.

I was thinking more along the lines of allowing people with projects to look for help themselves, rather than wait for people to come to them. Obviously, there should be some limitations and some customization possibilities, for example if someone doesn't have much time to help others, they could flag themselves as busy, or they could set up their options so that they can only take one job at a time. There are a lot of possibilities to make it more user friendly.

I wish you luck with that, but warn you how quickly people will *forget* to update their information about themselves or not follow through on their offers which will ruin it for everyone. That is why I tied my idea to a project. This way it has to materialize first and the people who are serious about helping will seriously approach the team first.

I encourage you to maybe get together with Hardrock there and come up with an implementation. I do not intend to compete mass scale like that. I really want it to be rather self-contained as a mini-community. It is not that I am anti-social! It's just that I do not have the time to maintain an openly public website and filter out all the junk that gets collected over time. Anyone will be able to register - I am not going to pre-judge anyone, I would just rather keep it as limited to serious developers or those with serious interest as possible by requiring a more personable and friendly approach than just sign up with a handle and a bunch of fake information. Basically, you can sign up on the website easily but to get *into* the projects and start working you would need to contact the project team or myself. Maybe if time goes on and I get more help, I will become more lenient.

I suggest you guys implement using a system already built rather than try and start from scratch. You will never finish it in a reasonable amount of time. For example, I (being a .Net dev) use DotNetNuke as my portal which already provides all the custom user information, blogs, rss, forums, and role assignments I could ever want. Couple that with something like an implementation of SharpForge, a (very crappy) conversion of SourceForge that I can rebuild to suit my own needs. If I had to write the project management system from scratch - even with all the fancy tools I have at my disposal - I might as well just give up. Ambition is one thing... doing is another. I learned that the hard way.

Hey, maybe if yours is better than mine, I will have everyone transfer over. As I said, I'm not in this to compete... I just figured I would because this is something the comm definately needs. OFPEC is very near and dear to my heart, but the past is the past. OFPEC is having too much trouble staying afloat right now. I really wish it wasn't, but it is not my site to manage or give advice about. I can only cross my fingers and hope they bounce back up.

[maddogx 13]

@Crashdome & Hardrock:

Since we all have similar projects in mind, it really would be ideal to get this going as a team. I'm a dev too (well, in training) and have a lot of PHP and MySQL experience, and as you are both devs too I'm sure we could get something going.

Since we all have different timeframes in which we can start, it might be best to get together privately and see where we go from here.

[hardrock 1]

Since we all have similar projects in mind, it really would be ideal to get this going as a team.

I think so too. Even though our plans might differ at some points: If we can get something going alltogether it would have better chances than three different solo projects. I don't mind on making compromises, as long as the result is useful.

[maddogx 13]

Since we all have similar projects in mind, it really would be ideal to get this going as a team.

I think so too. Even though our plans might differ at some points: If we can get something going alltogether it would have many more chances than three different solo projects. I don't mind on making compromises, as long as the result is useful.

Same here. I've sent you and CrashDome a PM.

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]You can compose music scores??? What do you use?

Synth + midi + Ableton Live + Sony Acid + numerous VSTi´s and Sample-Libs

I have turned this into a side business and already produced commercial music for several companies that are/were shown in cinemas and at international product exhibitions.

[bardosy 154]

It's a good idea, but it exists. This is the ofpec.com

[zwobot 17]

I was planning to build the site in PHP5 using the excellent Symfony Framework

Use cakePHP instead.

Convention over configuration

The idea is good, but honestly I doubt the acceptance (and discipline to keep the designers' profiles clean) would be great on a long time scale.

[maddogx 13]

I was planning to build the site in PHP5 using the excellent Symfony Framework

Use cakePHP instead.

Convention over configuration  

The idea is good, but honestly I doubt the acceptance (and discipline to keep the designers' profiles clean) would be great on a long time scale.

Well, that remains to be seen doesn't it. Planning is already underway.