D-Day 1944: Operation Overlord is looking for animators!

[RonanHayes]

In that case, I really don't see the point in pursuing the HL2 and BF2 fronts.

You've got a retail engine that you payed for. Push it.

The reason for going after 2 mods is rather simple. Indie games dont get enough or any attention can you actually tell me any indie games out there at the moment? More than likely not, infact I doubt most people even know what major indie dev studios are out there.....

My point being, tapping into HL2, BF2 and other major games, allows us to generate a huge fanbase for only a minimum amount of time. Our development workflow remains the same. If we need to learn a special trick for a given engine we bring someone in (Hence the HL2 animator search)

At the end of the day it is only costing us 4 members, 4-6 months work to get the mods in order. Its great Marketting, great PR and shows the communities what we are made of. This system has been complimented by several key figures (some from EA, some from the indie scene) So we will stick by it and finish what we started.... At the end of the day it will bring more fans to our community, and will help expand our potential too no end.

Personally I think your choice of genre is a poor one. While there is indeed precedent for FPS WW2 games being successful, the scope of genre itself is rather limited. At this point in time, the only way I can envisage a game within the genre being successful is if it's either backed by a big name or if it blatently brings something new to the table. When I say blatently, I'm not referring to the actual in-game expirience; I mean the customer can look at the front of the box or an advert and notice that it has something special going for it.

Let me point out exactly what unique features we have:

1. 160x160 km of terrain, thats over 12800000000 vertices representing the terrain, @ 2 metres per pixel. NASA and other Elevation Resellers do not have a map that detailed. They can only provide a map @ 50m per pixel

2. We cover every nation at the moment we have over 16 nations in Normandy alone and the long overdue praise for the Canadian, Austrailian, New Zealand, Irish and many many more.

3. Over 250,000 units control in realtime, moving around a map 160x160 km. All with their stats, health, general information and much more detail being captured.

4. An agressive training and campaign system

5. Over 256 players online (its looking like over 512 players online) Playing on a map of 160x160 km, with over 250,000 AI units on the map

6. An intelligent AI system, that monitors, controls, adapts, recalculates and evolves over the the course of gameplay.

7. 24 Hour clock system, with Rayleigh Light Scattering

8. Fully integrated and improved physics system, including complete building destruction, terrain deformation, metal bending, RealisticTank Tracks, Rigid Body.

9. OVER 250,000 UNITS TO SELECT FROM.

10. Realistic Squad Dynamics

11. Complete Tactics Engine, Communication Engine, Rules Engine, Pathfinding Engine, State Engine and of course these are all coupled into our AI Engine, which is developed using Genetic Algorithms, Neural Networks, FUSM, Goal-Oriented Action Planning, Hierarchical Task-Network (HTN) planning, Task-Method-Knowledge (TMK) and also TIELT (Testbed for Integrating and Evaluating Learning Techniques ). All are integrated in their own right and all are capable of being used to evaluate and determine what the AI should or shouldnt be doing.

12. We are releasing a complete SDK to the community long before the game is even released. Some MODS, will have permission to be standalone. We will provide hosting and servers for the mods and in certain circumstances we will be on hand to help the mods.

Now I honestly cant see how this isnt bringing anything new to the table. The AI alone is enough to be considered new, but the fact that we are using a next gen engine and really pushing the graphical boundaries. We are handling over 250,000 units, over 200+ vehicles, over 70+ weapons, and allowing the player to select any unit they want to play with....

Anyway more to the point, if anyone is interested in joining the team, or seeing what we are about.

ronanhayes@franticgames.com

Cheers

[Kosmo]

Oooh.. Fenno-Russian war you said?

Ok, now I'm hearing you. Bring in the "Suomi KP"

[insta]

Hey thats quite the impressive list of features and acronyms for your engine. Sounds like it will put quite a bit of strain on pretty much any server. Are you planning on running all your gameservers (since it almost sounds like an MMORPG), or are you planning on your community to host them?

Also, I think you are spreading yourself and your team a bit thin by developing the same (?) game for 3 engines. What if you release a mediocre mod for BF2/HL2? After a failed/horrible release, most people probably won't give your mod a second glance and certainly not help build up a strong community.

[Kosmo]

I agree with insta, you could be very well shooting yourself in the leg with the mod projects.

Even if we are used to get some amazing quality mods, game developers are game developers, making a mod, especially making a WW2 mod isn't going to give you necessarily a good name or that much visibility.

Even if you are a real indie studio, to many, you are just a mod developer with a large plans, and usually those fail to bring it. But if you were advertising yourself in forums and everywhere as an indie dev with the plans to make a huge game, you'd gather alot of audience.

And second, if people will have a free version of your game to play on their favourite engine, why they would buy your game? Many still play the UT2k3/4 demos.

I'm just pointing out.

[RonanHayes]

The mods are not complete games, the mods are merely a taste. We use them to test both our game rules and our AI code without the pains that go with rigourous beta testing.

