1. #1

    Default Volunteers Required

    Hi Community,

    Over the last 12 months we’ve been working on improvements to Neocron but the progress hasn’t been what we – and I’m sure you – would have liked.

    We need more people to speed things up but we need people we can rely on. You may not have noticed but over the last 18 months we’ve seen many volunteers come and go. A painful truth is that training those people, inducting those people, uses a lot of resources. Resources we could use elsewhere.

    We see people leave from time to time due to frustration; be it with working in a remote team, with Neocron’s archaic technology and sometimes due to how long it takes to get anywhere with… anything.

    Recently we’ve seen our internal numbers decrease somewhat for a variety of reasons and now we’re putting out the call to improve that situation.

    Our main aims right now are:
    • Finalise the next Titan patch, containing many improvements to the game’s code foundation.
    • Improve the engine which runs at the heart of Neocron, opening the door for improvements in other areas i.e. visuals.
    • Create an absolutely insane amount of visual and associated assets. Both 3D and 2D. That’s models, animations and textures.
    • Create, improve and finalise elements of our toolset to make some of the above and many other things less of a huge drain on resources.

    What you need to know:
    • Neocron started development in the late 1990s. That’s the better part of 20 years ago.
    • Let that sink in for a moment. A lot of the technology under the hood is almost 20 years old.
    • 20. Years. Twenty.
    • Our tool chain is better than it was in 2012 but it still suffers from many issues, it takes time and patience to implement things into Neocron.
    • You may get frustrated that you cannot change the world over night.

    What we need from you:
    • You need to have a decent amount of time to contribute.
    • You need to have patience and be self-motivating.
    • You need to take the initiative and try to solve problems without constant support.
    • You need to want to help improve Neocron, like, really want to help improve Neocron.
    • You need to have the following skills:
    o Proficient in ASP.NET MVC or
    o Proficient in creating 3D models, animations and textures in any toolset
    o It will be plus if you have experience in Blender and old Versions of 3DS Max
    • You need to be able to adapt to apply you skills across tool sets, that includes creating and developing against older technology.
    • You need to party like it’s 1999.

    If you think you can help us reach our aims, understand the challenges ahead and can contribute what we need, please do get in touch.

    You can do so by dropping us a line at applications [at] neocron-game.com.

    Please include relevant references and examples of work with your application, including some text about yourself and how you meet the specification outlined in this post.

    While we do need to improve Neocron’s content offering, we have purposefully left that role out of this list. There are many gaps in an efficient tool chain for this area, gaps we need to fill to prevent losing further talented writers and creators to frustration.

    We look forward to hearing from you.
    Trivaldi
    Neocron Support Team
    N E O C R O N - G A M E . C O M

    »I'm in a glass case of emotion!«

    DOWNLOAD NEOCRONPLAY NEOCRONFACEBOOKTWITTERIRCGET SUPPORTFORUM RULESRULES OF CONDUCT

  2. #2
    Canadian eh
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    We need more people to speed things up but we need people we can rely on. You may not have noticed but over the last 18 months we’ve seen many volunteers come and go. A painful truth is that training those people, inducting those people, uses a lot of resources. Resources we could use elsewhere.

    • You need to have the following skills:
    o Proficient in ASP.NET MVC or
    Since this seems to be the only skill listed for software developers is there any chance to get a little more details on the front/back-end framework/middle-ware being used?

    Is this this front facing/account web site and/or is this for internal tools

    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    • You need to have a decent amount of time to contribute.
    Is there a minimum amount of average hours per week/month what you are looking for?

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by General Crazy View Post
    Since this seems to be the only skill listed for software developers is there any chance to get a little more details on the front/back-end framework/middle-ware being used?

    Is this this front facing/account web site and/or is this for internal tools
    Mainly for the website and it's associated functionality. Bearing in mind the functionality of the website is something we're keen to expand upon.

    Quote Originally Posted by General Crazy View Post
    Is there a minimum amount of average hours per week/month what you are looking for?
    It's a difficult thing to quantify. In an ideal world you'd have enough time to be able to demonstrate tangible progress on the project you're working each week.
    Trivaldi
    Neocron Support Team
    N E O C R O N - G A M E . C O M

    »I'm in a glass case of emotion!«

    DOWNLOAD NEOCRONPLAY NEOCRONFACEBOOKTWITTERIRCGET SUPPORTFORUM RULESRULES OF CONDUCT

  4. #4
    Xpertz William Antrim's Avatar
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    Norfolk.
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    I'd like to wish all applicants the very best of luck. I hope something truly amazing comes of this.

