   Hero of Allacrost: 2D RPG seeking C++ programmers, artists, others
Team NameThe Allacrost ProjectProject NameHero of AllacrostBrief DescriptionHero of Allacrost is a single player 2D role-playing game inspired by classic console RPGs. In Hero of Allacrost, the player will explore rich environments, solve challenging dungeon puzzles, and fight strategic battles in an active-time based system. The game is free open-source software and is currently available across several platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. In addition to the game, we also develop and release a custom content editor for the game. Development on the game and editor began in June 2004.Target AimAllacrost is cross-platform and we try to make it available on as many systems as possible. It also includes full internationalization support for languages other than English. This game will be of special interest to those who favor a strong gameplay and story more than realistic 3D graphics and physics, and to those who reminisce about the game play. Additionally, the game is not-for-profit and open-source, licensed under the GPL.CompensationAllacrost is created and distributed for free. Because of this we cannot offer financial compensation to those who work on the project. Our team members are quite content with putting forth their efforts into what we believe will someday be a great game to share. We learn a lot from each other on the Allacrost team and you will absolutely learn new techniques and skills from those whom you work aside with. Having this experience will also make you a much more attractive candidate if you are seeking to enter into the gaming industry. Your full name will appear in the game credits.TechnologyWe don't require the use any specific software or  tools. Our programmers concurrently develop on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Allacrost currently uses the following languages, libraries, and APIs:Programming Language: C-plus-plusScripting Language: LuaGraphics librares: OpenGL, libpng, libjpeg, SDL_ttfAudio libraries: OpenAL, libvorbisOther libraries: SDL (user input, system calls), Luabind (C++ - Lua glue layer), QT4 (editor GUI), gettext (internationalization)Talent NeededFirst, here's a link to our "to do" list of the stuff we're working on right now. Allacrost Progress ChecklistI encourage everyone to look at this list, because if you join our team you'll almost certainly be working on something that is listed there. So its to your benefit (and ours) to make sure that there's at least a few tasks on that list that you think you'd be interested in tackling.ProgrammersWe're looking to increase our core programming team by a few dedicated individuals. Its worth noting that our code is very well designed, documented, and professional. If you don't know how to write anything but sloppy code, you'll probably want to pass us up. Our code base is about 40,000 lines of C-plus-plus and 10,000 lines of Lua. This is the result of about five years of work. So you need to be comfortable working with other people. Other qualifications include:- At least an intermediate level knowledge of C-plus-plus- Experience with Lua is helpful, but not required- Knowledge of our libraries (OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, etc.) helpful, but not required- Past game development experience will be very helpful- Need to be an effective communicator and work well within a teamAlso it would be great if we could get a graphics programmer with a good background in OpenGL. We don't have anyone like that on our team at the moment and there is some work to be done in our graphics engine.ArtistsAs you may have noticed, we have a high standard of quality in our game's artwork. However this does not mean that you have to be a top-notch quality artist to join our team. Much of our art is initially created by one person and perfected by another. I've even managed to create some of the artwork that's in the game myself. You don't have to be a pixel artist either, as much of our art is actually hand drawn and colored as you can see in some of the screenshots below.We have some very good artists on this team and they'll be happy to teach you their secrets and help you grow as you work alongside them. We hope you'll consider joining us.Other PositionsIf you don't have coding or art talents but still want to help out, we can find something for you to do. There's music to compose, text to write, sounds to be produced, online services to administer, spammers to fight, etc. Even someone to go scour the internet in search of open source artwork and sounds that we can make use of is helpful. When in doubt, there's no harm in asking us how you can help out.Team StructureOur team is composed of both "staff" and "contributors". The staff are the core group that drives development, coordinate efforts, and take responsibility for getting things done. Contributors, on the other hand, are people who simply help out with small tasks when they have the time and interest. All new members to the team are initially listed as contributors and will eventually be promoted to staff if they show a continued commitment to the project. Here are the lists of our current staff and contributing members (many are not currently active).Active StaffActive ContributorsThe team/project lead at the moment is a fellow named rujasu, who also happened to join our team several years ago after reading one of our GDNet help wanted ads. As for myself, I am the founder and lead programmer of this project. My primary role is that of a programmer, but I'm also the author of the game's narrative, I've contributed some artwork, and I designed one of the maps used in our most recent release.Contact InformationPlease post any questions or inquiries that you have regarding these positions (or anything about the project/game in general) in this thread. To apply for any position in our team, go to http://www.allacrost.org/contribute and read the instructions.Additional InformationLinksWebsite - http://www.allacrost.org/Wiki - http://wiki.allacrost.org/Forums - http://www.allacrost.org/forumIRC channel - #allacrost at irc.freenode.netTask manager - http://bugs.allacrost.org/Sourceforge Project Page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/allacrostSubversion Repository (web-browsable) - http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/allacrost/The Title ScreenExploring a TownMaking Way Through a CaveFighting a BattleCharacter ManagementShopping (technically this image is a draft, but this actually is how it looks in the game at the moment)MusicConfrontation -- standard battle themeBattle Jazz -- another piece of battle musicSave Game -- save game musicLatest releaseDemo 0.2.2, released Sept 21st, 2008.FeedbackAll forms of feedback are welcome and encouraged, including negative feedback as long as it's constructive.
  Hey everyone. I wanted to add a little background about why we're hiring at this moment and what's been happening with our project.Some of you may recall seeing help wanted posts similar to this one over a year ago and might be wondering what happened to us. To make a long story short, beginning a while back a lot of people on our team (myself included) started getting burnt out working on this game and spent less and less time every week working on it. The project came to a near stand still at one point. Many people on the core team have been working hard on Allacrost for 3, 4, some even over 5 years now so getting a little burn out was inevitable I suppose.In the last month though, I've handed off my leadership responsibilities to another dedicated individual so that I can enjoy working on creating the game again and not just dealing with the woes that come with leadership. Several people on our team have begun gravitating back and working once more, but the size of the active team is still very small and insufficient to meet our next release goal in a timely manner. Since the project and the team are picking up steam again, we decided it would be an ideal time to get some fresh faces and ideas and keep the momentum going.This project is (unbelievably) 5.5 years old now. So one thing we can guarantee anyone who decides to join is that we will never disappear. [smile]   ;  Wow, I was totally wondering what happened of you guys. I had wanted to join the effort, but upon entering the forums, everything seemed dead. PM me with the new details, I'm still willing to help out :)   ;  Very, very nice and encouraging to see you guys still working on this!Good luck!  Make sure you guys release this soon!  Dont let it be like several other titles from years ago that never made it to 1.0 (wont name any names ...):D   ;  Just so that people might have an idea of where they might fit in skill-wise, would it be possible for you to give an indication of where the primary contributors are in skill level?For example, how long they've been programming in general, in the project's language of choice, whether they're accademically or self-taught, whether they've worked professionally, or any specialities they have?Speaking for myself, that would go a long ways in deciding whether I was a good fit for the project or not.   ;  Glad to hear that we weren't entirely forgotten about. [smile] Orymus, I don't know what "details" you want to see. The first post of this thread is pretty dang detailed I thought. Feel free to stop by our IRC channel if you want to discuss anything. There's usually someone hanging around at all times.----------On another note, it would also be helpful if we had someone on our team who was dedicated to designing maps, creating content, and balancing that would be extremely helpful. In the past these tasks have typically fallen to our programmers, who do a decent job but usually are more interested in writing code. You don't need much in terms of qualifications because you can pretty much pick it up.Did I mention that in addition to the game, we also make a stand-alone game editor? Right now the editor can create tilesets and maps, but we're working on giving it additional capabilities to do much more. Here's a video that one of the members of our community made showing our editor in action after our last release.Toying with the Hero of Allacrost 0.2.2 EditorI also discovered yesterday that someone had uploaded a short video of the gameplay of our last release. Figured I'd share it here with everyone.">Hero of Allacrost Demo 0.2.2 Gameplay Video;  @Sweet Tea: Thanks! [grin]Quote:Original post by RavyneJust so that people might have an idea of where they might fit in skill-wise, would it be possible for you to give an indication of where the primary contributors are in skill level?For example, how long they've been programming in general, in the project's language of choice, whether they're accademically or self-taught, whether they've worked professionally, or any specialities they have?Great question. Most of the people that have worked on the project have been college students. There are a few that are older and are professional programmers (I don't think any of them were programmers in the gaming industry) and we also occasionally have a few programmers who are still in high school. Age doesn't really matter though, its skill, knowledge, and experience.I think Allacrost is also the first project for a lot of the people on our team...perhaps half of them or more. On average I'd say our programmers had 1-2 years of experience in C++ before joining the team, and practically no one had any Lua experience (some hadn't even heard the name before). The vast majority of our programmers are academically trained, although we have had a few that were self-taught as well. The only specialties of our past/present team that I can think of are computer graphics/OpenGL, and we usually explicitly sought out people with those skills when we needed them.So in general, I'd say the average skill set of a programmer who joins our team is in college or a recent college graduate with 1-2 years of C++ experience, no Lua experience, trained in academia, and little to no prior game development experience. But really our team is a mixed bag of backgrounds, experience, and skill sets. BTW I'm assuming you wanted to know about the abilities of our programmers only, but I can also share the talents of our art and music team as well.-----As for myself, when I started this project (June 2004) I had just graduated college, had a little less than a year of C++ experience, never heard of Lua, never had a job as a programmer, and didn't know the damn first thing about making a game. [lol] But I committed myself to it and here I am today, much wiser, much more experienced, and still just as dedicated. [wink]   ;Quote:Original post by RavyneJust so that people might have an idea of where they might fit in skill-wise, would it be possible for you to give an indication of where the primary contributors are in skill level?For example, how long they've been programming in general, in the project's language of choice, whether they're accademically or self-taught, whether they've worked professionally, or any specialities they have?Speaking for myself, that would go a long ways in deciding whether I was a good fit for the project or not.Hi, I'm the current project lead for Allacrost.  Personally, I've recently graduated from a four-year college in the past year with a computer science degree, but overall I've been programming for about ten years.  I would estimate that about half of my programming experience is in C++, learning various different API's along the way.  I learned Lua while working on Allacrost.  I'm currently employed full-time as a J2EE developer for the government.  Our programming contributors vary a bit in experience level but generally speaking have at least a couple years of software-related education or independent programming experience.   ;  I'd just like to offer my support for this project; Tyler ('Roots') and the team have been recruiting here for a long time now and have successfully grown the HoA from an idea to a polished looking (albeit incomplete) game and editor, and always have progress to show with their new updates.I've heard nothing but good things from those who have worked with the team in either staff or contributor roles, and would strongly recommend it for anyone with appropriate skills.  Although no compensation is offered I think this project is well worth your time as both a learning experience, as well as to provide a good portfolio piece for those hoping to join the industry.  You'll also of course get to take part in creation of what looks to be a great game in the making.To see how far the project has come, take a look at this post from back in 2004:Old school RPG in the making.As always, best of luck to Tyler and the team with their continued progress! [smile]   ;  I've checked the source code and it looks quite well written (the only thing I'm somehow surprised bout is all those friend declarations).The art is also really nice.But what makes me wonder is why does it take so long. the last stable release is from sept 2008, and it's version 0.2, extrapolation that to the final version 1. makes me thing you'll need another 16years.And the amount of work done so far also doesn't look like there is really any production going on.Why is there so few progress, what is your estimated date of having a finished game? Or do you guys not really care about finishing the game as long as you have fun developing? I've seen in your forum that you tackle issues (like the scaling of sprites) quite fast, even with hot fixes to have a good version (like a real company would do to keep production running).I just wonder, what kind of workflow and plans you have.   