Starting from scratch

zenofeller · 2005-06-13T04:06:50

Team name: not named yet The team will get a name the day there is some legacy of some sort that name can represent. Untill such a day, the naming of the team is a non-issue. Project name: Realms of Anaca Brief description: mmorpg style game, fantasy (medieval with just a little pinch of technology, muskets and such) going for isometric gfx, very complex skill/stat xp battle craft system. Target aim: ideally retail, but all depends. Compensation: no pay per work, but % of future revenue. can put in writing. Technology: At this early stage we have not decided yet. This is because the server and client platforms will be independent, the networking code will decide what we use for server, the graphics engine will decide what we use for client. I am inclined for C in some form, but that is not set in stone. We will probably use some sort of scripting language for the ai and such, but if the person doing it doesnt know perl i wont make them learn perl. thus i dont know yet what scripting language. As the project progresses we will write tools, especially for adding content and generating maps, but we just dont have them yet. We (I) are currently researching to see what pre-made graphics engine could be reasonably used, if any. Talent needed: anything you are good at can help, so dont be shy. Particularly needing : 1. one good to excellent directx person for the clientside and some tools. 2. one reasonable to brilliant script person for things like the ai scripting, quest and item generation and so forth. 3. any artists, for concept art, banners, sprites, textures, icons, gui graphics, so forth. can never have too many artists. not needing sound people at this early stage, but will later on. 4. any story writers are welcome to apply, and will be given a task. depending on that first story (which has to be written on demand, i dont consider pre-written stories) we will make a call. understand that call only says something about us and nothing about you, your skill or your talent. 5. we could use networking people, especially for the client side. I do not want a lead programmer at this point. This is because somebody can't just become lead programmer before i am confident that they have excellent communications skills. A coven of programmers under the magic wand of one lead programmer doing obscure coding at 4 am in the morning is my own personal nightmare. However, a person knowledgeable of coding who also has an ability to communicate efficiently about the code will gladly be promoted to the lead programmer position. No positions are ever "closed". I am confident that i can design/scale the project so as many as 10 people can work on networking, or client, or anything else. If you have any skills to offer do not be put off thinkig "ah, well, they already have someone for that". We can always use you. Team structure: 1 person doing game design, project manager, odd bits and ends. 1 person doing webmastery. 2 persons doing various graphics bits. 1 person doing networking for the server. 1 person writing stories (we aim to have about 1-200k words of short and medium literary bits to give depth to the world) Website: we are working at getting a website up, although there is going to be little to put on it. At the very least, we will have some of the Anaca Encyclopedia running and some mood setting text bits. And some graphics. This will hopefully be up this week or the next. Contacts: forum http://s2.phpbbforfree.com/forums/anaca.html just started, so will get more usefull/informative soon asdf116k@yahoo.com for any inquiries. Additional Info: there are currently a good number of problems with mmorpgs, here is the list of (in my oppinion) most important ones : 1. levelling threadmill (makes the game a matter of who has more time, isnt fun, allows xp farming) 2.inflation based economy (makes the game a matter of who has more time, isnt fun, allows gold farming) 3. lack of content (all the content in a mmorpg is enough for 100 hours of play, maybe. rest of the time players waste on non-content) 4. PvP nonsense. (In general a pvp community quickly sepparates in foxes and hens. which makes it not a community but two sides of a whining/flaming contest) Other minor points, like manifest inability to use MOST of the features a virtual world could, in fact, offer. I think I have a game system that would significantly alleviate or completely eliminate most if not all of those. I need to have this verified, and to do this i need someone to write a prototype of the game. The above means the game is almost completely (90%, yeah I know, now the other 90% needs to get done) designed. There exists a working system (mathematically proven to be working) for classes and skills, experience, interaction with monsters, crafting and resource gathering. All this exists in writing. I am currently considering wether i will have the most revolutionary bits patented (yes,at least one member of the team has had intellectual property protected before) or what. Nothing is taken after ANY other game, and this includes old pen and papers. Everything is written from scratch, to take advantage of the new circumstances (processing power of modern computers and ease of distributed communications in modern networks, both things impossible for the old pen and paper, where someone had to do the math in real time, for instance). Many of these original limitations still limit the MMORPG's released, although the physical restraints have long dissapeared) Quite a lot of very complex math went into that system designing, and if you ask a question, such as "why do you have 3 damage types ?" the answer is most likely not going to be "well i thought it would be cool to have 3 damage types" but, in this particular case "well, the functional that i used to represent interaction in the combat-space of the game-algebra admits a maximum of 3 solutions. Luckily, it so hapens that in reality the medieval weapons are grouped in 3 cathegories. (what a coincidence /sarcasm). Hence i must use 3 damage types". Granted, sometimes i will answer "well, thats cool", or "well, thats obvious". but often, more often than anyone i ever know of who ever made a game in the history of game making, i will have an actual numeric reason. The main reason i am so excited about this game system, excited enough in fact that i will actually take the asanine step of trying to have it implemented is because the above example has happened at least 50 times over as I was working. My functional has 3 0 results, oh, lo and behold, look on the site of people regulating the sport of medieval fighting (yea, it exists), they group weapons in 3 cathegories. It is the first time in my entire life when a mathematical model i came up with has such an unbelivable coherence with reality, in such unexpected ways. The concept is that if we get the game going, all the above can be then proven to be true. And if it indeed is true, the game will be in fact a hit. [Edited by - zenofeller on June 13, 2005 4:04:38 AM]

