Radakan RPG - Seeking competent lead programmer

[Sadr]

Radakan

Brief Description

Radakan, formerly The Shattered Lands, is a single-player RPG in a dark and dynamic fantasy-setting, driven by a freedom-of-choice environment, with focus on true role-playing instead of combat.

More about the game on our wiki's 'game overview'.

Website

Main Site - Go here to get a simple and full overview of our entire domain.
Forums - Check out the forums if you want to discuss something with us in public. It could be questions, suggestions or just casual talk.
Wiki - Here we have documented just about any information about Radakan there is. So if you want to know more about the game, the crew and the project in general, go here.

Target aim & License

Game Goals: No (typical) leveling, involving quests and storyline and a unique low-fantasy setting

Software Goals: Free, open source and portable.

Compensation

If you're looking for money, sad to say you're looking at the wrong project. We can only promise you a great deal of experience from working alongside a dedicated team with talented members. If you haven't worked in a team before, you will surely learn a lot about collaboration and communication. Alongside the obvious improvement you will get in your specialization, you might learn some new new aspects of game designing as well, seeing as we try to work closely together.

Technology

We are restarting our code from scratch, thus allowing us to widen our search by considering a new range of capable engines, yet still not excluding our original choice. The engines we are considering should be open source, portable and be well established, making Irrlicht an excellent option.


We seek...

... A bright and shining new 'lead programmer'

The 'why?' in short:

• Development on the coding-side was being more educative than it was productive
• The lead programmer did not have a high proficiency with the chosen engine
• The programming department was in need of structured leadership with guidance
• The coding done to-date was poorly documented in certain areas, being one of several issues making it difficult for new programmers to adjust

Our previous lead programmer is still with us as lead designer and a very capable programmer, and has been nothing but positive to this change since its proposal.

Skills

• Good communication skills in English
• Excellent written communications skills are required to interface with our technical, creative and management staff that is part of our game team
• Strong coding and debugging skills
• Game programming experience
• Extensive experience with at least one language
• Ability to write robust, efficient and maintainable code and mentor other programmers to do the same
• Understanding of modern 3D techniques (shaders, lighting models, visibility)
• Experience in administrational skills, such as leading a group

Personality

• Exhibit enthusiasm for games, positive attitude, and charisma
• Avid interest in games and new technologies
• Detailed and organized

Other requirement

• A lot of free time now and in the future
• Dependable
• Trustworthy

Responsibilities

• Creating a qualitative, stable and maintainable product
• Leading and collaborating with the other programmers
• Communication with the rest of the staff

Note: Once a new lead programmer has been aquired, we will start to determine whether or not additional members are needed, and if so; which.


Contact

Applicants

E-mail (preferred): contact <at> radakan <dot> org / sadr <at> radakan <dot> org

Alternate: See the contact-info of Sadr on our wiki. Should I have notified of my absence, the next member in line of contact would be Ignatius, at ignatius <at> radakan <dot> org.
Personal messages via the forum are also accepted, but are not recommended as they will not be checked nearly as frequently as e-mail.

In your e-mail, document or any other means of contact used, please fill in the following essentials, along with your own appendixes, be it your resumé, job references or just some additional information.

Name: {first name is enough, but full name is desired}

Contact: {E-mail, Live, AIM etc.}

Language of choice: {programming language of highest proficiency}

Programming experience: {years of active game programming}

Game engine of choice: {preferred engine for use of game creation}

Additional information: {Resumé, portfolio, examples, attachment info, references etc.}


Others

Those with a mere interest for the project, or maybe with a talent that is not sought-after here, are encouraged to register on our forum and let us know you're there. Sending an e-mail around these days will most likely result in a late answer, but will certainly not be forgot.


Why us?

• An established team: Programmers at-the-ready, writers and artists well in progress and an always improving team-structure.
• Good publicity: We're already known as a promising and steady project in some of the biggest development sites out there.
• Ready content: Complete concept design, plenty of creative writing and concept art, fully functional character models and enough music tracks to make an album!
• Centered management: Over the course of a year, we've learned that good management is not to be underestimated. This is why we've made sure to have sufficient leading roles in place for every working-department, along with certain individuals acting solely as managers.

As the team we are now, we have never done any previous work together besides what we have accomplished so far. Individually though, most of the team members have got considerable experience and talent, always ready to share it with the rest.

Development Examples

From concept to content

One of our races, the mighty grogg, found the beginning of its concept stages in a forum thread inspired by content on the wiki.

Free Photo Album with PicTiger

After nailing down the concept, the modeling could commence!

Image Sharing with PicTiger

In a couple of days, we'll have this lad running about, doing as he pleases!

More recent development examples will soon be added. We will also try to do our best to meet potential requests.

