~ Project Leads on CCG Workshop ~

So, you can say I've been around for a while, and although I'm not as old school as nipa, to most people I've been around for so long that whenever there is a problem with gatlingNet, my IM get buzzed by people I hardly know. That, however doesn't give me the right to bash anyone though, and this blog does not intend to do that. Rather, I'm going to briefly (Hah! as if this will be anything brief) encapsulate my thoughts about what makes a good Project Lead and who should apply to be one.

Before I start though, let me define a term.
Hobbit: People who pester to become a Project Lead, but after being granted the status of being a Project Lead produces absolutely (or close to) nothing.
(Yeah, that's right, another Tolkien reference, the CCGW world is littered with them)

Over my tenure as a Project Lead, I've seen numerous Hobbits hanging around the engine. (Why Hobbits? Think Trolls, but CCGW wise) Of course, one doesn't know that they are Hobbits until after they are made a Project Lead. Hobbits will do everything in their power to become a Project Lead - send in the Non-Disclosure agreement, write reviews, give regular tours, patrol the forum religiously and answer all questions posted there, stuff like that. Of course there are others who do most of that as well, so that's not a distinctive mark of a Hobbit. And of course, those are the things done by normal Project Leads anyways (or should be done by them!)

So what qualities should a person have who will succeed in coding an entire game for CCGW and not end up as a Hobbit? Assuming that said person is qualified (have a working knowledge of coding languages, knows his - basic - way around graphic programs, can work a computer, etc.) the following qualities are ones that I'd recommend a prospective Project Lead to have:

Firstly, it's drive. A person has to be really really really really really motivated to get a particular game onto the engine, particularly their first game, to succeed at it. I've seen people get on the bandwagon to become Project Leads because "everyone else is doing so", or because they wanted to play games for free on the engine and those people usually end up as Hobbits. The losers though are the fans of the game that said person was going to adapt and CCGW.

A person with drive, will "make time" to code the game, however busy their life may be. I know BugLaden is always amazed that ShadowJump manages to squeeze in an hour of coding everyday just before work whenever he's actively working on developing a game. An hour a day works out to quite a lot over a year. It doesn't even have to be an hour a day... even half an hour a day can produce marvelous results.

Drive also means that, for example, should I have to choose between watching TV or coding a game that is uncompleted, 50% of the time, I'll choose coding to ensure that at least some coding gets done. Of course, life shouldn't be dictated by adapting (or updating) a game, so I try to spend half of my leaisure time doing other things... like going out to a posh restaurant for dinner with friends, or watching a movie, or just making lists and more lists.

Drive on its own is not enough though. There have been a number of very driven Project Leads who have ended up as Hobbits. One's interests change through time and if the interest change before they complete (or even start) adapting the game, then those Project Leads end up as Hobbits.

The second quality is perseverance. Martin used to have a signature that said something along the lines of "If Plan A doesn't succeed, try Plan A". In other words, work on it until it works. I mention every once in a while in my regular blogs (this isn't regular, notice the tildes in the title and the lack of cards in this post?) that I almost gave up when adapting my first game. That was Babylon 5 and I tried for about 4 hours to get the cardback to work and nothing happened. I did nothing for a month. Had it not been people pestering me to complete the game, and others offering their help, I doubt I would have finished my signature game.

A subset of perserverance is a dedication. I'm not talking about exclusive dedication, although some Project Leads are actually exclusively dedicated to one game, but rather to the sort of dedication that will see the Project Lead stick with the game, through good times and bad, through difficult coding spots as well as the easy ones, through periods of low game play and periods of heavy game play. A dedicated PL will often be found doing the optional extras for the game - adapting and creating custom cards, creating and maintaining webpages and sites devoted to the game, updating the respective's game pages on CCGW, etc.

I'm also not talking about slaving away all the time to the game. As I mentioned above, a project lead should have a life, and life's normal activities - sleep, food, showers, time with family - should take precedence over coding. It's a sad thing when people give up sleep to adapt a game, often times, not only does the health of the lead suffers, but the quality of the coding and the game suffers too.

Thirdly, a good Project Lead is proactive. He (or she) takes the initiative to do things without being told what to do. Personally, I think this is my biggest area of weakness as I'm spread across so many different games, but nevertheless, I still try my best to ensure that my games are updated and kept up to date as far as is humanly possible. Proactiveness also ties in with the above two qualities - motivation and perseverance.