I can assure you that posting on forums as an Indie Developer does not attract the same attention as going at the mod scene. I have been on CGTALK, CGChat, Maxforums, and Gamedev to name a few for many years, and its only now that people are looking at the project with interest.

The mods will only cover a small portion of the game, and will target certain areas, its not expected to be a complete solution. I mean how on earth can you get 160x160km of terrain in the source engine?

We had to come up with our own terrain rendering system just to handle it.

With regards to servers, the processing is very very efficient, and works well on many of the PC configurations I have tested on.

Thanks for your concern, but I have been over these points hundreds of times. Its pretty simple:

1. Release Quality Mods to generate Support

2. Immediately there-after release the Games SDK and feed the community with weekly updates (both Mods and SDK)

3. Evolve the game with the community and keep them in the loop at every step.

4. Beta test within the community

5. Release the Game within the community.

The idea is pretty straight forward you feed the community as much content as you can. You dont give them BS, you dont give them excuses, you simply be frank and honest with them. At the end of the day they will accept any delays or bugs because you were honest about development problems or procedures. You simply dont fill them with crap or hide out for a while until the smoke clears. Sure to the outsiders it may seem bad and they may not give it another glance, but if you keep your core demographic happy, content and within the loop you have a very strong relationship with your fanbase and they will back your decisions.

[Kosmo]

Thanks for the fast replies, really shows that you are serious about the community relations.

But I still believe that you are risking awful lot with the mods, if you release nothing else than the best ww2 mod for HL2 or BF2 you'll risk just hurting yourself, but I hear your confidence.

Your strategy is rather interesting, near to something I have tought about myself couple of times. And it can give developer a good name when you have good community relations and give something to the community rather than make them pay for every little thing you do, something that made Valve very popular.

And something I have noticed in mod-community relations compared to dev-community relations is that mod team can get huge amounts of hatred towards them if they change one little aspect of their game, the community feels like they are the extra team member, being through the development from the beginning, they feel that you owe them something. As opposite to dev-community relations that are certainly different form of communication.

So don't let them treat you are an average mod team and I think everything will go allright.

[RonanHayes]

Cheers no risk in getting pushed around by some very picky members, heck we had a thread as to what you can do in game, and one guy wanted to be able to take a crap

Needless to say I walked away from thread rather promptly.

With regards to the mods, it can backfire only if you get lazy and let it back fire. If we release a good solid WW2 mod for both HL2 and BF2 it wll stand to us. Even at this stage going to investors with the Marketing plan simply blew their socks off.

For example:

http://www.invent.dcu.ie/

were very impressed with the proposals put forward and we are in talks with getting support from them.

The games industry is such a high risk market, if we dont finish the game, I will personally be in huge debt which I wont allow. So you look at if from another angle.

We can sit back and hope a publisher will pick us up (Highly unlikely, unless we present them with a near complete product, and even at that its most likely going to be on their terms)

Or we hit reality and drive our focus purely at giving the community the mods and the game. We sell the game directly to the community @ €40 a pop. Provided we meet our ganme requirements and expectations of the community and the mods are solid interms of quality we could realistically look at about

2000 x €40

Now thats being rather negative here, as most likely the community of a solid mod with a full commercial game behind it, would generate a community of around 10k + members. But Im not one to believe in false hope, soI will say 2000 members and will firmly stick at that as my goal.

2000 x €40 = €80,000

which equates to about €70,000 after tax, a modest figure for an Indie game team, and seeing as how we have a strong 500 member community at the moment, just of the back of a HL2 mod, Im confident we will reach the 2000+ member mark, but in time will telll.

So with that €70,000 we can pay all the team members, and contributors as well as set ourselves up for the next project.

Without the mods behind the game, bringing in the community I would have been very sceptical that we could even reach 500 members let alone 2000+. Heck before I ventured into the mods, I had my site and forums up and running for 8 months with some very impressive content including full demos of the game and we only hit 47 members over the 6 month development period.

As opposed to the 50 members a week that we have now. So you can clearly see that the Mods provided they are done right will bring in the community too us. And provided we keep our feet on the ground and have realistic and timed perceptions on the success of the mods and game everything should work out fairly well, perhaps not always to plan, but it will be enough to keep us the developers happy, and certainly deliever the goods to the community.

[Kosmo]

I like what you are saying. We would need more people who think like that to turn the game industry in to more healthier direction.

I can say that I'll be watching your progress through your tests closely, since I'm interested to see if there is actually a market for this sort of approach. Others like that I can say is Charlie Cleveland with his Unknownworlds, he is using the NS team to bring in the fans and build a community, then build a commercial game. Very wise guy, and his blog is worth a read.

I have had a talk with some of my friends that want in to game industry that we should start a small team, maybe make a mod or go straight to contract work to fund our studio, and in the side, work on our own game. It's basically a cat and mouse game to minimize the costs and risks.

[von*ferret]

you have four people creating that feature's list?

Its kinda hard to take you seriously when you're honestly considering adding functions to "take a crap." How does that add to my gameplay experience again?

