[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Ok the two main ways we can do this currently are:

1. The plot is openly discussed by the entire community, positive points are that everyone can discuss the plot and we have a greater plot 'think tank'. Negatives are; no plot surprises as a result of everyone knowing the plot and that it will probably take a while to wrap the plot up due to possible conflicting views.


2. Plots are sent to a jury of sorts who chooses the best one which will be FREDded. Plus points are; most people will not know the specifics of the plot and thus it will be new and exciting, it will most likely take a far shorter time to come to a decision and get started on this. Of course the jury would have a far more restricted view than the whole community.

Please vote or else leave an alternative idea for how we should go about this.

Until we come to a decision (I'd like to leave this vote open for a week) the main plot thread has been unstickied and can be found here: Main thread
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[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]You do know that simply voting 'some alternative' and not actually specifying anything voids your vote...
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[Singh]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]You do know that simply voting 'some alternative' and not actually specifying anything voids your vote...
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Weren't you supposed to have some excellent news to post or something?
And i already mentioned my alternative on the thread- if that doenst count, then count it as a Jury vote

[Black Wolf]

Same suggestion as before . People post timelines, ideas, pre campaign situation reports, (very) vague ideas, these are then voted on to choose the base storyline. Then that gets turned over to the jury/team to make missions and a proper storyline out of. Could be applied to other parts of the project as well - say a mission calls for a strike bomber - you could go through your concept art pics, find some strike bombers, have some votes on coolness. Or you could have a vote to see what people want to see in a Srike bomber - are rear turrets useful? Would a top speed increse be worth a manoeuvrability cut? etc. etc.

You wouldn't have to do this for every ship of course, or every plot nuance. Just a few, to give it more of a community project feel, as opposed to just a big project feel.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Actually I was thinking of giving each mission plan to a group of two to three people who can work on it by themselves and cross check each others work; sort of a FRED/testing team for each mission, each team would only know what their mission included.

This is of course provided the jury idea was chosen, otherwise  the fredding has no need for secrecy.

BTW please post your ideas for alternates in this thread too so that people can see them and agree/disagree.
I'll have to get some IRC time sorted out so that we can discuss this all in a more real-time manner.
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[Singh]

Might as well put the alternative here.
My main thought was to present the idea to the staff that will be developing the missions rather than a board of random members. This would cut out a hell of a lot of problems (especially inherent ones) in the plotlines when it comes to logistics.
I've posted a suggestion for a plotline on the other thread- it's only the first 1 or 2 missions because I am afraid that posting more would work against any mod/campaign that we make, ruining any surprise and negating the effect similar to the one we all experienced while playing the original campaign of FS2.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]The composition of the jury (if that decision is chosen) will not be random. I personally would choose people who I know are excellent fiction writers (we have quite a few here on HLP) but like I said we haven't got to that point yet so it's speculation at this point.
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[Tiara]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]The composition of the jury (if that decision is chosen) will not be random. I personally would choose people who I know are excellent fiction writers (we have quite a few here on HLP) but like I said we haven't got to that point yet so it's speculation at this point.
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You could go over to NodeWars and look around. It was and still is a 100% Story Debate (fiction writer game) with a FS touch We recently started another version.

[Singh]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]The composition of the jury (if that decision is chosen) will not be random. I personally would choose people who I know are excellent fiction writers (we have quite a few here on HLP) but like I said we haven't got to that point yet so it's speculation at this point.
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I see
Thank you for clearing that up- was a bit confused on the matter

Would it be allright if i finished up the entire plotline/mission series and submitted it to you via PM? That way it still stays private and you may use it as you see fit.

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Actually I was thinking of giving each mission plan to a group of two to three people who can work on it by themselves and cross check each others work; sort of a FRED/testing team for each mission, each team would only know what their mission included.
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Believe me - You don't want to do this - You'd spend half your bugfixing period repairing minor discontinuities between the missions, and this would only get worse towards the end. How would you be trying to FRED mission nine of a ten mission campaign without knowing what came in missions one through eight? It wouldn't be impossible I grant you, but it would be difficult. I FREDded a LM mission, the last one of R4, and eve though it was a sort of "addon" to the story (ie. not a plot critical part) I spent ages on ICQ to Stu making sure I got details right, and LM4 is only six missions long, and set in a relatively well known period (NTF rebellion). This would be in an unknown future, and at least 2 thirds of the missions would be plot critical.

The only other alternative would be to have a single person completely and utterly script every message, Briefing, Command briefing and major in mission event, which takes a ridiculously long time and often isn't quite as thorough as you thought. Again, I'm speaking from Experience here - trying to script TI missions left me with dozens of minor discontinuities, an that was in only the first 3 missions, and it took up a lot of time I could have better spent FREDding.

Hmm  - reading over it, that sounds like a flame. It wasn;t meant to be. Just a suggestion, couched in as strong as possible terms . You'd be better off putting a team of FREDders on the job for the first ten missions, then rotating them for the next ten missions (assuming this will be released in the ten mission increments the plot contest limits us to). That way, they'd have an idea as to what was coming, but they wouldn't have played the missions, so they'd get to enjoy the next round of missions.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Hmmm I don't see how this can happen provided the whole mission structure is checked before hand and the dialogue/characters have been well scripted.

Have I missed something?
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[Black Wolf]

It's really minor things as a general rule - Character personality traits are a big one, as are names, head anis etc. Little things a player would notice but a FREDder might not.

If you're willing to go into really high detail scripts though, you should be able to minimize the problem.

[Unknown Target]

No surprises would certainly suck. I voted for a jury.

[Bobboau]

for the plot how about we start off simple, the most basic part of the plot will be that some time in the future after several fights with the shivans we discover some sort of psudo weakness, specificaly something like there are only a finite number of there forces in our space and if we act quickly we can cut them off from there reenforcements else were. or something similar to that. the whole idea being that the shivans are godlike power and can never be truely defeated, we can through in some bosch subplot in later.
also if we set it far enough into the future it will not nesisarily conflict with any exsisting fan made campain, though this has the disadvantage (or benifit depending on how you look at it) of requireing all new ships, and probly interface art, and sound effects.

[Knight Templar]

well we have access to Infernos models, and now OTT's models not aparently, so ship models shouldn't be that big if a problem either way.

In any event, I agree it should be in the future, and use new ships and such.

[redsniper]

I voted jury and gave my reasons for doing so in the other thread before I saw this one.

[KARMA]

my suggestion is to choose the best minds in the community, and not only story writers (mostly, but not only...modding experience is in my opinion necessary), choose a moderator that will lead the group, to avoid religious wars between ideas and to make choices when needed (icefire?), and let this group decide the plot (maybe giving to the whole community the possibility to submit suggestions/plot etc). I have (as many others) some plot ideas (nothing really defined) that could be nice and that i'll be glad to share

[Bobboau]

I would suport IceFire, but I think he'll decline, unles it's a very short term, foundation type thing

[KARMA]

i suggested icefire just because he's someone who will receive a general approval, it could be somebody else, btw I was referring not to the leader of the whole project but to the leader of the team that will decide the plot, that should be a work of a couple of months

[kasperl]

indeed, if IceFire would agree, i think he is most fit to lead this project.