[MMOFPS]Metal and Dust Looking for Content Designers
Team name:
Mindkiller Productions
Project name:
Metal and Dust
Brief description:
Metal and Dust ( M.A.D. ) is going to be a sci-fi tank warfare MMOFPS. It will involve three factions struggling for power. The majority of the gameplay will be vehicular warfare. Players will not command people, but instead machines of war, that can be upgraded in a modular way. We have been working on it for two years now and the technology is solidifying. We are in need of content artists.
Target aim:
We are aiming to distribute our product online and collect a monthly fee.
Compensation:
No compensation, unless profit is made.
However, we have attracted attention, from a bunch of different sources, including Microsoft. At the very least, you'll be getting some good experience, while also building your resume.
Technology:
The engine is all home grown.
Client is written in XNA.
C# API's used for the Networking component.
The server is written in Mono.
The DB is a MySQL backend.
Target systems are Win XP / Vista / XBox360 ( after PC release ).
Talent needed:
Concept Artist(s): We need concept artists. Although some themes have been established for the different factions and locales present in M.A.D, most of the world is without a face. We need talented individuals to create the look and feel of Verga, its ecology, and landscape. Also although the factions must abbide by some themes, these are flexible and allow plenty of artistic freedom. Must be able to create semi original work.
Mesh Modeler(s): We need creative people to model our game world. M.a.D. will focus on futuristic military outposts and machines of war. We are looking for people that enjoy modeling tanks or other machines of war. There will also be a good deal of architectural work to be done. Experienced in some sort of moding or game project preferred but not required given the right portfolio.
Texture Artist(s)/Skinning Artist(s): We need someone that lives and breathes Texture art. Much of a game's look & feel can come from the quality and style of it's textures. Therefore, we are looking for talented individuals to make our project justice. Experience in gaming is preferred but not required given the right portfolio.
Team structure:
Flaviu "Zengi" Andreescu - I am the lead coder, and designer for MaD.
I've written our engine technology from scratch as well as the server.
I started Mindkiller Productions in 2001 although this project is only
about two years old.
Justin "The Tyrant" Bacco - He is our sound engineer. He is also creating the
music for MaD, which is inspired by Grunge and Industrial as well as many
other genres. He also co-founded Mindkiller Productions with me in '01.
Igor "Mensis" Shpakov - He is our head mesh modeler. He has been with us for
a year and a half. All those jagged pieces of war machine you see in our
content are his handy work. Dabbles in many other aspects such as our
front end web developing. All around go to guy.
Steve Maresca - Our glue man. If it's got an electric pulse he can hook it up,
make it cook, clean, and feed the kids, all from a snazy web interface.
VM specialist, he is the progenitor of Zentific, which we rely on for
managing our server back end. He is an affiliate and has been with us
for many years.
Justin DeMaris - If Steve is our glue man, then JD would be our glue sculptor.
He maintains our DB. He also coded our registration process and doctors
the SVN server when it gets sick. He gets things done, and provides us
with wonderful things like our two click production release process.
He has also been with us for many years.
Arthur "Beetlegauss" Wang - He is our lead concept artist. He is also a talented
writer. He is slowly shaping the look and feel of our universe and doing
the project great justice with every click and key stroke. He's been with
us about four months.
Ryan "Raigon" Quinn - Resident tinkerer. Currently drawing up the geography of
Verga. Has many interests and talents. He has been an affiliate since the
inception of Metal and Dust and helped prototype many of the ideas behind
it.
Website:
http://www.metalanddust.com
Contacts:
I can be reached at:
mido@optonline.net or
flav@metalanddust.com
My AIM:
Mido709
Previous Work by Team:
Mods for Rune:
Jetpack Assault
MKP Arena
UT2k4:
Flaviu "Zengi" Andreescu worked on total conversion Eden Eclipse
for the first Make Something Unreal contest ( we got into grand finals ).
Many one shot weapons and additions to UT99 and Rune.
