How do you manage your development?

My team and I work independently and then we either Skype, MSN, or email to meet up and see how everything is going. However, I can definitely see this becoming a problem later on once we get substantial builds. Then I could see us using Wikis, SVN, and maybe a forum (but I honestly hate forums).

Well my team usually work with Skype and power our work off the SVN which hooks directly to all of our work. We meet up now and again to brief each other on design ideas and show off concept art. But yeah, a SVN is a key aspect to a successful product.

Modular Combat uses SVN + Trac to focus our development. A good ticketing system is key for anymore than 2 people developing the mod, especially when they don't live in the same area.

DROPBOX IS THE SHIT WHOOOOOOOOO!

seriously, free instant file sharing. great for smaller newbie mod teams.

Pm's and Emails are the way to go

With neural impulses... Sometimes write a big load of crap in some personal offline development blog design doc whatever... Sometimes write that big load on msn to some friends who will get bored to death :P Recently I've done more this talk on msn, I think it's more fun.

Working with several different tools (IRC, SVN, Wiki, Bug Tracker, ..) is great, but utterly useless and quite a mess unless they're all cross-connected. Bug reports automatically linking to their own Wiki page for discussions, SVN commits automatically resolving associated bug reports, commits being posted live on IRC so testers could hop in-game and try out the fixes, etc.. Those are just some examples.

I don't know where I'd be without SVN and Trac. Having an SVN not only helps with conflicts, but it's great for making changes and getting them out to the testers in a timely and hassle-free manner.

work independently, communication via email, steam and forums, and SVN of course

I wish I could do SVN but I currently lack the resources to fund any such server.
So forums, ftp and an instant message chat.

The Warm Gunners use a few things...
We use Skype for everyday chat and meetings
We use SVN for our builds and distribution to the team.
There is also a full time dedicated server we use to play test the game.

As for software management and team management we use Basecamp
its a product by 37 signals...
Basecamphq.com

Its perfect for virtual teams and small in house teams that outsource.

We had tried three other software management tools and it just did not fly with the team... too complex and a real pain in the ass... basecamp is amazing.

Hope that helps some of you... we recommend all those methods :)

JC

Pretty bad match for the options on this vote :P

For my team it's Forum, Email, Wiki and IRC

A poll on what forum systems/features people are using might be interesting.

we use forums mostly

We usually use a mixture of forums and msn, but I've never heard of that SVN thing, what is it?

I svn everything, but I'm the only one that commits on it, and also i don't have a bugtracker or mailling spam list.

My team just started using SVN a few months ago, and there is no way I will ever go back to just forum posts and MSN file transfers. Ever. No dealing with annoying file limits or file extensions. No going through old forum topics to find 1 measly attachment. Restricting user access to certain repositories, and having a server backup of everything.

We use a forum for assignments/discussions, and have an internal wiki.

Petrograd team uses Skype for communication, and SVN/Trac system for files.

FOnline: 2238 uses SVN, IRC and forums. We also meet on the server to test bugs occasionally.

ESF mainly uses SVN to manage internal builds, Mantis for bug tracking, and both Dotproject and scheduled weekly meetings (IRC) for task management. Any impromptu communication is usually left to a combination of development forums and aim/msn/steam/teamspeak/etc.

Did any of the other projects happen to use Rsync before SVN became popular?

Mostly mail and messengers like ICQ, also Steam. Some we meet in rl, meaning they're friends living next to us.

frack.
Ok, this comment was meant as a reply to dremth, thanking him, but hell...

Like many others the ModDB team uses Skype for chat, SVN for versioning and Trac for Wiki / bug tracking.

We at Roundhouse use Syncplicity for sharing files and all the likes, works like a charm, and we use forums or IM's to communicate with each other.

I have no team members, i have a folder on my PC which i can access when i please! :P

Its pretty easy to set up actually, took me a while to find the "New Folder" button. But got it working in the end! Haha

But seriously for communicating i feel Skype is best for audio, chat and small file/image sending. For actual content an SVN or Dropbox are the key to developing.

Seriously, SVN is the only way to go. I don't see how anyone can mod in teams without it, it makes things so much easier.

Sure you have to get a server set up for it but it's no biggie. We use TortoiseSVN which is free, and is a god-send.

You make your repository on your computer, have all the files in there, and whenever a change is made to a file (say... a sound file), all you have to do is commit the change (aka upload that single file to the svn and leave comments about what you changed), and everyone's computers will automatically sync up to it when they chose to update their version.

It's INVALUBLE for bug fixing too because the SVN keeps track of many many versions, so if you accidentally cause a game-breaking bug to happen with an upload, the SVN takes care of everything and can revert a single file back, or can compaire files between two versions, or totally revert the entire build back to a previous version. Think System Restore except with mod files.

