Collaborative Scenario-Making Idea

[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.

[Mister Pleasant]

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]

Ok... from the closed CtP2 recruitment thread:

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?