Modacity Forging Guild (Name TBD)

[Heathen]

I dig Korns name.

[English Mobster]

Just pitching these ideas out there (if any of this is completely fucking retarded, I just spent the better part of 2 hours over a hot solder gun for the Model Railroad in my sig, and I think the fumes went to my head. I feel a bit woozy and it's hard to think/type straight, so excuse any typos as well):

An idea for a name to keep the HEK acronym: Halo Editing Kollective. Gets rid of the connotations of "Kids", plus it's a cool name. Another option is Halo Editing Komrades.

Our subforum should be set up similar to how CMT was set up here a long time ago, and should be laid out like so:
* Halo: Reach Discussion (General discussion for Halo: Reach and home of the Halo Editing Kollective.)
** Halo Editing Kollective (The official domain for the Modacity Halo Editing Kollective. Post your Forge 2.0 works in progress and ask for our experienced mapmakers for advice or help on making your map all it can be!)
*** Official Releases (Experience maps made by the members of the Halo Editing Kollective.)
*** Playtests (Take part in a Halo Editing Kollective playtest to experience maps made by the HEK and vote on the ones to become official releases!)

Any mapmakers can post a WIP thread for their map in the HEK subforum, similar to the current WIP threads in the CE section. The main difference, however, is that they can elect to "call for aid" and set up a date for the HEK community to come in and help them out. We'll come in, help them out with their map, do all that good stuff. Once they've finished, if they want to make it an "Official" release, they can tell one of the section mods that they want to submit their map for playtesting.

Every week, one of the section mods will create a thread in the "Playtest" section. This thread will contain download links and screenshots of every map in that week's playtest. It would also contain a date and time for the playtest, typically held over the weekend. During a playtest, each map on the list will be played for a grand total of three games (by default, Slayer, Team Slayer, and Assault/CTF, unless a mapmaker is designing a map for a specific gametype), to thoroughly investigate the playability of a map.
I would suggest a cap on the number of maps per playtest thread, say, five per week, as three 10-minute games on five maps would consume over 2 hours, and any more will go on for too long for playtesting to really be useful. This may lead to long wait times if 15 maps are released a week, however, unless 3 playtests are held, one of Friday, another on Saturday, and yet another on Sunday. However, we will have to see how many maps we release a week to really get a grip on if this cap is needed or not.

After a playtest, a thread is made for voting on which maps will make the grade and discussion on the playtest itself. The poll should be a multiple-choice poll with public voting, so we can see if anyone just votes for every single map week after week and punish them accordingly. Voting for your own map is discouraged.
At the end of the weekend (or however long the poll runs for), the top three maps will be chosen to become "Official Releases", and the remaining two would be sent back for gameplay tweaks.
Each "Official Release" should be hosted on a static account with Bungie Pro, so they could be available for download without the possibility of people removing them from their file share to save space (which WILL be a problem for people without Bungie Pro who make a lot of maps, as they will have to constantly rotate out the maps in their own file share).
However, after 16 weeks or so (assuming a constant stream of 3 maps/week), the maps will be removed from the Official Release section so that particular static account's File Share could be re-used for the influx of new arrivals.
The only way a map can be saved from a File Share "purge" is if it receives a substantial amount of downloads. If a map receives an abnormally high number of downloads, a poll is made deciding whether or not to move that map to a "Greatest Hits" account. If the majority votes yes, the map is moved to a "Greatest Hits" account so truly spectacular maps can avoid being purged. Another sticky at the top of the Official Release section contains a list of all 25 maps on the current "Greatest Hits" list for easy access.
One flaw with this system that will have to be addressed is what happens if a map is selected to be moved onto the "Greatest Hits" and the static "Greatest Hits" account is full? My solution is to have a vote, but selecting one of 25 equally-great options would be a pain in the ass. However, that is a long way off, and we should worry about that when we come to it.

Using this system, Modacity would only have to maintain a grand total of 3 static Bungie Pro "storage" accounts, all of which SHOULD be funded through donations. It's the best compromise between potential storage space and economics. It should hold for quite a while; if the system really begs to be expanded sometime in the future, it can be relatively easily.
This system will also require a few dedicated Section Mods to keep an eye on the HEK subforum every week and manage the playtests. If I could take the liberty of nominating someone, I would say Arteen would do a great job of being one of these section mods, although the choice really is up to him and the mods.

[ejburke]

File Share - Okay, I didn't realize the basic service was only 6 slots. Bungie Pro quadruples that, (assuming they keep capacity the same) so we should encourage people to upgrade and donate space. We can buy 5 Pro upgrades for the price of one dummy account.

But it's not really necessary to have all the approved maps available at all times. We can have an active playlist of maps that are guaranteed to be available for share, but if a map isn't available at a certain time and someone wants to play it, we can have a thread for requests. Of course, we'd try to keep everything available, but I don't think it's the end of the world if we're unable to do that. It's certainly not worth the hassle of asking for donations. It also represents a conflict of interest when we're accepting money from people who want our approval and endorsement.

