Posting your non-finished game

Hello!

I’m looking for a new graphic artest here and on newgrounds for my game and I can’t find anyone to join the project. Everyone kind of wants to see what they’re getting into (of course) but I’ve been wary of posting my game while it’s 75% or so finished and drawn/animated (very badly) by myself.

Anyone have a suggestion of what I should do? Would stripping it down into a playable demo be a good idea? I’m also worried about someone stealing my idea so I’ve been reluctant to even describe it fully on just general forums.

Let me know if you have any advice for someone in my situation,

-Sage

I would host it on some obscure web page and then show only the few people you want to show it to… email them the address, don’t post it on the forum. And also change the location of the file after a day or two to prevent people linking to it. It doesn’t seem likely that an artist would try to steal your code or your idea anyway.

I’m fairly new to this myself, but I suggest that you write a short description of your game in broad terms. There is a balancing act between getting across why you think your game is special without giving so much away that losers can copy it.

Try to tightly define what you need, so potential collaborators can tell what they would be in for.

And if you have made stuff before point to it, so people can see that you can actually do something.

If anyone is interested you can make demos available to them only. If you are more paranoid or the stakes are high, you could obfuscate these if you have some code you want to keep absolutely secret. And put their name up at the start: “Playable demo with programmer graphics for the sole use of Joe Bloggs, collaborator”. That dissuades people from casually passing stuff around.

And next time, try to work to your strengths. :-)

He he, my strength will never be graphics! I’m always going to need to work as part of a team I’m afraid. Thanks for the advice. My problem isn’t showing the game to someone who’s interested. My problem is it’s hard to generate interest in the game if you don’t want to show what you’ve done so far on just an open forum.

Heh, I know. I mean, I’m in the same boat. But some game styles need more graphics than others. If you’re a pure coder, try to do stuff algorithmically, that’ll reduce your dependence.

If you have something (anything) which you can point to which shows you can make stuff, I imagine that helps. There are huge numbers of wannabes who think their idea would make a great game (but can’t code it), I see them bugging programmers all the time. Artists probably get similar, so they’re bound to be wary. So having a demo with crappy graphics covers one part of the equation.

But artists are likely to be graphics whores as an occupational disease, so maybe you need something else which looks good. I think this is possible with code, but you need to be a bit inventive.

He he, my strength will never be graphics!

Tell me about it :P

sage880, there’s a really easy way. It’s called a trailer :D

Jude your everywhere….