FreeOrion

I would first of all like to say that you all have done a wonderful job on Free Orion. I have played tons of 4X games and they are by far my favorite genre. However, many 4X games lack the excitement and action that most gamers these days look for. Thus, the FPS games have taken over the primary share of the gaming market these days.

I am working on developing a game that will be the standard by which all future 4X games will be measured by. Perhaps even all strategy games will be measured by it. I am looking for people who posess the various talents and skills neccesary to produce such a game.

The first thing I did was contact various professional game studios and see if they were open to the idea. Most of them wouldn't even take a look at my ideas and/or didn't respond at all. The game I am talking about will be the ultimate space strategy game. It will be a blend of all the greatest aspects of past space games and include aspects from various RTS games and a few space flight sims.

Ideally it will be a blend of Homeworld(2), Pax Imperia:Eminent Domain, Master of Orion(Free Orion), Supreme Commander, Merit's Galactic Reunion, Star Trek:Bridge Commander, Hegemonia, Warhammer 40K:Dawn of War, and Imperium Galactica. It will be a real time game with full 3D camera and full 3D freedom of movement. Ships can move anywhere and are not restricted to lanes of travel. The game will also implement seamless zooming at all levels. Players can lock thier cam on a planet, enter into geosynchronus mode, and zoom right down to the surface. The player can zoom all the way in to view individual infantry and see thier facial features. From there, the player can zoom all the way out to view thier entire galaxy.

Ships can be moved individually in 3D space as well as moved in fleets. The game will have ship, race, and ground unit design.

Anyways, I have so many great ideas for this game. However, I lack the programming knowlege to build it. I have 3D modelling skills and have already designed many of the Human ships and one Voth ship. I have also designed numerous Human weapons. I have a nearly complete tech sheet as well.

I just need people who are as enthusiastic as I to help me with this. I plan on selling this game after it's perfected. Beta builds and other test builds will be offered for free.

If you are interested in helping and reading the game outline and tech sheets, please email me at zach@kustom.us.

Or, you could help us make the ultimate 4X game, since it's already well underway.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

My only real skills are in music and basic 3D modeling.

I would need serious help to get any good at programming.

I'm not sure what I could offer, but I could design ships for sure. I do them in sketchup and then fine tune and detail them in Blender.

Also, My game has one serious difference. Everything in it is real time.

I could offer some great thematic and ambient music for the game though.

Ideas are cheap. Implementing them is slow and hard. Talented people won't be interested in implementing someone else's ideas for the (very weak) promise of possible future payment when it's done.

See also: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/07/2125215

That said, contributions to FreeOrion are welcome. We offer the immediate reward that all contributions (ideas, programming, art, sound / music, etc.) can be part of the larger whole, which is all available under free licenses.

I've heard that many times, spark. As Geoff said "Ideas are cheap. Implementing them is slow and hard." is exactly why no ultimate game is ever done.


I was just about to ask you about your previous work (developed games, of course). I'm warning you, you are fitting "I'll make ultimate game" pattern too well. If you want to see your game ever done, first, don't make it ultimate, strip it off it's divinity and make it simple. When you develop that game, you can do sequel with more complicated idea and iteratively build up to your ultimate game.

Well, many of them have already been done. I've also been told that even the novel ones wouldn't be that difficult to implement.

Also, if talented people like yourselves are saying you wouldn't work on someone elses ideas, then why are you? I mean, didn't Aqui..... whatever his name is, come up with the idea for free orion? Also, I have had tiny bits of help, but all of those people had lives which became to demanding for any gaming, let alone development.

I'm sure if people like you have banded together to work on a COMPLETELY FREE project like this, than I am sure I can find some who would work on a game which would be sold once perfected. I just wouldn't put all that digital rights BS on it. I would sell it and people would actually own it and be able to install it on as many computers as they want and all with one CD key. The CD wouldn't even be required for play. Systems with the same key can also join and play multiplayer games with eachother. Or I may make it a spawner like Starcraft and Warcraft 2 were.

Anyways,
I'm not sure it would be a good thing for me to help with anything concerning Free Orion. I would always be saving my best creations and ideas for my own game. You guys don't need something like that. However, I still love your project and how far you've come with it. It's great so far. I'll never really fully get into it like some of you though, turn based stuff tends to bore me after a while.

I'll continue searching for help elsewhere.

Aquitaine was the lead designer for a few years, but he wasn't the project lead (which was Tyreth), and neither of them presented a fully-formed game design that we've been following precisely since then. Rather, the design of FreeOrion is ongoing, with public and private discussions about various features and content as we need them.


