I'm making this topic not because we have too many talented people available, but rather, the lack of dedicated and talented people applying.
As project leaders, we know we can do shit.
So when someone is proposing to help, which means a potential of countless hours of work lifted from our shoulders, it sounds awesome! Thank you! Except... the vast majority of people require us to babysit them only to see them quit after a few days. This happens very often and it is incredibly tiring.
I understand that some people have very valuable information that not many are knowledgeable about, but there are tutorials for almost anything. Please look up tutorials and get your hands dirty before saying you'll do anything for us! (spriting, eventing, ASM Hacks, etc.)
Unless you played with those things beforehand, you have no idea what you're in for.
So please, if you're only going to make us waste our time, just cut it short, try those tutorials and see for yourself how much work modding really is.
And if you do get past those tutorials and are still willing to help? Good! This proves you have dedication, and you are exactly the type of person we are looking for.
Our time is precious, we have busy lives, and modding is a heavy commitment. Consider the possibility that while trying to help us, you might slow us down. Show us that you're not all talk! Please!
Yes! We'd love your help, but...
→ → → Tutorial Link Index ← ← ← (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9204.0)
To anyone reading this far:
I stopped counting the number of people who offered to help with Journey of the Five only to disappear from the internet a week or two later. And when it comes to slowing a project down, I've even been that person. There are no harsh words here, just weariness from constant repeated behavior between so many people.
I want to thank Xifanie and Toshiko for these posts. They know 100% what they are talking about and completely speak the truth here, as they are 2 of the 3 people who work on Jot5 with me, daily.
Seriously. If you are new and want to send me a PM to offer to help me. While I do appreciate it. I WILL be sending you this thread first. I can't even tell you how many people have offered to help with events only to have it end up as:
"Oh, you mean I gotta actually learn a whole language and do work? fuck that"
:wark: :wark: :wark:
Eventing != Patcher work.
Waaaaaay too many people are spoiled by the patchers we have, which is why we have so many vanilla mods. Many people don't want to hear this, but using FFTP is childsplay. If that's all you know how to do and don't want to get your hands dirtier than that, then by all means. Make a vanilla mod.
If anyone wants to help out with Jot5 or other large projects, just know a head of time. Patcher/easy stuff is NOT what you will be doing. If you are offering to help with Jot5, then I have to assume you've played Jot5. If you've played Jot5, then you know we know our shit, we don't need help with the easy stuff :mrgreen:
As someone who initially wanted to help Jot5 at reveal(and had real life get in the way.) I have to agree with our wonderful mods above. I personally am producing a project that, until now, have been mostly easy stuff. (Correction: All easy stuff.) I wouldn't dream of offering help until I have completed my first two chapters worth of events.
On a side note. I have more lenient standards because I have easier work to do. (I still have standards.)
hex editing isn't exactly a walk in the park either, even 'experts' mess up. that's what debug is for. if you only know how to patcher, you are really only qualified to help with gruntwork anyone can do or testing. totally agree
After reading this tutorial ...... I really want to help us project the time it takes, I really liked the programs that got though some are with broken links would like to have me work and help in fact, I believe should have a lot of people talking about it and leaving without warning projects, but as has been said above, I will improve my knowledge and learn much more so with my hard work, reward learning.
But also I can not pay for the mistakes of others, so I'm available all day and trying to download all programs (although some do have more found links).
I want to propose that make loyalty tests and time in the projects, not discartem all for lack of commitment of some, I can guarantee that I will be useful, for me unfold to understand everything because it is another language, I am Brazilian, speak Portuguese and Italian and learning each day plus English.
I know the tutorials are incredible, however if they alone give knowledge and take off doubts, it would be great, but it still leaves doubt, to complete this extensive comment, (despite the fear of the answer, because it was very harsh clarification and relief, correct understand, but still scary ... kkk) recruitment and education as a sector in this wonderful site with incredible ideas, and would form would prove excellent time and creativity to good use, as a company, oh yes big projects in less time, satisfaction for all .
Excuse me from now on, it's just a suggestion .and thank you for at least see projects and character loved by everyone and with legions of fans, I try as much dedication as you, especially the administrator to Excellency, congratulations!
I'm waiting
I'm assuming the project you refer to is Jot5, given that it's the one getting the most attention on this site in general.
As is, I think the team's at the point where bringing new blood in would pretty much only be helpful if they were already experienced from the start. The biggest things that need to be done before the rerelease, or any of the following chapters, are all things that require more than just surface knowledge of how to make a vanilla patch.
