Collaborative Scenario-Making Idea

[Hoek]

Anyone interested in a sort of Scenario-Making Guild for civ 3? The purpose here is that not everyone is good at every aspect of scenario making. Some are better at graphics, some are better at technical aspects, etc. The advantage then of having a collaborative effort is to pool talent and resources. Someone would approach us with a concept, and we'd make the scenario. First we'd divide the labor, then we'd sort of have a supervisor for each project who would coordinate our efforts. This way, we produce the best-quality scenario in the least amount of time.

Anyone interested? post here or holla at me @ hoekzema@gwu.edu

List:

Graphics:
a) Units/other Sprites: Jason Bedouin
b) Non-sprite pictures: Hexagonian
Sound: Indian Jones, Snapcase
Mapmaking: Hoek, Harlan, El Hidalgo
Terrain/City/Unit placement: Hoek, Harlan, Rasbelin
Historical Research: El hidalgo, Case, Mark L, jdd2007
Rules Editing: Mr. Pleasant, KH, Bill3000, Mark L
Events: Mr. Pleasant, Mark L, KH
Documentation: Case, Hexagonian
Concepts: everyone, but leader is given final say
Playtesting: Mr. Pleasant, Bill3000, jdd2007

[KrazyHorse]

I wouldn't mind at all. Anything but graphics/sound. I'm pretty decent working with the editors/rules.txt etc.

[Hoek]

Cool...I'm not so hot with graphics either, but I make damn good maps and lay out infrastructure well. I'm also good at unit specs.

Count me in as well. I have zero artisitic talent, but find I do pretty well with technical aspects, game ballance, etc.

[Jason Beaudoin]

I can help with the graphics.

[Hoek]

Okay, I'm going to count a running list of who's in and what they're interested in doing at the top

[Hoek]

Pleaseant: what specific kind of work would you be interested in? playtesting?

[Colonel Kraken]

Collaborative scenario making is definitely a very real possibility. Just slide over to the CtP2 forum. Harlan coordinated an ENORMOUS collaborative effort that drew from the talent of many people and the suggestions of many more to make a modification/scenario type package that was no less than brilliant.

It can be done with the right individuals, the right attitudes, and a good leader or two.

[orange]

I'd be interested in map making. I've loved doing that with Civ2 and CtpII

[Steve Clark]

I would suspect that our colleagues from the Scenario League would be the core players for Civ3 scenario designing. Just a few of them have more experience than all of us combined. Why reinvent the wheel when we can leverage their
custom terrain graphics,
AI events,
custom units,
modified rules,
totally custom tech trees
experience (which would be very helpful for Civ3)?

[mactbone]

I'd be willing to help in any capacity. I can research some stuff or give suggestions. I think I'd work best on non-historical mods/scenarios though. I'm just too creative, I don't like all the grognards getting on me for not realizing that the 'wonderful and almighty anregouio' could run at a speed of 3 1/2 miles an hour over muddy terrain.

[El hidalgo]

I'd be interested in map making and historical research. I plan to make a lot of maps anyway, but I'll do some to specification if someone wants.

[TresXF]

i'll surely make some scenarios for civ III - but i don't think i'd participate in a guild, group or something else. due to my experiences in the past i'll prefer independence

[Immortal Wombat]

Depending on the techniques we have for making scenarios in Civ3, I'd be interested in helping out now and again.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Colonel Kraken
Collaborative scenario making is definitely a very real possibility. Just slide over to the CtP2 forum. Harlan coordinated an ENORMOUS collaborative effort that drew from the talent of many people and the suggestions of many more to make a modification/scenario type package that was no less than brilliant.

It can be done with the right individuals, the right attitudes, and a good leader or two.

That was WesW, but yeah, MedMod2 was a great acheivement.

[hexagonian]

Graphics, although more along the lines of taking existing photos and converting them into a consistent style for in-game pictures (such as the informational photos for the tech tree, units and so forth). I cannot create sprites though.

And I have a website that is now available for the tranfer of in-process Mods, so they can be downloaded for playtesting before finally being posted here at Aoplyton.

Land of Hexagonia

[Bill3000]

I'm interested in rules.txt stuff and playtesting.

Rules.txt stuff, events (depending on the extent to which this can be utilized if at all), playtesting/ballancing.

[Buck Birdseed]

Just to go for something totally different: Musical score, Documentation/Readme file.

