#41203 - IxthusTiger - Tue Apr 26, 2005 11:39 am
Long gone are the days when a single person toils over all aspects of a professional game. Now we only see that in the homebrew community. I read in an article about the way the Zelda team collaborates on one game, and I was wondering if any of you are part of a homebrew development "team."
I'm interested in any information about collaborative homebrew projects for any system. I'd like an idea of how you communicate with each other, and how your past, present or future projects come together.
If you are part of a team, what are your responsibilities? How do you divide the work? What kind of background does each member have? Do you have a "Miyamoto" who oversees art and conceptual design?
Thanks,
Ixthus
#41208 - Proteanruler - Tue Apr 26, 2005 12:46 pm
one thing you will need is a system for source control so that no two people are working at the same time. In my experience v few people actually succeed in homebrew collaboration due to the enormous amount of work involved. There is a reason why people spend all day (and night- hours in the industry are awful) working on games!!! If they could get away with doing it in their spare time - they would!! I take my hat off to any man, woman that can manage/setup a successful homebrew collaboration game, involving artists and coders (2 breeds apart). Communication tech is good now so there is not reason why not :) - it's a question of time and dedication. For those of us in fulltime jobs, with wives/girlfriends - I don't think honestly you will pull it off unless you are super human or are prepared to lose your better half ;).
#41209 - sgeos - Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:14 pm
| Proteanruler wrote: |
| involving artists and coders (2 breeds apart). |
I've been part to two homebrew teams, both 'coder-centric'. I have a couple of artist friends. Perhaps artists for 'artist-centric' groups? Admittedly, you don't get games without coders. Hence games like nethack, adom. Nice games, no art.
Communication was done entirely via email, PM, and chat sessions. When comparing the two groups, the organization and division of responsibilities was quite different. Both groups were about 3~4 people large. I lead neither group.
-Brendan
#41219 - Pacifist - Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:50 pm
Your better half is alot easier to keep around if she's the other 1/2 of your team.
My girlfried of 5 years is doing the sprites for the game I'm coding alone.
#41220 - Lynx - Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:00 pm
Well, I'm on a 2 man team. We use CVS for just about everything. We even keep our "todo" list in cvs and assign tasks. When I knock one out, I remove the task in cvs. When I take breaks from the project, I just make sure to update my source before hacking away. Nice thing is, when I screw something up, the "real" programmer (PhoenixRising) can look at the changes I made very easily and edit/remove them as needed. When we get to a version worth building/releasing, we mark it in cvs. Then, if there is ever a problem down the road, we can compare versions, etc.
I don't know how anyone writes code without something like CVS to keep track of what has changed, who changed it, and comments they provide when commiting it back to the project. We're also on a Jabber server chatting (setup on the cvs server) all the time. And because it is such a small team, we don't need someone to oversee anything. We just argue the details out.. and whoever is in charge of that module makes the final decision.
Edit: spelling.. uhhg
#41334 - Darkain - Wed Apr 27, 2005 6:24 pm
hell, i'm a one-man team... and i was lost until i got ahold of a source control system... first using SourceSafe, then Source OffSite, and then switched everything over to SVN (its like CVS, only better! :)
source control is the #1 *any* "team" or even "individual" working on large projects needs. after this, would be great communication.
everyone here seems to mention the collaberation between the artists and coders... yes, this is a bit of a pain, but i see the sound people as worse. i mean, c'mon, who ACTUALLY does sound? SFZ guys... music composers... etc.. but then again, most projects never make it past the coder + artist relation to make it this far, so i guess it isnt brought up often.
oh, and the biggest problem of all... people to like to share code. :) everyone loves to keep their magicial little masterpeices to themselves.
_________________
-=- Darkain Dragoon -=-
http://www.darkain.com
DarkStar for Nintendo DS
#41336 - Kyoufu Kawa - Wed Apr 27, 2005 6:37 pm
I'm the lead coder in the Helmeted Rodent group, if anybody wants to code some part(s) him/herself, that's okay. Several of the guys on my MSN list are reasonable artists, some pen, some pixel. I myself am both, but focus on the pixels in development. There's also a music guy and a writer or two. We even have our own proverbial Sound Guy.
These people would be... Rick on sound, Tony on music, me on keyboard and pixel art, Tony's sexy but unfortunatly 14 year old half sister on art (although she recently was called "Asian McSlowpants" with a very good reason), and several "lackeys".
Cearn is listed in the main credits for Catnip Dreams instead of the thankyous for no good reason whatsoever. He is not a team member.
PS: Darkain, regarding masterpieces... can I interest you in a coarse DDR-like minigame?