Game Designer Graduate looking for coder/team mate

TheNorthridge

Hi,

I'm just wondering if anyone would be willing to team up for a project.

The idea I've in mind, would be an open world shooter RPG, in the vein of the Fallout series, but with graphics reminiscent of Retro shooters such as Doom or Star Wars Dark Forces.

The story is set 10000 years after scientists awoke a race of Dragons, who scorched the earth and have caused a reawakening of mythical creatures in the world. I call it Charred Albion, a Post Apocalyptic Dark Fantasy set in the destroyed ruins of London.

I am a recent graduate of Pulse College with a degree in Game Development and Project Management. We learned all the skills necessary, apart from coding. This is where I need your help, for I can provide the story, art and design. I would just need a partner that can help me with the technology and coding aspects, as well as being involved in the art and design.

If anyone is interested, please drop us a PM.

Best Regards,

-Sean

Kilgore__Trout

Hi Sean,

Welcome to the game development forum. Your concept sounds interesting. I hope you won't take this as mere negativity, but an open world shooter along the lines of fallout is a tall order for a two man, first time team, even if you plan to deliver with lower end graphics, and much less content. Not saying it can't be done, but the very thought of trying to do it fills my soul with terror.

Fallout 3 likely cost 10's of millions, over the course of several years, with a development team of perhaps more than 100 experienced specialists. A team like this is likely to able to do as much in a week as a small team can do in a year.

If you do team up with someone, consider sharpening your teeth with a few small projects first, before embarking on something of this scale.

Torakx

This is a valid point.
However there is a way to do this I think.
What you can do is a vertical slice in a set area and work on the core mechanics.
The area and mechanics decided by the team you have and the time frame you know they can meet.
For testing this you could try one mechanic in a smaller again area and set a deadline, or see how long it takes.Take carefull notes of the development process and maybe you can work out what you will be capable of doing in any timeframe you set out, roughly speaking. I would always er on the side of caution making predictions.
I heard if you feel it will take a certain amount of time to make a game... double it. Which sounds about right from experience.

I'm helping develop a 3D open world type game demo as a vertical slice with a team of 5-8 people and have predicted next summer if we are lucky to have a polished demo inside a 4km square terrain.
And that is if we push it a lot with development and get a really streamlined workflow.

If you can manage to get the demo made, you might have a chance to get funding and develop the game, which could take a year or two depending on how you scale it up.
Good management really helps.Without a solid workflow/pipeline and management it will be much slower.

But any issues, post in this forum and I am sure there will be people that can share experiences and ideas.

ChRoMe

TheNorthridge wrote: »

Hi,

I'm just wondering if anyone would be willing to team up for a project.

The idea I've in mind, would be an open world shooter RPG, in the vein of the Fallout series, but with graphics reminiscent of Retro shooters such as Doom or Star Wars Dark Forces.

The story is set 10000 years after scientists awoke a race of Dragons, who scorched the earth and have caused a reawakening of mythical creatures in the world. I call it Charred Albion, a Post Apocalyptic Dark Fantasy set in the destroyed ruins of London.

I am a recent graduate of Pulse College with a degree in Game Development and Project Management. We learned all the skills necessary, apart from coding. This is where I need your help, for I can provide the story, art and design. I would just need a partner that can help me with the technology and coding aspects, as well as being involved in the art and design.

If anyone is interested, please drop us a PM.

Best Regards,

-Sean

Cut your scope in half, the half it again. With that you might have something achievable.

Retr0gamer

ChRoMe wrote: »

Cut your scope in half, the half it again. With that you might have something achievable.

This. Ever wonder why every open world game ever made is riddled with bugs? It's because coding a world where you can't control every possiblity is extremely difficult and requires a huge amount of testing and iteration to nail down and even then more than likely the game will be buggy. Keep your first project simple and small scale otherwise you won't get anywhere and you probably won't get much interest, as a coder myself I'd run away from joining a project like this from an untested developer.

ChRoMe

Retr0gamer wrote: »

as a coder myself I'd run away from joining a project like this from an untested developer.

Was a bit confused myself as a programmer as to how you can get a game development degree, but not have it include programming?!

aN.Droid

ChRoMe wrote: »

Was a bit confused myself as a programmer as to how you can get a game development degree, but not have it include programming?!

It's a diploma, pulse arent a hetac institution and I believe most of the certifications come from places like adobe, microsoft, autodesk etc.

There is a fetac cert at the end though.

B.A._Baracus

Hi guys,
Sorry if I am hijacking this thread. Just did a google search for Pulse College and this came up. Handy enough because I was going to ask a question on boards about the college course

I see they have a Games Development course (as mentioned above) But it doesn't feature programming?

So how good is the course?

JohnnyJohnJohns

Hi BA, I hope you don't mind me posting. My name is John Healy and I'm the Course Head here in Pulse College for the Game Development programmes. We have a weekly 4-hour game development module on the first year course at present that covers Unity scripting in C#. Outside of this theres 2D and 3D art, level design, narrative, audio and game projects. In second year we offer creative or technical specialisations that then include a full day on programming/development or else game art depending which stream is chosen.

A large focus of our course is team work and group projects so that you learn by doing with support from the tutors (Who mostly come from the irish game industry: Bitsmith Games, Havok, Story Beasts and others). We find this allows for specialisation in a number of areas as you become an expert by doing.

The course isn't for everyone and if you want purely to programme I'd probably recommend doing Computer Science in Trinity/UCD or similar. If however you're interested in working on smaller indie team where people typically wear many different hats I think the course is a great place to start.

I can't post URL's as I haven't been a user long enough??? I'll send these in a PM if it will let me.

If you'd like more info feel free to PM me and I can put you in touch with some students who are currently doing the course or provide more details. We also have an open evening tomorrow at half 6 at 20 Ringsend Road so feel free to pop along to that.

We are also in the process of redeveloping the course and getting it validated as a 2-year Level 6 Higher Certificate in Game Development as opposed to the current FETAC certification.