It's not a project you can just hop on into and learn how to Do Stuff as you go.
The closest person who has a task like that right now is me, I'd say, and there's no end to the amount of stuff I get onto IRC and ask Elric about. Generally, it's just for approval of a proposed change, but even that much means it's time being taken away from his project of the day.
And I've had to wing it in a lot of cases. Something as simple as designing a single skillset - seven abilities for a character - isn't actually that simple, because I need to take the time to look over everything that's been done so far and try to figure out a unique niche for them. Oh, they have multiple distinct weapon styles? Well, guess I have to make more than one unique niche for them. Oh, they use attacks in their game that just don't translate well to FFT? Guess I need to make it up entirely. Oh, there's no way to make this attack formula work unless one's made from scratch? Back to the drawing board.
And there was a lot I had to do. Spell effects, attempts at balance, animations, JP costs, learn priority, descriptions... if I hadn't been dabbling in FFH since 2011, and video game stuff in general for years before that, I would have been completely lost. Basically useless, really. Oh, I could have contributed a few ideas here and there for the characters I was more familiar with, but that's about it.
In fact, there have been more than a few times I've gone and completely erased what others have contributed while working on that task. And there's an absolutely massive amount of stuff I've proposed that's just been shot down right out of the gate. More people working on the same thing isn't necessarily a good thing.
The language barrier is also a big issue. As much as you tried, there were parts of your post that were hard to understand, and that sort of thing can make talking about specific issues a real problem. Even when everyone on the team speaks fluent English, we've still had communication issues more than once in the recent past, and that's just in my experience, this year. One example: I was asking about the chance to inflict status effects on certain abilities, but thanks to my phrasing, nobody realized exactly what I was referring to. Elric had linked me a spreadsheet that talked about Item/Ability Procs, but I didn't look at the word "procs" and think that it included status inflictions as well.
That ended up being two weeks of me thinking the infliction chance was something that, say, Raven had done in the past, but no one now remembered how to make it happen again. Then the topic came up again and Elric was like "wait, wasn't that already covered?" Oops lol
In the end, simply wanting to help doesn't mean that you can. Experience is definitely a requirement.
nyzer...
thank you for the explanation, fully understand the complexity that is referring to, I hope I can learn more about all the tasks, and also improve my English,
when I wrote this message was not saying that I'm good or anything like that, only hope to or better have the privilege of helping this team again, it is incredible,
Thank you for your kind response, I hope you have great success,
about the language ... clearly understand, is not easy to cominucação even with fluency, what I learned in college admistration is to communicate is a very difficult task, and has studied its difficulties but still are problems, people do not us understand or are not clear on what we want, not to mention the so-called "noise" that hinder and may even end up with a team,
well what can I say is to wish a lot of strong and hope for the best and for you, and certainly after I met you and your work,
I stay here, learn the maximum, and will be here when it is able to help in this project.
Thank you so much :D
I'm just another random person who want to Confirm everything that has been told here... i said the magic words "if i can help i'll help with whatever i can" As they said, without ACTUALLY knowing how hard and time consuming is to do this things... i tried, REALLY i tried, to do sprite editing, and a very BASIC and SIMPLE event. and it took days, no, more like 2 or 3 weeks, just to get a DECENT result, not even good.
So what i can say , to anyone interested to help the team of this amazing project is "YOU'LL NEED A LOT OF TIME" XD First to learn then to actually be able to help them.
If i had a normale and stable life , i really would have focused on learning since FFT is the only game i always put on top of every game i played, and this jot5 it's insanely good, plus the people behind it do it for free, so i really would love to help, but i honestly can't.
It doesn't matter how much you love FFT and how much you are proud of the people working on this project, if you don't have TIME and the will to learn eveyrthing from scrap, then it's better if you only compliment them, and don't waste any of their time ^^
:shock: :oops: :cry:
Id love to learn the modding that you guys provide and take the time to watch the tutorials, I do have a lot on my plate already but if I ever do have the time to dedicate myself I will but if I cant help you in programmy way LuL, maybe donating to you guys could help you guys in a way :) just throwing a idea out there
The skill with the best mix of "useful" and "easy to learn" would probably be event editing. If you're interested, go cut your teeth on that.
Tutorial (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=8229.0) (this is a bit outdated, so some of the commands won't be 100% accurate compared to the new versions, but the latest Event Editor has a ton of tools to help)
Newest Event Editor (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=11675.0)
Newest ATTACK.OUT editor (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=9749.0)