Indie's Unite-Game Idea + Project Work

#1 After looking through all the posts about projects and development requests, I can see that there is a large amount of people that have gotten burned or singed by development ideas and projects that have encompassed hours or personal time with no return. I imagine this is always a risk, but even more so with indies. So here is some back ground info on me...

I am 36 years old and live in Viva Las Vegas. I have been in 2d graphics production for well over 15 years in both management, training, customer service and general production. I have a vaste amount of experience in art and design as well as production in the 2d world (offset printing, large format ink-jet and 3d displays for various shows and seminars). My gaming and programming (very very basic) goes back to the days of the apple II, commodore 64, atari and intellevision. Hmm, I feel all old now, LOL!

I have no big get rich dreams and fully believe there should be some unity in modern culture that leaves room for diversity and advancement of knowledge and experience on an individual level. I'd personally like to take a huge chunk of risk out of most of the common day marketplace ideas and foster the supportive spirit more then being a millionaire. I lead a pretty simple laid back life for the most part.

Now, for what this project has already is a lot of 2d art, dialog scripts and a basic model for gameplay. What it does not have is a build gaming model, which ultimately brought me here to GG and lead to many ideas and ways to implement (affordably) a way to develop. and publish an MMORPG. I'm choosing the genre for 2 reasons, first is it's popularity and second it's my current favorite type of gameplay. I think it has many years left in it and provides a good way to get off the ground in development. I am certainly open to ideas as well.

I envision both instanced (PVE) and shared (PVP) zone gameplay without the typical leveling system seen in almost every rpg making it feel like a *grind*. The title is Neophagia (which in basic terms means famine in a rich environment) takes place on the planet neophagia and has direct links to the greek gods that are tied into a lot of the paranormal events (like ufo's and abductions) that we read about in modern rag mags. This link between them is explained in detail through the game and goes all the way back into greek and pre-greek mythos as well as *origins of the universe*. So there is quite a bit to work from.

I will try to post some links to a couple pdfs that I've been working on detailing skils, and gameplay. But realize i also envision a shared server dynamic that will drastically reduce initial start up costs of a dedicated server system. So if you do sign up many would be integral in providing the data to our future gamers. So just some extra tidbits to throw out there and regardless of response I'm pretty determined to put these ideas into action.

Thanks for reading, links to come :)

#2 "The entire development cycle, from beginning (right now) to it's fruition (whatever that may be) will be developed by indies, the entire profit of the project will be distributed evenly among each development team member with the freedom and perks of being an independent without the higher risks involved with various solo projects. As the project gets even more successful, having the experience of being a part of a successful team also looks great on any future projects you may take."

Actually this is the usual arrangement for MMOS - all volunteers unless the lead designer has a little personal cash he's willing to throw at it, profit sharing (meaning that when the project fizzles there are no profits), and the consolation prize that at least your work can be used in your portfolio.

I think (because I've seen this problem repeatedly) that you will not be able to get people to agree on what the MMO should be like. Me personally I'd love to make an MMO but I'm totally not interested in greek gods or alien abductions.

#3 Yes I imagine you are right about the agreement on mmorpg style, but the basic outline is in place and can always be tweaked. I think it's important that any developer has an interest in seeing the game done, I'm sorry to hear that you are not interested however.

Here are the links to the recent skills chart and players guide. Nether of which are complete or spell/grammer checked.

Skills Chart

Guide

#4 Sounds interesting!

I could help with the storyline, quests, etc.

#5 "I think (because I've seen this problem repeatedly) that you will not be able to get people to agree on what the MMO should be like. Me personally I'd love to make an MMO but I'm totally not interested in greek gods or alien abductions."

You can always decide/agree beforehand and then just say "this is what it's going to be like, period."

#6 Yes, Dan that is the point indeed. Not so much to dictate gameplay theme or model designs, but to initially agree that this is a project that you as a developer can be happy with. I have no desire to create a game that not even the developers feel good about and I've heard the horror stories. Development in art, sciences, music as well as software design start with the basics, but its hard to guess what they might become as things get milled around.

Everyone that loves gaming or desires to build the dream, has ideas and it often takes a project of well thought out proportions and support to make those ideas become a reality. But, not everyone, in fact a very limited few have the opportunity or even the desire to undertake such a venture. So finding the right people and combination of ideas often makes games that otherwise may be mundane, extrodinary just through the creative process and resources available.

I personally don't enjoy fps's, but for those that do and there are many, it's of great entertainment value that they be developed. Far be it from me to sqwaush the creative spirit for those that really want to make great fps games!

The absolute best i can hope for is a nice group that are behind the design and can agree on the fine details enough to make it stand out. Hopefully i/we can get enough motivation to bring even more unique development ideas to reality.

