AGS group projects

[Danman]

The way you explain it Andail. Sounds like a horror movie drop one after another, falling victims.  
I am too scared to make a group game now.  

I also would like to join if I don't get dropped off anywhere.

I got a few skills in everything. What most I got is 14 years experience in gaming ( I even had dos).. I know what games were really cool.

[abstauber]

The Team Challenge competitions usually start off pretty promising, with lots of good intentions and optimistic plans, but then the teams drop off one after another, falling victims of all the inherent illnesses that come with group projects.

I find that to happen in all projects where you don't pay the people. I guess there's a reason why FoY takes like forever whereas Dave Gilberts games have a reliable deadline

[Lucid]

I find that to happen in all projects where you don't pay the people.

Then let´s make a good commercial game, where everyone gets their cut.

[Crimson Wizard]

At russian forum we tried "Random Game" thing. Idea was that 4 participants do their part of work without knowing what others doing 
I drew backgrounds for that.
It was silly... but a little bit fun.

[Arboris]

If you guys are looking for a project, why not revive The Sphinx? It already has a good plot, well defined characters and puzzles for the first episode. Plus a style guide by Big Brother, and a few semi-finished backgrounds I made. 2d adventure had deleted all of the graphics on the wiki, but here's what's on my harddrive:

That looks great, when was this?

[Ali]

The Sphinx was being worked around 2005-2006, led by Snarky. This Wiki Page still has all of the character and story information. I did manage to find images showing some more character sprites:

[Lucid]

That´s beatiful game. I´d like to be part of the team.

[Arboris]

I see, too bad it got abandoned

[Snarky]

Aha! So you had all those images, Ali. I thought they'd been lost forever. I think I have most of the rest:





I also have the other steps of the tutorials bigbrother made, the reference images and some very early work in progress in a completely different style.

The only thing I seem to remember but don't have is a later revision of the sprite of the woman, Sesh, wearing more modern clothing (a t-shirt and shorts, I think).

If people want to restart the project, they're very welcome to. It kind of died because there wasn't a whole lot of interest after a while, and I didn't want to write it on my own (the point was always that it would be a community project, not one person's baby). Also it turns out that I suck at coming up with good puzzles.

[Radiant]

I find that to happen in all projects where you don't pay the people.

I beg to differ!

[InCreator]

I think team competition was awesome.
Velislav was quite a born leader too.

But yes, most of the little time we had, I spent on redrawing backgrounds from an artist that left in the middle of the compo  

I think that any group project takes:

1) Very clear (and realistic!) vision
2) Good leadership
3) Good planning down to tiniest detail and minute, also, sketches

Also, some inside rules for perfectionists like me. For example, how many hours should one background, animation or whatever take. If time is over, it will be saved and used, whatever state it is. Plus little "fix time"at the end of the project to overhaul everything that was save-used way too early.

Let's say, there 1 hour per background and 10 backgrounds.
And then 2 hours of fix time, which will be used ONLY after 10 backgrounds are done.
Then "fixing" is forced to be divided between what needs it most and cannot also go on forever.

[Wyz]

Well it can be done, but you need people that are really interested; Not just curious. There is no good way to tell them appart in the begin phase if you don't know each other very well. Sometimes you end up yourself with being just curious, it's some times hard to tell yourself.  It helps to get a clear understanding what needs to happen, for that you already need to have a solid script. If you don't have that you need some kind of planning that keeps progression going on. I'm currently involved in a game project, we have (voice)meetings each week, we make agendas and minutes. I think it (especially the minutes) really helps keeping the project going. A bit fussy maybe for a large group of volanteers, but it might work.

[Miez]

The Team Challenge competitions usually start off pretty promising, with lots of good intentions and optimistic plans, but then the teams drop off one after another, falling victims of all the inherent illnesses that come with group projects.

I find that to happen in all projects where you don't pay the people. I guess there's a reason why FoY takes like forever whereas Dave Gilberts games have a reliable deadline

I'd like to make a little sidenote here: "projects where you don't pay people" makes some group efforts sound like team members are being extorted. For FoY this is simply not true: as it is a fan game based on copyrighted IP there's simply no viable way to turn it into a commercial project.

