Dreamer in the Falls

Started by jimking11, December 29, 2020, 09:14:06 AM

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HELLO TO ALL MY  SOLARUS FRIENDS!

My  name  Jim King and I have  written a book  called  DREAMER IN THE FALLS  & Produced a trailer   for the  book  and  now  am  seeking anyone  interested  in  developing the  story  into a  video  game! so  far  i  am  a  team  of  one  but  that's a   good  start.  my  area  is  art  and  game  design and am seeking designers and  coders mainly... I would  love  to give  you the  E-book so you you  can  see  what i  am  working  on.  would  love to turn this  into a  game  which reaches the  market  and  makes a  profit  for  all the  team  members.  it's  a labor  of  love  so  there  is  no  money  up  front  but  I  am  a  dedicated  creator  and  won't  stop  until the  game  is  finished.   so  if  you  would  like  to  consider  being  on the  team  please  send  me  a  message...

see the  trailer  here:     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7zws6jeOIk

Hi Jim.

That trailer is really cool, the production looks great. Seems like a fascinating world, I like the aesthetic of the trailer. It's cool that you found Solarus and think it'd be a good fit for the game you'd like to make! Just a little bit of advice, you don't have much bait on the hook to be fishing for volunteer labor. Also, please take this as advice because your trailer seems cool, and it seems like it could make a really cool game, not me trying to tear your idea down. I'd love to see it succeed, but your asking for help in a way that probably won't get many takers. There are a number of things you could do to help yourself out though.

- You aren't really giving much information about your plan. What kind of game are you wanting to make? You don't really even have an elevator pitch in here. Is this a combat-focused action game? A detective adventure game? What's the scope? Seems like you've got a fascinating world and aesthetic based on your trailer, and if you're a writer I imagine you're familiar with putting together a pitch.

- Do you have any experience making games? Directing development of some other creative project? General managerial experience? Do you have a plan for development of this game, are you going to pitch publishers at some point (if so when?), get investors, do a kickstarter, etc? Again, what's the scope of your game? Are you trying to make a small experience, something someone might play for an hour or two? Or a grand epic, exploring multiple levels with complex gameplay and a lot of systems?

- If you're insistent on this plan where you ask people to volunteer their time to something that could eventually pay off, what are you offering to show people your game is worth investing their time into? You mention your expertise is in art and design- show some sample art, design some example maps. Solarus doesn't really need any coding knowledge to just make some maps a character can walk around on. And there's a ton of free code we've created that you can just use too, just importing it into your game like a module.

- Get started by yourself. We've very happy to help people learn if they want to make an effort. It'll be a much easier sell to ask people to help you if you've proven this is a good project, and people can see its potential.

- What about not asking people to do this for free? Why don't you get together a budget, talk to a publisher, and get some funding for this game? Or do a kickstarter once you get together a prototype, art, etc yourself? If you're looking to hire people, that's still sketchy to take a job from a forum on the internet, but it's easier than working for free for someone from a forum on the internet.

- Address a couple of the red flags in your request. Besides asking people to work without pay, you also linked a trailer with a release date of over a year ago. I can't find anything about the movie having been released, or see it for sale anywhere. Is it stuck in a bad development cycle? Severely delayed? Cancelled? Also, your book is self published on Amazon. Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's probably a great for some writers' situations. But it also means there wasn't a big financial support for your book, like there would have been if you'd gone through a publisher. At least from what I understand about the industry. Again, nothing wrong with planning a film that didn't end up coming out, or self-publishing a book. But those are red flags when you're asking someone to volunteer a huge amount of work? Better to address them upfront.



That's all assuming that, like you say, you want to develop this game with a team, looking for commercial success. I think a very valid approach is to just start working on this as a hobby yourself. Watch the youtube tutorials on how to get started with Solarus, ask questions in the Discord, share screenshots of your progress so people can support you. Then maybe when you're not a stranger on the internet asking for unpaid work out of nowhere, but a member of a community, people will be more willing to invest their time to help you.

I wanted to give a good response, but Max got around all the points... oh well..

I really liked the trailer at least...  Anyway the best advice I can give you is begin working on it yourself and if what you come up with looks good others will join your project over time maybe. I am starting out from nothing making my own game and it takes forever, but as I finish stuff people seem to be really nice with help when i ask on this forum (especially you Max) and reddit for programming questions and pixel art. :)