The True Story of a Collab with Four Artists

Two programmers and four artists. AS2 code in a compiler that doesn’t support classes. No Game Design document. How’s that sound for a collab?

There’s only one topic in the forum about a successful collab right now, and I wanted to add an alternate perspective for people to think about.

This is the story of how my collab team actually fits together, and how we make progress. I decided to post it now, before the game is complete, because the focus in this writeup is on why the team works, rather than on how the game turns out.

We’re working on an idle game, which was my idea, and an idea that I had to pitch quite hard to bring Skaterfly onboard as the other programmer. Neither of us are strong enough artists to be able to handle everything the game needs, so I also had to find a reliable source of art.

We ended up with four artists. We have one guy who provided the initial image the game is themed around. He’s currently working on suitable matching backgrounds, and so far they look great. Then I found two other artists willing to take cheap commissions, and negotiated their rates even lower. They’re getting increased exposure in the game in exchange for charging me less for their work than they usually would. And finally, a guy I’ve known a while agreed to help out with a couple of minor things, and he’ll hopefully be able to redesign the menu and the buttons for us as well.

So that’s six people, plus beta testers, working on one idle game. How are we managing to get so much done? As I write this, during a break from coding, the programming for our game is about 70% complete. The art is holding us back a bit – we request or commission most of it after a feature is complete, allowing the artist a better idea of how it needs to look.

The key is in knowing how much each person is actually capable of, relative to how much work the game needs overall.

Our background artist, for example, is a brilliant designer. He’s also quite a slow worker, and has college taking priority over anything else. If he was our only artist, the game wouldn’t get finished, because he wouldn’t be able to get everything done.

And the programming isn’t a 50/50 task. Of the two of us, I’m the better programmer, therefore I expect to carry more of the workload. Skaterfly gets delegated easier tasks – stuff he’ll be able to complete, and / or things that I find tedious to program.

We also have a fairly clear structure in place within the team. It’s not forced on any of the team members, but the hierachy is obvious: the two programmers are the ones making the decisions. We actively invite feedback and do our best to make sure everyone understands what their work is going towards, but the artists and the testers don’t get an equal say in how the game works. It’s good to let everyone have their input, but you also need someone making the choices for the game, and that should be the person who knows how the final product will look.

If that person with the plan for the game happens to be you, don’t think I’m saying you just get to boss everyone around, though. You should be putting the most work in. Its your idea, so show that you believe in it and everyone else will jump on.

I hope that this all shows people that there are other ways to make a functional team than the conventional setup suggested by collab forum regulars.

Thanks for reading! :)

10/10 Good read, will be waiting for your game

Nice post. When will the game be published?

In my experience, it doesn’t matter how the collab starts, the programmer(s) always end up making the decisions.

Originally posted by nadjatee1996:

10/10 Good read, will be waiting for your game

Thanks nadjatee :D Its always nice when the first reply to a thread is positive :D haha.

Originally posted by simplegoogly:

Nice post. When will the game be published?

When its finished. Lol. We’re aiming to have it all completed within this month, because there’s not a huge amount of programming left to do now. But it could take longer, probably depending on how long the art takes to finish.

Enough of the programming is done that with all the right art, the game would appear finished if we released it right now, but I’d like to get some more stuff added first anyway, so the wait for art isn’t too big a deal.

I was originally hoping to get through it fast and have it done before the end of August, but I injured my back pretty badly playing soccer and couldn’t work on it much for a lot of that month :p

Originally posted by CuriousGaming:

In my experience, it doesn’t matter how the collab starts, the programmer(s) always end up making the decisions.

That does seem like the best way for this sort of team to work. In this case it was essential because the artists weren’t previously aware of idle games, and the concept took a bit of explaining before they really understood how the game would work.

I’m only seeing this from one side of course, but to me it seems like its a lot easier to draw art for something that’s already been programmed, than it is to program something within the confines of pre-made art.

to me it seems like its a lot easier to draw art for something that’s already been programmed, than it is to program something within the confines of pre-made art.

I’ve wanted to run a contest that involves pre-made art for a while, haven’t done it due to laziness.

The idea is to get a set of graphics (perhaps with the help of people from the arts forum) and then give N days to the programmers to make a game using those graphics. We could have a special edition of the GiTD with pre-made art, that may help bringing the GiTD back to life.

