Bork: In Your Pocket - Programmer Wanted!

[Magnulus]

I recently ordered a GP2X from Lik-Sang, my head awash with dreams of the handheld. I'm really looking forward to putting all these freeware games on the system and playing them wherever I am. One thing that's missing, though, are RPGs. There are far too few of them. No roguelikes, no Zelda-likes... Very little of anything.

For years, I've been trying to get programmers on board with me to create a wildly and unrealistically ambitious AI project called Bork: On His Own. In one sentence, it would be an automated CRPG where you act as the mentor of the autonomous Character Bork.

When Gamepark Holdings announced their design contest, a spark flew up my rear end and ignited me. My head was once again filled with dreams. This time, though, it was filled with my vision of a handheld Bork game. A game that seeks to compress your typical Epic CRPG into bite-sized chunks for quick consumption on the go. RPGs are often unwieldy for a handheld, and with Bork: In your Pocket, I seek to remedy this.

So far, I am the only one working on this, with some helpful input from friends on the web. What I really need right now is someone to program the game as I have absolutely zero programming skill. I've tried learning, but I've come to realise that I need someone with much more code-smarts than me. In the event I do lure a programmer onto the project, I will act as lead designer and graphical artist, and anyone else who gets involved will act as co-designer and programmer.

Have I still not wet your apetites enough? Have a look at the (as of yet slightly unfinished) design document and give me a buzz if you find any of this interesting at all. I'd be more than happy to discuss the game at length with anyone who has any questions.
Design Document Version 0.1: http://www.magnulus.com/bork/bork_des-doc_0-1.rtf

PS: I will be posting the same or a similar message in other development boards around the web. If you frequent any of those that I "hit", I'm sorry about the repetition.

 

[BenRoshi]

A dungeon crawler is a good approach for a handheld rpg, and your design doc seems nicely done. The game concept is very nice.

That being said, good luck making it a reality. Programming is really the meat of creating any game, so the programmer is really going to be the guy who has to work to get this game done. Someone may be willing to do that, but that's pretty rare

But don't give up, someone may help you! And if no one does, don't give up on your game. Get working on the details (starting now???), get every detail of the game done. What does the town look like? You said you're doing graphics, draw it! Draw your hero, monsters, etc. Make spread sheets to detail each monster's stats, how the character grows levels (maybe some mathematical formulas?), you may even start diving into potential algorithms for the quest generator. Make a tree chart showing how it decides, for example, it could be....

.................Quest!........
......../........................\...
......Battle...................Talk To People
..../..........\............/...........|...............\
Area 1.....Area 2..1 person...2 people... 3 people

Get every detail you can of your game done, put it all together in a big packet, and maybe someone will take you up on the offer when you post it again.

And if they don't after that (probably won't come to this), you said you're no good at coding? Well anyone is good enough to code a text based rpg, so why not do that? Just make the shell of it, you don't even need a battle system (just call a battle function, randomly generate some damage to the hero, and exit the battle). Towns could be explored through menus and the such. Then post that up, and show people your hard work, and request that someone combine it and all your artwork together. I think then, someone will have to do it :\

Good luck!

 

[jbrodack]

well their is that homebrew bounty thing and there was a group project planned that didn't really go anywhere. usually i would say if you can't program their is not much you can do but in this community we have a good amount of programmers but when it has come to group projects or anything we have been short on good ideas.

i would really like to see this game made. getting to a basic playable point shouldn't be too grand a scale for a homebrew project.

 

[Magnulus]

Thanks to the both of you for the kind replies. Especially BenRoshi. I had never expected to get such a useful answer this quick. Yeah, I'm working on the more intricate design elements. The design doc as it is in that link is a result of me, yesterday, going "I don't want to finish it first! I want to release it NOW!" and then doing that. It is my intention to make it every bit as detailed as humanly possible because I'm painfully aware of my own inability to code, so I need to lessen the workload for the programmer. But I had kind of forgot about the algorithms and such, so thanks for me reminding me about those.

Regarding the graphics, you're seeing them in the document. Well, some of them. I'm working on them at a steady pace and I come up with one or two new characters every day. So far only characters, but I'll need to get crackin' on tiles as well before soon.

I'm actually very heartened by the fact that most of the things you mention in there are things I'd already planned to put on the document. Gives me some hope knowing I'm on the right track, so thanks yet again! After reading your reply, I'm thinking I need to get my document to 1.0 before posting any more in the other forums.

Here're the sprites I've made so far, by the way: Bork Sprites preview (No, that's not their in-game size.)

 

[Vimacs]

Sounds like a nice concept, lets hope it gets someware.
The sprites also look nice, i like the style.

 

[Magnulus]

Sounds like a nice concept, lets hope it gets someware.
The sprites also look nice, i like the style.

Thanks, Vimacs. It's heartening to know that there are people who'd like to at least play it when/ if it gets made.

Now for some serious business. I think I've decided I want to make one final stab at learning to code. I've tried looking around the web at what I'd need to learn, specifically, but to a non-coder it all seems sort of greek. I assume that having a development environment set up isn't going to be enough, and that there is a specific programming language to learn. I see C++ mentioned, and Python and Assembly are words that have been thrown around in my Google matches, and I know they're prog-langs (to put it shortly.) but can I pick any one? And would Python be sufficient for Bork: In Your Pocket, do you think? I hear it is slow due to its high-level nature but I suppose that's not so terribly important for a game of this type.

I know there are several adequate tutorials out there for these languages, but would I be better off paying the money for a proper book? I have a feeling I may have failed at programming before because of the quality of your average online tutorial, but I may be wrong.

