Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#61 Post by MikkoM »

Bigjoe5 wrote: If you mean the one with the detection circles, then probably, although since it shows them in a very unfinished state, it might be better if you prepared your own screenshot with the express purpose of highlighting the most attractive aspects of the game. For example, the system sidepanel would be open to a colonized system, perhaps with the resource tab expanded, and the buildings tab expanded as well, showing certain building icons such as the miniature sun icon, the black hole generator icon and the genome bank icon. The fleets window could also be open, showing a fleet being ordered to a new system. Perhaps one of the ships has received a scrap order and that ship has just been right clicked, showing the options "cancel scrapping" and "rename ship". All the resources should be at a positive value, though not all of them need be increasing, necessarily. None should be decreasing at an absurdly fast rate. If one of the ships in the fleet window has an absurdly difficult to pronounce name, you might consider renaming it before taking the screenshot. It might also be a good idea to rename the owned planet in the system before taking the screenshot, to show off the fact that it is indeed possible. Make sure the fleet window is resized so that the speed icon doesn't extend outside the window. There should probably be some systems owned by another empire somewhere on the screen as well.
Unless you or somebody else already have/has a good game scenario, which already has those recent additions and you or somebody else are/is able to provide the screenshot, this is probably going to take some time, because I have no prior compiling experience.
Bigjoe5 wrote:Yes; while the exact tone of the statement probably should be modified to match the rest of the post, there is currently no explicit directive, no direct suggestion for the reader to follow. You state what we're seeking, and how they can contribute, but at no point in the post do you actually say something to the effect of "please come contribute", which has a greater psychological impact than simply implying that the person reading should come and contribute.
This kind of a direct suggestion might very well have a greater psychological impact, but does it show the project in a right light? To me it seems a bit like a desperate call for help. And as it has usually been difficult for most new forum members, especially if they want to contribute to the programming/graphics part of the project to adapt to the already established guidelines, is it a good idea to make this kind of a direct call for help?

There are already quite a few indirect suggestions in the recruitment post about the project welcoming help from motivated individuals:
Recruitment Post wrote: Subjects:
FreeOrion seeks C++ programmers willing to learn. (C Board)
FreeOrion seeks programmers (mostly C++) willing to learn. (Programming Forums)
Recruitment Post wrote: if you are interested in working with talented individuals on an open source game project such as this and don`t mind learning new things, FreeOrion is a project for you.
Recruitment Post wrote: If you have any specific questions about some areas of the game or want to contribute to the project, please register to our forum:
However, if a more direct suggestion is truly considered useful then I will add it to the recruitment post.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#62 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Bigjoe5 wrote:This kind of a direct suggestion might very well have a greater psychological impact, but does it show the project in a right light? To me it seems a bit like a desperate call for help. And as it has usually been difficult for most new forum members, especially if they want to contribute to the programming/graphics part of the project to adapt to the already established guidelines, is it a good idea to make this kind of a direct call for help?
You have a point. The current indirect suggestions are quite adequate.

Here is a screenshot of the type I mentioned. It should perhaps be accompanied/preceded by an older screenshot with more stars:

Image

Edit: Changed screenshot so the speed icon wasn't cut off.
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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#63 Post by MikkoM »

Finally here again. This has been quite an interesting autumn with computers for me.
Bigjoe5 wrote: Here is a screenshot of the type I mentioned. It should perhaps be accompanied/preceded by an older screenshot with more stars:
I updated the screenshots again and used the screenshot that you provided, and a screenshot that shows a 500 star galaxy (taken by me). The total number of screenshots is still three and currently they aren`t all equal in size. I don`t know if this is going to be too big of a problem in the end though, as it is quite likely that all screenshots might have to be edited, so that they can be posted on those forums.

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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#64 Post by MikkoM »

Unless there is still something that should absolutely be changed in the recruitment post, I will try to post it relatively soon (probably early next week).

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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#65 Post by MikkoM »

I finally got the recruitment messages posted. (This really hasn`t been a good autumn for me. :()

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/projects ... post906955
http://www.programmingforums.org/thread24522.html

However, one of these threads was already removed once, as one forum moderator considered it to be spam. I contacted him and managed to get the thread back, but don`t be too surprised if at least one of these threads disappears again. The thread that was removed was on a forum that is filled with other project ads, so I am not exactly sure why this particular post was considered spam. Especially as I managed to contact another moderator of that forum well before posting the recruitment message, and he said it would be OK to post to that particular forum.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#66 Post by Geoff the Medio »

It's possible the threshold for assuming spam is quite low... I've been preemptively deleting a lot of user registrations in the last few months due to the volume of them. Before deleting a questionable post, I usually google a phrase in it to see if it's copied dozens of times at other locations, though.

Thanks for doing the recruitment posting.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#67 Post by Bigjoe5 »

For some reason, in the first one, one of the links in the message reads: "FreeOrion • Index page", for me anyway. It would probably be good if this were edited to somehow fix this.
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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#68 Post by MikkoM »

Bigjoe5 wrote:For some reason, in the first one, one of the links in the message reads: "FreeOrion • Index page", for me anyway. It would probably be good if this were edited to somehow fix this.
Yes, this seems to be an annoying problem. Unfortunately I noticed it a bit too late, when the editing time for that post had already ended, so know I will have to try and contact the moderators of that forum to get it fixed. Hopefully this won’t be too big of a problem for the readers of that post, though. At least there is still the part that says:
Recruitment post wrote:If you have any specific questions about some areas of the game or want to contribute to the project, please register to our forum:
before the weird link.

