I can always use unique 2D character animations of something walking, etc.
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Always up for giving anything a bash 
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I would be interested in this. I have a stronger programming background than anything else, but have been focusing more so on the finer aspects of Game Development. This includes things such as game theory, philosophy, and just the nature of āfunā.
Languages I feel comfortable in:
C/C++ ; Java
Languages I know well enough to read/debug:
JavaScript
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- Project manager / final decision maker - might well be another useful role to consider - give everyone some form of accountability/deadlines
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Definitely!
Those responsibilities usually fall on the designer or lead developer as they try to build a team around them for their first project or two while also establishing their āstartup studioā.
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Okay, since weāre posting expertises - I have quite a bit of educational background in C based languages, so Iād be a natural fit for the C# programming in Unity. I also have a music degree, although Iām rusty on the use of current electronic music creation tools, so Iād need to get up to speed there.
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As far as experience goes, other than this course, I have no real experience in game design, or C# or C++ programming.
I do however have 17 years experience in web development. Focusing on PHP/MySQL. So if we do a game with network capabilities, I could write the server side code.
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Since Iāve stated my interest, I figured Iād give my experience also. I have been toying around with Unity for about two years building random things so my experience is minimal. Only Unreal/C++ experience I have is from the course so far. I am studying for a BS in Management, focusing on Project Management. Although I wouldnāt say I have any real experience there either! I am a quick study though, and pick on quickly so Iād like to help where needed.
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I would say that you would be the most qualified as far as project management. I vote wesley as project manager.
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Iām in as well!
Iām still studying the unity course so far, so at least for now I could help with the programming and with the game design.
Well, Iāll give my opinion since brain storm is a good thing to get things working anyway. Iāve been working with business administration the past 10 years, there are a couple of things that I think perhaps could help to get this going:
1 - We could create a game brand for the forum community projects, making it an open project for the forum almost ensures that the games will be finished even if a few members decides to leave the project;
2 - We could register the brand to the google play store and to the IOS store (perhaps windows as well), there is a fee to be payed, we could split this cost, this way we would pay those fees only one time instead of paying it every time a new community project under other members is created;
3 - We need to have someone in charge of each community project, to make sure it will be finished and to organize who will be doing what;
4 - All games published this way shouldnāt have an income, so it wonāt create any problems between the members of the project. Although I have another idea, there is a reason why people pays for the ADās that we put in our games, Itās because it works! So instead putting some third party ADās that would pay us, we could put ADās chosen by the project members to their own private games, websites or IOS Store/Play Store profiles. This way doing a successful community project would promote their own work. Of course that who has contributed more to the game should have his/her ADās appearing more often, those numbers should be decided beforehand while developing it;
5 - Each project should have it own BitBucket/GitHub profile so everyone could work together, also it would be a good idea having some communication tool like facebook page / whatsapp group / teamspeak.
Those are just some ideas, what do you guys think?
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I am up for it too
I am currently running my own business, as a software developer. In the past I worked on many big software projects and I was responsible for managing good part of them. I find the idea of pooling resources very interesting and exciting.
I believe that we shouldnāt be counting chickens before they hatch, however contrary to one of the points by Joao, I believe if project is successful why should the creators not benefit from it. There are contracts and agreements that we can take between each other / agree upon before starting any work, detailing in very simple terms what will happen if the project is a success and who is in charge of what.
I worked with contractors almost all my working life, and there are really easy ways of accounting for people who drop in and out of a project.
This is my opinion of course, and in any way this is going to go forward I would like to be a part of it.
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@Pawel_Kosinski, we would benefit from it, since we would be promoting our own work.
But if we can make it work with agreements and contracts (cross country also) in a way that we directly get a revenue from it without more problems, it would be awesome.
Iām willing to be part of it either way as well
Just a couple of cents/pennies worthā¦
I think if you have multiple people coming together on a project like this, with perhaps significantly different abilities/experience, keeping things as simple as possible would be an initial best practice. It perhaps depends what it is you are trying to achieve. If the main goal is to create a game and get it out to the world that might be somewhat different from creating the opportunity for people to gain experience working collaboratively on the project.
For me, I think I would personally be a lot less worried about the first game created from a collaboration formed from here being a money maker. For me, and I am only talking personally, I think it would be a very interesting experience to see how it actually all works out. For example, people in different times zones, different ideas/thoughts, different abilities, different approaches to the work - there are sooo many ādifferencesā there that they could all create a whole multitude of issues and if you try to over come all of those initially I think the whole project will just become bogged down in bureaucracy before you actually create anything.
I would personally prefer to join in on something small as the first one, the game could be utterly un-sellable, but that wouldnāt matter because I would have experienced what it was like to work with, hopefully, a group of like-minded individuals, and, where things go wrong (which Iām sure they will, however minor), I could come away from it with a little better understanding as to how to approach that situation in the future.
I like the concept of the minimum viable product from the course etc. What is the smallest thing that can be done that meets a need. All you need to do then is define the need. Is the need to have a game that can be sold or is the need to learn/experience how a small group of people with a shared interest, who most likely have never met, can come together, perhaps just for a couple of weeks and work on something collaboratively.
I reckon you would have a success story if all you had game wise something really simplistic, but where ever body in the small group had contributed, felt valued, worked to some reasonable deadlines and was accountable, and put ideas forward for consideration for the next stage, agreed on by the group.
