mclaren u filthy thief :P i caaught u stealing others work trying to slack off are u damn programmers just cant get the staff these days :P *whistles while downloading*

well Loco, you gave it a good shot and I wish I could have gotten more level work done (I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I would have liked)..

Either way, I still have all the scripts and such.. and I may still hack away at it here and there.. just to see what I come up with (If I come up with something cool, I'll send you a few screenshots). Either way, as the saying goes, "Nothing Ventured means Nothing Gained"... and I would like to think that everyone involved with this hopefully walked away with at the very least a better understanding of what it takes to put together even just a small demo (Time, effort and planning, and dedication). I know it was kind of hard put from the get go with people leaving early on because they couldn't become masters of 3dgs overnight, or else because something in their lives came up...

It would have been nice if we could have seen this through though... and maybe one day, there will be a starting level

Regards,
Ayrus

If you had started with a finished game maybe you could have made progress. I mean I finish "game templates" all the time. If you started with the basic outline of a game a "template" of sorts then any addition to it might be considered a success. And if the project is carried on an ongoing basis like a wiki maybe eventually something good could come from it.

I’m not sure I have been to clear here but basically, starting extremely small, and using better communication channels, and small goals maybe good work might trickle in? Maybe such a game could be cut into sections and completed one small section at a time. Using forums, wikis, better online communictions and tools, and view it more as a resource site.

Just my thoughts I was hopeful for this project and nearly joined myself, though I haven’t had good experience with team projects either.

I hope this was helpful I'm a little tired right now.


Guardian

Guardian, I think I know what you mean. Maybe everyone could contribute some ideas of how to make something like this more successful as I think many in the community was hopeful about this project.

I think it is worth a post mortem and another kick at the can.

well, I havn't necessarily givin up for the simple fact that something like this would be an excellent learning tool for anyone looking to go in on a project and really see what it is like to see it through to the finish.

Either way, I can state right off 2 big things that killed this project (IMO); Impatience, Communication.

Impatience is up there because everybody wanted to do everything all at once so to speak. Some people wanted to just dive right in without taking the time to plan it out and flash it out a bit. Level designers wanted to build levels, programmers wanted to program, modellers wanted to model, etc... (I think you get the idea), but nobody wanted to sit down and take the time to build the full premise/storyline, decide on the weapons/powerups/items, decide on anything really or really set a basic set of guidelines. Because of this, people got too impatient to start building the world and lost interest, leaving the project.

Now, something that was not a failing, but did hurt us was the fact that a few people had to back out because they simply could not find the time to work on this and maintain their lives as well. Now, this did hurt us, but was, in its own way a good thing because these people realised that they couldn't do it, and let us know so that we wouldn't think we could expect any input from them.

Now, communication was also a big factor. At this time, all we used was icq/msn/aim and the forum, when it probably would have been smarter to go ahead and use a solution such as Skype or netmeeting. We also were unable to effectively have a meeting of any real kind because we could not set a specific time when all of us could be online (Different timezones). Now, we did try our best... but our lines of communication were very spotty and unreliable at best.

Now, of the things that went right, the first thing was that we tried to keep it as simple as possible, but with our own little innovations to make it "ours". We went with a basic shoot-em-up type sidescroller that would not be too hard for the level designers to build, the artists to texture, or the programmers to program. We didn't have to worry about the game concept becoming too complex for us because of the limitations of the sidescroller genre.

We Also made sure to have a means of making the files accessable to everyone on the team via ftp, which is always good because it allows for anyone to work on/with any aspect that they needed to do their Job (In my situation it was getting the main scripts from the programmers to design the level around the limitations of the camera, things like that.). This was also nice because we could work something out, then post a demo for all to download and evaluate and effectively input on.

Thats my current thoughts on the project, Loco, and the other might have different views and opinions, and it would be good to see those as well.

Regards,
Ayrus

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Impatience is up there because everybody wanted to do everything all at once so to speak. Some people wanted to just dive right in without taking the time to plan it out and flash it out a bit. Level designers wanted to build levels, programmers wanted to program, modellers wanted to model, etc... (I think you get the idea), but nobody wanted to sit down and take the time to build the full premise/storyline, decide on the weapons/powerups/items, decide on anything really or really set a basic set of guidelines. Because of this, people got too impatient to start building the world and lost interest, leaving the project.

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So then this goes back to what ARussell said - it might have worked better if you started with a design. That way all these eager beavers could have jumped in ... but into something defined.

I think a staged plan might have helped then. Start first with a design team and only after the design is finished, start to add on other team members.

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Now, something that was not a failing, but did hurt us was the fact that a few people had to back out because they simply could not find the time to work on this and maintain their lives as well. Now, this did hurt us, but was, in its own way a good thing because these people realised that they couldn't do it, and let us know so that we wouldn't think we could expect any input from them.

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I don't know how to do this .. but I hear you.

There must be committment to the project. Perhaps if we set some expectations upfront on how many hours we expect people to dedicate - say 20 hours a week or whatever - then they know up front.

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Now, communication was also a big factor. At this time, all we used was icq/msn/aim and the forum, when it probably would have been smarter to go ahead and use a solution such as Skype or netmeeting. We also were unable to effectively have a meeting of any real kind because we could not set a specific time when all of us could be online (Different timezones). Now, we did try our best... but our lines of communication were very spotty and unreliable at best.

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This will always be a problem. I would suggest that you just choose the best time and make it a regular meetimg time. Example Friday 9:00 am EST. If it is a regular meeting - people who can't actually make it, can still email their comments to the meeting moderator before the meeting and check the minutes of the meeting afterwards to see what the discussion was.

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Now, of the things that went right, the first thing was that we tried to keep it as simple as possible, but with our own little innovations to make it "ours". We went with a basic shoot-em-up type sidescroller that would not be too hard for the level designers to build, the artists to texture, or the programmers to program. We didn't have to worry about the game concept becoming too complex for us because of the limitations of the sidescroller genre.

We Also made sure to have a means of making the files accessable to everyone on the team via ftp, which is always good because it allows for anyone to work on/with any aspect that they needed to do their Job (In my situation it was getting the main scripts from the programmers to design the level around the limitations of the camera, things like that.). This was also nice because we could work something out, then post a demo for all to download and evaluate and effectively input on.

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So these things sound like keepers.

hahaha!

Jamie_Lynn quote

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So then this goes back to what ARussell said - it might have worked better if you started with a design. That way all these eager beavers could have jumped in ... but into something defined.

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Yup.

My original plan, was to give the experiment a dose of reality. I realized that many members were from different time zones and all of that. I think in retrospect I should have made the project much easier with less reality. Going through all the planning stages and all was probably not a good idea. If everyone had something to jump into from the beginning, it would have probably kept everyone's interest up. But how it worked out, it got to the point where basically a few old timers were doing everything, which totally defeated what the project was all about in the first place.

Anyway, like I said before, it is as much my fault as anyone's. I was expecting too much from the new members like I am used to with people I usually work with. I should have put the project together differently so evrything was up and running from the get-go.

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I wasn't expecting to manage the project and I didn't.

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I hope that you, or some of the other seniors that voluteered some of their time, will consider trying this again in the future. It would do the community some good, I think to see a project like this happen. (But I think whoever voluteers will have to have the time to manage the project for it to succeed and maybe that is asking for too much.)