Change in leadership

[Jaakko Seppälä]

Ok, guys!

It's time to wake up this zombie from its hibernation. In case you haven't been living under a rock made of adamantium, you will have noticed that the high-resolution mod of Ur-Quan Masters, affectionately known as UQM-HD is out! (https://sourceforge.net/projects/urquanmastershd)

The UQM-HD was the brainchild of our wonderful graphician, Damon Czanik, and he did a magnificent job of not only producing thousands of hi-res pictures for the mod, but also leading the project to its beautiful conclusion. (Actually not-quite-yet conclusion: the current release is a buggy alpha and we intend to make a better version soon enough - with all the bugs killed).

Which brings me to my point: During the course of us working together in UQM-HD, Damon has shown he's got the enthusiasm, the skills and the time to lead this kind of collaborative fan project successfully. Whereas I have been caught in the evil net of the Real World (tm) and have had too little time to spare for Project6014. When we released P6014's demo 0.2.1. I acted as the Project coordinator, story lead and main programmer. That was really too much for one guy to handle. I think that kinda burned me out and left me with little interest for P6014 for a long time.

So, from now on I want to concentrate only on the programming side - leaving the project coordination in Damon's capable hands! He has already been making a good progress in amassing forces (old and new guys and gals) to work once again for P6014, and the UQM-HD is bringing even more attention for P6014 too.

So, let it be official, Damon's our new boss now (if we want to use such a word in a joint, communal project like this ;)!

Jaakko

[Cedric Horner]

Hi all,

 

Yes, it's time. We have the structures in place and the resources. Now it's just a matter of doing the work.

 

While I'm slightly regretful that I haven't been fully engaged in the last 12 (24??) months or so I'm also pretty glad that we now have some individuals in charge with actual useful talents who have the energy to drive this thing to completion.

 

I'll happily endorse Damon at Project lead to get it over the line. In addition, I fully recommend roping in the guy Jeff who emailed us a week or so ago. He seems to have a solid resume and we really need a fresh injection of enthusiasm. I think the rest of us will feed on that.

 

Personally, I'm a long way from being a useful contributor to this team. My computer and software isn't set up for it and I think I'll have forgotten everything I learned about C+ (which wasn't much!). I really need a new machine. My current one is about ten years old.

 

In the mean time though I'll stay fully engaged until we close this thing out.

 

LET'S DO THIS

 

P.S. Well done Damon for nailing the HD project. That trailer was AMAAAAZING. I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl in the next week or so!

 

 

Jaakko

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[Damon Czanik]

Thank you gentlemen for the warm regards.

Happy new year!

First, I'd like to take this opportunity to address any concerns that some may have.  You have all done a lot of fine work, and I have no desire to change it.  This is your baby too. We've all put a lot of work and love into this project.  I will always be respectful of that. I can't guarantee there will be no changes, but I will never forget what it took to get us here.

Regarding Jeff. Both Jaakko & I have contacted him.  I agree Cedric. He seems to be a really capable guy. If he delivers on some of his ideas, he will be a huge asset to the team. When we e-mailed back and forth, I got so excited I couldn't sleep! 

Second, I'd like to tackle the elephant in the room.  If you look at our downloads section you will see that our last demo release was one year ago.  We've provided the community no feedback on why this is. Our fans deserve more. I'm going to post in the forums acknowledging our problems, and what we're doing to fix it.  We'll post updates, and we'll let them hold us accountable.

I'm going to work on our problems as quickly as possible. My #1 goal is to get this game done.  I'm not going to be tyrannical but our fans have waited long enough. Let's get this baby done this year.

Third, What has been the #1 reason for the delay? It's been the story.  We've all had thoughts about the perfect sequel for 20 years.  Getting us to all agree has been impossible. It's time for a change. I've assigned the task of story lead to Nico. He has experience on this, and will provide an aggressive but very realistic schedule.  He also will do whatever it takes to get us that good story.  He will build a team of writers necessary to do that.  

Fourth, I'm going to do what it takes to recruit the talent to finish the project in 12 months. We've let this team wither away.  It's time to build it back up.

We all love Star Control.  We all want this project to succeed. Let's move forward.

Thank you.

[Nico]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Nico and I was asked by Damon to be the story lead for P6014.
I'd like to introduce myself as well as my brother, and tell you a little bit about what I'd like to do and how we can all work on making this thing happen: building a compelling and wonderful story for the sequel of our #1 game of all time!

But first, I'd like to acknowledge that I am a new face here and it must feel very strange, for some of you who have been involved in this project for a long time, to see this announcement.
Damon has entrusted me with your baby and I feel honored and deeply conscious of what it means for all of you.
This is not my story - it is first and foremost our story, our dream. A dream some of us like me have dreamt for 20 years now, but never dared to think it could become a reality. Some of you decided to make it into a reality and today, I am here to help and be of service to our community. I have no intention to destroy anything, but I will rock the boat.

Who is this guy anyway?

I first met Damon a few months ago when I joined the UQM-HD project. I helped Damon and Jaakko mostly with testing and quality assurance in this project, when we got to the crunch of our first release.

Besides a core fan of StarControl I and II, way back when I was younger (this game definitely does not make us younger!) I am today a professional of collaboration and knowledge management. I have worked during 17 years as a business and knowledge management analyst and developed many tools for collaboration. More recently, I am finishing a Masters in collective intelligence processes, a new and exciting field of applied human sciences.

In addition, my brother and I have been developing compelling and rich large scale stories as game masters for the roleplaying game "Mage: The Ascension" for a decade. We have worked together in tandem as co-storytellers and provided stories for 8 players during many years, twice a week. The process of developing a story for a role playing game and for a video game isn't very different - although it's easier on a video game because you control all the possibilities.

My hope is that with our unique background and experience, both my brother and I will be able to organize the creative process around P6014 and build together a crazy, fun and compelling story. In 20 years of now, with luck, we will have a whole new generation of people who will remember fondly at our current story.

