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Cleff
 
   
  
 
 
Since: 05-19-02
From: Singapore
Since last post: 7890 days
Last activity: 7958 days
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| Posted on 06-08-02 07:25 AM | |
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Originally posted by Sasami
The jobs I will really needing help with are story line, artwork, real good beta testers who are familiar with how to find exploits in systems and where bugs could easily be made, weapons, monsters, items, prices (economy), good battle system algorithms and forumlas, dropping formulas etc.
Hey Sasami, regarding the above, what do you mean by weapons, monsters, items, prices etc. ?
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Sironin
 
Since: 05-17-02
Since last post: 7933 days
Last activity: 7617 days
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| Posted on 06-08-02 07:53 AM | |
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I wouldn't exactly say I've 'seen everything' in the gaming industry, but I've come fairly close. That is to say I've seen all walks of games across many a medium at many stages of development. I've also participated in the development of several. (not many are very well known, some were mods, one actually made it to being a sequal). But at any rate, as far as companies go, I'd say Gravity would be one of the nicer ones. They actually DO respond to emails (instead of some game companies of a 'no emails, press releases only' policies), albeit a little slow.
Yes game development is slow. Understand however that there is a specific development cycle you should (no you don't have to) follow. The particular school of thought on how many steps and where and how your planning and development is actually accomplished is basically up to you.
A quick word on Betas. There are many kinds of betas. (your Alpha should never leave your development lab, that's why it's an Alpha...) Some examples we've seen thus far are Open Beta: Open Betas are bad because they expose your product to the public before it is done and promote negative publicity. Similiarly, releasing an unfinished product before it is done and then releasing a patch in the hopes to generate a lot of revenue (from an early release of the game and online adspace and traffic) is also foolish. Bad game, bugs, bad publicity, bad reviews, bad for you all around. Closed Beta: Closed Betas are better than open betas because you have some control over who will be participating in your beta. However there are some problems with Closed Betas as well because often you will need a strict non disclosure agreement or something similiar to avoid the problems with an open beta. Remember, betatesting is to work out bugs, not cause you more headaches as a programmer/developer. Lab Beta or Alpha2. Just like the Alpha, it's a closed beta within the Lab or immediate membership of the developer team. Anyone that already knew about the game or worked on it tries it out and pokes at it for bugs. (the artists having finished their jobs now get to play games all day while programmers fix bugs)
A word on money: You'll need it. I'm sorry, but you will. Blade servers come very cheap these days (very VERY cheap for servers). Typically servers can cost you more than a car, but these servers run the more reasonable price of a regular computer. You can stack them in little tiny racks. They're cooled efficiently, and if you've got a decent router and internet connection, can just suck up the same bandwidth (please give them a proper t1/t3 if you're running game servers tho, cable is fine for alpha/lab/closed beta testing)
If you must have one, contact transmeta. They'll build you the cheapest most cost effective, most powerful ghetto super computer in the world...
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Sasami
Goddess in Training
 
Since: 02-18-02
From: Back in texas! YAY! college sucked!
Rating: 10 (1030 pts)
Since last post: 7359 days
Last activity: 7359 days
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| Posted on 06-08-02 08:09 AM | |
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| give me a link, but I am already very happy with the serving company I am with. |
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| Thread closed