ANARYU'S PROFILE

The video and couple of cycling screens and images are impressive looking. I'd expect more substance in a project before I'd invest (I'm working on something of my own and don't plan to post a project before I have a fully working demo, etc) but you sold it well!

A few warnings from someone who manages software projects with budgets for a living and has done so for over half a dozen years:

Money changes the whole playing field in any project, software in particular.

1. Have your plan mapped out completely, you build the design docs, everyone agrees and sticks to them
- You promised a lot of incredible things like smooth, revolutionary combat and AI and puzzles that fit the world, if you just plan to wing it and mess with it as you get there you'll come to regret it and it'll eat up time like you would NOT believe
- Balance your stats out early in a spreadsheet - 'winging' the difficulty and how stats/skills/etc work, as well as enemies, throws off balance like nothing. Even if your balance isn't perfect, if you used a spreadsheet to work out stats and build some common metrics (like X number of average hits to defeat, and min/max attack value ranges, etc.) you can tweak it without breaking the game if you keep it all calculated nicely.
- I can't stress how you need to know those numbers and features before you build, so I'll add another line.

2. No new features until it's working - scope creep is the ultimate enemy and will eat your budget

3. Get "who gets how much money and how and when" worked out early and get everyone to agree - no feature is ever implemented in the amount of time people will think they can do it in, as a rule we take a dev estimate and double it MINIMUM, so if you use an hourly rate kind of approach you'll be in trouble

4. Your advantage here is that it's a hobby and you've got some funds to work with - this is also your main disadvantage, up until now no one expected anything but to do their hobby, now they have money, be careful of how that can change mind sets

5. Be careful with your team, if someone decides they're sick of it and leaves the leader is on the hook, not them, know what to do if that happens

6. Use small goals to motivate your team - give them something small to work on, one at a time, and then get it working in the project. Big things make people feel like they have as much time as they need and they'll lose focus; small ones they feel good about completing and can handle. Do not leave it up to them. :)

7. Version Control. That's right. Do it now. Github is a good place to start. (ps. Make sure you stay in control of the files so that if someone does disappear you don't lose whatever work they DID complete.)



There's a lot more you should be doing, setting milestones and dates and such, but it won't happen with a team of hobbyists. So do what you can and be prepared for the worst and have a plan for when it does.


Finally, a word to you as the project lead. Bad shit will happen. You won't care about the money and you'll either want to write the whole project off and forget it happened, or you'll experience insane amounts of stress in trying to work with people to get something done. Either way you will wish you didn't spear-head this and you will experience ridiculous amounts of stress and fear and frustration and shame.

Tough it out, it's never really as bad as it looks (okay, maybe it is as bad as it looks, but it's not the end of your life, it'll just feel that way.)

(Also, when you start to make concessions to people in the hopes that maybe they can pull off something like a miracle, be warned that it is likely not going to happen and remember that a solution is all that matters, not blame.)

author=NicoB
Could you also submit a version that allows me to walk through my party members? I'm really tired of turning around and walking into them.

Oh yeah, I changed that as well (although the reason you couldn't before was to avoid having your party members on top of each other during combat, but we'll see if anyone is annoyed by that.)

Also, I was quite serious when I said you should totally stop! At this point you'd just continue to be frustrated, it'd only get worse, believe me. : )

We watched your Boutalles videos, lots of things we could improve we spotted already, and we got a kick out of watching them, looking forward to more!

author=Craze
Anaryu.

Dump Krisana for me plzkthnx. Why do all of your games look so good? ;_; (...because you and your wife are a good team. Don't actually dump her, plzkthnx2.)

Okay. (To the not dumping!)