[CANCELED]Community Chest 5

I have decided to cancel this. 

You all were very helpful, this was a very humbling experience. 

The Doom community has been nothing but encouraging and kind to me, so my intent was not to be disrespectful. I'm naive. As much fun as this project would be, I made a lot of bad decisions.

1. I needed to ask permission. It didn't cross my mind. I'm wrong for that.

2. My rules didn't fit the project. I thought a deadline and strict rules would make a more cohesive wad, but in reality, that's not what CC is about. 

What I learned: I don't need to run a community project, not now at least. 

Again, my intent was not to be rude, and I hope you don't think lesser of me for it. As always my PMs are open. Have a nice day.

Thanks again, 

Dusty. 

[RESERVED FOR MAP SLOTS]

31 minutes ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Map21 - 30 Hell (though if you feel that's too many Hell maps in a row, you can vary the theme a bit)

Might I suggest making 2-26 Hell themed, and 26-29 a mixture of previous themes? Or maybe a special penultimate theme? Maybe 26-29 can be a Hellish castle or something?

Hey, hi, howdy! Quick question, did you talk to The Green Herring before starting this project? He did organize the last Community Chest, after all.

17 minutes ago, Alfonzo said:

 

Yes, one of Doomworld's many secret curses is that even asking about there whereabouts of CC5 would cause TGH to delay its inception by a year or more. Just starting a CC5 project without his blessing... I shudder to think. It would probably delay the project so much it would loop back in time and bite us in the ass.

 

Get ready for a most unwelcome groping.

On top of this being needlessly chilling in effect, I feel like a couple of people are speaking on his behalf here without actually knowing what he feels about this. Maybe TGH should be allowed to speak for himself?

42 minutes ago, Obsidian said:

Hey, hi, howdy! Quick question, did you talk to The Green Herring before starting this project? He did organize the last Community Chest, after all.

If I could elaborate a little: I didn't mean for this comment to be antagonistic or gatekeep-y and I apologize if it came off that way. I do however think that with a series like Community Chest it's a good idea to at least talk to one of the people who put in the hard yards on the previous installments before you announce a sequel: get some of their input, make sure you know what you're signing up for, things like that. Running community projects is hard work, made even more difficult by the expectation of quality that follows a series such as this, and it's a good idea to get the go-ahead from someone who's done it themselves before you come out swinging.

If you're going to do a grab-bag\community scrapbook like pretty much every CChest has been, putting limitations on things like theme is counterproductive. Furthermore I agree with the above that a Community Chest not only should not regress backwards in terms of compatibility(EVERY cchest was boom at least) it is a missed opportunity (and kind of irresponsible as a manager) to not capture on the community zeitgeist (which currently is moving into MBF21 and UMAPINFO)

I suggest putting some more thought into this, and of course not endeavoring to take on a project of this magnitude on your own (get some experienced people on board to assist with management, I am speaking from experience in saying you will regret not doing so). Flippantly diving into a follow-up to a treasured community institution without really considering what you're about to do and having little to no experience is going to ruffle feathers of people who have come to expect such a project to be handled with care.

Also: Ditch any notion of a hard deadline and leave setting a goal once the project has already started and progressed naturally.

No offense intended, Dusty, but you should probably get a bit more experience in running smaller collab projects and releasing things before you try taking the reigns of such a storied and hallowed series, especially one that you seemingly don't understand the history of (Limit removing with IWAD textures only!?) Build up your own name before claiming someone else's, and all that.

I can only echo what Xaser has said. The Community Chest series has pushed forwards with every iteration from the very mixed first outing to CC4 which is probably one of the most polished megawads in history. Not to mention how more technical the maps have become as people become more confident in using Boom. MBF21 would be a great platform to make the next iteration on.

Maybe, just maybe this would be the good thing that comes from this thread, because it has been a long time and the subject hasn’t really come up that much. Personally the thought has crossed my mind a few times as to whether there would be another community chest.

As for the op, the restrictions put this at the level of the first NOVA project (albeit in open to everyone). That is fine, in fact a do like to make limit removing maps, and indeed I am fine with sticking to the stock textures. However I think people would be expecting more from a new community chest megawad. 

