I have been toying with the idea of having someone, who is much more adept at creating a shard and has the time to do so, (my time is stretched to the max these days between school, work and family) create a unique shard for me based on some specific requirements. Essentially I would like to hire the services of someone who would be willing to create a Middle Earth flavor shard that is accurate to the J.R.R Tolkien Middle Earth map (i.e. Arnor, Gondor, etc.) and has the cooresponding towns/dungeons in their given locations. Additionally, the creatures, language, etc. would also have to fit into the genre of Tolkien's world as well. If this is something that someone here would be interested in undertaking, please send me an email with the following information:

1. Costs incurred - both deposit and final deliverable cost for the shard. Also, what is the payment method that is desired (i.e. Paypal, money order, etc.). Another thing that may be an option would be some future support for the inclusion of the pol097, etc. packages as they become available to ensure the shard is up to date with current standards.

2. Time involved with the venture (this more refers to the creation of the shard as requested with map, dungeons, towns and the inclusion of vendors, monsters and general forest animals, etc.). How long will this take to create from beginning to end essentially...

3. Any additional information they will need from me.

I look forward to everyone who is interested in bidding on this project and will be in contact with individuals once I receive their information.

Thanks!

mijimoe

email address: mijimoe@hotmail.com

please allow me but one naive question:
Asuming there was a person, with the required time, skill and qualifikation.... what motivation should they have to work for you, as opposed to simply founding their own shard, allowing them to implementing their own ideas as they please?

That is a good question and it warrants an answer:

The primary reason that I would like to hire someone is because I do not have the time to devote to such a massive project. Therefore, for someone to even consider building a shard based on the information I have requested in the email above, they would need to be renumerated at a rate consistent to the time/labor put into the project. Thus, the primary impetus for someone engaging in this project would be the financial payment that they would receive. As a project manager/engineer in the world of IT, I would look at this as any other project I manage (i.e. there would be a Statement of Work and a Nondisclosure document maintaining the rights of use/ownership to the particular work performed) and have the documents drawn up that include defined wages, etc. to protect the interest of the programmer and myself as well. I was hoping that perhaps there was some enterprising individual who is in need of some extra cash that would like to be engaged in a professional endeavor. I have nothing but respect for the abilities and knowledge that individuals using POL have brought to the table.

I hope that this sheds some light on your question.

Thanks for the response!

Mijimoe

Interesting. I wonder how this will turn out.

It takes a long time to flesh out a fully-featured shard. Just ask Austin. I'm curious as to how much one would expect to be paid...

Before throwing out my own estimates I'd at least need to know the scope of work. The amount of time required to build the shard varies greatly depending on your ideas for features, game economy, map building, etc. Not to mention what you expect as far as maintenence.

Would this be a vbc or t&m job? That is, would you be paying hourly (doubtful!, just asking to be sure) or would you be paying a fixed price regardless of the hours worked?

What sort of programmer skills are you looking for? Someone who has coded a few eScripts and generally knows his way around the poldocs or someone with a more formal background on computer science or even understands the concepts of modularity, code readability and source documentation? Do you have a prefrence?

Here is a response that may help to answer your questions accordingly:

Thank you for your response to this post. I will endeavor to answer your questions to the best of my ability to ensure that my answers are as clear as possible:

I. The scope of work will consist of the following metrics:

a. creation of a map that is consistent with the Middle Earth genre (i.e. a map that contains all of the topographical features from the standard Middle Earth map that contains Arnor, Gondor, Mordor, etc.)

b. creation/placement of dungeons that are mentioned in the Rolemaster/MERP textual documents which are also contained within the works of J.R.R Tolkien - these dungeons would also need to be stocked with the creatures specific to their perspective locations

c. creation of towns/cities that coorespond to the locations on the general map provided in the Rolemaster/MERP textual documents

d. implementation of creature types that are consistent with the Middle Earth world of J.R.R Tolkien along with animal types (i.e. names, strengths, etc.)

e. creation of ore types that are consistent with the Rolemaster/MERP textual documents (i.e. glavorn, eog, mithril, laen, etc.) that are able to be crafted into items, etc.

f. maintenance which will include the incorporation of new POL updates/features that are applicable and recommended in order to reduce exploits, etc. This can be negotiated after the shard is essentially completed as I do not want to engage a person beyond the time that they can offer.

g. the entire map would need to be stocked with creatures in the various locations as well as vendors in the cities, guards regions, etc. The vendors of course would need to stock items that would be consistent with Middle Earth as well as cooresponding costs (i.e. a powerful item might be highly expensive and therefore only available in perhaps cities such as Minas Tirith, etc.

h. the shard will be created in to coorepond to Middle Earth's 3rd age at about the time of Bilbo's trip to the Lonely Mountain

II. Payment methods:

The manner in which I had envisioned paying someone was to negotiate a fixed amount based upon the time that they envision putting into the project (i.e. map creation, dungeon/city creation, monster/animal stocking in the world, incorporation of pertinent components, etc.). I did not expect to pay on an hourly wage as this would then result in a massive amount of monies paid. The plan was to get information from the potential bidders in a conference call that we could set up and throw out some numbers and preferred payment methods. Obviously a dedicated programmer wants to be paid and of course I dont want to be provided with something that I dont want so I will take measures to ensure both parties are satisfied.

