   [MMO] Elives Online - A journey begins (v3) and visual concepts
Elives Online - A Journey BeginsCopyright (c) 2010 Elives InteractiveAnnouncementHello everyone, I keep receiving applications by email but I would also like to know more your opinions regarding the advert itself so I can improve it, especially important points to be included that could help or others not clear. Thanks.After only a few weeks of recruitment, we have had more then two dozen applicants to our project and amongst them, we have found the some of the talent we need for our core team. A few of us are now starting to work on specific areas of the project including visuals, features and strategy. However we are still looking for some more talented individuals to complete our team.  So even if you can only spare a few hours each week but believe you could make a positive contribution to our project, we would be interested in hearing from you to discuss your potential.At the moment, we are mainly seeking:- Monster and Environment Concept Artist with a strong interest for anime design, a bright and colorful style and possibly modelling skills; (we have already anime artist, 3d designer and icon artist, plus founder who acting also as content/art director, brand identity, advertising and web design)- Unity and Smartfox Developers to lead the client and server development team and produce a clean, lightweight and scalable multiplayer product; (we are looking for both unity and smartfox to expand the dev team as we have already 2 developers)- Web Marketers, Promoters and Sponsorships/Investors interested in evaluating our potential for partnerships or investments.Apart from this we are reviewing other artists and musicians.Once we have completed some promotional material and our business plan, we can then discuss in more detail an effective strategy for capturing investment opportunities that can support the design, development, updates and technologies to be used in the long term.ProjectElives Online aims to be a lightweight, browser-based social, fresh and colorful 3d anime massive multiplayer role playing game.  It will focus on a community of inter-connected lives where gamers play specific roles in a player-based economy that may impact and affect other players.Through different classes and playing styles, our players will grow with a specific 'Life Path' that will suit with their own personality. They will choose to dedicate their in-game life to a single Life Path in order to reach the greatness of the Ultimate Spirit Class.Players will be able to live their in game lives exactly how they choose.  For example, some players may wish to spend their time gaining levels and more powerful skills, travelling around the world discovering useful materials, or simply living in the town making deals and creating powerful, unique items. Other players may choose to fight monsters and bosses with power, grace or magic items prepared by other players or embark on journeys in search of powerful healers to get mystery rewards. In short, our players will have the freedom to live their elives as they see fit.Gaming Highlights- Social-based class system featuring 22 classes and 6 final 'Life Paths'.  Each with interconnected in-game lifestyles and skill trees:  from the adventures of a Collector to the crafting of a Genius, from the sleek and deadly hits of a Fury to the magnificent and powerful combat skills of a Guardian; or from the intelligent and gentle Angel to the dark and extraordinary spells of a Demon.  This will include 4 class advancements starting from a simple Citizen and 139 levels for each path;- Bright and colourful anime characters, monsters and environmental design featuring different visual ageing stages as well as ultimate, powerful hero and spirit classes for each Life Path.  The Ultimate Spirit Classes will be able to switch from an invisible to human in a parallel world;- Essential player-based economy directly connected with the world and its improvements creating a collaborative environment that grows constantly with the community;- Well-organised collecting and crafting systems, extensive materials and an item database that includes real life references to facilitate both a gaming and learning experience - especially for younger gamers;More highlights will be released in the next months;Our PhilosophyWe are passionate about creating captivating worlds that will amaze our target audience of gamers offering a fabulous and long lasting gaming experience with a colourful, charming anime touch. We will be using the latest technologies targeted at indie developers to ensure the best compromise of quality and effectiveness.  We aim to cut out the typical whistles and bells of big budget, mainstream competitors and focus on simple, original and effective features to create a unique and enjoyable gaming experience.Business ModelWe are planning to develop a free-to-play gaming web service supported by sponsorships, small investments, a solid marketing strategy and integration with social and relevant sites.  It will also be a micro-transaction business where players can convert real money into Elives currency in order to purchase special in-game items and character enhancements.  In the future we aim to gain greater investment that will allow us to start up a small company.Market AnalysisOur target players are mainly teens and young adults interested in anime, casual gaming and role playing games up to hard core gamers.  Our competitors are mainly low-budget social games with small to medium player bases and other anime-based role playing games with similar features.Marketing StrategyWe aim to promote the game through an internally developed marketing campaign guided by the visual identity and professional marketing experience of the founder and eventual freelance promoters, increasing visibility through leading gaming sites, blogs and other communication tools.  We aim in the long term to create an effective brand identity that will contribute to the success of our business.Sales StrategyWe will study the different strategies for our online micro-transactions payment system in order to make it easy to use and accessible to our target audiences.  Next year we will be evaluating effective methods of increasing business sales.MilestonesThe project will start officially in Summer 2010.  We aim to produce video teasers, trailers and an online world preview/demo in 2011. We will continue to develop our project and commence beta testing during 2012, releasing more promotional video trailers.  A final version of the game should be expected between 2012 and 2013.CompensationThis gaming project is planned to start with an essential budget to cover development tools and server related expenses. As mentioned above, to begin with, it will essentially be a project funded by possible sponsorships and investors as well as any revenue from the micro-transactions business once it becomes profitable. Therefore our team positions are currently unpaid with future payment through investors and revenue or eventually other agreement to discuss on a case basis.TechnologiesUnity will be used as client development tool while Smartfox Server and eventually Terracotta will take care of the server side. The development will start on local machines and will then be moved to a virtual server, scalable to private server or clustering of server if necessary. Our development will start with the upcoming release of these middleware products, Unity3d 3.0 and Smartfox Server 2X, as the improvements of those platforms in the near future deserve the wait.  