This quality is especially important in the evolution of the engine. As gEngine is still in beta, every major change affects a game, sometimes drastically and fatally. Other updates exposes methods of doing things the engine has never been capable of doing before. As such each and every game needs to be updated after a major change. A Project Lead should not have to be told when to update his games with the latest technology made available.

Granted, it takes a lot to keep up to speed sometimes. That's why there are the online documentation to help out, and examples in other games. Failing those though, there are always other leads to ask and get advice from, which leads to the next quality.

Last on the list, but not least important is that a Project Lead has to have good social skills. A project lead has to be able to work with BugLaden and the other Project Leads to learn the tools of the trade and various other things related to the engine, to gNet and to CCGW. A project lead also has to cater to the fans and to be able to incorporate their opinions into their adaptation of the game. A project lead with bad social skills would at best, result in a poor quality game.

Even right now, I'm thinking, are those qualities enough? What keeps nipa so dedicated to his games, while kapa heads off to get caught in the quagmire that is WoW? Why does Martin move from strength to strength, while toon seems lost and adrift? How can ShadowJump make a resolution to "adapt 5 games this year" while kdevine still hasn't finished "Monkeys on the Moon" almost 3 years after he started working on it? Please note that I'm not calling anyone I've just mentioned a Hobbit, but I'm trying to figure out what do some people have that the others don't. I can only think of one more...

Although not essential (in my book at least), but nevertheless is crucial, is the element of curiosity. A project lead has to be able to think outside the box (sometimes) and experiment with what is currently available to produce what is wanted in the adaptation of the game. Ricochet's hand sorting scripts, for example, or Martin's game indicators are the sort of innovation that makes great games on the engine. A little bit of curiosity goes a long way sometimes.

In summary, to be a PL, one has to:

* Be computer literate (compulsory)
* Have knowledge about computer scripting (compulsory)
* Have knowledge about the basics of image editing (compulsory)
* Have the following qualities

1. Motivation/Drive
2. Perseverance/Dedication
3. Proactiveness
4. Good Social skills

(Curiosity is not listed because I don't really think it's compulsory, although it's a big plus to have) There maybe more, but those are the ones I can think of at this stage.

Adapting/coding a game isn't easy, but with these qualities applied, anyone can churn out games easily and quickly, and I'm talking from experience. Comments, are, of course, welcomed.

-+@ It's Time to Party @+-

Yay! Paaaaaaarty!



Three different cards, Yukk's Feed the Dog, Hamlet's Ending cardback and YNDT's Skyscraper. It's a change though, but it's also apt for what I have been doing today. I spent quite a bit of time today, adding the YNDT and Hamlet infomation to the CCGW wiki. Why those 2? Well, because together with Yukk, they are the 3 Interactivities Ink games that I've adapted for CCGW.

The story actually began yesterday though, when Tomi asked for a slightly different format to the game box for Mythos. I played around with Doom's box and at the end of the day, Tomi was happy with the modifications I made. So that got applied to Doom and to Mythos as well. I see he has done Dark Ages after thatwith Dark Eden being blank. Of course, a change to the format means I had to go back to each and every page to add the necessary stuff. Not a lot of pages at the moment, but that will grow soon enough... at least I hope.

MND was the other page that I created yesterday and it was just a quick cut and copy from wikipedia for that though. Not too much infomation yet, but since these are easier to edit than webpages, hopefully, they'll get polished up to a good enough standard.

Talking about MND, I actually had a look at the tournament results today. It seems that some people are reporting their results on the forums, but not on the engine and vice versa, which means that there are now two different records of the tournament. It almost seems as if it's two tournaments running concurrently. Ack, I hope I don't have to clean up as well. Transition periods are tough though.

I actually did some game coding yesterday - can't mention the game here yet. Was going to do some Hyborian Gates, but realised that I didn't have the files here. Grrr... oh well.

Ed is still trying to figure out what's causing massive lag on the server. I thought it was an error in the collections script, but it turned out not to be so. Maybe it's just something random or maybe it's a hacker. Who knows? It's interesting though, because the lag can oft times disappear and then reappear for no reason. Perhaps the physical server is just being cranky?

And everyone else? I really have no idea though. It's the beginning of the year and there's a million things to be done. It's also a new year to make resolutions to complete a game you said you'll code 2 years ago. Perhaps that's why Aaron's been hanging out around the engine these days? Who knows... I have' also seen Craig online though, although he hasn't hung out on the engine for a while now. I guess he's gone on to other things.

