Invision Games

Project Management, Part 1: Managing your team

Sebastian Kreutz — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:43:00 +0000

Project management is a vital asset to the success of commercial games. Due to the hobbyist nature of mods, it is often underestimated, even though we can learn a lot from professional productions to raise the quality of mods and raise the chance of project survival. Thus, we want to share some of our experiences with you in our latest developer diary.

One of the most common sentences you’ll read on ModDB comment threads is “please don’t let it die”. Many mod projects suffer the same fate of vanishing before hitting their first public release. In our own project lifespan, we got into a similar situation and TNE only survived due to a good portion of luck. There are many reasons for a project to fail. Especially when it comes to larger mods, there is usually a lot of dynamism what concerns the team lineup. People come and go, turn inactive for a while, have more important things in real-life that obviously come first. And even though you’re not bound to commercial pressure, this is exactly what makes modding more complicated to manage than an Indie game.
When we first started, we stabbed in the dark and just went on producing assets without a clear plan. Over the years, we started implementing a series of project management methods and tools that helped us a lot. We developed some of those on our own and learned others from industry professionals, such as Christopher Schmitz, the Head of Production at Ubisoft Blue Byte. In our first developer diary on production, I want to talk a little about the most important component of any mod: your team.

But first, what is project management all about actually? The very core is: ensuring that a project is delivered in time, budget and quality. Each of these factors influences the others and the task of a project manager is to find the right balance in order to make the project a success.

While the factors quality and quantity are rather self-explanatory, I would like to point out why time and budget are in fact relevant to mod projects as well. First of all, even if you work on a non-profit project, you still require a budget. Many people mistake this for money, but it’s actually all about the amount of work you can put into your project. In the end, the factor budget comes down to your team members again, which leads us to time.

Motivation

Sure, mod projects are even popular among professional game designers, programmers and artists alike: you don’t have budget-related time constraints as in a commercial production. Thus, you can simply be creative and realize some cool ideas without any pressure. For very compact teams with über-skilled people like Flavien Brebion, this can work out really well. Most of the time though, ambitious mod projects (including the ones that transition to indie) will work on lesser resources and thus require more time before substantial progress can be seen – or played. In these situations, it is very difficult to maintain motivation over longer periods of time. Thus, scope management can become rather important.

The vision

If you’re the one who launched a mod project, you probably have a pretty good vision of what the entire thing is going to be. But let’s say a 3D artist joins the team, does some props here and there, how is he going to understand or share that vision? How is he gonna stay motivated if the goal is not clear? Mod descriptions in their respective profiles are usually rather vague, verbalized in a marketing style and thus, not very useful for team management purposes.
A written vision statement should always be available to your team members. It’s not so much about particular features of your project, but rather the overall goal. Just to be clear: “fun gameplay” is no useful goal, as it is imprecise and leads you to all sorts of asssociations. You should rather ask yourself:

What is it that’s supposed to cause the fun?
Who do I want to reach?
What sets my project apart from others?

A vision paper that answers these questions does not only help new team members, it can also raise the quality of your mod. Once you start being more precise about your goals, you often end up finding out that the overall concept doesn’t turn out to be that unique at all and at the same time triggers some more thoughts. To sum it up: Be SMART about your goals. A handy buzzword for the most important properties to remember:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-constrained

I’ve made the experience with several student projects that tried to be the next World of Warcraft. Usually, the motivation was gone even before pre-production started. Even if your team shares your vision in its entirety – if the goal seems unattainable, it’s just a matter of time until the entire project crashes. It’s good to have a cool vision for something large. But if you really want to go for it, make sure that you set intermediate goals (milestones) that are attainable. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing a spare time work coming together as planned.

