Skype Meetings

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Sat Sep 05, 2015 7:00 pm

Invite PLEASE??

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Sep 05, 2015 8:18 pm

I've sent you a PM. Hopefully we can work this out, I'm not sure what the problem is, but I'm quite willing to assume it's Skype being Skype.

The Skype Meeting is over. Next Saturday, at the usual time, we'll start discussing the next topic of the Master Plan: 'What is Morrowind'. We'll have to see how much progress we make; I certainly hope I'll have time to post more in the forums, as there are several things I'd want to discuss before the meeting.
In these meetings, we (that is to say Theminimanx, at least for this meeting) are simply adding our notes directly to the Master Plan. As such, there may not be typical summaries. Naturally, the notes will be rough, as it's really hard to formulate a proper text while a meeting is going on; the idea is to write them out more tidily after the fact.

10Kaziem · Post by **10Kaziem** » Fri Sep 11, 2015 11:14 pm

Just as a note, I will not be around for the next four skype meetings, since I have assorted things happening on my Saturdays for the next month.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Sep 12, 2015 5:14 pm

Ah, that's a pity. Thanks for the heads-up.

The Skype meeting will start about [url=http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx]a quarter hour minutes from now[/url]. The topic will be What is Morrowind. I don't really expect us to finish that topic today, but I hope we at least manage to start some proper discussions so that we can finish it next week. I unfortunately didn't have the time to start those discussions myself over the last week on the forums, but such things happen.

Post by **Gnomey** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 8:38 pm

As the summary for the last meeting hasn't been posted yet, I'd suggest for tomorrow's meeting (Saturday at [url=http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx]6:00PM GMT/UST[/url] as usual) we just continue on to discuss the next part of the plan, which would be level design and perhaps area types. As is generally the case, the [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24291]Master Plan foundation document[/url] has some good ideas on the subject.

RomanNumeralII · Post by **RomanNumeralII** » Fri Sep 18, 2015 11:32 pm

Is anyone allowed to participate in these meetings?

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Sep 19, 2015 2:06 pm

Yes, just PM me your Skype address so that I can add you to the Tamriel Rebuilt Skype Meeting group.

Edit: I just realized that Theminimanx has updated the Master Plan document with what was discussed in the last meeting, but I still think it's better for us to discuss level design in this one.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Sep 19, 2015 5:56 pm

The meeting will start in four minutes.

Theminimanx · Post by **Theminimanx** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 8:45 pm

I'll be without internet this weekend, so I won't be able to make it to the meeting. Sorries

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 3:42 pm

After an unfortunate absence last week, I will be present today.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Sep 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Today's meeting will start at the usual time (6:00pm UTC), [url=http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx]so in about fourty minutes[/url]. The section of the Master Plan we will be discussing this time is Area Types.

10Kaziem · Post by **10Kaziem** » Fri Oct 02, 2015 1:40 pm

As a note: I'll be absent this week, the 17th and the 31st. May or may not make the others. People keep scheduling things over the meetings!

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 5:42 pm

This is a rather last-minute update, as the meeting will start in about a quarter hour from now, but for this meeting we plan to take a break from the Master Plan to discuss the website and perhaps our upcoming releases -- which will probably kickstart our 90-day release cycle -- and possibly TR_Data topics such as [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=25052]merging our data files with those of Project Tamriel[/url].

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 03, 2015 8:36 pm

The Skype meeting is over. We mostly discussed website stuff to start with and then meandered around a few other topics. As this wasn't part of the Master Plan topic, it will get a standard summary. (I have yet to update the Master Plan with notes from the last meeting, but I have the recording and will get around to it).

sasquatch2o · Post by **sasquatch2o** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:54 pm

I think it would be most useful to review what has been done the last 2 years. Analyze what still needs to be done. And decide what needs to change to accomplish it. What is preventing real progress?

That would be a good next meeting or 2. Exteriors and interiors need to be done, quests scripted, npc added. So set a goal a a timeline. Say, how much you want done in 10 years and figure out what really needs to be accomplished short and long-term for that to happen. What are the biggest roadblocks what is most likely to distract from making forward progress toward the end goal. What sacrifices might need to be considered to make your goals possible?

