Project Valkyrie's First Release
We'd like to say thank you to everyone who downloaded our first release of Project Valkyrie, with over 3000 downloads on Fileplanet alone!
We've gotten some great feedback on the forums and are working on tuning the game and fixing issues for RC2, which will include many fixes and enhancements, including Team Deathmatch.
For those worried about the lack of diversity in the mod, we're planning a 1.5 Month Content Patch, including new weapons, maps, player models and tweaks. As always, we'll be keeping the community up-to-date on our progress.
Project Valkyrie Mapping Contest
We'd also like to announce our first Mapping Contest for Project Valkyrie. Within a couple of hours of release, we saw custom maps on servers, so we know some of you out there in the community are itching to produce custom content.
The rules, signups, and other information are all available on our forums.
We should have a full prize list within the next couple of days, as well.
Do you think you guys could show the modding community what planning model you actually used, since it seemed so successful to be pulled off in 4 months.
Our planning model was actually quite simple; Build a feature list of what we wanted to be in the first release, Feature locked early (We still added some things that were going to be later, because we ended up having time, ie: with the delay) and then just stuck to the schedule making sure that everyone who was working on it was able to stick to the schedule. We also discovered that using skype as our communication / collaboration tool ended up being absolutely perfect for this kind of development, and allowed us everything we needed (coupled with a private forum for general info and such) to accomplish everything fluidly. Skype group chat works essentially like a cross between IRC and an instant messaging system, with the ability to have voice conferences and even white board functionality.
All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it worked out, granted there were times when it didn't seem like we were even going to make the 4 months, but we persevered and pulled through. Now that the base stuff is in, we can focus on enhancing everything else, and moving forward which is very very nice!
We're also sticking with the 'release early, release often' mechanism, it allows us a constant thread of iteration instead of spending a year or more on some huge plan for a gigantic release. As we progress further, and release more updates things will really start to grow and our vision should become apparent. Of course, we're also taking community suggestions into consideration with what we're doing. Originally of course, it was just going to be a small 3 month project that we weren't going to continue with and was just a team-building exercise as we stated initially. For example popularity, and making 'the best damned game in the world' wasn't on our list of priorities. This also greatly helped in development because we weren't constantly thinking "okay we need to do better than this game that just came out" every time we turned around, and was more of a "we need to accomplish these specific goals to be considered successful."
Somewhere along the line however, we really 'fell in love' with what we were doing, and decided that we'd continue development for a lot longer to get a really solid game, with lots of features that intertwine together and promote longevity in the experience. Since we made the decision to stick with it, we've planned out a lot of things which you'll all begin to see unfolding in the near future as we continue!
You should write an article for Moddb about the whole thing, be really good as a guide.
Also bloody hard work is what really got this mod made. All the talk in the world about fancy design processes comes to nothing if you don't get seriously stuck in. The people who worked on this mod all absolutely beasted themselves to get this thing done.
Awesome, would love to make a map too, but so darn busy with my mod, anyways good luck to anyone that enters, cant wait to see what people think of!
i could give it a try but i cant custom texture :(
Seems like a good opportunity to learn how! :D
You think we could get that testing facility map you guys made (the orange one) in the meantime? That looked like it would be fun to play deathmatch in.