Work structure

There is more to motivation than seeing a goal, though. Each individual has his or her own reasons to work on a mod. For fun, for personal mastery, for the feeling of achievement, for a portfolio…there are plenty of reasons. If you want to keep these people going, try to understand their motivations and implement them into your mod’s work structure. At Invision Games, we started off with a very classic approach derived from the professional industry: a straight hierarchy with the experienced leads laying down the game design and strategy. It’s a suitable model to stay within a planned timeframe, since actual producers can pull people back that waste the team’s time on things that aren’t even planned for the next milestone. It’s a way to avoid feature creep in case the producers have some experience.
There is just one major downside: In a spare time project, it is unlikely that people stay motivated if they have to work on stuff they don’t like. It even drains the creativity of professionals at work, so obviously the effect is stronger when you’re not getting paid for it.
So even if your team’s producer assigns tasks in a way that may be best for the project in theory, he might feel like a tyrant to the rest of the team at some point. That is one of the reasons why teams fall apart. When we ran into a similar situation, we knew that we had to change the work model. So over the years, we changed to a meritocratic approach to development by involving everyone in the creative process. We ended up having no more dedicated game designers, but actually having all the team working out the game design. Might sound inefficient for an oldschool producer but for us, it worked out very well. We introduced weekly meetings on our Teamspeak server where the whole team would gather, discuss progress, lay down plans for the next iteration and move on to a weekly playtest afterwards.

To us, this approach had various benefits: First of all, it created an iterative workflow that didn’t exist before. Even if just one person on the team had time to work on the mod that week, you’d still notice changes even in a weekly period. And seeing progress done by others usually motivated the other members to put some efforts in on their own. Without actually noticing it at first, we had implemented an iterative work structure that is most common in the industry. Running through the cycle of planning, realizing, evaluating and correcting frequently, we could establish a solid quality for or groundwork before proceeding with other features.

While we were concerned at first that involving everyone in the game design could cause inconsistencies, quite the opposite happened. We naturally developed a meritocracy where new or inexperienced team members would trust in the arguments of the senior staff, but would never hesitate to throw in their own ideas. With this approach, we’re most of the time able to get to a decision without actually having to vote. If we can’t get to an agreement through discussion, things that are not too time-consuming simply go into playtesting and voting really becomes a last resort.

Of course, less popular tasks still have to be done, but people are actually doing them in a self-determined fashion since they have an impact on the creative direction. That way, everyone pushes even harder towards a common goal.
To come to an end, there’s another hint I’d like to share with you. Over the years we had about 60 people contributing several gigabytes of material and countless work hours to Star Wars: The New Era. If a team grows that strong, you need to have a clear overview over the skill set of each individual. It’s not just about the producers having an overview, but the entire team size and skill set should always be transparent to everyone. If a level designer needs props or materials, he should know who to ask. And remember: it’s not about simply assigning tasks, but asking the right people whether they’re interested.

Of course, it’s always interesting for us what approaches other teams take. If you have an interesting story to share, just post in the comments! In the next production feature, we’ll focus on scope management: how to organize and document SMART project goals and keep track of complex feature sets and overall progress.

Interview on HalfeR.net

Sebastian Kreutz — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:52:11 +0000

The russian Half-Life fansite HalfeR.net recently invited us for an interview. They had been following our project straight from the start and were curious to find out more about our team’s history, work structures and plans for the upcoming release. In addition, you can find three brand-new exclusive action shots of TNE on their site.

Check their article for the extensive interview and images.
If you can’t read cyrillic, we have an english transcript for you.

HalfeR.net: First of all, Star Wars: The New Era reminded me of SW: Battlefront. And the question is – is TNE based on it? Or what inspired you to make such a type of modification? When did you start?

Actually, it is not – the inspiration for the project came from an entirely different title, which dates back to 2003. Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was a very popular title back then with a very vivid online community. Lindsey and I (the founders of TNE) were level designers for the Moviebattles II mod back then, which until today is one of the longest-lasting and successful mod projects I’ve ever seen. Moviebattles always aimed at being the most competitive Star Wars online game around with objective-driven gameplay, lots of customization and a focus on teamplay.

At some point however, the id tech 3 engine became rather aged and Lindsey and I could no longer realize our visions. Back at the time, we tried to create a prototype for a game mode which today, you’ll probably know as “payload” in Team Fortress 2. That was before TF2 was even announced, but the limitations of the engine forced us to drop the idea.

