Action RPG : Not-classified stuff, Production development, Team management

[Xenote]

Hey there, people!

I'm not pretty sure if I should post it here, since I've not any picture yet, but... THERE'S BEEN SOO LONG SINCE THE LAST TIME I COULD POST ABOUT SOMETHING! I just wanted to say: hey, I'm alive! I still watch your awesome stuff!

Maybe some one of you were thinking where the h*ll was I, because I dissapeared suddenly. Great, the thing is that I've started working in a project about a month and a half ago, and I'm been crazily busy since then. At first I was in charge of 3D art, but since the project has become bigger than expected, right now I'm helping with game design and project management too (until the 3D art work starts).

I can use this thread to do a little summary about how's the production going, and how I'm managing Producing things. In my head sounds great, but maybe most of you will find this organization things boring. Say if you're interested on me posting all this info. Of course, it would be great having the opinion of such an involved community, but I don't know if not graphic material qualifies for posting. I leave it up to you, I'll see your answers.

Anyway, if you prefer not to be overflowed by my enthusiastic walls of text, I can still keep track of the most important highligts, so I jsut post useful staff.

Lots of hugs! Keep doing as great as usual!

[Mr-Brett]

I'm happy to read about you development adventures but I warn you that I can get easily bored without any pictures! I'm just a visual person :P

[Xenote]

Good to see you again, people!

So, here's a little update about what has being going on this 2 months, since the last time I posted:

Preproduction phase is over
Game design document is almost done. Story background is abouty to be finished and final technical assets are being made.

Art department is starting with serious artworks, concept arts and documentation about standarization on Polycounting, textures, and general media stuff...
Marketing is done with his reasearches and he's starting to contact publishers and so.
Programmer is polishing numeric stuff in abilities, and starting the organization in Unity.

Final members of the production team have arrived
So it makes us 8 people. 4 of us are mostly full time on the project and 4 more are helping as much as they can while they maintain their former jobs. We're something like this:

FULL TIME
1 Producer/Game designer + Art Director (that's me!)
1 Company runner + Marketing specialist
1 Graphical Designer + Illustrator
1 Lead programmer

PART TIME
1 3D Character Artist
1 3D Environmental Artist
1 Script writer (Lore, Cinematics, Character Backgrounds)
1 Sound Engineer


Almost all the technical softwares hass been elected, bought or planned
I'd highlight those softwares or apps that we're using for team-working. I'm pretty sure that some of you will love at least one of them:

Google+ hangout: Hangs out multiconference videocalls
Google Drive Documents: Specially suitable for multi editing documents. Writting colaboratively is much, MUCH easier this way.
Plastic SCM: Version control, Files Hosting and sharing... This app is SO awesome!
Remember The Milk: Task management, Production assets, ...
Unity: Game Engine


That's pretty much all of the stuff that is being done by now. I'm totally happy because modelling will be starting any day soon, so I'll be able to post in WIP sections again.

As always, I'm glad I can rely on a such great community for advices and support. Keep rocking! See you soon!

[Xenote]

Hi there, people!

I was just wondering... Any game producer out there? I'm having a questiong/issue, and I'll be glad to have some feedback on it. I'll try to be as clearer as possible.

I'm trying to unify the applications the team is using, and preferably make them use the sames I'm using for production tiems and task management. The actual situation is:

Right now we're using one application for each of the following:
- Task management (tasks to do)
- Bug Tracking
- Collaborative file sharing
- SVN (Version control for Programation and Art department
- Production management. Times. Gantt and so.
- Design tracking and documentation.

I've been thinking on this problem for a month and I've found a sollution that could build together that needs that we have. Researching on the web I've found that there are some programs that suit our present needs. The stronger are:

Redmine
Features:
- Multiple projects support
- Role based security access
- Gantt chart /Calendar
- Wiki per project
- Forum per project
- Time tracking
- CUstomizable fileds on the DB for time entries, projects...
And much more

So I could just manage with a program like Redmine, and a SVN client. That rocks!

But... (there is always a but). I don't want the art team to loose time trying to get into a program which is not user-friendly. The application I've found that is more user-friendly is:

Teambox
Collaboration Software - Online project management tool for teams

The major feature of Teambox is that it's owned by the Box team (dropbox and so) and the interface is sooo nice. But has 3 main problems for my production:
- No Bug tracking
- No wiki
- No issue tracking (features, problems, improvement ideas, etc.)


Right now i've arrive to a maxium headache problem, so I beg for feedback. Does anyone know for a simple interface application, capable of doing what I require (except SVN, ofc)?

Thanks a lot for your patience, and your help!