Working together on a game as a project over the internet [closed]

Question

I'm looking for someone who would be willing to work on a project that would potentially become something similar to the game evony/tribal wars, but the project won't be primarily for actually making the game, rather than learning from starting to make the game work.

What website would I go about finding someone willing to help me with this and work together on a little project, no money involved unless things started really progressing, in that case if we actually do complete something worth money, then there will definitely be an even split of the income. I'm not what you would call great at programming, I have learned everything from teaching myself and have never taken a college level (or highschool) programming class, but I'm not bad at it or anything. And if anyone reading this is interesting, leave a comment.

Answer 1

We've got a chat for these things too, by the way. :)

For talking to random strangers on the internet: From personal experience, it's better to be able to say "hey, look, want to help me improve this prototype?" than "I'm looking for someone to code a game with". People come and go: Don't be afraid to start something yourself!

As for actually working on a game with others (strangers or not): Familiarise yourself with revision control software if you're going to be working on code with other people.

I can highly recommend Mercurial and I've got friends who like git. However, if you're going to have large non-text files, git can get pretty messy. Mercurial only somewhat cleaner in that respect. SVN is clumsy, but there's no escaping that it deals better with large binary files.

Most of all, don't worry about the details, just get the ball rolling. If nothing else, you're learning.

Answer 2

The best possible choice here is actually to find and meet other local game developers who are interested in working with you on a project. If you're not in a big city, then maybe you'll have to make a trip to one every month or so. If you're completely in the middle of nowhere, however, then you might need to look for people online.

The best possible way to find people for a project online is to go onto various game development forums and start posting about your project. Videos of what you've done so far, screenshots, general goals of where you're taking it. If you're lucky, someone will be interested in your project and offer to help. Do not just go onto forums and post "hey here's my idea, someone help me make it". That is frowned upon, and the only time someone will offer to help in such a case is if they're really desperate for money/something to do. The issue here is that a lot of people have their own ideas, and they'd much rather work on those than help someone else (unless their ideas are the same as yours...) So it's very hard to find someone to help on a project unless you pay them money from the start.

There's some useful advise here, as well: Finding other programmers to help on a project

Answer 3

Work iteravely. Break down your roadmap to completion into steps and start by offering smaller jobs to do. Ask for help on particular features, say you want to implement a foundation for an AI system that you can build on. It's less daunting than to say "I need someone to help me with these goals: to add a bunch of enemies, at least 10 story quests, and this many hours of gameplay". If you find someone that's interested in doing more the first time around, then consider yourself lucky, but you will more likely get responses from people that are okay with pitching in for a shorter time than going in it for the long haul.

Target a problem that you are most willing to tackle first and go from there. Don't confuse this with bait-and-switching people by making them do more than they initially offered to do, unless they're interested.