Proles | Dystopian multiplayer space shooter | gearing up for Kickstarter
Edit and on a side note
So, after going trough a shit load of emails/messages and talking to a bunch of amazing and talented people, we realized that 3d artists are a lot more expensive than we initially thought. We unfortunately cannot spend more than $450 per month for 3d art, as we really don't have more money than that. Of course we can make like a deal with the $450/month and some post-launch compensation - so we are still hoping and crossing fingers that we'll find someone perfect for joining our amazing little team.
Summary
The game
Proles is a narrative-driven multiplayer space shooter, but a bit different from the classical sense. While the story dictates how the game evolves and how it plays, the story itself is heavily influenced by the player's behaviour. For this, an AI director (we called it Big Brother) monitors all players and adapts the gameplay and story to them (individually and in a general way).
Set in a dystopian future inspired by classic dystopian novels (like Orwell's "1984" or Asimov's Foundation series), humankind is imprisoned by the omnipresent Big Brother A.I. on the moon. From there, players will be able to decide for themselves if they'd rather take it to the stars or try to crush the oppressor and its army of surveillance drones.
Other than that the game will play itself like any classical space trade and combat game (think of Freelancer or Evochron Mercenary) with the exception of a commander mode for large-scale battles and an mobile companion app (to manage small tasks on the go).
Who we are
We, the Inner Cookie Party, are a small indie game dev startup located in the heart of Berlin. Currently, we are funded through an EU/German grant which has allowed us to work on Proles full-time for nearly a year now. As a team of 6 (mostly grads or students), we try our best to be able to deliver new ideas to the great genre of space shooters - and we are aware that it is still a long road until then.
Current milestone
Unfortunately, due to unclear circumstances in the EU senate, we are unable to know if our grant will continue after April of this year. Of course, we are searching for other means of financing and so, among other things, we are working hard on a trailer for our Kickstarter campaign in a few month.
But for this, we are deeply in need of 3d artists.
What we have so far
Big Brother, the A.I. director
This A.I. is not only working in the back on our Servers, but also an in-game entity and willing to oppress any human that might enter the world of Proles. It is derived from the two founders master's thesis (I am one of them) and we honestly can't wait to test it in an environment with potentially a lot of players.
Small, working Unity3D build
There are a lot of mechanics needed for a space shooter to feel like one and we've already got a lot of them working. Flight-Simulation, Client-Server-Communication, Engine for rendering millions of solar systems, PBR-Workflow from modelling to in-game - but there are still more to be done!
Beautiful concept arts
The hardest part for a coder like me is to bring one's ideas to paper. Lucky for us, we found the perfect concept artist and he gets better at his job from week to week. We are not sure if we can ever stop his increasing output-flow... but since there is still much to design, this might be a problem for future us.
Experienced team and consultants
Both founders (me and a very good friend of mine) hold Master's degrees in game design/media programming and we've already worked a few years in the industry. Thanks to the grant we currently live on, we work everyday in a co-working space and thus have access to a lot of great people with lots of experience in running start-ups and making games.
Collaboration tools
Even with "just" 6 people, managing every task and every workflow can be a tedious process, if not for incredibly useful tools like Dropbox, Git, Trello, Jira and of course Skype.
Current team
Two devs - I, myself, am responsible for the front-end work and my workmate and good friend manages all the back-end stuff.
One concept artist - We were incredibly lucky in finding him, as he is incredibly talented and best of all: His ideas for the game are very similar to ours, which is an incredible help for putting everything to paper.
One sound artist - One day, I was searching for some royalty free music for our sci-fi needs and I stumbled upon the website of an experienced and seasoned musician and composer. Since I liked his free music quite a lot, I decided to wrote him a message thanking for helping the indie community out. A few emails later, he was with us on board and is now writing songs for Proles.
An game narrator - Twitter might have it's flaws and so on, but it can be a great help to make connections. And that's how we found her, sitting on her computer, waiting and eager to write for a game. Especially one with a dystopian setting.
An 3d artist - All the code, concept art, music and story are only half the game if there are no 3d models. Fortunately for us, we have an talented 3d artist who helps us prototyping and getting the final touch on concepts - but only from time to time as he is secretly working on his own game (which he tells me will be a real Proles-killer).
