Programmer seeking to create dev team Thread

Looking for all categories of developers to build up a dev team to make a HL2 based multiplayer game.

I have a set of innovative ideas to create a scary/eerie game which I would very much like to hear your opinions and ideas upon.

The game is in its early stages, we have a sandbox prototype environment where we test all our ideas and discuss through weekly which ideas to progress, lots of cool and off the wall ideas going on in there

Thanks, please pm if you're interested.

Can you post screenshots or links or give any more info?

Thanks for the reply TKaza. Its early stages so far so the screens will look hl2, I can provide some of the projects ideas.

What advice would you provide a starting up dev team for recruiting more members?

Providing informations about the project no matter what crude state they are in. People don't know what you do so they need to be filled in somehow so they see why it should be interesting for them or why not.

Ok np.

As for advice, plenty of information, screenshots.

Things to show your doing work and you know what your doing, aswell as information to back these up.
This is what i look for and im sure other do aswell.

Thanks guys. I'll start with my introduction. I am a full time programmer with 7 years commercial development experience (developing a range of developments from Assault Helicopters, Satellites to more recently developing with Microsoft server products). Through university (back in 2000) I developed with HL1 SDK developing a Bomberman clone mod. I also reviewed HL1 maps with Planet HalfLife developing the child site which got PC gamer website of the month award. Large parts of my university degree modules was game development related hense the urge to get back into Mod development.

The game idea so far is (your ideas on these will be very welcome):

2 teams - Demons vs Humans (also Non Player Characters (NPCs) on the maps)

The demons are very powerful and invisible to the humans giving the player a sense of great power and interactivity with the environment.
The invisibility adds maliciousness, and more opertunities to set up traps or events.
The demons Goal is to scare the NPCs and feed of the fear created via interacting with the game environment.

Difference interactions can be done once you have enough of the NCPs fear levels high enough:
* Turn lights on/off, turn tv/microwave etc on/off - low level of fear
* speak/make creepy noises - low level of fear
* Interact, move/throw objects - Medium level of fear
* Possess and control NCP characters - Medium level of fear
* Materialise in the form of an eerie ghost - Medium level of fear
* Loud screems that shatter glass/objects - Medium level
* Slamming and locking doors tightly shut

NCP seeing dead bodies will raise the level of fear however it will be strategically worse to kill the NCPs as there will be 1 less NPCs fear to feed off of.

Higher levels of fear allow the demons to start attacking the other human team in similar ways.

The humans
Your task is to go in and rescue the NPCs, the more you rescue the less fear there will be for the demons to feed off, and the weaker they will become. You can also be affected by fear in the same way as the NPCs.
Once enough NCPs are rescued/killed then the demons will materialise and can be killed. Killing NPCs will lower the demons fear however it will raise yours making yourself more susceptible to the demons. Possessed NCPs can be killed with no penalty.

Our vision of gameplay for the demons would be racing to raise their fear levels (and being creative and having fun doing so) to become ever more powerful and using that power to trap/torment the humans. Possessing humans and scaring other npcs. Teaming up to move and control objects in front of the other team and getting close enough to the player before sending voice command to say "Get out now"/crying noises and other interesting taunts (hopefully they'll be wearing headphones and it will make someone jump).

The vision of the human gameplay is to create the scariest survival horror game experience possible. You'll never know of the demons whereabouts until they strike, a good planned demon attack will leave you seperated from your team, locked in a room with objects being picked up and hurled towards you, glasses/windows shattering, lights flickering, demons materialising as scarey little girls (i.e like in the shinning) and ultimately even possessed/controlled and being forced to kill your own team mate.

The plan for the first iteration is collect ideas and prototype these ideas, all team members can submit maps, skins, code, objects and ideas to the prototype and they can all go in the prototype. We'll discuss our favorites of those ideas or spawn them into other ideas to use on the game.

A small number of these ideas will be developed into a first release (e.g. fear meters, NCP rescue and simple interations and taunts) then constructively review what we have at that stage and expand the features in iteratives. Because of this sandbox area we are welcoming people of all levels to help and the best ideas/skins/maps get worked upon get taken forward for the game.

I am confident in our ability to create the ideas mentioned thus far, and would very much look forward to hearing from anyone who wishes joining.

That's a much better post. Very informative!

It sounds like a fun game, and its a pretty original idea.

I'm sure you could get a good prototype up in a short period of time.
A lot of the features seem like you could rank the player by team, and 1,2,3 for fear level; and based on their rank allow them to trigger dynamic objects in the environment.

Edited by: NGS616

Good idea ngs616, I was also thinking about testing an idea from Fable 3 where you can charge up a weapon attack for as long as you wanted endlessly building up the damage power.

We've had some interest in the mod so far, we still need 3d modelers, artists and mappers and loads of testers.