Getting a developer to help you = Ten Tips

FiveM Server Development Server Discussion
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So…you want to start a server and you absolutely must have a developer to help you. There are many many posts in server bazaar asking for a developer but

Have a read of the below…

1 = What do you have to offer?

What are you bringing to the table? A good developer will spend hours, days, weeks of their life helping you build this, what will be your contribution? What will they get out of it?

2 = Offering Server Access

This is a red flag, it means what you have is worthless and not worthy of being protected. If you already have something of value to start with, be it an established community of players or already custom scripts, you won’t let just anyone have at it. Your developer should be a person you trust hugely.

3 = It will take time, how long can you wait?

You can easily take a list of releases and scripts and load them onto the server, follow the docs and be up and running with something functional but if you want something bespoke or better than what is already available, you have to be patient, give it time.

4 = What will you do? Answer it

Apart from “being the leader” what will your contribution be? How will you help build the server? establish what you and the existing team have already done.

5 = Do you need a developer or basic tech support?

A real developer, codes, builds apps, can even show examples of their work on GitHub, they can show what projects they have contributed to.

A tech support person, can edit a few pre-released scripts, setup a basic web server and is a little bit technical but really, not a developer.

What type of person are you looking for?

6 = Have a plan written out which they can see.

Its very easy to charge ahead, spin up a cheap host for $2.99 a month and presto you have your own FiveM Server but what do you do after you get 20 players? What happens after 3 months?

No developer will commit to your project if you have no idea where you are going with it. So make a plan.

7 = What will be unique or why should people care about your server?

Do you want to create the best racing server? If so, why will it be better than the others? How will you improve on what is already available for players to join.

8 = If you read the advert, would you want to do it?

Imagine reading a job advert which says you have to put in lots of effort and time, with no pay and the advert is only a few lines of text, would you be inspired to get stuck into the project?

9 = Build trust

Don’t lie and bluff about what you have, be 100% honest, don’t waste the time of the other person.

On the flip side, do they have coding examples? Do you get along with them? You both have trust each other.

10 = What do they get from it?

Some developers are really happy to stay behind the scenes and just build but what do they get from the project long term? Some are very happy to build it for the fun of building but others might want a more permanent position.

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Or screw all that and

Learn to fucking create resources instead of relying on everyone else to do something you are to lazy for.

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While yes, you could learn to do it yourself, not everyone wants to, and thats fine.
If someone has a great idea for a server and wants it done properly and professionally, they most likely want someone with experience to help them. Doesn’t mean they are lazy.
Someone that wants to make a server might be great at graphical design and can design and create all the visuals for a server, but doesn’t know a thing about scripting, so they want someone to help them do that part of the work.
Alot of the people asking for developers aren’t putting enough effort into their request, which I do believe is a sign that they don’t care that much and most likely just want someone to do everything for them, but not everyone is like that.
I reckon this topic will hopefully get people who want to request a developer to be more clear on what they want and more importantly, what they are going to do to help while the developer(s) are working.

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Learning how to do it takes months of practice and learning from scratch, it’s like playing an instrument.

Now yes, the bare bones basics are easy for people to learn but I don’t count that as development work.

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you can’t mark things as solutions anywhere else than tech support :frowning:

also nice one, gave me a good laugh

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I learned lua from scratch within a month? Also another thing is. Wanting a good and unique server within a month means you aren’t going to get a good and unique server.

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Nice to hear you learnt Lua within a month, doesn’t mean everyone is like that. Everyone has different abilities.
Also did you have any prior programming knowledge? Its much easier to pick up a language like Lua with prior programming experience than having none at all.
I remember when I first started learning Lua when I was playing MTA:SA and it took me ages to get the hang of it, because I had never done programming before. And a majority of my learning came from basically looking at leaked scripts from servers that were around at the time.
Make the argument that it may not have been the best thing to start with, but it was what I was interested in at the time which kept me motivated to learn. So I’d say that some may be in the same boat I was, but don’t have the motivation to learn and would rather have someone else do it and know its done properly, and even learn from their code at the same time.

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Lua is not a skill that you practice, its a language. How many others did you already know before you learnt Lua? If none, congrats but its unfair to say that everyone is capable of doing that.

Developing and building apps, is a skill, the language is irrelevant. If you can take something and build it from scratch, then maintain it, then grow it all whilst it remains stable and functional, good job. Now combine it with all the other skills a person develops, not to mention the dozens of other skills that you need to run a community.

The funny thing is, I don’t disagree with you in that it takes time to do something right, but you are shooting the guy who is trying to educate the masses as to how much effort it really takes. Instead you land on it with a reply telling people not to be lazy.

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So basically anybody is now consider lazy when asking for help improving their server. Nice…

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Not my words but it is an opinion some hold.

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Not every single person looking for a developer is lazy. However, the vast majority of the requests made are effortless, have no depth, and are just plain spam. The atmosphere surrounding the developer requests has been created to be such a poor one by the amount of people posting and expecting to get everything handed to them. On top of that, most of these requests are not even developer related – they are asking how to install already developed resources, cars, peds, or whatever into their servers. There is so much information thrown about the forums that explains how to do most of what you need. It may not be in a completely organized fashion, but its there. When I read those posts, I feel like the person(s) running (or trying to run…) the community/server/whatever expect to sit on their high throne and enjoy where they are while they have others slave over the hard work of actually creating the content.

If these people really want something, they are going to have to work for it. The posts being made are from people who just wake up one day and decide to rush rush rush to create a server. You will often see posts (not just looking for dev posts, but server adverts) that link to a forum that is probably a week old at most, and has one or two posts by the owner. There’s no content already there. There’s nothing. They want somebody to build for them while they manage the show. That is not how you are going to get anywhere.

Some of the posts in this topic also mention that the person running this server might not have the necessary skills to run that server. Well, if you don’t have the skills, why are you jumping to run a server in the first place?! If you are good at graphics, then go find a server that needs graphics work done. If you have a skill, put that skill to use where it is needed. Do not try to take over everything when you don’t have the skill, and then expect another person to come in and do the work for you.

This is not a blanket statement that means every single person is like this. I’m simply trying to provide insight as to why they are seen as lezy (at least in my eyes). I understand legitimate posts asking for help with concise issues – not just “I need help coding this [super brief idea here].” Try coding it. Find out where you have trouble. Post what you have tried, and ask for options. Show that you put the effort in to try and help yourself before asking for help from others. If you don’t know how to code, then start learnomg. If you want examples of code that are good, look in the popular releases. Heck, not even just the popular ones, look at all of them. Watch youtube videos, read tutorials, get some experience. That is how I did it, and that is probably how most (if not all) the devs have done it.

This turned into a massive post, but I hope the general point is understood. I’m not trying to shit post or bash anyone, but there really is a great lack of effort and sense of entitlement among the forums.

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please pin this as this really needs to be read by everyone posting as I agree with everything you said and which is why me as a developer wish they would take your advice.

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Might be a good thing to do.

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TL;DR

  1. People often assume the devs will do everything for them
  2. dont run a server you don’t understand
  3. pls script for yourself and ask if you dont understand something
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I literally just came on FiveM and can create scripts no problem xD

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Surely this needs to be a sticky topic.

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I completely agree…

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People will just ignore it either way. They could make it flash at the top of the screen and people still wouldn’t pay attention.

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just like the fucking support template, still gets ignored even when in the fucking text box

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Partly because the forum is full of so many people who just want to jump on the FiveM train, and have no fucking clue how a computer works.

need dev 4 script pls my srvr better than dee others

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