-+@ Bass Player @+-

Heh, that'll make it easy for those who's guessing...



Art Credits:
Darius and Naga by Beth Zyglowicz
Anget by Cody Shipman

Another 3 cards from Exodus Flight, which has been put on ice for the forseeable future. It's a pity though, some of the artwork is really nice for this set. Nothing much going MND wise, except the tournament. I did post up the themes for the tournaments until Summer. There's been some interest, but rather minimal though. One good thing is that Dave who runs the tournaments in Springfield likes my idea to have a Highlander tournament so I think Springfield will probably have it first before it goes online.

I did finish up the long overdue calendar for February - it's up on the Custom Card site. I've also got the March one ready to be setup, but haven't done that yet. Talking about the site though, Mark has kindly offered to host it so it's making a slow migration across to a new site. I'll announce it here once things are ready.

I just realised that I haven't done a nipa-Martin blog for almost a year now. To briefly summarise, "nipa" denotes a person who solves game design problems with game objects while "Martin" denotes a person who solves game design problems with scripts.

Today's update deals with Tony and Christoph. Last time I evaluated Tony though, he received n6M1 mainly due to his ability to manipulate game objects. Since then though, he's adapted Fluxx and Fluxx has shown that he has the ability to manipulate scripts as well. I think he's gonna get upgraded to n6M4. Christoph on the other hand, is barely starting out modifying SWD and he seems to prefer scripts to objects, I'll start him off on n1M3. The other person that needs an upgrade is Mark, as shown by his recent abilities to automate moves in games. I'll just add 2 more points to his nM scores. And the full list is as follows:

Ghosts
BugLaden nxMx - Rock, Scissors Paper
nipa n10M9 - Doomtrooper - Mythos
Ricochet n8M8 - ShadowRun - Last Man Standing
Martin n8M10 - Doomtown - Vampire: the Eternal Struggle
Novelty n8M7 - Babylon 5
ShadowJump n5M8
kdevine n4M8
toon n3M7 - Judge Dredd
kapa n2M1

PLs
tonyluzzi n6M4
Bruce the Goose n1M6 - Rage
Jammer Jun n2M4 - Shadowfist
Izibaar n0M3
Rainbow n1M2 - Sailor Moon
stormcloak n0M2
10tacle n1M2 - Star Wars (D)
vampus n0M0
[Note: Josh hasn't adapted any games yet, hence the zeroes.]

Former PLs with games adapted
jackalope n1M7
mechaman n2M5
hiro_antagonist n1M5
sillywiz n2M4
jaycurl n2M3
Valorian n2M2
JudgeWhyMe n1M3
j235 n2M1
Point Infinity n1M2
superryoga n1M0
TimalakofBorg n1M4

The eagle-eyed would have noticed the Signature games, and the secondary signature, where available is also included in that list for the current PLs. Ed gets RSP as his signature though... he's doing so many wonderful things in that game that it'll probably be the standard way of doing small board games for years to come. And it's no surprise that Rage, JC's second game, gets his primary. It's the game he updates as soon as something new is available before his other games. There's 2 other PLs with just one game, so those make it as their signature. Christoph has the aforementioned SWD, while Robert's Sailor Moon, although not the best game out there, is his only game and isn't too shoddy for a first attempt. Eric only has Judge Dredd left and I think he's doing something to it these days... I wonder what.

Mark mentioned to me that I left out his signature (and secondary). That's for a reason though. I haven't given too much thought to it (and Kev's) yet for one, but more because it's hard to judge what exactly is his primary. He seems to work on all his games all at once. That plus the fact that he does not have a major CCG is probably the reason why it's hard to figure things out. His signature game used to be Harry Potter... but since it's gone, he's sorta been without a signature for a while. Perhaps he'll find a new signature game.

-+@ The Tree House @+-

sorta like a haunted mansion, no?



Well... not MND cards for a change, but the spoilt cards from the first expansion of the Nightmare Before Christmas TCG that will be released next month or so. Yeah, I'm a few months late for Christmas, but the cards are so cool and I really do like the template.

Ed has been busy with trying to get the engine to work the way he wants it to work... the update patches are coming in droves lately, which is a good sign in my book. Bugs are getting fixed up pretty quickly and it doesn't even have to wait for a major update. I think the players appreciate it too.