@ Ryan please take a look at the ideas i have put together so far and submit some simple questlines, dialogs, etc. (or even think of new ways to develop a character) that we can go over and discuss. Thank you for your interest!

And both of you (Mare and Dan) for your input, thank you also.

#7 @Dan - then you just don't get anyone joining the project lol. Everyone thinks, if I'm working for nothing, I'm at least going to work on what _I_ want to work on.

@Jason - I'll describe the kind of MMO I would be interested in working on if you're interested. Tentative title: Becoming. 2D because a lot of indie game projects fail purely from the complexities of getting 3D art. Anime style because that's what I love. The game would be combat-optional with the main alternative being crafting and the secondary alternative being merchanting. Crafting would be done by playing minigames so it wouldn't be grindy. There would be a fairly small well-developed cast of NPCs the player could build relationships (romatic or platonic, positive or negative) with ala a dating sim. Players would grow plants, breed/mutate animals, build houses. There would be no leveling, 'level' would be measured by progression through the game's plot (individual to each avatar) and obtainment of money and cool clothes and other items, and also quests completed and PvP record. Classes instead of being prescriptively chosen at the start of the game would consist of descriptive titles awarded according to what the player spends their time doing - hunting monsters, pvp, group missions, crafting, breeding/mutating stuff, or buying and selling. An automated market system and a messageboard would be two other important parts of the game. Finally the game would have an 18+ server which allowed swearing and cybering, and a general server for kids and those who want a clean game. (A few other ideas for unique features and moneymaking ideas, but I'll keep those under wraps in case I ever get a chance to actually design an MMO.)

#8 Well running seperate servers just for adults could be pretty hardware intensive, keeping the game quite expensive to run for what is basically chat filtering that can be done on the client end. I don't think your project ideas are even remotely impossible or even difficult to impliment in 3d either. I've done some various art for both types and unless you're strictly relying on sprites, 3d art is somewhat less tedious, oddily enough. Then again 3d does really keep in the spirit of anime itself.

I know quite a few people that would love to see an anime style MMO out there (one that was really in the spirit of anime). I personally couldn't lead a team through that sort of game, i do like anime, yet i'm not a huge fan of it. I could definately see a game like Lain become an MMO, but right now the console market has a huge share of anime type games (not online based), which is a tough market to get into.

I think in the near future I could however help you with getting something going, stranger things have happened.

#9 It's not just chat filtering, the idea is to let the adults play in an adult atmosphere. It's really annoying to play a MMO as a 20-something in a see of fifteen year olds. I would just make the whole game 18 and up only, but there's such a big under-18 market I wouldn't want to ignore it. I'm working from the assumption that most MMOs have multiple servers anyway, it would be easy to designate some as pg-13 rated and some as NC-17 rated.

You think 3D art is less tedious that 2D? o.O Huh. I've also done both 2D and 3D art and I find the 3D a lot more enjoyable as well as easier to get satisfactory results when portraying people and animals. My recent personal project has been making an animated 2D anime-style MMO avatar. This has been difficult, mainly because I don't have a lot of experience with animation. After a few drafts I have my proportions pretty consistent and the motion fairly smooth but a bit stiff-looking. It is a sprite/paperdoll system, one where the game automatically assembles player-chosen layers for the base, hair, clothes, etc then flattens the layers into that avatar's personalized sprite. Once the basic bodies and their animations are established it will be really easy to add additional articles of clothing, weapons, etc. :)

Link: (not safe for work, bouncy female nude)
members.gamedev.net/sunandshadow/TFAV2white.gif

#10 True that all mmo's unless they only have a very small player base run multiple servers, but typically each server runs different parts of the entire game world, this includes zones, chatting, registration and player data, etc. Basically what you're talking about would require double that amount to separate adults from kids with no real guarantee that the kids won't be on the adults servers. There are ways to keep the kids off by using cc info, but most people really don't like posting cc info to game servers (no matter how secure they say they are). WOW is a great example of people choosing to just go out and buy game cards at their local store over buying time online tied to a cc. None the less many parents that do buy the game for kids will let those kids use the card for sign-up regardless of content or advisories. I agree that it can be extremely frustrating to be an adult playing with 12 year olds though, but there is good reason why the adults that make the games have a hard time filtering out kids. I think if anyone was really persistent they could come up with some easier ways around this issue, but to date there hasn't been any real viable solutions. A typical example is FPS's with lots of gore and how many of those players are 12 year old or under kids.

Anyway, you're animation looks great! What i meant about designing in 2d is that all the shadow and highlight detail needs to be accounted for with 2d modeling, where as in 3d the engine pretty much handles all that extra detail. Animation as well has been much more developed on 3d platforms. The algorithms to fill in frame data is quite intuitive now, making even very complicated movements quite a bit easier to deliver. So is your game idea a side scrolling one?

