pouët.net

i'm tired of all the nonsense lack of communication i witness: coders asking for 3d modellers, graphicians looking for musicians, antisocial people complaining they dont know the right people to colaborate with, that the ones they know dont have time, and that they want to make the best demo ever, and that they would do it if only they werent missing just one little element..

and then there are groups of newbies with motivation but lacking good ideas.

why are people so afraid to expose their ideas to the grand public in an attempt to find the right person for the job? i believe it to be the reluctance to get comments from people not truly interested in helping. and the immense doubt that finding a right person for the job is next to impossible.

what i propose is a place that facilitates the collaboration for scene projects. choice of anonymous description of project idea and list of needed people with certain caracteristics (2d logo, 3d (3dsmax), 3d (maya), 3d (lwo), texture, code opengl, musician (.xm chip), musician (.mp3 hardtrance), etc..) allowing access to information to individuals looking for groups to colaborate with.

the problems arised with such place is mostly the stealing of ideas, people wasting each others time wanting to see whats happening but not beeing able to deliver the requested.

i think it could be good inside and outside the scene.. extending to beeing proof of concept of freelancers beeing able to work well with teams, allowing companies to scout sceners (and sceners scout companies). having multi-levels ranging from amateurs just looking around for ppl with same interests / snooping for ideas to steal, to the more serious work which could interest scene outsiders (both companies and individuals)

i don't have time to implement this and turn it into a real project, but i would really like to see such a mamuth facilitator to be erected and run the proper way, with the scene mentality behind it (i.e. free and open, not money driven and lobby based).

perhaps it's utopia?! anyone with too much free time willing to erect it?

i believe such a project for non-sceners to carry out would always be money driven and doomed to elitistic failure.. with the scene support behind it, we could easily use our contacts to get game companies and other media companies / research centers / whatever to back it and turn it into a usable reality with both room for the deviantart-style idling and the more serious industry integration side.

laughter and destructive criticism may now ensue..

why anonymous?

i like the idea and would like to have such a resource aswell, even just for that kind of site could have interesting and informative discussion topics.
that said, the idea seems to be in the air for a long time, but noone actually realizing it - i admit the perspective of coding such a "monster" site if properly and ad hoc build is daunting.
maybe it could be possible to have a start-off by setting up some decent CRM, and to build a website with time, after it's seen to work?

tribe: some people prefer to be approached by merits of skills and not name reputation.

i will reinstall my entire pcb bbs system, call it at blazing 28800 baud at +45-87-ONLY-ELITE

bbstro goes here

I think I had the same idea few years back and we even talked this over a beer or 23, so I would still approve the project :)
Still, there are a couple of points which came out while discussing this:
- newcomers (a few years back they were called "lamers", but it was politically uncorrect) don't feel like being new in the biz. Many of them would just like to cooperate with scene rockstars since they feel they have huge potential (I once heard "I am not coding a softsynth if it will be used by that lame musician we have in our group"). This is something you cannot change.
- Matti said "why don't people just go to demoparties and meet other scene artists to cooperate with?". To make a demo you have to share ideas with your groupmates and discuss them, which can only be done with people you have some sort of "link" with. Digging out the email of "dj Tranceator X" from a database and asking for a tune before a given deadline is just sick.

Anyway, worth a try imho...

Hey ps, what an interesting point. I deal with this kind of problem in my own group, and I (we?) try to make a work on myself about that. Basically, I may suffer a bit of "psychorigidism". I think "mankind" is the strangest demo group possible from this point of view: half of the official team is inactive, 1/4 are more or less active coders, 1/4 are artists that would work if they could manage to use the coder's tool. When a project is started, the "project manager" choose its people, and the "unchoosen" are just not contacted.

Actually, we got a website, a very active mailing list, and heavy werkzeurg-like demotool projects BY ACTIVE CODERS ( actually 3 huge independant demotools.. hmm... no, 4 huge demotools if i count karate. ). As you might guess, absolutely no code sharing between the projects. ( there only have been some sort of code-project-sharing in the group on amiga around 1996, but that's all.), So, WTF ?
There is two reason for this:
1. The active coders are all experimented coders, so each want to control 100% of what they do.
2. the needs of each engines differs lightly. I need platform independance, other need 100% directX, other is more intro-oriented, one is Lightwave, other is 3DS, etc...

So, What's wrong ? why not ? From now on, we share different architecture experiences and speak about it. keeping the Differences is something interesting. On my recent engine, It made me work the fact that everything should be open and independant enough to make any possible code sharing.