As a general example, lets say that programmer X and I negotiate that the project will take 6 months of time to get in place and have up and running at a "beta" stage of development. Based upon the call I will have with this person, they decide that $750.00 USD is an appropiate amount to ask for and they would like to have paypal as their payment method. The payment method that they find to be best is to pay out XXX dollars per month / term period and this is what I will provide to them. From their side, they will provide a rudimentary progress report which I can review and make sure that we are both on the same page. Now this is a mere example and does not represent the format/amount that the project will consist of.


III. Programmer skills

In general, I woudl like to obtain the skills of someone who knows their way around setting up a shard who has been able to use innovative and creative impetus on their own worlds. Myself I have created my own shard which has been in place for a few years and have learned the "basics" as well as a few advanced skills but am by no reason an expert in the field. If someone out there has a B.S in Computer Science for instance (I have a M.S in IT myself) and they feel that this will give them an edge in their programming abilities, that is great. I will take into account an individual's history with working with POL and of course their general "skill-set".

If there are any additional questions anyone else may have, please feel free to contact me on MSN messenger as I typically am online even at work with this communication medium. Here is my email address that the program uses:

mijimoe@hotmail.com

Thank you again for you interest and response!

As being in the IT field for many years myself, might I give a few suggestions for your project.

1.) Have a lead dev for involving map and statics work. Possibly even the spawning of the world and dungeons.

2.) Have a lead dev for the sciptbase.

At the minimum, that would the team layout. I know the time and depth involved in map work, which is why I suggest this format. Unless however, you look into Middle Earth maps others have created already.

I would concur with Maud Dib on his assessment. Also, if you ar4e planning on adding custom graphics to the client I would suggest a lead dev to oversee that as well.

Take it from one who has had to do most of the map/custom graphucs and scripting alone, it ain't easy. It can be done but it ain't easy and something usually suffers along the way.

Also you'd want to have several dedicated people to be testers for finding bugs in the scripts as they are completed. These same people could be used to tarvel the map in search of glitches and bugs in it while scripts are in development.

May I suggest drawing on the original works of Gary Gigax and TSR publications Dungeons and Dragons for the various specs on the creatures. I believe the original D&D material, not the newer works, will more accurately reflect Tolkein's creation.

Thank you MaudDib for your valuable input. The idea that you have put forth is excellent and I can see where the value of having two individuals who would be able to work in tandem together could provide some high quality work. If there were some enterprising individuals who wanted to work in this fashion, I would not be opposed to this type of setup. The main pieces of information that I am looking for from anyone interested in perhaps taking up this offer can be best nailed down in a quick call (which I hope to have soon with whomever is interested.)

Thanks again for the information and guidance!

Wow...I just posted a response and missed you by a minute or so . That is another great idea that you have provided (I have played D&D for a number of years starting back in the mid-80s and so am fairly versed in the works of that genre). If anyone was interested in providing testing support, I would gladly welcome this as a great addition. At the present moment, I have a private network which houses a server that will be dedicated solely towards the Pol Server so should in theory be able to provide a fair amount of concurrent connections as the bandwidth is pretty decent here. If anyone wanted to be a member of a testing team alone and not have to bother with any crafting, again I would be glad to have you on board.

Thanks for your support!

Mijimoe

i think it would be easyer to ask for help than trying to hire someone to dev for you really

Thanks for the repsonse to this thread DeiviD. You do bring up a good point and I will address my cooresponding answer below:

The primary reason that I am looking to engage someone (or a small team of individuals) in the creation of a new shard is mainly due to time constraints. I believe I could create the shard myself with a number of inquiries, etc. along the way but my time is extremely limited as I work fulltime as an engineer and then additionally I am a doctoral student trying to get through my comprehension exams/dissertation coming up. Anyone who has been through the rigors of grad school will tell you that when you get to this point in your academic career you simply do not have time for extracurricular activites until you are completed with your research/papers, etc. Thus, that is the main impetus behind looking for someone who may be interested in a "side-project" of sorts. If no one decides they want to take this on then in a year or so when I have more time I'll most likely do the work myself and go forward from there.

Thanks again!

mijimoe

i could get you a testing team, we have been playing pol servers since pol093 and have got a load of bug related findings on our hours of play, we r consistent players and hardworkers (btw we will do this for fun) i already spoke to 2 of my mates, we player icrontic, nl and a few low budget servers on a 6 ~ 7 year term... hope u consider us just let me know how many people u need for testing, all we ask is a staff member inside the game to be aware of us and give us a helping hand in case we crash into anything strange...
i can get a player base of 10~15 players... deivid might know a few of em from old times neverlands... (might get drako tumacho krwlng rollin r|ge and a few others familiar names for a few old players of pol servers since they have played uogamers also and a few other servers too)