Quantum-thoughtsBarefoot software engineer in pants!

I wonder if you could use KickStarter a bit differently, to fund individual developers? I haven’t really contributed much to Pioneer this last couple of months since starting at Crytek, it’s just consumed all of my time.

I’d like too contribute a lot more, in fact I have a fecking long list which doesn’t even include all of the things that I’d like to do with it: https://github.com/fluffyfreak/pioneer/issues?state=open

This must be the same for some of the other Pioneer team too but our “real” jobs get in the way of the fun things we actually want to do.

So, how about KickStarter campaigns for individuals?
You list what you want to do, time estimated, and in priority order with whatever you think is a fair rate of pay for doing something you love.
Let say I did it, since I’ve just thought of it and don’t mind publicly discussing my finances :)

What if I could risk working for only 6 months next year (Hah! Again that is!). That would put my minimal funding for it at about £15k before tax to cover my mortgage and bills etc. Stretch goals would take you further through the list of things you hope to cover so I’d have:

• GPU terrain,
• orbitals,
• water,
• Faction Trade value differences.

For the first 6 months, and that would take £15k to get funding, if I got £15k then that’s what I’d deliver in that time before I bugger off and find more paying work, but stretch goals could also be:

• 3D cockpits,
• Threaded Job Scheduler,
• Atmospheric Heating and re-entry effects,
• Temporary decals showing shield hits,
• Rewrite noise system to use graph/nodes.

They could take the rest of the year and require another £15k divided into £3k chunks for each stretch goal.

All of that is just an example list, I think I’d be doing a lot more than that in a year of solid development on Pioneer for a start! :D money is just a guess as well as I haven’t taken taxation into account or indeed how that would even work :/

What I’m wondering from you lot however is what people think of the idea itself? Getting people to pay for individual developers on Open Source projects isn’t a new thing, there’s lots of examples of companies paying developers fulltime, bounties are a common way of funding large features too so it’s not that odd an idea.

Any obvious problems or flaws in the idea?

Tense? Nervous? Angry? Well then I guess someone’s demanding that you commute to another city so you can lose precious hours of working time to sit in on meetings that won’t help you, answer the questions of idiots who’re hindering you and generally make no progress on the complicated research task that they’ve given you which involves an unfamiliar build system using two different languages which you don’t know.

I am sat here cross legged on the floor before my PC honestly wondering if keeping this job for another month is even remotely worthwhile. The rational part is of course saying that I’m skint, the rest is wondering if another months pay is worth several years in prison for murder(/though obviously I’d plead diminished responsibility and accept manslaughter!). No I need the money, I have the mortgage, Danni wants to do things this summer and I’ve heard nothing back from any of the places I’ve sent my CV off to. On which note actually after all of the talks they’ve had it might be extended… by 1 month! Woo, 4 extra weeks.

That’s worthwhile I guess, as I’ll keep looking and leave at the earliest possible opportunity that presents itself. Not only that but I won’t find out until next week which is *drum-roll* my last week! What a complete clusterfuck.

We’ve got no design that’s worth a shit, nor have we had for the last 5 months, no real management or production, no leadership, no art or scheduling, constant re-design… I realise it’s hard to have re-design without design, perhaps re-whimsical-direction-and-arm-waving is a more accurate description.

I maintain that game development is not really that difficult for the most part. You define your desired goal, you plan the steps that get you from where you are now (having nothing, or maybe already having some tech) to where you want to be. Then you divide up that plan into workloads for people, try to figure out dependencies between tasks, identify risks (wherever and whenever that’s possible), sort it all into you’re preferred organising method, then you get on with it. Shit will hit the fan along the way but at least you’ll know where you’re supposed to be going even if you don’t quite get there you should get most of the way.

I still after 5 months am not sure what this game we’ve been making is really all about! Or how it will play, what the end goal of it is, how we define success or failure, anything! I know what it currently does and I vaguely understand what my current task is, but that’s all. That’s a pretty damning failure isn’t it?

On a different tack entirely, I’ve started work on something that Duncan suggested which I’ve tentatively called “red ship” thanks to this Rainbow Codes name generator implementation :)

It’s beyond early days on that one, I don’t even know where it’ll go yet… well, not quite true I know the inspiration for it was one of the games we’ve overplayed beyond all sense or reason, what I mean is that I don’t know where I’ll take this game eventually. Hopefully though it’s small enough to be able to release in a reasonable timeframe. We shall see I guess.

Andy