Hello world,

I am looking for people to work on small projects together as a way to meet new people in a leasurely 3dgs work environment, i.e after work weekends. My interests include RPGs, FPS, RTS, 2d scrolling games, puzzle games etc.
I am more interested in tinkering around with the 3dgs game engine with man power( and woman power) creating small demos in whatever genres interest the group to give everyone a fair chance to influence our common interests before deciding on one specific long term project. For me the short term goal is team experience and 3dgs knowledge.
I have experience in scripting, modeling, texturing, level design, and music. I spend about 40-60 hours a week developing in these areas.
The software I use includes 3dgs commercial edition( I will try to upgrade soon as I would like to have multiple physics ability in c-script), Max4 Photoshop 7, LightWave8.5 , Vue D'esprit, ZBrush, Milkshape, and various plugins for those applications. I have also tried a lot of the software in the WIKI and I am thinking about purchasing the texture software from spiral graphics.

I will gladly accept "jack of all trades" developers along with people who prefer to work in specific areas of the development process. I am jack of all, master of none myself. I enjoy learning from others as well as sharing my knowledge so if you want to trade I am all ears.
If you are interested in helping "jump start" a team in the 3dgs development process, please pm me or send e-mails to defiant@zovera.com I usually check this forum once a day so I will answer promptly.
Please feel free to comment with your suggestions so that I can keep this post updated.

I have uploaded some pics of a demo I have been working on for about a week. It consists of basic terrain cells, the completed test demo will have 36 cells in all. THe green cubes are a visual cue for some var arrays for position. The cube by itself causes terrain 1 to be removed and created based on player position. The idea is to have only one terrain cell at a time using rendering resources. The water shader was added yesturday. The terrain uses the terrainmultimtl shader in version 6.4.2, I edited it to make the shading mask a regular blended texture, I am working on adding more texture layers to that shader. I added sprites(the weeds)that are created using vec_for_vertex in a function that will later include player position to save fps. I planned the positioning in med by observing the heightmaps which I created in photoshop. The terrain cells are seemlessly aligned(the textures might make you think otherwise). As for the rocks, don't make fun of my rocks( I spent a whole 5 minutes on them), I will be adding pixel shader code for them as well as most level entities, fallback tecniques and default textures etc....As you may see the level is in bad need of art work. Thanks to Ello and test dummy for the background and player model. Warning, the pics are 1600x1200!!!

Here is the link http://zovera.com/page8.html

I thought I would add this to get some people interested in working with me. I can handle most of the programming and I am tired of working alone with the entire workflow on my shoulders...loool. If you are interested in working on a project that can include this one, whether for experience or as a partner in crime please pm or e-mail me at defiant@zovera.com

CHEERS!

My rocks look a little better.... thanks to aum54.
I reduced the reflection to give them a wet look. Now the terrain looks very dull. I started working on combining the blended texture terrain shader with the bump and specular shader(fx) maybe someone skilled in shader code will be interested in helping me...don't worry I wont tell anyone you answered this add to join a developer with no promise of fame and glory, not to mention a paycheck......just for fun...loool.

CHEERS!

Added a second gallery to my website, changed some textures and the terrain lighting, changed the player to Piccolo's armor knight, changed the water code slightly.
Here is the link to gallery number2
http://zovera.com/page9.html

I am now interested in working on a design document for this demo. I will post this document in a few days roughly describing the details. It will be a mini RPG as in a very small world for time frame purposes. It will need to have all of the basic elements necessary for the genre excluding a large amount of content, just enough to allow us to concentrate on game play as in how to make it fun, skipping the leg work of populating a full scale rpg world.. I am moving on to adding npc's and fighting code. E-mail or pm me if you are interested in joining in.
defiant@zovera.com



CHEERS!

I have added an enemy NPC with basic fighting abilities, if the player gets within 500 quants the npc will give chase and fight to the death, the player uses mouse_left to attack, if either entity gets knocked down they have to wait for the entire knock down sequence before they can swing again. Simple for now, I will add blocking, additional states to the a.i. I think first though, it is time to make a hud to display health and statistics.

I have registered with ICQ so you can reach me from there as well...223-573-486

Warning high resolution images(1600x1200)!!!

