I'm trying to get active in building my portfolio, and I know there are a ton (or a few hundred kilos) of people out there who are also either looking to get in or currently not doing too much. Throughout university and school, I never really met a group of people who were enthusiastic in developing games, though this was partly due to my teenage shyness which I probably only kicked firmly in the pants last year.
Anyway, beyond my life story; What I'm trying to propose here is for a group of sumea(n's) to get together and work on an Independent Small Scale game. Though I am in Sydney (and thus unable to vent my game design urges on a local Global Game Jam event as it's on the other side of the country), I don't care whether I can get a team in Sydney or across the country (or world). I spend my daily job managing outsourced people in GMT -2 via messengers and phone, so working with people on the same time zone is like a reprieve for me.
So if you're interested (or at least partially curious), post here with your name, focus/profession and a brief description of skills (we'll worry about contacts later).
Example:
Name: Andrew Bittman
Focus: Game Designer
Skills: project management, quality assurance, some programming and animation (though generally out of practice)
Really hoping to get some interest. Comments are fine here too.
I'll Help Where I can
Hi Guys.
My name is Michael Dobele (Mik) and I'm currently employed at Halfbrick Studios in Brisbane as a Producer and Designer. I've only been in games development professionally for just over 4 years but I'd love to offer my services to you and your team as an external "mentor" to the project.
If you need me I could chip in with suggestions, advice and general helpful criticism where I can.
Cheers
Mik
Welcome, Mik
Welcome aboard Michael, I'm sure we all look forward to hearing from you during development, and we're very grateful to have you on our side :)
I was planning on asking around to see if anyone in the industry would like to help in this 'mentor' style, but it's great that you've come to us first!
- Sam.
organising what tsumea can do
Hi guys, I'm super excited about you guys collaborating on projects. I want to pass by you on a few tiny things while I'm figuring out the best way you can utilise this site.
1. Groups - you can use groups on this site for private discussions. Make sure you set it for invite only.
2. Forum - I've made forum sections for each team for public discussion. Team A would be for Bittman's current team. You could post public updates or use this for others to provide interest in joining, ask questions, provide feedback etc
3. Chat - the chat is available for quick and conveniant meetings if required. Anyway, it's there if you need it.
4. Wiki - I can set up a private wiki for your project. It would be useful however to do at least do one general wiki page on the main tsumea wiki which lists your current team members, their skillset, and a small bit about your project.
5. I know there are concerns on the limited resources of talent for projects and that letting the floodgates on projects will have a detrimental effect on getting enough staff on board each of them, so we're currently limiting it to 3 teams for the time being.. The first team (Bittman's team) is one of them, and if you guys still want more talent on board, I'll be more than happy to promote any talent you require on the front page.
With the teams and projects announced, I'd like them organised in a tier with a scale from simple and small to much larger.
All in all, the site would be helpful in getting teams organised and started on a project, and I can manage all the stuff on providing industry feedback.
I'll be making a call for project interest and team members for Team B and C shortly.
What tsumea can do:
Good to see you are excited Souri, after a couple of weeks we've already thought about moving off tsumea to help development so I'm going to respond to your notes here to let you know what we think we might need.
1. Groups: Groups are good, however I would like more organisation within them. Perhaps being able to group members of my group under some titles?
2. Forum: The team forums are good, and I see the Team A thing can be used for public announcements, so thanks for that. The only thing I want to ask is if this forum could become more user friendly in general? I've found tagging is often somewhat bugged (I still can't get a
- working) and many free forum packages offer more variety at the click of a couple of buttons. Perhaps being able to section out the team's own section would also be appreciated rather than simply having an ever-growing list of threads. Navigation is also a little bugged, if I click on "1 New" it won't drag me to the new topic. Also, when replying it will drag me back to the first page even if my response was on the 2nd.
3. Chat: Cheers for that, I've been using it and trying to get my team to use the same channel rather than trying to organise individuals on msn.
4. Wiki: A private wiki would be great, and of course we would do a general information page. A wiki was one of the things we were moving away from tsumea to do.
5. Good to see you're trying to organise other teams. I feel some of my members may head out to Teams B and C when they popup (assuming it's not done too soon since that will spread resources thin perhaps) moreso because they don't have the time now, but may have it later.
Another note: The main things we were moving away from tsumea for were forums, wiki and svn. If the forums and wiki were improved, we would probably maintain both of these on tsumea, though the svn will probably remain outside anyway.
Also, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how you plan to provide industry feedback. We've already had a suggestion by one of our members to contact some people once we're well into it and also have had Michael from Halfbrick join to "mentor".
Indie Game!
Name: Khanh Huynh
Location: Melbourne
Focus: Game Designer
Skills: Organisation, QA (no experience but i have time to put in), very little programming and basic 3d modelling
Hoping to get more insight of a game being put together. Currently studying Game Design at QANTM and would like any experience that may enhance my studies or future career path.
Me TOO!
HI, I'm Oya. I studied first year Games development and Design in Melbourne. I haven't completed the course but it was for a major project, which I wanted to work with others to achieve. My strong points are concept art as well as environment design and texturing, Props, and project management.I have some time to dedicate to a project online or work with others. I'll be happy to show some artwork/resume if you would like to check it out.
Hi there
Hi, I would like to join this team!.