That supports my point... If you want to motivate people with money, most people are going to want it within a few weeks of doing the work and to receive a pre-arranged amount for doing a given amount of work.


We let anyone download or modify FreeOrion if they only release any changes under compatible licenses, but that doesn't mean there's no reward for contributing; as I said:
Some people find that reward valuable enough to contribute to a project. And regardless of why they value it, it's received immediately. Probably not very many people find this as rewarding as they would money, which is partly why FreeOrion's team is relatively small and development slow compared with commercial projects. But likely more are willing to work for it than would for unknown future possible payment.


Good luck then; you'll need it.

Thanks,

I probably will.

I completely understand what you are saying about the rewards of contributing to a project like yours. I've done it. I worked with a team of a few other people on a Homeworld 2 mod awhile back. It was pretty cool seeing my stuff in game.

But first, a few clarifications.

1. I'm not set in stone about all the features and design ideas I've listed.

2. The game would not simply be other people working to create "My Game". I would consider and evaluate any and all suggestions or demands from those who are generous enough to help.

3. I will shoot as high as I think can be accomplished for this game, given the limitations of current technology. I will not lower the bar for ease of production unless things which I wish done turn out to be impossible. I intend for this game to blow people away. The greatest games of all time are the greatest because they did something new or reinvented something and didn't just repeat the old.

4. The core aspects of the game are as follows; customization, fluidity, beauty, immersion, variety, and scale. Basically, this should be a game where the user can; customize as much as is sensible, quickly and easily access any function or view any data, enjoy breath-taking visuals frequently, feel as if he or she is part of the game world and see the game world come to life, constantly be discovering or creating new or unique things, and explore an incredibly vast game world (galaxy/system/planet).

I already realize that this game is going to be huge because of the size of the random generated planet maps and the level of detail on every object, but with the hard drives out there these days, it is now possible do to stuff like this.

Anyways, if anyone is interested, please get back to me.

to start this reply off: wow your [no flaming please]

to expand on that: you come to this board, with all these guys dedicated to the project of freeorion, who have already worked their asses off and continue to do so, using all their spare time to work on it more, and you tell them "hey guys, i got this great idea! you should come work for me and quit on freeorion after all your hard work because my idea is cool! i bet that my totally awesome idea will make tons of money and be an example to everyone!", seriously, could you be more of an asshole? i havent been with these guys long, and i havent contributed more than several ideas which havent been touched yet, but i already feel like i owe something, like i ought to do something to be a part of this, i joined this because i wanted to help, to give all i can to the team, and i do not appreciate what your trying to do with this post, you may have convinced yourself that your not doing anything wrong, but you havent convinced the rest of us, i dont even know anyone on the team, i have barely talked to them, but i still felt like they deserved more when i read your post, you are being incredibly disrespectful to them, you have no idea how wrong it was of you to ask them to leave and work on your own "idea"

oh and by the way, those ideas of yours are in no way new, i have had those same ideas before, i know people who have had them, and i would be willing to bet that almost everyone else reading this has had those same ideas, "oooh the ultimate sci fi game! great graphics, smooth movements, beautiful scenery, in depth land and space features, and all in real time!!" yea that isnt new bud

and to add more, even if all of those features were possible, it would be at least a decade to finish it, and would cost millions of dollars, not to mention the huge amount of people you would need to do all the jobs, not just programming, 3d art, sounds, music, concept plans, but even secretaries! filers, managers, directors, you name it! did you see pirates of the caribbean 3? did you see that the credits were at least 20 minutes long? all those names, even compacted into giant squares, took an incredible amount of time to scroll, and thats just for a movie! barely a fraction of those names where actors, and that movie didnt take place in the distant future, in space, on a massive amount of planets, stars, nebulae, dust particles, asteroids, comets, and all that other crap floating around space! and then you have to add in all the human artifacts, machinery, metalworks, space stations, ships, you know what else, you have to take all these things into account

this is why no one else has done this before, they have dreamed of it, but you have to realize that this sort of thing is just so hard, it might as well be considered impossible, it probably wouldnt pay off in the end anyway, you would most likely end up way in debt because in order to make profit you would have to charge an insane amount for people to buy the game, but then a lot less people would buy it because they dont want to or cant pay that much, and that idea of yours where accounts arent bound to cd keys....thats just idiotic, you obviously have no idea how common it is for people to share or pirate those things whenever they get the chance, you would lose an huge amount of your profit if you did that....

sorry to bring you down, but i really dont expect to see your title anywhere on the shelf or internet, ever

Just for reference, there is no policy against recruiting for other projects on the FreeOrion forums, hoping-to-be commercial or otherwise.

well, sorry, but i still feel like its just wrong, i mean you guys spend so much time working on this game, wouldnt you rather finish this than leave and spend your time on another project for this guy you dont even know, it would just be too hard to work on both of them for most people, so its either one or the other...

