For the forums, add a forum subsection with several forms inside it (Subsection as in how we have "General" etc.) such as Dev journal, news, discussion, and then at the top have a private forum that all involved have access and mod to, with that split up into the different sections involved (2D Work, Modelling, Mapping, Navmeshing etc) and get tasks etc done that way. (Is it obvious I'm not new to modding? lol)
(This is a long read but is worth it)
VH, I hate to burst a bubble but a simple into scene will take several months to create, there's a LOT more going on that you can see:
- All mapping needs to be done in Hammer, which is unlcear and nearly as bad as the BF2 Editor when it comes to crashes. DP will be able to give more info.
- With a new map, comes new statics. These can be made roughly in Hammer, but they would be limited to basic shapes and Valve textures. If these were to be made in a program such as 3DS Max, they would be detailed and take about a week of solid work to do.
- After the model comes the texture. These can take longer the model as you have to unwrap the model itself, arrange everything into a TexMap, fill in the base colours etc and add all the details. You then port the texture back into Max and hope it all works well.
- The model and texture then need to be exported, this can take time and if theres one small problem in the model, it can corrupt. If there are too many verts/polys, you're going to cause a lot of lag for some people, thankfully source allows a weapon to have bits missing on the side you don't see to keep the counts down.
- Rinse and repeat the above with a less detailed model for the 3P views.
Ok, that's just getting custom statics/weapons into the mod as well as the basic map. But for the map to work properly, a lot of entities are needed such as spawn points, physics models etc etc. These take time and are entered one by one, they are also the most common thing to mess up in Hammer. Oh, cut-scenes and location triggered events use a lot of entities.
Maps also need to be compiled and light mapped, the more trees the longer it takes (A PR forest map was done on an OCed system (Editor only uses one core) with 8GB of RAM, it took about 5 days to LM on "Med" settings, they still haven't done "High" to this day. Oh, this also needs to be done for statics and weapons separately.)
After you have the rough map going, you test that everything works as expected. You will be running around on your own, unless you are making a multi-player mod. If it's single player or involves NPCs, you then commence writing the AI Files including the navmesh (I have a feeling source Meshes itself, well at least custom CSS maps do.) If a mesh is needed, then you load up the map in Maya/Max and make a "model" that covers the ground, get an angle slightly wrong and the bots will get stuck (Trust me, I do stuff for PR Single Player, the meshes are THE most moaned about thing) or run around in circles.
When the mesh is made, you need to "cook" the mesh, a guy who does this for PRSP is on a OCed Core i7 system with 6GB of RAM, it takes over a day to cook the mesh, and these go wrong very often, meaning you have to hunt through the mesh and find the problem, then cook it again. Oh, you'll need one of these for infantry an another for any vehicles that use AI. Any fixed movements are even more entities.
You then get into the testing phase with the AI, any problems, your back changing the mesh/map and cooking/rendering it again, so more time.
Can you see why I'm slightly sceptical about how this will turn out?
EDIT: Forgot to say, all new weapons will need to be animated in a way that seems "real"
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