Who we are looking for
Our priority currently is to find one or two 3d artists for creating the following 3d models based on our concepts:
Big Brother - This A.I. is not only a big part on how the game works in general, but also the "main boss" in Proles. And for that, it needs a pretty scary ship to interact with the players.
Surveillance drones - Big Brother can't be everywhere at the same time, so surveillance drones will be the eyes to spy on everyone.
Player's ship - Scary A.I., Spy drones... all this means nothing if the players can's fight back with their own ships! This model consist of the outer hull, the cockpit and an inner pod - in case one should need to escape a destroyed ship.
We do unfortunately have 2 constrictions for this tasks:
Time - Our current goal is our crowdfunding campaign mid March, so the deadline is around that date.
Money - Well, we are funded and have something to live on, but our budget is very tight (max $450/month) - so we will need to make a deal. We are confident we can arrange something so that everyone can buy food at the end of the day.
Besides 3d artists, we are always looking for people to help us in any way!
How to apply
If you want to help us out with Proles, your English or German skills are at a level where we can communicate without having to worry too much about the barrier of languages and you're familiar with the creation of PBR-materials and spacecraft, we'd love to get in touch with you through e-mail (phima@proles.me) or you can just hit me with an pm. Please add your prices so we can get directly to the important 'stuff'.
Even if it shouldn't work out for these tasks, it can always be handy to know other talented people - just in case our crowdfunding should succeed.
- Mischa (Creative Director)
(Our Website is still w.i.p, but here are some more infos for you guys)
The game: http://blog.proles.me/the-game/
F.A.Q.: http://blog.proles.me/faq/
Concept arts: http://blog.proles.me/media/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProlesGame
Concept art
And of course, some eye candy is needed to finish this long post.
So, after going trough a shit load of emails/messages and talking to a bunch of amazing and talented people, we realized that 3d artists are a lot more expensive than we initially thought. We unfortunately cannot spend more than $450 per month for 3d art, as we really don't have more money than that. Of course we can make like a deal with the $450/month and some post-launch compensation - so we are still hoping and crossing fingers that we'll find someone perfect for joining our amazing little team.
Summary
- Game: Proles
- Genre: Multiplayer space shooter
- Setting/Plot: Dystopian future where humankind is imprisoned by an omnipresent A.I. on the moon.
- Special features: Plot inspired by classical dystopian novels like Orwell's "1984" or Asimov's Foundation series; Omnipresent AI director which monitors all player's behaviours and changes the gameplay/story according to it; Tactical commander view of battles.
- Platforms: Win, Mac, Linux
- Engine: Unity3D
- Current milestone: Working on a trailer for the Kickstarter campaign.
The game
Proles is a narrative-driven multiplayer space shooter, but a bit different from the classical sense. While the story dictates how the game evolves and how it plays, the story itself is heavily influenced by the player's behaviour. For this, an AI director (we called it Big Brother) monitors all players and adapts the gameplay and story to them (individually and in a general way).
Set in a dystopian future inspired by classic dystopian novels (like Orwell's "1984" or Asimov's Foundation series), humankind is imprisoned by the omnipresent Big Brother A.I. on the moon. From there, players will be able to decide for themselves if they'd rather take it to the stars or try to crush the oppressor and its army of surveillance drones.
Other than that the game will play itself like any classical space trade and combat game (think of Freelancer or Evochron Mercenary) with the exception of a commander mode for large-scale battles and an mobile companion app (to manage small tasks on the go).
Who we are
We, the Inner Cookie Party, are a small indie game dev startup located in the heart of Berlin. Currently, we are funded through an EU/German grant which has allowed us to work on Proles full-time for nearly a year now. As a team of 6 (mostly grads or students), we try our best to be able to deliver new ideas to the great genre of space shooters - and we are aware that it is still a long road until then.
Current milestone
Unfortunately, due to unclear circumstances in the EU senate, we are unable to know if our grant will continue after April of this year. Of course, we are searching for other means of financing and so, among other things, we are working hard on a trailer for our Kickstarter campaign in a few month.
But for this, we are deeply in need of 3d artists.