I am a Web and Interface Designer, and I´ve worked on many fields of graphic design over the years. I am proeficient on designing interfaces as well as 3d modelling.
I have experience developing art assets games for the pc and for mobile devices, as well as level design.
so this is my profile so far...
Name: Edwin Vargas
Focus: Interface, animation and 3D modelling
Skills: 3d Studio Max, Maya, photoshop, zbrush, illustrator, some scripting and video composition and level design.
3d Engines: 3d GameStudio, Unity3D, Cryteck Engine.
I´ll be looking forward to work with you guys!
Howdy
(message to the two above)
I must say we are starting to get into the business end of things and have already gotten a fair bit of work done, however you can still request to join the group by yourselves and catch up on things if you believe you can join a project partway through.
So feel free to invite yourselves if you're still interested, spend some time to catch up on things and put your hand up for the tasks we are currently working on.
Music and Sound?
Name: Christopher Larkin
Focus: Composition
Skills: Orchestration, sound design (musical atmos), electronic synthesis, recording, mastering.
I'd never say no to another programmer
If you have a name, get on it and invite yourself so I can get an email, confirm and then give you some details, etc.
We do have a sound designer
And typically one is more than enough. But if you're still interested, invite yourself to the group and I'll pass on further details.
Name: Ben Lee Location:
Name: Ben Lee
Location: Sydney
Focus: Game Designer/Programmer
Skills: Programming, management and people networking
Hi, I've been working in the game/graphics industry for over 11 years. Over the years I have worked on PC arcade games using Glide and worked on products/titles using proprietary DirectX and OpenGL engines. Currently I am leading a team working with the Gamebryo engine. I also do freelance work and currently personally own full licenses to Unity 3D Pro and Unity iPhone Pro (not the asset server). I would be interested in participating in a well organised indie project. Cheers.
Hey Andrew, Can you accept
Hey Andrew,
Can you accept my request to join the group.
Im currently a web applications developer but really more experience to break into the 3D gaming industry.
Ive done a few opengl c++ projects during uni and a few little 3D programs here and there.
Cheers
Sorry I was late on that
Laptop being sent in for repairs, I'll contact you properly sometime in the next couple of days.
Cheers for the interest.
How is this all coming
How is this all coming together guys?
I'm really interested to see how each of Tsumeas projects are developing. From what I can see it's been hard to come to conclusive decisions on engine type, team members and the like.
I'm hoping you guys have been working hard in developing your game concepts. :D
Haha we're slackers!
Nah not really, we just don't update those threads I put in the Team A section much since it's never a ton of new work rather than touches on existing work. I guess when you're in it it's harder to show progress. Maybe I'll do a snap of how our "in-dev" game looks so far, though it's very much placeholders and what-not.
Also, hoping to show something at Freeplay, but we'll have to see. Who knows how badly real life delays things? (e.g. My laptop is headed for repairs, who knows when I'll see it again!)
Moving the Tsumea projects
Moving the Tsumea projects forward = Monthly progress updates.
Greetings everyone,
Having seen and watched the 3 tSumea projects be suggested, debated, initiated and started to some extent. And being someone who wants to see these interesting projects form into something solid and tangible. I‘d like to make a suggestion for helping them move forward.
While I understand that perhaps a few discussions are being done privately and on locked forums. It’s my own opinion that showing the development process publicly in this project is also important, more so since many of the members are volunteering for this project with the purpose of participating in a project that would get their foot in the door for with the games industry.
With this in mind I would suggest that each team should produce a monthly progress update.
These don’t have to be elaborate and time-consuming endeavors to create. At it’s most simple it’s a summery of what new features, artwork and other advances the team has made to showcase to the public the progress of their work. It should take the project lead no longer then an hour to write up.
Either presented as a journal or scoop. A monthly progress update should outline:
· What advances has the team made over the past month in:
o Design – What design documentation has been written and how did it help the programmers and artists?
o Programming – What new, improved or revised features where implemented this month?
o Art – What new assets have been introduced into the game and why?
· What where the issues encountered with the project this month and how where they addressed?
· What advances is the team aiming to accomplish in the upcoming month.
Cheers,
DesignerWatts
Monthly Reports
Probably a better idea than me trying to inspire our members to post their own work on tsumea. I'll work on giving them out, thanks for the idea watts.
...but after we get Freeplay sorted...
Looks interesting
Im a concept artist w/3d skills max and lightwave. might be fun to get involved w/this
P
Again, to both of the above
Please invite yourselves into the Sumea Indie Project group, I approve and we go from there.
Getting people to self-invite has almost become a test. For every 2 people I tell to do it, only 1 does. For every 5 that do, only 1 stays. Interesting thing I've got going on there...
Timing was interesting, did either of you see us at Freeplay?
Letting everyone know that things are working really well already. 18 members (and not as many lurkers as anticipated) and a ton of great game proposals have meant an excellent start to things. We've managed to narrow down our game proposals from 12 to 8, and though it's not a great jump it is giving everyone experience in pitching their game proposals a bit more formally even if it is only a small game we're aiming to make.
I'll probably make a new thread to let people know more and allow proper lurkers to browse our work a bit more than the current group system we're using here on sumea.
If there are any more interested parties out there, don't forget to put your name down if you want to lend some assistance. Whether you're in the industry or not, this can't hurt (unless we totally fail, but those thoughts are for the "half-empty" camp rather than the "half-full" camp where I come from)