Team Building

As some of you may know my company is working towards developing proof-of-concept's to take to publishers and from time to time we have posted a 'looking for a team' request.

As an indie developer we are not in a position to offer payment or salaries for any of these types of offerings. Simple we are looking for like minded people who want to get involved with projects that look promising, improve their portfolio and possibly become part of a triple-A development team.

We have a number of projects under development and would like to invite people to become part of the team(s). Broadly speaking we have an 'extreme sports title' and a hack n slash RPG, both in the alpha stages of development.

We are looking for primarily for talented scripters although all other skill sets, modeling, texturing and other artisans will be considered.

Essentially if either of these titles gets picked up by the publisher you will be offered a full time employment contract of a minimum of 12 months as well as a cash reward for your work in the concept-development. (Negotiable)

Here at indiglow we believe that the A6 community has some very talented individuals and those of you who are looking for an opportunity to do something that might just change their life, who understand hard work and that these projects can only work with a team all heading in the same direction, please post in response.

If you visit our site you will notice some level work we have done for some AAA titles already and will know that while we don't claim to be on close terms with huge publishers, we have been mentioned on T2's italian site.

My point is that if one small pebble can make ripples in the pond, imagine what 10 could do?

Finally we are only talking about 'Proof-of-Concept' demos, not completed games. Each of these demo's should not take any more than 2-3 months to complete with a team of 5-10 people. That doesn't even mean you would work for 2-3 months, it just means that is how long we expect it to take. You may only do 2 weeks work, maybe writing a better physics loop or adding some new textures....

While I agree this isnt for everyone, and I respect those that are not interested. It would be great if for once, replies could be from those that are interested more than the critiques who see no future in this prospect.

If there are some interested people I will say more about the proposed projects and maybe discuss some of the finer details.

Thanks for your time and interest, its much appreciated

I am indeed interested, depending on one thing: the start time. For the next week or so, I'm extremely busy, but my business will be slowing down. Just curious, but when looking for team members do you look for people who not only have the skills, but whose "personalities" jive with the other team members?

Cheers, and all that jazz!

Laethyn, "personality' will play a major role in the selection process, (if I can call it that ).

Essentially in the last 2 years I have worked with remote teams members to develop addons for a specific AAA game. Most of these team members came from that field, and yet, our small development team, 4 people who had complimenting personalities, produced a hugely succeful mod of 8+ new maps and game modes. In contrast another team, sponsered by the game developer, with considerably more members, failed to produce a single thing.

So yes, it is very important.

We intend to produce P-o-C's that are competative with the mainstream market and we believe we can do just that with the right people working together. We have tools in place that will allow us to project manage and support the team remote or otherwise, to get us where we need to go.

We will also be constantly looking for new concepts, trying to get a rolling program going. During concepting we implement a cooling off period, a time where we don't think about the idea, and instead start a new idea. This allows us to be objective about the concept and if we then select it for the next stage, alpha development, it would be nice if we had a small group of people, who we have a good relationship with, experience team work, to develop these ideas.

We need people who are proffesional and creative, but someone with dedication and a problem solving attitude is possibly more important.

Maybe I can give an example:

Currently the RPG concept, has just passed a key workflow test, that is establishing a complete workflow to get models into the game. This has been done. Using a combination of hand animated and mocap source we have some very realistic and compelling animations, including fighting, parry and so on.

Yet in our demonstration we are just using the basic biped template to make the guy walk around. Why? Well we know the animations are now in place, our modelers and skin artists can now work on content, not process. And if we need to see the animations we can just look in MED of better still in Studio Max.

But if someone wrote a new move code, deisgned to work with our animations, we would be a big step closer to that P-o-C. We have skills here to do the work ourselves, but its a question of time management, and better use of resources.

So with a few of the right people we could make faster progress.

Thanks for your interest laethyn

Any positions for a goth rock musician?

BTW. I'm glad that no piss ant critics have spoiled your post. : )

Yeah so far so good

Have you got any samples of your music? Here are a couple of links to some of our own ventures into music:

Game Riff 1
Game Riff 2

So collaboration is the name of the game here

I will be here when you need me as well. I am only an e-mail away for any sort of professional service you may need.

-Paul.

Thanks Paul, nice to know we can count on LDD's services.

You are welcome. I do believe myself as well it would be nice to have some nice communcation between Publishers. There is a lot of Talent here and in the right hands can go even further.

We need Good Public Relations. If this can bring more notice of the such to the Game Studio Community the better.

Everyone that has Talent should help if they may like. The more the better to pitch some nice concept Demo's.

-Paul.