Structure and organization for collective story writing

I noticed Damon is in the process of moving the project from google code to sourceforge. So I don't know if I will continue with the current wiki, create a side wiki for the story independently from project, or evaluate if the sourceforge wiki is usable and transfer the stuff there. But I think we need a collective open structure where everyone can read the raw ideas and possible plotlines and offer comments on everything.
If you don't like something, say it. Most importantly: write why you don't like it. If you like it, say it too! If you have suggestions, write a comment. Even if it is silly, not fleshed out or plain crazy: write it!
Creating a story is all about imagination and creativity. It can only work if we remove all barriers to our imaginations - even if many ideas may not make it at the end.

I will also put in place a structure over the wiki (or whatever tool I settle down on) that allows for secondary / alternate story path. So each and every great idea, if fleshed out enough, can be added to the wiki: if it goes against some of the ideas already there, then it becomes an alternate possibility on its own sub-page. The reason for doing so is:
a) not to lose any idea: each idea can spark new ideas in other people, and we may very well pursue idea A for a long time and then suddenly go back to idea B.
b) so everyone feels they are heard and can contribute, without destroying another competing idea
Only at the very end when we are ready for actual conversation writing are we closing down some story lines and keeping some others. The longer all ideas, races, stories and devices remains a possibility, the more likely we are to collectively get new crazy ideas.

Steps & tentative schedule

Here are the steps for story creation (and feel free to comment about these)

January 2013

• Dav and I will present you with a bunch of very crazy new ideas and concepts, plot lines and weird new gameplay ideas. Some may or may not be interesting. We want to hear what you think of these within the comment sections of the wiki.
  
• Agree on which major gameplay mechanics will be changed so that you guys can already start finding resources and getting ready for these changes. More may come later as we get new ideas but this will get you started.
  
• Agree on enough major plotlines so that intro cinematics and key cinematics may be started
• If you'd like to contribute actively to the story, please write to me. I do not yet know everyone on this google group and I'd like to get to know you and see how we can work together. :)
  

February to March 2013

• Complete the historical background details
• Complete detailed events and storylines
• Complete fully detailed steps for each missions required to follow storylines
• Agree on ending conditions

April to May 2013

• Compile a list of all the conversation lines we will have to write for each race and each situation
• Compile all the variables we need to keep track of for various conversation conditions
  
• Open the story-creation process to a larger bank of writers and dispatch different writers to write each conversation, giving them very detailed instructions as to what the conversation script should be, the race styles, the outcome of each conversations, etc.

June 2013 to ... (to be determined, depends on how many writers we have)

• Write conversations
• Collect written scripted conversations and test them

I'll create a new post in the next few days with the details for these new ideas and concepts and how to proceed to get that story moving and meet our aggressive new timeline.

Thank you everyone, if you have any questions do not hesitate!
Nico

[Ariel Azia]

Hi all,

I guess congratulations for the uqm-hd is in order. I am happy focus is brought back to project 6014.

I just want to assert that I hope the new story lead by Nico does not mean that previous effort
at plot and dialog will be discarded. I have invested quite a few hours in tasks assigned to me

by Jaakko, and I would hate for it to go to waste.

I have no idea what mechanism should the story be decided upon, but kwayne has made a serious

effort in streamlining the current plotline, so I hope Nico can work from that.

Good Luck to all
Ariel

[drac...@aim.com]

I guess this means I should get back on making the dialog system function. That code is hairy enough and undocumented enough that once I had a delay big enough to disrupt me, I've kept procrastinating. Now that the holidays are over, I can refamiliarize myself with it and get it working.

Luke / Death 999

[Nico]

Hi Ariel,

Than you for posting your concern.  I can assure you that I have no intention to discard previous efforts on the story.  I can't promise I will keep everything but my goal is not to waste the hard work done by everyone.
On the contrary, I deeply believe this is a collective work and I hope I will have you on the team!
I'll send an announcement soon with the details.
I have also discussed with Kwaine already and I value his input on the story.

Nico

[abes...@gmail.com]

Hi everyone!

This is Dave, Nico's brother. Pleased to meet you all and Happy New Year!

Just a bit about who I am: I'm a boring banker (PLEASE provide my geeky imagination with an outlet! :P) living in Montreal, Canada, and I have a 4 year old named Felix that already loves video games, and that I hope will grow up playing SC2 HD and 6014 (if he doesn’t, he’ll be grounded. As simple as that).

Nico and I worked on massive-scale storylines in various tabletop RPGs in the past, and are both such adoring fans of SC2 that we were close to weeping like little girls when we heard of the HD mod. (Slight exaggeration, but still).

I really, REALLY want to reassure everyone that our objective is NOT to discard great, or even amazing, work that's been done so far on the story. Rather, we want to integrate as many as possible of the existing elements into the game, and without a group of dedicated writers and story contributors, it will be nearly impossible to achieve!

We want the story to make the player think often, laugh at times, wonder about unexplored avenues and unanswered questions or hints, and go "ooaah!" when large pieces of the plot are unveiled.

More concretely, we want the story to follow a logical, rational flow. The game is a sandbox, so if the story doesn't naturally bring the player to the logical "next step" (but without the big red glowing neon sign that ruins the fun out of so many games), the player will be frustrated, bored, or will often feel that the need to do the "next" thing is forced or stretched.

Nico and I will post over the week-end with some elements we want to open to discussion and for which we wish to gather ideas from your guys. We’re sketching up a “start-to-finish” skeletal storyline without any details fleshed out, simply to get a sense of what the “Big Picture” is going to be.

In other terms, we want to work on a story with you guys, rather than accumulate yet more (granted fascinating) background on races, items, etc.

This is an exciting project, and I really feel lucky to be part of the team working on it.

Again, pleasure to meet you all!

Dave

[Mark McGill-Smith]

Hi hi.  I'm not sure how many of you guys know me, but I do the music, sound and voices.  The change in leadership won't really effect me as I require completed work in order to do my job.  Just letting everyone know I'm still alive!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/project6014-dev/-/dRiKZX5mi3YJ.