In the meantime, we are continuing to plan and progress work in other areas.FounderPrint and web creative designer currently working in a leading web services enterprise environment based in London.  He has professional experience in brand identity, advertising and printing and a wide set of interests from music production and sound design to programming, photography, visual arts and project management. He is a computer-based role playing ex-hard core gamer and computer technology enthusiast with a strong interest in anime, games and asian culture.  His objectives are focused on developing a social, funny and effective gaming experience with a strong community and player base using his vision, background interests and a capable team.TeamWe have short-listed some potential individuals with various skills and few are already part of the core team.  We had applications from Unity and Smartfox developers, concept artists and modellers, content producers, web marketers and musicians but remember we are still looking for more team members!We are already working on character design concepts with our anime character artist - codename 'Mez' - and here  is a taster of what has been achieved so far. I, the founder of Elives, have been working on the global planning aspects including website development, game features and strategy as well as visual and documentation development. I'm also discussing with our developers, other designers and musician about design and music directions, as well as client and server development structure and approach.Our core team will be announced in more detail once the project has officially started in early July and the availability of each member confirmed.ToolsGoogle Talk or Skype will be used for communication between team members and 'Huddle' will be used as the collaboration and project management tool. Individuals involved into this project will be free to use their favourite software for their tasks and should provide their work in a format compatible with free applications if at all possible.How to contact usEmailelivesinteractive@gmail.comWebsitewww.elives.euAnime Concept CharactersIf you cannot see, click this oneConcept Design May 2010FeedbackIf you have any comment, questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me here or via email.[Edited by - nicologames on May 19, 2010 10:01:02 AM]
Hello everyone, I keep receiving applications by email but I would also like to know more your opinions regarding the advert itself so I can improve it, especially important points to be included that could help or others not clear.Thanks for your time and your feedback.;  Hello everyone,I'm not promoting myself in the music field, but just bumping with style and also want to show some ancient stuff, so who wants to collaborate on Elives knows I have some background in sound design and music ;). Any comment would be appreciated.Basically those tracks were done between mid-90s to early 00s and you can imagine the hardware at that time for home users, 386/486 and Fm cards with thirdy party conversion using soundfonts, I was one of those self-taught who were programming sf2 libraries and later sfz ones, and basically I was "let's say composing" note by note with fm synthesis. Then later on I have got guitar, bass, keyboard and other stuff, but mainly I was singing and doing experiments and sound design instead of composition.Strings, piano and strange soundsThese are few fast mute-keyboard realtime experiments from soundtrack style to I don't know "new age"? did in 30mins-1hr each with samplers at least 6 years ago.http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_experiments_01_tasti_nella_tristezza.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_experiments_03_eco_dalla_terra.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_experiments_05_lamenti_nello_spazio.mp3Epic prog metalPhantasye stuff were programmed note by note with fm sounds after school, prog epic symphonic metal started at the beginning around 1996-98 (epic prog metal fan) and then I have updated the sound with some samplers and added a real guitar years later, maybe 6-8 years ago. These are long pieces and took endless hours to write and adjust, note by note and including modifying parameters by hand, basically I was almost writing midi at the core.http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_phantasye_preview_03_mewlips_-_wars_of_the_underworlds.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_phantasye_preview_04_medieval_-_in_the_middle_of_the_firewalls.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_phantasye_preview_05_surprise_-_souls_in_the_watergarden.mp3Romantic chineseXialous Themes are note by note asian-style experiments to try out some new samples, 3 tracks done in 3 nights, each night around 3 hours spent from the first note to finalization, year 2004.http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_xiaolus_themes_destiny.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_xiaolus_themes_dreamy_night.mp3http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_xiaolus_themes_walking_through_my_mind.mp3A mess in the Apple StoreApple in London is a funny story, first time I went to the apple store in London, I saw an high end mac 32" with a mute-keyboard (I'm a pc/win user since dos 3) and start strumming with garageband with around 200 people checking phones and macs, recorded without sync and the mess around, no headphones, instrument by instruments, whatever I was thinking, it was funny with all the kids around, kind of tribe party after some time, and in the end a mac expert offered to burn it on a cd, so I brought the experiment at home, year 2006 :)http://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_-_apple_in_london.mp3Voice ExperimentAnd if you want to laugh a bit, turn down the volume and listen to it, it's an experiment with my voice and bass, very old recorded may 10 years ago with a "kind of toy" mic, sounds very poor :) but funnyhttp://www.nyosources.com/nyosource/works/nyo_vocal_improvisations_i_04.mp3Cheers,Nicolo[Edited by - nicologames on May 21, 2010 12:35:00 AM];  Hello,As you may know, I'm currently looking for 2 or 3 more developers to help the 2 currently in the team. Tain is a pro developer/analyst who will work on the global development but mainly on the client side with Unity3d and Josh is a brillant student interested in Java and server development, he will work on Smartfox Server.We are starting to define the whole structure but we need more unity (C# or js) and smartfox (java) to improve the development.Cheers,Nicolo   