~Hakurei Shrine~ > Rika and Nitori's Garage Experiments
Development of a dammaku game that can rival Touhou
Ctrekoz:
I know that coders are the absolutely smartest and the most great, the most important people out there who will prefer to respect me over showing them Minesweeper copy instead of six books of The Lord of the Rings translated into 38 languages, no need to remind me that. There is nothing more important and nothing more harder in the industry than coding, not even close, evertyhing else is just 5 minutes of thought and effort worth, thus every at least decent coder already has project with worldwide success which he did working alone. Words "team" and "passion" don't exist either, your are either one-man-army or hire everyone for enormous money.
In more serious note: yes I know what you mean, no need to act like guy who popped my "bubble", and no I did not "haven't done anything yet", which you can understand based on carefull inspection of what I have provided here and by my comments on Moriya Shrine forum in the similar topic, but you will not do this. I can't blame you since it's not your own project and you have not much of interest to read so much text, but that's how I tried to present it for now. Yes, I know that this forum consists mostly from coders, but if you really think that disrespecting publishers, produsers, writers, designers (any aspect be it gameplay, visuals of the characters, or else), artists, translators, composers, sound designers and others is fine and they are useless people, then I have not much to say. Who is the more important in building an apartment complex? The ones who plans its initial placement, makes all measurements, etc.? The ones who do all negotiations on "high level"? The ones who plan structural design? The ones who provide materials needed? Maybe the ones who install windows? The one who operates construction crane? The one who paints the walls? Someone else? Everyone has they role, be it bigger and harder, smaller and easier or closely comparable in importance and difficulty, and it doesn't mean that if you do something hard then someone certainly has easier time and you have the right to disrespect him.
I do not disrespect anyone, except my sarcasm in the first paragraph, and I understand importance of every part of this project. My self-esteem considering my own importance is alright too. I'm pragmatic and realistic person, and I will continue to work towards the success of what I want to be done. It would've be great for me to learn programming or graphics, but for the time being I have no time and energy for this, so i'm looking for other ways, but i'm not dismissing the possibility of learning it in the future.
Stuffman:
To continue your analogy, you're the guy who paints the walls, but you have this GREAT idea for a building and you just need an architect and a building company to put it up for you.
There's a reason nobody wants to work on your project.
EDIT:
Lemme elaborate because this is the part you don't seem to get. Doing the high concept stuff, character design, worldbuilding, writing, picking out music and stuff is the FUN part of making a game. That's the part everyone WANTS to do. The programming and spriting and shit is WORK. Often miserable work. It takes forever, and the only reason anybody does it is to get the end product.
If the situation were reversed, and you were a programmer and you were like, "hey guys i want to make a game but i need character and story ideas and stuff" people would be coming out of the woodwork to get you to make their ideas come to life.
I'm dismissing you because you only want to do the fun parts, and leave the real work to everyone else.
Ctrekoz:
Now I see your point better, but you're not exactly right. It's not me wanting to do only "fun" parts, it's me doing what I capable of doing and doing it good, and what I can't do or what I do bad, I seeking help with that, which is absolutely natural. If I would've been skillful enough to do everything alone, I would've done it. I'm not only painting walls, I'm architect myself, also making all neccesary negotiations, quality control and etc. - who I need is builders. Does translating more than 100 Word-pages from russian to english seems fun to you? Is it really fun for me to receive so much stress when facing negative feedback, but still trying to reason and discuss? Working with japanese character artist without me knowing japanese and without him knowing english? Me constantly searching people on various positions I need? Keeping my interest forever just by myself?
Writing, world building and everything else like that is fun, sure, but I doubt you realize how truly hard is to do it actually good, not something that only teenager girls will like. If you cannot walk my path, you can at least examine what I've presented and see it, and year of spent time is counting each productive day. I had moments when It was specially hard and stressful, and I thought that in future there will be people who will say that this is easy, and since time passes, my current emotions will be forgotten and I may even believe those people, so I need to just remember: "Yes, this is very hard work" and to not hesitate about this point. Even coming up with names and surnames was damn hard. Seeking needed info for example: do you think I knew before who is ?me no wakahìko, what is Tо̀shiya or who is Tawа̀ra Tо̀da and which fairy tale is assosiated with him? I can't begin to imagine how much pages I've read even counting only rereading of my own text. If you are not careless and do not want for your universe to have plot holes and be like "lmao it has no lore", the more your write, the more questions come up, the more things you need to answer, to rethink, to rewrite. It is very hard to just sit and describe you everything in two words, but as I said, I presented a big part of my work to examine which can easily prove you everything needed, and it's not even everything that I have. How can you judge me without doing that? You think Tolkien had easy and fun time making his bestseller fantasy works? I'm not Tolkien, but not writer of dime novels either. Not only writing, but do you know that I have ~10 pages of text and ~264 design references alone regarding visual design of the characters, and I still have not done design of the extra boss? Same treatment goes to music design, it's not just "woah I need badass song", same treatment goes to design of gameplay and attacks, to everything that I'm capable of doing right now.
