Well the time has come to expand the team beyond just lonely little me.
Despite the draining effect working on this mod for five years has had on me, I still love it too much to just stop and I want to continue working on it. However, some of the more tedious aspects I don't really want to touch anymore. Simply put, all I want to do for Hyrule: Total War is create the models, animate them, and make all of the Hyrule Historia missions. I want nothing to do with balance, bug testing, or anything that requires me to edit text files. From this point forward I want to work strictly on the artistic and idea aspect of this mod and its expansions. As such I'm going to experiment with bringing on other members and working with a team.
So then, what is it I need?
- 1 to 3 people who know how all of the various text files work. These will mainly be (but are not limited to): battle_models.modeldb, export_descr_unit.txt, export_descr_mount.txt, export_descr_buildings.txt, and campaign_script.txt.
- At least one person familiar with memory editing. In order to complete the mod I will need to increase the unit limit, the mount limit, and the building limit. I would also like to increase the faction limit, as there are more NPC's I'd like to include.
- A member that knows how the campaign map and all of it's associated map files work. While the map is largely complete for the main game, the expansions will all be needing maps. I'll probably lay out the basic foundation for the campaign maps and then hand them off.
- As far as balancing goes, I'll give general guidelines as to what roles I'd like the units I create to fit into for the team member(s) responsible, and then let the community decide if they are too powerful, too weak, should serve a different role, etc. In this regard the mod will become more of a community driven affair, as balancing everything is obviously not one of my skills.
- The community seems to be doing a pretty good job bug testing, I'll probably hand off builds of the mod to them to bug test before I release new versions.
I've had some rather unfortunate experiences working with teams in the past, so I suppose I'll lay a few ground rules for those interested:
- By far the most common issue that came up was people simply disappearing without so much as a word. If someone expects to vanish, some warning ahead of time would be nice to find a replacement.
- Communication is also important. I feel it should be relatively easy to contact a team member whenever I would like. It shouldn't take two weeks to get a response.
- Whenever work is done, it should be stated to me and other team members what exactly was done. I'll likely have a shared text file where you will list what changes have been made. For example, if you changed stats of a unit, make a note about in the file. This is pretty important, especially if multiple people are working with the same files. We don't want files overwriting each other and everyone losing work they did.
- Please, actually have the skills you are applying for. Good intentions are fine and all, but saying you can put units in the game and then you actually can't does not help.
- I tend to work at an extremely break neck pace, though I'm willing to slow things down a bit. Regardless, I want to keep a consistent pace. If things are not getting done on at least a weekly basis, I'll just take things into my own hands again.
Assuming this does not work out and I can't find reliable team members then in the worse case scenario I'll just resume on my own as I have these last few years.