The actual kickstart for TNE was in October 2005 when Valve published the “Lost Coast” tech demo for Half-Life 2. We were thrilled by the visual possibilities and the idea that you no longer needed a particular game to run the mod, but a Steam account with Source SDK base instead. We saw the opportunity to draw from engine updates without forcing our user base to move to new base games. Thus, we decided to give this a try and started developing in 2006. At first, the project carried the name “Moviebattles: Source”, since our initial goal was to create a successor of the mod on a new technology base. We ran into creative differences with some of the original MB2 developers and decided to rename our project, which would also grant us more creative freedom to do things differently.

HalfeR.net: Four gametypes: Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Last Man Standing, VIP Escort – it’s a lot of work to do. How big is your team? Does it make all the work together or do the different coders have their own job like making just the “capture the flag” type?

Currently, we have 12 active developers. But as with all noncommercial projects that last so long, we’ve undergone so many iterations over the years that people come and go. In total, we’ve had about 60 people contributing to the project. That being said, most of the contributors are artists, which always leaves us short on coders. Thus, we don’t really have the capacities to assign people to different game modes. Our current coder Øystein Dale has rewritten the entire gametype framework in order to allow level designers to influence a lot of the game logic. While that takes away pressure from the coder, it also allows us to work out a wide variety of gameplay scenarios without having to worry about technological feature creep.

HalfeR.net: I like multiplayer games for their competitive environment. I played Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Star Wars: Battlefront 2. These two games are very different. HL2DM lets you increase your skill, you can learn strafejumps, various tricks, weapon combos. To play this game you have to be fast and smart. In contrast to that SW:BF2 doesn’t have its priority on the weapons and movement skills. Teams are big and the game relies more on collaboration than on individual players like it is in HL2DM.
So as you moved to the Source engine what did you choose? Will we see some strafejumps and or is it gonna be the big map game with expert teamplay?

We had exactly this creative struggle when we launched the project! Of course we knew Battlefront and enjoyed the game, but we always knew we couldn’t do these massive scale battles with lots of vehicles in Source with its limited grid size. BSP engines are just not the best choice if you want to do that. Still, there was the question of pacing. Since we were coming from the Jedi Knight series, we were used to a pacing that was far beyond that of HL2DM. All players had force powers, strafe-jumping through the maps at an insane force-speed, placing mid-air kills with the Golan Arms Flechette or pushing other players into bottomless pits with acrobatics or force powers. Looking back, I haven’t seen a single online shooter for the past seven years that required as much personal skill and coordination as Jedi Outcast.

On the other hand, Moviebattles was the exact opposite. It relied more on players having different abilities which you needed to combine in strategic moves to succeed. The mod had a substantially slower pacing. In the beginning, we were ambitious enough to try to please both target groups, as we knew they both existed. We planned CTF and TDM to be fast-paced, while using different mechanics for the objective-driven modes.

We soon had to find out though that we couldn’t get the strafe-jumping mechanics to work in Source the way that they worked in the id tech 3 engine, so we ditched the idea and went for the slow-paced tactical approach. Currently, we’re focusing our core gameplay around a set of base classes, which fill in a different role each. In our first public release, those will be four player classes, which we plan to extend with future patches. We’re gonna roll out more information on each class over the coming weeks.

HalfeR.net: Please describe the Last Man Standing mode. We saw a few words about it in your resume, but didn’t really know about the Movie Battles 2 mod.

Last Man Standing is an objective-driven mode, which plays differently on each map. Essentially, we’re establishing different missions on each of the maps with one team trying to achieve a certain goal while the other team is in the defending role. The objective can be getting an object to a target zone, reaching an escape point, destroying a generator or whatever the level designer can think of. The levels for this mode are rather small, so each round lasts for about three to five minutes. Once a player is killed, he or she cannot respawn. Thus, if an entire team is wiped out, the opposite team wins.

HalfeR.net: Screenshots attract us with their fantastic atmosphere. Models and maps are on the PRO-level and look awesome. What’s the main point on the graphics? How do you use the source engine? Will all this affect the FPS rate?

