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[Tuplanolla]

Team Name:
(None.)

Project Name:
The working title is Piestalk.

Brief Description:
Simply put Piestalk is a text-oriented sandbox adventure game with quests and focuses on gameplay rather than graphics and sounds. It has been in planning since 2008 and in production since 2009, but hasn't gotten far because of assisting developers disappearing more than once. The defining idea of the game is to make it as realistic and detailed as possible, to the point where most of the manual (correlation and causation specifically) can be replaced with common sense. Implementing such features requires lots of knowledge and research of optimization and various fields of science -- especially statistical algorithm design to make the game computationally feasible. As a whole the project is very demanding and time consuming. On the other hand it has the potential to be an interesting learning experience.

Target Aim:
Free and partially open-source.

Compensation:
Half of the donations to come.

Technology:
The game is targeted for computers and as such should be cross-platform compatible. Any working programming languages, tools or resources are acceptable.

Talent Needed:
Game programming and assisting design (especially criticism) are needed the most, but any support is welcome. Pedanticism is a plus.

Team Structure:
I, Sampsa "Tuplanolla" Kiiskinen, am a physics student and as such extremely interested in science and development. I also tend towards being a perfectionist. I spend most of my free time studying subjects like electronics, psychology, programming or project management and enjoy difficult challenges and huge projects. Retro games are close to my heart as well. I'm fluent with (X)HTML/CSS, C99 and Ruby and can find my way around TeX, Java(Script), BASICs, Python and Assembly although I'm more inclined towards mathematical simulations than games (which is why I'm here asking for help). I also know a lot about (pixel) graphics, music and videos -- with years of experience. I wish to put all my skills to use to work on this project, the engine itself being my main interest.

Website:
My website is currently down for maintenance, but some of my (unrelated) musical works can be found from YouTube.

Contacts:
You can contact me via the email tuplanolla at gmail dot com.

Previous Work by Team:
(None.)

Additional Info:
While the game is very text-oriented it differs vastly from other adventure games. For example skills develop both forwards and backwards and instead of numerical "hit points" or "levels" the player only has a hunch of such things (which may not always even be accurate); the information is "I feel healthy, but pretty tired" rather than unimaginative "80 hp and 16 st". The numbers don't simply hide behind the text, but the player's stamina is calculated from things like simplified atp synthesis instead of linear timers. Everything in the game world is an individual object and behave according to the environment, thus making the game world "live". Fantasy elements can be added later if they're needed at all.

The game will have no censorship or double standards (thanks to no third party dependence). Things will be modeled with scientific accuracy, just as they are in the real world even if they're not particularly beautiful (being raped, choking on your vomit, etc).

The graphical direction is open for discussion. Any good-quality-but-low-detail alternative that doesn't require huge amounts of work (as there will be tens of thousands of different objects) is acceptable, classical tile-based top-down perspective or low-poly 3d likely being the best. Since people like screenshots I made a mock-up of a tile-based low-poly environment. I also made a fancy promotional image although the game might end up looking more like Nethack.

Sounds are not necessary because of the textual nature of the game, but can be added if there's enough time and resources to do so.

The plot is also open to discussion, but the main idea is already set. To avoid ruining the historical accuracy the game takes place in the future on another colonized planet. Placing the game (series) on a "colonization-unexpected apocalypse-new development from the very beginning" timeline makes the plot very versatile and allows reproducing historical eras similar to what has actually happened in a relatively short period of time; history is known to repeat itself anyway.

A simple server-client multiplayer feature is necessary at some point, because always adventuring alone is boring.

Feedback:
Any feedback is welcome. Don't be offended if I appear a bit harsh at first though; it's just how I am.

[eefano]

Warning: I'm the devil's advocate here.

These types of games enter a very risky situation where the efforts made by the developers don't repay in terms of playability, leaving the majority of players in clueless frustration.
'common sense' is not so common after all, and internationalization might be pretty impossible to implement. Even if you know basic english like me, you might not know the right words to use or engage in the right 'common sense' (culture based) behaviour.

For example, just play the game 'Facade' and drown in utter frustration trying to drive the engine in the direction you want while the 'live objects' annoy you endlessly with script-driven arguments.

Your curriculum speaks by itself, and I don't even see the reason you should need a 'game programmer', in fact you might only need some prebuilt engine (ogre, allegro whatever) to render the front end of your game mechanics.