Volunteer

We welcome volunteers with a few or many hours to spare each week to help out with game & tool programming, concept art and 3D modelling.

Please use the JOIN US link to submit applications

C++ Programming Requirements:

The project currently requires general programming, tools programming, game

programming, network programming and engine & graphics programming; consisting

of 'large' and 'small' tasks.

General Programming Requirements:

There are a large number of requirements in the current stage of general programming,

consisting mostly of coding interface controls like edit boxes and the creation

of general actions (functions) to assist the games creation. An example of

a general programming task would be to produce an action that removes an entity

(object) from the scene (program/game environment); another task would involve

coding the caret (character insertion mark) within an edit box.

Urgent areas that need general code include glyphs (images & controls)

& object actions (like moving, loading, unloading, hiding and showing entities,

glyphs and scenes).

Tools Programming Requirements:

There are a number of tools we need developed to produce the game.

Small tools that require work include a battle calculator that simple simulates

attacks using the battle forumula for me and the level designers to use to

determine who is likely to win battles out of two units. A Spacecraft editor

is needed for artists to simple test how bitmap ships will look with various

attachments such as weapons and wing upgrades mounted on them (in layers of

bitmaps). More tools are required than these at a later time (such as a semi-transparent

PNG file saver DLL for my map builder, sprite previewer for the animators etc).

Tools I that have been started include the Sprite & Map Editor.

Game Programming Requirements:

This area of code is currently being started as most of its requirments start

in future stages, such as the games mechanics and AI. However, minor tasks

that need attention now include the detection of layer clicks (the clicking

of entities in the maps parallax layered content).

Network Programming Requirements:

This is to be a multiplayer game, to be run on a users PC as a server, who

manually or automatically invites other players into his game map. This area

of work has yet to be fully planned and any assistance with designing and planning

the network features would be most helpful. Those who would like to contrinute

network code can also volunteer to help plan this aspect with myself (game

designer) and the coders.

Engine & Graphics Programming Requirements:

The engine & graphics programming requirements require Open GL and Direct

X programming experience. Current tasks that need attention include the refinement

of the graphics API; improving its error handling, fully implementing Direct

X support for alternative game settings for people who have trouble with our

Open GL acceleration and improving the performance of the engine which has

minor issues with sprite smoothness as you might spot out on the engine demo.

There are a number of new ideas for features to be added to the engine all

the time, so programmers who make themselves available for engine programming

can expect new tasks to come in frequently.

3D Modelling Tasks :

3D models are required to be rendered to a bitmap for the game

sprites (animated game entities) or for use with textures and animation. We

require modellers to be able to come up with their own 3D interpetation of

a text description of an object, since we are very short of artists, no one

will sketch reference art for you at present. To join you can spend as little

as 3 hours with the project each week doing something simple like making weapon

projectiles and meteors; or many more hours doing more interesting stuff to

add to your portfolio like spacecraft and detailed scenery. It doesn't really

matter whether you use 3D Studio Max or Milkshape 3D, as long as they meet

the given specification and can be converted to OBJ files for backup and enhancement

in other programs.

Basic Modelling Requirements:

Prefabs need to be created including girders, pipe work, wires, metal surfaces,

vents, satellite dishes, guns, turrents, packages, devices, symbols, interface

elements, particle elements for particle effects, planets, meteors, rocks,

mountains, railings, pathways, cameras, space structures and more. These are

small models on their own but on a whole they are all necessary for so

many different in-game purposes.

Whether you want to contribute all or just one of these models in the next

week, still volunteer.

Creative Modelling Requirements:

Skilled modellers with more than the usual spare time for this project can

take the lead role in designing and modelling the game entities. Including

the spacecraft, weapons, mountable devices and detailed scenery. When I mention

creative modelling, this requires you to come up with your own ideas. We have

a few people involved with designing the game; but not enough man power to

design the models.

You can volunteer to work on map scenery; mostly consisting of outspace ship

stations and power stations, you will work closely with the lead artist discussing

how certain spacebases and scenery will look in a meeting. Then the artist

can produce a rough sketch for you to model or you would come up with your

own interpretation of the discussed requirement.

Volunteers who wish to focus on game entities like spacecraft and devices

would also have a discussion with the lead artist prior to designing

the required entitity based on the specification given.

Texture Modelling Requirements:

We often use 3D models to render textures, if you are capable of producing

metal and plastic surfaces for circuitry, space bases, spacecraft, interface

elements and gadgets; there is a great need for a library of textures for

many uses. We will need you to render an arial/side view of your surface with

minimal shadows for an artist to manipulate into a seamless texture (if neccessary)

If you are not very good with painting or producing shaders for your textures

then you can just produce bumpmaps (black and white surface) that someone

else can paint or shade digitally. A supply of the image and its model file

is required.

Animation Requirements:

Animation is a time consuming job in this project and requires a large amount

of spare time. Animation jobs includes particle effects for explosions, laser

beams, energy clouds etc. Other jobs include the rotation of

radar satellites, camera rotations, weapon sequences, indicators, interface

elements and more. These sequences will need to be exported to individual PNG

frames (or TGA/TIFF/PSD if PNG export is not available)

Art Tasks :

We require artists to produce a few or large quantity of textures for use with

our 3D models, characters based on their specifications, designs for space

bases and structures for use in level design, comic strip art and interface elements such

as symbols and message screens. Artists who prefer to work on paper can freely

volunteer for mostly concept art, digital artists can do concept art but

there is a need in this area of experiese for texture art and character portrait

painting.

There is a lot of cool stuff here to make for your portfolio that is exposed

with the game and websites, although because of the need of consistency and

unity in game art, you may need to temporarily adjust your usual style to that

of the current game art. Artists are welcome to enhance existing art, although

we are more interested in getting the incomplete art completed.

Texture & Tile Art Requirements:

We need 2D painted texures for 3D surfaces and tile art such as stars for

the games scenery. By downloading the engine demo, you will see that there

are already a large number of textures on the 3D objects and the entire background

consists of layers of tile art (stars). The game will not only take place in

outer space, but the players will also fly into planets; where the backgrounds

would obviously be clouds, land and water. Some maps will also be inside a

space base (like in Star Wars) where the players can land their ships and walk

about (all in arial view). If you are new to the idea of creating seamless textures for games, there

are game related resources available at: http://pixelmorgue.com/ and

elsewhere in this forum.

A texture or a number of textures you could contribute include :

Metals for spacecraft, devices, girders,

circuits, space bases, satellites, weapons, buttons, railings, containers,

computers, chambers, pipes, wire grids and more.