Alot of these types of messages have popped up recently, and i doubt forming a group through a forum is ever going to be able to get moving. The main thing is, there''s probably many reasons why it''s never going to work -
1. People are more interested in talking about it happening, rather than getting it organized,
2. People turn away after the subject of money has been discussed in detail,
3. Many newbies out there only join to find out new techniques & ways of creating a game engine (cut & pasters), some programmers dont only want to contribute to the game because they''re work may get stolen and used in other people''s games, and finally
4. Its difficult to put all your ideas together and assign jobs to people without knowing how it''s all going to work.

On the subject of point 4. Its all well & easy to say, okay, person#1, you can do the blending. What he''s probably thinking is ''blending for what?'', and petty jobs like that one usually dont require too much coding experience, and is kinda dull. When person#2 is given the job of creating a collision detection function, it would be impossible to do if he didnt know how the terrain engine worked.

My point being - if you want to create a group to make a game through the forums, it''s best to get it all organised, and then bring it to the attention of other coders about how its all going to work. Commonly enough, when it hasnt been organised and posters such as yourself type up a message like this one, people feel as though they''re wasting their time thinking about it, and like many of their gaming projects, drop it after a week of no progress.

Just a thought.

I agree with wAVaRiaN, organizing is really important when making any projects. So I personally would think ppl should making posts about creating teams/groups rather than a project which is for everybody to make. I know organizing is the key for a sucessfull group, I am in one =)

Kenneth Wilhelmsen

--------------------------
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has
been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This
disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless
brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder

wAVaRiaN I couldn''t agree more. I lead tech teams for a living (not working on games unfortunately) and it''s difficult enough to get 30-40 minds focused in one direction EVEN IF they''re all in the same room. The prospect of distributed development is a very frightening one, more so when a budget and a deadline are brought into the equation.

That said, there''s nothing to say you (Acer722) can''t be the first person to do it. SOMEONE had to dream up anti-matter, SOMEONE had to land on the moon and eventually someone''ll conquer the logistics of open-source distributed development.

I suggest laying the ground-work, build a scaleable object model, setup CVS, you as the architect should set the technical direction, the framework as it were, then after a week or 3 find out who''s REALLY willing to put in the less glamorous hours of actually coding, integrating and checkpointing the thing and testing it of course. You might just end up with something,

L8r,
fs


http://www.CornflakeZone.com
//-- Modelling and animation in every dimension --//

Since fshana mentioned Open Source, I might as well contribute the "Fundamental Tenets of Open Source Development", rule #1 of which is:

Show me the code!

Seriously. You can''t start an OSS (Open Source Software) project on ideas. You have to provide an intial implementation, something that potential developers can compile and execute and see the benefits of. They can then join and suggest improvements or radical changes, but it remains the responsibility and right of the project leader - the guy who started it all, ergo, Acer722 - to decide what goes in and what stays out.

It''s also all about personality. OSS development is based on ego stroking (don''t tell them I said so). Everyone needs recognition, to be made to feel that their contibution is integral to the progress of the project, and without which the project would collapse. If not, they wont contribute - end of project if that happens to enough of "your" developers.

So, in addition to the excellent observations made here, I add:

5. Implement a working proof of concept or demo that programmers can run with.

This also embodies all the vague notions about structure and organization of the software in a working product. And no, I can''t join!