Hey guys, I was thinking about form a team to work on a commercial project since all the games I made was unsuccessful… But I want some tips of someone who already worked in a team (I mean, the team members living far from each other so…) like:
What’s the best way to organize the project, should everybody share a unique folder on dropbox? What if some troll delete everything (I know there is the trash bin but…) and block you on skype…??
How would be the communications between the members? Skype only? Create a custom forum since not everyone will be online?
I was thinking about make this more spontaneous than it can be, the team will need a development guide of what it need to be done or most of the people would know what to do with some instructions?
Or maybe just get everyone’s facebook and start the sh*t up?
Someone who worked on a team where everybody live in a different place could share some thoughts? Does it took how much time? Also, if not bother, post the links of the project so I can see the game dimension, because this is exactly my problem working alone, I get afraid of starting something big and don’t finish, then I just start something small, with very little content, or even the mechanic that also ends up becoming very simple too…
help!!
(can someone take the period out the topic title?)
I work with a very small core team on a project and have a few outliers at times working on it. The core team shares both a Dropbox and a Google Drive. The core team is composed of people I have known for a while and can trust. The others only get read permissions in the Dropbox and Google Drive. This method has worked very well for me, but the project that I am currently working on is far from finished, so no screenshots at the moment ;).
I am also currently working as the narrator for another game, and the setup for that is also well-done. There are multiple Skype groups, one for the core devs and one for the others. As one of the others, I only have access to what the core devs share with us, which includes some art, music, and scripts.
Both of these scenarios I’ve found help streamline the development process.
I’m the leader of the second group Oliver(rab) mention. If you’re curious, you can pm him or myself and we’ll gladly answer questions. It really just comes down to your skills as a leader, and your time you can spend online. If you know you’re able to be on all the time, it shouldn’t be a problem. Like myself, I’m either on my laptop, or my desktop at home or my iphone when I’m away. Our core team is a bunch of trusted people I’ve known for years, and our secondary group is voice actors, narrators and composers. All that stuff.
Our core team is 7 people, and we’re all close and work well together so perhaps that is what makes us work, and be successful. We’ve been together for 2 years, working on our 3rd project as of now. Still to early to share but I’m sure you’ll see it around the forums soon.
How many people on the core? Why dropbox and google drive? Does it ‘feel’ like the development is being fast? Aand one last questions is, are you guys working with some kind of development document like a gdd or something?
edit: the last post comes when I was typing this one…
As for me, we use mega. Dropbox and Google Drive were proving to have so little memory. The development has been so slow recently, but at times it moves fast. We’re working as we progress with the writer but we had a story draft written on day 1. GDD was made later on and as of now we’ve been working from the GDD.
Because my project (the one away from Khelton) does not take up all of my time, when every member of the team can spend a day all working together at the same time, all of our work gets done faster. What may take a drawn-out week otherwise would now only take a few hours. This is how Ludum Dare also works for me when I have a team for the game. A GDD is a good idea because it gives you a set goal. It is when you don’t know exactly what you want (and the group doesn’t either) is when you easily get into trouble. Though our GDD is in boys and pieces through different mediums, we know our goals. It is also helpful to set smaller goals to reach every day/week of working. We also occasionally use Mega, but Dropbox makes it very easy to share files without constantly having to download new files. I don’t know if Mega has released the desktop application yet, but when that happens I will also switch over.
My team is currently using dropbox to share everything and it is working great. If someone deletes or edits something that they shouldn’t (which hasn’t really happened since I trust the people I work with), then dropbox keeps some older versions of files (at least some), plus I every once in a while back up the dropbox folder.
We usually use Skype, but we also have a facebook group (private) for communication. Also it’s good to meet up IRL every once in a while (assuming it is possible)
At first we thought that we could do it without a GDD (game design document), but it really isn’t the best option. I strongly recommend to make a GDD and then make some adjustments if needed, also I found it rather motivational and good for organization to use a service where you can keep track of your progress and to-do tasks (I use Trello), this way you can easily see what else you need to do and what you’ve accomplished.
Hi, we are a team of 2 and we made Block Story. My partner lives in Russia, I live in the US.
Hell no. With just a folder on dropbox you lose the history, also it makes it really hard to work offline (say you are on a plane). Moreover it is a nightmare when 2 people work on the same file, or even if 2 people work on different files and you have to figure out which is the latest version of which file. You are also vulnerable to one member screwing up something. This is a nightmare even if there is only 1 person working on multiple computers.
Instead learn to use Mercurial (recommended) or Git. Get a free account at www.bitbucket.org and make a repository there.
Someone made some changes ? no problem, pull them with:
hg pull
hg update
Someone messed something up? no problem, just revert his commit.
Two people worked on the same file? no problem merge the changes with:
hg pull
hg merge
It is hard to overstate how important a decent version control system is, and how essential it is to us.
bitbucket also provides private issue tracking. But if your team is bigger than say 3 people, you might want to consider getting a free account at rallydev.com, and track your project using agile. And definitely use skype.
Do a list of the MINIMUM things you need for the first release. Get everyone to agree on it. Stick to that list, and work only to complete that. Rallydev can help you keep this list. Don’t just assume everyone knows what to do because you will never get everyone working towards the same goals spontaneously and you will never finish. Define the things you want to do, get everyone on the same page.
I live by the philosophy: release early and release often. So I release as soon as it is good enough, and then do frequent updates, which help keep interest of customers in the game.
Start alpha and beta testing with the public as soon as possible and as frequent as possible, feedback from users will help you keep motivation, and by the time you release, you will already have built a community ready to help your game succeed.
Yes, absolutely. Do that list of MINIMUM things right away.
Hey @Pelajesh and @goldbug! Thanks for the replies! It helped a lot, I didn’t know about Trello and also these version control systems looks very nice to work with, I never tried because I never worked on a team… And @goldbug, how much time took for the first version of your game?
Bitbucket.org for your source control repository.
If you develop on Windows use the Mercurial option and download TortoiseHg, a great integrated windows explorer tool for checking in/maintaining source code.
BitBucket also has an issue tracker for each repository.
But for an even better issue tracker, check out www.trello.com, it’s a great storyboard tool that is nice and visual and you can see at a glance on certain tasks what their status is on in a project. You can drag cards around and click on them to view team updates. Really handy!