#11 Thank you - personally I think it's only tolerable so far, this is only the second draft. And the nude version has to be basically perfect because many of the articles of clothing will show skin in different places, can't rely on the clothing to hide the details of the body like I often do when drawing people. Sidescrolling, I'm not sure actually, maybe more like isometric. Sidescrolling is great for combat but really doesn't work so well for sim gameplay like gardening.

For separating the adults from the children, I was thinking the pg-13 server would be the default one, and moving to the NC-17 one would require submitting a scan of your driver's license or similar proof of age - I know of an adult story archive website which does this quite successfully. Even if a few kids lie and submit someone else's ID, that would keep most of them out. Would only work for US players though, that might be a problem. Alternately we could go with a peer moderation scheme where players have to sign a statement saying they're 18 but also submit a few paragraphs of literate writing as proof of mental maturity. I'm not fond of requiring a credit card because I believe MMOS should be free to play and ad-supported unless players choose to subscribe to get rid of the ads. I dunno, there are lots of ways to handle age verification, it's a good subject for a team to brainstorm and vote on what would be the best approach.

#12 I always thought about having one version of a game where the kid "kills" a chicken and gets a chicken to cook vs. another version which let's the adult bite the chicken's head off and suck it's blood!

As for conversation, it shouldn't be too hard to limit it to multiple choice responses for the minors and eliminate most of the bad language hastles or making both versions incapable of chatting to each other (but I'm going to do them compatible with each other just right, hehe).

Like my puzzle game I'm planning. In the kid version it's all cartoon violence. In the adult version you get some vivid gore and destruction in a more realistic setting. In both, people are getting crushed by the falling debris which needs to be sorted before it hit's the ground in order to be eliminated and stopped from destroying the town. Oh yeah, and whoever plays as the bad guy in the adult version get's to hear some adult language, too!

My two cents...out of many!
- Ronixus

#13 That sounds like two totally different games because of the different graphics, neither of them an MMORPG because IMHO the ability to chat is an essential feature of an MMORPG. In my design the only differences between the two versions would be that some game content would not appear in the pg-13 version (risque clothing, ability to seduce NPCs, sexual roleplay forum) and some player language and activities would be censored.

#14 Blaha, Lain - boy that brings me back. Probably one of my original inspirations to become a computer heavy user, funny lookin back on it now and seeing how some things were different. I know my watercooled setup fancyness is influenced by watching that, that fluorescent UV green, heh.

Bout anime stylization, I personally love the style, having grown up with it, not real life acting or cartoons (dreadful stuff, cartoons). I always enjoyed the musical scores, specially those with Jazzy or DnB ties. Am I rambling? ;)

Mare: Your animation looks tight enough, though the head REALLY REALLY bothers me, the way the chin is farther forward than the forehead just defies anime all together. I just had to say it >.< Otherwise great animation, though there seem to be lots of pointy bits (not her knockers either)

I've got nothin' to do now, I could help, level design - light programming, etc. Currently floating between projects, would be cool to see one that actually made it to a playable point, but they all seem to fall apart before considerable progress is made :( Maybe I'm just bad luck. Or maybe its just the indie curse :)

#15 So it's quite on here huh? thanks Ish, of course. We do need more folks! Progress, progress...

-Website (basic) and forums this weekend DONE!
-Client end compression and encrypt DONE!

Moving on... Who else has time on their hands?

#16 Well, I just stopped talking because I realized I was kinda hijacking the thread and I didn't want to be rude... o.O

Ishbuu - with the chin, he head is tilted up, eyes on the horizon, which makes the chin project farther forward relative to everything else; but yeah, she's just a rough silhouette at the moment, I wanted to get the motion right before I went back and tweaked everything to make it look good.

#17 Certainly sounds like a great idea and something I'd enjoy getting involved with, I've several years coding experience but I am new to Torque and game development so currently just working through and learning that. Probably wouldn't be of any help on the project but heh if there's anything I can do then sounds great

#18 Well Andy, please feel free to contact me, email or msn. There's plenty of stuff to do and you can give me some idea of what you can handle. Excellent! tyvm

#19 I just wanted to comment on the line that you think mmo's have at least a few years left in them

I don't think they'll ever be gone, look at FPS there's a lot less original content coming out of those but they arn't going anywhere, and there's still way too many possibilities of what mmo's can do I think it's a genre that will always be around

#20 Did i say they only had a few years left in them?

I think that they have quite awhile left in life-span although maybe not as they mmo's we play today. I think we are taking a step in a slightly new direction here with neophagia, but it's hard to tell this early if it's one that will catch on or not.

I was never a fan of FPS's, I like content and story too much to just go around shooting people in the face :)