Surreal Cyberpunk Adventure Seeking Talent! Thread

At PolyBeast we are currently gearing towards a technical and aesthetic demonstration with a view to securing financial investment and the capability to further goals into producing a high profile commercial product.

The game is a highly unique action-adventure title that takes place in a surreal cyberpunk dreamworld, that is completely unlike any environment in a video game to date. Emphasis is placed on an extraordinarily dynamic game world, and game mechanics player down combat and instead encourage stealth, puzzle solving and exploration.

From a technical standpoint, the game is additionally quite advanced, eschewing many traditional approaches with regards to it's content.

We are currently interested in the following expertise:

• Programmers
• Concept Artists
• 3d Artists
• Animators
• Writers

There is presently no financial compensation available for this position (nor other positions within the team).

Programmers:

• Are well versed in a C or Java based programming language.
• Knowledge of UnrealScript is highly sought after.
• Have experience with programming for games.

Environment Artists:

• Use either 3dsMax or Maya.
• Are capable of dealing with all geometry, UVs and texture maps (diffuse, specular, normal).
• Experience with rigging and animation is very desireable.

Character Artists:

• Use either 3dsMax or Maya.
• Are capable of dealing with all geometry, UVs and texture maps (diffuse, specular, normal).
• Experience with rigging and animation is very desireable.
• Capable of combining both hard-surface and more organic techniques.
• Unreal experience a plus.
• Ability to deal with non-humanoids a plus.

Animators:

• Use either 3dsMax or Maya.
• Experience with both skeletal (bone structure) and vertex (morph target) animation desireable.

Writer:

• Has excellent work samples.
• Can cope with both dialogue and the larger story.

Concept Artists:

• Preferably works digitally.
• Can deal with various tasks, including landscapes and characters.

Please contact l.parkes-haskell[AT]polybeast.co.uk for more details.

Questions and Answers:
"Could you perhaps explain a bit more about what the environment objects would look like?"

Essentially, many of our environmental objects (we're calling them Variforms) are difficult to pin down because they themselves are additionally capable of changing their appearance and this can include a limited ability to change their physical shape - hence experience with rigging and animation being desireable.

However, for reasons of sanity, and actually having a playable game there are naturally also a bulk of objects that do not do this. These would largely be landscape features (rocks, flowing water meshes that sort of thing) or otherwise architectural at the present point in time.

Our environments are very varied, and each has a lot of variation between them, so there's an emphasis on a broader range of assets.

"Can you tell me how far advanced you are with the story/script? I'm wondering whether you have your gameplay nailed down but need a background story to consolidate or if you already have a fleshed out world but need dialogue and extra details."

There's a rudimentary outline for the game story which explains the nature of the game world and ties into the game mechanics, but it is still largely open and no specific dialogue or such has been written (nor would we anticipate that it would be a good idea to get too specific at present, due to the currently variable nature of the games content).

However that outline and the limited characters are very much fixed, as is the general plot direction. It'll be up to the writer to flesh it out, then later fill in the gaps with more specific content as the game comes together.

Edited by: ambershee

This looks very interesting. Not sure if I'd have time to work on it, but I PM'ed you a few questions.