Studio History:
The Mindkiller Production Studio has it's beginnings in Rune, a game that was released by Human Head using Unreal Tournament 99 technology. Our chief achievement was Mindkiller Productions Arena (mkpa). It transformed the gameplay considerably adding character persistance, skill attributes and many new weapons as well as classes of magic that were not in the original game.
For a long time the studio just ran a Rune server. Our server was always a freakshow of creativity. People would get force powers. Lightning would fire from their fingertips. I made force pull, force push, force grip and many others. I made many forms of magic. I made tanks, hoverboards, all kinds of odd stuff. Nothing too focused though, it was just alot of one shot work.
For UT2k4 I worked on Eden Eclipse, a total conversion that made it into the grand finals of the first NVidia make something unreal contest.
In about '04 the studio went silent and we stagnated a bunch. I tried getting away from the UT tech and into point blank engine programming a few times. Got ruined a bit. In 06 it finally caught on with the ease of use of API's such as MDX and eventually XNA. The current engine was started in '07 and here we are now.
The studio was mostly Justin Bacco and I until 06-07 when we made the additions you see in the post. Justin Bacco went off and started a band and is rocking out and has promised us a sound track. He is also still around from time to time and contributes sound effects to the project. That's it as far as the studio history, nothing too extensive I'm afraid.
Additional Info:
Hello polycount.net . This is a port from my post on GameDev.net. I thought their template was fairly solid so I have chosen to use it here. It's been a few months since we chimed in. Work is progressing smoothly on the project but we are still in need of content designers. The technology is maturing as well, although there are still quite a few rough edges. We continue to incrementally update our tech demo to show the community that we are capable and dedicated enough to see an MMO project to completion. Tech demo requirements and instructions are below, at the end of this section. You are welcome to drop in and play, but keep in mind this is an alpha tech demo, so be kind, and don't expect too much.
I will share some screen shots and offer some commentary to give you an idea of our current progress. Keep in mind, these are tech demo shots, and do not represent the planned quality of our release.
Here is some mesh work by Igor.
Here we have the beginnings of our mapping utility.
This is our in game terrain sculpting tool being built and finally becoming stable enough for usage.
This is an Inquisitor tank driving on non terrain surfaces. Adding this functionality seems trivial but posed many challenges given our real time combat and security requirements.
This took about an hour to make with the terrain sculptor, a huge improvement from the previous method of terrain development.
This show cases our terrain object dropper. Our mapper is still rough, but surprisingly flexible.
This is new, our REX particle system. I just completed this and am very satisfied with the power / flexibility it affords us. That is a single particle system instance. The shot shows off it's ability to change size, shape, color, position, velocity, etc given the initialization variable. It is interesting to note that all of this is entirely customizable within the mapper utility ( no coding necessary, all variable based ).
This is REX being applied to create projectile trail effects. Again no new code, just different starting settings.
I hope this presentation has shown that we are very committed to seeing this through. I know many times [MMO] projects ( let alone MMOFPS ) are the center of doubt because the sheer technical / design difficulty associated with such projects. However, we have been recruiting since '07 and continue to refine our technology in order to try and overcome the stigma associated with [MMO] projects.
Now onto the tech demo. If you go to our web page, http://www.metalanddust.com you can create an account by following the link right on the main page( our system will e-mail you, you have to click the link in order to validate the account ). You may download the actual tech demo from the link right on our main page ( it is only around 20 MB ). The link is a self updating link to the latest build. You need .NET 2.0 , XNA 1.0 Redist, and Direct X9c ( August 07 or later ) to run it. If you have problems, let me know via AIM and I will attempt to walk you through it.
The web page is mid-refactoring, and hasn't been updated in a while, but the registration works just fine as well as the download. Questions welcome.
Note: This is a tech demo alpha so expect some instability. I run the server in debug mode, instead of setting it up to auto reboot so that I can get good information and fix problems as they occur. As such, the server might not be up when you try to connect. If this is the case, and I am not reachable by AIM, please try again later.
