Whoa, plenty of things to share here ...
The pre-alpha stage.
That one started in november 2007. I was still working in Ballistic 2; one feature from that mod (the Javelin weapon, first fetured in UHM) had a lot of potential to fill in the role for the feature of dropping sentries, ammo and so on.
In the spring of 2008, after 'recovering' from Ballistic 2, the javelin like feature was evolved in the CPandora projectile class, the backbone for the special features of Fortress.
It was mostly a fun period, because it was all about experimentation.
The alpha stage
The days before going alpha got pretty tough. Only then I realised that the scale of this mod is big. Too big to be handled by one person. I mean at that point I wanted to make a playable map, something better than the cube I was using to test various features.
'A similar fate' was the experimental map used. It featured two 'A lesser fate' maps connected together by three paths. It was a crude map, and the fact that it remained virtually unchanged during the alpha stage, now points out even more that Fortress is bigger than one person.
But in this period, Windebieste announced that he considered AvP2 Fortress as his next project. Having the mapping effort of my shoulders meant a lot to me, and also 'instructed' by the podcasts at moddb.com, I started to work on this site.
Another good thing that appeared during the alpha stage was the automated build system. It consisted in a collection of .bat files and the end result was the installer the mod currently has. The installer itself was then perfected durring the beta testing phase.
Although public relations also took time, the alpha period provided a lot of good times. It's when the features of the mod got posted on youtube.com for the very first time. The mod got more and more publicity. I also started to play AvP2 online ( :0 ), to see how the game itself behaves.
The beta testing period
By far, the toughest period. Besides coding and PR, arranging for the tests themselves took its share of time.
Getting people in the beta program was a stressing task too; I registered to severl active AvP2 communities:
- I started by writting down the names of the clans I saw when playing online
- next step was to google the clans to see if they had their own forums.
- yep, next step was to join the most active forums found at step 2, and launch the spam: AvP2 Fortress is looking for beta testers!
The first person to join the beta program however did not come as a result of the posts on those forums. Vemarkis noticed the mod on moddb.com, and he was the first (and for the first tests also the only) tester to join the team.
More testers joined afterwards, but these first tests, when only me, Windebieste and Vemarkis did online testing did point out that something I did was wrong. The recruiting strategy was not that good. Perhaps I should have started first with the communities I was already active on, and individually contact people from planetavp.com, or lthfaq.com. I honestly don't know, and your input will definately help.
Also during the beta period, I made the mistake that is almost my trademark: I got overconfident. The result? Beta 5 speaks for itself: plenty of crashes, people getting stuck in spawn after pressing F1. It was horrible. I was able to fix the crashes the next day (heck, I knew what I have altered, and reviewing the code pointed out a mistake I did), so beta 5 had a lifespan of one day. But it was enough to make me be more careful.
Overall, the mod ended up getting me more and more tired. As a result, for about 4 weeks, no news were published, and the beta versions had only minor fixes. Unfortunately, PR got neglected.
Still, one thing that went good (besides the mod slowly getting polished) was the fact that we prepared an SDK. At Windebieste's suggestion, we prepared a collection of files that would make mapping for AvP2 Fortress easier.
Prepairing the release
That's now. So, what's left to do:
- update the SDK: it will contain also the .ed file for Gunnison_County_Forest, courtesy of Windebieste
- make a trailer. That will be a bit tough, but I have an idea as what to present.
- update this site (see the news section)
- make a small .pdf manual
Since this phase is not yet over, I will come back to this and edit it.
As a conclusion, what I feel we did good:
- use the automatic build system: it made packaging the mod so much easier.
- intensive PR during the alpha stage
- used a versioning control system (it saved my ass more than once)
- we split the tasks. That means Windebieste doing all te maps (a pretty big task if you ask me, so, thank you), and accepting resources from the community. The flag is a great example as to how several people can work on one item and make it just perfect.
- we mailed each other. It means a lot to always know how the mod is doing, and communication plays an important part in this.
We could have done better:
- recruiting beta testers. Perhaps a more open approach would get better results.
- PR during beta. It's a simple rule: if there are no more news about the mod, it gets forgotten.
- announce beta tests in time. A known schedule is good, but sending mails one day before is even better. People may forget the schedule, and in such cases a mail notification is the better solution.
Herr_Alien
I enjoy playing CTF games and will attend LAN parties for this purpose. Oh, and I will happily play AvP2 over a LAN as well. So how cool would it be if AvP2 supported such a game mode? It's actually been a long standing gaming dream for me with a great deal of appeal.
Then late in 2007, the Planet AvP forums became a springboard where such a notion was proposed; and being interested in creating content for it, I pledged my support for the Project by promising to build a map for it. Later, the Alpha tests started appearing and the feasiblity of the whole thing became apparent as critical features were demonstrated and worked. That was when my li'l ears really pricked up. This 'AvP2: Fortress' thing was actually going to work and it was then that I became very excited about it.
I had worked earlier with Herr Alien - he had a major input into 'Under the Hunter's Moon' - among other things, the critical feature of AI characters following the Player were his innovation. So my confidence in his ability to pull this thing together was already elevated. Now the proof of concept was evident and the decision to throw myself into 'AvP2: Fortress' became my next big modding commitment for a period of 5 months.
Starting in late May 2008, a revised version of 'A Lesser Fate' was to be the flagship map for the Project. It was the first of 4 proposed CTF themed maps.
Easy enough to make, these maps were also to be accompanied by 2 Assault maps. I knew that Herr Alien wanted to get the mod completed by late August 2008, so six fully featured maps in just 4 months was a tall order. Luckily, (for me) a delay in the proposed release of the mod not only allowed for additional tweaking and polish of those maps, but also provided an opportunity for a seventh map to be constructed that would support both CTF and Assault modes.
I am very happy with the work I have contributed to this mod. The maps are the best they can be for the timeframe in which they were built in; and above all, working with Herr Alien once again has been a joy.
With its imminent release in just a couple of days time, I am looking at the future of the mod. I am hoping that it will be a hit amongst AVP2 Players as 'AvP2: Fortress' does offer a unique gameplay experience - Mixed species team based Objectives in a popular and established 'fortress' style environment. An SDK is being distributed with the mod so anyone who wants to create their own content for it can do so. As for myself, I can securely say that I will be endeavoring to create additional content for the mod in its post release period.
Please enjoy 'AvP2: Fortress' - it was a great and satisfying mod Project to work on. A special expression of gratitude towards Herr Alien for his time and dedication to get this mod off of the ground and completed within such a short time frame.
Congratulations! We did it.
Windebieste
Should I make a long speech? Nah.
Gonna go with this: Mod is stable, looks good, balanced quite well (except I still don't like the big pounce , but I might be the only one).
I could have contributed with Attributes, since I do know quite a lot about that stuff. I could have done much better job than I did now.
More testers should have been every weekend, but we did quite ok with the amount we had. Could still have been more though.
Thanks to Herr Alien for paying attention to my opinions and fixing the unbalanced stuff.
Thanks for Windebieste for creating lovely maps (Gunnisson is still my favourite, but it still is missing the swamp ).
Also thanks to everyone who contributed to the mod. More people sure made the mod-building easier and bug searching also.
Looking forward to see if the mod will have regular servers up with players on the upcoming year. I'm afraid though that Aliens: Colonial Marines will take some regular AvP2 players away, but I still doubt AvP2 will die.
