Tell me what you think of this situation
by Paul Fassett · in General Discussion · 10/26/2003 (8:56 am) · 8 replies
I am currently putting together a mod for the torque engine and the team I have put together seem to me to be disinterested. Tell me if you think the same after reading this.
Three weeks ago I gave my development team assignments, scripts with a flow chart of what they need to do and told them what I expect the scripts to do. One of my guys is a modeler, the other two are scripters. I do the terrain, models, buildings and architecture, and a big portion of the art direction, plus upkeep the website and write limited scripts. I have a lot to do on my own but in three weeks, my team has shown me NOTHING, nathen, zero. They keep telling me they haven't had the time. I work on average 50 hours a week and somehow I have time to do all this www.11series.com .
I am now starting to worry that I will lose my team and am thinkng of just making this a mod of morrowind instead of a full game. What is your opinion after reading the site? Do you think I'm loosing my team and is there an alternative you can think of that will save this project?
Three weeks ago I gave my development team assignments, scripts with a flow chart of what they need to do and told them what I expect the scripts to do. One of my guys is a modeler, the other two are scripters. I do the terrain, models, buildings and architecture, and a big portion of the art direction, plus upkeep the website and write limited scripts. I have a lot to do on my own but in three weeks, my team has shown me NOTHING, nathen, zero. They keep telling me they haven't had the time. I work on average 50 hours a week and somehow I have time to do all this www.11series.com .
I am now starting to worry that I will lose my team and am thinkng of just making this a mod of morrowind instead of a full game. What is your opinion after reading the site? Do you think I'm loosing my team and is there an alternative you can think of that will save this project?
#2
I try to keep them interested by giving them the feeling they are more then just a coder or a scripter that they have a real impact on how the game will play out. What else can I do?
10/26/2003 (9:12 am)
Thats the thing I have done everything I know to keep them interested. I let them pick their roles in development so they wouldn't be doing things they didn't want, I also told them if they wanted to come up with a story I told them to come up with a story line like they would for one of their own and we would make their story a whole epic quest. Since our game is open ended each epic quest can be stumbled upon or given by a guild and would be really long and involved and told them that any time they wanted to add something was fine to me. This gives them the feeling that there is more then one story and they could see their own creative visions come true. We talked for hours about stories and how we would implement them.I try to keep them interested by giving them the feeling they are more then just a coder or a scripter that they have a real impact on how the game will play out. What else can I do?
#3
10/26/2003 (9:57 am)
Question....do you all live in the same area? if you could get together say once every week this might help. A friend and I work at the same place... so are lunch hour is spent exchanging ideas,concepts and testing each others work. As I don't have much time as he does because I am a single parent with two girls into sports. But I do find time to script and test things as well search the forums. You might have to most of the work or find a new team. 
#4
A summary of a presentation I helped give last year at the IGC details some thoughts on remote team management. It really only touches on some topics, but maybe it'll spark some thought. If you don't have experience managing a team, then you're going to have to learn the hard way how to find a decent team and motivate them. And never underestimate means of motivation where they motivate themselves and even you as they work. That's why getting an early playable version of the game (even with junky programmer art) showing what play will be like is so important if at all possible. It's motivating to be able to play it, even if you are using stick figures.
Dave
21-6
10/26/2003 (10:04 am)
I could go on and on about what could possibly be wrong with your project. Without many more details, I can't give definitive answers. However I can say that if you scope your game too big ('open ended..epic quest' type of talk scares me), do not have a detailed plan of attack, and do not specify short dev cycles for playable deliverables, then it's likely you will not get people motivated easily.A summary of a presentation I helped give last year at the IGC details some thoughts on remote team management. It really only touches on some topics, but maybe it'll spark some thought. If you don't have experience managing a team, then you're going to have to learn the hard way how to find a decent team and motivate them. And never underestimate means of motivation where they motivate themselves and even you as they work. That's why getting an early playable version of the game (even with junky programmer art) showing what play will be like is so important if at all possible. It's motivating to be able to play it, even if you are using stick figures.
Dave
21-6
#5
10/26/2003 (10:09 am)
Yeah, definetly the big game development fails 95% of the times. Everyone has come at least once with a big game project, specially epic stories, etc and has failed to do so.
#6
They both live about an hour and a half away so we communicate via messenger. I've known one of the devs for about 12 years now. I guess I just need to provide more info to them in the form of tutorials. What would be good to give them if we don't plan on doing a whole lot with the source code? I already sent them the tourniquet tut.
10/26/2003 (10:27 am)
Well on a kind of unrelated note then, if I was to do a small scale of the game and just concentrate on the basics, it would be better to script it right? I think the main concern with my devs is how to script the language. Are there any good tutorials out there on just torques cs language I could give them to read up on. Maybe it's more of a thrown out to the wolves without a weapon sort of thing. Is there something out there like that just for the scripting language I can give them so they won't feel so lost when they look at the game?They both live about an hour and a half away so we communicate via messenger. I've known one of the devs for about 12 years now. I guess I just need to provide more info to them in the form of tutorials. What would be good to give them if we don't plan on doing a whole lot with the source code? I already sent them the tourniquet tut.
#7
With Ecoheroes, I went through a number of artists who musicians who didn't do very much. Then there was 1 guy who did a fair amount of art that looked really good, but he didn't have enough time to keep working on it. I'm still using most of his art (he did give me permission to do so).
Then I found a musician who just went ahead and did all the music right away.
Then I found an artist who did all the non-character art that was left and another artist who's doing the character art. There's now only a few pieces of character art left (which are being done by the character artist + another character artist who started working on it recently).
But you get LOTS of people who never send you very much actual work. You just have to throw them off the team and find someone else. They usually don't even care when you throw them off the team because they're not too interested in it.
When you have alot of work done, it will be easier to find people who will stick around. Most people won't volunteer to work on a project unless it looks like it's going somewhere or they aren't interested in really working on it.
10/26/2003 (2:07 pm)
When people join your team, there's no way of knowing whether they're going to be people who are going to work or people who are going to SAY that they're going to work.With Ecoheroes, I went through a number of artists who musicians who didn't do very much. Then there was 1 guy who did a fair amount of art that looked really good, but he didn't have enough time to keep working on it. I'm still using most of his art (he did give me permission to do so).
Then I found a musician who just went ahead and did all the music right away.
Then I found an artist who did all the non-character art that was left and another artist who's doing the character art. There's now only a few pieces of character art left (which are being done by the character artist + another character artist who started working on it recently).
But you get LOTS of people who never send you very much actual work. You just have to throw them off the team and find someone else. They usually don't even care when you throw them off the team because they're not too interested in it.
When you have alot of work done, it will be easier to find people who will stick around. Most people won't volunteer to work on a project unless it looks like it's going somewhere or they aren't interested in really working on it.
#8
1) The team (or at least the leader) has a proven track record of finished titles that have been released (& sold).
2) A small project that seems easy to finish
3) Demonstration of project progress.
The other thing is to make sure that your team has a stake in the success of the project - if it succeeds, everyone profits.
10/26/2003 (8:41 pm)
I haven't really been through this experience, so I'm probably not the best source of advice. But putting myself into the shoes of a developer working on someone else's project, I'd have to say that I would need really solid evidence that the project is going to succeed - particularly when there are so many others to choose from. What would give me that confidence?1) The team (or at least the leader) has a proven track record of finished titles that have been released (& sold).
2) A small project that seems easy to finish
3) Demonstration of project progress.
The other thing is to make sure that your team has a stake in the success of the project - if it succeeds, everyone profits.
Torque 3D Owner Xavier "eXoDuS" Amado
Default Studio Name