All this needs to be discussed and more people need to be on board and on the same page if the TR is going to gain needed traction again. Otherwise this is all running in circles while pissing in the wind.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Tue Oct 06, 2015 5:54 pm

TR's lack of momentum at the moment is definitely concerning. Unfortunately, it's root cause -- i.e. not currently having a lot of active members with free time to work on the project -- is a circumstance largely beyond our control.

We should at least try to set a flexible deadline for wrapping up the Master Plan, least it turn into a troubling roadblock. Perhaps we could plan the next several Skype meeting discussion topics in advance to accomplish this?

10Kaziem · Post by **10Kaziem** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 12:25 am

I ought to be here for this week's meeting, so I'd be happy to chip in. Agreed that we should try to hammer out something more solid.

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:56 am

Well really the thing that stopping us from getting new members is us not having anything for them to do set in stone yet. I've brought it up multiple times on how to get more people visiting but since we don't have anything really for these people to do it's not really worth their time to come in and create a showcase.

I think the best thing we could do is find people now who have more free time to be here and could help out in showcase reviews and the like, but it's kind of a double-edged sword. In one hand, Morrowind is an old game. There's not a large group of people who actually MOD the game. It has a large following and it is arguably the most-liked of the three most recent released titles but the people that ARE left in the community are mainly those who want to just play it. A small number of those people want to MOD THE GAME.

That is why I think it's best to reach out to SOMEONE, ANYONE, to try and get more activity or more attention drawn to US AS A PROJECT. Not everyone knows that TR or P:C or SHOTN are active projects, and you never know what people may be willing to provide for the project, such as time, models, CS work, etc etc.

We are basically sitting in an ocean of untapped resources, but there's a lot of hesitation to begin fishing for anything because we still don't know WHAT it is we exactly NEED. Plus the fact that it'll probably be an uphill battle to get more people active on the project, but it CAN and NEEDS TO be done. It will just require some planning on the PR part and on making sure we're looking at the right market for volunteers.

EDIT: Possible place to try and garner attention to the project - http://forum.sketchfab.com/?utm_source=website&utm_campaign=header

Post by **Gnomey** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 10:39 am

The timeline for the Master Plan is pretty clear, at least for the time being: we're discussing each section of the plan in its own meeting. The last section we dealt with is Area Types, and I have yet to update the Master Plan with the notes from that meeting. The remaining three sections are Exploration, NPCs and Quests, meaning we should have the Master Plan filled with notes by the end of this month if all goes well, unless of course we end up discussing something else in one of the meetings as was the case last week.

Now granted, that won't mean the Master Plan will be done by the end of the month. However, once the last notes from the meetings have been jotted down in the document, I think we can already start working with it.

Once the Master Plan is in a usable state, we would probably (though by no means necessarily; a change of pace might also be welcome) continue along the pipeline in the Skype Meetings, which means we'd discuss planning documents next. Among the documents that could be relevant to us at the moment are the House Hlaalu and House Indoril planning documents, which have already seen a lot of discussion, a Thirr River Valley region planning document, the Empire document and Temple document, and perhaps some further documents. (eg. Old Ebonheart Planning Document, though I'm not sure if we need to bother at this point). Those would naturally have the highest priority.

By discussing a specific subject in each Skype meeting and then moving on to the next, we are ensuring that the project moves forward. The risk we run by doing so is not properly devoting time to subjects that really could use it, such as the Master Plan. I can't stress enough that the Master Plan is effectively the foundation for the whole project, and we're pretty much rushing it out the gate, which is a really bad idea.
Now in the interest of making measurable progress, that's just a concession that appears to be necessary. I never like to miss an opportunity to say that I genuinely think, if we were really concerned about getting the project done as soon as possible and as close to our vision as possible, we should for the time being completely focus on planning and consider the actual implementation almost as an afterthought, to be carried out after all the groundwork has been done. That counter-intuitive as it may be, the delays, confusion and mistakes caused by inadequate planning in the production stage waste even more time than sitting around planning for months and -- in the context of game design -- potentially years, and are far more annoying to boot.
However, at this point I think that's unrealistic for this project anyway, especially thirteen years in, just as I think introducing any kind of deadline would be and has shown itself to be in the past. We've become good at drawing in interior developers because that's most of what we did. Exterior developers and questers as well, if less so, because we've done a lot of that as well, if less so. Modellers, concept artists and planners were in far lower demand for the Morrowind project, (a lot of the planning was handled by the core), and consequently those we had (especially of the former) mostly left after we stopped working on Hammerfell. Trying to get a project of interior, exterior and quest developers to focus itself on planning entirely will just serve to make us unappealing to those developers while not guaranteeing we'll get any better at drawing in the other sorts. Hence the concessions.

