Seeing the activity in the community here (such as it is), specifically the modding and mapping activity, inspired me to think about mapping again.
I'm going to approach this with things I've learned at my job, project engineering management type things (I'm not a manager yet but I work with them every day). Things such as, but not limited to: find or build a business case, conduct feasibility studies, line up resources, define a scope of work, plan/schedule/budget, identify external drivers, identify risks and mitigations, define a development process, get buy-in from stakeholders (most importantly the customers), and develop a test plan.
I've done a little preliminary investigation already. Before I invest significant time into any further activity, I'm going to get two primary questions answered.
1.Is there a market for custom siege maps? I'm not going to put months of work into something only 7 people will ever play. I'm referring to “good” siege maps, ones that in one sense deserve to be played, but aren't. If this market does not currently exist, can it be created? (There's precedent for this – MovieBattles 2. Like it or not, it's one of the reasons this game still makes the top 50 most played on Xfire.) Is there anything that can be done to increase the appeal of a map?
2.What defines a “good” siege map? This refers to all aspects, but far and away the most important is the playability perspective as specific to the siege gametype. Location, location, location, also timing, class balance, objective type, performance, hazards, cover, tactics, and also location. Visuals are somewhere around dead last in importance in this regard – the base maps are pretty bland, but Hoth accounts for 60% (random guess) of pug games in the past 2 years by itself.
In the next week I'll try to expand on these topics and get as much feedback as I can. This is where I need the input of the community. Duo has made a great deal of progress in regard to studying the base maps and why they're appealing (or not appealing). I intend to take this further, stimulate some discussion, and see what falls out.
Associated random thoughts:
1. Siege has bugs, they need to get fixed. Server crash bug with /say overflow, slot 0 no heal, EOF custom classes, swoop bug, those are just the ones off the top of my head. I think j3rk covers most of these in ESM. I think the EOF error associated with too many classes has been holding back custom map adoption. People just can't be bothered to go swapping pk3's in and out of base every round.
2. Someone should think about an installer/uninstaller for a custom map pack. There must be some freeware/open source installer maker that can write stuff to C:\Program Files (x86 for 64 bit). Heck an adequately written bat file would work. Say pick the top x number of maps, put in a mature version of ESM. Call it the Ultimate Siege Expansion Pack or whatever. Post it to Filefront, run that in the MOTD on Tempest, have the admins broadcast an ad once per round, etc. Since Guard owns both Tempest and Tempest Customs, we don't have to worry about turf wars.
P.S. If you don't have anything constructive to stay, stay out of this thread. You have the rest of the boards to post useless spam. I will ask the mods to delete any posts that are off topic.