Dibs on Map01 (assuming this ever becomes a thing)

Since Community Chest is already an established series, it would probably be better (and easier) to start something else, just in a similar vein.

The name comes from Monopoly, which years ago inspired me to try and think of something using Chance Cards. I had the idea that there could be 30 cards made up, each one describing a theme, map format and arbitrary limitation. Each claimant then gets one of these “Chance Cards” at random, so you get a complete grab bag of maps by the end of it.

Doomworld Roulettes were a pretty similar concept, and I thought they both turned out pretty good.. Just spitballing some ideas here!

Love the idea of standard texture usage. I will make a map for CC5. Sign me up. I will take MAP09. But I have no plans to start working on it until the new year.

Quote

Generally for a community project, you should show off some stuff that you have done before even thinking of posting. Not only does it help with getting people interested, but it shows that you have a level of commitment to it beyond "just pitching an idea". That being said, if you're doing simple vanilla-compatible techbases, it shouldn't take you long to get something ready, yeah? So, I'd recommend whipping at least something up and showing it off. I will add that a megawad is quite ambitious. Unless you have a very strong concept, I'd suggest scaling it back.

This is what @AD_79 said to me before starting my community project, and they were 100% correct.

First, to restate what AD_79 said, "I will add that a megawad is quite ambitious. Unless you have a very strong concept," The themes of what you have planned are about as generic as one can get. Copying what Doom 2 did, almost to a tee. Take a look at what themes CC4 did, perhaps expand off those. It's hard getting mappers to do something that's already been done before, surprisingly. Also, make some maps before hand. Take some screenshots. post them here. Badabing badaboom.

Second, leading a community project can be fairly challenging. It's not just let people submit maps, make a few maps and releasing. It's a lot of work with keeping in touch with everyone, doing quality control, planning, getting graphics, and mapping. I'd take everybody's word on at least waiting to do something like this. 

Of course, I'm not telling you shouldn't do this. I'm not the one who gets to say that. Best of luck if you decide to continue on with the project, despite the feedback that's already been given to you so far.

After doing more research on the development process and history of the original CC series, I have to agree with everyone else here. Moral issues aside (I assumed you at least had permission to use the CC title) , here is my problem:

This is just a community project with the Community Chest tag applied to it. The limitations, in terms of compatibility and map themes, does not attempt to fall in line with the original concept of creativity fostered by the CC series.

You tell people to be creative, and then you say " DOOM 2 format, no custom content, no dehacked, no slaughtermaps, no jokemaps, no sadistic maps." Even the themes you picked out are severely limiting. And generic.

-Techbase

-City

-City/industrial

-Hell

The whole post is pretty much telling people to recreate DOOM 2. The whole point of the CC series was to let people go wild and have fun, cohesion be damned. This is the exact opposite.

Dusty, you seem to have got quite the strong reaction here, heh. Nonetheless, most of the opinions expressed here are valid and I would seriously consider them.

My advice would be take a day or two and then decide on the direction you want to take your project. How much you want to change the scope, if you want to continue with the Community Chest 5 name, etc. I would also read this if you haven’t already: 

Good luck, and whatever decision you take I personally hope it’s to lead a project of some form!

3 hours ago, Doomkid said:

The name comes from Monopoly, which years ago inspired me to try and think of something using Chance Cards. I had the idea that there could be 30 cards made up, each one describing a theme, map format and arbitrary limitation. Each claimant then gets one of these “Chance Cards” at random, so you get a complete grab bag of maps by the end of it.

 

Doomworld Roulettes were a pretty similar concept, and I thought they both turned out pretty good.. Just spitballing some ideas here!

Good idea, I myself would like to see this in the future DK.

Although there might be some confusion as it would have the same abbreviation as Community Chest.

Man I would love to take part after I finish my map for Booked. Not sure what slot I would even want but I think I could take any of the open ones :3 I could also make an M_DOOM replacement and maybe a MIDI or two...

