18 replies to this topic

[JiNXeD]

I personally would like a thread/area where people could ask people to join their modding project incase they need help in some specific area they're not familiar with, or possibly join a modding team themselves.
This might seem like an absolute idiotic idea and should be buried under hundreds of tons of gravel, but I happen to have experience of this type of act happening before.

You see, I am a member of many different modding communities, Frictional Games forums, where I usually take my role as a simple level designer for a 3D horror-adventure game "Amnesia: The Dark Descent", these forums have a habit of people asking other people help for different things in their projects, that may range from scripting to voice acting a little kid.

I am also a member of Meteormods.com forums modding group and a highly ranked and appreciated modder. There I mod for a top-down shooter game called "Meteor" and at certain times, "Meteor 2".
The modding itself can be of two types; either regular modding, which basically means making new maps, a story, possibly a few new tiles, and such. And yes, the game does use a tile editor for level designing, unlike Meteor 2; which uses a sector-type level designing system. Then, there's the other form of modding, this is called making a total conversion. Some of you might've seen me using this phraze a few times when I'm seeking for an equivalent for a "total conversion".

So what exactly is a total conversion?, you might ask. As known in Meteor, or Meteor 2, it is making a mod without using ANY original content from the game, and making alot of new content manually, all by yourself. The sprites themselves are created with programs such as MS Paint, then converting them to .pcx format and configuring it inside the game. This takes tons of work since you must make a different image for every frame of movement you want for that specific sprite; say, if you wanted a tank to look like it was moving, you would need atleast 2 frames, AKA 2 .pcx files. .pcx files are small, pixel based image files that are created with extreme care, no mistakes are allowed. Transparency is made using a "magic pink" colour code. I, myself am currently working on a total conversion, I have wasted hours of work on it and it is still not complete, been developed for 4 years. So, that is what a total conversion is, or as known here, a hack, I suppose?

So now that we've come to an understanding between different modding communities, I propose a similiar style of establishing modding groups for people who are possibly seeking to join a project/get people in his/her own modding project for help in the development of it.

Thank you for your time
If you decided to skip my explanations, I hope you still managed to get my point.

Edited by JiNXeD, 26 January 2012 - 09:47 PM.

[Dunc2403]

So groups like Music Makers, Level Makers, Spriters, Assembly-ers, et cetera?

[CommanderJersey]

I would like to say that I am a good map maker, so yeah
I could make maps

[JiNXeD]

So groups like Music Makers, Level Makers, Spriters, Assembly-ers, et cetera?

Well, yes.
For example, a person who is looking for a spriter in his/her mod project posts in that thread/area, a decent spriter spots the post, reads about what the mod would be like, gets interested, and then replies saying that he/she could do spriting for the mod project.

So then it's up for the project leader to choose which one of the volunteered people he/she would want, and when choosing one that seems what he/she is looking for, he/she would PM that person applying for a spriter's place, and so they would start working on the project together.

[Noxid]

No offense but this community isn't really big enough. The amount of effort and delay involved in getting even a half-dozen people to submit one or two maps each with no graphical edits, no hacks, not even a plot required, was monumental. Do you know why Take 8 is named that? because it's the 8th attempt at making a collaborative mod with the community, and so far it's the closest any have come to actually bearing fruit. This is due largely in part to the fact that for Take 8, everybody's contribution was modular and nothing particularly relied on anybody else getting something done.

The scene here is just too casual for any kind of serious project to take off. As soon as something starts to depend on multiple people having made progress, then somebody disappears, work stalls, people lose interest, and the whole thing falls apart. We are way too flaky, as a group, for this to work.

Edited by Noxid, 26 January 2012 - 10:29 PM.

[ShinyElectricBlueTiger]

I just don't see this happening anytime soon. Our community is rather small, unlike the Doomworld forums and the other two forums that you mentioned, where they just have many people that can work on mods. We have, at the most even though this may be a stretch, 50 active members per month, compared to the other forums that just have at least 100 to 150 active members. Let alone the 50 active members, even less of those can actually mod, and even less of those mod makers actually have the time to help.

So, en final, a singular modding group could work, but with minimal avail, and multiple modding groups would be unheard of around here.

Oops, I guess I was a bit to slow while posting there.

Edited by ShinyElectricBlueTiger, 26 January 2012 - 10:44 PM.

[JiNXeD]

So I see.

Although Meteormods.com has less than 10 active members, it still manages to produce great TCs, (total conversions) and mods aswell. People simply team up after hearing a simple, great mod idea and start working on it together.

Then again, I might be underestimating the toughness of Cave Story modding, I personally think Meteor modding is quite simple, Meteor 2 is alot more complex than that, but it can still be handled after getting to know it.
I am quite sure that with some effort, we could all come up with great mods/hacks for CS.
It's only about filling a small template and seeing how many volunteers there are.

Edited by JiNXeD, 26 January 2012 - 10:53 PM.

[Ambient_Malice]

You know 'Total conversion' mods sometimes use assets from the original game. But if the usage is subtle, it's considered acceptable.

For videogame modding in general ModdB.com is my favorite site. I practically live on there.

[Safusaka]

I think that people who know how to do certain stuff could occasionally post materials for others to use like graphics/music/etc.

[DualHack]

About forming modding teams it matters if you really know each other in real life not over the web. Yet i like the idea like if there were 4 people in the team 2 people could work on assinged maps and 2 people could work on scrpting!
BTW: I'd like to form a modding team on this fourum