Overly Optimistic?

I just had someone post a comment on the blog about my overly optimistic view of my new project. I figured I would post my answers so everyone else interested could read them as well.

>>overly optimistic/ambitious?

That's not an unfair assessment.  However, I do have confidence in a few things.  I'm confident that I can do this project; based on the fact that I have successfully completed similar projects in the past, more than once.

I am also confident that I am managing technical risk.

For example, one of my first requirements is not to get even any game play working.  My first requirement is to get a server written that can manage 1,000 simultaneous connections and to test it with bot scripts which actually create 1,000 connections and move characters around the world.

The 'M' in MMO stands for 'massive' and if I can't achieve that, then nothing about the game client really matters.

The key to success, in my view, is to provide a unique truly massive gaming experience; the kind you could only ever get, to date, from 'Planetside' and do better.  Having been the lead software engineer on 'Planetside' I would like to think I know a little bit about this.

>>have you already prioritized a list of features so that you know what to drop when you don't meet deadlines?

Yes.  I'm using Agile/Scrum methodology and Rally to track everything.

>>(and have designed play tests to know that these features aren't make-or-break?)

Well, we aren't doing the project that way.  This project will be in a continuous state of open beta from the day we have enough server infrastructure in place and two people can walk around the game world.  The game will never officially 'ship' in that sense; but rather features will continuously be added, and game design refined through play test over time.

This is the only way any truly successful multiplayer game gets developed.  If you do not always have a playable game, during the entire development process, you are taking an absurd risk in my opinion.

And, while we will never officially 'ship' the game, we will officially start charging people money for beta testing.

However, even then we have a lot of flexibility.  One of the key things to test is the monetization of the game, and what works best.  So monetization will be play tested and balanced just like everything else.

My design is that, from the stand point of the game mechanics, you will never play the game for 'free'.  What will be free are credits to play the game, which I will hand out with abandon to anyone who is willing to help us test and tune the development process.

Once the game reaches a level that it is truly fun to play, and I feel worth charging money for, at that point I will just stop giving away so many free credits.

For example, let's say you want to beta test.  Well, I can give you a $100 worth of credits to play the game (enough credits to play the game a ridiculous number of hours for five months).

Once those credits run out, if that guy is still in beta test, he is going to want some more credits to keep playing the game.

If I haven't created a game that is enough fun to accomplish this, then I will have failed.

However, this game is starting with a known, proven, and completely addictive game design.  So, my confidence level is fairly high that I can find a decent sized group of people who will enjoy playing it and be willing to pay a modest amount of money for the privilege. I'm not talking about charging them some absurd amount of money in subscription fees, or annoying the shit out of them with micro-transactions and/or advertising.  My initial plan is simply to charge very modest some of money per time played.  Something roughly on the order of 25 cents for half an hour.  But, this too, is all subject to change, refinement, and tuning as testing plays out.

This game is going to provide a unique gaming experience you simply cannot get anywhere else in any other form.

>>anyway, good luck with it all! Keen to see your demo in 2 weeks

Thanks, looking forward to getting it out!

Progress update

I have made some big decisions to move this project forward in the past 24 hours; and these decisions involved committing thousands of dollars out of my own savings to get things off the ground.

First, I have formed a limited liability corporation, under the name 'Duatiu LLC', which will have 10,000 shares of stock to distribute to partners.

Second, I filed a trademark application on the name 'Duatiu'.  I expect no difficulties since the name is a coined term and doesn't show up anywhere on any search engines.

Third, I have come to an agreement with partner Shawn Presser to work on Duatiu *full time* for the indefinite future.  Shawn is being reimbursed for his time spent on this project as a combination of shares of stock and a modest amount of cash to help defray his own personal expenses.

This is a pretty big deal; having a talented software engineer able to work on the project full time should go a long way towards pushing the game to the next level.

Our current ball park milestones are as follows:

• Within Two Weeks : A downloadable demo of the Duatiu game world.  You will be able to fly a free camera and walk an avatar around the game environment.  The visual production values will be close to the final product.  Using precomputed radiosity, nice diffuse textures, and a high resolution detail texture, we expect the game environment itself to be very visually stunning.  The game engine is being written exclusively in C++ for OpenGL.  While it will initially run on Windows; it may at a future time run on a wide array of tablet operating systems.  (Perhaps of interest to the programmers who follow this blog, I will be releasing my radiosity lightmapping tool completely open source at the same time.)
• Within Four to Six Weeks : Be able to connect to a server, hosted on Amazon.com, and walk around the game environment and see avatars representing other playrs.
• Within Three Months : Be able to play a simple basic game involving calling in supplies, operating a shield, and shooting human opponents; all in a multiplayer environment.
• Within Six Months : Functional AI agents running on the server; more of the actual game play implemented.

These are just back of the napkin estimates, but it does give you a general ideal of the scope and time frame we are thinking about.  I'm extremely excited that Shawn has committed to working full time on this project.  I expect good things to come from this soon!

My new project 'Duatiu' is actually getting some traction after just 24 hours of announcing it!

Well, I have already received quite a bit of positive feedback in the past 24 hours about this project.  First, a number of my friends in the industry have promised to help me out and that has been amazing!

So far I have commitments of time from:

Shawn Presser : Who is writing the core graphics engine and has already been working on the project for several months.  Shawn's contributions to this project have already been amazing.  We are currently working towards our first milestone to provide a demo that will allow anyone to run a character around one of our game world environments sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Jared Freedman, An excellent game designer, developer, long time friend, and all around good guy.

Billy Zelsnack : Billy is a well known figure in the game industry and a long time friend.  He has volunteered to help with the game project when he can.

Charles Bloom : It helps to have good friends in the game industry and Charles, even though he is one of the top guys in the world he still took the time yesterday just to whip up a little bit of code I needed to solve a problem.  I see shares of stock in Charles's future.  Plus, he's a fellow Porsche fan so we have that in common.

John Miles :  What has John Miles done on this project?  Nothing.  Does John Miles even know that this project exists?  Probably not.  Have I even asked John Miles if he will work on this project?  No I haven't.  But, as a life long friend, I'm sure he will help me out when I need it.

Wajih-Halim : A recent college graduate in computer science who wishes to help with graphics special effects on the game.

Ben Hesketh : Runs his own successful game company and contacted me from this website because he thinks the project sounds interesting.  Ben has volunteered to contribute on the server code.  The website for Ben's company, Compass Engine, can be found here.  And a link to his recent game 'Bounty Island' can be found here.

Robert Sitton : Robert is a long time game industry veteran and was one of my key sidekicks when developing the game 'Planetside' for Sony Online Entertainment.

Joe Bizz : Musician and sound engineer and fellow UFO enthusiast.  So how that networking shit works?

RAD Game Tools : The guys at Rad Game Tools are long time friends of mine, Jeff, Mitch, David, Brian, Sean, and others.  They have always been extremely helpful in supporting me and my projects and it looks like I may be able use their latest product 'Iggy' to accelerate the development process for this game.  'Iggy' is an amazing product written by the the no less amazing Sean Patrick Barrett (one of the Gods of the open source community).  'Iggy' is an embedded Adobe flash engine that virtually eliminates the need to do any custom user interface programming.  The entire user interface for a game becomes a series of Flash/ActionScript/FLEX data assets.  This should greatly accelerate the development of the user interface for this game.  Of course, that means that now, instead of looking for a GUI programmer, I need an expert who knows how to use these tools; but that seems like a much simpler hurdle to leap.

This is a really good start to the virtual team, but I still need some more artists to join the project.  Hopefully when people see the caliber of people involved they will realize they are missing the boat if they don't hop on soon.