New United Myth Coummnity Map Making Group

[Death's Avatar]

Nobody has even heard from kel in 3 or 4 years..
-Renwood

This is not true . He made an appearance over the summer, and a more thorough appearance a few months prior. Your point still holds, he wasn't doing any myth while he was around.

I think a lot of people prefer to work in small groups/alone. All depends on the project and makers...

-DA

[carlinho]

ren, don't misunderstand me
I've got nothing against mapmaking groups, in fact 3 years ago I was dying to be part of one, that's why I joined ONYX

and I really appreciate the help you offered me with ooga
believe me if anybody should have interested in it 3 years ago I definitely would have accepted the help

(actually Unkfoldt did plataea, marathon and thermopylae color maps)

the problem is the little free time I have I want to spend it on the greek project and not doing anything else, so If I got help kind of what Unkfoldt did (totally altruist help not asking for anything in return) of course I could take it...but then if I get :
we can do the scripting for your maps, but you have to do some units for us...
what's the point in doing so? it takes me as much time scripting as doing units...so it's not quantitative difference, but qualitative...

and this is what could happen if I joined a group, unless the group was called: go greeks go...

but I totally see your point in trying to unite wanderers, and I think it's a possitive attitude and you have my hats off, although personally I'm too much into my greek thing to join anything else than Onyx

So don't take my post as a negative towards your idea, I actually think it's a great idea, I guess my previous post was too much of a personal response rather than a comment on your proposal in terms of the community

cheers

[lank]

i've been reading this thread with an interest since it began. i do like the idea of open help and assistance between all mapmakers and creators for myth plugins, but (and i don't want to be completely negative here) i don't see the point in creating a new banner to do this job.

i don't know, ren, if you were part of the community during its golden age in '99 and '00 in particular, but if you were mapmaking then you may remember the vista mapmaking forum, where a strong community of mapmakers provided advice and assistance to all and sundry who asked for it - essentially the purpose of the mapmaking help forum here.

i propose that the forum here be put to better use, in the same spirit as your open collective, where threads are used to keep track of people's "open" or "semi-open" projects, their goals and tasks that are open or require help, who's helping with what, updates when they happen, maybe teasers to keep people interested and betas organised and so on. the main reason for suggesting the magma forum, even though no one need formally join magma, is because it's already established and well known. at this stage the community is small enough that almost everyone involved in mapmaking knows of it and has an account here.

i really like the idea you have, but i think it would be good to put resources already in existence to proper use before creating a new one. let's see if we can make it happen. maybe tomorrow i'll start something.

[Zeph]

very nice post lank.

I used to wander around 3d modelling forums and one of my favorite thing were WIP threads(Work in Progress)

Artists would post screenshots or movies of their project as it was being worked on. At the end, we could see all the creation process and between each posts, people could give opinion and suggestions.

[vinylrake]

Just for the record - when I initially suggested creating a new Mapmaking group, I was only joking.

I agree with Lank on this - I think the forums here serve the needs of recruiting and volunteering for help when mapmakers get stuck. The forums could also be used to recruit people to work on a team before a project starts if one wanted.

That said, I would DEFINITELY join a project team called "Go Greeks Go!". Seriously.

[Doobie]

Well Carlinho.

I am just as Crazy busy as the most obsessed of them (quit my job to produce TWA) and i was well paid.

I still help Fury on his maps that he makes. Ive offered Mine and ooga's help with your greek projects, but you havent taken us up on the offer.

I think if we all keep to our lone projects or just to the members involved in our current projects teams, we are all looking at least another full year or 2 of development to get our current work done.

There is no reason for this to happen. I would be happy to spend time making maps or testing/getting testers to work on your greek stuff even if it took away from the time that i have to work on The Wind Age stuff.

Your work is great carlinho and i see no reason why you should have to do 99% of it alone for another year or so just like fury, Ozone and Point work mostly alone.

I dont think any of us will be here 2 or maybe even 1 year from now.
So we should all unite help each other where we can, and trade work we can do for others for work they can do for us so we can get ALL OUR PROJECTS FINISHED!