Thanks, I’m sure the artists will love to hear that! We always wanted to take as much advantage of the visuals as we could. Star Wars really lives through its amazing art direction and it’s a pleasure to rebuild famous key spots. To me, the visual component of the movies is all about the “used future” look with some rather shiny places like Kamino as a contrast, but all of the settings with a very romantic color pallet and lighting.

Star Wars has recently undergone the visual direction of stylized graphics. The Clone Wars or the new MMO “The Old Republic” feature comic proportions or cartoonish textures. We’re trying to capture the classic movie look instead. Technically, it’s mainly work with high-resolution textures and highpoly models used to bake our normal maps. It takes more work than creating a normal map from texture, but the results are superior. We also use color-correction on most levels to fine-tune the atmosphere.

In terms of framerate, the Source Engine works out quite well on indoor levels. It’s very scalable, so players with older computers won’t have a problem playing the mod.

HalfeR.net: A big amount of players on Source makes the FPS quake. What can you say about it?

We only ran into FPS problems on one map during playtests so far, which we’re currently optimizing. Since we’re still implementing some core features, we haven’t run playtests with more than twelve people though, so 24 player matches are something we’ll still have to explore.

HalfeR.net: The engine gets updates. Does that cause troubles or does it open up new outlooks and ideas?

It’s always a bit of both. We’ve had updates that broke all of the developer tools for a few months and we’ve had updates that opened new opportunities. For instance, we ran into severe jitter issues with the animation system due to some glitches in the lag prediction system in one of the older builds. This problem drove our coders and animators mad, until we found out that the orange box build came with an optimized animation system that swept all of our problems away. We sometimes ended up building various systems from scratch again. This did throw us back in time, but the results offered a better stability and performance.

The major problem until today is the awkwardness of the SDK tools, though. If you run an operating system that’s newer than Windows XP, you run into all sorts of problems and have to create workarounds just to be able to compile textures or models. Developer suites like UDK, Unity or the upcoming CryEngine 3 for indie studios are a lot more accessible, since you don’t have to use command-line tools. Gabe Newell recently said that Valve is focusing on the creation of better developer tools, so we hope the modding community will get a benefit from that as well.

HalfeR.net: We know you’ve been working on it for a long time, how far are you to the finish? What’s the work progress?

We’ve made several bad experiences that have thrown us back substantially. Initially, we wanted to release live at FedCon in 2008, when we ran into severe engine problems with our projectile system. Then came a phase where we didn’t have any coders to progress with, until we were finally able to reboot the project in September last year. A lot of that time has been used for laying down new strategies and rebuilding certain components.

We’ve reduced the scope of the project for this very first release to create a target that we can actually achieve. As a result, the first release will only feature the Galactic Civil War era and four player classes. Right now, we’re in the process of migrating the last few core gameplay elements, after which the GUI will be getting a larger overhaul. At that point, we’ll be extending our internal tests to a larger user base and would also be happy to team up with communities who’d be interested in testing on their own Windows or Linux dedicated servers. Other than that, we’re busy giving the assets locked for the first release the finishing touches.

I wouldn’t want to name a release date at this point, though. Once we’re through with the coding-heavy stuff for our core gameplay, the Linux dedicated server and UI, we can think about a concrete date.

HalfeR.net: We and all our visitors really believe you can make this mod live. May the force be with you!

Thanks a lot, we hope we can proceed without further outages and hope to get some fresh people on board, as well.

First action footage

Sebastian Kreutz — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:52:30 +0000

Rebel Stimpack

Thanks for participating in our second community voting! Again, we have a winner which is now being implemented in the game. Concept art #3 won with an infinite improbable count of 42 votes.

After adding the stimpacks, you might have already suspected that we’re busy building the gameplay mechanics right now. After showing you our environments, player and weapon models for quite a while, we can now show you the first actual gameplay footage from CTF Deathstar and VIP Tantive IV. Yes, that’s right: The first release of TNE will feature both CTF and VIP Escort mode. But our system is built to allow for a wide variety of map-specific objectives that will also allow you to create custom levels that are only limited by your creativity.

