Hello, I'm going to teach u how to create a game making team, this will help u a lot.
1st rule, also 1st mistake kids make: There should be only 1 leader. Lets get real, how old are u guys, 13? 12? u are not mature enough to be a leader. Pick 1 leader, he must be a serious person, this one must be the most dedicated of all, and its hard work to be a leader.
Leader, u must listen ur crew members, the game isn't yours.. it belongs to everyone, even if he or she made very little. U must know ur not the game designer, ur just the leader. Ur job will be tell ppl what to do.
The leader must create a FORUM, with a TOPIC for each crew member. Inside each of these topics, u must include tasks.. eg. "Model a 3D cowbow" , "Make running animation" - also include specific info about each task.
Ur 2nd job for the leader is gather on his email all the work. That means each member sends the leader every work done. And the leader must put it all together on a single program.
Artists: We divide artists in several groups, those with same experience goes in same group. All artists in a team must have similar skill level, if ur a 9 yrs old noob artist..u'll cripple the style of the 21 yrs old experienced artist.. so find another team.
Anyway.. say you have 2 artists. The one with most experence makes everything, I mean everything. And send it directly to the 2nd artist, who's job will be make perfect the 1st artist's job. That means the 1st artist dont have to make so much effort, just draw sprites with good style, and give to the 2nd artist.
The 2nd artist will be the diference between a good game.. and an awesome game. He shades the sprites.. he adds eyebrows to the characters.. u get what I mean, right?
Sound Artists: These are hard to find. If u can make ur own music thats great, but its not the end of the world of the world if u download music from the internet.
Coders: Its better to have 1 skilled coder, even better if this coder is the leader.
The end
ps if u have team experience and u would like to add something u can do it bellow by clicking on add reply button, if u dont have a reply button u must register.
oh and a very important thing: start simple.
U can make the game story 1st if u want.. but if u start just by chosing a game genre and start off simple, working right away on a simple game, its better. U can always make up a story later. And u can always add more features later on.
No, this is some good advice. a lot of people make the mistake of jumping into this sort of thing without planning, then doing it all wrong.
"Say you're hanging from a huge cliff at the top of mt. everest and a guy comes along and says he'll save you, and proceeds to throw religious pamphlets at you while simultaniously giving a sermon." - Dustin G
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
22nd August, 2003 at 15:23:20 -
my "team" on poodles 4 is useless. i have an artist who cant draw, a sound guy with no recording equipment and a level designer who... doesnt do any work.
but i dont care because i end up doing all the work anyway.
i'd like to be director of a proper team one day, not an assortment of my ragtag school mates (bless them). i thinik it would be quite cool if everyone was sensible about it.
Oh, and to add to Dogzer's suggestions, it IS possible to have more than one leader, maybe like a partnership or something... just as long as they agree with each other. But if you do have several leaders, make sure you usually have all the code and graphics of the game with you constantly so you can run off with it if a battle starts .
And yes, start simple. Don't look too far ahead. The polishing should be done AFTER the game is completed, so don't bother with 3D intros and such too early on...
As for artists, sometimes more than one of em does work if they do it all seperately. One artist can work on all the sprites, another can work on the background, and the others can work on the little details like putting flower pots, beds, window glints, scratches, et cetera in the finished rooms. And if you've got a lot of them, some of the artists can work on the little details like animating the sprites the head artist couldn't find time to animate.
Coders: Yes, it's better if it's the leader. But you could also have other skilled coders who could do the conversation engine, save/load engine, etc. The leader is best for fine-tuning and putting together all the code.
Story writer: If you're gonna have a story writer, make sure he's sober and you can understand perfectly what he's trying to say. If not, you'll have a bunch of confused guys and if the story writer isn't the leader, even the leader could be confused and could easily end up killing the entire project no matter how far it's gone...
I too, speak from experience. And I've been in about... 6 or so team projects, scrapped because:
1. The leader no longer contacted everyone else
2. The morale of the team dropped too low and everyone thought that the game would never be completed
3. Everyone realised that there was a better game than they were working on out at the moment and they all started to playing it and in the end, half the group hated the other half. The only ones who stuck with the project had no graphical capabilities and it was scrapped.
4. The game was going all well and nearly completed till the leader (sole coder, who had all the source code in MMF, which the artist didn't have) took a one-week vacation as he tried to figure out the bugs in multiplayer. The one-week vacation became a several-month long 'vacation' and he wasn't heard of anymore till recently. At least I think that's what happened... it's been years since I saw him.
5. The game was going along quite well, till everyone got impatient and did some extra part in it which kinda conflicted with some of the leader's plans (shiny grass on a dark theme, arguments on how linear the game should be, sole artist taking long breaks). The leader finally gave up on it after the main story writer wrote a very long story which had no spaces between the words and way too many grammatical mistakes and spelling errors to make it legible.
6. The team couldn't really decide on what to make.
So... Dogzer, wanna work on another team project?
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
It's good advice indeed. Muz is right, too, but most of what he says applies to larger teams/games. Probably the best leader would be the designer and/or coder, though you should get ideas from everyone as they will have (slightly) different views and and talk about things that you didn't think of before. Just be careful not to have too many cooks, or else your broth will be spoilt. And that's not something you want
Oh, Gilgamesh, a lot of us are quite young (16 & under).
I would like to add that the key is never stop working. Never forger the project.. most importantly never leave ur team.
For a very long time Ive been on a team with a guy called boywonder, he is the leader and he is very open minded. We are like 3 or 4 guys.. all from finland, I'm the only 1 from uruguay. And I must say even if sometimes things move slow.. we dont give up.
Muz:
I do have some free time, so sure thing, how about we start a simple game and add features to it later? I've gotten a tad bit better at drawing since last time. =p
Gilgamesh:
I'm 17, but all too many people around here have the mentality of 13/12 year olds.
Dogzer:
So, whatcha wanna work on? I'm kinda short of free time, but I could do quite a bit if there's someone out there to work with. Your art was really good the other time, I'd wonder if you could've actually gotten better.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Yep, some good advice in there but.. well untill sombody gets there own team, they figure it out. Things dont work out just like that, you cant create a team by following some rules, but they do help you from making mistakes. I was lucky enough to get some very good members, like fishhead, ashman, neo, and others.
We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams...
Im also in a team, Heretic Emu Studios.
with Paul Jeffries, Blueemu, JD, Mutantleg, Buster, and Skatekid.
were doing our first Project "Arcadia" and its all coming along nicely!.
we have most of Dogzer said, we got our own Members Forum. We mainly post about Games were working on.
While Jeffries is the Lead Programmer, working on the whole engine everyone else is making around 4 mini-games.
its running smoothly at the moment, all you really need is a Forum, and also a Mirc Chat Room is pretty good.
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I've gotten a tad bit better at drawing since last time. =p
