Need Input from Mod Teams..

[Nefaric]

I have been asked by several friends who are working on their own individual projects, whether they be mods or other programming-oriented tasks, to construct for them a web-based development environment for their team. I have accepted such a task and plan on developing it on a larger scale. I am actually hoping that this will become something that more than just a few friends take advantage of. Perhaps modification teams would find it helpful during their stages of development as well.

Anyway, I am looking for input as to what features teams would really like to have in a web-based development environment. Let me take you through the basics of what I have thus far. Each development environment (DE) is secured and hosted on a third party host server. Within this environment are the following features:

Team Bulletin Board
News and Announcements
Team Forum
Task Manager
Private Member Messaging System
Member Mailing List
Public Project Information Page
Support for Multiple Team Member Access Levels
File Revision System (web-based and small-scale CVS-like repository: more information below)
Public Website Content Management System (project news, project features, forum moderation, mailing list, etc.)

I have chosen to alter a content management system that I have already developed by adding some development-oriented features like the file revision system. From what I hear, there is not really a need for a full-scale repository when the size of a team, and the number of programmers in the team especially, is limited. Thus I have chosen to simply develop a revision control system where files can be uploaded, monitored, checked out, committed, viewed, and downloaded individually rather than as a larger entity.

This could also be useful in other development projects outside of modifications, but I thought I could find some good insight here. I would be willing to host and maintain a service like this free of charge as I have the resources to do so. I am sure many of you would have concerns and questions before utilizing such a service, and I hope to address any of those that you may have so that I can develop around them in order to satisfy the masses.

You may reply here, send me a PM, email me, or talk to me personally using my AIM SN.. IAmLammie05.

Thank you.

Michael Lammie

 

[Cobra-Unit]

Sounds like a hit. I'm sure developers would love to have a place, a core, to concentrate all of their progress on. Their website could be a portal to their development corner. Uploading new content could be done quickly so their fans could view them. Also someone who hasn't seen or heard of their mod could do so by simply checking out the main page (or somewhere near).

Go for it.

 

[Ennui]

I need to get clear exactly what you're doing. Is this simply a content management system that is designed for mods in development?

I'm in leadership positions on two mods at the moment, so I'm interested.

I'd say that it's important to have the way it's displayed for non-modteam members simple - you should be able to customize how the site looks immensely, possibly a layout device similar to that of blogs, where you can actually make your own layout and use customized tags to insert code. I'm saying this because I like mod websites to be simple, maybe only a small navbar on the top for News, About, Media, Team, and Community, not a thousand links on the sides.

I think the file revision system you're describing is one where members can upload and download files to update the mod files on their system and on the FTP, and that's essential. Also, a good way to show mirrors for the mod file download. Private AND public forums are good. Member mailing list and also mod team mailing lists, and an easy way to make custom titles for the team members to denote their position, seperate from permissions.

Page for MEDIA - that is, concept art, renders, screenshots, and sound/video demos would be great.

Also, I think the Bulletin board is sort of what I'm asking for here, but a complex checklist - leader can add tasks, and members can check them off when they're complete.

 

[Nefaric]

Yes, that is what I'm going for. At the moment let me describe further the different sections of what I'm trying to accomplish in order to clear and confusion. I was looking to have a few different aspects to this. They are the following:

Website CMS:
This deals with everything to be viewed by the public domain. Includes news, game features, public mailing lists, simple forum moderation, etc. I think it would be possible to make this extremely template-friendly. The application could either produce include files that can be inserted into a webpage via php, shtml, asp, whatever. I could also provide code snippets to pull information that needs to be displayed from the database and display it where the user needs it. In the past I have made it so that the news would be saved in a simple HTML include file. If some would like it done in another fashion I can do that also.

File Revision System:
Confidential system for team members to upload and download individual files so that multiple people can effectively work on similar parts of a project at the same time. This is like a smaller and web-based version of CVS. Diffutils will be included to detect differences in file revisions, merge multiple working copies of files and mark conflicts, download different versions of a file, and allow the authors of the revisions the ability to comment on changes made.

Team Collaboration:
This is restricted to team members. This would include a team bulletin board, news and announcements, task manager (Team managers would be able to post assignments and set deadlines. Email notification could alert team members of when deadlines are approaching or when tasks have been completed.), and team forum.

Team Member Access:
Different levels and positions can be assigned based on the need of the team member. Different parts of the Intranet can be restricted if a team member should not have access to such an area.

I could go into more depth, but due to time constraints I cannot at this time. If there are any other questions or concerns please contact me. Thanks for all of th suggestions and support.

Michael Lammie

 

[embers.]

look at www.shadowness.com to see how you should do the profile pages