[Nico]

Hi Mark! It's incredibly exciting for me to see how we have so much great talents amongst the team.
SC2 was such an iconic game that we can find fans all over the world ready to help, which is wonderful!
 
Nice to meet you Mark.

If you have special requirements that may help you in any way from the story team, let me know.

I have a few questions that comes to mind (forgive me for asking if this is evident, as I am not yet fully acquainted with all the resources we have).

One thing I am going to do in the new story wiki will be to systematically add a "mood: " tag to all races. I'd like to give you some ideas of their state of mind, general mood or kind of voice we think such or such alien should have.
Is there anything else you'd like us to do to help you prepare? What kind of stuff would you like to know for each race to prepare for the voice acting?

Do you have deadlines or conditions we need to be aware of, if we are to respect our time table I published?

Also, what is your plan for handling the voices of aliens the player has already met in SC2 ?
Are we going to try to keep their voices "kind of" the same, or even should we?  (the terrible voice-acting for the Utwig comes to mind, and the even-worst choices for the Dynarri makes me shiver).

Finally, I am curious to know if we have plan to use some of the awesome music created by the precursors:
http://www.medievalfuture.com/precursors/main.php
(On the flip side, these are remix of old stuff... may not be appropriate. Just curious, your call).

Keep me posted :)

Cheers,
Nico

[Mark McGill-Smith]

Hi there, I'm happy to help.

Anything you feel would aid me is fine, personally I feel that I just need backstory and images. 

If you've played through the current release with the voice pack you'll notice that I'm trying to keep the voices reasonably close to the originals.  I'm still looking for a decent female voice actor, have auditioned a couple for syreen and shofixti to no avail.  While I have had fun with some of the races, it's going to become far too obvious if I voice them all myself, so anybody else who would be interested to audition would be great.

I'm fine with any deadlines as long as I am given sufficient warning.  It takes a couple of days to snip all the audio clips for a single race.

Personally I'm not too keen on the precursor mixes.  Listening to them mixed in with the PC/3DO music is odd.  They're well produced, but there is quite a quality clash. This is just my opinion, I dunno what the other guys think.

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[drac...@aim.com]

On Jan 4, 2013, at 4:33 AM, Mark McGill-Smith wrote:

> While I have had fun with some of the races, it's going to become far too obvious if I voice them all myself, so anybody else who would be interested to audition would be great.

Check out the last segment of JimPlaysGames' playthrough of SC2 - they're posted on Youtube. He read out the 'outtakes' and did a very good job on several.
Not a female, but you might ask.

> Personally I'm not too keen on the precursor mixes. Listening to them mixed in with the PC/3DO music is odd. They're well produced, but there is quite a quality clash. This is just my opinion, I dunno what the other guys think.

On the one hand, now that the remixes are all complete and about to be packaged up, there wouldn't be any old PC/3DO music.
On the other hand, some of them are more album pieces than soundtracks.

Luke

[Gergely Sinkó]

Hi

I've read Nico's wiki about the story, and though the text of the wiki we worked on so far was copypasted in it, I get the feeling that this is not the Project 6014 I've signed up for. Nico became a member who has the power to change the foundations of P6014, with the freedom of bypassing other members whenever he wants to, making changes to the story privately and secretly. For that reason I feel this project being not P6014 anymore, and I was being conned to contribute to a project I didn't want to. For this reason I'd like to retreat from P6014 and if Damon has the decency to allow me, I'd take my work and my name from the credits list too. Good luck to the project.

- Kwayne

[Damon Czanik]

Kwayne,

You will be missed.  As I've stated to you when you started.  This is an open source project.  All the work we contribute is open source. Check the license. Just because you are upset, doesn't mean you can remove any work (including your own).  It belongs to everyone now. The same with my work and the work of everybody else.   You are more than welcome to start your own project. I really want to see that. You can use the existing code, writing, and artwork. It is, after all, open source. 

Dealing with Kwayne has been a brutal task. It's why I and others stopped working on Project 6014. Now, You see our team is much smaller now, and no updates to the game in a year.  Kwayne threatened to remove all his work at the mere mention of my name as project leader because he didn't want to see his artwork changed.  I assured him, I had no plans to change his artwork. Now he is inviting me to come in and replace all his artwork? This is the guy who sent me 40 e-mails telling me what I'm doing wrong with the HD project. Telling me, what to do on my own separate game that I started?  Dictating what to do with my own free time? This is really about control.

Regarding the wiki, when Nico tried making changes to the wiki, Kwayne removed those changes.  Kwayne informed Nico that he had absolute control over the story.  The only way for Nico to get the job done in the timetable scheduled was to start another wiki. If Kwayne had been able to deliver, I wouldn't mind.  But it's been a year.  Not a single game text file changed.  Now it's Nico's turn, and Kwayne is upset. The wiki is almost entirely copied and pasted from the existing wiki. Nico has stated many times that he does NOT wish to change the work we've all done. He is requesting feedback on any changes planned. This is not about the story's direction, it's about control. Kwayne has lost control and he's upset about it.

Folks, I will not delay this project by deleting chunks of it because one of our members has a temper tantrum. So, No. Not going to do it. I will not delay this game further because one of our members is upset he didn't get his way.  The fans deserve better.  Now, let's finish this game.

Good luck to you sir. I truly wish nothing but the best for you.  I can get you paying jobs as an artist if you're interested. We're talking hundreds (possibly thousands). It's the art jobs I had to give up to work on Project 6014. Just e-mail me for details. And, you are always welcome to read the wikis and respond with any input.

Take care & good luck,

- Damon

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[Nico]

Kwayne,

I am deeply sad that you chose to leave the project.  I strongly believe that this project has a wonderful history, that many hours were put freely by many people and that we all deserve to put a little bit of each of us in this shared dream..
I think that leadership changes are difficult and believe me, I am sincere when I say I would love to see you stay and contribute to the story. I didn't try to "con" you into staying: I had several chat with you, just like I did with others, because I genuinely want each team members to feel heard and I want to see how I can take into account each member's view point. But in the end, this is your choice.