Feedback:
ANY
Mindkiller Productions
Project name:
Metal and Dust
Brief description:
Metal and Dust ( M.A.D. ) is going to be a sci-fi tank warfare MMOFPS. It will involve three factions struggling for power. The majority of the gameplay will be vehicular warfare. Players will not command people, but instead machines of war, that can be upgraded in a modular way. We have been working on it for two years now and the technology is solidifying. We are in need of content artists.
Target aim:
We are aiming to distribute our product online and collect a monthly fee.
Compensation:
No compensation, unless profit is made.
However, we have attracted attention, from a bunch of different sources, including Microsoft. At the very least, you'll be getting some good experience, while also building your resume.
Technology:
The engine is all home grown.
Client is written in XNA.
C# API's used for the Networking component.
The server is written in Mono.
The DB is a MySQL backend.
Target systems are Win XP / Vista / XBox360 ( after PC release ).
Talent needed:
Concept Artist(s): We need concept artists. Although some themes have been established for the different factions and locales present in M.A.D, most of the world is without a face. We need talented individuals to create the look and feel of Verga, its ecology, and landscape. Also although the factions must abbide by some themes, these are flexible and allow plenty of artistic freedom. Must be able to create semi original work.
Mesh Modeler(s): We need creative people to model our game world. M.a.D. will focus on futuristic military outposts and machines of war. We are looking for people that enjoy modeling tanks or other machines of war. There will also be a good deal of architectural work to be done. Experienced in some sort of moding or game project preferred but not required given the right portfolio.
Texture Artist(s)/Skinning Artist(s): We need someone that lives and breathes Texture art. Much of a game's look & feel can come from the quality and style of it's textures. Therefore, we are looking for talented individuals to make our project justice. Experience in gaming is preferred but not required given the right portfolio.
Team structure:
Flaviu "Zengi" Andreescu - I am the lead coder, and designer for MaD.
I've written our engine technology from scratch as well as the server.
I started Mindkiller Productions in 2001 although this project is only
about two years old.
Justin "The Tyrant" Bacco - He is our sound engineer. He is also creating the
music for MaD, which is inspired by Grunge and Industrial as well as many
other genres. He also co-founded Mindkiller Productions with me in '01.
Igor "Mensis" Shpakov - He is our head mesh modeler. He has been with us for
a year and a half. All those jagged pieces of war machine you see in our
content are his handy work. Dabbles in many other aspects such as our
front end web developing. All around go to guy.
Steve Maresca - Our glue man. If it's got an electric pulse he can hook it up,
make it cook, clean, and feed the kids, all from a snazy web interface.
VM specialist, he is the progenitor of Zentific, which we rely on for
managing our server back end. He is an affiliate and has been with us
for many years.
Justin DeMaris - If Steve is our glue man, then JD would be our glue sculptor.
He maintains our DB. He also coded our registration process and doctors
the SVN server when it gets sick. He gets things done, and provides us
with wonderful things like our two click production release process.
He has also been with us for many years.
Arthur "Beetlegauss" Wang - He is our lead concept artist. He is also a talented
writer. He is slowly shaping the look and feel of our universe and doing
the project great justice with every click and key stroke. He's been with
us about four months.
Ryan "Raigon" Quinn - Resident tinkerer. Currently drawing up the geography of
Verga. Has many interests and talents. He has been an affiliate since the
inception of Metal and Dust and helped prototype many of the ideas behind
it.
Website:
http://www.metalanddust.com
Contacts:
I can be reached at:
mido@optonline.net or
flav@metalanddust.com
My AIM:
Mido709
Previous Work by Team:
Mods for Rune:
Jetpack Assault
MKP Arena
UT2k4:
Flaviu "Zengi" Andreescu worked on total conversion Eden Eclipse
for the first Make Something Unreal contest ( we got into grand finals ).
Many one shot weapons and additions to UT99 and Rune.
Studio History:
The Mindkiller Production Studio has it's beginnings in Rune, a game that was released by Human Head using Unreal Tournament 99 technology. Our chief achievement was Mindkiller Productions Arena (mkpa). It transformed the gameplay considerably adding character persistance, skill attributes and many new weapons as well as classes of magic that were not in the original game.