Coding wise though... not much is happening there, or so it seems. Tomi seems to be busy in the Doomtrooper tournament and Mark seems quiet on Attack. I haven't heard from Kev about Monkeys and Martin is probably busy getting ready for the next Vampire expansion, Final Nights.

I've been busy fixing up the errors in Final Twilight that Lee Valentine, the president of Veritas Games (and a longtime supporter and critic of the game), has found in the online adaptation. All's good now hopefully.



That's the other thing I did last night for Final Twilight - it's an image for Trinity 2. I'm not too pleased with the shading, but Nate likes it and it will be added to Trinity 2 though. The background was interesting - grain, then texturise then craculature on a dark yellow shade. A final lighting effect to make the top bit darker completes it. Not too shabby there.

The MND tournament is still going on, of course, and the Terrible Twos seems to be going rather well, but then again, it's the beginning of the month and people are flushed with tokens. Dartax has been blogging at MND @ CCGW about his games, which is always a good read. Christoph (Freigabe) asked today in the forums though if they could have competitions for the EF cards. I turned him down though. Well, when they can come up with the images, they can make their own custom cards, I suppose. Mitch offered to take over a month running MND tournaments which was a nice offer, I might take him up on it too.

The reason I am writing today though is that I want to put down my thoughts about "Signature Games" on CCGW. What is a "Signature Game"? Well, I can't clearly define it, but it has elements of the following:

• Game coded (or re-coded) by one person and showcases that person's coding ability
• Game that is the first updated when new stuff becomes available
• Game that owner would advice people to look at when they need examples

Most of the time though, the signature is that person's first game for the engine. However, that's simplifying things a bit though... sometimes, some of the coders will have a "Second Signature Game" which is only slightly below their signature game. Often times though the Second Signature would be in a different category.

Let's consider a few examples:

Tomi's signature game is naturally Doomtrooper. Not only has Doom the most automation for any CCG, it's one of the most developed game on the engine. Although it was originally coded by Ed, I know Tomi (almost) completely recoded the game to include all the bell and whistles that it has now. Drag and discard, card attachments, deck legality checking are some of the things that started off life in Doom.

With almost a score of games under his belt though, he definately has a Second Signature. That game though is Mythos. Although driven by Alex, his subservient minion (or is that demon?), to ever greater heights, a large number of the automations in Mythos are the mastermind of Tomi himself. Playing the investigator automatically from the deck for example... to the floating tool bar, all of these are elements from Mythos.

What about Logan? Well, naturally, Logan's signature is Shadowrun, his first game that he adapted and one that he's most adept in. The hand sorting scripts were developed for Shadowrun, and Shadowrun also has the make change scripts which automatically calculates how many Yen needs to remain after spending some, and will create the necessary tokens.

Picking Logan's secondary is a bit more tricky though - it could either be his board game, Last Man Standing, or his tile game, Crypt: The Pharaoh's Curse. LMS had that amazing movement automation, which Crypt was the first tile game. Based on just that though, I'll call LMS as Logan's secondary, although only time (and Logan) will tell if that's the case or not.

It's easy picking Martin's Signature - Doomtown. The fact that he immediately announced an update to it after finishing VTES shows how much the game means to him. And there are huge elements of Doomtown that are found in many of Martin's games - autopositioning, turn order determination and multiple hands functionality to just name a few. Martin's secondary though is the game that has been taking up much of his coding time for the past year - VTES itself. Due to the nature of the license, it's much more advanced than Doomtown. The reason I didn't pick VTES as Martin's signature is simply that much of what's in it is either from other games, or specifically requested for it.

Tony's signature game though is his only game done from scratch - Fluxx. It's probably the first game to have experience points, and attempts to do a whole lot more than what on the surface. WoT, although it has grown leaps and bounds since he took it over, isn't as greatly developed though as Fluxx seems to be.

And as for my signature? I still think it's B5, which was revolutionary for its time. It was the first game to use dice and markers as buttons, and the first game to attempt to fully automate setup on the engine. Its original scope was modest, but as it and the engine has grown, it's attempting to do a bit more than everyone else. It's probably a bit low tech these days, but the basics of almost anything a CCG could need is in there.

And my secondary? No, not MND. I haven't actually changed much of Ed's code in that game. MND was so excellently coded by Ed originally that the tweaks I added later - creature dice, automated magi energize, etc. all pales by comparison to his genius. For once I'm stumped though. Nothing else stands heads and shoulders above anything else with the exception of B5 though. Suggestions are welcomed though.

