Vacation, Demos, and Help Wanted

Before I get to the advertising part of this blog, I have to go into story mode.

Ahem...

So, three Fridays ago (the 14th, to be exact), I came across an interesting thread on a certain professional social networking site that rhymes with PlinkedIn, and I responded to it. Privately. It had to do with a company looking for people who were working on MMOs. And we are working on an MMO...

Replied received. Reply Sent. Scheduling. Phone Call. Joy...

No, Epic Frontiers has not been picked up yet. What occurred during the call with this particular business person was a promise on my part for more information, and a demo by mid-November. No promises on their side, no paperwork signed, no promises of fame, fortune, or any other words beginning with the letter 'F' (I'm sure the task of getting the demo ready for mid-November will produce plenty of those all by itself). But what has happened was the definition of luck: Preparation meeting opportunity. I was prepared to push the team I have to start working on the demo, and I was preparing to get a 3D art team assembled anyway, so the opportunity to get on the phone with a businessman and talk turkey sat just fine with me.

And then I worried...

It may not work out: They may hate the tech docs I send. They may disagree with my design decisions. They may hate the demo. They may hate me. The demo may crash. We may not get enough done in time. We may blow it by a day or two and lose enough face to lose any hope of a deal. They may not like that I'm writing this in a blog here. An anvil may fall out of the sky and land right on top of me (and for those who have met me, you know that this is a valid worry). Oh, and after I set down the call I realized that I was leaving for Europe for a two-week vacation with my girlfriend, taking me out of action for 16 days, for the most part. What if the guys don't get motivated because of my spotty emailing during that period? What if nothing gets done? What if the team falls apart?

Nuts to that. You can worry things to death all day, and you typically will, but as long as you're able to put the worrying part of your brain in a dark corner where it can rock back and forth while swatting at demons without interfering with the rest of your gray bits, it's fine.

So I went on vacation to Paris, Brussels, London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, kept in contact as often as I could (at least every other day) and took reference and texture pictures and made mental notes of my travels that ultimately influence my game design decisions. Two weeks later, I'm back from Europe, managed emails pretty well considering the time differences and heavy touristing done, the team has produced some really good material for the demo area, a city named Ris'Hebbik on the planet of Chi'Hamak for those wondering, and we've welcomed our first 3D artist to the team. He comes in from a VFX background locally in New York City, so he's both talented and accessible for meetings. We've pinned down architectural styles for the city (very nice work by our concept artists), have technical drawings on the way, and the team stepped up in my absence like I trusted them to. I'm happy about that, and very happy about the guys I have on my team.

Now, we need more...

I seem to be pulling my teammates from everywhere but here, and that's fine with me as long as they do well- and they do really good work, but I can't ignore such a community as this when I ask for 3D artist types to come help on the game. So, if you've made it this far and you feel like working on a team, peruse the information below and get a hold of me at Ted@DigitalFlux--takethisout--.com.

Generalities:

1. Firstly, everyone works for specific hourly wages that are experience/talent/position dependent (just like the real world), which are then accrued and stored as sweat equity (not like the real world), and then paid back in the event that the game ships and brings in enough to actually pay people back. We believe that this is the most accurate way to compensate everyone involved in the project, rather than royalties or whatever. You also get full credit in the game for all positions worked, no matter how briefly you worked them. Work done is copyright DigitalFlux Entertainment, LLC, so if you leave, your toys don't go with you, but we'll pay you later for your work because it's the right thing to do.
2. I'm sorry, but we can't accept anyone who is learning to program or do artwork. We don't have the time to take to sit down and go over things, since we're trying to get a demo done for someone who may be interested in the game. If you know how to model/texture/animate and simply don't know how to do exporting, then that's a different story. Send us samples to review and we'll talk :)
3. You have to be 18 or older, due to work-for-hire and NDA signing. No, your parents' signatures don't count, even if they say they do.
4. We don't do yelling, egos, or immaturity on our team. If you do, then do me the favor and leave me wanting, I'll get by. We have a professional and flexible group that likes to collaborate, and that's how we want to keep it. Vibes count!
5. You don't need to contribute 40 hours a week to this. But if you know how much time you can contribute, then we can work with that. We try to be flexible, because we know that this isn't our day job. Yet :)

Specifics:

3D Artists/Animators: We need a few of these. If you are only good at buildings, or organics, or items, fine, we need all of those things done. If you can do all of that, even better :) We require portfolios to look at, and if you have screencaps of wireframes of your work, that's even better for our reviewing process. Low-poly (think WoW, with a 5 extra polys thrown in) is the name of the game.

Concept and Texture Artists: Concept artist candidates should be talented with creating stylized work similar to what we have shown in our gallery, and have samples to demonstrate said style. Ability to do environmental/background concepts is a plus. You'll be working as part of a team which is partially in place. Texture artists should also have demonstrated abilities.

Writers: Our head writer is great, but swamped, and needs help. Have writing samples, hopefully with character dialog, that we can review. Check out the website to see the conversation system we developed for the game (hint: it's more flexible than the one in Star Wars: The Old Republic, if not quite as simple) for a look at where we're going with missions. Procedural story generation. Background story generation. Procedural, personality-trait-based AI. Okay, okay, I'll stop, but only because it makes me sound like a used car salesman ;)

Coders: I have tasks that I would like to hand off to an enterprising coder looking to do things for the T3D engine that they can boast about on this site such as character customization, stat-based running/jumping/climbing, and helping to bring more active environments into the MMO. You need a copy of T3D and a creative, can-do attitude. Oh, and datablocks are evil and databases are good, so if you have SQL and PHP/HTTPObject knowledge, it's a plus.

As we stand now, we have 1 designer/coder/artist (myself), 1 writers/designers, 1 artist/writer, 1 concept artist, and 1 3D artist. I would like to pull in another few artists, both 2D and 3D, as well as a writer, or even two, and a coder (or two, if someone with procedural content skills wants a go at beefing up the story/mission generation). We have a mid-November deadline for a demo to present that needs production-quality artwork (because having Kork and Boombot do the deeds just doesn't represent the game as fully as we'd like).

It will be hard. There will be uncertainty. There will be blood...

Luckily, the blood will be digital, the hard stuff is fun, which is why we're here in the first place, and the uncertainty is worth it, or else we also would not be here in the first place =)

Contact me.