Greetings! I represent a development team of about six people that are currently working on a single player role playing game, but unfortunately we've been in a sort of rut for a long time. We can never find any dedicated grahpic artists. This is sort of a cry for help to anyone who will listen or is interested. As earlier mentioned, the name of the game is Realm of Strife - http://www.realmofstrife.com It's a single player roleplaying game project that we hope will lay the groundwork and preceed a full-fledged MMORPG, but that's a ways off I suppose. My roommate and I started this project last year to enter a game developing contest. Incidentally it won second place out of about six but only because it wasn't complete. Our main deterrant was lack of artistic talent, but I was our makeshift "pixel monkey" (as I so aptly called myself) for the time. Over the past year we've picked up a few people to help us out such as an amazing story writer and a generous webmaster/benefactor that also does some concept art on the side, not to mention another personal friend who acts as level designer and an auxiliary programmer. After a year, we're on our third VERY EARLY alpha release still and have become rather frustrated with the game's progress. We have not given up, however, as so many nay-sayers have since predicted. Far from it. Finding this site has given us hope. The game itself is programmed in VisualBasic 6.0 and while it does use a pre-made engine we have done much for the development of this engine and the creator (Ben Marty, the contest holder alluded to earlier) comes to us first when he wants to implement something new or wants to test something. He likes our project, as we're the only one of the games entered into his competiton that has an actual community. We'll get to that later. We hope to someday get VB.net to use, but that's rather expensive unfortunately. The story. The story, in my opinion, is what makes any game. An online contact and friend of mine has come up with an amazingly complex storyline/universe in which the game and its prospected successors will take place. Basically it's a fantasy world as one would expect. Medeival type weaponry and the like, but with a twist. Here's a super-brief premise. There were two forces in the world: Chaos and Order. They were constantly at ends with each other and that conflict kept the world in existance. Now, however, two new forces known as "Good" and "Evil" have arisen as the intelligent life has almost conjured them up to serve their basic psychological needs. Chaos and Order, while both very powerful, are very wary of these two "hotheads" that seem to hate each other with a passion that may have been greater than their own. In an awkward cease fire, they both investigate the situation. So where does a main character come into play? Basically, you're a nobody. An insignificant whelp in the face of a huge cruel reality. At least you are now. I can supply much more story details and the like upon request, or you could simply go to our website (http://www.realmofstrife.com) and check out our "Storyboard" section. We're doing this in our spare time for the mere enjoyment of doing it. The game we'll be making will be free for all, so of course we won't be able to pay you as we're not being paid ourselves. Who knows where this could lead, though, eh? Eh? All we can offer you is if you want to be a part of this project full creative input. You'd be as much a part of the team as any of us are, as without any one of us the project wouldn't be able to function. Basically we need sprites. Tiles, too, but at this point they're much less important. We have a semi-playable (meaning you can walk around and beat up baddies in one dungeon with one character that is playable) demo out for download on our site and you'll quickly notice that only one of the characters can attack. That is because I simply cannot do attack animation. I'm a programmer/musician, not an artist. We need character sprites first and foremost and then would like to work our way from there. The sprites themselves generally have a 16-bit color depth though the engine we're using can be forced to do most things. Finally, I assure you we're not giving up on Realm of Strife. It's too important to us, if not just for the sake of shoving it in the faces of all who have laughed at us and told us it wouldn't happen. We love video games and their development processes and hope that you do as well. It's been a year and while we have had setbacks and our personal and school lives have gotten in the way, we've stuck through it. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me via email (mr1218@messiah.edu) or AIM (drummingmoron) or my ICQ listed in my profile. Or you could just respond to this thread. We do have a downloadable primative alpha demo available on our site (http://www.realmofstrife.com) as well as screenshots, the story, forums, and anything else that you might use as a reference. Thanks for your time! Matt Robins Programmer/Music Composer/Public Relations for the Realm of Strife project [edited by - drummingmoron on May 31, 2003 3:06:19 PM]