What we have so far
Big Brother, the A.I. director
This A.I. is not only working in the back on our Servers, but also an in-game entity and willing to oppress any human that might enter the world of Proles. It is derived from the two founders master's thesis (I am one of them) and we honestly can't wait to test it in an environment with potentially a lot of players.
Small, working Unity3D build
There are a lot of mechanics needed for a space shooter to feel like one and we've already got a lot of them working. Flight-Simulation, Client-Server-Communication, Engine for rendering millions of solar systems, PBR-Workflow from modelling to in-game - but there are still more to be done!
Beautiful concept arts
The hardest part for a coder like me is to bring one's ideas to paper. Lucky for us, we found the perfect concept artist and he gets better at his job from week to week. We are not sure if we can ever stop his increasing output-flow... but since there is still much to design, this might be a problem for future us.
Experienced team and consultants
Both founders (me and a very good friend of mine) hold Master's degrees in game design/media programming and we've already worked a few years in the industry. Thanks to the grant we currently live on, we work everyday in a co-working space and thus have access to a lot of great people with lots of experience in running start-ups and making games.
Collaboration tools
Even with "just" 6 people, managing every task and every workflow can be a tedious process, if not for incredibly useful tools like Dropbox, Git, Trello, Jira and of course Skype.
Current team
Two devs - I, myself, am responsible for the front-end work and my workmate and good friend manages all the back-end stuff.
One concept artist - We were incredibly lucky in finding him, as he is incredibly talented and best of all: His ideas for the game are very similar to ours, which is an incredible help for putting everything to paper.
One sound artist - One day, I was searching for some royalty free music for our sci-fi needs and I stumbled upon the website of an experienced and seasoned musician and composer. Since I liked his free music quite a lot, I decided to wrote him a message thanking for helping the indie community out. A few emails later, he was with us on board and is now writing songs for Proles.
An game narrator - Twitter might have it's flaws and so on, but it can be a great help to make connections. And that's how we found her, sitting on her computer, waiting and eager to write for a game. Especially one with a dystopian setting.
An 3d artist - All the code, concept art, music and story are only half the game if there are no 3d models. Fortunately for us, we have an talented 3d artist who helps us prototyping and getting the final touch on concepts - but only from time to time as he is secretly working on his own game (which he tells me will be a real Proles-killer).
Who we are looking for
Our priority currently is to find one or two 3d artists for creating the following 3d models based on our concepts:
Big Brother - This A.I. is not only a big part on how the game works in general, but also the "main boss" in Proles. And for that, it needs a pretty scary ship to interact with the players.
Surveillance drones - Big Brother can't be everywhere at the same time, so surveillance drones will be the eyes to spy on everyone.
Player's ship - Scary A.I., Spy drones... all this means nothing if the players can's fight back with their own ships! This model consist of the outer hull, the cockpit and an inner pod - in case one should need to escape a destroyed ship.
We do unfortunately have 2 constrictions for this tasks:
Time - Our current goal is our crowdfunding campaign mid March, so the deadline is around that date.
Money - Well, we are funded and have something to live on, but our budget is very tight (max $450/month) - so we will need to make a deal. We are confident we can arrange something so that everyone can buy food at the end of the day.
Besides 3d artists, we are always looking for people to help us in any way!
How to apply
If you want to help us out with Proles, your English or German skills are at a level where we can communicate without having to worry too much about the barrier of languages and you're familiar with the creation of PBR-materials and spacecraft, we'd love to get in touch with you through e-mail (phima@proles.me) or you can just hit me with an pm. Please add your prices so we can get directly to the important 'stuff'.
Even if it shouldn't work out for these tasks, it can always be handy to know other talented people - just in case our crowdfunding should succeed.
- Mischa (Creative Director)
(Our Website is still w.i.p, but here are some more infos for you guys)
The game: http://blog.proles.me/the-game/
F.A.Q.: http://blog.proles.me/faq/
Concept arts: http://blog.proles.me/media/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProlesGame
Concept art
And of course, some eye candy is needed to finish this long post.
Replies
Erik S.
It took us forever to go through all of them and we unfortunately realized that 3d artists are a lot more demanding on the cash than we thought.
We can't afford more than $450/month on 3d artist, we really don't have more money than that... but we are still hoping that we'll find that special someone to join our amazing little team :-)