Comments on: A History of Fall from Heaven (Part II) http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121 Soren Johnson's Game Design Journal Mon, 06 Sep 2010 07:41:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121&cpage=1#comment-17353 The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun Sun, 11 Jan 2009 11:37:57 +0000 http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121#comment-17353 [...] Hey - the games journalist union will be after CivIV/Spore designer Soren Johnson. You don’t understand how it work. Us lot ask questions, and you guys answer them. If you start asking questions too, it all falls apart. Anyway - he does a huge two part interview with the Civ4 ultramod Fall From Heaven guys. Part one here. Part two here. [...] [...] Hey – the games journalist union will be after CivIV/Spore designer Soren Johnson. You don’t understand how it work. Us lot ask questions, and you guys answer them. If you start asking questions too, it all falls apart. Anyway – he does a huge two part interview with the Civ4 ultramod Fall From Heaven guys. Part one here. Part two here. [...]

]]> By: Content One Degree Removed: Fall From Heaven Interview http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121&cpage=1#comment-17291 Content One Degree Removed: Fall From Heaven Interview Fri, 09 Jan 2009 18:53:37 +0000 http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121#comment-17291 [...] so I’ll take the easy blogging way out and link to Soren Johnson’s three part (I & II & III)interview with Derek Paxton, the lead modder on the total Civ IV conversion Fall From [...] [...] so I’ll take the easy blogging way out and link to Soren Johnson’s three part (I & II & III)interview with Derek Paxton, the lead modder on the total Civ IV conversion Fall From [...]

]]> By: VRBones http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121&cpage=1#comment-17170 VRBones Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:41:48 +0000 http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=121#comment-17170 I'm amazed that you took the time to interview the FfH developers, I would have thought it should have been the other way around. That shows an appreciation for the modding community you don't see too often. Great interview, a lot of depth about what it takes to build a substantial mod. I hadn't realised that there were more sections of the SDK released with BtS? I'd fiddled around with the AI code before (my pet topic), but might have to take another look. <blockquote>Derek: The second greatest risk to a mod is the “unfixable” error (the first being abandonment by the creators who burn out or go on to other things). A lot of how we work is based around trying to mitigate that risk. One way we do that is by forcing all code to go through me.</blockquote> I certainly agree that's a good way of mitigating errors, but isn't that setting up a single point of failure for your abandonment issue? If you have a holidays, the project stops. If you lose interest, the project stops. If you're out of action due to injury / emergency, the project stops. Are there steps in place to "palm off" the control if something causes you to be away from the project for an extended period of time? Man, this has gotten me in the mood to download the latest version and play through again ... I’m amazed that you took the time to interview the FfH developers, I would have thought it should have been the other way around. That shows an appreciation for the modding community you don’t see too often. Great interview, a lot of depth about what it takes to build a substantial mod.

I hadn’t realised that there were more sections of the SDK released with BtS? I’d fiddled around with the AI code before (my pet topic), but might have to take another look.

Derek: The second greatest risk to a mod is the “unfixable” error (the first being abandonment by the creators who burn out or go on to other things). A lot of how we work is based around trying to mitigate that risk. One way we do that is by forcing all code to go through me.

I certainly agree that’s a good way of mitigating errors, but isn’t that setting up a single point of failure for your abandonment issue? If you have a holidays, the project stops. If you lose interest, the project stops. If you’re out of action due to injury / emergency, the project stops.

Are there steps in place to “palm off” the control if something causes you to be away from the project for an extended period of time?

Man, this has gotten me in the mood to download the latest version and play through again …

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