This being said, this is a shared dream. No member, including me, should be able to stop people's ideas before they even had the time to be fleshed out. My Job as the story lead is to provide an open structure that allows everyone to contribute without feeling judged or blocked. Remember no one is paid here, we all do this of our own free time, by pure passion. My philosophy is that everyone who has spent a significant amount of time and effort to flesh out an idea or a story should get his or her voice heard - whether or not that idea may end up being included or not in the final story. And each new idea can generate more new ideas and fuel our creativity.

I am a facilitator in the writing process.  I prevented you from blocking the process, and I am sorry that caused you to feel dis-empowered.

As you noticed in the new wiki, all the previous information has been preserved. Each member who wrote back to me or who wrote back in this thread was individually contacted by me, got the wiki address, and were invited to add comments on everything.  Each team member also gets subscribed to receive the wiki comment's notifications, so everyone is encouraged to read everyone's discussions on each page.  There is no secrecy here, other than a desire to keep the bulk of the fans from seeing the story before playing it.  Several "Collective Writing Jams" will be conducted in the future.  Alternate storylines will be created in the wiki for each competing ideas, so all ideas can be researched, discussed, weighted, and we can all build on each other's ideas.  Everyone here has the potential to influence the project, because it's an ongoing open project.  It's not a dead thing cast in stone.

What I want is for ideas to flow and for the best compelling ideas to naturally emerge from this process, to get the richest and highest standard of story we can get by putting our heads collectively on the same goal.  Ideas will be judged on their merit, by everyone together - not by hierarchy or power, or by a preset idea of what the foundation "should" look like. The only restriction will be to follow and preserve the SC2 lore and background story intact. Once the various puzzle pieces in the various storylines come together and start to inter-relate to one-another, we will naturally know which stories work best and the others will be closed, and then we will be ready for the conversation writing.

I have worked with Damon and Jaakko on the UQM-HD release and I was impressed with their openness, professionalism and dedication.  I have but the utmost respect for their work.
And as a project coordinator, I hope Damon will not hesitate to ask me to step down if I can't deliver: his loyalty should be first and foremast to the project success.  He managed UQM-HD wonderfully well and we are already going viral, with over 6000 views of the HD trailer on youtube in less than 4 days and more than 1000 download the first day we released UQM-HD.  The key to good project leadership is that the right people are found for the right job:  I intend to make sure Damon does not regret his choice.

I remains, as always, available for comments and suggestions.  
In the mean time, I wish you the best in your life and your future projects,

Nico

[Gergely Sinkó]

Thanks for trying to analyse the situation, Damon, but the reason why I'm planning to go away from this project is because when I joined it, I thought P6014's foundations had serious, adult minded limitations, but now -- as I see it -- the worth of that is practically zero. I of course care about the material I've written in the meantime in it's full intended complexity, but I would argue for those bits anytime again (especially because I didn't have the opportunity to discuss some of them). BUT I don't have the energy and time to fight for fundamental elements like the Druuge remaining not involved in P6014, keeping the Ilwrath and Thraddash dead, or the actual region of space we're playing in. I just don't want those stitches cut up and open up the project to go grow into immoderate proportions.

Just some clarifications for all:

I didn't chase people away. I didn't say anyone to go away from the project, but I have this stupid expectation that all members are adults who can talk about ideas. I proposed ideas and I argued for them, that's all. Apparently people here didn't stand having discussions and because they were too uncomfortable with engaging in those discussions with me, some of them left blaming me. It's easier than admitting their own lack of commitment. However most members had more serious, adultlike reasons to go. Everyone has a life you know. Of course if the goal is discrediting me as a person, one can simply say I bullied people. In my opinion though it's a really odd society where adults feel bullied because there's someone who disagrees and tells it to 'em.

I didn't threaten anyone with removing my artwork, as legally I couldn't and -- believe it or not -- I am well aware of that. I just don't feel like I'm contributing to the same thing I signed up to. What would you feel if you liked Star Wars but hated Star Trek, joined and worked for a Star Wars related project, only to get the news that some guys came from nowhere deciding that your work now is used for the Star Trek you hate, conspiring behind your back? Wouldn't you feel it's wrong? Nevertheless I only asked Jaakko to help me remove my artwork, and I'm asking Damon the same. Of course if one's goal is to discredit me as a person, he'll say I "threatened" the project.

It's true that I had disaggreements with Damon over UQM-HD. He asked me something I wouldn't want to do because I have different views about what a HD project should be, I reasoned my opinion, he said he does what he wants with his own project, I agreed and left him to his own devices. That conversation must have left it's mark in his psyche because after that his reaction to everything I said was an attempt to discredit and antagonize me. I asked Jaakko to help me remove my artwork because I knew that Damon hates my guts and giving him authority would only invite more of his insults and tallies of my vices, and ordering me around like an underling. (He treated me like that even in times when we were supposed to be equal members btw.)
It's just natural that I don't want my work being used by someone like that.

Regarding the wiki: by the time Nico made his changes to the P6014 wiki I didn't know he's going to lead story development. From my standpoint it was unwarranted meddling, and to my knowledge I was handling the documentation by then. As I remember, Damon -- in absence of Jaakko -- told me in a chat that I could write story (after a narcissistic outburst of blame and insults), only if the changes would attract some attention among the members. This was confirmed when Nico told me that Damon and Jaakko said I'm the guy to look for when it comes to story. Most of his changes were merely cosmetic, and I only deleted the pictures he put on because I didn't want them to become spoilers. Also I didn't want any random visitor to just grab the pictures and publish them as their own, since I didn't yet post them on dA.