One game that isn't really my secondary though is Reversi, complete with its AI and all. That was a collaborative effort between Tomi and myself and the result is a bit inspiring considering the technology (i.e. mainly built for card games) of the engine isn't really geared towards it (at that time). Likewise, I won't consider Portable Adventures my secondary due to the fact that at least 2 other people have worked on it from its inception. I'd like to nominate AvP as my secondary, except that there is nothing special about it... oh well.

-+@ Lock @+-

New month? Same CCG...



Art Credits:
Inferno by Annette Burke
Harvest Feast by Matt Holmberg
Dune Blast by Nov, background by Holmberg

OK, Dune Blast was the last templated card that I did a while ago. It looks funny... too 2D, I need to find out how to improve things like that to make them more 3D. Anyways, the card has been added to EF, and of course, the website has been updated to include it yadda yadda. And if people haven't already read it, Flight Delayed pretty much has the status of where EF is going.

It's another month and MND has got a new tournament... less than 10 games were played last month for the tournament, and dartax emerged the winner. I think I gave out more tokens than was actually used... doh! This month though, it's a quick tournament format with only two magi and it's titled Terrible Twos. I hope more people will play in the tournament, but I don't have too much faith in it.

I was just talking to Bobby about finishing up his 4 KT cards for TW. He still hasn't found the time to do it yet. I still have to finish up Paradwyn, and Weave and Core are still up in the air, although they aren't as up in the air as they seem to be. I wonder how many people actually understand that TW, and DJ, is still on eventhough EF isn't. Probably not a lot... and of those that do, not many would care. I won't blame them.

Meanwhile I've been busy working on Final Twilight as it releases its second expansion in almost as many months. This is the first expansion to include artwork by yours truly so hurray! I'd boast a lot more about it, but blegh, it's not much to boast about. I think the expansion has already been sold out or something... hmm... Anyways, Nate has come back with a whole bucket load of defects so I guess I'll have to get around to them sometime...

Meanwhile, Mark seemst to be making progress on Attack according to his blog. That's not an exclusive CCGW blog, so there's a lot of searching to get the CCGW related parts, but it's a good read nevertheless. It's nice to know that my blogs have started others onto the path.

Tomi has started on the part to adding XP to his games. That is a great thing, and hopefully it'll encourage more people to play his games. Martin has also announced that he will be spending time to update his signature game - Doomtown. I can't wait to see what tricks from Vampire will he be using in the Doomtown update.

Two people I haven't heard from for a while are Tony and Josh. Tony is probably busy with work and all, and he still posts once in a blue moon on the forums (OK, I exaggerate, he posts a lot more frequent than that... and a lot more frequent than Robert, that's for sure). And Josh? Probably vamping away doing some other thing. I hope he hasn't given up on coding CWNB, but somehow, I don't see how someone can keep up with learning how to code these days, with the gazillion things to remember, unless they are really really really really really really really enthusiastic about the game in question, like Christoph is about SWD...

Christoph is still tweaking SWD to his liking. I think that's a good thing that he's doing. It's a pity that he's just a one CCG person though. Anyways SWD is still going strong, but has been overtaken by VTES in the number of games played category as of last month (yes, I'm still doing that eventhough I've stopped reporting them). The good news for VTES is that WW has agreed to let the next expansion be added... it'll probably be around the end of March, early April according tot he announcement.

Talking about announcements, I had to update a whole lot of stuff on the FPN for February a few days back just to catch up with everything. For once, there's not one, not two, not even three but 4 tournaments running simultaneously this month. That's a first I think for the engine.

It's a pity that the engine has been a bit unstable lately - the forums are fill with people complaining about not being able to log in. Oh well, can't be helped, I guess. Ed is trying his best to trouble shoot the problems and it seems to be taking up all of his time.

Talking about forums, I simplified the Custom Cards forum a while back also. There's still a small group of people who frequent that forum, which is a good thing, but I wonder how long that will last if there are no more competitions there. Oh well.

And it's full circle back to MND again. Things on my to do list for the next few whatevers, in no particular order:
1. Fix Final Twilight.
2. Finish up Hyborian Gates.
3. Add WSS2 to WSS1, automate, update and add XP.
4. Nag Ed to switch on the lab so that I can finish off NBC.
5. Add TW Underneath to MND, add DJ to MND, bugfixes.