Conversion
Pack mod
What I've worked on:
What I've worked on:
•Testing
and asset management
•Unit design
•Unit design
The
"Conversion Pack" mod is the largest mod I've worked on for Battlefront II in
terms of both scale and visibility, and a large part of that is because
it is the most visible mod for Battlefront
II - the most downloaded of any individual mod, with over
half a million downloads.
That
said, I have mixed feelings about the mod. It's not especially
well-crafted (if the people who worked on this in the past put this
together today, it would be leagues better) or especially notable for
anything except its scale. It is
two very important things, though. It's a mod that meets a
very popular request - seeing Battlefront
I content in Battlefront
II. And, secondarily (and most importantly), it's the first mod to do
that.
Tied into that is the reason I ended up helming the development of this
mod. When it was originally developed, it was a mod with a reasonable
(and obvious) scope - convert the maps from Battlefront I for
use in Battlefront II.
This isn't particularly hard, although it required a little dedication
(and that task has since been done and redone by many to much lesser
fanfare). The initial concept of the mod generated substantial traction
(it was a
popular concept, after all), and that popularity was where the mod
sort've went off the rails.
As the mod gained popularity, the developers working on it started throwing in their own touches - a unit class here, a new map there (cf. Scope Creep 101). It continued getting developed and seeing interim releases; releases that were playable but not "complete" (or relatively bug-free). And as the mod grew and grew, more people in the modding community offered bits and pieces to it.
I was one of the many that offered his own bits and pieces to the mod - I had a concept I wanted to rework into a larger mod, but I think I wanted the ready-made visibility that the Conversion Pack could offer, and so I offered it in to that. As I started developing that (which, at around this point, became the largest in-progress addition to the Pack), the original project leader reached his limit in terms of dealing with the endless cycles of iteration on the mod. Because I was the developer currently with his hands in the mix the most, he offered me the task of running the development of the mod.
I stepped in, my previously-in-development part of the mod essentially
finished. With my addition, the patch was supposed to be seeing a large
"2.0" update, and I decided that we should target this for a "final"
version of the mod. The endless additions to the mod were retarding any
chance for the mod to ever be fully bug-checked, and there was obvious
burnout of people working on it.
Now, at this point, most of the damage had been done. The protracted development timeline of the mod meant that there was little consistency in quality and a high rate of source file loss (which often meant that popular additions to the mod couldn't ever be bugfixed). Regardless, I put together a large testing team and put together a systematic test plan to identify, map by map, issues with the mod. After compiling this list over weeks of testing, I organized fix and cut lists, and addressed or removed features, respectively. I iterated through this testing several times before finally making a public release of the mod.
After the public release - which was overwhelming in its popularity - I started aggregating user feedback. There were still several bugs that we'd missed and there were numerous user change requests. I accrued these for several weeks and put together a large patch to address these.
Looking back, despite my general feeling of success in taking an overwrought project and slimming it down to the point of completion, I still made several decisions with which I am unsatisfied.
My biggest error, I believe, was in allowing my original additional
content to stay in. It was well-received at the time, but I believe
that had more to do with the context of the content than its quality
(it referenced the highly popular Knights
of the Old Republic games). More importantly, it added
even more stuff to
an already over-large mod.
Another piece I wish I'd done differently was in how I addressed legacy issues. Like I mentioned above, there were issues with source files being lost or inaccessible. Generally, I took an attitude of "fix, and if I can't fix, cut," but I couldn't do that with several of the conversions that were the core of the mod. With those, I'd simply acknowledged the errors and did my best to minimize their effect on the player. If I'd been a little more knowledgeable at the time (or, simply, not as overwhelmed with things to address), perhaps I would have taken it upon myself to simply rebuild a lot of these conversions - the effort is minimal, and it would have resulted in a more consistent, bug-free experience.
My experience with the "Conversion Pack" mod was a great one - it not only gave me a lot of experience, but it gave me a lot of exposure within the community. Looking back, I wish that my earnestness in getting this done had been matched by a little more practical knowledge, but I wouldn't change the experience.
This mod can be downloaded at:
ModDB
Gamefront
Gamefront (2.2 patch)
As the mod gained popularity, the developers working on it started throwing in their own touches - a unit class here, a new map there (cf. Scope Creep 101). It continued getting developed and seeing interim releases; releases that were playable but not "complete" (or relatively bug-free). And as the mod grew and grew, more people in the modding community offered bits and pieces to it.
I was one of the many that offered his own bits and pieces to the mod - I had a concept I wanted to rework into a larger mod, but I think I wanted the ready-made visibility that the Conversion Pack could offer, and so I offered it in to that. As I started developing that (which, at around this point, became the largest in-progress addition to the Pack), the original project leader reached his limit in terms of dealing with the endless cycles of iteration on the mod. Because I was the developer currently with his hands in the mix the most, he offered me the task of running the development of the mod.
Now, at this point, most of the damage had been done. The protracted development timeline of the mod meant that there was little consistency in quality and a high rate of source file loss (which often meant that popular additions to the mod couldn't ever be bugfixed). Regardless, I put together a large testing team and put together a systematic test plan to identify, map by map, issues with the mod. After compiling this list over weeks of testing, I organized fix and cut lists, and addressed or removed features, respectively. I iterated through this testing several times before finally making a public release of the mod.
After the public release - which was overwhelming in its popularity - I started aggregating user feedback. There were still several bugs that we'd missed and there were numerous user change requests. I accrued these for several weeks and put together a large patch to address these.
Looking back, despite my general feeling of success in taking an overwrought project and slimming it down to the point of completion, I still made several decisions with which I am unsatisfied.
Another piece I wish I'd done differently was in how I addressed legacy issues. Like I mentioned above, there were issues with source files being lost or inaccessible. Generally, I took an attitude of "fix, and if I can't fix, cut," but I couldn't do that with several of the conversions that were the core of the mod. With those, I'd simply acknowledged the errors and did my best to minimize their effect on the player. If I'd been a little more knowledgeable at the time (or, simply, not as overwhelmed with things to address), perhaps I would have taken it upon myself to simply rebuild a lot of these conversions - the effort is minimal, and it would have resulted in a more consistent, bug-free experience.
My experience with the "Conversion Pack" mod was a great one - it not only gave me a lot of experience, but it gave me a lot of exposure within the community. Looking back, I wish that my earnestness in getting this done had been matched by a little more practical knowledge, but I wouldn't change the experience.
This mod can be downloaded at:
ModDB
Gamefront
Gamefront (2.2 patch)