Draft v0.1 of future plans.

Hey guys, I present you the draft v0.1 of the future plans. The reason for it is to inform you guys about how things are going to get handled in the future. The reason why I mention this is because I still haven’t thought about everything and I think it’s fair to inform you how this is going since you guys are the ones who made this possible. Without extending this anymore, let’s get into it.

Introducing, [Team.]

Note: everything in this draft is bound to change. Feel free to give feedback any sort of feedback you think it could be useful to improve this.

Hey guys, so after thinking about it, I’ve decided to work as a Team. Such team (or group, whatever you decide to call it) still doesn’t have a name, but is going to have some members in it. Here are the roles of the current team idea I have:

* Model Builder: That’s going to be me. Model building will still remain a 1-man-band.

* Beta Testers: These are going to be everyone else. The job of the beta testers will be simple: they will test the model to see if something is not working as intended, and they will define if a model is ready to be released or not.

* Releaser: The person in charge of putting the model out for public release.

Process of model building.

So, I have thought about some ideas about how to give hints and to say which models are going to be released without putting pressure under anyone. Since dA (and the internet really) are getting more and more aggressive about assets, I won’t be giving any links in there.

Because of that, here’s the current process for model building:

* Announcement.

Basically, what I’m going to do is announce that a model has just began to get built. There won’t be any details given, however, it is expected for the Beta Testers to expect a model, so they will need to give some of their valuable time to testing the model.

* Model Built: Send to testers.

Once the model has been built, it’s going to be sent to the testers. No model is going to be released in an Alpha state, all models are going to be released as Release Candidates.

Once they are sent to the testers, the testers will have 10 days to test the model and see if it is really a release candidate, however, if they find an issue that, they will inform me about it so I can evaluate if it’s really an issue or if it’s working as intended.

The testers don’t have to thoroughly test a model: if they want to create content with it, that’s fine. If they don’t care about the model and they test some poses with it to see how it behaves, that’s fine as well, everyone will have different was to test a model.

* If the model passes the tests:

The model is going to be released by the releaser for public download. Instead of waiting for 1 month after the initial release in Patreon, it’s going to be released after the 10 days of testing.

* If the model doesn’t pass the tests:

I’m going to recall it and I will fix the issues found in it. Once the issues have been fixed, instead of sending it back to Testers, it’s going to be sent ready for release, so it’s going to be released as soon as possible.

Releases.

The models are going to be released on the usual channel everyone knows, but one permission will remain: feel free to backup and mirror it.

Current FAQ (may get updated)

– What will be the process to select a model?

I’m still not sure on this. The current issue is simple: I gave you guys the power to select a model because you guys paid me to build the models. In this case, it’s going to be different. Unfortunately, I had to pick over 1 arbitrary decision from a bunch of arbitrary ideas:

* Creators decide who get built:I decided not to go with this, because this will only enforce the idea of Content Race, where whoever release content with a given model first is the one who will get the most attention. If they want to do that, they should learn model building instead.

* Everyone can decide who get built: I decided not to go with this because one, it’s very chaotic, and two, it’s just a bad idea. You see, more often than you imagine, you will find people saying the community needs more [character] content.That’s not how things go: that is just the person wanting to see more of that character.

* Beta Testers decide who get built: I decided not to go with this because  it’s giving too much power to a selected group of people. I’m not going to give them such power because that will be like turning this into a merit-based decision, and I want to stay away as much as I can from a merit-base model.

* I decide who gets built.In the end, I decided to do this. Yes, it is also arbitrary, but I’ve never built models that I wanted to see, and if I did, I did them free of charge (see: Model Practices.)In the end, I think this is the best result, because I’m mostly seeing what content people is creating, and I can easily see which characters are getting more attention than they should. I like to see myself as someone that will compliment current creators, and in some cases, open the doors to other creators.

– Who are currently the Beta Testers?

There are no names in the list yet. I have in mind some people I would like to ask if they would help me with the beta testing, but nothing is set in stone yet. Something I can say however, is that I don’t care about the quality of the content the Testers create, for I’m not doing any merit-base selection.It would be literally a selection that will come from the top of my head and that’s it. Like everything however, it will have some sort of bias, but on my defense, I will see you can’t find a true unbiased selection anywhere.

– Why go with beta testers when you can just release the model?

In a very rough way, you guys were my Beta Testers. You guys would mention issues about the model, and then I would get them fixed (I hope) and then it will get released after one month.

It’s the same in here, the only thing that changes is that is going to be just a group of people, but now, it’s going to take less time for a full release (10 days vs. 1 month).

The reason why I go with this, is because after I send a model to the testers, I want to focus on the things that have me busy, like material research and the book.I don’t want to get distracted with comments and stuff, all I want is to do the thing and that’s it, that’s why I decided to go with a group of testers.

– How can I be part of the group of testers?

Nothing is set in stone yet. I still don’t even know if this is going to be well received, but something I will say for sure, is that it’s definitely not going to have the same process than in here.

– What would remain then?

Well, there are a few things that will remain unchanged. From the top of my head:

* The banlist will remain to be the list of characters that are not going to be built, like non-adults in their canon, doubtful looks and models that are already built by LordAardvark or Red Menace because of the customization levels.

* Only full models will be released, which are models and outfits. No alpha-level models (only characters with no outfit) will be released.

* Something I would add as a new thing however, is that now I can decide if a model can get extended or not, which means, now models can get outfit updates.

End of Draft.

So that’s the draft guy. There’s still a lot of things to think about, but I think this is a good start. Let me know what you guys think and see if I would be missing something.

I will also prepare some stuff for the beta testers, so everyone will know what the beta tester will do, their rights and what kind of “tasks” they will have to do (spoiler: not many: they are testers.)

Anyway, that’s all for the day. Wash your hands!