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[VideoGameProject]

From my experience, just putting talented people together won't make a great product. You'd need a good leader who can motivate and keep every one in check. Being a leader, and doing development at the same time, requires quite a high workload. Couple that with the fact that most people will be doing it as their side project (or one of their many side projects), you'll see that coordination becomes difficult because of the different stakes each person has in the team.

Hey Guys!

I have the skills and motivation needed to get a game created. I, like this forum creator would like to get some talented people together to make a game. If interested visit http://www.facebook.com/VideoGamesProject. I have the same dream. Let's turn it into a reality.

0/10 should've kept your trolling to a single thread.

Maybe so, This person is trying to do the same as I. Perhaps by "Trolling" this thread I I can gather support. And team up with this like minded individual with the same goal.

[vinheim3]

From what I gather in the thread:
1. If we did this, we'd need a good leader and good organization. Obviously there's got to be multiple leaders managing different things.
2. There have been different collaborations, but they're pretty much dead. Probably due to inactive members or the whole forum structure of posting things. I was always imagining some kind of IM for this instead, one that most people here use.
3. Motivation. I think this doesn't need to be an obstacle if a clear design doc is made and everyone is given very simple tasks one at a time.

I think I forgot to mention that my idea was that there would be projects for different programming languages. Competition is a great motivator.

[Geeze]

 
Wants this now! Managing a project like this could be interesting.

Time to make a poll!

[MrDodo]

Well, I would like to be in. My programming skills are not great, but I have some experience with Flash (as3) and Box2D.

The idea of some kind of competition between the different lenguages I think rocks!

[Muz]

Wrote up a quick and dirty guide to managing indie projects:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=27653.0

[SodiumEyes]

The thing to remember is that games are often year-long/multi-year projects. You can't just post "let's make a game together!" on a forum and expect to form a team of people who are actually committed enough to achieve such a long-term goal.

[keo]

i'd give a go with graphics and contribute to design

[Retro]

Warlock's Gauntlet was a community project for a polish game programming forum, warsztat.gd. We actually managed to finish it, and the development took 2 years. But as for the quality... well, this isn't the best of games, because we were almost entirely programmer-focused, and other aspects of the game are lacking. Still, it got 6.9 on desura. Guess people thought it had unused potential

I hope you know what an awesome achievement this is. I've been involved in a similar initiative on a Slovenian gamedev forum and it failed spectacularly for all the reasons everyone mentions.

But if I try really hard to come up with something constructive for such an initiative, maybe it should be managed more like open-source projects, maybe even to extent of delegating jobs through a system like Worklist. I have no idea how to design such a game though as I'm not a guy to support design-by-committee.

[LazyWaffle]

Nothing to contribute right now, but bumping this. I propose we just start pitching game ideas, I guess?

[baconman]

For those interested in using GML, I have a starting framework (in my current project) that's flexible enough to handle most 2D game styles, and includes a Level Chunker approach for ProcGen level design.

Slightly disjointed attempt at making a flexible framework for many types of 2D games. Many of the asset objects already have coding for proper actions/reactions (bomb collect adds bomb ammo, bomb set subtracts one, creates explosion, objects react to explosion sprites), and it also contains (optional) code for a "level chunk randomizer," which can be coded with strings to set tile objects.

No music, SFX, or tilesets yet; and character controls and stuff like gravity/collision checks aren't implemented as of now. All assets are Creative Commons. Could use better "placeholder bushes/trees" as well.

Level Chunker management tutorial:

1. Create a grid of "LevelGenChunk" objects, surround where closeoffs are desired with "Blackout" objects. These will randomly transform into "BattleChunk," "NaviChunk," and "TrapChunk" objects.

2. These three objects will check neighboring chunks and provide a Perlin Noise-style answer (IE: their "image_index") that will cause them to link to one another, and close off any of the same type (or Blackouts). The idea here is to provide flux between different playstyles, in order to prevent monotony.

+1 blocks off the top.
+2 blocks off the left.
+4 blocks off the right.
+8 blocks off the bottom.
"15" totals make standalone rooms that we can bridge with created doorways, or warp pipes, that sort of thing.

3. Based on the image index, the objects then use ten "fillScreen#" commands, each one laying fifteen tiles across. The first 15 variables are "image_index" frames for the "oScriptTiles" object. There's easy-to-pick-up-on patterns in that. Then for the 16th variable, just list the object (oScriptTiles).

It makes a 15 x 10 grid of 48x48 tiles; and so long as openings between them are mutual, it's all green. Tiles include two-tall/wide angles and inner/outer curvatures as well.

4. Just use conditional "create_object" commands after that to fill the chunks with objects!