Being a mod leader...

[Jubal_Barca]

It's sooo hard. How the hell do the rest of you folks out there manage? There's fans and some team members on the one hand asking you to get a release, and on the other many people who you consider friends who you are often loath to hurry....


I sometimes wish I could lead less and mod more...

[oscarreeve]

#sigh# It is hard work, But when u are a mod leader, it is best not to have a huge team, keep it fairly small so it is a lot easier to handle

[Garnier]

Mod on your own. If you find someone else who is modding on their own, and the two of you have the same goal, you can work together. But don't "recruit" people for a team if you haven't done a substantial amount of work already, and only "recruit" people after they give a lot of work. You don't need a team to make a mod, you need work done. To get work done, do work..

[Turk]

Well it is not so damn hard,but there things,which i cant do,like modelling etc.an example:

i am modding text editing as leader alone but i cant write enough english to make good unit descriptions and i am looking for someone who is doing that since some weeks and i still didnt find them!
this is what leadership makes hard
to not find that what you need!

[Darkarbiter]

Mod on your own. If you find someone else who is modding on their own, and the two of you have the same goal, you can work together. But don't "recruit" people for a team if you haven't done a substantial amount of work already, and only "recruit" people after they give a lot of work. You don't need a team to make a mod, you need work done. To get work done, do work..

Really wish I knew this earlier. I worked this out recently... I'm thinking wow 2000 hours for the Corsair invasion? And how much of that is people writing over each others code? People waiting for confirmation from others? Things getting scrapped unnecassarily due to people? In general unorganisation?

If you work on your own... assuming you don't have previews theres no pressure... even if you do... theres probably not that much and it'd be a lot easier then leading a team.

Maybe just do the core stuff yourself... or if your like the above poster try and get auxillary people for writing descriptions (they get to help in your great mod and credits so who wouldn't want to help )

[Jubal_Barca]

I've done all my own coding and a decent amount of skinning, it's just having to marshall people on the graphics front when you don't want to...

[MasterOfNone]

2000 hours is a very modest estimate indeed. I probably, as Coding Manager, spent a good 3 days (and several evenings) per week on Corsair Invasion over the course of a year. That's about fifty hours per week, but it probably hit 70 some weeks. That works out to between 2500 to 3500 hours for the year. But that was just me. Admittedly I was doing the lion's share (being in part-time employment and neglecting priorities elsewhere ).

Of course, it depends on how fussy you are - much of the time was spent testing, researching code mechanics, tracking down good images to use and bug hunting in addition to actual modding and build management. Oh, and forum posting of course! That can take up a lot of time, especially in the area of technical support. If you want a full conversion and a stable mod you will have to put the time in to make it so, and players will notice the difference.

Even after all those hours I never had time to attend to a proper system of unit balancing (big tip: never rely on beta testers to do any thorough testing) and were it not for Aradan (now my successor) and Xerex the FATW would still not be balanced and the rest of the community would not have the Complete EDU Guide.

As a mod leader you need to take up the slack and keep the mod on course. I think I probably had to learn almost everything during almost-three years on the Fourth Age. Don't forget this also means learning about such things as bug-tracking software, installer software, batch files, ftps, version control systems (we did not need one as I was the Build Manager Tyrant ) and a host of other stuff you may never have expected when you first set out

In some ways a mod leader does not have time to mod, and yet it is hard to see how one could come to grips with such a task without a good understanding of the mod in all its aspects.

To be a mod leader you need:

* quite a bit of free time
* a determination to see it through
* to learn new skills and take up the slack
* to be a good communicator
* to be a bit of a perfectionist (but also a realist - see below)
* to set realistic goals and deadlines (do not make "enthusiasm goals")
* to be highly organized (Excel will become your friend!)
* to take on team members who have already proved themselves (as outsource support) to be reliable, committed, skilled and productive
* to be able to take criticism (especially from noobs who seem to think that adding their pet faction and all that entails can be done in a few days)
* to work very hard and keep momentum going - or consign your mod to the trash heap or to versions of the TW series few longer play; the longer the mod continues the more likely it is to never be finished (in most cases)
* to work with other modders so that wheels are not reinvented (and time thus wasted)
* oh, I could go on...but I've retired and others can do it

[Halie Satanus]

My advice, get Makanyane in your team and do everything she doesn't yourself, job done.