Check our gallery for the first few shots. They are also available on ModDB in HD resolution.

As we are approaching the Pre-Alpha version of the mod, we’re in need of partners who are interested in helping us test and providing a Windows server for doing so. So if you’re running a clan or gaming community and are interested in a closed alpha program, don’t hesitate to contact us through contact [/at/] invision-games.com!

We’d also like to thank G4B2S and be good or be gone for their support!

Terminator Apocalypse terminated

Sebastian Kreutz — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:55:01 +0000

Dear Terminator fans,
we are sorry to inform you that this project has been terminated. The project has been struggling with shortage on essential positions and has halted when the project leaders left. The remaining developers have switched over to Star Wars: The New Era, which is unaffected by this cancellation and continues to be developed.

Since we could not convince the artists to publish the unused assets under Creative Commons license, we will not be able to provide any material to the modding community.
Thank you for your enthusiasm during the project!

Second community vote

Sebastian Kreutz — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 21:03:31 +0000

Imperial Stimpack

You’ve voted, we’ve worked! After summing up all votes from ModDB, facebook and our own website, concept #2 was the clear winner for the Imperial Stimpack and is now being worked into the game by Sven (see concept render). Thanks for participating so actively in the voting!

Rebel stimpack concepts

One of our major objectives when rebooting the project was to let you – the community – take a more active part in the development of the mod, even if you’re not developers yourselves. While our lead programmer Øystein Dale is working hard behind the scenes on a framework that will allow you to create very flexible gameplay scenarios, we’re continuing to involve you in the art direction of the mod.

Thus, we have another vote coming up for you! Our concept artist Simon was busy again and created a total number of eight concepts for the Rebel counterpart. Now it’s your turn again! Post the number of your favourite concept in the comments of this post! This time, you can cast your votes until Saturday, April 16th (18:00 GMT).

Stimpack: Community vote

Sebastian Kreutz — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 21:10:24 +0000

Wolfclaw just recently joined our team as a new concept artist, and just at the right time. While the Star Wars universe supplies us with lots of amazing designs to implement, we also want to give Star Wars: The New Era an individual touch. Time for our first community vote!

One of the new gameplay assets will be class specials. Each player class will have its own custom special abilities that enhance its tactical use over the variety of weapons. While we’re not giving away too much at this point, one of our player classes will feature a stimpack that the player can use on himself or friendly players.

Wolfclaw created a set of five concepts for the Imperial stimpack and now, it’s your turn! Which of the designs would you like to see ingame? Vote in the comments section by mentioning the number of the draft shown in the image, e.g. “#1″.

Imperial Stimpack Concepts

The voting will last until saturday 12th and will be carried out on our website, our ModDB profile and our facebook fanpage.

Mod of the Year Awards 2010

Sebastian Kreutz — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 19:28:26 +0000

The world’s largest mod platform ModDB is launching the 2010 MOTY Awards, as the end of the year is nearing. As in every year, the event also contains an award for ‘best upcoming mod’. Do you think that Star Wars: The New Era has what it takes to become the best?

For the next 14 days, you can vote for any mods you like. The ones with most votes will get into the top 100! So if you like our project, feel free to vote!

Looking for artists

Sebastian Kreutz — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:01:56 +0000

While we’re back on track with the development of our Source Mod ‘Star Wars: The New Era’, we’re looking for further talented artists who would like to contribute to the project.
In particular, we’re searching for 3D and texture artists as well as sound designers. Read more for the details!

3D artist
If you’re familiar with 3D Studio Max or similar modeling programs, know how to create proper UV maps and bake normals, then we’re looking out for you! We need further 3D artists to create player models and props for the game.

2D / texture artist
Doing a full conversion requires a lot of custom texture work. If you are familiar with Source’s materials system and know how to use Photoshop to create good textures, don’t hesitate to apply! We always need good textures for our props, player and weapon models and of course our maps.