I would also like to offer my abilities for level design, textures and or modeling. If you need samples I can provide those easy. GS out.

So, can we hear some tidbits about the RPG project? Obviously, I'm not looking for a detailed description, or on specifics of game mechanics, but perhaps some basics.

Now, this may seem odd, but here is the way I work: if a project does not "match" my thought process on certain things about game dev, well, I would rather bow out gracefully, then continue forward, to the detriment of the project. Perhaps this is not the best way to join a team, however, I'm much more likely to produce my work by the deadline date/higher quality, if the project is something I believe in, AND the team members are people I believe in.

And that is one of the reasons why I "poke my nose" in certain threads around here If people are paying attention, then they have garnered a bit of info on my thought process on game dev/design. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I'd rather know beforehand if it's a project I would like to work on, instead of finding out after, and causing problems with the team, which helps no one.

If you wish, you can, obviously, pm me any minor details, email me at laethyn@laethyn.com, or ignore me

Cheers and all that jazz!

Sent you a PM.

I could do some level design, for you.

Andrew

@laethyn: While I am not going to reveal all the juicy goodness here just yet, I agree some more info on the RPG title would be most benefitial. Before I do however I would like to address your comments about an idea 'meeting' your expectations, and how this effects your involvement in a project.

While we have a concise Dev Doc and Concept Paper for both projects, we have tried to keep the actual development options as open as possible. For example: We know there will be a complete magic system and that this system includes a 'Unique for Genre' element, but these UfG's are the only fixed requirements and even these are somewhat flexible.

We believe that to realise the 'vision' of the title, means that a lot of flexibility has to be factored into the development docs to allow creative changes and to encourage the natural evolution of the title.

With that said, having a Development Doc that is concise allows these changes to be managed and not chaos or free form.

A good example of this would be:

*Development Document Says: Horse & Rider.
*The Modeler: Makes the rider, but decides a Unicorn would look way better.
*The Proggrammer: Turns the horse into a camel which is a much more efficient creature and removes the rider as he is excess baggage.

End Product: A Unicorn with 2 humps and no rider...

My point being while we will encourage creativity, we must keep as close to the original vision as possible, otherwise target-deadlines and much more, quickly go the way of the dodo, and at best a stalled project.

This is why communication between the team must be a priority. indiglow will be providing a private TeamSpeak server for all members of our projects to use, to better communicate with each other and to hold development / design meetings.

For info on Teamspeak visit: http://www.goteamspeak.com

On with the show!

I can not reveal any details at this time regarding the 'X-Treme Sports' title, however I can discuss the RPG in more detail....

Here is a copy of the 'Concept Paper' for the RPG title: Dark Prophecy - Realm of Kings in MS.Word format.

Hopefully the first thing you will note is that its a 3rd person RPG, and to clarify this further, we are talking about what is traditionally refered to as a 'Hack & Slash' adventure game, similiar to that of the Buldurs Gate franchise for PlayStation2.

The Concept Paper is writen for marketing and for complete understanding of the features would require a read of the development document which gives more detail than what is presented here.

In short we have focused on some very simple, and well established game system as we feel GS is best suited to this style, (Mayb not be an opinion shared by everyone, especially the FPS developers here ), and our pre-alpha testing supports this theory.

As for the game mechanics, we are entirely focused on the KISS approach, Keep it Simple Stupid, and while we want the game to feel complex and deep, we believe this can only be achieved, at least by indie developers without the $million budjets, by following this rule.

I can, and will, go into more detail a little later on, most likely over @ indiglow.co.uk, sometime early next week and maybe we can look at defining some team members and responsibilities.

A quick note about that: We will be looking to assign team leaders, to take specific roles within a small group, and so everyone who would like to get involved, it would also help if you could give a little bit of information about what you would like to bring to the table, and feel free to put yourself, or recommend someone else, to take a more senior role in the team, this will help us move things on quicker and again improve inter-department communications.

Thanks again to everyone who has responded

Can i join this software project development?
Is there are requirements this project?

After much deliberation, I've decided that unless you have need for a "mechanics" designer, ie designing spells, effects, skills, how the world works, etc. (which, after 15 years of DMing dnd games, I've got quite a bit of experience), I'm going to bow out. If you DO need someone with those types of skills, you know how to get in touch with me

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After much deliberation, I've decided that unless you have need for a "mechanics" designer, ie designing spells, effects, skills, how the world works, etc.

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I to would like to help with any of those things if you do need someone or some people for those things (id be happy to work with laethyn.... hes a good guy)

I have a good experience with designing all of those things plus more.

Cheers SA