I enjoyed participating in this month's challenge and found it an interesting experiment, but since it is now coming to an end for this month, I suppose it is time to revisit some of the discussion of how it should be organized. My (somewhat critical but I hope constructive) suggestions follow.
After seeing the number of people who had to drop out, or submit an unsatisfactory product at the last minute, I think more than ever that it would be a good idea to make this challenge bimonthly rather than monthly, especially if there are plans to implement a review and revision period as well, as that is just one more thing people involved with the challenge will have to take some time to do. In the course of a month, a participant would be expected to:
-play and review last month's modules
-determine the theme and what CC is sponsored and plan a concept around that
-build a module
-playtest and revise the module (or else submit a hopelessly unpolished entry that will need to be redone)
For most people most of the time, all that is just going to be too much to do in one month. I speak, ironically enough, as one of the few people to submit something for this month's challenge in a timely manner, but that was because I was a sufficiently experienced module builder to have a good idea of what I could realistically accomplish in a month, and plan accordingly, and to know exactly how to implement many of the things I wanted to do. It is true of course that these problems can be mitigated if we have a different set of people building modules in different months. To some extent that will surely be the case, but there will also surely be some overlap, as our pool of potential builders is not exactly unlimited. If we want to expand that pool, furthermore, it could only help to make things easier for less experienced builders, who, of course, can be expected to need more time. I could never have made a module in a month, at least not one anyone would have any interest in playing, if I had tried to do it a few years ago. Again ironically, I think I could work well enough with a monthly time limit myself (in fact I rather appreciated the discipline it imposed - it was for me a useful exercise to focus on speed rather than my usual more perfectionist approach), but I am uncertain how many other people can. If a bimonthly schedule is decided to be not in keeping with the spirit of the thing, a compromise suggestion might be to alternate challenges that must be completed in one month (for more experienced builders and/or those who want to try dealing with the extra challenge) with some that have a longer time period.
I am also uncertain if it is a good idea to encourage builders to put up separate vault entries as a normal thing, or the routine way of correcting bugs. This seems like it would simply clutter up the Vault with duplicate entries for no good reason. If particular builders want to do it that way, then by all means accomodate them. Likewise if someone is planning to put up a version of a challenge entry that has been revised and expanded significantly, it would make sense to do so. However if we are talking about simple corrections like fixing a few typos in dialogue, or eliminating the possibility of a bug by changing one line of code in one script, and the like, this seems a very cumbersome and uneconomical approach. For minor fixes like that, it would seem more sensible for authors to email a revised module which in due course would be used to update the ABC Vault Entry (It appears something like this was done at least a couple of times with the CCC, so it is not completely unprecedented, though of course bugged work is probably going to crop up more commonly with modules). And while some builders may not like having to work through a third party, and should therefore be free to set up separate vault entries if they wish, I think others would actually prefer to have the ABC entry be the main download source for a challenge entry. That provides a good excuse for a certain lack of polish, since realistically not all participants are going to have the time to fix and revise everything that ideally would be.
Finally, is there any particular reason posts for the ABC were put in the Toolset forum rather than the Modules forum? The latter is arguably more appropriate, and has the advantage that it does not normally get all that much activity, whereas in this forum there is the danger that all these ABC-related posts might distract people from posts concerned with the forum's main purpose of giving builders technical advice. Perhaps we should consider switching over to that forum, at least for posts concerned with reviewing modules (definitely a topic that appropriately belongs in the Modules Forum) rather than building them. Just a thought, I doubt it actually matters all that much.
UPDATE: And speaking of posting in appropriate places, this should probably have been posted in the general ABC thread rather than the February specific one. Whoops. Feel free to link or quote and respond from there, if desired.
Modifié par rogueknight333, 02 mars 2013 - 07:57 .