  5. #5

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    Wish I could help, but do not have any of that skills

    Good luck to all volunteers and our gratitute.

  6. #6

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    We really need web development resource proficient in ASP.NET MVC to help us with our website. Please get in touch using the original post as guidance if you fit the profile outlined.

    Cheers,
    Triv
    Trivaldi
    Neocron Support Team
    N E O C R O N - G A M E . C O M

    »I'm in a glass case of emotion!«

    DOWNLOAD NEOCRONPLAY NEOCRONFACEBOOKTWITTERIRCGET SUPPORTFORUM RULESRULES OF CONDUCT

  7. #7

    Default

    Really wish I could help too!

    Shame it isn't PHP + Mysql as I'm not to bad at them (or server scripting).

    I'm guessing most of it is too complex for people to offer to try learning? (can imagine that would just cause more headaches having to get people up to speed!)
    "Without change something deep within us sleeps: The sleeper must awaken"

  8. #8

    Default

    I do have an IT background (Sysadmin) but my knowledge of ASP.NET MVC is rudimentary. Give me a quick Task Overview and I will look if I can get myself up to the task (fast learner :-))

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    We really need web development resource proficient in ASP.NET MVC to help us with our website. Please get in touch using the original post as guidance if you fit the profile outlined.

    Cheers,
    Triv
    convert to php and i'm sure you'll get much more help having said that do you have a git or svn setup of the current website code so we can look at it? and a list of jobs you want doing on it?

  10. #10
    Registered User eNTi's Avatar
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    Well... actually I'm currently working on ASP.NET MVC for my employer in the form of adapting nopCommerce to our needs. My knowledge of the inner workings of MVC are ... puddle deep though but may they will suffice? Just PM the gist?

  11. #11
    Canadian eh
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    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    We really need web development resource proficient in ASP.NET MVC to help us with our website. Please get in touch using the original post as guidance if you fit the profile outlined.
    I really think if you expect to get someone "Proficient in ASP.NET MVC" you might want to give a little more detail and outline of expectations of what they are getting themselves into.

    From what I can tell you are using Orchard CMS. I have never worked with Orchard myself (I did look at some of the source code and documents) but have worked with Sitefinity(Enterprise Level CMS) for a few project, writing custom widgets and modules to do things that the system was not designed to do. Complete nightmare as there is closed source with poor, outdated and obsolete documentation.


    Here is a simple explanation of information for those wondering if basic knowledge of MVC would suffice.

    The normal ASP.NET MVC request life cycle is fundamentally different from that request life cycle of that used in a CMS. A CMS will end up being more MVCish then true MVC. I not going to go into a lot detail but what they do is call parts of the MVC framework indirectly, losing parts of the build in functionality that is setup normally doing the normal MVC request life cycle, causing something to function differently or not to function at all. For most basic stuff the MVCish approach works fine other they try to recreate the missing functionally which may end up not functionally in all cases like it would with the true MVC.

    Most resources for learning ASP.NET MVC teach the very basics and sometime bad habits. Major thing to be aware of are different design patterns, reflection, IoC Containers and development principles for ASP.NET which can help you understand why things are done the way they are in different system like a CMS.

    CMS are not designed for ease of development but ease of use and functionality for none developers to create and maintain content for a web site.

    This only just covers the back-end of things and doesn’t even get into the client side of things.


    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    Mainly for the website and it's associated functionality. Bearing in mind the functionality of the website is something we're keen to expand upon.

    It's a difficult thing to quantify. In an ideal world you'd have enough time to be able to demonstrate tangible progress on the project you're working each week.
    As a volunteer this could amount to a lot of hours of work then just something casual to be able to demonstrate tangible progress each week.

    Other thing not ever mentioned is are the front end things like theme templates and graphics is this being taking care of by someone else or is this being pawned off on the developer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Trivaldi View Post
    You can do so by dropping us a line at applications [at] neocron-game.com.

    Please include relevant references and examples of work with your application, including some text about yourself and how you meet the specification outlined in this post.
    Your approach to finding for someone "Proficient in ASP.NET MVC" may not be the best way to go about it.

    A few things here that turn me off from volunteering would be the following:
    1) The vagueness of what you are looking for as well as the expectations of progress.
    2) As a professional it hard to give relevant example of work when they are tied to privacy and non-disclosure agreements.
    3) Do to the type of work I do the prospect of something being said to a professional reference that would have me associated
    with games, especially Neocron do to some of the games content. This could have adverse affected to my professional image.

    I fell what you are asking for by "applying" is more of a commitment then I would want to do without more of a discussion first. If someone is serious in discussing this more with me they can always PM me.

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