Looking for a partner(s)

Community Got Skills? Looking for Talent? Job Offerings
1

Hi all,

I have had a vision for many years now to create a MMORPG. Over the years i’ve been told it wouldn’t be possible. That it’s a crazy dream. That an indie project would not be able to do it. I’ve had several false starts on my own trying to create the assets and the game logic myself within in UE4. For various reason (poor pc spec, lack of skill, lack of time etc) I have made very little progress.

The cold hard truth is my talents do not lie in the day to day of code/blueprint generation. The creation of assets and animations. However, the skillsets that I do have and have honed in over 20 years of my professional work life is the ability to work with and collaborate with others to achieve an end goal. I do this every day every month in my day job through managing over 18 engineers across 3 scrum teams to deliver reliable and functioning SAAS projects.

So what am I looking for?

To begin with I am looking for someone who is experienced in the 3d modelling that can create environments and high grade assets of all types to convert for me (or redesign from the ground up) thousands of assets that I have that were designed and built to use in the old torque 3d format. This encompasses, landscapes, buildings assets etc.

I cannot pay a lot but can pay £200 - £300 each month. I am looking at someone that would in the longterm become a business partner in the venture. yes to start off with you will be getting your hands dirty creating the content to begin with but you’d be a person that could eventually lead a team of people if this project becomes successful.

Of course there’s a need for many other types of individuals to realise such a project. However, I only right now have the financial resources to pay for content creation. If anyone else has other skills and feel like they’d like to get involved and would be willing to work for free to begin with then feel free to private message me with the skillset you have what you are looking to do and examples of your work.

2

Whoever told you its extremely unlikely (nothing is impossible). They are right. Your biggest problems are your budget. You will need hundreds of thousands of dollars or more if things are done right. Also you will never get anywhere unless everyone working on the project is working in person. I could go on and on but don’t feel like it. Also who will host all the servers?

3

I disagree, this is the digital age and I’ve worked remotely for the past 3 years on projects. And you won’t need hundreds of thousands to get the basics done. Only thing the OP needs is a GDD, something unique would be a plus but something to provoke interest at least.

4

Djinghis is absolutely right. I have been working as programmer remotly for 2 years. Also you should have a very good GDD and specify contents for a DEMO, with that you can get Kickstart or even better, some pusblisher and investors. Be sure to have a good design and focus on the DEMO build first.

5

I’m going to come down in the middle .

On paper, yes, you can make an MMORPG with nothing but leadership skills and people that share your vision. However, I’ve seen a few of these scale of projects - even some with good amounts of funding - eventually wither away with naught but abandoned websites to show for it.

Obviously you know it isn’t a sure thing, but I would stay grimly realistic for the first 6 months or more.

And yeah, you’ll find people willing to work for free or cheap, but you really do get what you pay for on average.

6

Djhingis, FilipeTessaro and ImmutableLambda all make good points which I agree with. Of course there is also truth in what Famulous Hotdog says. But it’s good to be optimistic.

Snakeeyes11, I sent you a PM. :slight_smile:

7

Sent you a PM

8

Hi @snakeeyes11,

Just say NO to MMORPGs, and YES to Scalable Multiplayer Online RPGs (SMORPG). If you can design a high performance experience for 64 concurrent Players, with intent to scale concurrent player count, your MMORPG will come to fruition organically. I refuse to say MMORPGs cannot be done due to costing this and that, because your definition of MMORPG may be different than mine. Your concurrent player target count, may be different than mine. Your implementation of Networking may be different than mine.

Your greatest challenge is Content, Content, Content, and you’re not recruiting enough content creators such 3D Modelers, Animators, VFX, Sound Producer, to meet the supply and demand of a live service game such as a MMORPG. This is an area I conducted extensive research into because like many I had MMORPG Dreams, and planned to take on the endeavor single handedly with my programming skills.

To solve my ‘Content Problem’ I selected 4 methods:

  1. **Use Highly Modular 3D Entities **{characters, creatures, weapons, vehicles, architecture, landscape, props} which could generate massive variations using interchangeable mesh parts, animations, and parameterized materials.
  2. Procedural Content Generation to algorithmically assemble Modular 3D Entities, Dungeons/Landscape, Musical composition, and Quest Generation.
  3. **Purchase High Quality Modular Content **and easy-to-customize content from the Marketplace.
  4. Pick up a 3D Content Creation Skills. At minimum, develop enough skill to Mod existing 3D Content.

Why Highly Modular 3D Entities? Because, not only did I want to prefab many variations of entities, but I also desired to provide my Players a means of customization. In fact, Customization is a managed form of Player Generated Content. Why not provide the Player’s tools to create Entities, Quests, Rules, Music? You don’t need an Army of Game Devs, when you have a Community of Players who can create Content in your game using your tools.

Procedural Generation gets a bad rap, due to its potential to generate repetitive content. Well, I had two solutions to mitigate this problem, #1) More granularity and variation of modular parts 2) Manual Post Edit of Proc Generated Content. I dont have a problem doing some of it, I just know I cannot do all of it.

In my opinion, paying £200 - £300 each month for a single Artist to generate the amount of Content required is simply unfair. Use that budget to acquire assets from the Marketplace. When you purchase products you effectively establish a relationship in which Vendors can support you, through supporting their products. There are many Professional Vendors in the Marketplace which are open to recommendations and will assist implementation and some go out of their way to create Free Add-ons and Tutorial. I consider every vendor I do business with a Virtual Game Development Partner.

