Team:
I’ve thought a long while about what kind of skills I might need for the best chance to complete the game, but before that it would be worthwhile to know what I can do:
I’m:
An average artist: You can see some of the artwork I made in my github page (linked above). I actually draw traditionally and am trying to shift to digital but with my current setup (a small graphic tablet on an ancient laptop) drawing anything on screen is a major headache. Drawing minutia digitally strains my eyes, so for the time being I'll devote myself to make good background art and perspective sketches and the like.
A high school level coder: I’ve been learning to code for more than a year, and while I don’t know all the fancy algos and databases, I know enough to be able to show a bunch of text and images on screen and make a decent AI, which is enough for the game.
Writer: Well aren't we all?
Music: I’m a novice (grade 4) pianist, I should be able to make a nice tune from reference. However, as I mentioned above my laptop is reaaally old, so I can’t use some of the nicer vsts and plugins. Also, I suck at sound design, so I'm not really good at making effects and the like.
Oh, and I have a finance degree where I learnt marketing & management for the first 2 years. So you know that you can make the best game you can and I'll go through heaven and hell to ship it!
Bottomline: I’m kind of the jack of all trades master of none in the group, I can switch between high workloads and help meet deadlines. I’ll primarily be working as the group’s ‘rough sketchpad’, fitting your ideas in the game and making it one organic whole rather than a mish-mash of ideas. This means I’ll be involved in your processes a lot, and you should use me to shoot off your ideas no matter how trivial (like, even if it’s just a very rough character sketch or a simple 8 beat loop.) If there is one thing you can expect from me, it’s that we will be working smart and not hard; my biggest failure would be you wasting your time because of lack of or unclear instructions.
Secondly, I’ll be fulfilling all the business and marketing side roles, so that you don’t have to worry about the ‘sales’ side and just focus on making the best game you can make. Of course, I’m new to this as well and may require your help from time to time, but hopefully I can build a good audience for the game together.
What is needed -
From the writer:
As much as I need your ability to create a compelling world, another important role will be to find patterns. As I’ve said, this game is wrapped in a narrative dialogue, so with all the text you’d be writing you need to find ways to make it both unique as well as reusable. For example, we don’t want our text to say “[$Person X] froze [$target] by casting frost” every time someone casts frost, it’d make things boring very quickly. However, I don’t want you to think of a new way to cast frost for every battle that takes place, we’d be writing 100s of line just for one attack. Thus, we’ll have to find some patterns for reuse, like a unique line if the enemy is weak to ice, one if the enemy takes critical damage from an ice attack, one against certain enemy types in specific situations, etc. Or, maybe we can split a sentence into many parts, and mix and match between them. In any case, my point is that we’d have to work smart so as to not get overwhelmed.
From the programmer:
In honesty, if you're a coder who knows his objects then you're more than enough as this isn't a game that heavily relies on code. With you it should'nt be a problem to code most of the systems for the game in a couple of weekends, and if you have more time we can build on it with some minigames too!
From the artist:
I don’t want this to happen here, whenever a character appears on screen I want their artwork to have an impact on the player. This means we’ll need many unique art pieces for the game.
Now, I did some math and I reckon we’d need about ~150 figures drawn. W-wait a minute! Before you run away, listen to this:
1. These 150 sketches aren’t coloured, all we need are fast and loose sketches on small 200 X 200 canvas that show gesture and emotion. I don’t want to waste effort, every character drawn will have a role to play and a specific emotion to evoke, and as soon as the sketch drawn gives that feeling it’s enough. We don’t need lineart quality and it doesn’t have to be fully drawn figures. If you can draw the various degrees of emotions (like, all the shades of happy, from a smile to full blown laughter) from reference, you’re enough.
2. You won’t be alone. My buddy who’s a good artist can devote time to the project over his summer break. He’s still in college, but he's good with a pencil. And then there's me, who can do backgrounds and environments and stuff.
So what will you be doing, you ask?
1. Character design. You’ll be creating the characters my buddy will draw, as well as tell him how to draw it (pose, etc).
2. Finding patterns. While I have prepared you and him for the worst case scenario of 150 sketches, you surely wouldn't want to spend time drawing the same emotion on the same character in different ways, right? One very important role for you will be to find ways to reuse assets. This might involve having to rethink scenes so that we can use some of the previous assets, or maybe redrawing just a part of a previous sketch (like changing the arm's position, or making the hair sway differently, etc).
3. Animation. The engine we use only supports frame animation. Making Pokemon like animations should be doable as we can use squash and stretch, rotation and other tools from within the engine.
4. Background art. I could do that. We might work together on the compositional aspects, and then I’d go make some.
I honestly don’t expect you to do it all, once you’re on board we can find someone to fill in the gaps.
Also, your art doesn't have to look like the ones I've drawn, I don't mind if you draw like this or like
From the musician:
If you’re interested, maybe we can make some music together. The style I’m going for is celtic, neo-folk and a touch of electro. There's a whole playlist I'd like to recommend, but Lurie by Rigel Theatre and Ifan's Theme from DOS2 (the first minute or so) make a good sample of the things we'll be *ahem* emulating.
What I do need help on is sound design. For games like this, sound design is absolutely critical for immersion. I tried my hand at it and I sucked. So if you can make or find nice sound effects (carts on road, a stream, explosions, ice crackling, dodging an attack, swords against swords, coins clinking on wood, etc) or at least know your way around your DAW’s knobs and buttons I’d be thrilled to have you.
Few more things to say:
1. This is a mobile game.
2. It's the first part of what will hopefully become a series, and it will be released for free.
3. The assets you produce will be yours, the only rights I'd have is to show it on my free game.
4. This means that you can do whatever you want with the things you make, even sell or reuse it for other games.
5. And if I want to use your assets commercially I'll have to buy them from you, either by payment or rev share, your choice.
6. I don't have enough budget for paying you, not right away. The game we're making is a test for the market and for us, to see if we can hook enough of an audience for the game to make it viable for selling.
7. I won't lie, this game is not the 'next big thing guaranteed to make it big', it's just a simple CYOA turn based game with a twist. But I think it's fun. I think it'll make for a good experience. And I have plans. We're not gonna make a game and pray for the best, we're gonna keep reaching larger audiences as well as keep them engaged. I know what needs to be done, and I know how we're gonna do it. And you can be sure I'll try my hardest to make us reach the point where our game sells. But before that we need to make a game worthy of being sold, and I know I can't do it alone. So, would you like to be a part of the team? I promise, if nothing else, it'll be a fun and insightful journey! And if nothing else there'd be pizzas at the end of it!!