Floris Recruitment

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Duh

Duke
During the past year the Floris Mod Pack has grown from a small compilation with a handful of mods stitched together, to a full grown colossus with more options than any of us could have had imagined possible. To expand on this - or even to just maintain it - takes a lot of time. Even though we invest much in this project, it's still not enough. That's why we are looking at you: maybe you are fit to join our ranks and help us develop the next version. We are specifically looking for artists and sceners, but would generally welcome anyone who has a talent (for example, scripting or modelling). Considering the scale and seriousness of the project, we are interested in people of 17 years and older. Though youthful enthusiasm can result in great things, we prefer the reliability that comes with a certain age.

You are expected to be somewhat experienced with the things you want to do. For example, if you want to model meshes, you should already have done some modelling work with a 3d-software of your choice. It is of course a plus if you have previously been involved in modding projects and can show us your work - be it for Mount&Blade or any other game. Since we want to improve the native game, it is necessary that you are able to deliver quality work. To stick with the example: We already have enough decent looking models, so we're not going to add more of those. We do, however, want to replace these decent ones by truly astonishing models. If we should ever decide that a product of yours is unfit for the pack, we expect you to understand that. You are free to share all the work you've done for us with the rest of the world (for example as an Open Source Project (OSP) pack) - preferably after the release of the according FEMP version. As long as you are the one who has done the work or all participants agree to share it, it is fine if you decide to share things earlier.

The Floris Venture has always been one of the open source kind and we don't intend to change that. That means we won't close our source because you want your genius code to be hidden. We will also not restrict the use of our mod as a basis for other mods, because you want your beautiful model or art to be a shiny jewel only found in the realms of Floris. You can of course decide yourself which of your works will go into Floris and it is also fine to restrict the use of them to using the entire package. If this is a real bother for you, then this project is not for you.

At this point you might wonder why you would join the team at all: Isn't it the same as to release something open source and hint it to the developers of Floris? This is indeed something that happens quite often, and it has led us to some of the great mods out there that we hadn't found ourselves yet, but it's a world apart from you joining the team and helping shape the final product. Let's start out with the most obvious reason: we have a certain agenda, a vision on what we want Calradia to be. We know what we are doing, but most folks don't and while OSP contributions are a great thing to share with the community, because all benefit, not everybody can use everything. In other words, by joining us you will be able to better contribute by designing your products to the specific needs of the Floris Mod Pack.

The second point is that we are an active team, whose members help each other. So basically, the more, the merrier. Increasing the amount of people that seriously work together, that support and teach each other, will improve our overall ability to get things done and our abilities in general.

Additionally to the above we can offer you a large player base and a reliable development, which means that all of your works will be (at the very least) used by us and played by the many people who enjoy our pack. This will also result in critique, praise and feedback in general.

Alright, I'm interested. But how do you guys work? What do you expect of me?

Considering that the team is spread all across the world and we can't just come over or call each other, it is absolutely necessary to maintain a good level of communication. To achieve that we are using the forum, our IRC channel and the dropbox software to stay in touch and share our work with the rest. This doesn't mean that we have to be able to always reach you or that you have to be around every day, but it does mean, that you tell us how things are going for you (work-wise) and when you may need more time for yourself or have to leave for a prolonged period of time. There will be no consequences or odd reactions to such things, because all of us do have a real life and we are doing this for fun in our spare time.

The general work will be divided into two things: What you do for us and what you do for yourself. This means we will have certain things we need or want from you, but besides that you are more than welcome to be creative and make your own additions to the game. In fact we currently prefer folks, who are willing to lead their own projects within the Floris mod pack. This would mean that you talk to us about what you want to do (that way we won't get into the situation where you have invested a lot into something, but we don't feel it's appropriate for the pack [a magic system for example]) and after getting a heads up you are pretty much free to develop things as you see fit. You can recruit folks to help you out , put up a notice in dropbox with a job you need done or directly talk to us in IRC and see if one of us can give you support. The only condition with this is that you are actively communicating with us as long as you lead that project.

The workflow is easy to grasp: we communicate via the forum or irc to share and discuss ideas, and we use dropbox to share our module systems as well as resources and merge tested features into a combined version. While working on a feature we utilize all of the above to help each other and share information. We like to ensure that features are thought through and working well - It is up to you how to use your time during the general development period. Once we announce that we are planning to go into beta, we expect all team members to wrap up whatever they want in the next version or tell us that they don't have the time to work on the pack at the moment. While the development period for 2.5 was quite long (~9months), we are aiming for 2-4 months for future versions.

How experienced do I have to be?

To put it simply, you should be self-sufficient. While we enjoy working together and discussing complex problems, we can't solely focus on fixing your problems. Since you might have a completely different idea on what self-sufficient is, you should apply rather than not apply, if you are contemplating it.

How to apply?

You should pm Monnikje, Caba`Drin and me an application, which contains a short introduction, tells us what you are interested in and lists your skills and experiences. Previous works are a great way to show us what you can do. Should you have any questions regarding this, feel free to ask in this sticky.

I'm not a modder, but I would like to help.

There are actually a few things, which we could use help with.