For a long time the studio just ran a Rune server. Our server was always a freakshow of creativity. People would get force powers. Lightning would fire from their fingertips. I made force pull, force push, force grip and many others. I made many forms of magic. I made tanks, hoverboards, all kinds of odd stuff. Nothing too focused though, it was just alot of one shot work.
For UT2k4 I worked on Eden Eclipse, a total conversion that made it into the grand finals of the first NVidia make something unreal contest.
In about '04 the studio went silent and we stagnated a bunch. I tried getting away from the UT tech and into point blank engine programming a few times. Got ruined a bit. In 06 it finally caught on with the ease of use of API's such as MDX and eventually XNA. The current engine was started in '07 and here we are now.
The studio was mostly Justin Bacco and I until 06-07 when we made the additions you see in the post. Justin Bacco went off and started a band and is rocking out and has promised us a sound track. He is also still around from time to time and contributes sound effects to the project. That's it as far as the studio history, nothing too extensive I'm afraid.
Additional Info:
Hello polycount.net . This is a port from my post on GameDev.net. I thought their template was fairly solid so I have chosen to use it here. It's been a few months since we chimed in. Work is progressing smoothly on the project but we are still in need of content designers. The technology is maturing as well, although there are still quite a few rough edges. We continue to incrementally update our tech demo to show the community that we are capable and dedicated enough to see an MMO project to completion. Tech demo requirements and instructions are below, at the end of this section. You are welcome to drop in and play, but keep in mind this is an alpha tech demo, so be kind, and don't expect too much.
I will share some screen shots and offer some commentary to give you an idea of our current progress. Keep in mind, these are tech demo shots, and do not represent the planned quality of our release.
Here is some mesh work by Igor.
Here we have the beginnings of our mapping utility.
This is our in game terrain sculpting tool being built and finally becoming stable enough for usage.
This is an Inquisitor tank driving on non terrain surfaces. Adding this functionality seems trivial but posed many challenges given our real time combat and security requirements.
This took about an hour to make with the terrain sculptor, a huge improvement from the previous method of terrain development.
This show cases our terrain object dropper. Our mapper is still rough, but surprisingly flexible.
This is new, our REX particle system. I just completed this and am very satisfied with the power / flexibility it affords us. That is a single particle system instance. The shot shows off it's ability to change size, shape, color, position, velocity, etc given the initialization variable. It is interesting to note that all of this is entirely customizable within the mapper utility ( no coding necessary, all variable based ).
This is REX being applied to create projectile trail effects. Again no new code, just different starting settings.
I hope this presentation has shown that we are very committed to seeing this through. I know many times [MMO] projects ( let alone MMOFPS ) are the center of doubt because the sheer technical / design difficulty associated with such projects. However, we have been recruiting since '07 and continue to refine our technology in order to try and overcome the stigma associated with [MMO] projects.
Now onto the tech demo. If you go to our web page, http://www.metalanddust.com you can create an account by following the link right on the main page( our system will e-mail you, you have to click the link in order to validate the account ). You may download the actual tech demo from the link right on our main page ( it is only around 20 MB ). The link is a self updating link to the latest build. You need .NET 2.0 , XNA 1.0 Redist, and Direct X9c ( August 07 or later ) to run it. If you have problems, let me know via AIM and I will attempt to walk you through it.
The web page is mid-refactoring, and hasn't been updated in a while, but the registration works just fine as well as the download. Questions welcome.
Note: This is a tech demo alpha so expect some instability. I run the server in debug mode, instead of setting it up to auto reboot so that I can get good information and fix problems as they occur. As such, the server might not be up when you try to connect. If this is the case, and I am not reachable by AIM, please try again later.
Feedback:
ANY
Replies
Your screens are all presented in 3rd person camera which conflicts with your FPS labeled genre. Explain.
How many unique players have you stress tested your servers with?
MMOFPS is popular and used for describing massive and the combat I just described all in one term. If I were to use the proper term our game would be a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Shooter.
