Programmer looking for team

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#1

Hello, as the title suggest, I’d like to fill a gap somewhere. :wink:

I’m 22 years old and studying business information systems in Würzburg, Germany.
I’m programming as a hobby, mostly with Java and I always wanted to create my own games, but finally came to the conclusion that I do not have the time and skills to ever satisfy my own requirements, especially when it would come to graphics, sound and all the stuff that cannot be done with code alone. :persecutioncomplex:
In addition, I cannot really decide which of m many ideas to start with or what tools to use (tried around with JMonkey, Slick, libGdx and a few others but never really stuck to anything), which is why I would love to help out somewhere.

To give you an idea of what I did so far, this is the only of my projects I can really show off, since someone helped me out with textures and Minecraft handled the rendering pretty well: http://www.curse.com/mc-mods/minecraft/228486-birds#t1:screenshots
I really love to design game features and AI in particular, I liked the Minecraft system of animating directly form code instead of using imported animations. But I’m a curious person and would try to learn whatever is necessary to contribute. :wink:
My preferred genres would be strategy, role-play and open world games in general. Not so much racing, shooters or jump’n’run.

#2

Hi, are you talking about the same idea that you said to me on my forum? I had the same issue as you, lack of free time, so didn’t reply to you. I think we can talk more if you join the IRC or Slack.

#3

Not exactly. What I suggested here was more an idea to get people used to your engine and maybe build a community. Didn’t work out that well, though. :emo:

In the long run, I’d like to build something bigger, I really lack knowledge with OpenGL (I’m stillt rying to get the hang of it and also read some of your tutorials, actually) and skill for actually making textures. :wink:

#4

That idea is actually good, I actually liked it, but the reason I didn’t post there is that the engine is still in the premature state. Most of the things that you have used earlier have changed now, and it offers some more performance than before. I should actually had replied to you there, didn’t mainly do since I didn’t want to start a will be cool in future project on a premature engine.

Sorry about that.

#5

I could use some programming manpower for the game I’m building the engine and server-side-part for right now, it’ll also fit into your RTS category!
I’ll send you a PM with the details if you’re interested. :point:

#6

Just be aware that working in a team is MORE work than working alone.

As the philosopher said: “Hell is other people.”

#7

work-load while developing isn’t the problem, but the sheer amount of sub-tasks, so I’m pretty confident that it’ll be great to have someone to share some of the tasks with, especially considering AI routines and systems, etc!

#8

I absolutely agree with ags1.
When you go from a one-man team to a two-man team, you suddenly have a lot of communication to do, which you did not need before (because you only had to communicate with yourself).
Important aspects of communication that everyone new to a project has to know are:

  • what is the overall design/architecture of the system? What part does what and how do they interact with each other?
  • what is the direction you want to drive the design (this aspect needs more communication when the viscosity of the system is high - i.e. when it is “easy” to make a mess) This is especially crucial when you are in the start phase of a project where many things are yet undone/undecided.
  • what parts do I have to interface with when wanting to add a certain feature? i.e. what and how do I have to do things when I want to “add” something? Again, if there might not be a clear architecture this aspect needs a lot of communication
  • what about quality, source code and naming conventions?
  • what about tests?
  • how to setup a proper development environment? Are tools, apart from a bare-bone IDE, needed and how to configure them?
  • how about synchronizing both peoples’ work (do you use GitHub?)

It is likely that when you are working alone on a project you might not have a large amount of documentation that communicates all this, so your co-workers/partners have to rely on personal communication.

Last but not least it can simply not be overestimated how much mental work and burden it is for someone new to get accustomed to the design and the inner workings of some framework/engine. So even if that all was documented or communicated by other means, it can still be hard to comprehend, also depending on the motivation of the contributor.

#9

If you find yourself having too many sub-tasks, the answer is not to add more people, it’s to subtract some (most) of those sub-tasks. Start much smaller. Start smaller than you think is interesting. Do one small (tiny) thing at a time instead of trying to dive in to a large project.

[quote=“VaTTeRGeR,post:7,topic:55505”]
I honestly wish you the best of luck. If you do indeed succeed in starting a team from a forum and publishing a game without starting smaller on your own first, please let us know. I think you’d be the first.

That is not to discourage you, but do a search in the forum for “team” to see a huge list of people who have made similar posts. See how many of them succeeded (zero), and then consider starting smaller on your own and working your way up until you’re actually ready to lead (or even participate in) a development team.

Good luck!

#10

@KevinWorkman

[quote]If you find yourself having too many sub-tasks, the answer is not to add more people, it’s to subtract some (most) of those sub-tasks. Start much smaller. Start smaller than you think is interesting. Do one small (tiny) thing at a time instead of trying to dive in to a large project.
[/quote]
I’m trying to distill it down to it’s essence every now and then, but you’re perfectly right, I won’t be able to instantly build every little idea and feature that comes up.

[quote]I honestly wish you the best of luck. If you do indeed succeed in starting a team from a forum and publishing a game without starting smaller on your own first, please let us know. I think you’d be the first.

That is not to discourage you, but do a search in the forum for “team” to see a huge list of people who have made similar posts. See how many of them succeeded (zero), and then consider starting smaller on your own and working your way up until you’re actually ready to lead (or even participate in) a development team.
[/quote]
I’m not trying to build a team from the forum and then release the next minecraft ;D I just saw this post and and thought he might be interested in this project and would like to help getting it further towards a playable game.
Also this is not my first project, I did 3d-Modelling in Blender for over 3 years, I have worked in a dev-team already (3d-Prop-Modeller for No More Room in Hell) and also with smaller teams before that. I have made several small games/prototypes, but I have never released one, that’s what I’m trying to achieve on the long run.

@KaiHH
I’m using Git+BitBucket and Eclipse and I may switch to github in the future.
Server and Client are using the Artemis-odb entity-system, LibGDX and KryoNet.
I built the whole thing to be easy to modify and plugable.
Your last part is especially important, the whole thing is lacking documentation in parts that are changed often, so I’ll have to manually communicate how the whole thing holds together.

#11

Well, I already worked together with texturers/modelers for my mod, joined with another modder later, tried to help SHC with his engine (;)), helped a lot of people with smaller programming tasks and trained two people in Java over text chat, we have to do pair programming in ruby for university this semester, and all in all, I like to work in a team, as long as both sides actually try to communicate. :smiley:

So, I’m waiting for a pm. :wink:

#12

Hi there!

If you really do this because you want to learn something you may want to have a
look at my game (which can be found in my signature). I could use someone who
helps me creating contents with AI, because I’m quite busy with other stuff concerning
my game.

I’m 18 and also from germany so communication shouldn’t be that hard. I’m not yet
that experienced with working in a team, but I could use a helping hand :slight_smile:

If you’re interested PM me and we can talk more about it.

Greetings

#13

Are you still looking for collaborators?

#14

It seems to me that much of what is mentioned should be documented, regardless, if you want to have any chance of efficiently modifying/maintaining the code after having taken time off, or disengaged to go deep into any other project. There may be drawbacks to two-person teams, but the fact that it enforces some communication/documentation discipline is a benefit, imho.

[EDIT: and “hell” can result when the other team member drops the ball in this regard.]