Seriously, for us at MWLL the mod would have gone 6 feet under by now without the SVN. Frequently during playtests if we encounter a game-breaking bug or crash we will start rolling back versions to see when the problem first started happening and then look into fixing it after the playtest.

we at of the Platinum Arts sandbox team use a SVN, a mediawiki, a PHPBB 3 forum, and primarily IRC for communication.

I don't see how any project can honestly consider to survive without use of a versioning system, such as CVS, SVN, monotone, bazaar, git and trac just to name a few; it's perfect for finding past silly silly mistakes and errors, or undoing someone else's changes if they did something really silly. I've experience with a few other coders whose style and general code I just can't stand...

now if any of you can't really afford to host a server to contain the versioning system, you might want to consider giving an online service such as sourceforge a try (though being mods, you'd most likely have to try elsewhere; I've never set up a project on SF, so I can't say)
a quick google will also turn up services like BerliOS or OpenSVN

seriously, IRC and version control systems are a must have for any project that wants to stay above the water; if people insist on throwing the anchors out...

wikis are also important if you want people to stop harassing you whenever they want to know something, and it allows the community to contribute, and feel as though they're helping out on the project, which they do; documentation is an area which is usually severely neglected by poeple working on the engine I use

I just do the work and then privite message or send the file by email. It's alot easyer that way!

The Freeworlds: Tides of War mod team uses SVN (amazing), forums and MSN to coordinate. I could never imagine modding without SVN, though. It's truly amazing.

For a good host, I recommend going to Google Code. They've been very good to us.

We have been working via forum/FTP for all these years now, and then we finally started using SVN a few months ago when the motivation was at about zero. Since then, we have made over 300 changes to our mod and still are adding new content, three vehicles within the past week, SVN power baby!
Oh and did I mention that our SVN repository is 17 gigs in size, and that doesn't even include the levels?

Forums, email and messaging. We work via milestones. Everybody has a list of things to do for each one, including bug fixing, tweaks, and content. Milestones are based on time frame and content amount. After all the work is done, it is wrapped up in a package and distributed to all team members to try out. We try to do this every 2-4 months.

This allows everybody in the team to be on the same page, and have the same installs of the game. It also removes any dev clutter the game install will have. Working with goals also helps keep a team motivated. Everytime we have one, its something new for everybody to try out and helps keep us from being burned out.

1187 Uses Dropbox and Skype for about 90% of our work. We find the two programs to meet our needs excessively well. We do have a forum, but none of us like using it. We usually work as we go, adding and fixing things as we find them out. We've found this system to work well for us and wouldn't have it any other way =).

-Vis From The 1187 Team-

we use svn and a forum

SVN, BugZilla and Wiki.

and this isn't just modding either, this is commercially also.

I pretty much just use Dropbox (getdropbox.com) to manage all of my data and find out what everyone has done with the recent updates that comes with it. It also allows rolling back files if anything happens to any file, and much more. It's pretty much just like SVN, but with 2GB of server space free (you can always upgrade whenever you want.

Dropbox is a very valuable tool.

We sadly all work separately, I wish that would change and we could be all open though.

We havent got into any work yet, but we are going to use a forum (when we can bothered to set it up), www.getdropbox.com to link files easier, and we also have a VoIP server (mumble) to have regular talks over things (server is for our team to play matches, not speciafically for the mod :D).

Forum and msn!

Since I'm the only member of my team, I'll say I just work alone. I don't use SVN, Wiki, BugTracker or anything, I just simply develop, then let my friends beta-test my products, and when it's enough, just release it to the public here at moddb.

We use a combination of forums/FTP/and Skype to do our work, we would like to own our own SVN however currently the price of such a thing is a little steep, and we currently are too early in development to require one anyway.

Smashball is powered by SVN, Redmine (includes bug/support/feature tracking, wiki, and basic project managent foo like milestones and roadmaps and gantt charts), and Basecamp/Campfire for group communication and file sharing. We allow playtesters to access SVN to receive test build updates, but the "stable" release is available via steam.

We experimented with auto-close features based on commit message content, but it didn't give us sufficient workflow control, so we just have threads in Basecamp that get updated whenever someone commits to SVN.

Builds are done with an unholy union of cygwin/gnu make, msvc++, and valve's contenttool (which replaced the even more unholy automatic installer/updater hacked together with NSIS).

In addition to these systems, I highly recommend that for projects beyond 2-3 people, you put the "producer" hat on someone. Without someone dedicated to herding all the cats in the right direction, your project will flounder and miss planned milestones!

Skype conference's regulary, msn kept on while we are working, regular enough group meetings. We have our own forum but we don't really use it as it is felt real-time commuinication is far more benificial to our development group

We used Skype and SVN.

I use git and GitHub to track my changes, track bugs/issues, and write documentation. I can't recommend the pair enough.

SVN, Mantis as bugtracker, wiki (although that one isnt really used) and FTP for development
Forums, MSN and xfire for communication.

The Australian Postal Service.