[Hoek]

Alright, i've been updating the list, and I'm going to try to reshape the list so as to show the division of labor more, and then stick various people into the slots. I agree with Cnl. Krakken that leadership is needed. The way I was thinking about it, whoever's idea the scenario it was in the first place would be made the supervisor of the project. He would coordinate the various aspects of production and would exert some degree of creative influence on the project.

I think we should have the group be somewhat formalized, so that we only work on projects controlled by our own people. That way we can set down some ground rules and have a sort of standardized method of making scenarios. What do you guys think of this idea?

[Harlan]

I must admit my faults. I love making scenarios, but some parts more than others! In particular, I'm keen on maps and knowing all the historical detail that goes into the setup (resources, roads, troop dispositions, borders, city size, etc). You can see my website to get an idea of how I can get deeply into that kind of thing.

However, I'm also very disappointed. I was burned out on the limitations of Civ2 years ago. I looked forward to making scenarios for CTP, and that didn't work out. Then CTP2, and they pulled the plug on patches. So, for years I haven't really had an outlet to make scenarios for, and I'm rarin' to go with Civ3.

During these years in exile of sorts, I've made preparatory maps for a number of different scenario ideas. Frankly, way more stuff than I have time to realize! I'm say about 8 different things, some much more thought out than others. But maybe I can hand some of this off to a team of others to see to completion. For a couple I'd be happy to be a leader of a team, for a couple I'd be happy not to be. Without a team structure to help, most of these will probably never be actually completed, since I don't like doing many aspects of the scenario making work.

I don't want to publicly say what these ideas are, cos I think its nice to surprise people. But if anyone is interested and can keep a secret, email me. We could get a team started already and really hit the ground running. I'm not letting the mere fact that the game hasn't actually been released yet slow me down.

[Rasbelin]

I could join the group, perhaps.
Placing units, infrastructure, diplomacy,
editing and setting up cities are some
of those tasks I could do. Or am I not good
enough for the team?

[FrostyBoy]

I am currently making a site devoted to mods and the like (see link below)

At the moment I'm not interested in helping out (I have too much of my own work to do yet), but time changes and I might be able to offer my help with the graphics

surely you remember:
(it was a rush job done in 30 minutes. I expect to be changing all sorts of things in Civ3)

[Dr. Nick]

I can be a creative assitant... I can occasionally come up with units, but not from scratch and they're quite mediocre. I can help out in the technical aspects as well.

[Hoek]

Harlan: I'm gonna email you in a second. I found that I had probably 4-5 different projects that I had in various stages of development, one of which was pretty much ready to go (the Phillipine Insurrection). I often couldn't find the time or patience to follow through completely with a project, and I only ended up producing 2 scenarios on my own. Alot of time was wasted doing the preliminary work, and the idea here is to increase the efficiency of scenario-making.

Rasbelin: Of course you're welcome to join!

[Hoek]

Updated and modified the list. Is this an acceptable division of labor to people? Are there categories that I'm missing? What do you guys think?

[Harlan]

Hoek,
I just sent an email to you.

I for one don't think the historical research aspect needs to exclusively be the task of the leader, though the leader needs to do at least some of that stuff if they're gonna know what they're doing. If someone like El hidalgo wants to assist someone in that aspect, more power to em. You can never have enough historical research, so input in definitely welcome.

[Case]

Count me in!
My strengths are my research skills and abliity to write documentation.

[Immortal Wombat]

I'd contribute to the concept adding through a scripting language, but *gasp* there isn't one.

I guess other than that... there would be better artists, though I could help with that. I have enough patience to do some units perhaps. I can't be arsed to game balance, so I'll leave that one...

I guess it depends on how the scenario making is done. I was thinking of doing something similar for CtP2, but everything fits together too tightly to make it easy to split.

Put me down under obscure concepts and ideas generation centre. (assuming the game is flexible enough to allow those ) or units, and basic graphics.

[Hoek]

True...I guess there is a definite role for in-depth historical research. I think that whoever comes up with the idea should have at least rudimentary knowledge of the conflict we would be dealing with. Perhaps the leader would be required to fill out some kind of proposal form that would have a space for basic historical background. We could develop a phase-based way of operating, with the first phase being historical research and team forming, the second phase being map making, unit placement, infrastructure placement, city placement, and unit design; the third phase would be the mechanics of the scenario including events, rules editing, technology editing, and such; the fourth would be play-testing.

What do you think of trying to integrate mutliplayer capabilities into the design?