The 15th Man Project: Rules and Overview

This is where we hammer out the details for the plan for The 15th Man Project. I have a proposed outline, but since this has never been done before, the order of things may need to shift around a bit. This discussion is to try to come up with as complete a walk-through of the process as possible. We may decide to shuffle things mid-project, but I think an outline will be key to making sure we stay on-task and not get ahead of ourselves.

Outline

I. Basic Design and Planning

• Character Concept
  
• Background and History
  1. Gender
  2. Hometown
  3. Story
  
• C. Concept Art
  
• D. Name
  

II. Detailed Design and Practical Data

• Visual
  2. Spritesheet
  3. Portrait
  
• Theme Music
  
• Abilities
  1. Ability overview
  2. Ability list
  3. coding (existing vs. new mechanic, feasibility discussion + what existing things to remove/change)
  
• Stats and Balancing
  

III. Joining the Cast

• When/where/why
  
• Relationships
  
• Altered scenes
  
• New scenes
  
• WoR self-actualization subquest
  

XX. Cleanup

• Making character visible in shop menus and party selection
  
• Own set of equipable gear
  
• Etc...
  

Our next submissions round will be Iris' ability list, so get on FF3usME and show us what you (she) can do!

Rules for Participation

Submissions
Submissions will be made the topic designed for them. Feel free to interact with each others ideas, make suggestions, colaborate, etc... Only the FIRST submission made by each member will be taken into consideration. If you decide to make changes, please edit your original post.

Submissions need to stay within the scope of each topic. That means when we are doing concept art, nobody should be posting partial sprites or discussing abilities, we will have separate threads for those eventually. We need to keep things in order as much as possible. However, things that already have been decided should be discussed as relevant information (AKA the character's background will obviously play a roll in what he/she wears). The only exception to this rule is during the background ideas as gender/hometown/backstory will likely be tightly linked and will probably be discussed in a single thread even if they have separate voting.

Preliminary Voting
Preliminary Voting will take place in a new thread, created by me, where I will list all of the proposed ideas. Here each person will be able to give 2 votes in-thread (not a poll). Only the FIRST voting post by each member will be counted. The top 3 suggestions will move on to the final poll.

Final Poll
The top three suggestions will make it to the final poll where members will vote for their favorite suggestion. The winning suggestion is final, no re-polling. You can use this thread to talk about why you picked what you did, what you liked, what you didn't like, etc...

I expect everyone to be civil and there will be no putting others or their ideas down or there will be immediate consequences.



Conclusion

This will not be a quick project. Each thread will likely be open at least 5 days and likely longer depending on the level of involvement we get from the community. Art, Music and other tasks requiring actual work will stay open until everyone who would like to make a submission is able to (within reasonable limits).

Thank you all for supporting this idea. I think it will be a huge success for the site and open the door to future community projects as well as increase the overall knowledge of FF6 hacking. I look forward to working alongside you all.

Feel free to discuss the plan I've put in place, make suggestions, talk about things we may need to do differently, I want to know what you think!

Happy Hacking.

I'm a little disappointed in the lack of feedback for the idea. But I'm going to continue on and if there's not much activity for the first thread or two I may need to put this on the backburner.

Quick question for the staff: where should I put the rest of the project threads? is "Site Discussion" the best place or should I put them up elsewhere?

I mostly didn't respond with any feedback because it looks pretty thoroughly planned out, and I don't really have much to add. That inconspicuous looking Clean-up section may end up becoming the hardest part to pull off though, coding wise, and I have a feeling it's going to end up being a little larger by the end of this project .

I'm in the same boat as Lockirby, you've mostly covered all your bases. I'm a little torn on the limit of one proposal per person, since I think I've got 2 or maybe 3 decent ideas, but that's cool I just need to work on sorting things out and deciding which proposal I like most. When do you think you'll be putting up the character proposal thread?

Sorry for my lack of response but I just saw this thread. I think you covered all the basic stuff and I agree with all of the points. I think this project should have its own forum because of the numbers of thread it will have and I will make a suggestion in that direction to the rest of the staff.