Here is the link to the new gallery... http://zovera.com/page10.html




CHEERS!

I have been experimenting with the sphere engine in A_6 version 6.4.2. I set it up to work on a purely scripted level instead of dropping entities into wed and assigning actions. I played around with most of the fx shader settings and integrated it into my rpg demo. I still need to adjust the shading to align properly with the light direction but the depth transparency and surface reflection shift nicely as you change the z value of the camera.
You can see the preliminary results as the last two pics in gallery 3, here is the link... http://zovera.com/page10.html

I am still looking for texture artists and modelers to help with the creation content. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me, as posted before, my goal is to put together a group of people to cover the main areas of game development and learn to work on development in a team environment, I have decided to put off a game outline untill this team is complete so that we may all have an equal chance to add our input at the very early stages of the project. Please contact me if you are interested.

Update...
Added a 4th gallery with the height blended terrain shader in the sphere engine changed to a color map blended terrain shader, still tweaking it as I started last night, here is the link...

http://zovera.com/page11.html

If you and your other team mates ( if you have any yet) are serious about developing projects to the finish, then i am in with you, if not i'll be starting my own team soon as i keep joining teams that either don't know what they're doing or they break apart after just a few short weeks. I'm a jack of all trades with some knowledge in programming, scripting, texture creation, other 2D graphics, level design and website design. however, i prefer the job as producer for two reasons. first, my real job is project manager, second, i can get my hands in all areas of development. Now, of course i realize this is going to be a work for free team (unless we come up with something worth publisheing), however my requirement for joining this team is that there is someone who can write a story and a good design document, a REAL design document, i have design document templates from commercial companies that i can give to whoever will do the designing. i also ask that we start with just a few people and recruit people as we need them, from my experience this is the biggest reason for people bailing out of a project, they sit around doing nothing because there's no design material for them to work off of, OR the crap being used as design material is so vague in guiding the team through what they need to do that they just ask "hey, what do i do" so the producer or designer looks at the design material and says something like "uhhh... it's kinda vague, just make some monsters or something, use your imagination" which makes the artist or whatever have to do more work than they should because the concept artist should have already done it, so the artist guy bails out because he has no clue what he should be working on and feels like the project is going nowhere, and he's right......anyway, i apologize for ranting, i just needed to put that out there so you have an idea of what i'm looking for and you can make the decision of whether i fit with your idea of a team. anyway, let me know.




James

Hey Shadow,
I couldn't agree with you more, supplying extensive direction to those who need it, as well as offering elbow room to those requesting the chance to demonstrate thier ability to create unique content, either way requires a solid design document to avoid content creation that becomes un-usable. I will be happy to read your design document templates as a guide, though I am well educated on the requirements for this area, the pursuit of knowledge never get's old for me. I have done extensive research in many areas of game development, it sounds that you have as well. I spend on average, seven nights a week and most weekend days learning and practicing what I already know, and what I need to learn. I will not be the one to quit if that is your concern, as long as the project is handled professionally there should not be too many others as well.
I am very capable of handling the story line and tailoring it to the design document, using the perspective of both the programmer and the artist as a guide from my knowledge in both areas. I have extensive project management experience, as that is my position in the company I work for during the day, that is something we have in common so we may be on the same wave length . As far as starting with a small team, I would support that decision untill we end up with a format that demands expansion. This would be glaringly obvious to everyone when it presents itself.
This is a "work for free" effort as you have commented, untill we have something worth buying, whether that is a game, or services provided is something we can use as a goal to help further motivate the group effort. There are many possibilities once the obstacles of filling the minimal positions, and coordinating the workflow is successfully achieved.
Above all else I want to do this because it is what I enjoy doing in my spare time and would love to one day make it full time.

PM me when you get the chance, I am east coast so keep that in mind.

CHEERS!

That Demo looks great! I am very impressed! I especially like the water!

Thanks link, just having fun with the sphere engine. Btw if anyone is using the sphere engine I will ask Matt if I can post the modified rgb blended terrain shader so people can have fun with it.

I would formally like to welcome James and Jameson onboard and Charlie for his help and support as an invaluable asset to our game development challenges.


CHEERS!