I never said that I have absolute control over the story. Another exaggeration on Damon's part, again to antagonize me. When I joined P6014 it was natural for me that only one person can handle the documentation and others have to ask that one person. Did anyone see me meddling with any documents when Jaakko was around? I saw as if Nico was bypassing this "rule". I became a little upset because when I was new I always asked if I could do anything (I even asked if I can give ideas about the story if some of you remember), and I expected the same from him. If the message I wrote seemed raw it's probably because I didn't have much time writing, and English being a second language to me I need time to polish my way of expressing myself. (However at that time I would had rather spent writing time on story). However me being rough at some times doesn't warrant to resort to bypassing tactics that undermines the trust of the entire team.

I didn't deliver a single game text file because I didn't plan to. Damon put up that unnecessary challenge to me about this, 2-3 months ago. I didn't have a year. I only wanted to write the story script, progressing from the material we had already. In case I really had a year I wouldn't have been able to use it fully because since 2012 April I became less and less able to produce results, due to a serious emotional breakdown that also made me disgusted with touching or looking at my computer for 4 months. I mentioned this at places Damon can reach, but of course if one's goal is to discredit someone, these small details are easily forgettable. I didn't know about any timetable, but honestly I don't take timetables Damon used to make up seriously, for I don't believe people on the internet can be controlled by such devices. The other reason why I couldn't have delivered results in a field I didn't even plan to is because no one except Ariel did actually contact me about helping. Two people were actually working on P6014, while Damon chose his "own personal project" over it, not giving a damn about the changes I made. He didn't react to any of them, instead he conspired to put someone else in my place because he doesn't stand even the thought of me "controlling" anything.

But let me assure you, this is NOT about control. This is about courtesy beyond sweet sounding slogans, ambitious declarations and promises. Courtesy that is apparent from one's deeds, not one's words. Would Nico propose his ideas instead of secretly integrating them into a new wiki, not involving not just me but other members either, my only problem would have been Damon's harassment.

[dczanik]

Well, if I have exaggerated anything, I apologize. But, you have quit, so you won't have to deal with me again. Perhaps, one day we can take a look back at this and laugh about it.

Regarding the story. There was an old way of doing things.  Writing a story by committee has clearly not worked for us. We need something different. To push things forward. It's all text, nothing is set in stone. If things don't work out we'll change them. Nico was part of the HD team, there's no conspiracy here.

[Joris van de Donk]

Welcome, Nico, and anyone else whose name I haven't heard of before. Before I proceed, I'd want to let you know (and remind everyone else) that all e-mails here are public at the project6014-dev Google Groups list. Just keep that in mind for whatever you write.

Anyways, I understand Kwayne's point. Suddenly throwing a leadership change into someone's face is not the way things should be done, no matter how important a leadership change may be. These kind of important things need to be publically discussed before they're pushed through.

Furthermore, I'd like to say that I have been getting annoyed with that secrecy thing, as well. I stopped doing any kind of story development mostly because certain people were writing new story/alien concepts behind my back, and I couldn't comment on any story ideas until it was too late and everyone was too 'set' on their new ideas to be influenced by my ideas. Secrecy works well in a closed-source and controlled environment, but it does't really work well in an open-source environment.

Also, for the love of god, don't make a seperate 'hidden to the public' wiki for story stuff. It's very important for open-source games to have development happening in public. I've seen this personally with a project I was involved with before (the Epic Sauerbraten Singleplayer Campaign project). We had a great team of skilled people, but all development happened in secret. Slowly, people started losing interest and we never had the ability to attract new people because nobody was able to gauge the status of the project. People don't even bother asking if they can help when they think that a project has died out or it otherwise in hiatus.

-Joris

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[Nico]

Hi Joris,

Thank you for getting involved in this thread, I appreciate hearing different point of views.

For the leadership change aspect, I can't comment much. From my stand point, I do not know what dynamics were present before my involvement.
What kind of discussions happened, or did not happened before Jaakko appointed Damon to manage the project happened before my arrival.

I am also not aware of what possible secrecy may have happened before I arrived. I can totally see how you would feel if some story development happened behind your back.
Which is why it's nice to have a central wiki and make sure all ideas are posted at one, central place. We are on the same page for that part.
I have been involved with story creation for a long time, and I also have some professional knowledge of collective work and how to organize them.

You said: "mostly because certain people were writing new story/alien concepts behind my back, and I couldn't comment on any story ideas until it was too late and everyone was too 'set' on their new ideas to be influenced by my ideas." ...and I think you hit the spot right there! Indeed, in a project where there is no structure, we got some very destructive dynamics that appears:

• People get attached to their ideas over other ideas and do not want to let go of them, so they start working in silos
• An implict norm get established, in which project members feel the longer an idea has been up, or the more work it has demanded, the more it has to stay in the final game (regardless of whether the idea is actually good or mediocre)
• People are fighting to influence each other to "convince them" of their ideas, instead of seeing the discussion as a way to generate more ideas and more creativity
• Ideas get stifled by influential members before they get the chance to be developed
• Endless discussions happens over fine points of details
• Decisions are taken and "set in stone" for micro aspects while the larger core story has not yet been agreed on.

All of these dynamics, which are very typical of unstructured teams, are very detrimental.

To counter those, we put in place a structure where:

• All comments and discussions are centralized in one common place where all the story developer have access and everyone can see each other's comments. All comments should always be written there, so it's transparent and easy to find and everyone is encouraged to respond to each other there,
• The main wiki pages are NOT seen as a "final" or "agreed" product ; instead, a new page is created for each main idea and competing ideas can still be developed concurrently until the very end of the story creation process. This way, no one feels stifled or arbitrary stopped from creating new stuff, which is the ultimate goal: to be creative.
• Everyone is encouraged to add and comments on each alternate storyline, including these that go against their own - so that we can truly BUILD on each other ideas.  The goal is to think "Ok, What if this is happening? Let's play with that and try it, and think what I could do with it - even if it's not my favorite twist or choice". And since this storyline does not remove your own choice or twist, there is no loss and no need for competition.
  
• Storylines which really get rich, make sense, are well developed and tie well into other storylines eventually emerge as solid
  
• A few selected editors with good writing skills can regularly attempt to synthetize each other ideas and write more formal background stories, to help everyone see how it would feel.
  

