RMRK Guilds, 2010?

Most everyone here knows all too well about the guilds. We tried this last year but failed pretty badly, probably due to lack of motivation and drive to finish. However, the guilds did do a good job in joining the community together in a competition that gave us a lot to laugh/fight/bitch/cause drama/boast about. We made closer friends with some people through the guilds, whether teammates or rivals. Can't lie that it was fun, despite the fact that we all failed.

I wanted to see what people thought about trying once more at a guild competition between two large groups of RMRK again. With the recent turnout of the latest GIAW V and number of people able to successfully finish, we might be able to be more successful this time around. And even if we aren't successful, there'd be plenty of laughs along the way at least.

What do you guys think?

It might be a good idea just for, as you said, sort of bringing the community together a bit even if they don't actually finish the project.

I'd be fine making the boards and getting everything set up again but someone else needs to set up the rules. I guess I could even create sign ups and we could let those go until about January since the RPG Maker crowd here doesn't seem to visit the forums every single day. Assuming of course, other people here think this is a good idea.

it was fun as hell last time, even though nothing got done.
We should wait until around summer though, when people don't have school and can actually work on things.

Or we can have it be something longer than a few months, perhaps have it actually end at the end of summer or something?

Having it a summer-long contest and an extended contest ending in July/August or so both have their merits.

Perhaps it'd be better to try the extended contest this year. You could start in January/February, and even though everyone has school and such they could still work when they could which would work well for planning the smaller details. When summer comes around you could get the big stuff done.

Then again that has the effect of getting tired of it by the time summer comes around, but everyone should be fine with that if they're using RPG Maker anyway.

I don't know I'm just rambling xD

I'm not sure, the only reason GIAW is successful is because it's quick, it's a week, people don't lose interest fast enough and the work actually gets done.  

Not sure how I feel about an extremely prolonged competition.

GIAW is also just one person

You guys probably know my view. People try to bite off more than they can chew, drama begins, shit like that.

Thinking about it, if one person can make a whole game in a week with or without school, I don't think it'll be hard for a team to do so with or without school either given a short period of time. They'd need time to plan out, obviously, and then time to get their act together and build it. Need a period that's long enough for people to get shit done (since it'll take longer for a group of people to agree first and decide what's going on), but not too long so as to lose interest in.

A short time frame is the only viable option, procrastinators and drama whores (Atemu) were what really ruined my guilds game.

Anything under 5 weeks might be worth a shot.

True. People were saying they didn't think there wasn't enough time before. Maybe there was too much.

I don't really care how long as it is. Though I'd prefer it be at or over a month and a half, since a lot of people are busy with school this time of year. It doesn't really matter if the games get completed, because it will still be fun.

On a side note, NAMKCOR and I were discussing both co-leading a guild together~

So, maybe start building teams soon and then start the actual game making process on Jan. 1st, lasting up until either the end of February or end of March, so that there's enough time for people to agree on an idea and then carry it out.

I still personally think we should hold off until people are less oriented on school, but I'll join whenever it starts.

Might I suggest not limiting it to 2 guilds?

I'm up for it. My last semester is going to be really empty. I took the maximum number of credits this semester and it ends in 2 weeks. So I'm good to go into any guild for a while.

I really like the long-term project idea.
I would suggest urging iterative development with bi-weekly or monthly goals. That way people always have a short goal in focus.
There are problems with iterative development for RPGs, but people will learn about them so I don't think that's bad either.

The biggest problem with that would be to define each goal and how they count.

Zeriab did you change your sig?

Yup, garygill made me a new one :3

I like

Also, I think I like Zeriab's idea, if it is what I think it is. I think that people are right in saying that it won't work if the term is too long. However, if the time is too short I don't think we can expect any coherent results - The reason GIAW works is because there is only one developer. With a large team, it will necessarily take a long time to build a consensus on the project to work on. Or else all of the functions are split off where 1 or 2 members each work on a single aspect, and then there is no real coherency to the project.

If we set short-term goals with penalties if it is not completed, then people will be encouraged to focus on the task at hand, and each aspect of the game will have been collaborated on, so it's not disjointed.

So, a potential chart with bs values would be:

Character Development - 1 week - 5%
Plot - 2 weeks - 25%
Initial Database setup - 1 week - 5%
Mapping - 3 weeks - 25%
Eventing + Dialogue - 3 weeks - 30%
Balancing - 1 week - 10%

with feature development and resource finding throughout where appropriate, and of course the freedom to change any element that does not work as the other stuff begins to progress.

and then all of that could factor in as say, 60% of the final grade, with 40% going to the quality of the project itself and that could be judged on other factors, such as gameplay, cohesiveness, etc...But, if we set short-term competetive goals, then I think it might work better.