I’ve always been code-centric in my pursuit of game dev, but I had an epiphany when working with UDK…I need to learn 3D modeling/texture/animation if Im to ever see any game idea come to life. So I grabbed Blender and started forcing myself to learn it. I had to remove the barrier in my head, that im just a programmer, and start thinking I will be a 3D modeler. After all the self-motivation speeches, I still can only crank out primitives, but I can cut, slice, and dice existing models to get the desired result. I have no shame in reverse engineering.

Anyways I can ramble all day about MMORPGs, because I also wanted to develop one in UE4 at one point in time. Even though I’m not developing a MMORPG today, I’m designing my network subsystems with intent to scale concurrent player count for our 4 Player Co-Op FTPS Game Product.

I wish you the best on this massive endeavor.

Sincerely,

Frankie ‘TechLord’ Taylor
HeadlessStudios.com

9

The OP never asked for your opinion on his project guys. It’s the “job offering” thread, not the “general discussion”

10

Once the OP posted in public, they asked for public opinion by default. If you read deeper into the responses, you will see the answers as to why Devs are declining the recruitment offering. MMORPGs demand a massive amount of content and effort, paying £200 - £300 each month for a single Artist to generate the amount of Content required is simply unfair.

11

That’s the worst justification I’ve ever heard. If you are not interested because you think it’s unfair, just close the page.
Nobody came on your recruitment topic to say that your project is bad and that you should do this and not this.

12

Actually they do - knowing why people are declining your project is often the first step in understanding the barriers you need to overcome in order to get the talent you need.

13

I was talking to Techlord and they don’t : ExORION Survivor: Alien Invasion | Kaiju Survival Terror - Job Offerings - Unreal Engine Forums
At least you guys can do this in PM and keep his recruitment topic clean?

14

I typically don’t go tic for tat on forum posts. But if truth is to be told , Harois’s post don’t offer any insight or alternative solutions for the OP to consider in regards to the recruitment. My posts is relevant to the topic at hand so and its obvious especially with the following statement from the OP

So please leave Forum Moderation to the Moderators. If you’re not signing up for the offer, or offering any information relevant to the post, be a leader, lead by example and follow your own advice.

15

@snakeeyes11 I’m interested in helping out. I’m by no means an expert in what you’re looking for, but I’m always down to learn more!

Discord: SuddenLife#0030

16

When you’re working on a game independently your time is your most valuable resource and neglecting to understand the shear scale of your project will lead to the ultimate waste of time which is a failed project.

I agree that an mmo isn’t impossible it’s just extremely impractical, making a scaling multiplayer setting leaves server hosting and administration up to the users.

This means that you don’t have to have:

-international servers
-anti cheat and hacker prevention
-balancing at all skill levels (this is something that even very few big name developers know how to do well, IT’S NOT EASY)
-a dedicated I.T. department to deal with a massive influx of user/account issues

All these things need to be paid for, which I’m sure you understand already. The part that is commonly overlooked is that it needs to closely match the fluctuation of users. Assuming that you have some way of convincing people to give up their hard earned money to pay for content that isn’t “pay to win” and you successfully promote your game, people will might give it a try. Now lies the problem, if your game isn’t what it boasts or worse; it suffers from a bad launch altogether. It will snowball in bad PR have a decline in users all the while you are paying for the things I listed above scaled up to the initial launch. 10 000 man servers with 100 people in them is the massive kick in the nuts that games with very diverse and unique content have suffered repeatedly since the invention of the genre.

There will be a long period of alpha and beta testing, and to test all the content on the user scale necessary while providing an incentive for users to do the testing. You will be running your servers and services for free with little to no profit while people help you build and test your game. For an mmo this usually takes at least 2 years.

I think creating an experience you can share with your friends or community of any size is fundamentally what an mmo is, and focusing on making quality content is what scaling multiplayer games do a million times better than mmos. Take Minecraft for example, it may not be similar to the game you are imagining but its supports server sizes from a single client .exe to thousands players in a world that feels infinitely large. I think with your unique game mechanic (ie:survival and crafting) as an objective you can do away with everything repetitive about mmos and you can do away with mmos altogether. Not only is this a safer endeavor but you are appealing to a larger demographic of gamers making the potential for a successful game/series/business.

TechLord laid out a golden formula for this type of indie game development and I hope you seriously consider their methods.

I suggest you create the experience you want to have in a game and leave scale up to its users. Make the game, put it on steam, play it with your friends. You have nothing but your time to lose and you can have something playable while you scale it up.

I’m not got going to crap on anyone’s dreams based off how much money they have in their budget, I think looking for volunteers is perfectly valid assuming you can find them. You should make this project a realistic as possible especially if you want other people to get behind your ideas and share your ambitions. But if you have £200 - £300 than you should think about the best way to spend that money and buying non-unique content is probably it. Otherwise you should probably work on a per-asset payment system and take peoples time in to account.

Also, I just want to say I think people should be a bit more mechanically descriptive when recruiting for their games. Everyone has a story they want to tell or mmo/battle royale they want to make, but what makes your game a game. With out disclosing intellectual property, it would be nice if people would better explain some of the game mechanics they want to incorporate. Saying you want to make an “mmo” sounds to me that you simply want to make W.O.W. clone, although I’m sure that’s not true.

I think that what I stated is legitimate advice and I don’t think anyone who dismisses what TechLord or myself said as unjustified criticism is thinking very rationally.

I truly hope you find this insightful and don’t think I’m trying to deter you from ultimately making an mmo.

Good luck,

Cheers.

enearle