Edit: Just a quick question... Will the people not participating in the project be able to vote concerning an aspect of the hack? I think someone not putting any effort in the project shouldn't have a role in the decision making process.

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I think things like display a 15th character in the shop menu, enable re-equip, coliseum battle functioning properly and assign RAM spell block (if he uses magic) should be addressed in the first place to make sure of what we can do and what we can't.

Edit: Just a quick question... Will the people not participating in the project be able to vote concerning an aspect of the hack? I think someone not putting any effort in the project shouldn't have a role in the decision making process.

This is what separates this from other projects, EVERYONE has equal say. Unless it becomes obvious that a poster is purposefully trolling, then they get 1 vote per thread, just like everyone else.

In most projects, the people doing the work make all the decisions, which makes perfect sense. But in those cases the purpose of the project is to bring the makers ideas to life, there is an empirical correct answer.

The purpose of the 15th Man Project isn't to come up with something that is "ideal" or the "best", but to get the community involved. Not everybody has developed the skills to make major contributions to the site, but almost everybody has thoughts to share. It's this kind of project that turns casual and less ambitious members that are maybe on the fence about learning to hack into dedicated members.

That being said; the only choices non-contributors will have to choose from are the things provided by the contributors! It's like built-in extra influence (and also incentive for new people to learn and improve new skills). Let's face it, we will all probably be disappointed with how at least one of the votes turns out, but if you can't handle losing one or two votes, this probably isn't the project for you (not you specifically, Mad, the general "you").

Bottom line: as a community building project, everybody who wants to have a say, gets one.

I think things like display a 15th character in the shop menu, enable re-equip, coliseum battle functioning properly and assign RAM spell block (if he uses magic) should be addressed in the first place to make sure of what we can do and what we can't.

Yea, I'm aware that will be, by far, the most difficult part of the project. So this kind of thing will need to be tackled hand-in-hand with the rest of the project. At the same time, I don't want to stall the whole project on something only a very narrow subset of our members can tackle. I would venture a guess besides you and I there are only maybe 3-4 other active members who can currently handle those kinds of tasks.

Also, if worse comes to worse, we can replace a current character (which will add a varied amount of work to the project depending on who gets replaced).

Bottom line: as a community building project, everybody who wants to have a say, gets one.

Fair enough but I would keep the polls for members of the site only.

Also, if worse comes to worse, we can replace a current character (which will add a varied amount of work to the project depending on who gets replaced).

This is a decent alternative.

Yes. Submissions and voting of all kinds are for site members only, not for guests. If you want to join in, you must be a registered member. Other than that, not really restricting things by groups. Though what I don't want to see is 18 fresh members with 0 posts voting for the same submission, obviously there would be foul play involved here. I will keep an eye out for any signs of cheating.

As for the additional tasks, I will try to get a checklist together and keep a topic open for handling those things where our ASMers can be constantly working on these things and talking over our options. These ASM tasks likely wont go to any kind of voting because its about making it possible, its a doable or not thing, not a subjective thing. I doubt we will end up with 4 different people insisting we add the character to the shop menu their way and no one elses. I think we will all be happy as long as it gets done.

Acutally, Mad, I would be totally cool with you trying to get a topic up this weekend for that and maybe heading it up if you have the time. I wont have the time to really get something together until probably Tuesday. Totally up to you, I have no problem managing it myself, I'm just a little backed up ATM and won't have time this weekend to work on it.

Though what I don't want to see is 18 fresh members with 0 posts voting for the same submission, obviously there would be foul play involved here. I will keep an eye out for any signs of cheating.

Not to mention that according to site rules, anyone registering twice or more with the same ip can and will get banned. Now it's easy to navigate under different ips if you know your way around...

Acutally, Mad, I would be totally cool with you trying to get a topic up this weekend for that and maybe heading it up if you have the time.

I will start working on this tomorrow. I'll make a thread for the ASM changes we mentioned and try to document it a bit. I think each person wanting to work on this could try different things and we'll come with a patch for each problem when we are sure we looked at everything.

Looks like I'm in...