About

Hero of Allacrost is a single player 2D role-playing game inspired by classic console RPGs. In Hero of Allacrost, the player will explore rich environments, solve challenging dungeon puzzles, and fight strategic battles in an active-time based system. The game is free to play and built with open-source software. It is currently available across several platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. The three major design goals we are seeking to meet with this title are:

• Prioritize efforts on developing engaging gameplay and a compelling narrative
• Eliminate tedious and micromanagement mechanics that are commonly found in RPGs.
• Make battles interesting, challenging, and requiring of a high level of strategy from the player

The About page on our website describes several of the game's core features and how they enable us to meet these goals. See some screenshots here and videos here.

Talent Needed

At the moment the team consists mostly of just myself. There are two other programmers working as well, but they have very limited availability to do any work at the moment. Becoming a member of this team means more than simply getting told what to create. We strongly encourage people to participate in design discussions and offer their own ideas to improve the game and the project itself. Although the core design of Allacrost is well-defined at this point, there's still a lot of unanswered design questions and features we have not yet implemented. There's still plenty of room for you to influence this title should you be interested in doing so. You can read more about what it's like on the Allacrost team and our philosophies by reading about our team policies on our wiki.

Listed below are the specific needs that we are seeking to fill at the moment and what people who fill those roles can expect to be working on for the next couple of months. If you're interested in the project but don't really want to work in these roles, you are still welcome to join us. Very soon we'll also be needing a writer, game/map/level designer, traditional 2D artist, and perhaps a composer.

Pixel Artist

The most immediate needs for pixel art include: various demon sprites, townspeople sprites, and some needed improvements and additions to our desert castle-town tilesets. See the (2) and (3) links for some examples of our current pixel artwork so you can get an idea of our style. If you feel this above your skill level, please don't be intimidated. Even programmers create some of the art occasionally (myself included), and they are certainly not this talented.

Links:

• (1) - Information on rights to an artist's work and how to get started
• (2) - Lists the types of artwork found in Allacrost. The Maps, Sprites, and Icons sections cover pixel art
• (3) - Explanation of our artistic styles, influences, and design

C++ Developer

Allacrost uses a custom engine, which is in a completed state, and the core aspects of the game operation and gameplay are all functional. We still have several advanced features to add and technical challenges to overcome on the development front. At the present moment, the major work we need help on are: save points and the save/load game system, enemy AI, and the implementation of scripting in battles. While our developers mostly focus on C++, there will be some Lua development involved as well.

Links:

• (1) - Qualifications to become a programmer and steps on how to get started
• (2) - Our primary documentation home, covering the engine, game logic, and more.
• (3) - Our code and content repository, free for anyone to look at and study

Activity

Our most recent release was in June 2015. This was a development release, which is essentially a snapshot of our work in progress. Below is a link to download it as well as a walkthrough video of this release with commentary.

• Release Files: http://www.allacrost.org/download
• Release Video:

The next milestone we're working toward is another development release that continues where our previous release left off, which will finish out the current "chapter" of the game. The major requirements for this release include map design, scripting, and creation of some additional artwork (a few map tiles and around a dozen sprites). We're also introducing fundamental changes in the design to make our battle system more interesting and fun. The anticipated date of this next release is sometime within the next month or two.

By the end of this year, we will be making an official release. This will be a fully designed, balanced, and polished product. It will be an iterative improvement of the next development release with some amount of additional content and improved event scripting, dialogue, and several improvements in the UI and other areas of the code. This is the team's current long-term goal. More information about our upcoming releases can be found on the Roadmap page on our wiki. This includes a list of all the major tasks that must be done along with their current status.

Compensation

Allacrost is created and distributed for free. Because of this we cannot offer financial compensation to those who work on the project. Our team members are quite content with putting forth their efforts into what we believe will be a great game to share. We learn a lot from each other on the Allacrost team and you will absolutely learn new techniques and skills from those whom you work aside with. Having this experience will also make you a much more attractive candidate if you are seeking to enter into the gaming industry. Some of our team members have been solicited by recruiters for well-known game development companies. Your full name will appear in the game credits.

Joining

Follow this link for information on how to join our team and what you can expect from working on this project. If you have questions or wish to give feedback, feel free to either post a reply in this thread or message me directly if you wish to inquire in private.