I never want to do Wireframes again.

Seriously.




I did all my e-mails, sent out everything to the two (down from four) people that I'm going to interview that live in city here.


The problem is that I still have all these bids out on these freelancer sites.  My feeling is if I pick one of them now, they're going to be like, "Yo, what took so long?  I took on something else."  Because, as everyone knows, everyone and their dog needs a programmer.  Why?  Because no one can really program.  (In some cases, not even programmers.)


I spent a lot of time redeveloping the way the battle system is going to look on screen.  It sucks when you think that the vague idea that made sense of paper really didn't make any sense when you tried to push it into a wireframe.  Lame.


I might even send a couple of these out to the freelancers I'm interviewing.  But tomorrow.  It's Halloween time and I'm going to enjoy myself.



What sucks is yesterday I spent so much time wireframing/spec'ing that I didn't have time for a nap.  Going three days with two hours sleep is just so passé.  I slept ten hours, would have slept more, but my phone was ringing off the hook from 11 a.m.  And it's Saturday. 


Lame!  =P


For this weekend:


-Finish storyboards (still not done, thanks Photoshop for erasing half my wireframes after I made them, duplicating my work.)
-Hopefully the two people I e-mailed will send me back quotes and we can move on to interviews so I can find out if we can work together or what.
-Sleep, nap, and otherwise ignore reality, including all the work that is coming up in the next two weeks.  It's going to be insane.
-Hopefully the artist will e-mail me the next set of sketches I can share.

I've narrowed it down to under 10 programmers

So because I'm outsourcing programming, as a last ditch effort I put up a CL posting, and some of the responses I got were just as good the outsourced ones, and maybe even better.  I now have:


-3 interviews to give to local people in Toronto
-3-4 ish interviews to give to people located in Russia, Germany, India and potentially Serbia
-Some serious decisions to make

I remember hiring the artist was also this tough, I got a lot, a lot of response, but picking the programmer is much harder at this point, since I won't be able to ask for test results besides what's in their portfolio.  Artists can do mock-up sketches, but even if I ask someone to code something for me, that doesn't tell me if they're a good fit for my team.

To-do tomorrow:

-Spec screens (dreading these)
-finish storyboards (almost done for the half of the demo I want to release)
-send e-mails to set-up interviews and quotes (dreading this b/c it's end of day FOR SURE)
-Nap (I seriously need it.)


Done Today:

-E-mailed about 40 e-mails to programmers
-E-mailed artist 3 times today, sometimes with contradicting instructions
-Then harassed her on Gchat (that clearly helped my credibility...)
-Slept (Was feeling sick...)

Some early heroine poses

Hiring a Programmer

So far, I'm stuck between one or two choices across seas and a local Toronto developer.

I'm tempted to go with the Toronto developer, but I haven't even discussed a budget with him yet, nor much of the game specs.

However, the other developer are so starved for work or scrappy for it that I may go with one of them.  (Serbians and Indian developers are in a close race for a small amount of $.)

Today's tasks to be done:

• Review the applications of foreign programmers
• Write out a full game spec sheet
• Make a mock-up with lines and explanations
• Draft Kickstarter/Indiegogo stuff (haven't decided which I'll go with yet...probably Kickstarter for better American visibility

On the bright side, the devs that have responded to me have been positive that the system I've described won't be hard to code.  Which is good, and fits with the initial questions I asked dev friends (who are too busy to work for low pay.)

Some early art

One of the poses of the Lamia. 

I'm a jerk and I'm hiring someone to code for me

Yes, I'm hiring a freelancer to do my code.


I know that makes me a horrid person in the video game community by most standards.  Everyone always says, "Learn how to code."

OK, sure if it was Ruby on Rails, I probably wouldn't mind.  But, no, I don't want to learn Objective C while I pay other people.  I might as well just pay more people.  You know, because I'm not completely destitute yet.

The sad thing is that I want to learn how to code...I just don't have the time at the moment, and it's not cost efficient.  Second, I really believe in the mantra of focusing on what you're good at.  I'm good at

• Creative stuff
• Managing people
• Marketing/PR
• Giving away my money

All of this suggest, logically, that I should hire someone else to do it.  Also

• I would have to buy a Mac (I had a dev but he backed out...we would have used his stuff)
• I would have to learn everything
• The game idea would fizzle out I would get frustrated, I would throw said Mac against wall, negating both progress and possession of a shiny object
• I believe in hiring people helps make the world a better place because people get paid to do work, and you get to stress less.  It's like charity, only I get something else out of it.

More importantly, I'm not very good at logical thinking at the best of times (I'm investing in an adventure iPhone game) so I think someone with experience and code and tricks on hand makes a lot more sense than well, anything else that I could come up with.  I have ideas about how things work, and I could probably cobble things together or tweak (read: destroy) code once it's finished, but it's just so much easier working with someone with experience.

This is the start of something new...ish.

So I have been working on a project I started in the summer to make an iPhone game. 

I decided I would blog some of my experience, and being as transparent as I possibly can without giving away too much in the game, and without boring other people.  (We'll see which one of those I really accomplish.)

I have always wanted to try and make a commercial game, but time or $ has always held me back.  I definitely have time (but next to no $) so this will be about my attempt to create a game that I think is really fun, and learn along the process.

Development:

Code:  Searching for a programmer (last one backed out at the last minute)

Art:  1 Designer doing character art, 1 Designer doing 3d backgrounds

Story Design/Game Concept/Marketing and Organizing:  25% complete for the demo (subject to change, depending on who I get to help me program this sucker.)