There is also one quite an interesting post in that thread:
MK27 wrote:Also pretty sure "Zach Laine" is actually a porn star....
If this is true, I don`t think that we need to wonder anymore where tzlaine has been lately. :wink: :lol:

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strooka
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#69 Post by strooka »

well what about me?
i have experience in c++, i could manage the mac version, if i'll can get to run it. i'm willing to learn ogre on linux since i study 3d programming.
i've some experience programming 3d apps in java.
but at first i could fix some bugs.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#70 Post by Geoff the Medio »

strooka wrote:well what about me?
i have experience in c++, i could manage the mac version, if i'll can get to run it. i'm willing to learn ogre on linux since i study 3d programming.
i've some experience programming 3d apps in java.
but at first i could fix some bugs.
We'll happily consider and possibly accept (with revisions) patches posted to the programming forum from anyone. If you need help figuring something out, feel free to post about that as well.

There is a list of bugs on sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=54 ... unc=browse

And there is a general list of suggested programming tasks on the FreeOrion wiki:
http://freeorion.org/index.php/Programming_Work

Feel free to find or suggest your own desired additions or fixes as well, although I suggest discussing any large changes before writing them, as they may require artist or design input to be acceptable.

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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#71 Post by MikkoM »

It might be worth mentioning that inspired by this
Geoff the Medio wrote: What might be useful is for anyone on the forums who's interested to post on various other forums, where appropriate, when releases are made, to attract attention to them, much like the recruitment posts discussed above.
...I have been posting news about new FreeOrion releases to majority of the forums to which I have also posted recruitment threads. I have usually used the following kind of message format:
MikkoM wrote: FreeOrion v.0.3.14 has been released for Windows, statically-linked Linux, and Intel Mac OSX!

Major changes since the last version include: Progress on the 3D interactive combat system (not yet playable however), which can be tested during regular games by running "freeorion --test-3d-combat" or directly by running
"freeorion --tech-demo". Transition from SCons to CMake. Resource meter growth is now +1 per turn instead of a much more complicated formula. The visibility system has also been completely reworked.

A complete (long) list of recent changes can be found here:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1220&start=15

And the new releases can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freeori ... %200.3.14/
In my update messages I have used a couple of changes that have seemed both significant and interesting to me, as examples of what has changed since the last release. If this is however disliked, I can leave the change examples out and only post a link to the official release thread.

The reason why I am mentioning this now is that I have recently expanded my news operation to also include most of the websites that Tyreth mentions in this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1236

(most of those sites have administrators who go through the messages before they are released) and so thought it would be nice to let others know what I have been doing, before I singlehandedly manage to destroy FreeOrion`s public image.

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pd
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#72 Post by pd »

It's an excellent idea to post on the recruitment posts. It's a nice way to show the project is alive and progress is being made.

Instead of linking just to viewtopic.php?p=42955 (the thread) you coud link to viewtopic.php?p=42955#p42955 (the specific post).

Feel free to ask me about images to use as well. People seem to be easily impressed by it and it's much more "catchy" then just text.

These two are related to combat obviously:
http://www.optisch-edel.de/fo/windows%20builds/3449.jpg (screenshot)
http://www.optisch-edel.de/fo/trithmark1_7_cropped.jpg (artwork)

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MikkoM
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#73 Post by MikkoM »

First of all sorry for the long respond delay.
pd wrote:Instead of linking just to viewtopic.php?p=42955 (the thread) you coud link to viewtopic.php?p=42955#p42955 (the specific post).
This is a very good idea. Now I just have to learn how to link to a specific post, so I can do this with future releases. I already updated this more accurate link to some of my news messages. (Most of the others cannot be edited anymore or are only modified by site administrators.)
pd wrote:Feel free to ask me about images to use as well. People seem to be easily impressed by it and it's much more "catchy" then just text.)
Yes, good quality images are always nice. Some sites still seem to have very old thumbnail or normal sized images of FreeOrion...

http://www.happypenguin.org/show?Free%20Orion

... so I wonder if it would be useful to provide them with a new clear and generic FreeOrion image. However most of those sites that have old screenshots are modified only by site administrators, so all possible changes will have to be done through them. And because of this I can`t really be sure how willing they are to make such minor changes.

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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#74 Post by teresap989 »

Congratulation's on the work that you have done on this game, it really looks amazing. I have some experience in programming languages, like C, python and also C++ (while i haven't programmed it in a while) but not on game development and i love programming and games so why not join both. :) So, if you still need programming help and i will be very happy to part of this project.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Developer (and artist? and sound?) recruiting

#75 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Welcome. Programming help is definitely still sought-after and appreciated. Game design discussion is very slow/barely existent at the moment, but this is mainly because development itself is so slow currently, so there's not much more that's in immediate need of discussion. Feel free to create or add to a topic in brainstorming, choose a task from the Programming Work page, or attempt fixing a bug on the sourceforge tracker to begin familiarizing yourself with the code.
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