Torque 3D team wants serious skilled part-time hobby indie
by Peter Mowry · 05/09/2009 (3:20 am) · 12 comments
For now, the title says it all... Or most of it
We've just started the project. We have the game concept, basic game design, plans for a version 0.1. Setup a private message board, version control, contacts, etc. Found some good teammates. Made some initial concept art, 3d models basic game design doc for version 0.1. Some sound/music contributors starting to work on initial sound effects.
Did some engine research / comparisons and settled on Torque 3D, and entered the beta just yesterday. Did a little Torque 3D code research. Have relevant experience with some previous game development, relevant programmer day job, relevant computer science computer graphics studies, etc.
We have enough to get started on the project and work towards the feasible version 0.1 of the game... However, we'd love to get additional teammates / contributors.
Please only contact if you have significant skills in some useful area, such as game/graphics code, visual art (3d modeling, texturing, 2d art), or other areas (such as music/sound, level design/editing, city planning or 3d architecture, web / online / server, etc). And are able to contribute significant time/effort to the project.
We'd love to have anyone who is able to help, join the project, and work on whatever aspects / contributions that you are most enthused about!
The project may evolve towards monetization goals... But first, we just want to work towards making a great game, starting with a great feasible prototype version 0.1 of the game.
If you're interested, please let me know!
Btw, I realize in this post I haven't said anything specific about the game design stuff, or specific skills and assets of team members.
However, if you are interested, you're probably first interested just based on the type of team/project it is. So if you are serious (and have serious skills), then please contact me, and if it sounds like you are likely to be able to contribute, I will be glad to share some more details about the game design/planning and the rest of the current team.
Also, in 1-3 months-ish, I may do another post with some screen shots of the version 0.1. But for now... Hoping to maybe get another teammate to join even before then?
Thank you for reading this post!
We've just started the project. We have the game concept, basic game design, plans for a version 0.1. Setup a private message board, version control, contacts, etc. Found some good teammates. Made some initial concept art, 3d models basic game design doc for version 0.1. Some sound/music contributors starting to work on initial sound effects.
Did some engine research / comparisons and settled on Torque 3D, and entered the beta just yesterday. Did a little Torque 3D code research. Have relevant experience with some previous game development, relevant programmer day job, relevant computer science computer graphics studies, etc.
We have enough to get started on the project and work towards the feasible version 0.1 of the game... However, we'd love to get additional teammates / contributors.
Please only contact if you have significant skills in some useful area, such as game/graphics code, visual art (3d modeling, texturing, 2d art), or other areas (such as music/sound, level design/editing, city planning or 3d architecture, web / online / server, etc). And are able to contribute significant time/effort to the project.
We'd love to have anyone who is able to help, join the project, and work on whatever aspects / contributions that you are most enthused about!
The project may evolve towards monetization goals... But first, we just want to work towards making a great game, starting with a great feasible prototype version 0.1 of the game.
If you're interested, please let me know!
Btw, I realize in this post I haven't said anything specific about the game design stuff, or specific skills and assets of team members.
However, if you are interested, you're probably first interested just based on the type of team/project it is. So if you are serious (and have serious skills), then please contact me, and if it sounds like you are likely to be able to contribute, I will be glad to share some more details about the game design/planning and the rest of the current team.
Also, in 1-3 months-ish, I may do another post with some screen shots of the version 0.1. But for now... Hoping to maybe get another teammate to join even before then?
Thank you for reading this post!
#2
Is it planned to be a Multiplayer/Singleplayer, MMO, FPS, Puzzle, megaman-ish, diablo-ish, halo-ish ?
etc etc...
P.S. I assume mepem.com = Me, Peter E. Mowry. Interesting choice!
05/09/2009 (5:31 am)
Peter, could you share the game's genre and/or art genre/style ?Is it planned to be a Multiplayer/Singleplayer, MMO, FPS, Puzzle, megaman-ish, diablo-ish, halo-ish ?
etc etc...
P.S. I assume mepem.com = Me, Peter E. Mowry. Interesting choice!
#3
You'll do better finding people once you've come out and said what you want to work on. Most people here want to work on (or avoid) specific kinds of projects, and no one cares enough about your unique idea to steal it. Saying what you're working on also says that you know what you want to make, and you're not just grabbing up a bunch of people to whom you then fire off a mass email saying "okay, what ideas does everyone have?" (that happens).
Also, as a word of advice on team building: If you have coders, do some game programming up front before you get artists. A 3D artist wants to see his/her work in-game, and if it's going to take 3-6 months to see it doing what it should be doing inside a game engine, then you're going to lose that artist. You can get away with programmer art if your gameplay is good enough, and it shows potential artists that you're both serious and very ready to utilize their time and assets.
