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Adobe Atmosphere Project Wrap-up:
A Look Back at the Star Wars Project
With the success of the Atmosphere Star Wars Project, we wanted to get the inside story from Lace, the project's leader. She graciously agreed to share her insights on the project: what worked well, challenges the team faced, and advice for other project leaders.
In the beginning...
The idea for Star Wars came to me for a number of reasons, it seemed like people were dropping like flies out of Atmosphere, with the disappointment of waiting for the new builder and everyone being so busy with real life. With this in mind I thought of having a fun project for the Atmosphere community members that were still around. I think one reason I got so many replies was because it was not a group sponsored project, it was a fun project there were no prizes or rewards to be won. It was just an open your mind and have fun building project.
I think the hardest thing for me at the outset was to think of a project that people would have fun doing. One that had lots of different places we could build. After I came up with the idea of doing worlds based on Star Wars, I posted it in the forum. Then it was just a matter of waiting for people to reply and join me. I had a number of replies within two days, which I thought was great. Most of the team was with me on this from the start, but I did chat with others in worlds to get them to join me in this.
One of the hardest people to get to join the team was Martin. I knew that if he were involved the world he would build would be great. Well he hummed and hawed about it until I told him he could do the Death Star. He jumped at it; the idea of building a huge world that would have a ton of JavaScript in it got him hooked with me on this project.
Overcoming challenges
Wow, you want unexpected challenges? The Star Wars project had its share!
I can only tell about the problems that I know of, there must have been others. Everything seemed to be going well and I was thinking great, sure we had a few problems but there was nothing big at first. Then in the forum it was said that we should have the "OK" from Lucas Films so I emailed them and wow I didn't think I would get the reply I did. In the email I explained what Atmosphere was and what we were trying to do. Their reply was 'Stop what you are doing now or legal action can take place'. At this point I was thinking 'Great, how am I going to tell everyone on the team', so I started to look for a loophole on the Star Wars web site. I didn't like being told I could not do it. I was looking around on the site and I thought I'd better let everyone know, so I told the team that I was looking for a loophole that we could use. I set up a meeting with the team in one of my private worlds so we could all talk about this. Not everyone could show up so I emailed the log out after the meeting. By the time the meeting date was upon us I had found our loophole, and sent it to everyone on the team so they could see it for themselves.
The meeting hour was near, I went into the world to wait for my team, when everyone got there I asked them if they received my two emails and how they felt about continuing. I then went over what I had found on the official Star Wars web site. It says that if you are a member of the Star Wars fan club you can make a fan web site. The Star Wars project had just become the Star Wars Fan site Project. As the person that emailed Lucas Films, I thought it would hit me the hardest if they didn't like what we did. If anyone wanted to leave because of this I would understand. I also told the people that were on the team if they still wanted to build, but not have it on their server, that I would host their worlds or avatars so it could not be linked back to them. I'm happy to say that everyone at the meeting felt the same as I did, we were not stopping just because Lucas Film said so. We would design the Fan Site.
One problem I found funny but sad at the same time, was one of the avatar builders that joined us late has a four year old that thinks the puter is great to play with. Well he put daddy's document file in the trash and by the time daddy realized, it was too late he had cleaned out his trash and lost everything.
Poor Apkalus had his puters stolen. I didn't hear about it for a while, it was getting close to the opening, and he was going to do the web site for me. I wanted it up one month before the opening. I emailed him so many times, I even tried to phone him to see what was going on, but had no luck, so I made a web site and thought if he did come though then I would delete mine.
I think everyone loved the Falcon on the weekend. Well there was almost as much work put into it as the Death Star. Jbez had it all built and the file got corrupted and he had to start all over again. Once it was done the second time, he must have thought 'Great, I got it built again, my problems are over'. Well not true with the Falcon, the textures were moving around after saving and closing, and the next time he went to open it, the textures were not where he wanted them.
We had our share of crashes and other small problems, but we all kept going. I’m sure everyone will agree things looked great, but even with everything ready for that weekend we still had problems. There was one world and a few avatars that were not going to be done in time. That was the easy part to deal with, compared to what we had been though already.
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