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Want to help write a simple RPG for iPhone?

Now I’ve recovered from GDC illness, I’ve got a little free time again, and I’m starting one of the iPhone games I wanted to write. This is a “for fun and learning” project, so it’s deliberately chosen to be low maintenance / easy to make a first version / easy to extend later / etc. I need artists, designers, quest-writers, and programmers.

Well, I don’t *need* anyone; I can do this all myself. But I’d rather do it with other people, and I thought there might be some hobbyists reading this who’d like to do something similar.

EDIT: there’s now a googlegroup for people working on this. You *must* contact me first via email (see below) or your request to join will be automatically rejected. http://groups.google.com/group/dmclone

Super-short summary:

  • Clone of Dungeon Master / Eye of the Beholder (google them if you haven’t played them)
  • …except “online” (not sure how much direct multiplayer interaction to allow, but probably “a lot”)
  • i.e: real-time / turn-based mixture, using simple fixed-perspective 2D-faking-3D graphics, and using the built-in pauses in gameplay to hide the network latency

I would like to do these bits myself (most important first)

  • Server code
  • Level design
  • RPG system design

I would really like other people to do these bits (most important first)

  • Graphics sets
  • RPG system + balancing
  • iPhone client
  • Quests / scripting / level-design

I could do all that myself, easily enough. Fine. Whatever. But given my limited spare time, I’d rather focus on doing a small number of things (i.e. server code) better, with more depth, than doing the whole thing but much more shallow / weak.

For the first release, everything’s GPL licensed: code, content, everything. It’ll probably take us several releases to get something we’re happy with publishing, and at the start of each new release we might mutually decide to change the license; but we’ll start off with GPL and see how that works out.

If you’re interested, email me at adam.m.s.martin@gmail.com, tell me a bit about yourself, and what you’d like to do and why. Prior experience isn’t required – enthusiasm, personal interest, and “actually producing something” is. If I get no responses, I’ll just go ahead and do it all myself. Slowly :).

6 replies on “Want to help write a simple RPG for iPhone?”

I loved Eye of the Beholder and other first person dungeon games a lot when growing up.
I’m currently busy developing other projects so I’m afraid I have no time to help out.

It would be awesome if you blogged your progress, would be a lot of fun to follow along and give any feedback that you may request :)

Hey Adam,

I have wanted to do this for a while, and some interesting (and relevant) demos but struggled a bit with the motivation of working on my own (usual story for development in that all the the difficult problems are solved, then lose interest).

I even setup a Google Group (and some random joined it) but I didn’t progress with it, particularly because I changed jobs and became busier at work. I’ll drop you an email with some demos.

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