[Danman]

I think the best way a group could work would be 

I do a background for 1 hour. Give to to another team member and he works on it. Then when the other team needs help the same applies. That way it like a give and take. I think the fact that lots of people play these games is good enough pay. ( For our egos anyway. ) Some people want to do these games and some can do it. That is what I think depends if people want to be payed.

[abstauber]

I find that to happen in all projects where you don't pay the people.

I beg to differ!

Tell me your secret!

[Tuomas]

The biggest reason why I wouldn't join a group-fun is that most of the people here draw plain shit, and who'd be the hated leader to tell them that their background or sprites just don't fit the vision of the game. If on the other hand everything would be accepted the game would look very strange and irregular. Probably not worth playing either. Too many chefs spoil the dinner you know.

[RickJ]

Tell me your secret!

1.  You need a committed group of people on the team
2.  Dedicated , full time leader

Most people that say they are committed to a project aren't.   The ones that are
need to be constantly pumped with enthusiasm lest they lose interest and drift away.
The amount of effort required to complete a game project is greatly underestimated
by most people.  It's really naive to believe that you can come here with a game idea
that people throw themselves at a chance to produce graphics, music, etc for it.

[Ryan Timothy B]

The biggest reason why I wouldn't join a group-fun is that most of the people here draw plain shit, and who'd be the hated leader to tell them that their background or sprites just don't fit the vision of the game. If on the other hand everything would be accepted the game would look very strange and irregular. Probably not worth playing either. Too many chefs spoil the dinner you know.

Haha, I totally agree with this. It would be hard to have a large group of artists making one game, and good quality is pretty slim around here.  It could be an eyesore seeing multiple background/characters drawn by many individuals.

You'd pretty much need one person making the backgrounds, one doing the characters, one doing the character animations, one doing music, one doing sound effects, and one leader.  The programming, dialog/writing, game and puzzle designers can be done by multiple people, but much easier with one person for each (with perhaps puzzle and game designer being the exception).

You're looking at possibly 11 people if you really wanted spread the work around to maximize efficiency.

[Wyz]

well in that case you want to do two this:
first: Don't set the bar to high, begin with something small but complete, and leave room for extention, like episodic games. It's important to have a clear finishing point in sight, so it's not along run. Other then that, also make the quality of the sprites a level that is doable for at least a few artists.
second: Have an art director: a game (every game in fact I think) needs to have a consistent style. The only way that will work is beign harsh and keeping standards, even if that means you need to bitch about some sprite someone made. Ofcourse the artist has to be able to understand what the art director had in mind, so communication is key. And also it must be doable to start with (see my first point).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

These large group activities are just begging to fail.  You want to gather a small group of people you know you can trust by their established body of work, not a bunch of untried internet 'personalities' who just want to be involved with something to be one with the hive mind or bask in some imaginary spotlight.  And yeah, when the word 'free' is involved it's best not to be too ambitious in scope or design since a lengthy development cycle is the single largest cause of attrition with online help (and probably for commercial efforts as well).

If you have physical, punchable friends who like designing games they would make far more useful and accountable allies than anyone you meet on the internet because you can punch them (and they know it).  On the internet it's all a toss-up of who has the biggest personality and friend/enemy list so you're going to find loads and loads of people who will offer to help but have no intention of actually sticking with the project for various reasons (disinterest, a severe underestimation of the effort, life issues, etc).  That said, when you do meet that rarest internet person with integrity (like Dave Gilbert) you befriend them and keep close tabs on their projects since they are the only type of people online you'll be able to rely on in an actual project.  Finally, the simple approach is just not to offer your help until you've accomplished something real on your own, and the reverse, not to accept help from someone who has a completely blank slate with nothing to offer but potentially empty promises.  This is the reason why so many recruit a team requests go unanswered.

Get a game or two under your belt or some solid art or music in a portfolio and then start discussing your dream team!