Player progression will be achieved through levels. There will be attributes that will generally augment some abilities ( no 'requirements' on attributes, generally buffs to aid play style ). These attributes will be harder to change. The player level determines chasis he can purchase. The chasis come with a number of hard spots and a weight limit. Every other item is free form, player must manage weight heat and power ( so like huge gun but no shield and stuff like that is possible ). Inventory can't be hot swapped on the go, and it determines how a character plays. This is obviously easily change-able.
Not many, we've just come out of the shadows. We do not want to overexpose before we have good content of fear of scaring away a potential community.
1) History. What else have you done between 2001 and 2006 under the Mindkiller Productions label before Metal And Dust? Saying the project is two years old but that your studio is seven isn't really a value-add.
2) Portfolio\previous experience. Link to the examples of your team members' previous work, as well as the Rune and UT2K4 mods and models you cite. Why make me go hunting? Also, "silly weapons" comes off sounding funny and slightly unprofessional.
3) Terrain editor. Combining the terrain editor shot into a side-by-side before and after would be a more concise way of illustrating what it does, instead of taking up so much space to present one idea.
4) Barrier to entry for testing. On your website, why not provide download links to the .NET 2.0, XNA 1.0, and DirectX download pages instead of making someone that wants to play go hunting for them? Also, I'd rethink registration. The barrier to anyone wanting to try this seems VERY high right now because they have to jump through so many hoops.
5) Team structure. I'd suggest reorganizing this as being role-based instead of person-based. i.e., Lead Coder: You. Lead Modeler: Guy 1. Lead Concept Artist: Guy 2. That's a lot more meaningful for me to see what roles are filled, instead of a list of people I don't know and a vague description of what they do.
6) Screenshots. Thumbnail it down to maybe 320x240 screenshots so the whole pitch doesn't take up so much space.
7) Contact info. Pick one email address -- preferably the metalanddust.com one as it seems more professional -- and don't bother with your AIM. Keep one contact point and simplify it. More isn't better.
8) MMOs are VERY hard to build and maintain. If you set your sights lower you might have a better chance of attracting talent because of the inherent risks involved in MMO development. I should know... I worked on one for two years, and then my company imploded because it did a poor job of making them successful.
Hope that helps.
The web page is a relic, and I didn't make it. It was made by someone else that is no longer on the team. It doesn't even reflect the real team members ( it was made for a side school project ). Igor has been absolutely swamped but we will have a new web page with that information up within the month. The page is done we just have some small technical issues to clear up. My sincere apologies for this.
As far as barrier to entry, the demo is up there for people to be able to play it. I do not want people playing it all the time right now, even though the server is up 24/7. This is why the links to those things is not up yet but they will be eventually.
As for the account stuff, it's kind of required anyways. Your character has quite a bit of persistent stats under the hood, how would you propose we save this without some way of identifying who you are. We may implement a guest account for this though.
I understand your concern. However, given the indie nature of the team and the loose schedule everyone has, it is very hard to place titles. Many of our members master several disciplines, serve various roles depending on what needs to be done. Some drop in, some drop out. It would not be prudent for us to create a rigid structure, and this has been the death of many moding projects. The descriptions are vague because many of them do many many many things.
Sorry but AIM is alot more convenient and it is much easier to judge character through real time conversation with me. It's gonna stay, although the e-mail is a good consideration.
I understand that, and I am fully able to face those challenges. I came to you today with a working demo for this very reason. I consider myself worthy, having created this engine from scratch. It is a seamless loader and the real time combat works even if it is very basic right now.
The risk is immense, and any company with as few resources as us, would implode. But we are not a company, we are people contributing free time, so no cost is incurred. Despite the odds I do not wish to lower my sights. At the same time I've had to make many compromises in order to see release one day. So overall, I understand your sentiment, but politely refuse
Best of luck. I mean that.
You're planning out of order. Stress test then content. If your base project can't handle the load post content you will have a more difficult time addressing bugs. You must regularly test your standard server player limit with each game play addition. Without this, you can't foresee what you create.
I'll split this into two, the 'MMO' problem and the '-FPS/TPS' problem. Namely, the reason 'MMO's are hard to scale in general and the reason why real time shooters are ever harder to scale ontop an MMO platform. I will briefly describe what we've done to address the problems and hopeful alleviate some of your perceived hostility.