I may not find working on TFV as important as my own project, But i would do all i could to help out fellow myth creators, beacuse regardless of what project we spend time on we are ALL MYTH CREATORS! I dont want to see another LAWS OF EVIL happen! Where 1 guy dissappears and the ENTIRE AWESOME PROJECT is given up on. the lack of interest to finish Laws of evil i find very distrubing. its awesome and looks mostly completed....but the manager is gone and nobody has any interest to finish it.

Nobody has even heard from kel in 3 or 4 years....is he even alive still?
I hope if i dissappear and my project is 90% completed people try to stay true to the vision and finish it without me.

-Renwood

The reason nobody took on finishing LoE is because Khellek was very particular about that plugin. It was his baby, and it was pretty clear he didn't want people to take it over should he have to take a break or even abandon it. That's his right, and we respect it.

[Renwood]

Really? hmm but is 3 years a "break"?

Well Doobie if he said something like that, I guess it makes sense then..kinda.
If he cares soo much about it though...why not finish it?

I dont think he can really have it both ways...its important to him, but not important enough to finish.

But thats just IMHO since i wasnt on the LOE team.

Ive just seen a lot of it (screenshots and C maps) from ooga when he lived out here and heard a lot about it. It should be finished, maybe people could ask kel to come back and do so, or see if they could get permission to continue work on it then submit those changes/additions to him to get his OK.

The collective group im thinking of would have a simple forum and a uploads/downloads section for all the groups involved to use for their current builds/betas.

PM has no such DL/UL feature.

To carlinho, you asked what the would the point of trading work be.
If i made something for you and you made something for me, if we could then BOTH use each persons work in our projects then we would be getting twice as much work done in the same amount of time.
Ooga and i have done this with the likes of Iron, Road and OZ over the years and its worked out pretty well.

I am mostly im thinking some uber group would be for advice and gathering more highly skilled testers in their respective fields.

As some have said Magma kind of fills this role allready, But i dont see any tester group on here at all. It would be nice to be able to go to 1 place and read about all the current projects, find out when public testing sessions are taking place. Be able to download all the current project builds from a downloads page.

My main point for this logic is to speed things up for all our projects.
Im not sure how long there will even be players for them.
Another year at the least... in 2 years i think 80-90% of the people who even still play myth will have moved on.

Be a good idea to get our projects out when there are still people to play them, let alone get enough testers to even see how our work perfoms with max players in it.

This will be my last post on the subject untill there is something more solid like a website.

ive got a ton of work to do.

seeya guys!


-Ren

[vinylrake]

Really? hmm but is 3 years a "break"?
I dont think he can really have it both ways...its important to him, but not important enough to finish.

Sure he can. He can have it however he wants, it's his. He can care about it so much that he doesn't want someone else to come in and ruin what he's created by releasing something that wouldn't be up to his standards something that would reflect negatively on his reputation or his personal standards, but still be too busy or no longer interested enough to want to put the time into finishing it the way he wants.

In other words, Having very high standards (being very particular) requires a lot more time and effort to finish a project to one's satisfaction so if you do have those high standards you might be less likely to want or be able to invest the excessive time and effort needed to finish it to your liking.

The collective group im thinking of would have a simple forum and a uploads/downloads section for all the groups involved to use for their current builds/betas.

PM has no such DL/UL feature.

From what I hear free upload/download folders are available for the asking from udogs so why would anyone need another upload/download site? Or were you thinking of folders that only members of the group have access to? Or is your point that there is no central 'one stop' place where mapmakers can find _all_ the currently in development projects without having to dive down into every individual users personal folder on udogs?

As some have said Magma kind of fills this role allready, But i dont see any tester group on here at all. It would be nice to be able to go to 1 place and read about all the current projects, find out when public testing sessions are taking place. Be able to download all the current project builds from a downloads page.

Maybe just request that Project Magma (or mariusnet) create a dedicated topic for testing/projects-in-progress? It wouldn't be that difficult if there were a seperate high level topic for testing - then each map/project could have it's own topic under that.

