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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

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In the stock market, you must buy high and sell low...Wait! That's not right!
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Yes, I can be intelligent at times!!

God Bless

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"But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another." - Psalm 75:7

Startup Christian Games Company Producing Mobile/PC Games/Tools

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

quote:

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Originally posted by LegaianLight:
mostly my part in this is the story and a lot of the ideas (some mini-games, what fights would look like, general town formats, etc), though i can always use the help in the story and design areas as well. So far i have what one could call a chapter of the story done, and a fairly good idea of what the fights would look like (yes, violence will occur, though, like i said, im open to a lot of changes on a lot of things).

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So are you going to be writing the primary design document? Or are you looking for more people to help you design in a collaborative effort?

This all sounds like a fun idea, but it's kindof hard for programmers and graphic artists (especially experienced ones) to want to commit to a project that doesn't have something solid behind it -- whether it's previous work experience that you have as a designer, or a complete (albeit draft) design document if you're new to making games.

If you're looking for help writing a design document, then that's one thing, but if you're looking for programmers to commit to a project that doesn't have a design doc, you may find that you'll have a hard time finding talented people willing to join your team. You say you have a chapter of the story done, and that's a great start. I'm just trying to give you some feedback as to what I would want to see in this project were I looking for one to join (I'm up to my eyeballs in other stuff, but I hope I can give you some helpful constructive criticism).

Maybe you are more prepared than I think though, so if I'm wrong, then please feel free to correct me.

Sounds good so far, I look forward to seeing where you go on this!

In Christ,
clint

Edit PS: Thinking about it, I'm not sure what direction I should direct you towards. I have a hard time telling if you want this to be a commercial project for the sake of making money, or if you're looking for it to be a hobby project. If it's a hobby project that you're creating for the sake of creating a freeware game that's fun to make and get some experience, then I could see you getting a small team of people who are interested and dedicated to getting something done. There are some very talented people on here that could do much of what you're asking for in something like BlitzBasic, but it may be harder finding a Torque or Unity programmer. That said, the cross-platform requirement that you're asking for up front is going to be a little steep for many of the hobbyist programmers on here.

[This message has been edited by HanClinto (edited April 11, 2006).]

For the most part, i would work on the Primary Design Document on my own. Though, i could hit some points where i cant figure something out, or someone elses input would help the game.

I know that its difficult for programmers and artists to commit their time to a game which they know little of, though, as i said, i dont want to post my idea for the whole world to see. I am leaning towards posting a general outline in the future, i just want to get a little more worked out as far as the design document is concerned.

Thats unfortunate that you are too full at the moment! If this catches your eye after a while, i (perhaps we at that point) could use your help.

I feel more prepared than i sound, and thats not helpful, i know, thats why im starting to write things out. I already wrote out the general idea for the Random Fight System, meaning i wrote out how the actual fighting would work, how the prayers would work, and so on. This idea is something that ive had in my head more or less since i started playing games, and i started to write it out then, though it was fairly incoherent. Now i started writing out a much more coherent game, which is where that "first chapter" comes in. Also, i wrote out a prologue, which explains a lot more on the general layout of the game. so one could say there are 2 chapters done so far, and i hope to get at least 3-5 chapters total, if that helps people get an idea of the total length of the game. I hope that helps!

Thanks for your constructive criticism, and please keep it up!

God Bless You All!

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

quote:

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Originally posted by LegaianLight:
...if things go smoothly it would go something like this
-Low quality models made to test the fight system
-Program general fight system
-Create maps-world map, towns, dungeons, etc. this would take the longest as far as i can see
-Start to work on the rest of the character models and refine the fight system
-Start to integrate all of the pieces, animate towns and such, etc
-add in the story
that sums up the major pieces that come to my mind

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Hey!
I'm no programmer or artist, but I thought I'd post a little excerpt of a talk that John de Margheriti (a Christian Australian businessman) gave at the Christian Game Developers' Conference last year; it really made me rethink how games should be made, and I thought it might be useful for you and other developers. Regarding game production (after the design doc is done), he said something like this:

Create a demo. A demo is a *vertical* slice of the game; it goes deep & demonstrates key features. Take a small part of the game - one map, or one quest, and work on everything that is required for that slice - characters, objects, music, sound fx.... Don't skimp. Do a good job on everything from graphics to user interface to game mechanics. Polish & repolish this slice. Often, less experienced people try to take one thing, e.g., art, and they sit down and say, "ok, this week we're going to get all the art assets done." This quickly becomes too overwhelming, and you end up skimping on quality in order to get it done.

