People wanted for small puzzle game project

[Unknown,Unknown]

I am a programmer and member of the Sierra Gamers Developement Project, and I am looking for a few people to join my team that will be creating a small pc puzzle game. At the most I am only going to recruit five people. I will be using a very simple screening process to help me select the people for this team. I will need to see what they are capable of, and that they are willing to do work before i recruit them. If you would like to see something that I have done, you can see a demo I made with the Wild Tangent Web Driver, located at home.insightbb.com/~jt-sgdp. When the project gets started, if I need to add more people, I will certainly do so.

I have not yet decided if I am going to be the only programmer of this project yet, but that is certainly a possibility. I will, however, be the only designer of this game, and be making all final decisions. If you are interested in joining my team and helping me create my puzzle game, here is what I’m looking for.

Programmer – C++, DirectX, game programming experience.
Artist / Animator – 2d graphics and animation experience preffered.
Musician / Sound Effects – game music and sound production experience preffered.

Also, the people that I recruit for this project have to have, or be able to easily get access to, their programs of choice for doing what they do (programmers will need Visual Studio.NET 2003 retail version). Also, they need to be able to put in at least ten hours a week on the project. We will be using a time card system to keep track of everyones involvement.

The entire game will be done 2d because I want to avoid 3d for a first-time project. The team will develop it’s own engine for the game using DirectX 9. I think this will be better than using an existing game engine considering the project is just a simple puzzle game, plus I have quite a bit of DirectX code already written from some of my previous projects.

The game will be called Popcorn Panic, and will be a fast paced puzzle game similar to the ones you see today (ie. Bejeweled, Walls of Jerico, Tetris). The theme is obviously popcorn, and the puzzle peices will consist of regular, butter, caramel, and chedder popcorn. They will be moved around on a grid, and need to be lined up to be removed. I don’t want to say too much about it right now, but I do have most of the game design completed already. I will have the entire design finallized by the time my team is assembled, that way we can begin immediatly. I am hoping that with the popularity of simple puzzle games these days that we could even sell a few copies. If not, at least we will be able to get peoples attention.

If you are interest, please email me with the information that is listed below. I will be accepting applications until at least December 24, and given that I have enough applicants, I will assemble the team by January 1. Rember that this is a volunteer project, and although I hope we could make some money on it, that is not to be expected. The experience alone will be worth the effort.

Here is the info that I need from you:

Contact info (just name and email address)
Which position you are applying for
Talents and accomplishments, examples needed (feel free to email me files)
List of software that you will be using
How much time are you willing to put in a week

Thanks for you time.
JT Harkey
jt-sgdp@insightbb.com 

A message to the current Sierra Gamers Development Project members:

I’m sad to see that the previous project has fallen apart after such a short amount of time. I was hoping that you would all succeed and make something fun and worthwhile. I’m not going to try to figure out what went wrong, that has already been done. I do not intend for this small project and team to replace the old one, nor do I see myself as the leader of the entire Sierra Gamers Dev Group, just the leader of this small team. I see this as only a small side project for the Sierra Gamers Dev Group, and admittedly, for myself. I am excited about my idea, but I am only a programmer, and cannot acomplish it by myself. Hopefully when my team actually has something to show, it will excite people in the group again and show them it is possible to create something over the internet during everyones spare time. And of course, you are all welcome to apply to be part of my team.

I would also like to point out that even though it sounds like it, this will not be my project alone, it will also be considered a Sierra Gamers Dev group product, and will not be seperated from Ken’s site. I am hoping it gets the team off to a good start, and after it is finished everyone will be excited again and we can build something as a whole team, something big, Also, if the team wants to do something else right now in addition to this small project, that is great, and I will help all I can with that too. I know that my small project is not utilizing are full roster, but too many people on a small project is bad. I believe that was one of the major problems with the last project.

[Unknown,Unknown]

JT,
Did anything come of this?

[Unknown,Unknown]

sort of.

i ended up putting together a small team of people. it turned out to be just me on programming, and julie and sonia doing art, and a guy i met somewhere else doing the sound. julie and sonia both came up with some really great concept art and i used it to put together a popcorn themed puzzle game. the idea came to me because i noticed there is a huge popularity for small, simple puzzle games. i decided to theme it with popcorn because i love popcorn and there doesnt seem to be many games based on it.

i ended up coding a full 2d sprite engine in direct 3d for the game, which could easily be used for something else. it was just a sprite drawing engine that has alpha blending and rotation. but then i put together the first prototype of the game and it wasnt fun. that was a problem, obviously. the only way i can describe it is it was like a bad version of tetris attack with popcorn instead of blocks.

so i decided to wait and put the game on the backburner for a while. i am still convinced that a popcorn themed puzzle game would do alright considering the popularity of games like bejeweled and the others, but i need a better gameplay design first.

in the meantime i decided to make a little blackjack game and i asked julie to help me again and she agreed. we actually are very close to completion. it’s just her and i working on it. it’s turning out rather nice i think. simple, but fun. after all, it’s just classic blackjack.

so i guess you could say something did come from the puzzle game idea, just indirectly.

[Unknown,Unknown]

I could use some help getting into game programming.  If you need any help with art I am a pretty good sketch artist.

Will we get a chance to sample your game?  Does direct3d use C/C++ programming?  Do you need a special function library? 

Good luck on your BlackJack game!

[Unknown,Unknown]

Julie and I are still talking about what to do with the blackjack game once it is finished, so I’m not sure if we will be posting it or not yet, we’ll see. As for the popcorn puzzle game, I would rather not post it because the gameplay wasn’t right yet. I don’t want people to think it is a bad game the first time they see it because I do want to finish it someday and sell it.

As far as DirectX goes, you can code DX with any of the major microsoft languages. It is accessable from Basic, C/C++. and their newer language C#. The coolest thing about DirectX is that you can get it and develop with it for free. Go to msdn.microsoft.com/directx to download the latest SDK. It’s a hefty download though, so I hope you’re not still on dialup.

Let me know what kind of level your skills are in programming and math, and I can help you get started. If you’re still a beginner, DX might not be the way for you to go yet. Also, I can recommend some books that would be at your level.

[Unknown,Unknown]

My math background includes the following classes:
High School: Algebra I & II, Trigonometry, Geometry, Calculus I
College: Calculus II & III, Differential Equations, Discrete Mathematics, Physics I & II with Calculus, Statistics. 
My computer background is: Turbo Pascal, Programming Concepts (Java), Object Oriented Programming (C++), IT Program Design (ANSI C), IT Data Structures & Algorithms (ANSI C, Hash Tables, Binary Trees), IT Human Computer Interface (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
On the Side I have programmed in VBA in Access.
TOO MUCH SCHOOL!!!

PS: And yes I’m still on dialup (Free juno)

[Unknown,Unknown]

you should have no problem getting into game programming with that list of skills. your math education is deeper than mine, and i do alright so far. i only went up to business calc and elementary statistics. why dont you email me and tell me what areas you are interested in and i can help you from there. do you want to actually code an entire game engine, or are you more interested in just using someone elses and focusing on the physics and gameplay? do you want to start out in 2d, or jump right into 3d? tell me what kind of projects you have worked on before and, if any, game related things. maybe we can work together on something too.

i think you can get my email address from my profile, i hate to put it in the text of message boards because of spam.

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