next »

[randomprofile]

I've got a question paul... Have you copyrighted "Mythruna" yet or no? Because of my time on the internet, I've seen alot of bullshit (Excuse me). Some of you might know who Boxxy (Queen of 4Chan). During the "4Chan Wars" She posted alot of videos on youtube, and one day someone claimed copyright to all her videos which were then removed from her account and transferred to the imposter, Anyway thats about it . Secure the Word "Mythruna"

[scorch]

I believe we all would testify in favor of Paul if something like that happens.
Anyway, I believe that Paul do that when Mythruna gets more famous.

[pspeed]

Yeah, it's trademark that I'd have to worry about re: the name.  And really, since it's a word I completely made up and had 0 google hits prior to my securing the name, another company would have trouble sniping it.

Registering a trademark is not free and will come after I setup the company... as I'll need to trademark the company name as well.  But these become assets and I'd rather park them with the company than myself.

[randomprofile]

EEEEEEEK, I'm scared D:... Na I kid, I realize it costs money, but before you make a company... MAKE A TEAM

[pspeed]

Company comes before revenue.  Revenue comes before team.  At least in the formal sense.

[randomprofile]

This is how I see it in my head...

Guy One: Hey dude, I've got this great idea for a game.
Guy Two: Sweet... can I help in development?
Guy Three: You guys making a game? I wanna help.
Guy Two : Lets sell and actually make some profit of this game?'
Guy Three :Thats a great idea
Guy One :But we a need a company too.

And thats how Guy One, Guy Two, and Guy Three, became badass game designers and lived the rest of there lives as upper class citizen.

[pspeed]

To directly answer your post, selling+profit is the prerequisite for a company... even in your story.  No matter how many guy or guys there were.  But more on the underlying point...

I have a lot of experience managing teams and trying to work on them at the same time.  There is a lot of overhead involved.

Usually, if two developers are "made for each other", ie: they are just perfectly in sync somehow and can complete each others sentences then you can expect this to add about 10% overhead.  So, if I'm working on the game 25-30 hours per week then I will spend 2.5-3 hours of that coordinating work with someone else.  That presumes that I've already done about 80 hours of work properly laying out a design that we both can follow.

For most, that number would be closer to 30-50% of my time spent keeping the other developer productive and making sure their code wasn't breaking things and my code wasn't breaking their things, etc..

And that's just for one other dev... every additional dev adds another 10-20% until you have about 5 guys and I'm doing nothing but managing everyone else.  I don't really get to code at all anymore unless it's drilling into why something isn't working for someone.  Throughput has increased but now so has schedule.  For a big project, you gain a lot of positive "corporate-like" things like redundancy, not burning your people out, etc... but you generally _increase_ the length of the schedule by adding people.  The old saying about how "9 women can't have a baby in one month" isn't the whole story because 9 women also can't have 9 babies in 9 months... you'd have to find 9 pregnant women right off the bat.  Realistically, if you wanted 9 babies it would take you at least two years.  But I digress...

Right now, all of the systems are in partially built stages.  I can keep a lot in my head and leave comments for myself in the code so I sort of know where I'm going.  I also have a ton of design documents written "just for me" that I can pick up and know what I was thinking.  I can also change my mind and turn on a dime, refactoring entire sections if I choose.  For while I have lots of experience working in teams, I also know what works for me as a "cowboy coder" working on my own. 

There is a point 'real soon now', where these systems start to come together in a way that I could let other people work on them without issue... but that is also the point where they are ready for some published modding specs.

And there is also the issue that I can't afford to pay anyone or promise anything to anyone who contributes (having a company is also the prerequisite to promises by the way)... and voluntary contributions are awesome but can't be counted on in any way.  Life overtakes someone or the wrong word is said in a heated design discussion and suddenly motivation/time dries up and I'm left to start a piece over from scratch.  There is considerable risk for me here, especially considering the overhead costs mentioned above.

I super appreciate all of the offers.  I honestly do.  It's actually one of the things that keeps me going... knowing all of you who believe so much in the game that you want to help.  I just feel like I'm not in a position to field them properly at this point.

Currently, I feel like my best plan is to keep knocking the critical or risky systems down until I have something solid.  I'm in a better position to accept help at that point... and not coincidentally, that's also when the modding support will be pretty well fleshed out and I will feel really comfortable talking about "what's next" because the risky systems have been completed. 

I hope that all of you who are eager to help will take that as an opportunity to build cool things.  That's also when I switch from full-on, head-down development mode, to creating an official online presence for the game and really trying to get the word out.

Man... sorry to ramble on so long.  I hope I didn't upset anyone.

[randomprofile]

EEEEEEEK! Sooo much text D: I got scared , I understand you're point of not wanted to have a team at this time, But here's an Idea I once used, you make like it, you may not . But I'll shoot anyway. A while back me and a few friends were working on a game (It was so sad I refuse to name how and what) But how we did it... We had a webserver where we kept our files and what we would do is... If I login and download the "source" it says I'm using the "source"... So my friends would not touch it. when I was done, I would reupload the updated "source" and someone else could work on it... We all had a "goal". At the moment we were working on cities and I was working on one while everyone else was working on others. And that is how we stop each other from going into each others work. and when we would finish we would look and fix if needed. You could do something like this... Another idea is, I once found a site that allowed you to write and compile programs online, and it actually worked, and from what I remember it updated real time. So what you can do is have your team logon at same time (or not), and edit the code real time together. And I really don't have any ideas tell me what you think PLZ

[pspeed]

I've worked with large teams, participated in several open source project, and run four open source projects of my own... some of which actually have additional members.  Source code is managed generally through subversion and tasking can be managed through a wiki or more formally through an issue-tracker... casually through a mailing list, etc..  I don't even consider that stuff as part of the overhead.  The overhead is just in the technical exchange required to keep the source code from turning into a pile of unmaintainable garbage.

Right now, some of the code is ugly but does what it's supposed to and I fix it when I come back through.  I can rapid fire through features this way and then swing back and refactor later.  I couldn't do this on a team... I'd spend most of my time explaining stuff.