Celtx Partnership

[Stephen E. Dinehart]

Hey all,

I just received confirmation from Celtx that they are interested in a partnership with the WSIG Tools Initative Team.

1. Let's have a serious chat to nail down a feature list and working methodology.

2. Corvus can we use you chat channel tomorrow at 12pm EST, and again Monday @ 12pm EST?

3. We can strategize as a group and on the wiki.

4. I will be having a conference call with them on Wednesday afternoon to discuss terms. Interested in participating?

Stephen Dinehart

[Ron Toland]

This is great news! After playing around with the CeltX software and
watching some of their videos, I'm impressed with what it can do.
It'd be nice to have them working with us.

Many thanks to Stephen for making the initial contact!

Ron

[corvus...@zakelro.com]

Setting up a meeting room won't be a problem. I'm not sure how long I
can be there tomorrow, but Monday is no problem. Fortunately the site
exists even when I don't. ;)

Celtx's tone and eagerness to work with us jibes with everything I've
heard about them. I feel they bring a level of professionality to the
project that we wouldn't get from many other partners.

--
Corvus Elrod, Zakelro Story Studio
http://www.zakelro.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/corvus

[Jeff]

Hey guys,

I have been playing around with Celtx recently for some of my
projects, and it seems to be the closest to what we want that I've
been able to find on the market.

However, there are some questions about the appraoch before we get
something stamped as "SIG-approved." Or at least before it's SIG-
approved and actually of real value...

1. Having worked on FPS, strategy, adventure, and casual games on PC
and DS (and a bit of console), on-line and off-line, I can say that
the needs and the formats are fairly different. Let me rephrase that.
Wildly f**king different. If a tool is really going to be 'approved'
by an 'official' game writing body, we need to seriously think about
scope.

2. How does the SIG actually decide what is and isn't good, and what
does and doesn't get approved? To do something that will have
practical value, we should come to decisions that are a) meaningful to
a majority of game writers, and b) likely to lead to usable real life
implementations further down the line.

I'm not trying to throw cold water on the overall effort, but I have
already seen the SIG run things out as 'efforts' and 'initiatives'
that lie dead in the water. I don't want to see any of us wasting our
time on another of those.

However I'm interested, and I'll certainly use it and proselytize it
if it's good, and I hope it works. So count me in, and eager, but
jaundiced by scepticism (and scarred by experience).

Jef

[Stephen E. Dinehart]

Jeff,

Thanks for jumping on board to help out. We are trying to address you concerns.

The chat sessions this weekend will help determine our methodology and design, ultimately steering what gets present to Celtx during partnership talks. We are still in exploratory mode. Deign documentation has yet to be created.

Could you do us all a favor and create a spec sheet of features based on your ideas?
Since you are a pro, and a user of Celtx, your input could prove highly valuable to the initiative.

Cheers,
Stephen

Jeff wrote:

[corvus...@zakelro.com]

I feel that one of our goals needs to be a highly customizable and
intuitive Template Builder. This would go a long way to turning even
the existing codebase into something highly relevant for a great numbr
of game design uses.

[Stephen E. Dinehart]

Relevancy is vital. A highly customizable system is a must, it would be great if users could define their own work flow. I like the template idea! We could even have project templates, to manage multiple scripts in sub-templates.

corvus...@zakelro.com wrote:

[Stephen E. Dinehart]

As an addendum we will not be meeting tomorrow, but Monday will be our first chat.

Have a good weekend all,
Stephen

Stephen E. Dinehart wrote:

[Dinehart]

I have an appointment and will not be able to make 12pm, is everyone
ok with having it @ 4:00pm EST instead?

Sorry for the trouble,

Stephen

[Corvus Elrod]

That actually works better for me, but I'll remain flexible to any shifts as long as it doesn't move to into morning/early afternoon.

--Corvus

[Coray Seifert]

I think I can make that, but Mondays are pretty tough.

Have we identified a project lead for this initiative? Seems like there are a lot of great ideas out there, but we could very easily over-scope this project and end up with a bunch of burnt out SIG contributors and nothing to show for it.

Perhaps we should look at this from an agile methodology, pick out our top must-have features, and then add things to a backlog for future implementation, once the core feature set has been polished?

Cheers,

- C

Stephen

[Corvus Elrod]

We'll have to negotiate a bit with Celtx (should we go with Celtx and they have my vote unless our initial meetings go disastrously) and work with their existing process, but I like the agile idea. Regardless, I think it'd be good to present them with tiers of features.

I think we should discuss project lead and other related positions at the meeting today. I know that I probably don't have the chops to be lead, but I do have the time and commitment to contribute in a significant fashion.

--Corvus

[Ron Toland]

Meeting at 4 pm EST works better for me, too.

I agree we should compile all the ideas we can and then rank them
according to priority. To address Jeff's concerns, I think we should
open up the initial feature-listing to the SIG at large. Should we
then do the prioritizing ourselves, or also let the group vote on the
features they want the most?

Ron

On Jun 9, 7:20 am, "Corvus Elrod" <corvus.el...@zakelro.com> wrote:
> We'll have to negotiate a bit with Celtx (should we go with Celtx and they
> have my vote unless our initial meetings go disastrously) and work with
> their existing process, but I like the agile idea. Regardless, I think it'd
> be good to present them with tiers of features.
>
> I think we should discuss project lead and other related positions at the
> meeting today. I know that I probably don't have the chops to be lead, but I
> do have the time and commitment to contribute in a significant fashion.
>
> --Corvus
>

[Coray Seifert]

Seems like a group vote would be a good way to inform the future project lead's decision on the prioritization of this list.

Just my 2 cents.

- C

[Corvus Elrod]

Once we come up with a list of features, I can put together a survey of them, each with a five or ten point array ranging from "Not at all important" to "Of absolute importance." The reason I keep harping on the use of surveys is that it will make it SO much easier to extract meaning out of the feedback.

--Corvus

[Stephen E. Dinehart]

Great stuff everyone,

Glad to everyone still so pumped. It really is an exciting opp for us all. I think using an agile methodology is a great idea, and in terms of leads, I'm all for it.

Looking forward to it,
Stephen

Coray Seifert wrote:

[Roane Beard]

I will not be able to make the 1 pm, but am looking forward to hearing about the outcome.

Best,

Roane Beard

--
___________
Roane Beard
Staff Writer
Meteor Games

[Dinehart]

Hello all,

We (Ron, Corvus and I) just got off the conference call with Celtx and
in my opinion it went very well! They seem very interested in
partnering with us to create a Universal Open Source Game Writing
Tool! The WSIG Tools Initative should have a plan for next steps in
the coming days. This is really exciting! Thanks to everyone for their
help and enthusiasm! Please feel free to get involved, we need
everyone's help.

Cheers!

Stephen E. Dinehart
http://narrativedesign.org
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephendinehart

[Ron Toland]

The conference call was great. They had good questions, and seemed
really excited about bringing their expertise to bear on our problem.

Thanks again to Stephen for arranging that call, and for taking that
first step of emailing Celtx! Apparently we've come to them exactly
when they're considering the next direction for their software, so our
timing couldn't be better.

Ron