NathanJ · Post by **NathanJ** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:08 am

I think it would be good if we use a strong structure for the developping work - as we talk about measurable goals, a simple example would be:

- Every big city has a guildhall of every faction
- every big faction has as many quest givers as there are guildhalls
- every faction quest giver has at least, lets say 8 quests to give.

If we have on the mainland 7 big cities (or "capitals"), there are 56 quests for every faction to make.

this would give us the ability to see how far the progress really is - and this concept we can also use for misc quests or something else..

NathanJ · Post by **NathanJ** » Thu Oct 08, 2015 11:29 am

Oh, and another thought: what if we could pool our strengths more on one point, like this example:

We want to build the city narsis. Every step only begins when the previous is finished.

First step: Brainstorming. general feeling of the city, misc quests, faction quests. city-overlapping quests are considered too. At this very early point I would plan every quest to avoid conflicts later, for ex. like "we need this and that NPC living in this city at the east wall, but there is none".

Second step: Artwork. How shall it look like.

Third step: Exterior modding. The modder "reserves" a building for every faction and through the specific architecture he determines the interior size and how many levels it has.

Fourth step: interior modding

Fifth step: NPCs

Sixth step: quest developping

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:14 pm

Today's Skype meeting is over. I'll be the one copying over the notes from the meeting this time around, and may take a bit longer again as I'm still in the process of adding the notes from the Area Types meeting. (Though I have at least made good headway on that by now). That being said, Kaziem and I have added a few notes already during the meeting, and the topic of exploration shouldn't be too relevant to the topic of the next meeting, which will be NPCs, anyway, so it shouldn't cause too many problems.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Mon Oct 12, 2015 5:34 pm

Cool. I'll make sure to show up at that one.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:47 pm

The Skype Meeting will start in a quarter hour. To be perfectly frank, I slept in and haven't prepared anything, but the [url=http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/old_forum/viewtopic.php?t=24291]Master Plan Foundation Document[/url]'s section on NPCs is relatively well fleshed out.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 7:31 pm

The Skype Meeting is over. We mostly discussed sub-cultures, (Sload used the term Faction-Tropes, but from my experience that leads to misunderstandings), and then more-or-less ran out of steam. The topic for the next meeting will be quests.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 24, 2015 5:08 pm

The Skype meeting on quests will start in fifty minutes.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:08 pm

The Skype meeting is over. Next week's topic hasn't been established, but it will probably be a break from the Master Plan, as we've finished discussing each point of the document. The Skype meeting will take place at the usual time ([url=http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx]6:00 PM GMT/UTC[/url]) on Saturday, which means an hour earlier than usual for some of us due to daylight savings.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 9:01 pm

Would anyone be up for a Thirr River Valley region planning discussion at the next Skype meeting?

Post by **Gnomey** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 9:15 pm

I'd be up for it. I am contemplating whether we should go back to bi-weekly meetings, though; we've finished (at least for now) the Master Plan discussions which were the original reason for switching to weekly meetings, and considering the growing backlog of recordings to summarize and increased forum activity, I quite selfishly think I could do with some more time between meetings.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Thu Oct 29, 2015 10:06 pm

I wouldn't mind switching back to the bi-weekly schedule.

10Kaziem · Post by **10Kaziem** » Fri Oct 30, 2015 2:38 pm

I also wouldn't mind, as I think we have some backlog and also because I can't make it to tomorrow's meeting.

And I want to be in on the planning stuff.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 1:17 pm

Sounds good then: the Skype meeting will be at [url=http://www.worldtimeserver.com/current_time_in_UTC.aspx]6:00 PM GMT/UCT[/url] on Saturday, November 7, 2015, and we'll be discussing the Thirr River Region.