I am trying to put in place something like this.
There is no secrecy, you are one of the first people I contacted actually. 
The wiki is on open source and totally open to all readers. Anyone wanting to join into the story creation only has to ask for the link.

And if the team happens to lose interest, well there are no permission to give to read - the link can just as easily been given to new members at any time.

But It can just as well be moved back to the official code store, if that is the wish of the group. I just didn't want to have hours of work (about 70 hours so far) deleted, so I temporarily worked with my brother on a side wiki.
I would love to get the chance to chat with you and discuss all this, Joris. You seem to have a lot of experience with open source projects, and I would like to hear more about it.

Best,
Nico

[abes...@gmail.com]

Hi everyone! Sorry if this post is long, but there’s a lot I want to share.

 

Come on people.

 

Is this what this forum is going to become?

 

Or are we here first and foremost to build an amazing story to create a memorable sequel to one of the best game of the XXth century?

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not dismissing the validity of anyone's feelings. But can we move on? We've all experienced this kind of dynamic. In work groups, in school, in projects... You know how it can go: this kind of back and forth can last months and destroy the creativity of the community. It can displace the focus. Please, people. Let's not let it happen.

 

This platform is meant to enable us to gather a large amount of excellent story items, to eventually concentrate them into a good story.

 

Things needed to change, for the project to advance.

 

Now.

 

I want to work on the project. I don't want to waste any time on "who's boss and who's ok with it".

 

Why?

 

Because we've all got full lives, and the only motivation we have of taking time to do this, with total strangers, unpaid and with zero personal impact in our daily lives is how excited we are about an SC2 sequel.

 

I see the pages upon pages of penmanship that went into the last 20 posts or so, and I can't help but feel a pang of regret that this time and (virtual) ink didn’t go into getting the story to advance.

 

Can we focus on this, from now on? Please?

 

And by all means! If we're not getting the story to advance, to become richer, and to get us closer to a final game, just flush us! But I really believe we can, with your help, build a storyline that will knock the socks off our players.

 

Lastly, a little clarification about "secrecy":

• We had initially worked on the existing wiki
• Our additions were being deleted as they were posted
• Wikis offer no backup to my knowledge, so we needed to store our story ideas, so we backed it up
• At no point was our new wiki private, we simply had not shared the link yet
• We shared it with every single person we spoke to, as soon as we spoke to them. If you haven’t received it yet, here it is: http://code.google.com/p/story-creation/wiki/Welcome?tm=6
• Comments are open to all on the new wiki page, and if anyone wants to be a full-on contributor, and is committed to add to the story, enrich it, and fill the (numerous) blank pages, by all means! Tell us, we’ll add you.
• We're 100% open to add our contributions back into the existing one, please note however that we’ve already almost doubled the number of pages and added quite a bit of content, so please be sure if that’s what you want.
• We would like to avoid anything being erased, and I’m not just talking about our ideas, but about anyone’s. To be honest, I feel it would be easier to manage if people used comments on each page to debate ideas, and used the edit on a page never to remove, but to add or synthesize elements.

 

A note on that last point: to create a good story, all ideas have to be fluid and mobile. It's a bit like creating a nice mosaic – you have a whole bunch of various sizes and colors, you don’t trash any part before the final assembly, because the idea that seems oddly-shaped now might be just the piece we need to make the story fit nicely later.

 

We need lots of great, crazy ideas, at this point, not to crystallise and eliminate. I think we’re far from the finalization of the story, in which we will finally decide which elements we keep and which we “kill”. It’s a funnel approach to story-creation.

 

A note on that note (:-P): it’s not because it’s on the wiki that it’s final! The wiki is a living, breathing tool. If some potential storylines or plots contradict each other, let’s simply create a separate page. When we finalize, we’ll all decide then, together.

 

 

Dave

 

[Jeff Wilcox]

Gentlemen,

 

    Hello. First off, I am a huge fan of this project and this team!

    I've just recently joined, lured here by the incredible experience of playing the latest release of Project 6014. I can see from reading the messages here, this team is made of creative and passionate people with a geniune love for all things Star Control (so I'm in the right place)

    Since I'm the new guy, I have no axe to grind, ego to bruise or agenda to pursue, and am speaking honestly when I say that this project is bigger than any one of us. This team did so well with its demo, in terms of graphics, story and especially dialogue that I couldn't put it down until finishing it. My point is, it was this team that made it happen. There is some serious talent here.

     As Dave indicated, a lot of effort expended here could have gone into the story. I agree with him whole heartedly that there should be no ideas left off the table (unless utterly absurd) until we all have a shot at making our case for or against a certain plot device or event.

     I hope I can help in any way I can. I am especially excited about the storyline, and have many things to weigh in on referring to the material in the wiki as well as a few ideas I think could enrich the storyline a bit. The job done thus far has been phenominal, something I doubt a big game studio could come close to.

     I am currently working on ramping up the melee engine to 60 FPS from 24, and have met with some early success. I'm also experimenting with a few methods to implement fine angle rotation in the navigation sequences, lander sequence, and of course melee (don't worry old classic melee diehards, it will be an option that can be turned off)

 

I look forward to working with you all.

 

Jeff

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/project6014-dev/-/wStC-4IDpmoJ.

[Brian J. Landsberger]

Hello,

My name is Brian Landsberger, I have always been a fan of Star Control 2 and just stumbled across this project and all I have to say is: wow. You guys are real visionaries! I am a Software Engineer, and although my area of speciality is networking, I would be happy to step out of my comfort zone and lend like lend what precious few cycles that I have to help bring this project to fruition. If you're already at full then consider it a standing offer.

All the best,

Brian

[Nico]

Welcome Brian!

You can contact Jaakko for the programming skills - he is the lead developer.
Thank you for joining in!

