Hi, I am starting a team project with members in different countries. Which direction should I take if we all need to work on the project at once? Would I have to sign up for the cloud service? can we work on this online using Unity5? If I purchase assets will they be available to my entire team?
Thanks
Coordinate the project using Trello or Hack’n’Plan to document tasks and bugs.
Communicate using Slack. Skype or Google Hangouts is also handy for meetings, but Slack keeps a searchable history.
Consider maintaining documentation in a wiki.
Share the project using a version control system service such as CloudForge or Visual Studio Team Services. Those are just two examples. There are lots of online VCS services. If you’re buying assets, don’t use a service that makes your repository public.
There are technical details to setting up version control with Unity. You can google those. There are also considerations when more than one person is trying to edit a scene. You can google that, too.
If the asset license says “This extension requires one license per seat,” you must purchase a copy for each team member. So if you have 5 team members, you must purchase 5 seat licenses. If the asset doesn’t have a per-seat license, you can use a single copy for the entire team. However, all team members must clearly understand that the license is only for the team’s use. They can’t use it for their own projects that are separate from the team. If they need to do that, they should buy a separate license.
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Thank you, a lot of good info, the hack n plan and slack look perfect for my needs. I am starting out with only the basic knowledge of game creation - I made a text game about ten years ago and that was a piece of cake. Looking at Unity is a bit overwhelming and the first time I tried it I couldn’t get past placing a small patch of terrain. I have a lot to learn in the next 30 days thankfully, I have a guide and there are a few good videos out there.
Happy to help! Consider doing a few really short “practice” games first. Perhaps one of your team members has a very simple gameplay idea that they’d like to explore over, say, 5-7 days – for example, a side-scrolling infinite runner where the player only presses the spacebar to jump over obstacles. This will let you work the kinks out of your process before tackling the real game.
Also, whoever is going to lead the team should read this: What Makes a Good Game Producer? And you do need a team lead. The lead doesn’t necessarily rank higher than anyone else; it’s simply a job that needs to get done like all the rest. It’s often a thankless, frustrating job, but it’s almost impossible to make a team project work without someone volunteering to “herd the cats.”
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Infinite runner…I like that boing boing, look at how big Super Mario got. I was looking at uMMORPG in the asset store and building on that, it really needs terrain. I’ve been looking at this visual studio and it’s kind of clunky and there’s no template for Unity only Unreal and something called Cocos but, I would use it otherwise. That blog looks like a good read.
why are you looking at uMMORPG… dont try and run a marathon before you can crawl.
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Do you think it’s a mistake? it’s a basic game with directions like how to add monsters etc. everything is supposed to be built right in. Before I would do that I will play around with Unity first. Biggest problem - using Unity and a browser at the same time, I can’t do it otherwise, I’m a pretty fast learner. I’m going to start with the Viking City and see how much I can muck up there : )
That’s great advice from JamesLeeNZ.
If you’re setting up a team, a simple project that just displays “Hello, world” may take you a week because it requires a lot of tasks before you even create the project:
- Get all team members running the same version of Unity.
- Set up a Hack’n’Plan site and accounts, and make sure everyone knows how to use it.
- Ditto for Slack.
- Ditto for version control.
Once you get “Hello, world” working, see if your team can make something like Canabalt but without the polish, just functional. This will involve your artists, programmers, designers, testers, etc.
That’ll give you an idea of how to take advantage of products on the Asset Store. The Asset Store is fantastic, but it really helps to have experience using Unity so you can determine whether each product is a good fit for your needs. uMMORPG isn’t necessarily a mistake – it might be perfect for what you want to do – but it’s far too much to tackle as a first project.
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Much to think about.
From your posts, you seem green to gamedev (in more one than one ;p)…
MMORPG is pretty much the hardest game type to create. An asset will get you started, but you’ll start hitting brick walls very quickly. Walls that even seasoned developers will struggle to conquer.
I mean, if you want to spend a few years working on it before giving up because you lost all drive to finish it, go for it…
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It depends on your scope if you have any.
Adding monsters, changing scene etc are the easy part.
MMORPG requires a lot of cash to run. If you don’t have a good stash, forget about it, and stick to a single player game.
If it were that easy to just give up I’d use that excuse all day. Can’t comb your hair…give up, don’t want to get up to go to the bathroom…wet the bed lol
Giving up is easy.
Giving up something you’ve worked on for years is hard.
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MMOs are many, many times more complicated than single player games. Not only do you need to handle client-side networking, but you need to defend against cheating and also build out the back-end server infrastructure and code.
Not that it’s all doom and gloom. A basic MMO doesn’t necessarily require a lot of cash to run. Just spin up some Amazon Web Services servers; they’re relatively cheap. And it’s possible for small teams to make them. Take a look at Worlds Adift or Love. But they were made by experienced developers. Get that experience first, for example by making some smaller single player games.
Yeah, I’ll take a look at those. Like I said I’ve built a text game and that took a couple weeks of sleepless nights but, I did it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do besides, I’ve already bought the domain name so I can’t quit. I have a kickstarter set up so, we’ll see if that gets me anywhere.
Speaking of MMOs we recently had someone advertise their server solution on these forums if you want to check it out.
MMO will take a couple of YEARS. Can you stick at something for years?, where the end may never be in sight?, where better/bigger professional mmo’s get released.
Im trying to dissuade you for a reason. Not because I have anything against MMO’s or people trying to create them, but because 99% fail.
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Thank you.
If you want to do this, then do it. While the advice above is great, you will learn a lot playing with a game template like uMMORPG and if that is what you enjoy doing, then just do it.
MMO’s take a very long time and require a lot of work. But…if you start with a template, you can make a simple one fairly easily. It won’t be exceptional or even fabulous, but it will be a great learning process. I cut my teeth with a team making a huge MMO. It never was released due to budget issues but I learned a lot from those guys. Back then we didn’t have anything like uMMORPG. 
Just realize you are doing this out of love for the hobby and to see if you can do it, not to get rich quick. It will be hard, and frustrating, and you will get criticism from folks here who think you shouldn’t try something that might fail. Just deal with it.
People here mean well, but they don’t get that making games as a hobby means doing what is fun for you. Maybe you will finish a simple game you can play with your friends or maybe you will move on to other games when you realize the scope of an MMO.
But…with a tool like uMMORPG, why not try? I haven’t regretted a single day of our endeavor and still, after over a year of serious development, I have no desire to quit. I have learned a lot about a lot of stuff and honestly, a single player game, at least from the perspective of a designer/artist/manager/whater-else-needs-to-be-done perspective, seems like it would be easy at this point. 
So if we fail…we have all the knowledge we need to start again with something different.
Good luck!
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Thanks Teila.
First, I am going to study for the next few weeks, I found a book online and that’s a start. After that I will work on a little 2D project like ToniLi suggested. At the moment I am just looking around and seeing what’s out there and I have been looking into what Atavism has to offer. I feel pretty confident that I can put a simple 2D game together by June at the earliest.
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