Also, that would allow the programmers to focus on, you know, programming, instead of wasting valuable time trying to make what a graphical artist should be doing.

There was a GoTW that only allowed pre-made art from the Labs pack. I didn’t end up making a game for it, but it seemed like a neat idea.

this is pretty awesome! my question is are you guys having problems with keeping the art in one consistent style? That’s always been my fear when working with multiple artists.

The art isn’t entirely consistent in some places, but I don’t think its different enough to affect the game.

Good artists can style match within their range if you show them some samples, but our two main game artists happened to start working at the same time, meaning we couldn’t show either of them how the other was drawing at first. But we had each artist working on different stuff in the game, so that everything within that area or type of item is consistent with itself. All the hats are drawn by the same person, for example, so you never look at a hat and think “well that doesn’t fit”.

From my point of view, even though some people will see that the art doesn’t quite match up in some places, its not a problem. Its better than programmer art, it means the game will be finished a lot faster, andI think the style is similar enough that many people will assume its an intentional difference anyway.

Two programmers and four artists… How’s that sound for a collab?

Sounds better than one programmer and zero artists ;3 (aka: me, most of the time)

Skaterfly gets delegated easier tasks – stuff he’ll be able to complete, and / or things that I find tedious to program.

Seriously? I need one of these ‘Skaterflies’…

Originally posted by saybox:

As I write this, during a break from coding, the programming for our game is about 70% complete. The art is holding us back a bit – we request or commission most of it after a feature is complete, allowing the artist a better idea of how it needs to look.

Just remember the last 10% takes 90% of your time :D

Originally posted by truefire:I need one of these ‘Skaterflies’…

I found him in the wild and trained him myself :)

He was 12 when I started teaching him AS2, and since he learnt from me, we have a similar coding style and use the same tools, which makes collaborating together way easier. But I’m still the better coder, so it makes sense for me to do the tricky parts of the project, and for him to take his pick of the easier stuff.

A wild skaterfly (lvl 12) appears!

Syntax correction, I choose you!

Syntax correction uses Fix Error 1009! It's a critical hit! 57 damage!

Skaterfly flinches.

Saybox throws a great ball.

*doot*

*doot*

*doot*

*fanfare*

You caught a wild skaterfly. Would you like to give this coder a name?

lol

I still dont understand why you need so many people working on it :S Idle games are one of the easier games to create. Which wont get sponsored, So good your paying commissions.

“Easy” is relative to what goes into a game O.o

There are two reasons we have four artists working on it. The first is speed – if you only work with one artist, it takes a lot longer to get all the art. Ans the second is that if you have artists who specialize in one type of graphic, and then you need stuff outside that range (eg buttons and menus), your options are to find another artist, or to use programmer art for them.

And there are no plans to look for a sponsor for it, I didn’t even mention sponsorship in my post.

Originally posted by c0rupt3d_l0l:

I still dont understand why you need so many people working on it :S Idle games are one of the easier games to create. Which wont get sponsored, So good your paying commissions.

Agreed
Might as well make a dress up

A dress-up game with a lot of art would still need a lot of art to be drawn for it :)

And there are no plans to look for a sponsor for it

I could market your game (read: put on FGL, wait for sponsors) for 20% commission (on the sponsorship payment. keep your ad-rev). ;3

Lol. If only it was that easy to find sponsors for something :D

For the benefit of the people saying idle games are “too easy” to need a team working on them, I checked through the game source just now, and although I’m not gonna actually sit here and count every line, I think we’re at about 2,000 lines of code, maybe a little bit more :)

There are idles with different levels of complexity.

Anyways, expect a thread about a team consisting of purely programmers soon :)

I think we’re at about 2,000 lines of code, maybe a little bit more

That all? I don’t think I’ve ever published anything (except for GiTD/GotW entries) with less than 3500 lines.

I bet those weren’t dressup games though.

Its likely we’re over 2,000 (partly because I have a habit of coding everything on one line), but I’m not gonna sit here and count every line :P

Real men program up to 20,000+ lines of code :3

I have a “Source Code Stats” Plugin for FD that does it for me.

Also tells me how many are comments or whitespace.

Real men Those who lack OOP abilities program up to 20,000+ lines of code