Hi Brett! Thanks for the awesome questions. Hopefully I can address them for you.
Q: I've never dealt with payment on retainer before, how does that work?
A: The retainer is an amount based on the contractor / employer agreements, typically a percentage of the total contract estimate. We (my company) do non-gaming application R&D, and typically a 10% retainer is what we get (of the estimated contract payout). So if we contract for $10k, the client will cut a check for a grand to get things rolling in our lab.
As for identifying a solid number, I will just say that the project budget (to alpha) is more than five grand and less than ten. I know that is ambiguos but we've got some research to lay down first, which will involve the team making changes to the specification and getting to a point where we can identify the amount of work required, and more importantly, what that is worth to you. Since the time spent during R&D is compensible (sp?), that is where the retainer comes in. It covers your initial expenses for time worked as we polish the specification / design. We can discuss more particulars of retainers, in a private venue, since it can vary based on experience.
Q: What percentage of the pay to start off with? (And the rest at the very end?)
A: Retainer will cover your initial expenses as we work to identify and create a set of milestones. From the milestones we can derive a fair, competitive wage. The retainer for this position could range from $0 - $500.00 depending on experience. Once the specification is done, and the project started we will pay bi-weekly via company check, or monthly via wire for international team members. We're an established shop that pays on time, and have references if you need warm fuzzies.
Q: How many hours of programming per day towards this project do you expect?
A: This is a tough question since we've still not nailed down a specific estimate for the total project dev hours. If the team concludes that the project can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time, then the amount of daily progress will not be as pressured. As a base guidline, 1-2 hours a day would be a minimum. We don't work weekends. We don't work holidays.
Q: How long will you keep the programmers on after the alpha? I understand to the first stable release at the very least, but into the support period?
A: Yes. Sorry for the ambiguity. I was referencing alpha in the original post (and elsewhere in this FAQ) as a way to illustrate the development tempo we expect this project to possibly require, not necessarily the entire development lifecycle. In other words, "We expect this project to possibly take 30-90 days to get an alpha build ready to internal playtest." That's in terms of calendar days mind you, not necessarily cumulative days worked. I can be soooo
confusing, can't I? 
It basically comes down to this: It's a small project (well small to me I guess, but huge to some) that is being done as an experimental preface to a larger project. What I mean is, if we push a RC of this game mode and it is as popular as we hope then the next step in the project is not lateral, but to move off of GMOD and develop on a HL2 core, building a full blown mod in the source SDK, based on the gameplay of this project. (at which time we will release the GMOD gamemode final candidate into public domain).
The project is provisioned with standard amenities (sp?) such as Bug Tracker, SVN repository and developers foundry (forum), so adapting your IDE to this project should be straight forward as I think SVN is pluggable in most common IDE's.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Let me know if you have further questions, or comments.
Regards,
Rob a.k.a. Dr. Roxor
