Re: [Adonthell-general] Getting contributors (was Re: Kudos on [Adonthell-Devel])

[Kai Sterker]

On Jan 17, 2008 12:30 AM, Ingo Ruhnke <address@hidden> wrote:

> I think the most important part is to establish, in a few clear sentences:
>
> 1) Where the game currently is
> 2) Where the team currently is lacking or even who is left of the old team
> 3) Where the game wants to go
> 4) When it wants to reach that point
> 5) What kind of talents are needed

That sounds reasonable. I'll try to incorporate those into the help
wanted stuff I've written yesterday.

[...]

> Also it is very important to get basically all contributors together
> at once, since when you try to collect them one by one, they will
> come, look at a mostly dead project, lose interest and leave again. So
> you will never build the critical mass of developers to get something
> done.

That's the hard part, I guess.

> All that said, I have a very hard time to get contributors myself.
> GotM worked kind of well for a while, but for most part it were the
> same five developers over and over again and after a handful of
> projects, we simply seem to have run out of them, since everybody is
> stuck maintaining one of the previous GotM projects or has become busy
> in real life. So I don't know how well that would work these days,
> i.e. we didn't have a new project for a long while, still might be
> worth a try.

I will, but I think there still is some work left to define tasks for
newcomers. Stuff on the road map seems too complex for a start (and
also depends mostly on me getting finished with the collision stuff).
In answering email on the other list, I got the idea for at least a
couple more simple things that might be better suited. Maybe I can
even come up with more ...


> It as also far better to get a few dedicated developers then to get
> lots of undedicated ones, since the last kind tends to end up tweak
> the engine here and there but never drive the game as a whole forward.

Again, that's right. Unless people have the patience to work on
something large for months in a row, we also need people with time to
spare :-).


> PS: It might also help to cut down the number of mailing lists, i.e.
> announce, commit and devel should be enough.

Not sure if that's really scaring people away. In reality, most
discussion these days goes on on devel anyway. But artwork and plot
are nice to keep that sort of stuff separate and easier to find. I
also imagine that artists/writers are not neccessarily interested in
code-related stuff.

Kai