[DaVinci]

In the first place you need a vision in the desert and the will to realise this fatamorgana ... and then all other what MoN mentioned above.

[Darkarbiter]

Stuff

Speaking of which I have to say unit balance is highly underrated by a lot of mods. The unit balance when FATW came out was rather bad... it's a whole lot better now but I bet it turned a lot of people off.

Based on Theory:
People think that releasing a beta won't hurt the community?
Or maybe it will? Some guy who really likes the skins will tell all his friends/clan to play it... they might hate the balance or some other issue and they'll be turned off the mod allmost for good. It'll be a lot harder to convince them "Ït's a lot better now". I think it's probably best to only release something that's relatively playable... even if it removes some features... better to brag about new features then "Features rebalanced". Also as stated above get the unit balance right... people want to play battles and have good campaigns mostly. So I think it's defenitly worth paying a lot of attention and lots of testing of EDU.

One little gripe that's a little off topic. If you have a 1.0 download and a 1.1 Patch why not just have 2 downloads? The 1.0 and 1.1 bundled and the 1.1 patch for those who downloaded 1.0 earlier? It takes me about 20 minutes to do this and overall it's gonna save a lot of people a lot of time and download bandwidth.
It's simple...
Make blank folder
Install 1.0 patch...
Install 1.1 patch on top
(Continue installing patches in the order your supposed to if applicable)
Make new zip/Installer
=
Smaller download overall for those who are only just downloading it and less space... I'm sure theres at least one person on dialup who's now going to download your mod who wasn't before.

[MasterOfNone]

Speaking of which I have to say unit balance is highly underrated by a lot of mods. The unit balance when FATW came out was rather bad... it's a whole lot better now but I bet it turned a lot of people off.

Yes, it is underrated but most mods will probably never have the time to attend to this in a serious way; hopefully with the release of the Complete EDU Guide this task will be somewhat easier for mods. We had 2 people headling the project (both great mathematicians btw, one has a profession in some math-physics field) of unit balance and perhaps another couple giving some limited assistance. They took some months to complete (if it can be said to ever be complete) the unit balancing (note that this is just unit balancing - campaign balancing is yet another area). It's a vastly complex area. I think I worked out that something like 70 factors affect combat - it's a nightmare to balance but getting the values behind the attributes and the formulae cracked was a big hurdle. No mod leader could possibly have the time to undertake such a task and give it any focus; we were just very lucky in this regard - or maybe not. I think when people see a mod that they like and where the commitment and desire to succeed is evident, and the professionalism and stability obvious, they want to help make it "perfect".

This leads nicely on to your comments on whether or not a mod leader should release a mod in a beta stage. It, like many things, has more than one answer...

I agree that releasing an unstable "open beta" can damage a mod's future appeal; I do not understand why some mods release their mods with known CTDs still unresolved, for example. I have been put off ever downloading some mods because of this.

However, there are other considerations, one of which is that you will never get enough feedback from private testers. It cannot compare to thousands, even tens of thousands, of people downloading and playing your mod and giving feedback (well, the ratio of download to response is awful but obviously a small percentage of 50, 000 or whatever it a lot higher than a few semi-committed private beta testers). This kind of feedback is very valuable. There is also the consideration of things growing stale among both fans and dev team members if releases are a long time in coming - and the morale of a dev team is quite important.

I was a little confused by your suggestions on downloads. I assume you mean a 1.0 build plus a 1.1 patch for that build, rather than a 1.0 patch and 1.1 patch? On that matter though I think mods that have a half dozen or more patches, hotfixes etc. attached to their main release base are asking for confusion and trouble.

It has always been my feeling that patches should be cumulative and FATW always has done it that way (with a slight diversion in a 2.1/2.2 patch due to technical issues) - so that patch 1.3 included patch 1.1 and 1.2 for example (and any hotfixes - which, btw, are always good to avoid as they also cause confusion; we've only ever had one I think.). So, in this way, there are never more than 2 downloads.

