08-20-2023, 10:07 PM
Hello team! It has been a good bit since I was officially handed the reigns to the team, but the real world has me going through an impromptu move to a new healthier place to live and I'm still working the details of all that out. In my rest time I've been going through chat records, digging through the repository, and thinking hard about how to handle the project. Here, I present a heavily cut down version of the notes I put together in the process.
My interest in taking the position of Project Lead for Contingency is to ensure that the collective knowledge generated over the past dozen or so years since the original musings of "our own Halo game" first began is preserved and the project is in a position where it could feasibly continue for another dozen or so years.
My immediate goals for the team are to build up the tooling to help the team manage itself better, change the team's overall development ideology, and start working the project up to a state where it is fundamentally easier to attract and utilize talent.
I consider the tooling to provide the most immediate benefit to the team. The kanban style organization just isn't cutting it and a great deal of source files for content are missing. The project needs a centralized system that can reach out through our communication platform(s) and our dev tools (discord, gitlab, etc). This tooling should eventually take over the bulk of the workload that Directors and Leads were theoretically supposed to be supporting as they managed their own subsets of the game's development. Additionally, it will dramatically help with the onboarding process of getting new members set up and ready to contribute.
Changing the team's development ideology is going to be a slow process but it should eventually feed into itself and start increasing activity levels. In the short term, I don't really expect anything to change in regards to the ProjContDev repository. By all means, maintain the status quo and aim to proudly delete that "ALPHA BUILD" widget. But in the future, I expect the team to operate in a slightly more open environment.
After the new tooling is in place, I will begin leading an effort to tackle the technical debt that the game has incurred over the project's sevenish years of utilizing Unreal Engine 4. The important thing to note here is I do not intend for the fruits of this labor to go directly into the ProjContDev repository. Instead, I will be creating two new repositories. I have no names for these repositories yet and have simply been calling them the Open and Closed repositories.
The Open repository will host a game-agnostic framework in which "Halo style" games can be built off. The key factor of this repository is it will be exposed to the public. Licensing for this repository will allow anyone to use it as long as they are in compliance with the MGCUR. There is no obligation for those using it to contribute back to the repository.
The Closed repository will take advantage of the Open repository's license and configure/tailor the framework to the specific design of Contingency and plug into its back-end services. It will more closely resemble how the project currently operates. But assets from ProjContDev will only be added to the closed repository if the author agrees to allow unrestricted use by Contingency in compliance with the MGCUR. Furthermore, source files for content submitted to the Closed repository must be provided as well so future issues/changes may be resolved in haste. I am grateful to those who have contributed to ProjContDev under various restrictive conditions, but such verbal agreements on the matter are an administrative nightmare. I don't want a theoretical new project lead ten+ years from now to inadvertently cause drama because someone's assets aren't being used according to agreements the lead was not even a party to.
I understand there may be some resistance against these ideas, but consider for a moment just how approachable ProjContDev will be over the next few years. From an artist perspective, the Directors have already honed in on what the game should look like and what assets are to be created. For some artists, that's desirable but it leaves those who are wanting an outlet for their own creativity no place in the team. From an engineering perspective, the game is hard coded to do what it does and is very inflexible. If the engineers who have worked on the game for years aren't comfortable touching certain parts due to the effort involved, how can we expect new members to help?
In creating the Open repository, we are forcing ourselves to first create something that is usable by all. By making the Open repository public, we are allowing the public to become familiar and fluent with the way Contingency does things through no additional effort. The project can only thrive on the good will and free time of its contributors. I have no intention of changing the game that has already been created. I only want to establish an environment that attracts talent and further cultivates them. Keep in mind that ProjContDev is just one game and is wildly different than the concepts toyed with back when it was in Cryengine. The path I am declaring is to open the possibility of the current game, that so much effort has gone into, just being one tiny module in a greater catalog of games created under the Contingency banner.
My interest in taking the position of Project Lead for Contingency is to ensure that the collective knowledge generated over the past dozen or so years since the original musings of "our own Halo game" first began is preserved and the project is in a position where it could feasibly continue for another dozen or so years.
My immediate goals for the team are to build up the tooling to help the team manage itself better, change the team's overall development ideology, and start working the project up to a state where it is fundamentally easier to attract and utilize talent.
I consider the tooling to provide the most immediate benefit to the team. The kanban style organization just isn't cutting it and a great deal of source files for content are missing. The project needs a centralized system that can reach out through our communication platform(s) and our dev tools (discord, gitlab, etc). This tooling should eventually take over the bulk of the workload that Directors and Leads were theoretically supposed to be supporting as they managed their own subsets of the game's development. Additionally, it will dramatically help with the onboarding process of getting new members set up and ready to contribute.
Changing the team's development ideology is going to be a slow process but it should eventually feed into itself and start increasing activity levels. In the short term, I don't really expect anything to change in regards to the ProjContDev repository. By all means, maintain the status quo and aim to proudly delete that "ALPHA BUILD" widget. But in the future, I expect the team to operate in a slightly more open environment.
After the new tooling is in place, I will begin leading an effort to tackle the technical debt that the game has incurred over the project's sevenish years of utilizing Unreal Engine 4. The important thing to note here is I do not intend for the fruits of this labor to go directly into the ProjContDev repository. Instead, I will be creating two new repositories. I have no names for these repositories yet and have simply been calling them the Open and Closed repositories.
The Open repository will host a game-agnostic framework in which "Halo style" games can be built off. The key factor of this repository is it will be exposed to the public. Licensing for this repository will allow anyone to use it as long as they are in compliance with the MGCUR. There is no obligation for those using it to contribute back to the repository.
The Closed repository will take advantage of the Open repository's license and configure/tailor the framework to the specific design of Contingency and plug into its back-end services. It will more closely resemble how the project currently operates. But assets from ProjContDev will only be added to the closed repository if the author agrees to allow unrestricted use by Contingency in compliance with the MGCUR. Furthermore, source files for content submitted to the Closed repository must be provided as well so future issues/changes may be resolved in haste. I am grateful to those who have contributed to ProjContDev under various restrictive conditions, but such verbal agreements on the matter are an administrative nightmare. I don't want a theoretical new project lead ten+ years from now to inadvertently cause drama because someone's assets aren't being used according to agreements the lead was not even a party to.
I understand there may be some resistance against these ideas, but consider for a moment just how approachable ProjContDev will be over the next few years. From an artist perspective, the Directors have already honed in on what the game should look like and what assets are to be created. For some artists, that's desirable but it leaves those who are wanting an outlet for their own creativity no place in the team. From an engineering perspective, the game is hard coded to do what it does and is very inflexible. If the engineers who have worked on the game for years aren't comfortable touching certain parts due to the effort involved, how can we expect new members to help?
In creating the Open repository, we are forcing ourselves to first create something that is usable by all. By making the Open repository public, we are allowing the public to become familiar and fluent with the way Contingency does things through no additional effort. The project can only thrive on the good will and free time of its contributors. I have no intention of changing the game that has already been created. I only want to establish an environment that attracts talent and further cultivates them. Keep in mind that ProjContDev is just one game and is wildly different than the concepts toyed with back when it was in Cryengine. The path I am declaring is to open the possibility of the current game, that so much effort has gone into, just being one tiny module in a greater catalog of games created under the Contingency banner.