🔒 Locked

Game system programmers wanted

Started by oxonline Apr 3, 2005 at 9:30 PM 2 replies 750+ views

Original Post

Apr 3, 2005 at 9:30 PM

This is a chellenging idea and I am sure this community would be the place to find the people I need. A revolutionary change in game development is required to bring game prices down to a reasonable level and to help people who have a great idea for a game, but no programming experience to create the game of their dreams. I am looking for developers in all areas of game programming to assist with a project to create game development tools which require no programming skills to use. I will need people who can work together to produce a development system for different styles of game. I also need people who can develop for consoles and most platform, specifically PC, Mac, Linux, PS2, X-Box and GameCube. This may all seem quite confusing, so here's an example. One genre which we might want to look at creating a development environment for could be a graphical adventure game. I would therefore need programmers to design the interface for the environment, people to work on simple scripting libraries, ways of using movies and 3D images in the system, character control, artificial intelligence for NPCs, people to write an engine for each platform and a way of compiling the completed game to a format recognised by the platform (and engine) of the user's choice. There are obviously other factors to consider, so the requirements of the example listed are no exhaustive. I would be very interested to hear from both people who would be interested in assisting with such an idea and also to hear peoples thoughts on this idea. The end result would be a series of pieces of software for each game type we have developed a development suite for with profits from sales going directly to the people involved. Stephen Ellis, April 2005

CrystalMagma

Apr 4, 2005 at 6:47 AM

good idea, dont think it would be good for console development as they would still need to purchase a £250,000 dev kit

darookie

Apr 4, 2005 at 7:16 AM

In contrast to the above, I'd say it's a Bad Idea™.
First of all, no console developer will be legally entitled to work on such project (→ NDAs), unless he/she is using some homebrew devkit, which will lack the required features and is still not 100% kosher.
Secondly the development of such system is a huge undertaking that will most likely not be doable on an amateur basis. Take a look at Microsoft's efforts towards their XNA-idea.

Game development isn't easy and that won't change in the forseeable future.
To produce a high-quality title, you will need an excellent staff, lots of time and dedication. Your idea - as noble as it sounds - is nothing more than a bubble that will easily burst. Programming knowlegde is required to create games. Great artists are a must to have a nice looking world, pleasant music or a good plot.

Don't get me wrong - I have no intention to destroy your dream, I just want to point out some facts. Start small. Take a look at existing solutions (game engines, click-and-play gamedev kits, etc.) and analyse their strengths and weaknesses. Then put together a "wish-list" of things you'd like to see and come back here to find people who can help you.
I'd also suggest you to read lots of post-mortems, e.g. at GamaSutra, to get a closer view of the current state of the typical game development process. This will help you judging the pros and cons of the tools I mentioned earlier.

Conclusion: I to put my first statement into perspective, I think it's a Good Idea™ in general, but at your current level of knowledge I just don't think it's reasonable to recruit people.

Best of luck and don't let my babbling put you down! [smile]
Pat

Neil Kerkin

Apr 4, 2005 at 7:17 AM

Great idea, unfortunately it is very difficult to do. Check out the list of engines here . Might want to get some experience with something like Torque first. my $0.02

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.