The 'MMO' problem is one of content, complexity, and sociology. Content for an 'MMO' needs to please in a way that many find meaningful, furthermore it has to be engaging. This means that's the game must keep changing. If the user is allowed enough time to put all the gameplay components into repeated patterns in his head, it gets boring because it turns into grind, be it quest grind or mob grind. Furthermore if content is too varied, it is short lived and does not provide the user enough of a treadmill to stick with the game for a long time ( and the bills must be paid ).
We dodge many of these problems by pitting the users against each other. Humans have a much higher level of variance than AI. We add meaning by making territory capturable and we will make an effort to make victories have lasting effects on the environment. The game is skill based so it is more fun because there's a longer learning curve. However, player acquisitions of bigger and better equipment still maintains a positive treadmill to keep the people that blast through content interested. We will still have mobs and AI will play a role in faction battles, but PvP is the frontrunner here.
Now to address your main objection, the technical scaling problem. MMORPG's consume a large amount of bandwidth. It's not immense, but it does not scale perticularly well because it's a quadratic curve. Shooters, have a much larger bandwidth requirement than RPG's, and they are much more sensitive to jitter and latency. They scale extremely poorly and typically cutting corner leads to gaping security holes. This, is the MMO-FPS problem, and the main reason there are very few games in this genre.
But believe me, knowing this, I did not come here to waste anybody's time. Reakktor, Mindkiller Productions home grown engine, leapfrogs current solutions. The way we compress movement data over the network is very rare. I don't want to say unique, but I haven't heard of any other engine doing it the way we do it. It beats popular titles like Counter Strike Source bandwidth per player footprint by orders of magnitude. So when someone comes on and tells me our engine is a 'SHOOTER', without knowing any of the tech, math, and two years of research behind it, well, it's easy to see why I may get annoyed.
Scalability is measured in usage, not maxima. You can always get a bigger pipe, if you can pay for it. The key to bandwidth scalability is how much of that pipe do you use in proportion to your users connected. We've kept track of the numbers and know that the system scales well. We can do that without reaching maxima. So no, actually, you don't stress test first. Given the quadratic nature of bandwidth use, you would incurr a great deal of cost before making any money. For an indie project, that's suicide. There is also the issue of CPU scalability. We have handled this fairly well also in Reakktor, it uses a semi distributed computing method and has the clients precompute many aspects. The immediate issue that comes to mind with distributed computing is security. The server can double check many of the values, and for what the server doesn't have time to double check, peer users can double check the values and do. Security is one of our chief concerns after scalability. I would gladly go into more detail on any of the issues if someone were interested.
Again, thank you for your input, but if you're going to come on and blindly bash someone's tech without knowing anything about it, under the assumption that every guy spouting 'MMO' is a foolish twelve year old, then please, at least bring some study cases like Auto Assault or Tabula Rasa or something to the table rather than just spouting assumptions.
-> caneruyanik.deviantart.com
Usually I get in touch with people that want to join via some sort of messenger. Multiple people or just me talk to you for a while, to get to know you better. I then let my artists check out your stuff and give me their opinions of your skill / personality, and then if all is good you're in. So my aim s/n is Mido709, and I have msn, mido@optonline.net, I also have yahoo messenger, flavatfs, feel free to contact me whenever.
We're also hard at work on providing a web page and forums.
[ame]
Scott Petty
Environment Artist
BioWare-Austin
Out web site www.metalanddust.com is up and operational. Feel free to let us know what you think. Our forums are also up but are still under redesign. We're also still looking for members!
Thought I'd stop by and pick your brain a bit.
We've decided to implement statistic tracking for our games.
We spent two weeks putting together some stat collection shown here:
http://metalanddust.com/?page=player&p=Zengi
The layout is just experimentation at the moment, it's more about the stats displayed.
As a player what kinda stats would you like tracked?
P.S. We are now 8 people strong but are still looking for more. We urgently need a texture painter at the moment. We still need plenty else as well though.