Bit sized chunksā¦ thatās what I would personally look forā¦ of course everyone is different, but I think it would be a shame if people dropped off of the initial idea just because things got a bit too complicated or they felt that they wouldnāt be able to contribute.
I think if the small group went through a few iterations of this, each member would get to know the other quite well, everyone would get a sense of each individuals strengths and hopefully feel comfortable asking for any help where necessary. Perhaps through each iteration you consider adding something new to the same game, a new feature, perhaps the cube now has footsteps when it moves, so someone is responsible for creating the sound effect, someone for implementing it when it moves and so on. Depending on the size of the group you may need several features. I think you would find that as you kept moving forwards in this way, some of the items that perhaps from an initial idea seemed big ādeploy fully functional, exciting, kick-ass game that will generate a revenue and pay us some bucks/pounds/euros/drakmaā will seem considerably more attainable.
One thing I found that worked quite well when I worked in a smaller team (little development squad of 3 developers) was being mutually reliant on another person. It worked really well for us as it happened, we were developing a small web app, one guy wanted to do the UI, another was keen to extend his SQL Server skills, and I enjoyed writing the business logic in the middle. Because of the way this turned out, UI guy would say something like I need to display the persons date of birthā¦ I would write some code and add it to my objects so that he could reference it in his UI, I would say to DB guy that I needed to have the date of birth data in the query. We could all work fairly independently on our individual bits but we knew that there was someone else relying on what we were doing, because we all got on well no one wanted to let the other person downā¦ it was a really fantastic little production line which saw feature and feature get delivered, and because of the repetitive successes and individual responsibilities, no one had any issues asking the next person down the line for the thing they needed. Was really good fun too.
My apologiesā¦ this may have turned into 5 cents/penniesā¦
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@Rob, you are completely right here,
The big wig game companies all have departments doing there thing in which they micro manage certain aspects of the game. It isnāt just a cluster of people doing everything from the start, and obviously people will be needed more than others (IE, designers will be done quicker than anyone else in terms of initial artwork etc.
And of course version control would be a massive part of these projects, but you would expect there to be a set out guideline for everyone to follow and PMs dictating on what needs doing next and how quick it needs to be done to meet deadlines etc.
As long as everyone could agree on whose who in this scenario then I think it could be a great project to all collaborate on, and also at the same time if you were looking to get into game dev as a career you are also building a portfolio at the same time, but showing you can work as part of a team and know the key aspects of version control etcā¦
Now as you say Re: money makers, I donāt think that would ideally happen from the get go, obviously I canāt speak for everyone, but I for one although having 10 years in front end development am still not the best at C# as I am learning a completely new code from scratch. But back to my point, the games arenāt going to be amazing sell for 0.99p + from the get go, you would have to know your market build an audience and get great games published which will take a long time for everyone to get into the flow of working together and co-existing as a collaboration rather than an individual throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and people agreeing just for the sake of getting a game out.
Could be going off on a tangent here, I do think its a great idea and would love to be a part of it, but there needs to be some guidelines set from day 1 and a lot of maturity from everyone would need to be displayed for this to work and continue to work.
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Good ideas @Rob, @Jordan_Ashton and @Joao_Dalvi. Perhaps a small project that is directly involved with the courses? We could build out a text adventure with art from the blender guys or expand upon blockbreaker. Both of those are very small and would be suitable to get to know the team. We could go a bit bigger and expand upon laser defender by creating a story, expanded levels, and powerups. The blender team could create some 3d models to use and we could have multiple enemy types, bosses and even alternative player ships that could be purchased with some in game credit that is earned.
After that, if the team works well, we could explore doing something more commercially minded.
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Iām very interested in doing a community project based around the Unity lectures. So if thatās the plan, Iām definitely on board if no one minds!
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Using the course games to build on would be a great idea in my opinion @wesley . Not only would the team already be familiar with them, but if you started at the beginning with the most simple, then, after youāve all worked on that project together you could move on to the next project in the course and give that ago - each game would potentially open up more functionality that you could add - but the simplicity of the first couple would remove the requirement of agreeing on a specific game to create, there would already be some outlines of what is to be achieved, so again another added bonus. Potentially then all team members are offering enhancement suggestions to make it better. I think that would be a real winner.
I am certain @ben would be more than happy to perhaps pop a post on Facebook or the Twitter feed also once completed, as it would no doubt be of huge benefit to potential students who may wonder if the course is for them or notā¦ a kind of before and after if you like, from the original course material to what a great group of students produced collaboratively.
Any progress on this idea? Just started bowl master and will be buying blender course next week so hopefully will be able to help in either art and tech side of things
My experience is from Further Education.
Programming wise, in the early years I learned Cobol and Pascal at College doing a BTEC National Diploma in Computing.
Then as a mature student at University I completed my HND in Computing we used vb.net and asp.net at the time.
Programming was always my best subject but I also completed other modules;
Business Technology
Systems Development
Database Management and Reporting
Visual Web Development
Project Management and Development
Interactive Systems Design and Evaluation
Advanced Programming
Multimedia Technology
It was a few years ago now and havenāt really used those skills in a business sense.
Is this thread dead? No one posted here for 2 months? Iām a 3D/2D artist and animation/filmcraft graduate with some newly acquired Unity programming skills.
thanks Steve