Post by **Seneca37** » Sat Oct 31, 2015 2:46 pm

Here's my 2 cents

1) I don't think we are anywhere near ready to cut back on meetings. Once Exteriors/Interiors/Quests are full of claims to be worked on - then we can cut back on the meetings. However, I am not without a heart and know that this is a tough time, espeically for those in college. So cutting back until after the holidays (and getting caught up with summaries), is not a bad idea. Hopefully more people will chime in on the MASTER PLAN so that it can be FINALIZED. But I think that we should get back to a weekly meeting soon after Jan 1st.

2) HMM - I guess we could discuss some stuff on the Thirr River Region, but it does seem a bit premature to me. We still need to discuss the History of Morrowind, and then House Indoril, and maybe House Hlaalu, if were going to cover both sides of the river. Having all that information finalized would help greatly when discussing any particular region.

Post by **Gnomey** » Sun Nov 01, 2015 3:13 am

A valuable two cents.

1. I pretty much agree with what you say here. While going through the points of the Master Plan took top priority, there's still a lot to discuss, so weekly meetings would be more ideal. I'm just concerned that, at the moment, taking care of the meetings and putting together the summaries might eat up all the time I can devote to TR.
2. It's a bit premature, yes. I'm not sure how far we'd get with a meeting about the History of Morrowind, though. Sometimes those broad topics can be hard to get going. A meeting to focus on a relatively small topic like a region might help us orient ourselves a bit after all of the Master Plan meetings. It could also prove helpful for the CS work we're doing in tandem with the planning and to provide us with a concrete example (probably one of the best regions for it) for the History of Morrowind discussion.
I'd be a bit more hesitant if it were a different region, mind, but as we're sort of working on the TRV out of order anyway I don't think it's an issue in this case.

I can already say now that, when we discuss regions, I think we should formulate an idea of how they looked like before the eruption of Red Mountain as well as, of course, how they currently look. Really, history should probably be considered in all planning documents.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Sun Nov 01, 2015 6:52 pm

Talking about how to implement Hlaalu and Inodril characteristics in the Thirr River Valley will likely inform us on what we still need to iron out with their concepts. Seeing it from a practical perspective can help, I feel, since it brings up topics like, "what tone should we go with these characters?" or "what resources do we need to flesh out this faction?" Otherwise, I agree with the importance of finalizing those discussions prior to any future region work.

Post by **Gnomey** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:09 am

To toss out a quick idea I got from the concept travel thread: as a stop-gap measure to fill the time until the summaries are posted, what if we try to come up with a specific topic in the meeting that could be carried over and continued on the forums? So for the exploration discussion, we have the concept travel thread. For the What is Morrowind meeting, (or I suppose more accurately one of them), there was the idea of people posting what words and phrases they associate with Morrowind as a whole and the individual districts or Houses territories in particular, though in the end that never got posted to the forums.

Basically, we'd just have the meeting as always, but at the end we'd pick one of the things that was discussed that we'd like to see further discussed the most, or that best lends itself to further discussion, and right after the meeting would write a quick post on the forum shortly outlining the topic and opening it up for ideas.
That would allow people to get an idea of what sort of direction the Skype meeting went without having to wait for the full summary, to be able to start providing feedback to at least one part of the meeting right away, and hopefully it would also allow some of the enthusiasm discussions over Skype can generate to be directly transported over to the forums, rather than dying out as the recordings sit on my desktop doing nothing.

This wouldn't replace the need to work on getting summaries out quickly and effectively, of course. As I say, it's more of a stop-gap measure.

Ironed Maidens · Post by **Ironed Maidens** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 3:27 am

Feel free to post the 'word/phrase you associate with Morrowind' to the forums, I keep spacing on it.

10Kaziem · Post by **10Kaziem** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 4:55 pm

That sounds good. If I can make it to this week's meeting, I'd also like a few minutes at the end to discuss forum stickies so I can get some quick feedback/ideas on the stickies in progress, so we can move the finished ones and make progress on the unfinished ones.

Yeti · Post by **Yeti** » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:25 pm

Turns out I might be busy tomorrow - too busy to prepare for a Thirr River Valley discussion. Could we possibly postpone that topic for another time?

Post by **Anonytroll** » Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:11 pm

I'm opting out as well - I'm at friends' with no internet in reach.

I do have some things I need to bounce off somebody next week. I hope next Saturday either is a meeting or you guys show up on IRC more often.