Approval Process - Here's how I see it:

1) Applicant posts images and/or video demonstrating their work
2) Someone with the authority to inspect submissions will download and walk through the map
3) If deemed worthy of further review, the map will be upgraded to Candidate status and a link will be posted.
4) Three appointed panels of judges (Red, Blue, Green) will take turns testing candidates in scheduled sessions.
5) 2/3 majority approval by one panel upgrades candidate to Bronze Tier
6) 2/3 majority approval by two panels upgrades bronze to Silver Tier
7) 2/3 majority approval by three panels upgrades silver to Gold Tier
8) Platinum Tier would be the Hall of Fame tier. We'll know them when we see them.

The panels could be a fluid thing, changing by the week depending on who is available. A Blue panelist could be red the next week or replaced completely, if need be. We just need a general pool of people whose opinions are trusted by the community that we can randomly select from. That way, there aren't any hard feelings.

Forum structure - Just one forum with several stickies is probably best. We can play it by ear and adjust accordingly, but it's a good thing to have a bunch of active threads on the same page. Divide it up too finely, and you have ghost towns and sections that people just stop checking.

[Kornman00]

Well since this is more than just a community based idea, but rather a "record" label in a sense, we shouldn't constrict the flow of data down to threads. Yes, they could start off in threads, but then should get "signed" into a content system capable of centralizing information about the variants, where the approval process can take place.

We already dedicate SO much forum space to everything else, that adding to the space would just be like beating a dead horse. In order to survive you'd need to bring to the table something new for people other than just being a "hub". Reach will be bigger and more active than CE, and especially so for all our "other" games that we have forums for. Why throw such a dedicated and new idea into what has basically become a trashcan?

A content system has a means of uniquely displaying data. Forums are fucking forums, they're generic. We can manage "mirrors" of where to find approved variants (map/game types), multimedia content (either inline images or links to youtube demos, or even saved films). We can link to the original user accounts and have the current approval status displayed. Then you could also put advertisements of scheduled playtests. If you wanted to do all of this in a fucking POS forum, you'd have to make every single person have some sort of mod status plus you'd have to deal with some fugly ass forum display which doesn't/can't provide templates to display and edit the content needed for "signed" variants.

I'm tired of seeing so much shit get thrown into forums like it was a catch-all. Don't treat it like Bungie did the texture cache in Halo 1/2. If modacity actually becomes the one who governs this, it better be done, and done right, in a CMS.

[ejburke]

Can you manage to infiltrate Bungie and steal us a copy of RAID?

Forums be ghetto. No denying. A CMS would be a great thing. But is it do-able? I figured we were just going to use Google Docs or something for sharing administrative info.

We're all excited now, but who knows how we'll feel once the game is in our hands. So maybe ghetto is better until we know for sure that all the effort spent on making this a well-oiled machine is worth it.

[Arteen]

We're all excited now, but who knows how we'll feel once the game is in our hands. So maybe ghetto is better until we know for sure that all the effort spent on making this a well-oiled machine is worth it.

This is what I think. We should just wait to see if we even enjoy Forging that much before we do anything major. Just having forums will be fine, too. It works for ForgeHub.

[jcap]

Well, here's what CAN be done without any massive code revamping:

The downloads system can be set up to include categories for Reach. When someone submits a new item, they can specify whether it is a map or gametype, they can provide multiple pictures and a description (including a YouTube video if they want), and they can specify the gametypes a map would be designed for. Since we can't actually host files, they would also need to provide a link to the Bungie page. Members would be able to rate and comment.

That's just for downloads. For organization of teams, we have absolutely nothing. I mean, we have blogs which multiple users can edit, but that's it.

[Arteen]

Meh. That seems like it would distance content from its creators. That works well for static content like in CE. Everyone has to download the same exact map, and once you release a map out into the wild, it's too late to make any changes. You cannot play on a map unless everyone else has not just the same map, but the same exact version of it.

With Reach, there's more room for iteration and conversation with players. Want to tweak a map based on player feedback? Bump your thread, describe the update and redirect the download hyperlink to the latest version. Players can now download this new map without any worries of version conflicts with other players. Forums threads seem more intimate and constructive than a download page with comments. ForgeHub seems to be going strong with their forum-based setup.

[Teltaur]

Well, figured you guys might be interested in this:

But while I might not have what it takes to make an amazing map destined for our official matchmaking playlists, I can show you the basic steps. I can walk the path.
...
When I'm finished, I’m going to submit my creation through some of the same channels and mechanisms you’ll be using post-launch so you can see what the process might be like in Reach. Ready?

Let’s begin.

http://www.bungie.net/News/Blog.aspx...ncomp_Cartog_1

Might be something to watch for, just to give a better idea of how the system works and how a map could even be considered for Matchmaking use.

[Gwunty]

im down, I used to make maps and shit a while ago.
CLS_GRUNT