I've made a group of people join me before i could even make a simple single game and now I'm the leader, we are very new to programming games but we at least know some program languages.
I want to know how I could divide the work or even work as a team.
Hi,
First let me point out the obvious: forming a team before you know what making a game actually involves is a bad idea. Learning how to make games takes a while, and some people on the team are likely to lose interest along the way. A better choice would have been to make a few games on your own and then form a team once you have some experience under your belt.
Second let me point out why nobody has answered your question: it is very open ended. Do you want to know how to manage people, how to divide the roles of creating a game, what roles there are in the first place, how to manage a project with different time zones involved, etc...
If nobody understands the question don't expect any answers.
Also: (this isn't aimed at you but rather at all the beginners reading this) please take the time to read the sticky posts. We get the same "where do I start" question every day - it gets tiresome and that may be the reason nobody replies.
Now, to actually answer your question: I suggest you practice as a team. That is: find yourself a few decent tutorials and make a small project together.
- for the programmers you look up a tutorial on how to make a tetris game (yes, tetris! Don't expect to make mario on your first go).
- for the artists you look up a tutorial on photoshop or maybe how to make pixel art
- for the audio guys you make them follow a tutorial on composing an 8 bit track or maybe an XACT tutorial if that's what you're using
- ... (you get the gist by now)
The idea is to give everybody a chunk of the project to bite into. The fact that you are all working on the same game will help keep everybody motivated.
Make sure you keep your ambitions in check - ten small steps (i.e. projects) is better than one huge one.
Hi,
First let me point out the obvious: forming a team before you know what making a game actually involves is a bad idea. Learning how to make games takes a while, and some people on the team are likely to lose interest along the way. A better choice would have been to make a few games on your own and then form a team once you have some experience under your belt.
Second let me point out why nobody has answered your question: it is very open ended. Do you want to know how to manage people, how to divide the roles of creating a game, what roles there are in the first place, how to manage a project with different time zones involved, etc...
If nobody understands the question don't expect any answers.
Also: (this isn't aimed at you but rather at all the beginners reading this) please take the time to read the sticky posts. We get the same "where do I start" question every day - it gets tiresome and that may be the reason nobody replies.
Now, to actually answer your question: I suggest you practice as a team. That is: find yourself a few decent tutorials and make a small project together.
- for the programmers you look up a tutorial on how to make a tetris game (yes, tetris! Don't expect to make mario on your first go).
- for the artists you look up a tutorial on photoshop or maybe how to make pixel art
- for the audio guys you make them follow a tutorial on composing an 8 bit track or maybe an XACT tutorial if that's what you're using
- ... (you get the gist by now)
The idea is to give everybody a chunk of the project to bite into. The fact that you are all working on the same game will help keep everybody motivated.
Make sure you keep your ambitions in check - ten small steps (i.e. projects) is better than one huge one.
thank you for the reply and the advice, and i know that forming a team was a bad idea from the start but continued anyway as a sign of ignorance...
this really helps, thank you
No problem, here are a few links to help you along the way.
http://zetcode.com/tutorials/javagamestutorial/tetris/ -> making a simple tetris game in java with swing library
http://zetcode.com/tutorials/javaswingtutorial/painting/ -> texturing with java swing library
http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/chasm/4553/tutorial/tutorial07-sound.html -> playing sound in java
I did not follow these tutorials but they should be enough to help you on the way. I googled java tutorials as it is easier to learn than most languages and borrows a lot of syntax from c++ if you ever want to switch over.
(I learned the "ten small steps" rule above the hard way!)
Working in a team adds two main points of complexity to your project:
* Who is doing what?
* How do the things we've done fit together?
Both are solved with planning and communication. You need to work together to decide what you're going to do, how to break it up, who does what, and how it's going to fit together once everyone is done. Predictions tend to be wildly inaccurate, so prioritize the things you want to do, and have regularly scheduled meetings in order to talk about problems and changes that need to be made.
Good luck.
If you had not started it yet, I would have advised you to wait with leading a team and at most join one. Now since you've already started it I recommend going ahead and carrying it through to the best of your ability. That way you will learn as much as possible out of this. I won't comment on the chance of achieving what you set out to do; it's the experience that matters at this point. Many new programmers (my own field, thus the role I feel comfortable discussing) lack team experience, and this is the sort of thing that rectifies that.
