I am looking for a programmer who is interested in making an indie game called Space Hockey. The design document can be downloaded from my blog on GameDev.Net. There are also over 600 pages of material relating too my 14-game Pirate Dawn Universe on this blog.
For now I am only looking for a programmer who is capable of making Space Hockey, and together we can assemble the rest of the team from there. I am looking for someone who is at least near 30 years old and has finished at least one game before. I don't want to distract younger people from establishing themselves in a career with the lure of making games, and I want someone who has made at least one game before so that they understand going into it how much work that entails even for a simple game like Space Hockey. It doesn't have to be a game that was published, the whole point is just that you understand how much work it is to actually finish it.
I am not looking to just make something to post on an indie site somewhere, the goal here is to eventually have Space Hockey for sale on Steam. As can be seen in the design document, once that has been achieved there is a lot of expansion of this that could take place resulting in half-a-dozen or so DLC expansions. This would begin as a hobby/indie project but will, hopefully, someday become a commercial game company. Assuming that Space Hockey and its DLC expansions were successful, the goal would be to transition into a commercial game company and begin work on the 14 games of my Pirate Dawn Universe.
I have been designing games and simulations since before the computer game industry existed, for about 40 years now. I don't say this out of arrogance. It is simply a fact of time that today, in 2018, I am one of the most experienced and knowledgeable game and simulation designers in the world. Although the very simple Space Hockey does not use it, a physical construct that I call “Rube” is the fundamental basis of what you know as “The Matrix”. Rube is also the fundamental basis of cyberspace, an insubstantial holodeck, and a self-programming computer with omniscient communication. The later games of the Pirate Dawn Universe such as Territories, Mission, Clash of the Titans, and the Struggle of the Ancients games are all based on Rube.
The Pirate Dawn Universe is a sci-fi universe focused on space ship games. Lost Art Studios games are based on the 300 years of game design that came before computer games. They are not, for the most part, based on past computer games. This is only one of the things that makes these games unlike any computer games that have ever existed before. As a former member of the SFB Staff, there is no competition out there for Lost Art Studios when it comes to making space ship games for the computer. If LAS can get off the ground, competing within this genre in the modern game industry would be like hunting rabbits with a 120mm cannon.
This will begin as a hobby/indie project to create Space Hockey, and we can establish a typical deal where those who contribute to the creation of the game receive some form of payment if and when the game actually makes money. I really don't care about the money very much and am open to anything that works. The true goal, however, is to get Lost Art Studios off the ground as a commercial game company that will very easily dominate the space ship game genre with its 40 years of accumulated knowledge of the Star Fleet Universe community. And, of course, Rube... which also partly comes from the SFU. Even if Lost Art Studios manages to get off the ground, we would not attempt to develop a truly large or complex game at first. Part of the plan within the design of the games of the PDU is that the first three games are smaller and more simple games to make.
Territories is a prequel, that “Civilization scale war game” is first chronologically but can be made at any point during the telling of the PDU story. The actual first three games are intentionally simple to make. As an MMO Pirate Dawn is “massive” from the player's perspective, but it it is actually a fairly small and simple game too make. The “massiveness” of Pirate Dawn is an illusion too the player. The game itself isn't actually “massive”, the simple arcade game maps are. Manifest Destiny and The Trade Wars, what would be the second and third games, are both smaller and easier to produce than Pirate Dawn is. They are both intentionally minimalist strategy economic war game “scenario generators” where the focus is heavily on the tactical combat resolution (which is not 3D). Lost Art Studios would not even attempt to make a “big game” until we were on our fourth release.
If you are interested in helping to create Space Hockey, with a plan already place to keep going from there, you can contact me through my blog on GameDev.Net or my e-mail address:
From Astral Invasion...
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All of the songs of The Yes Album are a part of the Astral Invasion story;-)