Audio

Ambient Arachnyd theme - By Jim
Zharg Morg theme
Grogg Theme

Settings

Quest example 1: Xemna Dilemma.
Quest example 2: Cave Girl
Character & Tale example: Ronir, Vigor's heir.
Location example: Syrtis Desert.


Feedback

Any feedback would be appreciated in this thread, be it praise, criticism or questions. To apply for a position, it is preferred that you contact us personally (see above).

[CuteAlien]

I appreciate the professional post you do here, but after browsing the wiki for a minute I can't help to notice that you fall in a few typical beginner traps.

Just to give you some hints:

Your feature set is so far simply a wishlist. That's sometimes a good way to start a design, but you shouldn't mistake it already for a design. It's not. Design is not about thinking up features - it's about thinking up a game. Never forget that everyone is each day in a rather complex so called "realworld", so every designer knows this world and tries to get some part of it into a game world. The difficult part is not having lots of ideas but to reduce the ideas to the important - and realizable(!) stuff.

So to start with the design you should browse through your wishlist and filter out the one important feature which you really want to make. Don't try for more than one feature at the start. So lets say for example you find out the feature which everyone in your team really must have is a fighting system which can be turn-based and simultaneous. Now the next step in the design is to find out how you can do that. Don't think that's too easy - even doing a turn-based 3d fighting game will already be more work than you will expect (but it wouldn't be such a bad project for a start). So if this is your killerfeature you can kick the rest. No more RPG needed (remember that RPG was in this example not your killerfeature - the fighting system was).


Now there's still lots of work ahead. You seem to like a fantasy-setting - that should be no problem. But think exactly how your world should look like. Think about the amount of levels and try to find which features you will need. And that's features like: Will you need a highmap (a flat floor is a little easier to handle - for example for placing objects, so maybe that's already ok). Will you need walls. Will you need bushes. Will you have water. Will any objects have to move. Will objects move on which other objects are placed (platforms - not recommended). Will you have bridges, ladders, ... Will you need triggers. Will you need an editor. What should your camera be able to do. Just having a top-down camera that behaves well is for example maybe already tricky enough for a starter team (don't forget that camera-movement also influences object selection). How will the controls work.

Also very important: Think about your menus. GUI costs time - often more than everything else. Calculate at least 1 week programming per dialog - it's probably even more. So reduce the dialogs from the start to the minimum.

Then start to think about your fighting system (still seeing it as the example feature which you want to do). A good way to get into that stuff is to checkout other games. Really analyze them and find out which features they use. You can for example learn a lot from tabletop rulebooks.

But don't be afraid - it takes longer than you expected, but it 's also a lot of fun. And maybe just give a beginner programmer a chance. You won't find a professional programmer doing such projects for free. So why not just start a little smaller and build up a team slowly? Once you have for example a good fighting system your next project might re-use that...

Good luck

edit: removed some anyway ;-)

[BlindSide]

Very good advice.

Seconded.

[rogerborg]

The docs do actually dip down into design, although ideally there would be a very detailed (psuedocode or diagramatic) layer just above the implementation.

I really like the way this project is being documented, and it looks like it has legs. I'd echo the advice about cutting features rather than adding them though.

[Sadr]

I appreciate the professional post you do here, but after browsing the wiki for a minute I can't help to notice that you fall in a few typical beginner traps.

And I appreciate any help you're willing to give We have after all been actively developing this game for over a year, so getting to know that we are making "beginner" mistakes was a bit troubling I must admit. The majority of the problems you are addressing are really not so much an issue of a flaud in development, but rather a flaud in presentation. Here's what I mean:

Your feature set is so far simply a wishlist. That's sometimes a good way to start a design, but you shouldn't mistake it already for a design. It's not. Design is not about thinking up features - it's about thinking up a game. Never forget that everyone is each day in a rather complex so called "realworld", so every designer knows this world and tries to get some part of it into a game world. The difficult part is not having lots of ideas but to reduce the ideas to the important - and realizable(!) stuff.

Even though we are abundantly aware of this, awareness might not have been enough, and I think you've spottet a critical error in our design plan here. However, you must also keep in mind that we have now reached the point where we'd like to attack the technical side of the game, with the help of a knowledgable programmer who would help us plan more ahead from a technical point of view.

So to start with the design you should browse through your wishlist and filter out the one important feature which you really want to make.

We've actually discussed this topic a whole lot on the forum for a long time, and we've nailed done a select few essential features for the game, the first step being rich conversation, along with the essential game mechanics; like walking for instance. We've figured out that physics will be almost, if not completely redundant in this game, which saves us a lot of issues in that area. The biggest problem here is: We haven't gotten around to documenting this properly on our wiki.