That chart may not be an appropriate time + value analysis, or even a good way to go about it. Also, I should mention that the categories do not mean people can't work on anything else - if you have a dedicated mapper, he might only want to work on maps through the entire project. But, knowing that something specific has to be done by x deadline I think will force most of the team's resources onto that goal where it is appropriate, and that will likely result in a better project and one more likely to be finished.

I also agree with Zylos that there should be more than two guilds and we should limit team numbers to 8-12.

I'm a dedicated mapper

I like what I'm seeing here. To be honest, I can't wait until we decide to start this. It's been a while since I worked on anything good.

I suppose we could start sign-ups soon, regardless of when the actual game-making process begins. We can't know how many guilds to have until we know how many people there will be. If only 10 people sign up, it'd be silly to have more than 2 guilds.

Of course, I expect a lot of people to sign up, like last time. The problem is, many of the people who signed up were not active. I still have the membergroups from the last guilds set up and there were 29 people total and that's after removing people from the guilds because they left for whatever reason (Atemu). But how many of you actually had everyone show up for their job? I remember several times someone was waiting on someone else to do something or someone was picking up someone else's slack.

The point is, multiple guilds are fine, but let's take into consideration that too few people is a waste. At the same time not everyone who signs up will be dependable.

As for when this all actually takes place and exactly how long, perhaps some public polls would be a good idea. If this is a community event, then after all the community should have a say.

I'll create a topic for sign-ups later today or tomorrow, if nobody has objections. While I'll probably be less involved in the overseeing of the guilds than last time, it's easiest for me to handle sign-ups and such since I have to put everyone in the proper groups.

NOTE: Again, this does not mean we are starting soon - although most of you seem willing to start anytime.

EDIT: This also raises the question of who is actually judging the finished product (if it even makes it that far)? I believe last time we agreed on just letting members vote in a poll rather than having actual judges, but whatever you guys feel is best is fine by me.

I know I'd enjoy participating in this again. Though, I feel like I held back my team last year but now I feel much more confident in myself about my ability and I believe I would be able to be able not to be a set back this time.

I agree, Halo, we probably shouldn't keep all of this behind the closed doors of RMRK Advanced. For the timing of it, we should see what everyone has to say, not just us. And for the multiple guilds, first we have to see how many people we actually have.

The biggest time consumer is to get everyone to agree on something, because if I recalled right there was a lot of tension just between deciding on the style of spriting. But I agree that short-term goals might be better, so as to force people to focus and agree on things quicker. Instead of having set deadlines and penalties though, perhaps we can have competitive judgings of whatever teasers and info the guilds release on set dates? Like, one week having the guilds present a basic outline of a non-spoiler story and any concept art they have like we did for a teasers last year, and the next week we show off maps or possibly a playable demo. The guilds agree to release certain pieces of info, and each week we have the community vote for which one they like better thus far. Keeps up the competitive edge and the urge to do better than the other group if you fall behind a little.

The guild members don't necessarily have to agree on everything. They can pitch ideas and the guild leader(s) can make the decisions and organize how and when things will be done. I think one of the reasons why I only got like 5 or so maps done was because I wasn't able to picture everything perfectly, and didn't have much of an idea as to what I was expected to do. Guild leaders should play a much bigger role this time around, so we get more work done in an organized fashion.

The guild leader(s) should probably be thought of more as a director. The final decision should be theirs but there should be some discussion of course about what to do. After all, do you think on real video games everyone making it is in 100% complete agreement about everything? No.

Even better would be if the mapping style, for example, were decided solely by the mappers and the guild leader. Let the scripters, spriters, etc. focus on their own work rather than how the mapping is coming along. (If I remember correctly, this wasn't a huge issue last year but it still happened and proved to be just a time waster).

In short, yeah pretty much what Irock said. Ultimately none of this is up to me though, just offering my opinion

The guild leader(s) should probably be thought of more as a director. The final decision should be theirs but there should be some discussion of course about what to do. After all, do you think on real video games everyone making it is in 100% complete agreement about everything? No.

Even better would be if the mapping style, for example, were decided solely by the mappers and the guild leader. Let the scripters, spriters, etc. focus on their own work rather than how the mapping is coming along. (If I remember correctly, this wasn't a huge issue last year but it still happened and proved to be just a time waster).

In short, yeah pretty much what Irock said. Ultimately none of this is up to me though, just offering my opinion

Yeah, there should be discussion among the members. That's what I meant by "pitch ideas" because naturally members would incorporate several ideas into a few different ideas. If a respectable decision isn't reached, the guild leader(s) would make the final call.

