$12256 / $11500
Greetings!
After searching the earth for various free art sources I could use for a game, I find it very difficult to find tilesets that would fit together to make a full game.
The RPG maker graphics are very nice, but are only available for use inside the RPG maker programs and would violate licenses to use them in external programs.
The closest I could find was the LPC graphics which are very nice, but still lacks in a lot of areas including incomplete animation sets, not all terrains have proper transitions, and not lot of variation in buildings and environmental props.
My original idea was to use what was available, and then hire artists to create the custom sprites that I need, however I am sure a lot of you are aware that pixel artists are quite expensive to hire for exclusive work. My buddy and I have always wanted to make an innovative 2D mmorpg and I know what you are thinking. Majority of mmorpg projects never see the light of day and are very difficult projects to take on. I perfectly agree, infact, we have failed many times in the past. Mainly because neither of us has really had the time to put into it that is required. So we would hate to spend thousands of dollars on exclusive artwork and it never see that light of day.
Finally, in May, I will graduate college, and a whole bucket load of time will become available to me to dedicate to my own personal projects. However, even with all this extra time, there is still a VERY HIGH chance this project will still fail. Stuff happens, mmorpgs take a long time to develop, test, etc... and lives changes during that time.
In that regard, what I propose is paying for non-exclusive art at hopefully a cheaper rate than exclusive, so that even if our project should fail, the art is still available for others to use in their personal projecets. The art would be in the style of the LPC graphics and would be made to the specifications required by our project, but would be freely available to use from the time it is created.
Now I don't plan on starting anything till late May, so I'm mainly just trying to test the waters and see how much interest people here would have in creating art for this and at what rate they would like to be paid. This also gives me time to write up specifications for all the art needed for the project. In the end, everyone would have a complete graphics set to make an entire detailed game including skill animatons, GUI, character portraits, and tons of props, environments, and items. All it one single style.
Just leave a post here so I can get a feel for how many people might be interested in contributing and what kind of rates I can expect to pay. We can work out details later on how you would submit the art, and how you would be compensated. Don't want someone to submit the art here, and then someone else quickly grab it and then submit it to me for payment.
Also, I might want to add that the game project we are working on will be closed source and commercial, only the art assets you guys make will be freely available.
Thanks,
Kalagaraz
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I am not a 2D artist, but I would like to ask that you consider not using the LPC graphics for this. My complaint with them is that they are licensed GPL/CC-BY-SA. Both of these licenses contain share alike clauses that require derivatives to be of the same license as the original and the CC-BY-SA in particular is known to be unclear about how this should be interpreted. While I do not expect anyone to get in trouble for making a good faith effort to follow the intent of these licenses, I would like OGA to be home of a consistant, quality, librally available, legally unabiguos series of sprites and tiles.
So with that in mind, I would be interested in helping with this under the following conditions:
* The style guide and the core sprite sheets and tiles are licensed under the CC0 (read it before you agree!)
* The core sprite sheets and tiles are clean (in the moral sensorship since of the word).
If you are interested in this contact me and maybe we can work something out.
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For those who would be interested in learning more about the LPC (including what the style guide is) you can check here:
http://lpc.opengameart.org/
Your original thought of using existing free graphics is 100% the thing to do.
Please PLEASE reconsider using ONLY existing free graphics until at least an ALPHA version.
Here are the GREAT reasons for doing this:
1) You should design your game so that graphics are easily upgraded - most popular online games do have regular graphic updates so this should be an important part of your design. So use free graphics as a part of testing the upgrade graphic code - at least until your prototype is working.
2) DO NOT try to build the entire game. If you have 1 playable room where you can do all the basics - e.g. multiple people can connect, talk, attack and move (maybe pickup weapons, loot corpses or whatever once you get the basics working), this is an enormous step - you make this 1 room your protoype room, get all the bugs out of it, make it reusable and you have the template for your game.
If you build the above and it is fun. Your game world is ready to be built, and you can seriously consider paying for graphics then.
Saliv:
I'm entirely open to creating a completely new style that is licensed CC0. Just seemed like the LPC sheets were a big thing here that I thought people would be more willing to work on extending.
All the sprites and tiles required for my game should be family friendly, as it is intended to be a free-to-play HTML5 browser game with optional in-game purchases, on the condition that it does not become yet another failed project for which I make NO guarantees that the project will ever be completed.
Boogle:
I have worked on personal mmorpg projects in the past, all of which have failed, but have exceeded steps you pointed out. I see your point though and that was one of the reasons I chose to start with the LPC graphics, as it already gives a good base to start working on the game, before commisioning a lot of art work. While I don't mind using free art to begin with, I do like to have things going concurrently and while programming with prototype art, having professional art being done simulatenously.
If you believe it would help garner support for doing artwork for this project, I could quickly throw together a prototype like you stated and have it hosted within 1-2 days using the LPC graphics. Something simple like typing in a character name and being able to walk around a demo world and chat with other players.
