Project Title (working):
Gy (Gray)
Description:
Limited Open world / capture the flag style single or multiplayer third person game.
Inspiration for the world and skills is a mash up of Brandon Sanderson Storm light archives set in a Peter F Hamilton style Commonwealth Saga future with a bit of J.S.Morin black ocean thrown in.
Includes:
Risk v Reward will balance drop in play with real risk.
Class based system absorbing and combining different types of radiation to grant skills and movement capabilities.
Main target is to capture charged crystals and return them to base using floating platforms while defending / attacking. The platforms can also be upgraded and are part of the strategy.
Play will take place in a large crater with lots of chasms, dropping into the chasms gives another dynamic to the game play platforms key to moving across chasms.
NPC’s are actively harvesting and collecting crystals as well as other players.
Current Status:
I’ve just finished 3 months pretty intensive training on Unreal to get more familiar with the platform (I am new to Unreal, not coding, networking and IT in general), I’m now taking a step back to write up the world the game is going to inhabit and the core gameplay so if you start soon that’s where we will start collaborating.
Team:
Me, I’m taking a year out to work on this full time as I look to cross over into the gaming industry from a successful career in other IT areas.
Your crazy!, yes possibly, however I do have a track record of turning crazy into success over the years and changing roles significantly so this is not new to me.
What are you looking for:
I’m looking for predominately a technical artist but have an open mind, I can help with all more technical aspects of the creation process, UV unwrapping, retopologising, rigging, weight painting etc. happy to share knowledge so being artistic is the most important bit to me. I’m also looking for someone to bounce ideas off and generally collaborate with, for example currently I’m writing the back story for the game. You would most likely be an enthusiast looking to get involved in a more substantial project or someone looking to build an initial portfolio of your own with a few hours a week to spare. I will put in a proper contract to cover us both but this will very much be an adhoc, lightweight and hopefully fun engagement, I can cover both artistic and technical so I will be going ahead regardless, but I’d like to focus on technical for this one more and would be good to collaborate.
Why should I work with you:
I’ve got over 20 years (non-gaming) IT industry experience from coding and deploying enterprise applications to running global teams, I’ve just finished a stint doing global cyber security. I have a track record of delivering across multiple countries and technologies in high pressure situations, I’ve worked direct with the likes of Microsoft and other major companies. In parallel I’ve worked with blender and other tools on personal projects for years in a technical artist capability. There is a good chance we will deliver something at the end of this, my linked in profile
What will you get out of it:
At the minimum hopefully a nice set of assets and a substantial piece of work to put in your portfolio to get a decent job.
If it goes really well, I might try pitching it to a studio with you.
If it goes really really well I do have a relatively novel idea for a revenue stream but that is not the goal of this project. The goal is to get into the detail, get a game delivered and have something to showcase our skills.
Ways of working:
I only speak English so that is a prerequisite, however English does not have to be your first language, I’ve worked with people all over the world for years and it’s always worked out fine.
I work early UK hours 5-8 AM then from 15.00-21:00 most days (I have horses I need to sort out during the day!) so can easily accommodate working with most time zones. To set expectation I’m only thinking we check in once a week or so for a couple of hours and see how the engagement goes from there.
Tool Set:
- Unreal 4.26.1 Going to start out with standard engine and try and keep it like that.
- Core gameplay I’ll be doing in C++ and exposing the configuration through blueprint in an artist friendly way, I’ll help you get set up to run C++ project if you have only done blueprint before but you don’t need to know C++ just basic blueprint. Visual Studio if needed to get things running but I will help you get that set up you don’t need to know it.
- Asset design Blender is core as I’ll be doing some design work myself and I want to keep a standard tool and I can help with technical challenges if we use blender.
- Substance painter / designer for texturing, it would be handy if you have that as well but not essential.
- Adobe suite for image manipulation etc. nice if you had same but not essential.
- I’ve got the full Iclone / CC3 suite and other tools as well which will probably come in handy to speed up character design and animation.
General working:
- I’ll invite you to my Microsoft teams, we will use that for collaboration / calls etc.
- One Note, I’ll set up a shared space.
- Dropbox for shifting files around, I’ll give you access to mine so you don’t need to worry about space.
I think that’s it, if you have made it this far drop me mail at and lets have a chat!