(When I say moderator in this post, I don't mean any RMRK Mod, but just whoever is responsible for ensuring the guilds are on track and for setting standards)

I don't think the teaser thing would work, personally. Part of what I see as the goal of splitting it up into pieces like that is to encourage the relevant members of the guild to focus, together, on a single task. Having to release a teaser wouldn't really encourage the collaborative aspect of it. That has a number of benefits; in addition to making it more team-oriented, it would also be a safety mechanism. If you have only one person in charge of eventing, for instance, then if they lapse or are forced off the project by real life then there are others who know the direction of that aspect of the process, so it wouldn't totally ruin the guild's chances.  The other reason I would be uncomfortable with teasers is it doesn't really force the team to progress. You can have enough content to make a great teaser and not really have very much done. I'd rather the interim judgments to be ones primarily measuring progress of the project, not how good it looks or otherwise as those judgments could be worked into the final product judgments. At the same time, teasers would be more friendly to judging then whether or not the database is set up correctly, which is why I'd rather the judgments of those portions be primarily based on progress rather than the content itself, and reserve content judgments for the final product. That type of judgment would be more amenable to objective assessment by an unbiased moderator, rather than using a community poll for every stage. If we went that route, we wouldn't need all of the stages to be public releases, only ones that made sense and the moderator could make assessments of progress where it actually makes sense.

Also, I would be more comfortable with the guild director having a limited veto power rather than total control. If there is indecision, or if he/she thinks a particular choice would be really, really bad, he/she should have the power to discard it. But if >60% of the guild don't want to go a particular direction, I don't think the guild leader should be able to force them in that direction - the primary goal of it should be fun, and being forced to do work that you think is kind of lame isn't much fun.

And I agree that it should only be among the relevant members of the guild. People who aren't mapping (aside from the director) shouldn't have a say in what the map style ought to be. But I would leave that for the individual guilds to decide. ~ Maybe the moderator could only set the external deadlines and judgments, and give each guild a week to determine its own constitution for how much power the guild director would have and who gets to vote on what issues.

Everything involving the guild should be up to the guild leader(s). The organization, the things that need to be done, the order they need to be done in, the time it should take to do them, and everything else. A guild can't be operated in a timely fashion if they spend all the time arguing about these things. However, I'd listen to the opinions and suggestions of everyone else, since it is a team, and I'd most likely go with the majority's suggestion. This is assuming the suggestion isn't too much to handle, or if it's just a bad idea in general. I don't think limiting the guild leaders is a great idea. The guild leader could go with whatever political system they feel is best. It's not like they can force anyone to do anything they don't want to.

Modern algebra raises a good point though. In fact, he raises many good points and I pretty much agree with him entirely. If most of the people disagree with the decision the leader makes, then they're not going to be enjoying themselves very much (most likely). This seems to be an issue that really needs to be discussed thoroughly and so I'd like to move this topic to one of the public forums to get community involvement now.

If any of you mods think this should stay in RMRK Advanced, by all means, overrule me and move it back.

If the leader made a decision that everyone didn't like, there would be an issue. That's why a good guild leader will listen to the members to reach a good decision that most will enjoy and will be beneficial to the game. I don't think we should be concerned about how the guild leaders are going to act, as it really shouldn't be much of a concern at all.

You're right, it shouldn't be, and I don't think it will be. The leader needs to be able to make decisions people won't like. But it's best to be prepared for it. I think the best course of action is if the guild is really that unsatisfied with the current leader's decisions, they need to vote for a new leader.

I think that anyone who would be the leader in the first place has enough sense to not do stupid crap like that and will put the fun of the project before anything else.

When the guilds are put together they should decide on how it's going to operate, I don't think we should impose a standardized set of organization rules.

This sounds like a blast and I'd love to participate. I can now, since I got past the internet filters at work.

If I may, (and I never thought I'd hear myself say this,) I agree with Irock. A guild leader should be strong enough to make "executive" decisions but also listen to his members. As far as a standard of operation rules, I agree with Halo; I think keeping the group together is kinda one of the challenges that make it a contest.

Hrrmm.. I would only be worried that a bad guild leader might make the guild not fun for the all of the members, and then sadness would ensue. But you guys are probably right that the guild leader needs a certain amount of power in order to ensure the guild works well. At the same time, I think the other members need at least enough power that they can stop it if it is such that it makes it not fun, because if they don't they'll just leave or not do it which would kill the project as quickly as having an indecisive or weak director.

I would be up for allowing each guild to make their own constitution as NAM suggested though - maybe whenever we do get this going we give a small amount of time at the start of the competition for the guilds to create their own devices for power apportionment. That's also dangerous though - maybe I'm just overthinking this.

