Who would be interested in forming a GLBasic dev team?

[spicypixel]

Given the quality of talent here it would be a sin and a shame not to pool a team(s) to develop cross platform games. If anyone is interested and believe they have the skills to create high quality titles then please comment on the idea here and your thoughts.

My key skill is 2D pixel art. I'm skilled in logo design, hud creation, font creation and background tilesets. I also have skills in animating sprites too although I do prefer mechanical stuff (ie shoot em up) or platformer type graphics. This is not to say I cannot create others but this tends to be my strength. Also happy doing incidental animations, explosions, pickups etc..

As a part-time programmer it does give me the added bonus of preparing artwork that is coder-friendly shall we say lol

Anyone else interested?

[Ian Price]

I think it'd be great to form a dev team, but to do so would require dedication, motivation and volition to get even the smallest things done. Sometimes compromises and tough decisions have to be made.

Communication (or lack of) can be a real killer, as can people's real lives. Interest levels can wain very quickly if productivity levels fall off (as they always do).

Tasks, ideas and workload require sharing and agreements from all parties, otherwise interests wain. Balancing all of these can be almost impossible.

Then you have to decide whether the venture and all the hard work is going to be commercial or freeware. What about the profits of commercial ventures? Who keeps the books etc. etc.

But yeah - these are all minor things compared to the fun and satisfaction that teams bring. I'm game:)

[spicypixel]

Well I was thinking freeware to eliminate the hassle of ca$h As for the other issues yep totally agree but even so I'm sure if an idea can be agreed it's still likely to reach fruition and those that are at the end are effectively the team for the next venture commercial or otherwise

[erico]

totally agree with Ian, but then again, no run no fun, we just have to keep things a little non personal... no fights.
I would say we go for commercial if we can.
I could help out some gfx too.

Having seen a few AMOS attempts on that and a few others, I´d say it´s risky.

[Wampus]

I'm game for a collaborative effort. My relative strength is probably complex/creative problem solving. I'm reasonably good with sound & music too so I could help in that area if needed.

To begin with why not get a Dev team together for a minor project, intended as freeware, just to see how that goes? Keep it deliberately small to see what that's like before committing to anything larger.

It would be ideal to use specialised cloud-based framework for this sort of thing. SourceForge or GitHub would pretty much cover all that, so long as the project is open source. If there was a desire to go commercial, keep the option open of doing that or simply keep things closed source then we'd need to do everything ourselves. In that case a dedicated cloud-based project management app will be essential for organisation & communication - something like Collabtive installed on one of our webservers or a free plan with people like Teamwork Project Management. A version-aware multi-user file server for source & media files would be necessary too. Project Management apps usually have basic file servers but there are better dedicated apps for that sort of thing.

Once we've got a show of hands for who wants to try this it would be a very good idea in my opinion to select a primary person whose role would be to co-ordinate the project and a secondary backup to take over just in case. Such a position should be administrative only (to my mind) with no more creative control than other contributors, i.e. purely to help keep things moving along. They would keep tabs on the various roles & assigned tasks, keep everyone informed about what was happening, help co-ordinate ways to resolve problems that arise, etc.

I think it would also be good to have a lead programmer role for orientation purposes. Although any of us could offer code ideas or solutions it would be helpful if one person was concentrating in particular on how it all had to fit together. It doesn't mean they'd necessarily be the most experienced coder, just that they would be the primary tester and concern themselves with the code as a whole.

Anyway, getting carried away here. Can't see how many people would want to join in yet!

[spicypixel]

I thought it best to start with something free and also quite small to see how it goes as a project. I have a nice idea for an arcade puzzler. I started writing it in BlitzMax a while back. It's a relative simple game concept where level design is what creates the puzzles so no complex algorithms or enemies just simple level layout. I'll post something here to show what I mean later.

As for project collaboration with github or sourceforge I'm happy to use anything for team collaboration. It'd be interesting to see who'd be best suited for co-ordinating the project and candidates for lead coder too (not me though lol)

I see from the posts already we can cater for art, code and sound so off to a good start.

[Sokurah]

If you're up for doing some graphics for a game that is already nearing completion, I could certainly use a helping hand.

It's not programmed in GLBasic though - it's in BlitzMax, but it IS a freeware game.

It's a shooter controlled using the mouse only and not that much graphics are needed (15 enemies, all 32x32, some animated...but not all, plus misc).

I can PM you the details if you'd be interrested?

[spicypixel]

If you're up for doing some graphics for a game that is already nearing completion, I could certainly use a helping hand.

It's not programmed in GLBasic though - it's in BlitzMax, but it IS a freeware game.

It's a shooter controlled using the mouse only and not that much graphics are needed (15 enemies, all 32x32, some animated...but not all, plus misc).

I can PM you the details if you'd be interrested?

Yeh PM me

[spicypixel]

Here's my lil demo of the game Idea I had, logic isn't implemented but you can see from the demo the style of art etc... Still very much work in progress but easier to see than sketches and text sometimes

Download:
http://www3.zippyshare.com/v/98781464/file.html

Keys are:
Q - Up/Left
S - Down/Right
P - Up/Right
L - Down/Left
Space - Deletes tile below you (my testing of changing map data)

Screenshot


Include in the ZIP file is a tiny mock up in 2D with some brief info about the idea too. Thoughts appreciated

[Sokurah]

It looks amazing, but then again - I'm a sucker for isometrics.
I love the robot - very cute. And everything is very crisp too. Lovely.

I'm noticing that that you don't walk behind scenery anywhere - only those bomb-like thingies. Is that because you don't want to obscure anything or because the engine doesn't clip the scenery correctly if you walk behind a wall?

[matchy]

That does look very cool but I suggest the idea needs more development before any prototyping.

For me, creating something like this is easier in 3D because the animated models and textures are simply easier to generate quickly regardless of user graphical tastes.

[spicypixel]

That does look very cool but I suggest the idea needs more development before any prototyping.

For me, creating something like this is easier in 3D because the animated models and textures are simply easier to generate quickly regardless of user graphical tastes.

Noooooo 2D looks cool lol It was only a game idea suggestion that could be playable based on the main sprite and bombs on a level causing the player to think. Similarly the feel of a nice physics engine makes you think oooh could be a good game here. Rather than spending ages working on a concept that could be flawed from the start I was thinking something like this has good groundings to be playable from the get-go so ultimately it can only improve with features. I agree it needs much more game elements included to have a complete game idea mind

[spicypixel]

I'm noticing that that you don't walk behind scenery anywhere - only those bomb-like thingies. Is that because you don't want to obscure anything or because the engine doesn't clip the scenery correctly if you walk behind a wall?

Both really but mainly because I haven't gotten a separate layer for walking behind

[erico]

a picture can say a thousand words...and also bring a thousand ideas.

It looks neat, I took a look at your plan within the file download.
That front-face isometric type looks good to.

One thing is that each of the forum guys are probably researching different areas, 3d, net connection and so on.
If the game is to be a test drive and free, then we could group what people are currently developing/studying into it.

[spicypixel]

Yeh I was originally gonna do the chaos engine perspective style (although the pic is a quick 10 minute mock up). I think its a great idea involving people who are working on various aspects as it keeps things modular and assists in dev time.

How about some show of hands who'd be interested in getting involved? Not necessarily my idea I just thought I'd start off by throwing ideas into the pot.