I am bored programmer, however i have laundry list of which project i would join. So bear with me, and lets hope my rant will give you insight into complicated souls of programmers:
So i no particular order things that i consider about (NOT) joining projects:
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must be doable in one year or so. So anything with MMORPG, awesome RPG with open world and everything cool from all AAA rpgs together. Or best FPS ever. All that is no go for me as single programmer for project. So if its only artist and me as programmer game must be adequately small, and doable for just 2 persons in about year of working 20 hours per week each.
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if you want awesome fighting system you should get animation and character artist|(s), and dedicated programmer, so they can bug him not other one who is coding rest of systems. Just 2 people and any mention of such awesome ideas is deterrent for me.
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if you need extensive network code like fast FPS for 64 ppl (all that needs a lot of work for optimisation of network traffic) so better get dedicated programmer for just that. And this is hard, because network replication is all over the place. So you kind of need two programmers that somehow can work together and not fight, which is rare. So i stay away from all networked games for this reason, network code almost doubles work needed for coding game.
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even harder is when you want game that needs server side structure and coding and you have no funds and nobody that knows how to do it.
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this is not in your case, but anybody that is “just idea person” with no other skills at all as team leader for me is “avoid at all cost” project. Not saying every idea person is like this, but that hints narcissistic or plain dumb leader of team. Also idea man usually does not have any idea about size of his new idea feature and how much work it is.
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future platforms you plan to use, ie VR, ios, steam, ps4, eggsbox etc. Personally i do not join projects that i do not have all systems for. Because testing and debugging would force me to buy such system, and for free project is waste of money from my pov.
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minimal or badly written description/recruitment post. Or those types that reply “ask me trough PM about more info”. Nope, this indicates idea man that is paranoid to share his awsum idea and also lazy to write proper description. It is enough to ask for “design documents” about project and never get them, to see if project is worth or not.
And last that is not so important as stuff above:
- i must like doing such project or game. So this must be something i may enjoy playing in future, something from genre i already played, so i know how to implement game elements etc.
- with teams bigger than two we need some version control and backups.
- for bigger than few weeks projects i would like to know if its totally free, royalty or paid etc. Its not about money really it is more about avoiding drama later.
- and last clear and well written recruitment post, use template more you add better chances to attract that rare animal “bored programmer”. Write about everything you plan for your project.
So i hope my rant will give you some thoughts.