And rather than a message board, use Huddle as a workspace. It's free for the lowest end usage, provides more storage than you'll need for docs, and has all kinds of team management functions. Good stuff, that, and it will help you a lot (it also has discussion forums in a wiki format).
In any event, you sound like you have some good skills to bring to the table, from what your profile says.
Edit: eb beat me to the first response. I need to stop writing such long posts :p
05/09/2009 (5:35 am)
This is better off in the jobs forums, as an FYI.Quote:I realize in this post I haven't said anything specific about the game design stuff
You'll do better finding people once you've come out and said what you want to work on. Most people here want to work on (or avoid) specific kinds of projects, and no one cares enough about your unique idea to steal it. Saying what you're working on also says that you know what you want to make, and you're not just grabbing up a bunch of people to whom you then fire off a mass email saying "okay, what ideas does everyone have?" (that happens).
Also, as a word of advice on team building: If you have coders, do some game programming up front before you get artists. A 3D artist wants to see his/her work in-game, and if it's going to take 3-6 months to see it doing what it should be doing inside a game engine, then you're going to lose that artist. You can get away with programmer art if your gameplay is good enough, and it shows potential artists that you're both serious and very ready to utilize their time and assets.
And rather than a message board, use Huddle as a workspace. It's free for the lowest end usage, provides more storage than you'll need for docs, and has all kinds of team management functions. Good stuff, that, and it will help you a lot (it also has discussion forums in a wiki format).
In any event, you sound like you have some good skills to bring to the table, from what your profile says.
Edit: eb beat me to the first response. I need to stop writing such long posts :p
#4
www.huddle.net/huddle-price-plans/
If you have a hosting plan, ill prefer a custom solution, ex. xoops or impresscms. Check my last blog, and check my website Softcannon Games.
And its true, i dont make a post for team building in GG because ill want make some gameplay videos first.
05/09/2009 (11:41 am)
mmm huddle?www.huddle.net/huddle-price-plans/
If you have a hosting plan, ill prefer a custom solution, ex. xoops or impresscms. Check my last blog, and check my website Softcannon Games.
And its true, i dont make a post for team building in GG because ill want make some gameplay videos first.
#5
05/09/2009 (4:03 pm)
@Javier: Huddle is mainly for team management, not for social networks for your site. I use the free price point because the game design docs don't take up much space. Aside from that, I think that your thoughts on using social network software on a site to help with community building is a great tip (and something that I need to do on the next major website update).
#6
@eb: It's true eb. mepem is a palendrome, and Pem is a recursive anacronym.
@Ted: thanks for pointing out the jobs forums.
@Ted: thanks for mentioning Huddle. I may look into that one in the near future
Yes I completely agree with both your comments about give more info. The issue is slightly about not wanting to publicly announce too much before we implement version 0.1. But, yes you do have an excellent point about "no one cares enough about your unique idea to steal it", so I'll throw out some brief high level info here as a start.
...
Initial team/work:
The projet is still early (starting/forming). But the initial goal is to work towards version 0.1 of the game. The long-term vision is more open and varied. But the version 0.1 goal for the game is reasonably simple/feasible, and reasonably well-defined.
We do have a basic intentionally very concise game design doc explaining version 0.1, and higher level ideas for a long-term vision. We have a 2d artist who is leading the concept art design, and two 3d modelers who have made some initial 3d models based on this. Imported one into TGEA demo with dts model, dsq animations, bump map test. Also, I am not the only one on the team who has some basic previous experience with game code. Also, we also have 2 guys starting on some sound effects/music stuff for version 0.1.
Some of us are in (Austin, TX), and we had a few in-person meetings at the start of the project. But the project is online (not location-centered), because that's how you can access more contributors. The general idea is that we want help from anyone who is enthused about the project and has real/significant skills and time/effort to make actual significant contributions. In whichever area(s) you are most enthused and most skilled (the obvious basic areas are game code and visual art or map/level design).
I have specific things I'd like to implement in the code (either myself, or for a skilled game coder teammate to take as a module/component) for version 0.1. And we have specific things for the other areas of version 0.1 (game design, visual art, sound).
...
Personal, very brief:
In college, a major concentration for Computer Science was Computer Graphics/Games, and did a few write-your-own-engine 3d games with DirectX:
* www.gillius.org/m3/index.htm#shots
* www.mepem.com/resume_RIT_pre-SimNow/Xundar/
* www.mepem.com/resume_RIT_pre-SimNow/IsoBomb/network.php
Since then, in my Coops, and now my day job (past 4-5 years), I have significant exposure to DirectX/OpenGL and GPU's at AMD/ATI, and of course code/programming stuff in general (and obviously some web/online team stuff). But this will be my first time being serious about using someone else's game engine, though I think it will actually just make the project easier and more robust. This past month I did a lot of research on various game engine choices, played with some demos, etc, which led us to Torque 3D.