Another year at the least... in 2 years i think 80-90% of the people who even still play myth will have moved on.

That may be true, but I am not so sure. I would guess 80-90% of the current players have been playing this game for 5+ years which is an eternity in computer game time - I wouldn't be suprised to find 70% of the people currently playing the game still playing it 2 years - as long as the game still runs well on the latest OSes.

This will be my last post on the subject untill there is something more solid like a website.

Good suggestions and good discussion, but I think it would be silly to set up a website when everything is so vague and disorganized. seriously, I could set up a website today with forums and an upload and download section for mapmakers but what would that gain? Why would mapmakers frequent this new site instead of ProjectMagma/mariusnet and udogs? I've had experience with the whole "If you build it they will come" website creation philosophy and it's generally not true unless there is some burning need / interest in the site that is not being met by existing site(s).

In the interest of making sure the resources ARE available to mapmakers wanting to combine their efforts or enlist assistance in testing or other aspects of mapmaking, what are the functions you feel this mapmaking collective/association/group needs which currently do not exist?

I have heard you express a desire for a central upload/download site for mapmakers to share their works in progress, and a forum for testing. Are there other things you think this group would need?

[Death's Avatar]

Udogs HL?

Has UL/DL, and often people around who are asking/helping with mapmaking stuff.

I think between that and Magma (the two are linked pretty tight), it achieves all the mentioned goals...

-DA

[Zeph]

i agree with vinyl. A new thread on magma about plugins being made would be the way to go.

[A-Red]

i agree with vinyl. A new thread on magma about plugins being made would be the way to go.

Yeah, that would make a lot of sense.

[vinylrake]

i agree with vinyl. A new thread on magma about plugins being made would be the way to go.

Maybe all that's needed is some place that ties together all the links. Maybe something like this?



note: this is an older page that pre-dates this conversation, I am open to suggestions of useful things to ad.

[Point]

ive started current project threads over time... developed some B32 standards for maps and tagsets... organized meet ups with mythers from all over the place met up with ooga, road, carlino and others in attempts to try to get some collective work done in the past...

at times we had fun test games dabbled in actually doing something productive though really was more fun than work sessions ... with darry and zen we ended up playing more flashpoint than myth.....

the gist is we all have our areas of thought and myth knowledge if we actively share that in person or on the forums things move forward... so unless you lock all of us in the same room for a week and dedicate time to fear and loathing and nothing else really no more would probably gained than just simply using the forums to spread the knowledge around a bit.

keep posting ideas and challenges and keep answering and move on...

ARMY Munitions Factory is mainly me and a couple other army order members that chime in from time to time... So things take time I said long ago I would join magma if I could get some dedicated help to finish things... I'd join something else if the same would be true though as most of us I wouldnt be able to spread myself any thinner than I already am for time to work on myth stuff.. so i guess its a catch 22.

[t o x y n]

yow

Ren called me the other day and was explaining this idea to me.

I had an idea to go with his idea, although I dunno how well it goes with what he's posted so far.

Basically, it's sort of like a sourceforge type of site for Myth map makers. There would be rep points and stuff for people who helped with posted projects, etc.

The site would work something like this...

*An area for in-progress projects
-Release/Version log
-Bug reports/Feedback from other users
-Information about the project
-Reports/Meters for how popular the project is
-Maybe even the ability for other users to upload/download their fixes, but set as an optional thing by the project's author(s) when he/she/they post it. Think of it as open-source map making, or something...

*An area for completed projects
-Same as above, except for that last part, and including a list of people who helped on the project
-Rating & Review system (ratings based on various things, like quality, colormap, scripting, fun factor, etc)

*Forum

*The site would have global blocks integrated into the design, showing the newest projects, the most popular ones, and the ones who need the most assistance (or the ones who haven't been assisted with yet), etc.

The only problem is that with my limited time and php abilities, this would take a while to build. I don't know how successful it would be either. I just hear solo map makers always calling out for help with their projects, so I thought this might be a good idea.

meh

[Renwood]

Damn toxy i said something simple!
heh

Yea what you outlined seems pretty daunting.