Over to saying what everybody wrote here, i think that this project needs quite some changes, with a new name like "back to the origins" or "Maps extravaganza" or anything else that is not CC5

8 hours ago, Obsidian said:

Hey, hi, howdy! Quick question, did you talk to The Green Herring before starting this project? He did organize the last Community Chest, after all.

I did not. Should I ask permission? 

6 hours ago, The Green Herring said:

Hi,

 

Alongside everything that everyone else brought up here, I'd like to focus on one thing in particular: if you are to start a community project of this magnitude, it would be best to wait till you have experience in leading community projects. I made many mistakes myself running Community Chest 4 that caused it to be dragged out for years, and I'd been in the community for only about a couple years at the point when it started. You've only been in this community, it seems, since June of this year. The best course of action would be to not repeat history, and save a huge project (let alone Community Chest) for when you have a wealth of knowledge of project management under your belt, rather than bust out a huge project with just a few months' presence in the community to your name. There's a reason Community Chest 5 hasn't been started in all this time: it takes some serious time, effort and patience to run a project like Community Chest without it crashing and burning or being dragged out to an absurd extent, and I haven't been able to do much in terms of planning because, long story short, life was kind of rough to me for the past half-decade.

 

So, there's some consultation from the last person to run a Community Chest about running Community Chest. I would have appreciated if you asked them for that consultation before trying to start the project, but there's some consultation nonetheless. If I were you, I would put this on the back burner, wait till you have much more experience, and then ask them again. I would much prefer to transfer leadership of a series to someone who has the project management experience to take it on and who makes the effort to communicate with me directly to discuss the idea first, rather than someone rather new to the community who announces "I'm starting this soon" as the second post of a thread about the idea of the project, and then tries to start the project, all without saying a word to me even privately. After all, a person rushing headlong into starting a project without discussing it with me first is another part of why 4 dragged on as far as it did, as while that person had at least already been recruited as a co-leader beforehand, I was forced to run the project without as much planning as I could have, alongside someone who demonstrated little consideration for teamwork in the few months they were involved.

Honestly, I didn't even think about it. And I sincerely apologize, I'm definitely in the wrong. Should I just cancel this? I thought it would be fun, and I loved the previous wads. I think you're right. I assumed the reaction would be more positive, but you make good points. Yet again, I'm sorry. 

4 hours ago, Horus said:

Dusty, you seem to have got quite the strong reaction here, heh. Nonetheless, most of the opinions expressed here are valid and I would seriously consider them.

 

My advice would be take a day or two and then decide on the direction you want to take your project. How much you want to change the scope, if you want to continue with the Community Chest 5 name, etc. I would also read this if you haven’t already: 

Good luck, and whatever decision you take I personally hope it’s to lead a project of some form!

I appreciate you posting that. I read through multiple times while getting the op ready. Honestly I'm quite embarrassed that I was so inconsiderate to the previous CC manager, and I'm going to cancel.

7 hours ago, dew said:

Seriously? After four iterations spanning a decade, all based on Boom, with a lot of custom content?

I don't see any connection to the spirit of CC if this is a lim-rem wad that only allows iwad textures.

 

Where the hell does this come from? CC3 map29 is one of the low-key stepping stones of the slaughter genre, why are we gatekeeping?

 

This won't happen, I guarantee it. A mere year for a project of this magnitude is bound to fail, others have failed with more.

 

Not saying that CC's project leadership cannot change hands, since that happened before, but usurping the project while completely restructuring it is audacious.

7 hours ago, Xaser said:

IMO it's a big missed opportunity not to use MBF21 and UMAPINFO for a Community Chest continuation -- CC has been Boom since CC2, so going back to lim-rem 32-maps is a regression. Look forward, not backward.

You guys are both right. I'm probably going to cancel, and if not, do a serious rewrite of the rules.

Consider me stoked. I'll take up the helm of music duties for a few levels!

1 hour ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

 

You guys are both right. I'm probably going to cancel, and if not, do a serious rewrite of the rules.

No need for canceling. Just rename it to something else (Community's Trunk, perhaps? Like a homage or parody or something.), maybe change some rules & you're good to go.

Unless you don't feel confident leading the project. If that's the case, then yea, it's probably for the better to cancel it & try it again in a couple of years.