Support

Many people play or want to play this mod and some of them experience bugs or other problems. Often a little support can get them and their games back on track. This is a time consuming and continuous, but very important job. We are currently doing it on the side, which is why we aren't always able to help folks as well as we should. Having somebody help out with this (and keeping track of things like bugs and suggestions in our online tracking documents) would be great. You need to be reliable for this job and it would probably be a good thing, if you are generally interested in the forum and therefore likely to stick around for a while.

PR

Unlike many other mods we haven't been able to promote our mod across the internets and it would be great if we had somebody with time and interest to take care of that. You should be able to work with pictures, possibly videos and maybe even some webdesign. You should also credit all third parties, which have done a promotion for us on youtube, via AAR or some other way. This is a big job and you aren't done by simply putting Floris on moddb and the like - you also need to take care of the places where you have promoted the mod.

To be safe, i will stress that there should never be any sort of negative commentary towards other mods. Your job is to point out why Floris is worth playing, not downtalk the works of others.

Helping out

If you are not interested in having to commit to the mod over a prolonged period of time, but would like to help out, then there are a number of ways in which you can contribute. These include, but are not limited to creating signatures, AARs, Lets Play or Promo Videos, sharing Screenshots, answering questions on the board, writing guides to the different Floris features, participating in the discussion of planned or existing features and much, much more.

I want to become a modder. Can I learn with you guys?

While its great that you are interested, we don't have the time to really guide you, especially because it's not always the best idea to start out by only asking questions. Modding is a lot about doing things yourself, reading up, trial and error and slowly improving. This is actually the thing that sorts out all the folks with only sporadic interest. Once you have created something and possibly even shared it with the community do apply - we might just take you.

Concept

We are not interested in folks that "only" have ideas or concepts, simply because we expect all of our team members to be creative, to have ideas and to share them. This is part of any job we might offer you. It's not a job in itself.
 
A request for the players of the mod with too much time on their hands:

I would very much appreciate a starter guide and a (seperate) late-game guide, which adress the different features and how to use them efficiently for playing. Especially the starter guide should be more of a short overview, which allows the inexperienced player to take a quick look and get started. I would be happy to help folks with this, if they have a question regarding a game mechanic or whatnot and if things turn out well, i want to add these guides into the mod.

Cheers,
Duh
 
Why not start an open thread where people add in their personal play styles early and late game and then have someone polish and link all of them into a guide. I could help.
 
Suspicious Pilgrim said:
Why not start an open thread where people add in their personal play styles early and late game and then have someone polish and link all of them into a guide. I could help.

We could start a wikia.  Along with having information about the various additions to the game, it could also have a section dedicated to different strategies for early, mid, and late game.  Regardless, I'd be more than happy to contribute to a guide.
 
Although I'm not good at making models or anything like that I would like to offer my help in the Nord Faction. I'm from Iceland you see and our native language is almost identical to the ancient Norse so if, by any chance you need some one to find a catchy viking name for a Nord person, just ask me or even if you need a small text. I'm here if you need me. Oh and if you think I'm not from Iceland. Þá getur þú riðlast á sjálfum þér þar til heimurinn endar.
 
So Duh I hear from you that you guys are particularly looking for sceners and am starting to learn the basics for myself on the editing program used for scening and am just curious as to what exactly are you looking for. You know like is there some sort of specialty you are looking for or... Guide me so that I may be of better use to you good folks.
 
Well as described in the recruitment topic - we have a couple of jobs for the sceners, but outside of that they are free to re-/create/improve things they like.

Things currently todo:
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnG_YU8hXbcFdC02VlZ2WC1KbFBaLTVBSWhlQzJGMnc&pli=1#gid=0 <- Bug fixing
- Work with Windyplains on village tournament scenes
 
Would you like a voice actor? I'm actually a professional voice actor and voice over artist. I have all the equipment, software and skills necessary to do all that stuff. I actually worked with a few game mods as well. Was part of the Prophesy of Pendor team as a voice actor but I'm uncredited because I disappeared when my paying jobs got more hectic.
 
Hanakoganei said:
Would you like a voice actor? I'm actually a professional voice actor and voice over artist. I have all the equipment, software and skills necessary to do all that stuff. I actually worked with a few game mods as well. Was part of the Prophesy of Pendor team as a voice actor but I'm uncredited because I disappeared when my paying jobs got more hectic.

I, too, could do some, although I wouldn't profess to be professional in any way, and I certainly don't have all the correct equipment (webcam mic and Audacity for me).

I have, though, done some (as yet unreleased) voice acting for SoD:W. Err, what else? Does an A at AS-level Drama count for anything? :wink:


Oh, I'll copy and paste my recent guide over to that guide thread, too. :smile:
 
Question: Do you still need sceners? I am thinking of starting with scening, I have already tried some very basic things. However I think that I'll learn much faster when doing on "real thing"(I would have better motivation-it would be serious and if I managed to make something cool, it wouldn't be wasted). So if you wish you can give me some work and if it looks good, I'll share it.
There is scene tracker, but I don't know which need some work and in which style they should be made.
 
Do it anyway dude. Even if all the scener needs have already been filled, which I believe they haven't, the Warband modding community could always use more. And you can fix bugs as you see them too, which is a definite plus.
 
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