Uhm this is just an idea that I just got from reading this:

@Halo - are you going to be taking on a role as a moderator again this year, or do you want to be more hands off? Because if neither you nor anybody else wants to do it, then I might be up for that role. Otherwise, I'd sign up as a SCRIPTER

In the signups.


Why not have the games polled by the community as a whole. Everyone gets two votes. That way anyone who worked on their own game would vote for their own and then we get one other vote. (I say it like that just because I know some people will vote for themselves if it were only 1 vote.) Post the games - Post the Poll - Wait 2 weeks, and see who won.

I'm not against saying no to my own idea here, just something I thought of. I'd hate to see MA dropout to mod the guilds.

well, I think it would depend on the system we end up using. If we go with "progress reports", then I'm not sure if polling would be the way to go for most of those categories (aside from maybe plot and mapping). Aside from which, if we had a poll for each category every week or two it would get boring to keep voting on all of these things and I suspect interest would falter. Aside from which, content wouldn't be an appropriate measure of things like Database work. If all it is measuring is progress, I think it could be assessed by an unbiased moderator and we would need a moderator in that case. If we go with Zylos' idea for teasers, then community polls for each deadline would be more appropriate and we might not need a moderator. I think, however, there ought to be anyway, since they could act to enforce the rules of the competition, also resolve disputes between guild and perhaps extend deadlines if all guild leaders agree or whatever - point is, I think Halo's role last year was an important one whether we go with progress reports or not. However, he has also indicated that he would be willing to fulfill that role if it is no more extensive than last year, so I wouldn't need to be moderator in that case.

In any case, I don't mind dropping out of the guilds and it wouldn't necessarily exclude me entirely. It would give me more time for scripting public scripts, and guild requests could still be made publicly and I could, for instance, offer to fulfill one or two script requests for each guild (to be made public immediately thus also making them usable to all other guilds if appropriate).

Ah, you misunderstood me Modern. That is exactly what I want to avoid.
What I would want is something like this:

• Month 1 - Small game released (First build) 5%
• Month 2 - Revise and extend (Second build) 10%
• Month 3 - Revise and extend (Third build) 10%
• Month 4 - Revise and extend (Fourth build) 15%
• Month 5 - Final build (no hanging issues) %60

Basically that you create a small hopefully working build after the first month. It's alright if there is hanging issues. It just should be at least somewhat playable.
I would also want to avoid the waterfall model as much as possible since there are times where people don't do anything even with back flow.
I would want everyone having something to work with after the first week.
Remember this is not like normal game development which starts with fewer people in the start phase and then more people get added.
If we don't give people something to work with then there is a much higher chance that they will abandon the project. (Of course too much work shouldn't be given either)
While this primarily is for the guilds to figure out I see no reason why not to come up with a model which encourages this.
My idea is basically to incrementally build the game up. For data-basing it would be to only have say 6 monsters and balance them out.
Work on say 10 maps and event them so they work as well as possible.
For next build then a couple of more monsters are added and a rebalancing takes place, a couple of maps are added and the old maps are revises. Likewise with mapping. And similar ideas with the artists. They can go over the monsters again. Perhaps the first 6 was unfinished, finish them more. Let's not forget how much people will learn this way
You would never work like this in a normal situations, but the guilds are definitely not a normal situation for rpg maker developers.

Another issue is that people will go. It's a fact we learned the last time. What about accommodation for traffic of people. I.e. people can come after other people go?
Of course there will be some administrative aspects to deal with, but what do you feel about the idea?
As for scoring I was thinking that public voting should be counted for each build as described. Perhaps some judge voting can be added into the mix. This would of course mean that judges would have to be found.

*hugs*
 - Zeriab

We've sort of moved the discussion on that topic over to http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,36352.0.html, but I think that model is probably a stronger version of the content-based release models. However, I don't think there is ever a time where people would not be doing much in the waterfall/progress-based models. Guilds could always be working on other aspects of the game than the particular area of focus, I think the model would only encourage focusing on the issues that need to be resolved. With an incremental approach like the one you mention, I would be worried that hangups in any specific area would completely inhibit progress in another area. Mapping can't be done before you know the story, and so if parts of the story are unresolved then the mappers would be left with nothing to do and no way to affect progress. I would simply prefer if whatever model we came up with encouraged collaboration on as many areas as possible by as many guild members as possible, thus reducing the negative impact if a member leaves or if even a single group is behind on their own tasks. The point of the progress-based model isn't to limit all of the members to one aspect at a time or to exclude the members who work primarily in a different area, it is merely to setup a schedule that encourages that the necessary work is done in a timely fashion to enable completion of the project and to encourage collaboration on all apsects of the project, where mappers can have some impact on the story and vice-versa.