Community Factions - Official Info

[Rhino]

Please read this entire post epically if you are part of or thinking of starting up a community faction.

This is to clear up any questions any of you may have about the community factions, how they are going to work for mainly the teams working on them, but also for the public and new community faction teams that may be starting up.


What are Community Factions?

They Factions for the Project Reality Mod that are developed by our community members who want to see a new army ingame.


How do I start making a Community Faction for PR?

First if you want to develop a Community Faction, you will need to assemble a team, unless you think you can do the entire mod on your own which is really not feasible unless for a small mini-mod based on PR, depending on how small the mini-mod is and the skill of the developer. The normal community faction will need a team because it would be a major addition of a team to PR, etc. Best way to go about recruiting a team is normally to go posting a single topic in the community modding forums about what you plan on doing, and on other forums you think you may be able to recruit from. Remember, "testers" for your mod don't count, in fact, you can not recruit any testers for your mod as will be explained later on. Only DEVs like modellers, skinners, mappers, coders etc.

Once you have a team, you will then need to assemble a design plan of what you want to do. If your making a new faction, your design plan should include all the vehicles, weapons, and general new content you will be adding such as maps, statics or w/e. The more complete your design plan is, the more seriously we will take you and the more likely your community mod will succeed.

Once you have completed your design plan, you will need to submit it to a "Red Tag" Developer via a Private Message on these forums with info about the basics you want to do, a list of your current team members, examples of any work you may have done so far on it, models, textures etc and of course, your design plan. Again, the more complete your submissions are the more seriously we will take you. Modding is no easy task and it takes a huge amount of time and effort and we do not want to be wasting our team on a community mod that don't look like they have their sh*t together.

Once you have submitted the above, we will assess your mod and providing everything checks out and we are happy with your general concept, design plan etc we will approve your mod and make your own sub forum inside the community modding forums for you to work in. The Leader of the Community mod will also get access to the R-COM (Faction) forums so he can be in direct contact with CONs & DEVs.


What assets are we allowed to use?

To put it simply, anything that is inside the Project Reality mod or vBF2 (not xpacks etc) already, you're allowed to use, even if its not in use currently in the mod though if it's not in use, that may be because its buggy or still not finished.

For the assets in the mod, you are allowed to reskin them and add "child" objects on (models attach by code, like a missile rack or w/e) thou you are not allowed to modify the model itself without our full permission. This also goes for vBF2 models and other mod's models.

You are not allowed to use anything from another BF2 mod, including other BSS mods without full permission of the use of that asset. To get permission, you will need to go though us (Project Reality Lead Developers) to gain permission. To do this, please read the relevent Stickied post in this forum. Any assets that you require from other mods though us you are not allowed to redistribute or anything like that to any other mod team or w/e. If any other community mods want to use an asset that has been required via another community faction team, they must go through the same process.

If we find that any assets have been stolen from any other mod, be it BF2 or any other game, we will take serious action against you along with that team and inform them of exactly what you have done and then we will take it from there, but be warned, you do not want to get onto the bad side of us or any other BF2 mod, we have full copyright on these assets we have made, as you do on the assets you have made and we are entitled to take legal action if need be, though we hope it never comes to that.


How will our Community Faction be released once finished?

Once your community mod leader thinks your mod is ready, or almost ready for release then it is his job to post on the R-COM forums that they are finished or almost finished. Once then, we (the developer team) will take a full look at your mod, give you any feedback on changes you may need to make, and also run it though our testing team if need be. We will probably give you some developing help at this point from our own DEVs to help finalize your mod for release. Then, we will either give you permission to release it, or we will release it for you (with full credit to you and your team of course), if it is a new faction we will most likely release it for you. You are not permitted to release your community mod without permission from us, if you do we will take action against you. It is not hard to get a "yes" from us, the only thing that will make us say "no" is if there is some major bugs that we think need to be cleaned up before release first, or it would take the mod in a direction we don't want it to, thou if we thought it would we would probably say that when you submit the design plan. It is also in your best interest that we release it since that means full front page news cover on our, and every other BF2 community site, ingame MOTD (Message of the Day) promotion and us hosting the files on our servers etc.


Final Info

We are here to help you, as much as you are here to help us by trying to add something new to PR so providing you are willing to work with us in a professional manner, we will do the same.


Cheers,

The Project Reality Team.

[AfterDune]

Sometimes, Community Factions ask us what "requirements" the PR team has before we can label them "ready" (which means.. ready for implementation).

Below are some guidelines we have set up to help you on your way a bit more. Please note that by meeting the requirements posted below, a faction is not automatically implemented in the first PR release. There's more than just having everything done by the rulebook. And it takes time and planning before the next step can be made.

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Requirements

Models
All max scenes must be exported as .max 9 format.

Soldiers and kits
A complete set of soldier reskins. Don't use custom made soldier models, stick to the vanilla soldiers. This is to prevent kit geometries from looking all weird on other soldier models. The kit geometries' reskins also have to be completed.
If you want to have your faction look different, create kit geometries. Make sure these kit geometries fit the vBF2 soldier models and work properly.
All soldiers and kits have to be set up and named as it's currently done in PR.

Weapons
Fully operating weapons, weapon sounds and animations.
All weapons need to be named correctly to PR standards, and the textures need to be sized appropriately.

Vehicles
Fully imported and correctly functioning set of vehicles.
All vehicles need to be named correctly to PR standards, and the textures need to be sized appropriately.

Maps
At least two maps, created by/for your faction. All maps have to be completed and of course, should meet the PR standard.

Sounds
Localized voices for all "roles" (commander, squad leader, grunt), up to PR standards. They must be well recorded with good amplitude, completely dry with no room tone and the voice over acting must be believable ('in character').

Other
The whole faction must work properly and should be provided as a minimod which extends onto the current version of PR (like how PRSP was done up to now).
The faction must have a full set of flags, rallypoints, spawners, logistics/support trucks, command posts, etc.

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Community Faction "Timeline"

Here's a global timeline;

When your faction is ready, you test it, of course. When you are sure all the above requirements are met, you contact the Community Faction Manager (Amok@ndy) about it and provide "answers" to all the above subjects.
The Community Faction Manager checks the report and whatever else he can check. If all is well, the "report" will be forwarded to the DEV team, for a global check.

When all is well so far, arrangements will be made with the Test Manager, to have the official PR Test Team have a good thorough check. The Test Team knows their job and they take it seriously. From weapons to vehicles, from skins to sounds, from assets to maps, everything will be checked. So you can understand you have to make sure everything works as it should.

When the Test Team detects bugs, errors or whatever else, they will report it. All found errors and bugs must be fixed by the developers of the faction, before a the green light is given.

When the testing of the faction has been completed, an "OK" will be given to the DEV team. The DEV team then takes another good look at the quality of the faction.

When you get to this point, your faction will be implemented as soon as the PR release planning allows it.