CGEmpire - Independent & Amateur Game Development Community

Started by , Mon 05/06/2006 15:04:24

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cgempire

First of all, this may not be the appropriate place to post this, but I could find nowhere on the site I felt more relevant on these boards, and I would hope it may be of relevance to this community enough to warrant a post. If not, then mods, please feel free to delete (or preferably move :)) and heart-felt apologies.

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Hello everybody,

CGEmpire is a new community that has been set up by several industry veterans to help those who wish to get into the game industry, and to support independent game development.

In a world where game development technology and production costs have all but muscled out the amateur community, we aim to bring back the days when someone could sit in their bedroom and make a game. By offering free and dedicated support from our Resident Experts in Art, Code, Music & Design, as well as the support from other members of the community.

We hope to provide amateurs and professionals alike with a relaxed and approachable forum, where encouragement and constructive critisism are offered. Those who may feel giants such as CGTalk and other sites intimidating to post on will hopefully find CGEmpire a welcoming place to discuss all facets of game development, and recieve advice from industry veterans.

We provide various in-house developed 3DS Max plug-ins, such as the infamous Blubber script, completely free for download for registered members. We will also provide textures and models completely royalty free that members can download and use as they wish.

We also have plans in the future to offer:

* Hosting and advertising for independent game projects.
* Offer e-mail addresses and web-space to independent developers.
* Offer critiques of art portfolios.
* Offer completely free games developed in-house.

All proceeds from advertising will be used to fund development of free resources for the community.

However, CGEmpire is very much in its infancy, and we need veterans and newbies alike to build this kind of community, as well as spread the word. Please take the time to register and help us make CGEmpire a great resource, and to try and bring back the much missed bedroom coding era where anybody could make their mark.

A link to the site can be found here:

http://www.cgempire.com

Thanks all!

chris @ cgempire.com

Gord10

Games are art!
My horror game, Self

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

One issue I have is that nowhere on your profile (or anywhere I can see) do you list your credentials (or those of the other Resident Experts) for being experts.  Simply claiming that you are a 'Lead Programmer' doesn't really do anything for most people unless you have a list of professional games to back it up--and since your goal is to have 'professionals' help amateurs get into the business, listing your real name and background on what you have done to make you qualified for such a task is important.  Good luck.

cgempire

A good point. We are currently constructing a "Resident Expert Profile" section that will give details on our career and specialities. We will try and get this online as soon as possible.

In the meantime I've added a bit of info to my profile, and I am suggesting the same to other REs in the forum.

In case you're interested, the Resident Experts on our site have worked on games for Capcom, Sony, Atari, DICE, Codemasters, Bethesda, Cinemaware and Eidos amongst others.

Thanks for the feedback!

chris

Erenan

Seems interesting. Did anyone else notice that Nikolas Sideris is a resident expert on that site?
The Bunker

Paper Carnival

Yes I did, I browsed it a bit and found a tutorial by him there. I was like "wow, an Orchestration and Instrumentation tutorial? awesome!". I blindly followed the link and added the page in my bookmarks as fast as my internet connection could allow, but when I started reading I noticed that I had seen it before :P

Nice forum, I'll check them out more later, when I have time.

Nikolas

Quote from: Erenan on Mon 05/06/2006 21:15:25
Did anyone else notice that Nikolas Sideris is a resident expert on that site?
I did!  ;D

Yes the tutorial is the one to geoffkhans' site (www.gregjazz.com). Although it has been off-line for a little while because of minor corrections from my part.

Actually about cgempire: there are a lot of pros in there from the gaming industry, mainly as far as I can tell, from the UK. The art in there is really impressive.

Nikolas

MillsJROSS

This is more than a bump than to add new information.

I think this site is a great idea. Right now it's member base is on the weak side, but if you're interested in going into this industry, this site has potential to grow.

-MillsJROSS

lemmy101

Just run into this thread.

Yup, Binky and myself ran into that site and were quite impressed with what they were trying to do, so signed up. They seem a friendly bunch, and it seems they are genuinely trying to support independent game development... even tho members seem to be a bit lax it does seem to be picking up quite quickly, so worth signing up IMO

That may also have something to do with them agreeing to host Forgotten Element for us. Bless! :D

And Nikolas being an expert on the site definitely sweetens the deal ;) hehe



Huw Dawson

I signed up a few days ago. Really nice site, and it looks promising from both a game player and wannabee maker like myself. The experts seem friendly too. So hooray on that front. ;)

It's also nice to see that The Forgottern Element (and therefore AGS) has a standing there. Whilst I may not totally agree with some of the art, the game is extreamly well made and looks fantastic, so it's the best ambassador for us AGS'ers, right? ;)

- Huw
Post created from the twisted mind of Huw Dawson.
Not suitible for under-3's due to small parts.
Contents may vary.

lemmy101

Well thanks Huw for your comments on FE :)

I believe they're definintely looking to support more games in such a way but we kinda got in there first due to nikolas' involvement (thanks nikolas!) I guess we must be a test case or something tee hee... a few games have been posted on the indie forum, really cool ones at that, but didn't seem to get the same support, I rather suspect the "free" element (no pun intended :D) stands for a lot there as it does here.

In exchange we offered to host all our art assets / plug-ins over there, and they seem to support AGS in the sense that I saw a news item about it.

I think they're rather hungry for artists to post gfx in the artist boards at the moment.

cgempire

Hi all, thank you for your kind words about our humble site.

Yes, we are very pleased to have Forgotten Element as our first fully supported game at cgempire, especially since one of the people behind it is "one of our own" so to speak, but we will indeed be adding other games once we have got more members, and finalised the site design.

The fact that a lot of AGS games are free, not to mention that AGS itself is free, means we give this community the upmost support, and will be willing to help in anyway we can to help Chris Jones and this community to keep doing what they are doing... though this is a small gesture when you consider this site has many thousand more members than our own :)

Although we are not ready for hosting more games at the moment, we would be more than happy to make an exception for the "baby horse game". If the (actual) author could contact us it would be much appreciated as we at CGEmpire think it is perhaps the most ingenious thing we have ever seen and would love to have it feature on our forums ;)

Thanks again,

chris @ cgempire.com

Nikolas

3 months old thread. There've been worst than this!

I'm bumping this thread!1!!!1!!!

Don't know if it is right, or it feels right, but I think that you should know about CGEmpire and the recent developments.

After a while of problems with servers and other stuff and with help from various members, donation-wise (I'm going to mention Geofkkhan here who is simply stunningly great, but others also who you do not know), we managed to purchase a gallery system. And also the front page/portal has been redesigned and looks even better now.

Sadly after all this upgrading, which took almost two weeks, there has been a lack of posting. So I'm bumping once again and hope you don't mind (too much).

I am a Resident Expert there, and that's why I'm doing it, but also of course I think it is a great site and a great idea.

That's about it for a bump-post. Front-page's up, Gallery's up, Chat's up, new comps are on the way, sponsor's also.

Thanks

Gregjazz

I've been a member of CGEmpire for a while, and I can certainly vouch for it. They've got an awesome new gallery for users, as well as other things. This is a great resource for anybody interested in game development. There are plenty of resources in the 2D/3D art realm here, as well as a monthly music contest with some GREAT prizes. So check it out. ;)

Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens

I will make an account here because Geoffkhan has severely pimped it.

Nikolas

Thanks to both of you then. :)

Though you could just browse around, seeing most features without even registering.

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