[Brian Landsberger]

Nico,

Thanks for the kind words, actually Damon contacted me and we're discussing where I might be able to fill in. As I told him, I am actually a Sr. Software Engineer at Nuance Communications and my speciality is network stack, filesystems, and occasionally operating system development. That being said, you guys are doing such great work that I'm happy to stretch myself to help in whatever way I can. Damon suggested that I take a look at  the networking code over the next few days, and when I was talking about Project 6014 with a friend at work I had an interesting idea about how we might endeavor to make future UQM adventures (not just Super Melee) a peer-to-peer experience: why couldn't the TrueSpace tunnels floating around in HyperSpace, QuaziSpace, etc. be other players?  

At any rate, if you have any questions please feel free to give me a holler. 

All the best,

Brian

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[Dan teh Chad]

If you don't mind my asking, where has this project progressed to since January? I was reading where it was recognized that the group needed to buckle down and get through some of the story sluggishness that was delaying things... And it was great to see that a small demo was available in January... But I don't see much sign of progress since then. I'm not sure what language this is being coded in, but I'd be very curious to learn that. I've been picking up a fair amount of code in the last nine months, and I learn VERY quickly. I'd love to see this get off the ground, it's kind of sad to see it just sitting here without going anywhere.

It seems like you've had people who are very interested in moving forward, and who have a lot of talent. But if there's one thing I can say is missing, it's organized leadership.

That's not an attack, it's an unfortunate fact. When I say that we don't have organized leadership, I'm not saying that the individuals heading this up aren't organized or aren't capable of organization. I'm saying that this PROJECT isn't organized. I've seen very little in the way of timelines or status updates here, and it appears that after years, you're still stuck in phase one with storyline. This project is never going to happen if you can't start setting (and holding) organized goals and planning. I'm sure the current leaders are more than capable of some excellent work, and maybe if they can sort out this mess it could see the light of day. But... Right now it really isn't in a good place. And that's sad, because this is a project that I *want* to get excited about.

From the outside looking in, it's easy to say that you need someone to step up on planning and orchestrating this on a larger scale. I'd love to see you bring in someone with the skills to do something like that, this group is like one big poster-child for Lean Six Sigma methodology, lol. If the leadership is ever interested in getting someone who can help them set/share and keep to deadlines, as well as keeping a more open channel to share what the project status is, I'd be happy to assist. And if it's not me, I beg you: GET SOMEONE who can straighten this project out. I think a lot could be done to truncate and streamline this project easily in six months. But, perhaps I'll just get lambasted for insulting the current position this project is in, or for speaking out of place, who knows.

Either way, I hope that anyone reading this can tell that my rambling comes from someone who is watching, and WANTS to see this happen, and wants the group to succeed. I'm not saying this because I want to point the finger, I'm saying it because I want to see everyone do better. Because if the project does better... We can all enjoy some Good Ol' New Star Control, right? ^_^

On Wednesday, January 2, 2013 6:49:22 AM UTC-8, Superbutcher X wrote:

[Nico]

Hi Dan!

It's actually refreshing to read your post, because it's really great to feel the passion is still flowing and we really can use more programmers, if you want to try a go at it.
The project had gone to a near stop a year and half a go, and then we had a good momentum going last year when I joined in as a lead for the story team.
It moved forward really fast in the story wiki ( here: http://code.google.com/p/story-creation/wiki/Welcome?tm=6 ) for the first 6 months, until about last March / April, when I was caught putting crazy hours between my main job and finishing my Masters. So I had to temporarily leave the story creation project. 

A graduated a few weeks ago and I am now fully back on this project! :-)
And re-reading everything we did with a fresh look, I think we are very close to being ready to move to the actual conversation writing.
In the mean time, I know that Damon and Jaakko worked really hard to release the beta version of the Star Control II HD version and this has been a huge success.
I do not know yet if they are ready to move on into this project and we will have to meet and look at setting some schedule again.

This being said, it's important to realize that even though this project may seem like it is going very slow and the leadership is not up to par with, say, the kind of leadership you find in business project, everyone here is giving their time voluntarily and of course, various life events must take the priority sometimes. The project is starting to get organized (at least, I will only speak for my part, the story wiki, i'll let other speaks about their own sections) - but the basic fact of life is: it won't go any faster than the sum of the time the people are willing to put into it, unless you are willing to settle down for sub-par work.

So as leaders of the project, we can only push people so much. The best way to involve people is to give it enough momentum by participating ourselves and hopefully this generates ingterest and sparks the passion in each one of us old geeks so more people want to join in and we gain in momentum.This is what I am now doing in the past week or so as I am coming back to this project. Hopefully a lot of people will get excited again and join in - but no matter what, I am commited to reach a final, programmable story soon.
In term of the story, we have:

- A rich and working skeleton with 4 acts
- A detailed set of steps for the main story arc
- Several story arcs and events shaping up
- A lot of links, tools and ideas gathered, sorted and enriched by a lot of comments and discussions

And within the next few months, this part will be ready for writing the conversations and scripting them over the script tools.

Who will commit to join me in this task in the next few months?

Cheers!
Nico

[WhiteRakogis]

Hi,

Glad to finally hear an update on the progress of the story.  I've been checking in on the Story Creation wiki intermittently throughout the past several months, and occasionally posting ideas of my own (just posted something earlier today about rainbow worlds, and I've previously posted ideas about the sentient milieu, Zoq-Fot-Pik, Umgah, and Lurg).  I'd certainly love to help with the story any way that I can, and maybe even help with the dialog writing later on.

Several of the ideas I've already posted originally came from ways to tie previously posted ideas together, so if there are any gaps in the story that still need filling, feel free to send them my way, and I'll see if I can come up with something.

Also, will there be an updated story flowchart any time soon?

WhiteRakogis

P.S. The deleted post above was mine.  I just reposted it to clean it up a little.

[Damon Czanik]

I agree. We've definitely had our share of troubles in the past couple of years. Life has slowed us down. For some reason, Nico felt that a degree was more important.  I had to work because food and shelter was somehow important to me.  But now we're back. And we have our priorities straight damn it! Spending all our free time to work on a free game!