Sound designer
‘The eye sees better when the sound is great’ – that’s what Steven Spielberg said, but it does apply to games just as much as for movies. We have a large need for sound effects for our scifi weapons, impacts and all other kinds of sounds that will create a really dense atmosphere. Star Wars is famous for its amazing organic soundscape – so if you’re as much of an enthusiast as we are, you can help make this a similar experience!

How to apply
Post your application in the appropriate forum and please include your age, your location, some information about yourself and your motivation. Make sure you post some references along so we can have a look at your skills.

What’s in for me?
Good question! While we try to reach professional standards, this is still a noncommercial mod projects made by fans for fans. Thus, we cannot offer any kind of monetary compensation. Our motivation is to create one of the best free mod projects around, to improve our skills and of course to do what we like best: create games that others can enjoy!
Still, there’s a lot you can draw from the project other than the pure fun. Several of our developers have earned various hard and soft skills that they could use in their game design studies or as a reference to enter the industry.

We’re looking forward to your applications!

A Breath of Fresh Air into the Sails of Development

Lindsey Freeman — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 23:20:40 +0000

So as you might have noticed, our site has undergone a bit of a visual refresher. We felt it to be appropriate given the developments going on this past summer with the team and the mod. The new version of this site does away with the Subdreamer CMS we’ve been using the last few years and instead uses WordPress. Several features of the new design will be the ability for team members to add themselves to the roster of the team (avoiding the problem of having an outdated list) and posting individual developer blogs.

Two new team members have joined our ranks recently and have been instrumental in helping gather together what we’ve already produced and pinpoint what to focus on for finally releasing this mod.

Maestro, our new lead coder, has tremendous experience on the Source engine and has worked on a few mods before this. In the few weeks he’s been helping us he has made great progress on adding in several features we were hoping to have as well as fixing issues that have been troubling us for some time.

Watchtower is a close acquaintance of Maestro (and actually was the one to introduce him to us, the two have worked together on mods before) and has skills in level design, modeling, and texture design. He has been diligent in helping organize and prioritize the art assets and projects the various team members have been working on for the first release.

In terms of our current plans for the first release, we have a few gameplay modes that will be centered around an objective system that will change its overall required objective depending on the mode. Sub goals will also be present in most of the levels, for things such as opening shortcuts or activating defensive measures.

Team Deathmatch: Pretty straightforward; kill the the other team as much as possible within the time limit.
VIP (Very Important Person): Each round a player gets chosen to be the VIP, this could be Princess Leia on the Deathstar being escorted to the Falcon or R2-D2 getting to an escape pod on Tantive IV.
Capture the Flag: Capture the other team’s flag as much as possible within the time limit.
Last Man Standing: Three to five minute rounds where teams attack/defend objectives in the map (Destroying/escorting objects, opening doors, making to an escape point). Players can be killed and remain in a state of death until the next round.
Team Assault: Similar to Last Man Standing’s objective gameplay only with unlimited respawns , a longer time limit, bigger maps and more objectives to attack/defend.

With all these game modes players will choose from a selection of (for this first release) three classes, all with their own unique ability to bring to the battlefield and support their team mates.

Soldier: A common grunt trooper with a good mix of firepower, speed, and armor. Can dispense ammo drops to resupply team mates.
Heavy Weapons: Higher firepower such as rocket launchers and better armor but lower speed. Can throw a special grenade that emits a partial shield to block progress of the other team as well as protect team mates from damage.
Sniper: Armed primarily with a sniper rifle, this class has higher speed but lower armor. This class has the ability to use the Electrobinoculars to scope out hard to see foes in hidden places and report their positons to their team.

Finally, we have some new pictures of the projects our team has been working on, first up is Pene who aside from updated shots of his stunning Mos Eisley map (and some of the props used) has been working on one of the Electrobinoculars to be used in the Galactic Civil War era. Also DT being unhappy with his first version and always the perfectionist decided to redo his Stormtrooper model to a new one which impossibly outdoes the old one in quality:

So that concludes our first news post on the new site redesign. We’re going to try to make more frequent updates now, Watchtower has offered to do PR work.

We are still looking for people to join our team, texture artists and 3D modelers are a big must have at this time so if you’re interested don’t hesitate to fill out an application on our forums!