Nice drawings
Muke Domination V is just "bad"

Good luck with you searching

That's a rather extreme change -- I would not jump to it so quickly. There are costs and benefits to either approach, but in my view the art is very important, and you'd be losing a lot by moving to a low res.

As far as the technical challenges go, a non-tile-based method would not be terribly hard. Given the interest in this thread alone, I assume you can recruit a reasonably skilled programmer, so this shouldn't be a huge concern.

As far as gaining some of the other advantages of a tile-based engine, without sacrificing the resolution or the unique qualities of the art, Carrus had a nice suggestion:

You can know early on how good it's going to be... so I think if the 50MB demo looks like it'll be great, you'll try it.

Marcello

With impressive art, coming from a good coder? I would. Though there are many people concerned about download size, there are also many with a nice connection and some spare time ... and for purposes of testing, you don't need such a large audience.

Thank you all so far you have all been really great help...

Zaphos - You are incredibly helpful. Thank you. It is hard to be surrounded by so many people you admire and not know who to listen to. Here is all I know...

+ I want to make a game (Not necessarily my own)
+ I want it to be bad ass
+ ...and I need help doing it.
+ I would like to invest a lot of time into the project art wise.
+ I need to know the team that is working on it is serious about it. Not intensely serious but serious.
+ I have had a few bad experiences in the past where coders lose interest or just can't do it. Not to say there is a contract written in blood but...

Q: Other questions I haven't answered. Would I want the game to be for fun or for commercial use?

A: I am solely in it for fun but who knows... at the very least I think we could have a cult following.

My thoughts so far...

• I think Indeterminatus and his team have good follow through. That is a definite plus.

• Jakub Wasilewski looks like a good pick

• Simon Parzer looks like a good pick

• Mokkan looks like a good pick

I want to ride this one out a bit and give some more people time to see my post.

Lith

While you're waiting for the prefect match, could you just make me one animated character in this perspective?

I just want walk, run and punch. That's all I ask.
Maybe die too.

Simon good point, but I only stated my original idea as a building block. I am still unsure of what game to make. If someone thinks they can do my idea that would be great, but I am keeping all possibilities open at this point. I take what each coder says very literally, so I guess I can be persuaded easily.

I'll check back later.

Lith

Your art is great!
Please finish your "DarkGems" RPG project, those images looks like screenshots of an old school RPG by Square.
If you are looking for coders, you're in the right place.;)

I must side with Simon and Matthew on the issue of having multiple coders. Generally the thing with internet projects is that they tend to fail when one of the links in your development chain fails. So, try to make your team as small as it can possibly be. If the game is a task that can be handled by only one programmer, by all means, have only one. Two programmers are not likely to do the work twice as fast, but it is likely that one will leave the team, and the other will be left with gobs of code that he isn't familar with. Only if the task is too big for one person, consider getting two persons working on it. Even then, preferably get two persons with different fields of expertise and different views on what they like coding.

Ideally, you would like one/two coders and someone taking care of the audio side of things (while you're here, I think that Mark Oates could help you, if you ask him nicely).

However, I must say that you didn't make an overly good impression with your description of the project. The thing you posted first was a good sketch, but you backed out of it way too fast when you got opposition. And the critique wasn't all that well-founded - a 3200x2400 bitmap can be packed with JPEG2000 33% down to about 2MB and still not look half-bad. Of course, loading time could be a small issue on slower computers, but it could be helped (for instance, by loading the level by chunks in a separate thread). Never mind the technicals, just don't get too easily convinced that your project isn't feasible.

If you want to really get one of us on board, you have to provide way more details about the game. Your graphics are awesome, I must say that, but you must understand that most coders are pretty creative people and very much like working on their own (brilliant, in their/our heads) ideas. So, in order to get somebody to help you, you have to convince him that the project of yours is right up his alley. The thing has some promise for originality - there are not many games that use non-tiled hand-drawn levels. But it is not really interesting if you don't fill in the details (story, background, mood, type of gameplay (fast, reckless running with jumping on enemies, or a slower paced game with ranged weapons, or one where you stealthily sneak at the monsters from the back and stab them?)). Throwing Mario or Sonic as an example won't give us much of a picture of what you have in mind - especially when you give us both of them as the example .

APPEND:
One more thing about recruiting. Be careful with people that jump on board without hesitation, without asking for details of the game design. They tend to leave the project with similar ease, and quite fast too.

Er. What? If you really want the map in a tile-based form for your pathfinding algorithm, you can do a post-process step to generate it. There's no need to let this kind of technical detail affect the way art is done on a high level.

Yes ... but I think it is reasonable to assume that essentially anyone downloading a 50-100 MB game of this variety has sufficient ram for it, even given a relatively inefficient implementation. After all, older games have used similarly large bitmaps for backgrounds, before. Baldur's Gate and its follow-ups come to mind.