Old Archive Archive

Started by zenofeller June 11, 2005 05:21 PM

12 comments, last by zenofeller 18 years, 10 months ago

Raduprv

997

June 12, 2005 04:26 PM

Quote:Original post by zenofeller
Quote:Even I have problems recruiting good programmers to help with my MMORPG.

something in there makes it not all that surprising :)

Something like... what?

Eternal Lands (free, Open Source MMORPG)

necreia

793

June 12, 2005 05:21 PM

Quote:Original post by zenofeller
...

Recruitment is a skill, there are so many of those MMO posts that if you want a good chance to get some skilled people, you'll need to 'outdo' their recruitment angle. If you have the most information presented in the best way possible, you'll have a great chance to encourage skilled people to work on your concept.

Quote:Original post by zenofeller
...if i dont name a team it doesnt have to mean i cant get my brain around the complexity of naming the team, does it ?

Saying you have a design document is good enough, don't have to display it. And having a Team Name does show that you've taken care of everything you could, and came up to the point as to request others for assistance in the project. You're requesting people to devote large amounts of time into a very long and shaky process... the best way to let them in is to show that you have taken care of all the management details already (as that is the role you say you will serve in the project).

Your position is direction and design, but those things are not illustrated by the recruitment post. There may be a design document or other materials, it's best to say they are at least finished. There is also no word of what languages / engines you will be using. (If you haven't chosen one yet because you want the programmers to choose it, then you really should start with recruiting only one programmer as a lead and let him/her build everything before you bring in others... they must all "speak the same language.")

Also, you didn't even mention WHO you need. Starting from scratch is one thing, but you should at least show you have researched WHAT it takes to make a MMORPG by saying who/how many you need.

From reading the recruitment post, I can't tell:
- What type of game it is (fantasy, real time strat, sci-fi, shooter), just that it is MMO with RPG elements.
- If you have a design document or any concept anything
- What team is looking for help, just the project name
- What you have done before that proves you have manager or game designer skills
- What language the programmers will need to know, what model format will be needed, or even if the isometric is 3D or 2D 'based'
- What time frame you are looking at for development
- What people do you need, 1 programmer or 10... 1 artist or 5?

The only thing that can be gathered by the post is that, you have a web master, game designer/project manager, and a spriter working on an ambiguous project… for 2 days.

You may see this as insultive, but this is not only an attempt at helping you build a more professional recruitment thread so your project succeeds, but to help avoid others from coming to the forums and see/creating new-MMORPG threads without first performing the proper planning stage before pre-alpha development.

Raduprv has worked with a team to produce a successful MMORPG thus far (located at http://www.eternal-lands.com). His opinion in this is very seasoned and relevant. Saying you don't want public responses (even if they are opinions) on a public board is silly. You came to the community, not the other way around.

*edit: grammar

[Edited by - necreia on June 12, 2005 5:21:58 PM]

Raduprv

997

June 12, 2005 05:35 PM

BTW, I made the same mistake once.
At that time I only knew ASM, and didn't know any OpenGL or DX (that was about 5 years ago). So I tried to recruit a team, and managed to get a few interested people. We had a few real life meetings and stuff, until, for some personal reasons, the lead programmer left. We didn't go very far at all, just had a simple terrain engine and that was pretty much it.
Then I realized that I have to become the lead programmer myself, if I were to actually have an MMORPG. So I started to learn C and OpenGL, so I finally managed to make an MMORPG.
Now I am working at my second one as a lead programmer/idea guy/software engineering and work at my first MMORPG as customer support, some financial stuff, team coordinator and so on.

Eternal Lands (free, Open Source MMORPG)

zenofeller

100

Author

June 13, 2005 04:06 AM

based on community feed-back, i have edited the recruiting post.
thank you to all the people who did post, understand that regardless wether i agree or not, or even agree you have any right to say what you say, i will consider what is said.

*edit*

actually, doing some reading here on help wanted (which has been very amusing indeed) i realise i have been overly [ridiculously ?] harsh to people posting, and wrongly so. i must appologize for what now seems an entirely uncalled for "stepped on bunions" attitude, and i must encourage everyone to post, regardless if its what i originally asked for or not even remotely.

this doesnt mean i have given up on my project, i dont intend to. actually working on website art and stories atm, hopefully will be up sometime next week.
it just means i stopped going to dailyrotten and am now coming here for my daily pill of amusement.

[Edited by - zenofeller on June 15, 2005 7:06:51 PM]

Starting from scratch

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