You're free to feel that way and to post about it. I was just pointing out that it's not an "official" policy against such recruitment posts.

I have no plans to quit working on FreeOrion so that I can work on another game development project. However I don't think prohibiting forum posts is an effective or necessary means to keep other people from stopping contributing to FreeOrion.

Being too restrictive about such posts may give the impression of being paranoid and defensive and that we're particularly worried about losing people to other projects. Maybe we should be, but there may be a corresponding benefit to appearing confident since this is such an amazing project that recruitment posts aren't a concern.

Also, the possibility of using one's contributions to an open source project such as this as part of a portfolio in a search for paid work is a strong motivator to make such contributions. Prohibiting recruitment posts such as this thread (which is claiming potential payment) or the other one linked above would undermine this benefit.

FreeOrion also uses forum posts for recruiting, so it would seem a bit hypocritical to prohibit others from posting on the FreeOrion forums (even if we don't post on other similar projects' forums - I'm not sure as I don't make those posts myself).

First of all....

You should really learn not to add your own bullshit into other people's posts. I bet you would really suck at the telephone game. I never asked any of them to leave or quit working on free orion. Also how is saying that I would like them to help with my project because I am impressed with thier work disrespectful?

Second, I also never said any of thier ideas were unoriginal or that what they have done has all been done before. I did speak generally about what separates great games from everyday crap, but I never directed any of those statements at Free Orion. (I'm adding that one in even though you didn't accuse me of it because people who make these posts like your's tend to find anything possible to take out of context.)

Third, I have great respect for anyone that has worked on this project and I am very impressed with it. I have stated that numerous times.



Fourth, You don't have any idea about what I have outlined for the game and all of the various ideas that I would like to try and implement. So, don't go telling me that I don't have any new ideas. Your general sarcastic tone implies that you view me as being arrogant and disrespectful, and then, you make a statement like that? You are the arrogant one, sir.



Fifth, This isn't a big hollywood production movie. Games don't require near the staff that movies do. I also never said I expected it to get done with any sort of speed. As for all the things you think will be rendered, you make too many assumptions. I didn't specify an exact level of detail, and much of that could be random generated. It's not someone will be painting each individual blade of grass on a planet surface.

Sixth, The statements you have directed at me have no real foundation and your assumptions are typical. Everything you have stated is your opinion, which is, to be frank, without reason or factual base. You should also learn how to speak to people in a more professional manner and not be so short fused.

I'm not sure what made you think I was comming in here with my chest all puffed out saying "my game will be better than yours", but you should really read more carefully and take things more at face value instead assuming that I'm some jerk who wants to take all these people off thier beloved project for some false promise of sharing profits of game sales. I fully realize and admit that, without the help of numerous talented people, my game will never even get going, let alone be fully realized and become a potential classic.

So....
Relax and take some chill pills.
I don't believe anyone else was offended.... Where they?

you seem to be even worse at telephone than me
but i am going to stop there, i dont want to fight, and i feel foolish for posting what i did
i do want to tell you about one thing though: theres no such thing as "randomly generated", sure there are programs that do that, and they are good at it too, but a computer cant actually do things "randomly", the program must be scripted with set rules that tell the computer what to do to generate things "at random"
and i did read the ideas that you did mention, and yes i made assumptions, but please read those ideas again, you want something that takes place in both space and on numerous planets, you said you wanted breathtaking views, and all those little details you wanted to look good, you said you wanted ships that dont move on any sort of grid, you said you have modeled even some of the guns that land troops will carry, those sort of things, at that level of detail just are not as simple as you seem to think
please take your defenses down again, i dont want to fight you and i would like if we could just disregard what i said before because i really do feel like a fool now

I don't think that true white noise randomness was Thundax's point. Pseudorandom is actually pretty good approximation of white noise after all, all standard rand functions use same math (modular exponent) as RSA encryption algorithm. Also, pseudorandom algorithm have one neat feature: seed. Using same seed you can generate same sequence of pseudorandom numbers, so for example, instead of remembering location of all stars, you can remember only single number and recreate exactly the same map any time.

There are nice stuff that can be done with pseudorandom sequences and fractals. Like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCzDKj3hjOE.