Starting a Team with Karma Thread

“People accept only that person as their leader who is radiant with good karma.”

This little guide is for people new to making a modding team. It's for people tempted to write something like this:

Someone wrote: I've got a great idea for a mod
I Need:

• Programmers
• Character artists
• Mappers
• Voice actors
• Texture artists
• Sound engineers
• Animators
• Writers
• Video editors
• Web developer

It's a very tempting to ask for such a lot of people.

Lets look at the balance of that team request:

It is close to being balanced, i have a feeling Karma will not help this mod.

Lets look at another team request:

Someone wrote: I've got a great idea for a mod
So far i've done:

• mod designs
• character designs
• map designs
• written the script for voice actors
• finished the story
• found hosting for the website

and would like some help with other things!

Strange, this request has focused on the work already done.

The balance of that team request might look a little like this:

It's all out of balance. Will the Karma come to this persons rescue? I think it might

When making a request for new team members, showing the work you've already done is a huge positive for prospective helpers.

“By the karma of good actions, some come to serve the leader.”

GM

Edited by: Dayvi

hehe nice idea
things like this should be made as a article so they could reach the front page
in the forum it will just be buried along the other (less usefull) topics

I would like to add that prototype gameplay and/or in-game assets carry 100 times more influence than theoretical design and planning. Writing a script/design in abstract is quite easy. Keeping that vision coherent when implementation problems start complicating things is the hard part

Of the things on your seesaw, the only one with much weight for me is hosting. Everything else is a hollow promise unless you (or an existing teammate) can prove they have the abilities to implement the theory into practice.

Well now Gibb, i dont think we need to slander such a brilliant post ;P

Strangely enough, I was thinking of cobbling together something to help people write HW posts which might include something like this. A kind of "How much of what do you need?" questionnaire that then put together a HW post, but also told you if you were making common mistakes (eg idea but no work).

Sigma, Maybe it'll get pinned, you never know, there are far stranger pinned topics.

Gibberstein, Every little site offers free hosting these days.

Jacksonj04, That's a good idea, or what about a flow chart?

That was basically my idea, except more guided. Like:

"So, you've got an idea for a mod. Do you have a detailed design document?" -> "Yes", "No", "What's a design document?"
"How much of your idea are you willing to share?" -> (tickboxes) "The Plot", "The Characters", "The Weapons List" etc.

and then working out scores for a variety of outcomes like "You're being too secretive", "You need more detail", "You're asking for too much", "This has been done before" and so on.

Dayonic wrote: Sigma, Maybe it'll get pinned, you never know, there are far stranger pinned topics.

true, but there are alot of people who just ignore the pinned topics
an article will grant you far more attention

Dayonic wrote:
Gibberstein, Every little site offers free hosting these days.

What about Subversion hosting? Arranging that is much less trivial, but having Subversion makes a huge difference if you plan to have code for anything more complex than a few simple weapons. Sharing your codebase via FTP is a nightmare if more than one person is working on the code. It's still a pretty smart idea for a lone person working on the code.

Also, if the design doc is badly researched , I'd still say hosting carries more value, even if it's only FTP..

Edited by: Gibberstein

Am I the only one confused about the point of this topic?

Yea yea, dont ask for a full team if you dont do anything yourself.

But seriously. Karma?

The name is misleading.

It simply means if you do hard work people sooner or later are going to help you... it's a bit idealistic world view but better than storming the forums with both guns blazing asking for chimp monkeys to do the hard work...

How about this Jackson:

I think the image is a little too busy and might remove some leaves

Now THAT is sweet!

Haha awesome. Everything in life comes down to a flowchart.

Indeed. Love the: Like Learning? ; nah ; shame .. Reminds me of a bunch of kids spamming around on these kind of forums.

Guys... trees grown downwards in information technologies

Thanks for all the feedback guys

I'll make my next guide (Winnie the Pooh's Guide to Modding) much more detailed.

Lol Dayonic, I love it. "Can do the job? -> No -> Oh." xD