Among all the random questions you asked, just one is left unanswered, and sadly, it might just be the most important one: How will the controls work? This feature has been put off one too many times, seeing as we've always had a bigger focus on what would make the game unique. Ideas are flowing already; hopefully we'll have an explanation to the planned camera system and movement scheme placed on our wiki shortly.

Also very important: Think about your menus. GUI costs time - often more than everything else. Calculate at least 1 week programming per dialog - it's probably even more. So reduce the dialogs from the start to the minimum.

Then start to think about your fighting system (still seeing it as the example feature which you want to do). A good way to get into that stuff is to checkout other games. Really analyze them and find out which features they use. You can for example learn a lot from tabletop rulebooks.

Considering our individual experience, and time spent working together on this game, I'd like to think that we are way past this stage. We've looked at our share of other games, and we've come to a pretty much final decision on what we'd like to create that's ours.

But don't be afraid - it takes longer than you expected, but it 's also a lot of fun. And maybe just give a beginner programmer a chance. You won't find a professional programmer doing such projects for free. So why not just start a little smaller and build up a team slowly? Once you have for example a good fighting system your next project might re-use that...

I think you might have misunderstood. We did build up the team slowly, and we've been taking things step-by-step from there. We already have very competent programmers, one of which have 15 years of working experience, however not enough time to act as a lead programmer. Like anyone else we still have a lot to learn, but we are confident what we do, and right now we are ready to start working with a highly competent and dedicated lead programmer.

Good luck anyway.

I didn't quite like that anyway, but thanks nonetheless! Your feedback has been most useful, and we're addressing many of the points you raised already.

[CuteAlien]

The biggest problem here is: We haven't gotten around to documenting this properly on our wiki.

Ok, that's all I did read, so I everything I wrote refers to that.

I didn't quite like that anyway, but thanks nonetheless!

n.p., I removed it ;-)

[shogun]

I especially like this design:

http://img75682.pictiger.com/images/13897829/

Hopefully this will make its way into the game. :)

[Taldor]

I'd echo the advice about cutting features rather than adding them though.

I realize that a dynamic physics environment will be to difficult and time consuming to implement. We (the Radakan Team) don't consider it an essential part of the game, so I expect that we will drop the idea soon (officially).
We're also currently revising the battle system.

[Dorth]

thoughts:

Idea->Feature->Design->Implementation->Test and refine
for example:
Immersive World->Rich conversations->Conversations should offer 2+ choices for any dialogs->(code based on requirements and design)->(same, refined)

getting people to help sporadically is one thing. Getting the man hours from experienced people that will stick with the project fr at least one phase is another. Money helps. A LOT. Try and find investors, with all you got. If nothing else, publishing, marketing will need money. Also, look into mentoring.

BE CAREFUL! It's ok to cut nice things that are already or clost to be finished, may it be art, design, music or code. Not doing so will leave part of your game ackward. It's sad, but part of your work will be for nothing. It always happen, all you can do is reduce the part of it that is and cut what needs to be cut as fast as you can.

Good luck.

[sio2]

Have you anything other than stuff to read? Your site says you've been going since March 2006 - do you have any prototypes, demo engines, WIP? Do you have any games or demos made by any of the team that we can see?

It took me three months in my spare time to put together my Irrlicht-based game engine, starting from a blank Visual Studio project.

[Sadr]

Have you anything other than stuff to read? Your site says you've been going since March 2006 - do you have any prototypes, demo engines, WIP? Do you have any games or demos made by any of the team that we can see?

Since over a year ago, the first alpha version of the game was released, featuring a test-model running around in a simple GUI. I don't think getting something to work was ever that hard, the hard part was making proper development. Our current programmers have spent a lot of time getting used to Ogre, but so far more time has been spent programming-to-learn and adding tools to Ogre to extend its functionality, instead of actually developing anything.

It took me three months in my spare time to put together my Irrlicht-based game engine, starting from a blank Visual Studio project.

Well you said it. That's exactly why we're considering other more complete out-of-the-box engines over Ogre, because it seems like we're spending more time extending it's functionality than we are actually creating something for the game, like letting the modelers see their models running about, interacting with one another.

[sio2]

Since over a year ago, the first alpha version of the game was released, featuring a test-model running around in a simple GUI

Great. Where can we download it?

[FlyingIsFun1217]

Yes, I do believe you are supposed to have some sort of Irrlicht content to post in the projects section.

FlyingIsFun1217

[Sadr]

Since over a year ago, the first alpha version of the game was released, featuring a test-model running around in a simple GUI

Great. Where can we download it?

There are more recent builds for Unix systems, but the latest build for windows however is quite old, and can be found here.

If you want, you could also try to build the more recent version yourself. Just get the source, and read up on how to build it.

[FreakNigh]

Even a good game can't make it out there anymore, there are too many already and for free.

Even a team of dedicated talent couldn't really compete anymore.