You can do this given any system for annotating the terrain. Again, this should not affect art direction.

Here is my game idea in greater detail since I finally have some time to sit down and explain myself.

GAME NAME

Luna : Assent from Evian

BACKSTORY

In the world I am envisioning there are different types of elves.

Dark Elves – Live underground - White Hair
Rivirin Elves – Live Deep Underground – Jet Black Hair
Fire Elves – Live in the Desert – Red Hair
Night Elves – Live in the Forest – Purple, Green, or Blue Hair
Sky Elves – Live on the towering cliffs of Urdenfell – Yellow Hair

There was an Ice Age know as the Rizdenfall Epoch and all of the surface dwelling elves that were on the surface joined together in the Lark Grotto. A beautiful grotto with access to the surface, roughly half a mile bellow ground.

Fire Elves, Night Elves, and Sky elves dwelt here together out of necessity. It was there only option. They were all waiting for the Ice age to pass. One simple rule was made and obeyed by all. None of the elven races were to interbreed.

The great separation happened 40,000 years ago when the elves separated to follow different beliefs. Most to follow different elemental spirits. The Night Moon separated to follow the God of man and is highly disregarded among other elfin tribes.

STORY / PLOT:

The story evolves around two elves (Lithien, and Luna)

Luna is a Fire Elf. She inherently has red hair, grey glowing eyes, and is obviously very beautiful.

Lithien is a young Night Elf Ranger with purple hair and he is our hero

The two fall in love. Luna even gets pregnant

The elders find out and a trial is held. They give him a fate worse than death. Banishment to Evian. (see bellow)

They Put Luna in prison and vow to burn the baby once it is born and make her watch.

In the Lark Grotto there is a slab of rock with chiseled runes called the Hearth Stone. When anyone stands inside the runes the are teleported to Evian.

The History of Evian. Evian is a pit deeper than hell. It is rumored to be deeper than the pits of hell and tunnels around hell. That is where out hero starts out. There of course are others already down there and a small civilization has been built there. Before an elf is banished he is fed some special bread that gives him a state of deep amnesia. As the game progresses the hero remembers key elements of the story I have described and fuels him even more the find a way back to the Lark Grotto. So. Basically it is a love story. The hero has to get topside before his “wife's” unborn child is born, only to be killed.

Throughout the game there will be beautiful backgrounds and different environments underground. There will be enemies, puzzles, and bosses to defeat.

I also know how to make music too and have already made some amazing music for the game.

Enemies –

Rivirin Elves – A ruthless and brutal band of elves will stand in our hero’s way
Trolls – These brutal creatures hide in shadows and thirst for blood
Bats – Blood sucking bats
Etc…. Many others to fight on the way out

EVENT SYSTEM: The event system wouldn’t need to be too advanced. We would need the ability to show cut scenes, change conditions, and use switches to trigger changes in the environment. That’s really it for the event system. I want to keep it pretty simple.

GAME WORLD: I want the game to be epic in scale and this is why in the end we might have to go for tile sets. This is going to come down to time. How long the coder can put into the project. If the coder can put years into the project then I would probably hand draw all of the environments.

INVENTORY: We would defiantly need and inventory system to manage item and heal etc. Not too advanced but still functional.

MOOD: The game is going to be dark, gothic, bloody, and have a lot of Elf Ranger action. I can’t think of an example because it has never really been done before. The characters will be slightly cartoony and cutesy but have some bad-A$$ qualities to them.

I want to constantly remind the player of the gloom he is experiencing to get back to the one he loves.

COMBAT SYSTEM: Live hack and slash. The hero would use are Scimitars and bows. That’s it.

PUZZLE SOLVING: The game would need puzzles and the fact that the game is moving upwards for the most part helps this.

PERSPECTIVE: Side-view Plat former. Think Mario or a better example would be XEXYZ for NES or Ys Wanders for SNES.

IMAGE TYPE: This is still up for debate. Either Hand Drawn or Tile set based. Both have plusses and both have minuses.

CODERS: Bases on popular demand I would at least start with only one coder.

FINAL THOUGHTS: The game sounds complicated but in truth I think it’s doable. IF it was completed to this point then we could decide whether to add co-opp elements MMO elements etc. But in the short term I envision it only as a single player game.

Thanks for reading and for all you support/intrest on this project:

Sincerely,

Kinglith
-----------------------------------------------------------
>>Follow your Heart<<

Heh, sounds far more deeper than Mario/Sonic games. I like the idea, and I'd definately play the game (at least for the graphics). Unfortunately I always get lack of motivation after some time of working on a project -> I don't have any projects completed, it's sad, because I have so many ideas. Well to speak frankly, I have one. The game I've made for Christmashack in 8 days. In my opinion it's a crap, but at least I was happy to finish something.

Edit: hazul, I was thinking the same

Yes. I'm very interested.

I've read all your ideas and it is doable.