nesdev.org

So I know that many developers are active around here and many of them work on their own projects. But one thing that I don't see is a collaborative project that involves the whole community.

I would like to see a site made game that represents the community. Something that anyone can join in on. Many people would probably get involved simply for the experience and being able to see a game from start to finish being worked on.

So what is everyone ones opinion about doing such a project?

Project management gets very hard when there are more than two people involved in a project, especially with no real incentives.

This usually doesn't work. Most homebrewers want to have full creative control of their projects, and the level of control decreases greatly with each new person that joins the project. Programmers who are working for free don't want to realize other people's visions, only their own.

I think the idea is to find a single project that covers different members' intersecting visions.

Case in point: RHDE wasn't my vision. It was originally the vision of one of my cousin's classmates. But I jumped in because I was able to make it intersect my own visions 1. to build with blocks while dissociating myself from a certain Russian-born programmer who hates the free software model and 2. to implement a game suitable for my "DX" fictional setting.

My next vision is to make a SMB1 clone that can replace SMB1 hacking as a means of producing a side-scrolling NES game. If the first game on this engine is in someone else's world, so be it.

My sentiments mirror that of thefox.

Usually community collaboration projects/games, at least on classic consoles, tend to have 3 or 4 people at most. For example, Demiforce's Drymouth game involved only 3 people (coder/graphics, graphics, and musician).

The larger the number of people, the more likely there will be excessive amounts of pondering over minuscule things, or heated arguments over design choices (and never coming to full agreement). And if you have people who have large egos, eventually those can rear their heads and cause massive issues (i.e. someone leaves the project). Do not think even for a minute you can find a replacement by snapping your fingers -- it isn't that easy.

Back in the 90s I worked with Riff on our qNES emulator, which was just him and I. We never ran into any of those scenarios, but that's also because he knew a hell of a lot more than I did (esp. about things like cache lines and writing assembly code so that it fit within those cache limits -- something I still to this day haven't bothered to learn), and it made the most sense to accept his expertise, while I did other things (working on graphics code, trying to implement framework for mappers, etc.). But that's a different beast than, say, designing an actual video game -- a **LOT** more is involved there.

To support all my claims, check out the following game called Cube World, which has been worked on by just *one guy* and he explains somewhere (FAQ, blog post, I forget) that he wanted it to be developed entirely by him (and the majority has been), but eventually branched out to get one more developer (not sure what their role is). And for efforts of basically 1 guy, it's pretty damn amazing: http://wollay.blogspot.com/

Now compare that to, say, large-scale Kickstarter indie game projects which consist of say 10-20 people, or commercial games which consist of probably 50 (not including any outsourcing, which is SUPER common; even Nintendo does this quite heavily!) people, and how awful those games turn out most of the time. No, not all the time, but most (IMO).

Then perhaps we could break into teams, with 2 to 4 people per team. Some of us would post design documents, others could sign on if they find a project interesting, and then each team would work on its own project.

So what are your visions, guys?

In my opinion, collaboration would be a problem for people who don't even know themselves in the real world. There will always be problems with too large teams, but 2-4 should be fine.

Also when someone leaves the projects it can be very problematic, because that means all his work can't be used and has to be re-done from scratch. This can be ok if this happens to the music guy, but just imagine if that happens to the graphics/character designed guy, or the programmer guy. It basically means the game has to be redone from scratch.

Bregalad wrote:Also when someone leaves the projects it can be very problematic, because that means all his work can't be used and has to be re-done from scratch. This can be ok if this happens to the music guy, but just imagine if that happens to the graphics/character designed guy, or the programmer guy. It basically means the game has to be redone from scratch.

Contributor license agreements are designed to avoid this situation.

Erockbrox wrote:So I know that many developers are active around here and many of them work on their own projects. But one thing that I don't see is a collaborative project that involves the whole community.

That would be very interesting. I agree with most comments tho, as it can turn out to be very hard getting follow thru on such a project.
Comming from a few years in the pc demoscene (tracker and organizer of sorts) so I know it can be troublesome with group projects.

On the other hand, there are a lot of amazing talent on this forum not put to (THE BEST) use due to the fact there are just so many steps involved making a more complex game. So, joined forces for a large scale project is something I look forward to seeing.
I really don't add anything to a skilled group like that, so I am just saying it would be nice.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I would like to dive into something to gain some experience making a game. I would like to make my own game on my own but lack the skills and its pretty difficult, but if I were just issued one part in making a game I feel as if I could reasonably learn that part and work on something. But there doesn't seem to be any ongoing projects that you can just jump into and help out currently.

If you split the work between a small group of people, not only could you possibly finish the game sooner but the quality might even be better because each person would be working in their own field of expertise.

It could be a game to show off peoples talents from the community as well. If its never been done on here before then why not try it? Some people like me would help out simply for the experience in making a NES game or if the game is really really good, it would be nice to you that you played a part in it somehow.

Also decisions could be made on the voting community here. For example:

Why type of game would you want to see?

a) Side scrolling shooter
b) Top down scrolling shooter
c) RPG
d) Platformer
e) Puzzle type game
f) Adventure
g) Educational

The one with the most votes would win and be the type of game to make.

I'm not sure if it counts but we still have a ongoing collaboration project via the programing competitions known as Action 53.

As for a single collaboration game that I would like to see. For a a while I thought of a "game" that's basically a collection of tech demos with fun and interesting menu navigation much like how Gameboy Camera and Mario Paint spiced up their menu navigation.

I think we already had a discussion about this and came with the conclusion that what would work best for a collaborative project would be making a fighting game, where everyone creates different chargers, as it is usually not a problem when people with very different styles show up (like the ... vs Capcom series or Super Smash Bros).

However the idea didn't go very far as nobody wanted to took the lead of the project, and that the NES hardware is unsuited for 1-to-1 fighting games (assuming the chracters have a body), unless an advanced mapper such as the MMC5 is used.

But the NES is suited for platform fighting games, whose characters are anywhere from the size of Double Dragon characters to the size of Shaq-Fu characters. Street Fighter 2010 (AVGN review) was an early attempt at this style; Super Smash Bros. perfected it.

But the real reason a collaborative fighting game doesn't take off is that it takes roughly 150 frames of art for each character.