9 replies to this topic

[winter]

post disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

In an effort to get some traction on content development, I suggest we establish a convention for organizing work that multiple people are involved with.  I didn't see anything like this in the forum, but I could have easily missed it - so please forgive me if this is already established.

I don't think we need anything fancy like project management software - just simple record keeping.

For instance, if someone is working on a story line, that an outline should be established like:

"target characters: a/d 40+, magic less than 20
ultimate goal: get a new spell, retrieve the Wand of Spell Enhancement and get 50,000 defense magic experience
background: Sima in Netsam Village is missing stuff and wants to know whose stealing it
parts:
  1. *start (winter) - talk to Sima
  2. gambit (winter) - ants, Ants, ANTS! summary - char hides out in Sima's shop and waits for stuff to disappear, sees that ants are taking stuff away.  Char is ultimately unable to stop them.
  3. *talk to Sima who refers character to an exterminator
  4. quest (Butler) - where do the ants go? summary - follow clues to see where they are going, leads to gambit Ant Master!
  5. gambit () - Ant Master! summary - Char goes through various traps and creatures and finds the Ant Master. Char cannot get to him however, but finds something referring him to the Wizard Lorimar.
  <more stuff>
  7. quest () <some name> blah blah, reward: Wand of Spell Enhancement
  ...
  11. gambit () <whatever> reward: new spell - Stingers
  12. quest () - Spelling Bee. summary - the character uses the spell that Lorimar taught him in order to kill all the ants and therefore drive the Ant Master out of the city.  Reward: 20k Magic experience"

Then with something like this in place, if someone wants to design a piece of it, they put their name on an item and go at it. Of course, there should be coordination between the designers, but at least there's some tracking.

Same sort of thing can be done for maps:

"general theme: Forested peninsula with small islands
basic geography map: Winter - done
City 1 (north): Butler - done
Village 2 (east-central): Codux - done
...
Island 4 (south-west): AlddrA - in process"

etc... each map area could have a list of interesting things, shops, NPCs etc.. some coordination as to which quests will exist withing which map areas, etc...

What I'm suggesting could eventually get very big and complex, but if taken one part at a time, I think it could help coordinate the pieces.

This is just one proposed method - but having SOME way for folks to coordinate contributions would be useful.

Other ideas??
<I promise, this is the last new topic I will post today>

[butler]

mm. There is a collaboration between those of us working on maps, and I have asked for help in establishing the backstory (OL's history). Really, all this is to build quests/ more specific stories on. Really, a lot of things like this will require us to finish the maps (and we have set ourselves a rather steep amount to deal with, in an ambitious way).

I'm just bringing together, the map design document (with our continent map, and all the information we need so maps flow better together in a colloborative project), and this will be the foundation of OL History as well.

As for map wise, I strongly say each person does a map, and maybe one other goes over it to comb for mistakes. Colloborating at the same time on a single map file would be chaotic.

Things like storylines, we need to sort out the general direction we want quests to go in. I'm in favour of a branching system, where you follow one branch of a possible story (and you cannot go back on decisions) to get one of various different rewards.

I also know that for a while, people where colloborating on a new map maker. I think most of this is done in private, then presented to the community when there is something to show (thinking about the wikis, and a few other projects in that regard)

[winter]

I agree colaberation is the way to go.  It doesn't have to be everyone and tracking it doesn't have to be open to everyone.  Some small group should come up with the general outline (of a story line or a map) - and the parts can be loosely defined.  Then the parts can be divvied up among the contributers.

Peer review within the group is a GREAT thing and should be used whenever possible.

I would REALLY ENCOURAGE possible quest makers to cut their teeth on smaller one-off quests.  It's not easy to make a compelling "adventure," and I don't think it is realistic for a group of people to attempt to create a continent-wide coherent story line in one-felled swoop. Whether we bring pieces of an adventure "live" or not is somewhat irrelevant, but I think parts should be made available on the test server as they are done.  There they can be analyzed and rebalanced by the team.  I'm a huge proponent of piecemeal development, especially when there is SO MUCH to do and very little development resources working on it.  The result is that more people see it and get excited about it and more focus is given to it = more fun and quicker progress.

So, where do I start LOL!

[Makiltur]

I move that we appoint Winter as the Official Unofficial Content Development Project Manager >.>

Yesh, something coherent plan-wise would be nice but there are difficulties:

• No official direction, underlying concept or goals currently
  
• People randomly stop playing and we have no idea what they have done/are doing
  
• Things I can't think of at the moment

A sufficiently complex spreadsheet would be wonderful for keeping track of everything - One sheet per area of development (maps, quests, graphics, etc) with project descriptions, participants and statuses within each sheet, for example. Googledocs is our friend here (with someone making a backup in case of trolls)

[butler]

Small issue I have with quests at this point is that we really don't know whether they'll fit in naturally with bases we still have to make. I do like the idea though, of jotting down the basic concepts at this point, so we do have a base to more quickly move on from when we do have these other bases done.

Damn you Makiltur!!!! Cutting my post off.

To you, I was thinking about repurposing my MediaWiki base (that I had started building a Wiki on, which Ash has already fulfilled) and using that as a colloboration base, as that let's everyone post examples and files to it, and freedom to discuss in a very open manner. If you're interested in that, It would be nice to no so I could start on yet another mini project (and mak, i need to talk to you about the continent again )

[winter]

Google docs is fine - Mediawiki if you want to spend the time managing it, super.  Either way, if we can get some goals and direction down we can do some parallel development

[winter]

Um, so in the spirit of not duplicating work, are either of you in the process of setting up a spreadsheet or a wiki?  If so, please post here (boot-strap, if you will).

If not, I can work on setting up a Google group and new google user (to hold files) for OL Community - Content Development (or some such thing).  I could set up the shell of a spreadsheet for the current work in progress if you like, but I think you two (Makiltur and Butler) at least have the initial content, n'est pas?

If you two could respond whether you are or are not in the process of starting, that would be great.  If neither of you are, I'll go ahead with the new user and group, setup a basic folder on gdrive for the user and share it... to get off the ground with it.

[Makiltur]

I haven't started anything significant organization-wise. The most I have is a general shape of something in my head, and those never translate well into 2 dimensions XD. Content-wise I have very little (maps only), Butler has more.

Please help us organize!

[butler]

I had a slight battle with electricity (and lost) so was out on a powercut yesterday .

Currently I have:

• Flying Citadel map (half done)
  
• Flying Citadel insides (started, mostly to play about with insided for above map)
  
• Continent Map drawing (Done, only map divisions to be finished on it)
  
• OL History (Basic principles done, on hold till continent is coming to a bit more fruition)
  
• em
  
• thats it

I got sort out the MediaWiki thing a bit. Could just use it so people could see the work an browse through it a bit easier (and make it the public wing) while google group could be the private wing (in case that stuff doesn't quite come to fruition)

[winter]

Ok, set up the basics and made starting contacts.

If anyone is interested in being part of the content development team (making/reviewing maps, graphics, quests, etc) please let me know.

THIS GROUP IS NOT INTENDED TO REPLACE GAME IMPROVEMENT DISCUSSIONS IN THIS FORUM!!!  It is merely being setup to help track the actual work being done.