All kidding aside, we aren't showing much in the updates, but work is being done. We need more great writers, to finally get something in the story done. This has been our Achilles heel for a long time. 

I'd like to see some goals set up for the writing. However small. Baby steps are fine as long as we are moving forward.  Nico, what small steps can you take that can be accomplished before December?

I've got some art goals given to me by Nico. Art that he feels we need.

If anyone can also help with recruitment of programmers.  We really need the help if we are to implement the writing ideas set in the story wiki.

I'd really like some additonal stories inserted into the game before the end of the year. Do we have enough to make the Baul and Foon Foon dialog? Or at least start it? Do you feel we are there with any alien Nico?

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[Mark McGill-Smith]

Hi guys.  Just reading and checking in.  I'm still available for voice acting, music & SFX, even though that stuff might be a long while off.

[Sid Ed]

I've thought about p6014 literally every day for the past two months, but that damn life just takes too much time. But, if anyone wants to collaborate on the Baul-FoonFoon-Xenweyi dialogue I got a head start...

[Dan teh Chad]

I'm really glad to hear that there's some movement on this in the near future. I understand having other priorities in life -I'm working through a bacehelor's degree while working an analyst position that runs 50+ hours\week... I get it. It's just disheartening to a lot of the fans when there's just nothing for us to see, outside of the occasional explosion of story ideas that often don't appear to be in a coherent or well-conceived form. And the quality of submissions you are getting has nothing to do with ANYTHING in leadership, you're naturally going to get good input and bad input. As mentioned, this is a free project that doesn't pay people. I absolutely understand that, I led a special interest group for about a year with nothing but volunteers -you get what they're willing to give, and that's it. I completely understand that, have you considered maybe updating the front pages of the wiki? It really goes a long way if visitors can easily see what's new, or that there really is activity... Otherwise it largely looks like a dead project. :( Which makes us sad.

Hell, I'd be happy to start updating the status on the front page, just so that users and interested parties could see how it's doing.

Frankly, I'd be happy to help with the project in any way I can, I'm not really sure what programming language it's written in, or if you're using any commonly available wrappers\etc. So depending on that, I may be able to dive in and assist on that level. At the very least I'd be quite comfortable working on transcribing\writing dialogue trees to your script tools, which I've heard in a lot of the more conversation-intense games is really a bit of a tedious mess (I thrive on processes like this at times). I'm VERY glad to hear that there's work going, and that we still have some solid goals; there was just no way of telling without being on active leadership until this conversation happened (I glanced through several portions of the project page, and saw not much of anything). Whatever happens, I sincerely hope that you get a great game made, SC2 was the first game that really took me beyond the simple platformers and shooters, it was the first time I really wanted to explore every piece of the universe, and try everything. It's the reason I love RPG's now. In my (occasionally) humble opinion, it's really a big precursor to games like the Mass Effect series as well(considering exploration factors and intertwining storylines, etc).

So, let me know if I can help in any capacity, and whatever the case, best of luck!

[Nico]

Hi Dan,

You seem very enthousiastic about contributing to this project.

Would you contact me outside the forum at my email address so we can discuss how you could help us to make the story ideas more coherent and ready for programmers? :-)

Nico

--

[Nico]

Sid Ed, the Baul-FoonFoon-Xenweyi part of the story has mot bern revised and needs a solid adjustment to become coherent with the way the story has evolved so far. (for one thing, the lurg are totally revised and are much more invisible to everyone now). It is far from ready for conversation writing.

I'll start working on this story arc in the next few days, watch for it & please everyone comment and offer help and reflections - as usual in the new wiki's comments section. 

Nico

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[Nico]

Hey Mark :-)

Goid to hear you are still on board with us!

A quick question for you: we had an offer for some work on the music by someone who posted here - would that fall under your lead? Or under the art side? Should I refer him to you?

Also, we will be ready to start working on writing the conv soon. Do you think you could provide some samples if i sent you some stuff? It could spark some interest and it'd be nice to pffer something to the fans on the forums. I was wondering if we could work on realeasing 10-15 seconds video segments of conversations every months to feed stuff to the fans?

Let me know :-)

Nico

[Nico]

Hi WhiteRakogis,

I'll provide an uodated flowchart in the next weeks to come.

Its a lot of work though - wanna help? :-)

Nico

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[Mark McGill-Smith]

As long as people can agree that the quality and 'style' of the music fits, anyone is free to submit.  I'm rather enthusiastic about writing it myself, but given that the original game had a separate composer for each race, it's only fair.

I can provide samples as soon as needed, provided that dialogue is sorted out and solid.

[Sid Ed]

The relationships can be revised however, but we need to keep the main wiki concepts, such as that the Foon-Foon are "enslaved" by the Baul and you can choose to help the Foon-Foon rebel as well as the Baul being related to the Ur-Quan. I knew already the Lurg would need to change, Damon mentioned that they acted too cliche as bad guys and he was right with their "we rule everything" and "we will destroy you". Instead we should give them a complex philosophy that isn't what you'd expect. Aside from their pursuits of bio-engineering dominance, and the Umgah being former experiments that rebelled, the Lurg should in some way perhaps be trying to keep a balance, perhaps they think what they're doing is right and their plan is to genetically modify "weaker" races and de-modify "stronger" races so that no particular races is the strongest, which makes them prime enemies to the Ur-Quan but possibly helpful to you and races like the Vux and Foon-Foon. 

[Sid Ed]

Aside from that, real writing for projects like this that are for entertainment and are for many people isn't done by one person, we need an actual chat room and times to meet up where we can all chat regularly to discus the progression of the story and other things, and improved easy-to-use speech software would really help with that as well. 

[Mark McGill-Smith]

There is a chatroom.  It's called #project6014 on irc.freenode.net and has been abandoned for as long as I can remember.

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[WhiteRakogis]

I don't know how much help I can be on the flowchart, but if you send me the link, I'll see what I can do.