(Not) Riding Solo blog - jrjellybeans

Recently, I was talking with an artist about working on the next game together.  Actually, it was the old artist that did the fantastic work on The Good Apprentice.  It will be a huge help working with someone again particularly with the art, since I need it so bad.  We’ve decided to try to split up the work 50 / 50, which is great.  I’m really looking forward to the challenge of working with someone else again.

There is just one small problem: I’m a bit worried about clashing ideas.  Specifically, I don’t think he and I LIKE the same types of games   While a difference in ideas is always a good thing (after all, two heads are better than one), I am concerned with the project taking a long time.  With the Flash market being what it is, it’s pretty essential to be able to crank out something pretty quickly.  If we’re spending all of our time arguing over different elements of the game, then it’ll cause some problems and take too long.

Of course I could be wrong, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.  Along those lines, I’m thinking about how much additional work I might have to put into the current level editor to make it more user friendly.  Currently, the editor is a pretty bare bones thing (I actually have a video of it HERE).  While it’s fine for the games I was making, if we’re going to be adding stuff, it’ll take some time to adjust.  For example, the artist mentioned parallax scrolling – currently, the editor supports only a single background that is static.  While it wouldn’t take too long to add it in, it’s just something that will add time to the project.

There’s also the problem of communication break downs.  Obviously, if we’re going to be working that close together, there needs to be constant communication between the two of us.  Every time that I’ve worked on a project with other online groups has ended up not being finished.  Granted I think the artist and I are a bit more familiar with each other than any other group I’ve ever been a part of, but, it’s… um… something to think about.  But, working online brings in the problem of different schedules, different time zones, etc. and those are hindrances to the completion of the game.

All of this is related to the last conversation that the artist and I had (we spoke last Friday or Saturday).  He said that I was more concerned with getting something done than having fun.  And, I said that he was right!  Now that I know the difficulty of trying to make something spectacular with very little resources, I’m trying to avoid it at all possible.  I’d honestly just rather make a good game that was finished and complete than spend my time working on something that might never be finished…

While I am looking forward to working with him again, I’m afraid that the project length will expand significantly due to the complexities of working with more than one person.  Of course, I could be wrong.

Any advice that you guys have, I would love to hear it!