[Schmung]

It just sounds so ..overblown. Theres lots of big numbers and fancy concepts there, but I don't see anything that actually equates to gameplay. Once you get beyond the numbers and acronyms, there doesn't seem to be anything concrete there.

Still, all the best, anyone willing to take that much risk deserves at least some kudos.

[Kedhrin]

no matter how awesome your mod is, how serious you are, how much you want to be a real studio. You are not a game studio, you are not working on anything professionaly and no matter how awesome the mod is it will not be taken seriously.

games have one thing that defines them against mod's, they are realistic, money, millions of dollars, pressure with deadlines, marketing, etc.

you do not know these on mod's, no matter how much you think you know it, you don't.

[Kosmo]

no matter how awesome your mod is, how serious you are, how much you want to be a real studio. You are not a game studio, you are not working on anything professionaly and no matter how awesome the mod is it will not be taken seriously.

games have one thing that defines them against mod's, they are realistic, money, millions of dollars, pressure with deadlines, marketing, etc.

you do not know these on mod's, no matter how much you think you know it, you don't.

I think alot of real developers watch what is happening on the mod scene, and the ones that matter ARE actually taking mods seriously, and that is the moving force, we also call gamers. They bring the money, they bring the volume, they are the ones that say what goes and what not. Simple.

Even when I agree that games have an advantage against mods in that they are products made by companies, companies that have to meet their financial ends to stay floating. BUT, I say this, even when you introduce any kind of sum of money, it doesn't automatically mean that it is anywhere near better than something made without a budget, if you want examples, go and play some of those horrible Terminator 3 games, something you don't want to spend your money nor your time on.

Mods have the advantage that they don't need to tie their staff under NDAs and they can share their product with the community in early stage of development, game developers like to hire "community heroes" to their teams, they bring publicity, it's social business afterall. Most mod teams have close ties to the community because they can have them. For example, how many developers names do you know from a blockbuster game? Against the possibility of actually personally knowing the name, the place where he lives and maybe even play a game or two against a mod developer.

[RD]

Why would an awesome mod not be taken seriously?

[Kedhrin]

no matter how awesome your mod is, how serious you are, how much you want to be a real studio. You are not a game studio, you are not working on anything professionaly and no matter how awesome the mod is it will not be taken seriously.

games have one thing that defines them against mod's, they are realistic, money, millions of dollars, pressure with deadlines, marketing, etc.

you do not know these on mod's, no matter how much you think you know it, you don't.

I think alot of real developers watch what is happening on the mod scene, and the ones that matter ARE actually taking mods seriously, and that is the moving force, we also call gamers. They bring the money, they bring the volume, they are the ones that say what goes and what not. Simple.

Even when I agree that games have an advantage against mods in that they are products made by companies, companies that have to meet their financial ends to stay floating. BUT, I say this, even when you introduce any kind of sum of money, it doesn't automatically mean that it is anywhere near better than something made without a budget, if you want examples, go and play some of those horrible Terminator 3 games, something you don't want to spend your money nor your time on.

Mods have the advantage that they don't need to tie their staff under NDAs and they can share their product with the community in early stage of development, game developers like to hire "community heroes" to their teams, they bring publicity, it's social business afterall. Most mod teams have close ties to the community because they can have them. For example, how many developers names do you know from a blockbuster game? Against the possibility of actually personally knowing the name, the place where he lives and maybe even play a game or two against a mod developer.

you are very wrong,

in many ways, mod's bring life to games yes, but they don not take them on a professional serious level. The problem with mods is that they are taking the success of a few mod's to their heads, and now everyone making mods is thriving for this 'success' dream and it's bs. mods used to be about having fun, some professional teams do make game demo's off mod's but they do not release these to the public, they keep them secret and only as a technical demo. real professionals know the difference between mods and games.

mod's can be better than full games, that does not matter at all in any way.

and no, no companies that matter are taking mods seriously. when you say 'serious' a company is not like OMG THIS MOD IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. no that is some fake fantasy, if you make a mod, good fucking woopty doo, it it does good, gets a HUGE player base and draws lots of players then they'll start noticing you and poking around, but until you reach that level like DOD and CS did, you are nothing but an ass stain. you can have the best mod in the world, but if it doesn't have the players flocking to it it doesn't have a chance, and even then your chances of getting money is very unlikely.

i'm asking you not to keep ruining the mod community with this bullshit strike it rich fucking crap, it makes me want to get a gun in shoot you in the face. sorry, but you greedy, pos mother fuckers always wanting money make me sick. work on mods and games for the love and experience, not some bull-shit fake dream of striking it rich, you're worse than a garage band.

i'm sorry if i'm sounding like a prick, but honestly i hope this guy and his mod fails, crashes and burns so he gets a reality check, i had to get this reality check a while back also and I see people who act like I used to act and it makes me sick.

[RD]

Kedrin read the whole thread. And do some historic research on how sucessful studios started. There simply is no other way than being ambitious and getting money into the equation. If you hate those kind of ppl, then go to your boss' office now and tell him.