Sorry about all these newbie questions, but hey; you gotta start somewhere.

 

[Vynx]

Have you considered a cash reward as an incentive to get someone on board? I know it's not the best idea, and it's probably last resort material, but it might attract some attention.

You could simply run a donation appeal to the community so you can get this project off the ground, so it wouldn't have to be out of your pocket - just something to consider.

You'll have to outline everything you want to do though, create a big concept post including graphics, maybe a plot teaster, enemies, features, etc. If the game looks good, people'll take notice. Linking to a document isn't going to grab anyone's attention - put it all directly in a thread instead

 

[Magnulus]

Thanks, I'll try the post thing for sure. I'll do that once I have a more comprehensive design doc that I can also link to as an aside to that whole bells-and-whistles thing. At the same time, I might as well do a full combo of it and put up some t-shirt designs and a donation link to my paypal. It could be like the Windows on Mac competition where everyone can donate as much as they like. I hardly think that it'll reach 12'000 USD, but a few hundred quid would be nice too, I guess.

There is already the incentive given in the GPH design competition, with a possible profit of 5000 USD in total. Of course, 30th of september isn't that far away...

But yeah... Thanks for your suggestions, everyone. I'm noting everything said here so I can make my further appeals even more appealing!

PS: Any hints on my programming-learning question?

EDIT:
How about a t-shirt with "I want a hero down my trousers!" and a picture of Bork?
It'd need an Americanised version, though.
Just off the top of my head.

 

[Ravnos]

That stick man has a penis!

Also, I'd love to help but I don't know if my skillz are up to par yet. If you can't find anyone better I'd be happy to get involved, though.

 

[DaveN]

That stick man has a penis!

Don't be so jealous!


One thing already mentioned was really important; you shouldn't make the design document just avaible as a download. Build yourself a nice website with all the Bork stuff or just use a thread here where you'll post updated doc's, pics, etc.

But the idea sounds nice, but it'll be very important to make a good quest generator with a lots of different objectives etc. for the quests. If you have to rescue five persons in a row and all are guarded by a monster, it will get boring too fast. Sometimes they should be trapped in a dungeon, sometimes you'll just have to solve a puzzle to rescue them, sometimes you should have to fight an enemy, another time the player would have to pay for the rescue and another time the guy that should be rescued just runned away and you would have to get him to go back home in a word-duell in the monkey-island style.

And also the sprites are looking really great. Nice style!


PS: @ Ravnos. Wasn't mean to be taken serious.

And I'm sorry for the possible grammatical mistakes, english is just one of three languages I'm learning.

 

[Magnulus]

Yeah, I'm sort of starting to wish I hadn't been so hasty with the doc. I tend to get really tired of waiting and then I rush into things. I've made a note several times in the past that this seems to be a VERY bad marketing tactic. <_< Website, bells-and-whistles presentations and all this stuff are in the plan, but sometimes I get a little carried away, sadly.

I'm a big fan of a certain degree of randomness in games. It's not without reason I have the eight arrowheads of Chaos tattooed on my back together with a smiley. I'm currently thinking of ways to implement quest generation, and I have a relatively good idea of how to do this, the only drawback being that I haven't put it to paper yet, which means that it could come out as complete throw-away gibberish.
I really like your mention of Monkey Island. That set up some sparks in my head. Incorporating other genres and such could be a nice addition, but I'll have to be careful not to get carried away with features. Did I tell you already that I sometimes get a little carried away? I am at this very minute repeating the mantra "Keep it simple!" in my head over and over. Think Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space, but with the addition of random quests and more objectives on a single map. And with Trogdor. And The Grim Squeaker (That's the guy in my avatar. From the Discworld books.)

I kind of want to make it customisable as well, in terms of quests, so that I can create some specific quests that will be the same for everyone every time apart from the map, which would always be random. This could be used to great effect if I want to give the game an overall plot that you kind of come back to in the end, though I'm not so sure I want that. That's a decision for later on in the development, though.

I love getting all these little feedbacks and stuff. Might be that it's not such a bad idea to just release the unfinished doc like this after all.

And also the sprites are looking really great. Nice style!

Thanks again! I've always been fond of the stick-man style.

 

[Bongo]

seems like an excellent idea but this seems like a long tough project which may really pay off in the end but i have a bad feeling that this will ever be a finished project

 

[cinnix]

The link to that doc doesn't seem to work.

 

[Yono]

PS: Any hints on my programming-learning question?

First off, I like the concept and the style.

That being said, programming is hard, and while enthusism is helpful, learning C++ to do an ambitious project like this would be very difficult. Learning to program an object-oriented language takes quite a long time. However, you seem like you are a good artist, so you could still contribute to a good portion of the game even without doing the programming yourself.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Magnulus]

That being said, programming is hard, and while enthusism is helpful, learning C++ to do an ambitious project like this would be very difficult. Learning to program an object-oriented language takes quite a long time.

Yeah, I don't really think I'd be able to program the whole thing myself, least of all by september! My aim is mostly just to be able to program some explanatory bits to make it easier for people to understand. I'm learning Python now, so we'll see how that goes.

However, you seem like you are a good artist, so you could still contribute to a good portion of the game even without doing the programming yourself.

You're too kind. *blush*

 

[nickspoon]

PM'd.

 

[Magnulus]

PM'd.

yay! The fun starts now, folks! As we come up with more things, I'll make a new thread with a link to a proper website. Thank you, Nick!