how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

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bladum
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how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by bladum »

what in your opinion is most successful way to build community project on Love forum ? I mean in which scenario people are mostly willing to join new project and build something together ?

aka do it for me developer
1) i have an idea / design / concept art of game <description or pictures> i am looking for someone to help me with.

aka game play developer

2) i made this prototype <youtube link> i am looking for developer to help me with further development as i dont know where to go

aka effect developer

3) i made this alpha version <youtube link> i am looking for developer to help me with make it more polish, like shaders, screen shakes, particles or other effects not related to gameplay

aka game / level designer
4) i made this engine <youtube link> i am looking for developer / designer to help me to fill it with data for example weapon list with damage and cost

any other scenario you think about ?
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airstruck
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by airstruck »

I've wondered about this too. The things you listed sound mostly like "I'll do this, you can help with that" which sounds like maybe a better fit for a small team project than a community project. The fourth thing you listed sounds like it's on the right track, though.

Something that could work well for a community project might be a game where people can add some piece to the game that fits in with the rest. They can work on their own piece pretty much in isolation, and players can somehow use all the pieces together.

For example, it could work with a roguelike game. You'd write the basic "engine," add a few monsters, items, and prefab room designs. Then you'd publish detailed instructions on how to create your own monster, item, or room design. Say you want to create a monster; along with all the usual stuff like damage, hp, special attacks, etc. you'd also give it a dungeon level it spawns at and a percent chance to spawn. Same for items and rooms. Then the game just uses whatever monsters/items/rooms are available.

That way, if I want to try to contribute something, I can play around with it and create something new for the game without really making any commitment. I can try it out myself, and if it makes the game more interesting, I can submit it to the project. You'll have a low barrier to entry where people can add something new without changing anything that's already there. At that point, some people might take more of an interest and want to do some work on the "core" of the game.

I don't think that approach will work for just any type of game, but it could work well for anything randomized like roguelikes or space exploration, build-it-yourself type games (sim city), tactical combat games (people can create new units, skill trees, etc.), and probably others.
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by zorg »

In my opinion, one would be less "shunned" for the last three than for the first, since that's the stereotypical "Everyone has ideas" category; no one likes an idea man (that wouldn't be willing to do anything else, i mean, like contribute code/art/sound/music at all), but even if they would, it's still a bit hard without seeing something concrete that you've already started working on something; and that usually means a prototype, not just concept art or music tracks.
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bladum
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by bladum »

how about define a "class" on forum for every interested user ?

for example = i am engine developer looking for gameplay developer etc...

with such simple demand / capacity system maybe it would be easier to build bigger team
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by peterrust »

IMO the most successful community projects are libraries or engines that can be used by multiple games, as opposed to complete games. As zorg mentioned, everyone has ideas, the hard part is the work necessary to bring those ideas to life.

From my brief time reading the forums, reading and re-reading the Love "awesome" list (https://github.com/love2d-community/awesome-love2d) and prototyping a top-down action/adventure game, the Love has a lot of excellent libraries for specific things (cameras, vectors, game state, Tiled import, music, animation, classes, entity/component, gui, etc), but not many higher-level "game engine" libraries that utilize the lower-level libraries: a platformer engine, a roguelike engine, an action RPG engine, a sim engine, etc, etc. These game engine libraries could come with default graphics (there are some excellent tilesets in the 2D section of opengameart.org) and/or default game mechanics, but would be designed to be extended & customized so that people could make the game their own.

I've recently started building a top-down action/adventure engine (with some, but probably not all, elements of an RPG) and would love to collaborate with others. My game has a dark/intense sci-fi feel, but the engine should work well with any top-down graphic set, including the Liberated Pixel Cup (http://lpc.opengameart.org/), Kenney's (http://kenney.nl/assets), or Hyptosis & similar (http://opengameart.org/content/rpg-tile ... wn-objects).

Regarding tips for a successful open-source project, the tips here resonate with my experience (not gaming-specific, but most of these ideas are probably universal): https://medium.com/code-zen/how-to-main ... .2jkv5sjvl
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zorg
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by zorg »

I'd add to the above that i myself tried creating an "engine" on top of löve, but the truth is that that's similar to wanting others to use your thing, whether it's a game, a library or an engine.
The engine is your idea of how löve would make making (a subset of) games easier. Thing is, people think differently, so, for example, i might fancy an idea to create a bullet hell engine with löve, but unless i myself create an actual game with it, chanches are, no one else will use it.

Same thing with libs, people might reimplement the functionality themselves, because they either know better, or they think they do. :3 (or they just want experience solving such problems themselves)

Also, making engines is just as hard as making games, dare i say harder, since you kinda want to create something generic, for others to use; there may come a point where it's so generic, it's as "hard" to use, or even "hard"er, than just using löve itself. And by hard, i probably mean more complicated.

I mean, some libraries made for löve are complex enough as they are, like serialization libraries (binser and bitser for example; looking at the code will make you realize how much edge cases and whatnot one would actually need to handle for a generic <whatever> implementation; you need to think of whatever you haven't already, and make it so those are also handled, when creating libs/engines made for others to use.)

Similar reason why there's really no "good" GUI library for löve either; there are libs, that aren't wrappers to stuff like imgui, i mean... and by good, i mean "generic enough".

...i kinda lost my train of though, so :|.
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by Sir_Silver »

If you have an idea or ideas for a game, be them code/art/music whatever, why don't you present your ideas and see if anyone is willing to work with you to fulfill those ideas? Some might resist this idea, for the fear that their ideas are so good that they don't want anyone else to steal them - which I understand - however, you are unlikely to get anyone to cooperate with you unless they share commonalities: similar coding skill level, etc...

Just present what it is that you want to do in the best way you can and ask if anyone is interested in helping you.
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raidho36
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by raidho36 »

0) don't argue about projection. :crazy:
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ivan
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by ivan »

I don't think asking people "can you make this for me" is going to be very productive. Everybody likes doing their own thing so it's just not very realistic to expect strangers on the internet to do all the work for you (assuming there is no money involved).
A more realistic approach is to start making your project, show your progress and encourage people to join, regardless of what they want to contribute (art, code or music). Of course having an easy-to-use editor/modding system for your game can lower the barrier considerably. And keep in mind that people are not going to stick around forever, since games can take years to make.
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Re: how succesfully build community project on Love2D forum

Post by kikito »

If someone comes with just an idea I turn them off immediately (I might send this link). The only proposals which remotely interest me start with "I built this [link to something awesome] and I need help".

[Link to something awesome] doesn't have to be complete, but it needs to have the hint of greatness. For example, a designer could show really good pixel art (not just "the typical pixel art of someone who has been practicing for a couple months"). A programmer looking for collaborators should show working code, and probably share some of it as open source (the whole project doesn't need to be open source - some libraries might be enough, to see the programmer's quality).

It would also help to know what kind of commitment the person looking for collaborators is willing to take: "I can do 2 hours every day" or "I have all saturdays free". Similarly, the commitment expectations from collaborators would be nice "If you choose to collaborate here, you must be able to at least dedicate 10 hours per week to it".

I would also want to know if there's money involved, and how would be handled. "This will be a completely open source, free project" or "We'll try to make a Kickstarter, we'll split the money this way, here's an example of the contract we would use".

In short: if you want collaborators, the thing you use to get them is showing off what you can bring to the project. If you can't bring something awesome to a project yet, work on that first, and then ask for help. It must not sound like "I will be the boss with the ideas and you will be the grunt doing all the work". It must sound like "I have this awesome unfinished thing, I have worked on it a lot, but I need some help. Maybe we can finish it up together").
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