Interested in contributing your experience and talents to the Allacrost project? We always welcome individuals who are interested in helping the project. On our team, we distinguish between those we consider staff and those we consider contributors. A person who is interested in joining the Allacrost team must first decide if they wish to be considered staff or a contributor.

Staff and Contributing Members

Staff members are:

  • required to go through a formal hiring process before they are accepted on the team
  • expected to have significant prior experience in the area in which they are applying for
  • are granted immediate access to all team resources, including the private team forums, FTP, etc.
  • are held responsible for completing the tasks that they are assigned
  • have their name put in the credits

Contributor members are:

  • not required to go through any hiring process
  • not required to have any relevant experience what-so-ever
  • are not granted immediate access to team resources, but may be given access after producing a significant amount of work
  • are not held responsible for completion of any work that they take upon themselves to do
  • have their name put in the credits as long as they make tangible contributions that are used by the team in some form

You should apply for a staff member position if any of the following conditions apply to you:

  • You expect yourself to usually be able to make commit some of your time to working on Allacrost each week
  • You want to have a greater say in the direction the project takes and the way that the game is designed
  • You wish to take a leadership role in the project
  • You have a significant level of experience in the roll for which you are applying

Note that once you join as either a contributor or staff member, you are not "stuck" at that status by any means. Our more regular and seasoned contributors can request to be promoted to staff if they wish, or staff members who find themselves unable to continue the same level of commitment to the project can ask to be downgraded to contributor status. Although we do reject some staff applications based on lack of experience, we will never reject contributors, and suggest that rejected staff applicants to take the contributor route if they are truly interested in helping the project.

Areas of Work

The three main areas of work on the team are programming, artwork, and composition (audio). The secondary areas include online services (web development, forum/wiki administration, etc.), writing, translation, and team management. Contributors are typically expected to apply for one our three primary areas, while secondary area contributors are rare.

Applying to the Team

The links below will bring you to separate forms to fill out to apply for staff or contributor members. You should receive a reply with a few days of submission. If after one week you have still not received a response from us, send an e-mail to "jobs", followed by "@allacrost.org" and let us know that you applied but haven't received a response.

Staff Application

The staff application is lengthy for a reason. We invest a lot of time in training our new staff members and setting up all of their accounts, so we want to make sure we only accept those applicants whom we believe will make a difference on the team.

Contributor Application

The contributor application is more of an inquiry than an application. When you submit a contributor application it is a formal way of saying to us: "I would like to help your project in [this area]. What can I do?". We will respond with a short list of tasks that you may assist in and upon satisfactory completion of at least one of those tasks, your application will be complete and you will be invited to become a part of the team.

Resources

This section contains links to useful information for new or interested applicants.

* Our forum contains several public areas dedicated to programming, artwork, etc. Look in these forum sections for threads which are "stickied", and read the latest posts in these. The forum is also the team's primary communication medium, so it is recommended that you register an account there.

* Our wiki is a repository of vital information, such as standards for code, artwork, and composition as well as lists of certain things that need to be done. Look in the "Contributors" column on the main page for relevant information. You should also take a look at the various "Needs" pages, such as Coding Needs for programmers, which lists the areas of development which need additional help.

* Our bug tracker is used primarily by programmers, but also sometimes for online services and content (art, music) development. In addition to listing bugs, it contains a list of programming tasks that need to be completed (look for any bug report filed with the "feature" severity status).

* Finally, you may wish to drop by our public IRC channel: #allacrost at irc.freenode.net. There are usually at least a few members from the team in there, and they can help answer any questions you have directly.