Also, programming and spriting is not that really fun? So you say that there is no games in industry with interesting and pleasing gameplay, visuals? Yes it's hard to do, but result makes up for it. Same with writing. When you see your hard efforts was worth it, and you finally can face only the end result and forget about what was before, isn't it the great feeling? Not to mention money profit.
--- Quote ---...people would be coming out of the woodwork to get you to make their ideas come to life
--- End quote ---
Huh, and who says that their ideas worth it, that they are really interesting and fully thought out? "Hey guys, I want to make 3D Touhou MMO" - that kind of idea? I wonder if Blizzard or some similar company hires their writers or game designers or similar positions choosing random people with pretty faces from the streets.
Stuffman:
Shit, dude. The amount and/or quality of your writing is not what's in question here. What I'm trying to tell you is that it's irrelevant.
Here's a hypothetical. I decide to come out of danmakufu retirement and make another game. I'm going to do all the programming, graphics, and character art myself, same as before (disclaimer: I had to hire a music guy too).
I have the choice of using your world/characters/story, or making my own.
Why would I want to use yours?? All that stuff is fun and I want to do it myself, and by default, it's going to suit my tastes better, because I made it. (And, frankly, the level of meticulousness you're describing would be obnoxious to work with, because it leaves no room for my own expression.)
Here is the takeaway:
Nobody will want to work on your project, because you're only contributing things that they would want to do themselves anyway. No matter how much cool art or music you commission to drum up interest, it won't change that.
Learning to program and doing the code yourself is unavoidable if you want this thing to happen. You might be able to get a graphics guy to help you once you have something substantial to show off. I have two courses of action to suggest:
1) Sit yourself down in front of some tutorials and start crackin'.
2) Alternatively, consider making a different genre of game where programming will be less of a hurdle and your writing will be a more substantial part, such as making something with Ren'py or RPGMaker.
Ctrekoz:
Yet there is ideas around which works not only one person, but a team and not only because of payment interest. Colossal amount of fan content all around the world is made based on existing fictional universes and etc., not on people's own, like take Touhou as an example. If you are capable of doing art and character design, why are you drawing Shou Toramaru instead of your own original character? So this is what i'm trying to do right now, i'm trying to make people interested in my own world, and i'm working on it from the point not of "fan game that a bunch of random guys will play and praise a bit, so story here is just because, no one cares anyway", but I really want to create something that will be interesting and inspiring for many hunders of thousands around the world, thus writing quality. Further, It's not the question of "he worked hard but I need to work harder so I will not help him" or "I will do something easy, let's go then". Yes there is not much success yet, yes pitch may be too long and etc., but i'm trying. You may offer me to write a book then, but how much people is interested in, let's say again, Touhou, only because of it's gameplay? It's even more hilarious when people understand how much plot holes there is, how stupid in-game dialogues there are, etc., but they still adore this universe and most of the fans not played in the games itself even once.
--- Quote ---Nobody will want to work on your project, because you're only contributing things that they would want to do themselves anyway.
--- End quote ---
Well, by that logic every single one video game in the world should be made by 1 man, and nothing except coder's position exists. Same, for example, for films, where then nothing except director exists - isn't it fun to, let's say, to not hire actors and play all roles by yourself? You mentioned hiring a music guy - isn't it interesting to make music by yourself? Don't you have the musical compositions which you adore listening to? If you have no skill, why didn't you learned it? Why do you draw character art then? If it's fun, why then I hire character artist for my project? Or maybe because you also can do it, you have the proper skills? You said that amount\quality of my writing is not the question, yet you still imply that this is easy to do and irrelevant in the whole picture of "from what the finished game consists". Good luck in writing the whole The Witcher 3 scenario all by yourself then, with all the quests and dialogues. My project is not The Witcher 3, but it's still giant amount of quality writing.
--- Quote ---And, frankly, the level of meticulousness you're describing would be obnoxious to work with, because it leaves no room for my own expression.
--- End quote ---
Not at all. I have problems in game design of attacks, how much of lesser enemies and in which formations there will be, and etc. . The best example is visual design, which I consider being thought out by me the most, on par with writing. I mentioned that I have a lot of text and design references about it, but i'm not an artist myself, so I cannot thought out every singly pixel of the picture, I can't personally test all color options and etc. . Simply compare textual design of Lady Yvetta from the full verion of Level 2 Concept, design references and the picture that my character artist did - you will see a lot of stuff taken from what I described and showed, but there is a lot of stuff which artist did himself, freely. Or look at how humbly I described Shagyggaicho, his design was done mostly by artist himself. There is a lot of creative freedom left in everything, be it music, art, gameplay, and etc., I accecept discussions and ideas about "my own field", i.e. writing, visual design and etc. too, everything you want.
I understand importance of coding and how hard it is to do it, but I have no skills in this field yet. Please understand that my work is not easy either - it may be easier, but not easy. I understand your points and a lot of time passed since I started to search for help, and little success was achieved. I'm not blaming anyone and I don't say that I'm the smartest here, that I did everything the best and that everyone is stupid. Yes, I will continue to try, to search ways, to learn stuff and etc., and your feedback helps me, thank you.