So it's all on me now. It has been for a while now and I really did make progress, but what's left feels very daunting to me. I promised myself that the next time I go back into Neh, refamiliarize with the entities and utils and the mess of files (*again*), and work on it, that I would see it through to the end. Thus: my contract with myself--"only go in if you're serious".

I haven't felt serious. :-/ 

 

else will help out*

*assumption from non-mapper player who wants more nehahra. 

Doing all the monster and item placement doesn't necessarily have to take an age. I hated doing it as well, but a mapper that's used to it might be able to get it all in there in half a day per map. In fact 70% of it is playtesting. It might not be perfect and lack complex fight setups, but at least you'll get some complete maps, and I'm betting they'll look fkn awesome since Bal did them. 

...Surely placing monsters and making the gameplay go is the fun bit?!?! :p

imo it's architecture that's the drag really. Huge rooms that look arse for ages, waiting for compiles etc. 

I'm a gameplay guy as well, but there's a bloated monster lurking on a server which demands a daily time sacrifice.

I tend to leave environment to artists now. 

It's a fluke when my levels look good. 

How much work is left to do anyway? Only item placement on a few maps (how many exactly)? Is the code base done? Any additional content? 

I'd be willing to help - monster placement is what I do fastest. I hope you didn't use Valve 220 map format or anything obscure like that. 

i'd love to see negke take them on though... 

Negke please. That would make me very happy. 

ZealousQuakeFan, well as it turns out, yes I'm an environment artist (actually character artist now). It's playtesting that killed it for me, I don't really play quake anymore, so can't find the patience to play these maps over and over until the gameplay works (they are fairly long maps too).

There are 2 pretty big maps, 2 smaller ones, also some unfinished ones but does are probably better left aside.

Mindcrime, I don't mind if you want to get help from another mapper, he shouldn't sign anything until he's actually seen the maps though, as we both know by now it's not a trivial task to finish them up. :) 

gb and negke on those. That way there can be some variation in gameplay styles too amongst the 4 maps. 

is this the bal3dm5 debacle again? 

Yes! 

let neggers do it. 

Given that the mapfiles are a mess with a zillion versions (the last couple finalized/sealed by Bengt as a favor, and where are the base files now? I don't know) ... and that all the work I have done doing placement in the maps has been through manually adding them (longhand) and compiling TXQBSP -onlyents... I honestly wouldn't know where to begin involving anyone else. 

Note that I'm not against the idea of involving other people (if they're really *that* masochistic to want to become involved), I'm just not sure how that would work given the present clusterfuck.

#277 : Code base is done, although there's a few kinks to work out for the final boss monsters and, well, I kept adding new features .. and more new features ... and more new features ... as I was working on the maps, so not everything (that's new) is perfectly tested.

Of course, to put "new" in context. I mean "new" to me & Bal, recent additions to Neh. There have been hundreds of additions/features added to Neh since the release in 2000, much of which would be fresh, new, maybe even exciting to someone who has only been exposed to the Neh from 10 years ago.

As I said, I'm not against the idea of bringing new people in at all. 

negke
noun (plural negkeke, verb to negk)
someone who enjoys crazy ideas, or who derives pleasure from enduring the pain of expressionistic quake mappery or from being forced to do dumb monotone work for others 

And if NahkahiiR does play testing one could call it Nehkhara. 

A mapper needs a complete .def or .fgd file, the texture wad(s), and the .map files. They also need a working version of the mod to test with.

Next step is to get them to compile reliably.

Once that is sorted out, find several good playtesters (onetruepurple, ijed and negke might fit the job). Their feedback can be condensed into a bullet point list of possible / desirable changes.

For getting stuff back and forth between people (every playtester needs the mod), an SVN repository has proven beneficial. Where you host it depends how big the whole thing is and if it's open source or not. RMQ does this and the team uses things like TortoiseSVN to upload and download stuff.

A team is invaluable. One person who ends up in a clusterfuck is a pretty bad scenario compared to a network of playtesters and contributors. The latter lets you actually finish stuff.

A central repository also acts as a backup and version control system. It's pretty nifty. 

an SVN or git repository for this regardless of the size. I'd also playtest. 

I'll give this thought and next week, when I have time (between a scriptwriting phase and a production phase, oh and between podcast mastering phases for other projects) I will go through the Nehahra files, try to bring some order to it (mostly by trashing the gazillion junk files cluttering the folders), and oh document *all* the features properly in a devkit txt (rather than scribbled notes on paper.. which I'd done for a time, as I was the only one who needed the info any more...) One way or the other, I would have to do all this anyway for a devkit w/ a release.

The reason I'll give this thought is because it may be that this never will be finished unless there's a group of people on it, and I'm left in the position which I function best (coding, getting error reports from mappers/playtesters, fixing shit, tweaking models and other things). Basically, the position I was in 10 years ago with the Nehahra team where there was a good functioning feedback mechanism.

I can be many things, but I can't be everything ... not on a sane, normal mortal timetable.

I'll keep an eye on this thread for any additional thoughts and etcetera through the week. 

Consider zipping everything you have now and archiving it, you never know what you might wish you hadn't deleted. 

I learned my backing up lessons many moons ago and have since amassed untold of terrabytes of digital pack-rat goodness. Don't worry. I back up everything.