Sounds like you have a good history/platform. I guess what you need now is the right strategy to both manage your time and also encourage artists to join your project.
I do think a working prototype is a good place to start - it allows anyone (e.g. artists) somewhere to go to see progress and recognise that the project is not vaporware.
To back this up - you should plan the next month or more at a weekly goal level.
E.g. Lets say you start now, you might go.
Week 1: Publish working Prototype online. (maybe something you have done previously).
Week 2: Convert Client to HTML5. ((if not already done)or split this up if it takes more than 1 week).
Week 3: Add Updater system. (e.g. downloads a pack from an online server - and updates the client's graphics/levels. (again, split if you think it will takes more than a week).
Week 4: Testing week, bug fixes + ensuring code is decent quality with reusable objects etc.
...
This list should be made public - that way people can easily see that development is active and progressing rapidly - encouraging envolvement.
But it should be a simple list - one you don't have to spend much time maintaining each week.
Anyway - just some ideas. Start small - and keep hitting regular goals so that you stay on track - have the occassional Test/Code review week scheduled to help manage any slippage - and if your project isn't slipping you can either use it to improve your code or get ahead of schedule.
Oh - and another note, I know HTML5/Canvas can do some cool stuff - I am also using it.
But it still doesn't compare to engines like Unity3d on graphic intensive and complex games.
The game you have linked to in the past looks very graphic intensive, using a large world and many users/objects etc.
(I also read somewhere you also have a Unity3d pro licence?)
I guess the question is - will HTML5/Canvas have the performance you need? Or should you reconsider Unity?
Yes I have a Unity Pro license, but the issue with it is accessibility. You can use the Unity web deployer, but there will be people who don't want to install the browser plugin, or simply can't due to certain restrictions. I want to make an MMO that really feels like an online game where players have a significant advantage by playing with other players rather than taking the solo route that AAA mmos these days seems to make the most efficient way of progressing. To do that, making the game accessible to a larger audience is a must and I believe HTML5 canvas and a free-to-play with optional purchases architecture is the best way to acheive that.
I believe HTML5 canvas should be more than capable of what we have in mind, specifically I plan on using the Phaser framework, mainly for it outs of the box support for TMX map parsing. Pixi is nice, but i'd either have to write the TMX parser myself, or work an external library into it.
I don't plan on having fancy lighting effects and detailed shaders or anything like that. Just a simple 2D game similar to a mmo version of to the old legend of zelda games or mozillas browser quest.
I want to stress that I don't want people to start doing artwork because they expect to have an awesome game to play one day. I would like people to help do artwork for the game at a cheaper paid rate than what I would pay for exclusive work with the principle that all the artwork would be public domain and freely able to use in anyones game or project. If going by my previous track record, there is a 100% chance this game will never see the light of day haha, but I'm hoping having more free time will change things.
I totally agree with you on having weekly goals. I don't really plan on starting anything major till after I graduate in May, but I can certainly have a nice playable demo up by next Monday. After May, I could also do weekly updates or some such and create an updated news feed / blog type thing.
Sounds good.
Another HTML5/Canvas item to be aware of - if you want Canvas only (to get the performance boost that CocoonJS gives with Canvas Only), Text Input directly into canvas is still very buggy, most likely if you want to fully support chatting you will need to include both DOM and Canvas.
I have an example of Text Input directly into Canvas on my Website Play Store App (contact Us).
I got it to work - and wrote a class to support a wrapper class (that somone else wrote for Phaser I think - this wrapper had a few bugs in it as well).
It now supports basic char entry, Swype and predictive text (The initial example only supports basic char entry).
But there are some bugs I just can't work around, e.g.:
There is no way I can currently sensibly detect a long press delete.
The current implementation appears to only allow editing entry data that was created by itself (from when you invoke the keyboard). Therefore you can't edit existing text because the delete button doesn't fire the event!!! This is the real killer for me. Not firing an event means I am completely in the dark and cannot work around the bug.
There are issues, but given time I can work-around them, The 2 above I can't work around, I could take a stab at the delete button, but the not firing an event one is nasty.
So anyway - from everything I have read - You will likely need to include both DOM and Canvas in your game if you want a decent chat experience.
I don't want to turn you off HTML5/Canvas - I think it is great and am using it for a bunch of projects - I guess I just want to let you know of some hurdles I have crashed against so you can either ensure your expectations on performance are realistic - or at least be prepared to allow your game to be a little less polished in certain areas to work around the restrictions you will sometimes get because of it being a browser game.
oh wait - are you only planning on supporting desktop (like) environments?
If this is the case - some of the concens above are minimised - e.g. more power is usually available on desktop like environments and if a keyboard is always attached, you don't have to worry about using a virtual keyboard api via CocoonJS etc.