The base release has to be kept unpatched as far as the upload is concerned. There are a number of reasons for this, and it would be a lot of hassle to add each patch to a build as it was released. You would have to build the whole thing again and upload it and then - with tech support - you would be dealing with people who had different versions (which would cause confusion). It is quite critical to keep things simple and keep things equal for all. I am not sure how it would benefit people much in terms of downloading either, most patches contain overwrites on small text files and bigger patches probably have new image etc. content - so you'd end up with a choice between 1. two downloads of 200 MB and 20 MB and 2. one download of 215 MBs. It's not worth the hassle until a point is reached where the patch adds such size and content as to make it worth a new release. Having said that, it is encumbent upon mod leaders to make sure the size does not grow too large and this is again a matter of managing things well; again, the phased-releasing of a mod (such as FATW) lends to this process very well.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I would also recommend that all modders need to agree to a statement that the work they make for the mod will remain under the control of the mod from that point on. We've had the problem come up three times in three years - but if modders agree to it or face a penalty of agreeing to it or leaving the team, it provides some measure of assurance that they won't try anything like it later. If any mod team needs a good example of such a statement, just PM me and I'll send you ours.

[Darkarbiter]

I would also recommend that all modders need to agree to a statement that the work they make for the mod will remain under the control of the mod from that point on. We've had the problem come up three times in three years - but if modders agree to it or face a penalty of agreeing to it or leaving the team, it provides some measure of assurance that they won't try anything like it later. If any mod team needs a good example of such a statement, just PM me and I'll send you ours.

Out of interest what terms are you suggesting? Just that their work won't appear in any other mods?

[Halie Satanus]

Out of interest what terms are you suggesting? Just that their work won't appear in any other mods?

There have been cases, some very damaging, where modders have submitted work and then denied usage when there has been a 'falling out', I think that's what TA is adhering to.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

"Attempted to deny usage" I would say. We have not stopped artists from letting their work be used elsewhere, but we aren't removing their work because they get mad about something and leave and then want all their work removed because of it. No mod should have to do that, especially if there is no "schism" of the mod and different people assume control.

[Arakorn]

No mod should either try to keep info, maybe work too, for themselves.

We aren't competing Game Devs, although sometimes you may think so. Cooperation leads to shorter time needed to develop the mod.

[Darkarbiter]

No mod should either try to keep info, maybe work too, for themselves.

We aren't competing Game Devs, although sometimes you may think so. Cooperation leads to shorter time needed to develop the mod.

Fair enough if it's traits... but if it's art or models people are gonna get deja vu and it's not good for either mod. Besides... when has this ever happened? Theres the EB animations for RTR but apart from that I can't think of much work that's shared between mods.

Certainly thinking this is all done... and then someone leaving and denying access would be devistating to a mod.

[MasterOfNone]

The FATW put up terms a long long time ago telling those who joined that they could not decide to go running off with their contributions or deny useage. What you contribute to the mod becomes the property of the mod. They will always be credited though.

It is a good point, Teleklos - I am sure Arakorn could find our old terms somewhere in the depths of the forums

[Arakorn]

Of course!

3. All of the work you do for the Mod cannot, should you leave, be taken with you or disallowed by you for use in the Mod. Although the work never ceases to be your own creation (and you will be credited) the Mod Team have the right to use it by virtue of your tacit agreement to the same by joining this Mod.

http://www.stratcommandcenter.com/fo...howtopic=16191

It's my talent, finding old threads... I remember finding our FTP details for Palantir (MoN) too!

[Miraj]

Since we're on the topic what are the exact measures or "protections" that mods get for their work on sites like TWC, the org and others? Has their been cases where individuals or other mods have used other peoples/mod's work without permission and TWC took action against them? Broken Crescent has a pretty tight policy on our work and it seems inevitable that some 12 year old kid is going to rip off some of our knights the moment BC is released. Especially considering the fact I've seen more than a few posts of kids talking about using our skins/models as if we're an open source mod.

I just want to know what assurances and protections creative work gets on these forums and whether such 'rules' have any teeth.

Thanks.