Roll call

[Desrtopa]

This is a roll call to determine what resources we have at our disposal for this project. Describe what sort of work you intend to provide, or contributions such as money to hire others if applicable. Note any particular skills, and your expected level of availability.

[Desrtopa]

I plan to contribute writing for the game, both on the big-picture story and structure level, and the basic detail of character dialogue and such.

I have a lot of of free time to contribute, and am willing to spend it working out the dialogue for loads of bit characters, should such a thing be necessary.

While I definitely can't carry this game over the finish line myself, I hate letting a group down, and I intend to remain committed to this project as long as it remains viable.

[DaFranker]

My availability is proportional to my subconscious level of motivation, modified by the 35h/wk day job and normal life necessities. So 50h/wk * subconscious motivation level.

I don't quite know what sorts of particulars my skillset would have in this group. My priors that everyone else here is already quite knowledgeable in programming, game theory, game design and AI is rather high, but I might be mind-projecting a bit.

My feedback on game design considerations is usually highly praised as exceptionally insightful, and my suggestions for improvements highly supported (by other users / players), but I have received little to no feedback against any game design stuff I came up with myself. So I might be really great at game design, or I might just happen to have gotten good at subconsciously pattern-matching and comparing a design against other game designs and coming up with an easy-to-improve weakpoint.

In terms of coding, I've done lots of tweaking, game code modifications (or scripted), did some fiddling with lower-tech game AI, and built large systems of context-sensitve vbscripts to automate 80%+ of my data entry job in a previous department. But I've never, to memory, built a single standalone application from start to finish outside of the context of a tutorial, even as part of a team.

So... writing? Game design? Coding? Testing and feedback? Diving in documentation? Research and prototyping? I don't know if choosing a specific category of things to work on is going to help much. In the past, even having a specific thing in the project that I was responsible for didn't have any noticeable effect.

So I really want to try the Valve style: Move my desk at the intersection of things I think I can do and things I think need to get done.

(side-note: Sorry, I know I'm messy when I write like this. All of this seems like relevant information though, and now rewriting it in a less stream-of-consciousness format feels like a chore.)

On Monday, February 18, 2013 9:29:38 AM UTC-5, Desrtopa wrote:

[Jolima]

For what it's worth, I found your post very informative DaFranker, Maybe because I'm prone to such rambling myself before grudgingly forming it up into something more coherent.

Anyways, I'm skilled in programming and software design. I'm working with Java, C# and JavaScript in my day job and wouldn't mind picking up whatever scripting language is needed for the game engine we end up going for. I've also got some interest in game theory/design but not much of a track record in it, just a folder filled with design notes from various unfinished projects.

My availability will also depend on motivation of course, but on a guess maybe 8 hours per week spread over evenings and weekends. If I know myself right, I'll probably keep motivated for as long as others keep working on the project, but is probably not the one to look to for getting us going again if it's getting bogged down. (I do like to breaking character when warranted though, so who knows. :-) )

I also support not trying to assign strict roles to everyone, but keeping any discussions and decisions open to whoever cares enough to get involved and an issue tracker where you can claim whatever issues you think you can manage. (We should probably agree on Kaj acting as benevolent dictator if needed though.)

[Mitchell Owen]

My availability is going to be nil until late March probably, after that it should be more flexible but I don't want to promise more than 5 hours a week--though I'd expect at good times to put in far more than that.   It would be ideal for me (and possibly in general?) to have smaller separate portions of work that can be done somewhat independently; being able to get something done and report back with it is something I'm likely to put more time into whereas getting engrossed in a larger scheme is something I'm likely to put off and not put much time into.

I suspect I'll be on the weaker end with regards to programming in the group--it's been a long time since I've worked with anything other than Python and HTML, but I'm pretty good at turning ideas into algorithms and doing more programming is part of what I'm hoping to get out of participating in this.

I'd be happy to do math-related design aspects, taking a math concept and plot concept and merging them into a coherent mechanic is something that I've spent a lot of time doing.

A couple of questions: about how many people are currently on board for this project?  And, is the mailing list/google group the place we are planning to mainly coordinate, or will we plan to have bigger skype meetings as well or something?

[Kaj Sotala]

I'm doing this on the side of attempting to finish my degree *and* doing work on other tasks for MIRI: however, I've just cut down on my work hours in order to better focus on the studies and this project, so things aren't as bad as that might imply. Also, like I mentioned in the opening post, I'm thinking about transitioning to doing this kind of a thing as a career at some point, so I'm both motivated for the sake of the project itself and for the sake of getting valuable experience (both on the design and programming side). I intend to dip my toes into a bit of everything. :)

I have only rudimentary programming experience, but I've read a fair amount of various kinds of theory and advice on storytelling - primarily on writing traditional fiction, but also some on video game storytelling. (This is a good book on that topic, BTW.) And I've spent a fair amount of time hanging around various game designers (who've made board games, traditional RPGs, strategy game mods, etc.) and absorbing their discussions. Also dabbled in fiction-writing somewhat.

Do we have anybody who'd be proficient with graphics? It's going to be a bit of a problem if we don't have any artists. Maybe if we managed to put together an adequate prototype in some reasonable time, we could persuade Eliezer to put in an advertisement for this project on the next MoR update and thus draw in people with the kinds of strengths we need. Though it's better to already have a good idea of what this project should look like by the point that we're expecting to get a big influx of new people.

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:37 PM, Mitchell Owen <magf...@gmail.com> wrote:

A couple of questions: about how many people are currently on board for this project?  

The Google group says that there are currently 11 people around.

 

And, is the mailing list/google group the place we are planning to mainly coordinate, or will we plan to have bigger skype meetings as well or something?

I was thinking mostly the mailing list, but if people want to have Skype meetings as well, that's fine by me.

[DaFranker]

Do we have anybody who'd be proficient with graphics? It's going to be a bit of a problem if we don't have any artists. Maybe if we managed to put together an adequate prototype in some reasonable time, we could persuade Eliezer to put in an advertisement for this project on the next MoR update and thus draw in people with the kinds of strengths we need. Though it's better to already have a good idea of what this project should look like by the point that we're expecting to get a big influx of new people.

Yeah, that'd be a problem currently =\

We can manage with placeholder art until later stages of development, but it would be nice to see things come together a bit more visually, and some early concept art to inspire a bit more would be nice.

At worst, though, if we're only looking for artists to do graphics and nothing else on the game, decent-to-good ones can be found in a lot of other places if it can be credibly signaled that the team is robust and will likely carry the project through completion. IndieDB and ModDB are the first examples of such other places that I'd have on top of my head.

Of course, all of that would require some actual PR. I'd rather avoid it and find someone from the LW / HPMoR readership, if possible. Would also help with communication.