...
The Game, very high level:
The game is cross-genre, the tentantive project code name is "City Hero Defense". The look is NPR (comic book esque, stylized, non-photo realistic, not in a goofy-cartoons way, closer to the feel of the many recent popular semi-serious comic book hero action movies).
If this sounds like something that would interest you (you, being anyone reading this), then please post here to express interest, share a contact method, or join the private message board (www.mepem.com/game/forum/)
...
Thank you for reading this! -- 2009/05/09
05/09/2009 (5:05 pm)
Thank you for your comments and excellent feedback@eb: It's true eb. mepem is a palendrome, and Pem is a recursive anacronym.
@Ted: thanks for pointing out the jobs forums.
@Ted: thanks for mentioning Huddle. I may look into that one in the near future
Yes I completely agree with both your comments about give more info. The issue is slightly about not wanting to publicly announce too much before we implement version 0.1. But, yes you do have an excellent point about "no one cares enough about your unique idea to steal it", so I'll throw out some brief high level info here as a start.
...
Initial team/work:
The projet is still early (starting/forming). But the initial goal is to work towards version 0.1 of the game. The long-term vision is more open and varied. But the version 0.1 goal for the game is reasonably simple/feasible, and reasonably well-defined.
We do have a basic intentionally very concise game design doc explaining version 0.1, and higher level ideas for a long-term vision. We have a 2d artist who is leading the concept art design, and two 3d modelers who have made some initial 3d models based on this. Imported one into TGEA demo with dts model, dsq animations, bump map test. Also, I am not the only one on the team who has some basic previous experience with game code. Also, we also have 2 guys starting on some sound effects/music stuff for version 0.1.
Some of us are in (Austin, TX), and we had a few in-person meetings at the start of the project. But the project is online (not location-centered), because that's how you can access more contributors. The general idea is that we want help from anyone who is enthused about the project and has real/significant skills and time/effort to make actual significant contributions. In whichever area(s) you are most enthused and most skilled (the obvious basic areas are game code and visual art or map/level design).
I have specific things I'd like to implement in the code (either myself, or for a skilled game coder teammate to take as a module/component) for version 0.1. And we have specific things for the other areas of version 0.1 (game design, visual art, sound).
...
Personal, very brief:
In college, a major concentration for Computer Science was Computer Graphics/Games, and did a few write-your-own-engine 3d games with DirectX:
* www.gillius.org/m3/index.htm#shots
* www.mepem.com/resume_RIT_pre-SimNow/Xundar/
* www.mepem.com/resume_RIT_pre-SimNow/IsoBomb/network.php
Since then, in my Coops, and now my day job (past 4-5 years), I have significant exposure to DirectX/OpenGL and GPU's at AMD/ATI, and of course code/programming stuff in general (and obviously some web/online team stuff). But this will be my first time being serious about using someone else's game engine, though I think it will actually just make the project easier and more robust. This past month I did a lot of research on various game engine choices, played with some demos, etc, which led us to Torque 3D.
...
The Game, very high level:
The game is cross-genre, the tentantive project code name is "City Hero Defense". The look is NPR (comic book esque, stylized, non-photo realistic, not in a goofy-cartoons way, closer to the feel of the many recent popular semi-serious comic book hero action movies).
If this sounds like something that would interest you (you, being anyone reading this), then please post here to express interest, share a contact method, or join the private message board (www.mepem.com/game/forum/)
...
Thank you for reading this! -- 2009/05/09
#7
www.softcannon.com/modules/wsproject/
05/10/2009 (9:58 am)
@ted, you dont understood me, xoops have some modules for project management, you can make a project public or private. So is better because the team can post in other modules, ex. blog, and you are making community meanwhile you build your game.www.softcannon.com/modules/wsproject/
#8
05/11/2009 (6:12 am)
@Javier: Interesting, I didn't notice the project management modules...
#10
I also gave your account permissions at the board (www.mepem.com/game/forum/), hope to hear from you, thanks :-)
05/17/2009 (1:05 am)
Thank you for expressing interest Syndroma. I will check for this PM at the board :-), and reply to you thereI also gave your account permissions at the board (www.mepem.com/game/forum/), hope to hear from you, thanks :-)
#11
05/27/2009 (6:01 am)
Hey Ted. Thanks for the tip on huddle, been using blogspot + ftp. Are there any catches in the license (we own rights to files you upload etc)...
#12
www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/17385
05/31/2009 (4:16 am)
I put up some visuals as requested... Just a video demo of starting on some initial Torque 3D code (and 3d models and concept art).www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/17385
Torque 3D Owner Peter Mowry