Advice for my unfinished missions

[schaefsky 0]

Link to first mission (release):

First mission at OFPEC (no addons required)

Update 25th of May 2009:

Link to beta missions:

Second mission (no addons required)

Third mission (no addons required)

Original Post

Hello all,

I've been playing OFP and ArmA and lurking these forums for some years now and figured it's time to introduce myself.

To quote my flatmate: "You know what? Most of the time when I come into your room and you sit in front of ArmA, you don't actually play the game, you just have the editor opened. I think the only reason you play with ArmA is because you are too old to play with Lego without being embarassed."

And right he is. Lego rules!

Anyways, the other reason for this post, besides introducing myself, is that I need some advice:

I've been throwing together some small to medium sized missions for OFP and ArmA over the years. I even started to work on a small "campaign" for ArmA because I didn't like the original one.

Now before rising any expactations, there isn't a story developed, the missions I make have VERY basic intros, if at all, and mostly no outros. Also no cutscenes, etc. think you get it. But I think some of them are fun to play. I always wanted to finish and polish them so I could release them, but for various reasons I never did.

So, I thought I'd do it like this:

I will release some of the stuff I made as WIP (work in progress), so people interested could give me some feedback.

And, most importantly, I would like people to get involved with the missions to polish them up. (This goes for mission stuff like objectives etc. but especially to all you movie makers out there to maybe throw in some well edited cutscenes and the like).

Essentially something like an (cooperative) open-source mission editing process.

I will give full permissions to edit, copy, modify etc. anything about the missions and scripts, but I would like to ask not to start releasing edited versions right away to avoid a mess. Suggestions for a due process for this are also very welcome! Also I would like to have the right release something like an "original editor's cut", a state of the missions I especially like. And finally I would like to be mentioned in credits where it is due.

So give a vote in the poll, and share your thoughts!

PS:

Since I don't have webspace or a crapidshre account or something, any advice for actual release would be welcome. I was thinking about asking some community sites (like Armaholic, Armedassault.info, Armamdb and the like) to host them for me. Yes, I am a cheap bastard

You can wake up now, post is finished.

Edited May 25, 2009 by schaefsky

[manzilla 1]

My suggestion is to release it over at the OFPEC missions beta testing thread. You will probably get much better feedback and testing over there.

SP Thread:

http://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?board=82.0

MP Thread:

http://www.ofpec.com/forum/index.php?board=104.0

[.kju 3241]

yeah ofpec sounds like a good idea!

mission making is unfortunately almost always an one man

project. so most ppl are not used to working together on one

mission or rework other ppl missions (apart from technical aspects).

will be interesting how it turns out

[schaefsky 0]

Thanks Manzilla for pointing me to OFPEC, didn't realize they're testing missions.

Quote[/b] ]mission making is unfortunately almost always an one man project.

Yeah, but following the topics of Footmunch's F-16 and things like ACE Mod I thought "Well maybe someone would like to bump in."

Updated first post with OFPEC link to first mission.

[.kju 3241]

Right. I didn't say its bad to work as a team on a mission or

rework other peoples missions. Quite the contrary.

The challenge you are facing, is that people are not used to

work that way.

This is the only thing I am saying.  

That said to improve the chances of success you can do various things of course.

[schaefsky 0]

@Q

I'm sorry if I stepped on your toes with my last post, wasn't my intention. Reading it again it sounds a bit like it was though, sorry for that. Was in a hurry since people started to crowd my room and I wanted to wrap it up.

That said, do you have further advice for me? Since I've been following your projects for some years now I take it you have some experience on the whole cooperation thing.

@all

Thanks for the input so far, either by posting or giving a vote.

If you can actually be bothered to play my mission giving feedback either here or over at OFPEC would be great!

A simple "Liked it (not)" will do for me.

There are no addons needed, though I plan to release an ACE version (mission runs fine with ACE at the moment though)

PS: Any advice for a good picture upload site so I could hotlink some images (under 100KB ) ?

[.kju 3241]

http://www.picfront.org/

You need the technical backend for cooperation:

* Version control (svn/git)

* Task/issue/bug management (RedMine/trac/mantis)

Try to make your post as easy readable as possible:

* Bullet point lists help

* Use bold, italic and underscores

* Use images to illustrate a mission / campaign plan / etc

* Make it as clear as possible what you want others to do

To name a few thoughts.

[xeno 230]

http://www.picfront.org/

You need the technical backend for cooperation:

* Version control (svn/git)

* Task/issue/bug management (RedMine/trac/mantis)

Setting up a version control system and a bug tracker for such a small project like a mission is simply overkill (in this example a mission with a 52 KB mission.sqm and three very small scripts).

What would make sense would be a version control system for multiple missions/addons (maybe everybody could learn from each other and help others and get help). Like what open source projects do. But I guess that will never happen although it could stop reinventing the wheel again and again. But that's only my opinion

Xeno

[.kju 3241]

well he was asking for my experience and suggestions.

these were not specifically targeted at this one project, i would

still say the apply for it.

there are various sites that offer such tool support for free.

it takes very little time to set it up. more time is needed to

understand and use it in a proper way.

that said Xeno we used all this backend support for WGL, for ACE,

for PROPER, for OAC and for currently WIP projects

[schaefsky 0]

Hi all,

just updated the first post, my first mission got reviewed by OFPEC.

If you played it, would be nice to let me know how you liked it and what (or what you did not like).

Huge thanks to the folks over there! Great place to get your missions tested and reviewed.

Expect more to come (some kind of follow ups to the first mission and maybe some unrelated missions as well).

What would you guys like next? The follow up to the first mission or either a simple ACE-Mod mission or a simple A-10 strike mission (ACE compatible and lots of more fun with the improved tracers)?

[schaefsky 0]

Hi all,

just updated the first post with two new mssions at OFPEC.

If you played it, would be nice to let me know how you liked it and what (or what you did not like).