Another thing he said is to identify your critical paths - the things that the game is critically dependent on, and work on that first. It could be, for example, A.I., or the fight system, etc.

Once the first slice is done, add another vertical slice next to it - the next or preceding quest, or an adjacent map. Put the same effort into this that went into the first slice. Theoretically (and this part shocked me) - the game should be ready to ship at any time. (This concept obviously ignores the continuity of the storyline, but you get the idea - quality-wise, each part should be pretty much "done" and ready to go without too much further tweaking.)

Well, I hope that's helpful to all you would-be game developers out there!

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it's pronounced "tonics"

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

Torqe is good and all, but you might have to look out if you could possibly want shader effects in the future, and therefore you'd have to look into the shader version of the engine.

Check out Ogre. Its an open-source (LGPL) Rendering Engine. Wrap a good sound library and a physics library and you'll have your engine. Although it'll take extra time to create (obviously).

Game Design Document... You can always find a good template, but you'll really want to just pretty much grab the titles of each section and add your own until you have have all the titles that you need to explain the game. Don't get too technical for the game mechanics, leave that for the "Technical Design doc", often called the "Technical Spec".

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=23

That should help you out with the design document. Use it more as a guideline, and then you'll end up with the best design document for your game.

Later down the track I might be able to help out with coding.

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"But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another." - Psalm 75:7

Startup Christian Games Company Producing Mobile/PC Games/Tools

those are the major points this will cover. There are categories in each, such as seperate chapters in the story, seperate gameplay aspects, among many other things. if people are interested in some of these, i can post those as well. I just want to hear more constructive criticism on the main topics and any other categories that i might want to add. Many thanks and God Bless You All!

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

That said, I recognize the need for a design document up front. Basically I think it's important to have one's goals laid out at the beginning. If you don't have your goals laid out, you could end up anywhere.

I see many fledgling projects get started before they know where they're going, and the developers soon disperse because of lack of commonality in ideals, or they get lost trying to make something huge when they really don't know how infeasible it is for them.

The classic case is how many people want to write MMORPGs, when they don't have a clue about how hard it is to write a scalable network architecture that can synchronize load-balancing and game-data in real-time across a distributed server system. I don't want to join a "hobbyist" MMORPG team, because I know how hard it is to write one, and I know that less than 1% of hobbyist MMORPG projects ever get even so much as a playable demo.

All that said, I think a design document should show that you understand what you're getting yourself into, you understand where you need to go, roughly how you're going to do it, and basically what you need to get there. It's sortof like a business plan if you're starting a business -- people won't lend you money if they don't think you can manage it well, similarly talented developers won't give you their time if they don't think you can manage their skills well.

I hope that explains it all better.

Great job being so dedicated and trying to do this the right way! I'm really impressed that you've started writing this -- I think it will help you out quite a bit if you have a good outline of the game. It's easier to design in pencil than in code.

Anyone with more "real" game development experience than me care to give advice on this subject? Gump? Mack? Graceworks? Brandon? Others? I want to learn more about this aspect of game design.

Cheers!

In Christ,
clint

That's how much this non-professional knows.

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2Co 7:10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

[VoHW] (Help needed) [Blog] - Truedisciple (mp3)

Thanks for your input, Jari! glad to see you updated your site! I hope things are still going well.

Alright, in other news, i took a little time off from writing the design document. I got a little hung up on all of the systems that are integrated into the Fight System, and hopefully ill find a way to get everything in order to make this as easy to use as i can.

Thanks to all who have helped or offered to help thus far!

God Bless You All!

LegaianLight

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,

Sent you an e-mail!

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Quantum Materiae Materietur Marmota Monax Si Marmota Monax Materiae Possum Materiari?

Here are some approximate team needs:
Programmers:
C++
Torque Experience prefered, not needed

Graphics Artists:
Some form of 3D art experience
2D perhaps, open for discussion

Animators:
3D animation experience

Designers:
Heart for Jesus
Enjoys RPG's
Knowledge of Legaia and Dragoon prefered

The first three i am definitely in need of. The last category isnt entirely necessary since for the most part i am handling that.
The Torque experience is prefered, and if you have Torque, that would help a lot, though if i get some Work, i MAY help in the purchase.

Thats all i can think of for now

God Bless You All!
LegaianLight

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O Praise Christ, O Praise Christ, He Is Holy, He Is Holy - O Praise Him,