JesseLH

Hey everyone, quick update for anyone who hasn't already joined the official project, we've moved over to our own site. www.thewesterosproject.com We've gotten started and things are looking really good so far. We've done a lot of the pre-production decision-making for how we want the mod to work and what we want it to be and we're moving into getting started on production, beginning with Winterfell. A story is in the works with a complete outline for "Chapter 1" of a Mod of Ice and Fire going up this weekend. We're still interested in growing the team a little bit, so if you're interested in joining, please fill out our quick application here and we'll get back to you within the week.

Ok, the first meeting for the mod team will be held this Sunday at 12:00pm (noon), USA Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5:00) If you haven't joined the project-turf yet and would like to get in on the mod and have your ideas heard in the first meeting, please send benfclark a message with your e-mail address and a quick message saying you'd like to join the Westeros Project.

Awesome! We'd love to have you onboard. Send a pm to benfclark (his last post was p7, I think) and tell him you'd like to get in on the project. He'll invite you to the projecturf (if he hasn't already) that we're using as a gathering ground and place to field some early ideas. be sure to take a look at the "Organization Time" discussion once you're there and then glance through some of the other discussions just to get a sense of what's going on. Also feel free to post some shots of your work in the design section.

Awesome, thanks for the help, donker316! For everyone who wants to get involved: We're trying to decide on a time for our first meeting. Please figure out what times might work for you next week and I'll get back to you with an official date/time for the meeting: http://www.doodle.com/ybaspva8amsknkwn

Alright, so it seems to me we could probably give this a few more days, maybe a week, to capture any more interest or other people looking to participate from stage 0, but then there's actually a lot we can do to get started with pre-production. First thing would be to hold an introductions and planning meeting where we can toss around ideas, figure out exactly what we want to do and how we want to go about it and divvy up responsibilities for Phase 1. To prepare for the first meeting, 2-3 people should probably work on a basic pre-meeting document that outlines guidelines and goals for the meeting. These will probably look something like this: 1. Agenda for the meeting/how to conduct this in an organized, respectful manner. 2. What is the project's realistic potential? 3. Basic goals to focus on for the mod overall. 4. Basic strategic approach/timeline. 5. Basics of Teams, organization, and communication. During the meeting we can set up a realistic deadline for the pre-production team have an initial set of pre-production docs created and a outline/timeline for the various projects. Then we can all hold another meeting where the docs will be open for commentary/concerns and then we can get started! benfclark, I assume you'd like to be one of the organizers planners for this meeting? I'd be happy to help with this as well. Anyone else with good experience planning this sort of thing? In the mean time, anyone who thinks they might like to contribute can start jotting down ideas (either here or at home on paper), gathering concept art/reference material, digging through the skyrim creation kit wiki, and of course, reading and bookmarking any passages from ASoIaF that might come in handy. How does that sound?

I found Google+'s hangout feature to work more with more consistency and less dropped calls and it's also that handy screen share feature. But I do have skype, if we'd rather go that route. Jesse

You can add me to your list. I'm new to these forums (a buddy linked me to this project), but I am not new to modding, modeling, or game development. I think this is a fantastic idea (I'm a big fan of ASoIaF), and actually, I think this is exactly the way to go about starting a project like this... It seems to me, you're just gathering interest to see what's feasible. That's a perfectly natural place to start. It's where I started on my major project and it's been a big success so far. Now, a little about my experience: Editors/Engines: I have very little experience with the Oblivion engine, but I have worked with a bunch of other editors and engines. I have worked with the Unreal Development Kit and several of the Command and Conquer editors/engines, as well as the Unreal-based splinter-cell editors. I learn these things extremely fast, though, so don't count me out in this area. Modeling/Texturing: I've been modelling casually for years and have a few good friends who do it professionally. I've worked with 3ds MAX primarily. I also have some experience working with ZBrush. My best work is environment and object models, though I've done some decent work with character rigging, texturing, and animation as well. I've also done a ton of environment texturing work, including some procedural stuff that I use to generate unique static textures and I could definitely make some of that work available to this project. I also have good experience with particles and effects-based modeling/texturing. Height maps: I've got TONS of experience with height maps. I started out on BRYCE3D when I was little and used it for years along side Terragen and 3ds MAX in my environment modeling. Project Management: My biggest strength is probably here. As I mentioned above, I'm working on a long-long-term project, building a game from scratch with UDK . I have a some friends working on this with me and I found that the pre-production preparation of outlining and deadlining and then the production process of managing goals, deadlines, versions, changes and tweaks, people's abilities, information, story, and ideas is really the key to moving the project forward. I have a good system in place to ensure clarity and transparency as well idea-generation so that everyone is on the same page, expectations are clear, and people are generating awesome stuff that really contributes to the project as a whole. I'd be happy to share my experience in this arena with this project. I'm also great at building teams and playing people's strengths. So anyway, count me in. I've put my long-term project on hold for an indefinite period because we've reached a point where we'd have to start dedicating serious time and nobody on my team can do that yet, so no need to worry about it interfering with this. Good news is that means I'd be able to dedicate a pretty good amount of time to this per week, too.