Now second point: newschool demo group always organize there projet like this: You know, LW/3DSMax is the 3D state of the art, And all gfxman must know how to create anything with these tools at lightspeed. So why should we comunicate ? Do your job, as a coder I will just code an "exporter". So all the creation process is completely "freezed by the state of the art."
So, Is it so interesting ? That's the main reason why all recent demos look like each others. I try to break this logic, but I doubt more and more that any artist (music, gfx) could or would be interested to use such stuff....
Anyway, none of the mankind demo was made the same way. The process was radically different each time.
But... this time I'm quite dispapointed about group working. But maybe i will get it back.

Sceneish Stepstone site, it could be.
:)

do like me -> all code, gfx and music !

i havn't any problems with collaboration between me and myself =)

That's what I meant when I said that you must be on the same page with the people you want to make demos with. If, as a coder, you think that coding tools and players sucks and you'd like to work on hardcoded demos you have to find gfx people which are ok with that and can explain "in coder words" their design ideas.
Good (and funny) demomaking requires ommunication and social skills, at least in the way I see it.

ever seen a group with working communication?

aaand it requires a lot of trust that gets built up over time. you have to believe that the guys you work with will deliver and that your hard work doesnt get junked. not to mention, making a demo is a very iterative process - you tend to have to ask for changes from the music, gfx or fx or whatever over and over again.
thats a big enough problem in long-established groups with well known people, let alone a bunch of random guys you got off a website. :)

the other result is, you get just "a tune from person x, some gfx from person y, some code from person z" that dont go together, and you get some horribly incoherent work. (mmm. how many demos actually do look like that.)

the scene is full of groups made up of friends, who arent individually the most talented, but trust each other and get good stuff done because of it.

Word! If you want something done right, DO IT YOURSELF! \o/

also D.I.Y is so punk ;) anyway i like ps idea.

i like the idea. But I think the problem of idea-stealing and people joining a group and not delivering need to be dealt with - how about having the site track these ad-hoc groups, with the group members giving a rating to each other at the end (say a simple "I would/would not work with this person again"). That way, you would build up a rating after finishing projects, real lamers would not get repeatedly picked up, and groups with big ideas + projects could specify "only people with x+ recommendations can view this/apply".

I actually like the idea too, then again i want to work with people who i know for a while and can rely on.

psonice: that looks too much like rent-a-coder for my taste :)
i'd see it more as a meeting and discussion place for projects more than "i need a logo done in two days".

I can imagine the webside rapidly turning into something like "we're looking for a coder to make us a softsynth and possibly an introsystem featuring poser-like models, realtime physics global illumination and realtime caustics. we have a few ideas for a BP200x release. PS: our musician only uses FruityLoops. kthxbye".

makc: not really, my idea there was that established groups with a big half-finished project could find reliable people (think FR looking for a coder willing to finish kkrieger ;) while new people would all be on the same level.

Having a rent-a-coder feel to it would be more of a general issue with that kind of site, but I'd expect any coder with enough intelligence to be able to code to also be able to spot a "we want a code monkey" style request and avoid it :)

ps:
nice idea.
I think that it is a good idea for the community.
The message that wants to be passed on is what Krabob means though my writing was an
extreme example...

Krabob:
I agree.
Actually, there are a lot of demos by the demotool or Maya and the MAX authoring...
I thought that I was able to make the one that the method was efficient and good on the
way last year.
However, "Can I make prods that it is really good?", I feel the doubt.
Actually, there are a lot of voices that the demo that wants to see many times
for these several years was lost between scener of Japan.
Why is it?
It might be in the place that the enjoyment to hardcode has weakened though it is not
understood because I am not experiencing the scene still completely...

Dixan: so true =)

synergy is important when working on projects, especially to get stuff coherent and slick. I fear working on such a recruitment basis this element gets too little attention. as well as the fact you dunno what meat you're getting.. could be a good artist but lazy or an enthusiastic one that only makes some good stuff every now and then.. or a lazy fuck [like me :P]

i totally agree with idea! i'm such a fine musician and no-one invites me to their demogroup. why? lack of communication, that's the only problem! FOR SURE!!!!1oneeleven

i like the fact that it could be annonymous. imagine, developing an entire demo with an unknown coder. someone that gets your gfx and music together and make it rotate in a cube or something.

oh, and i agree with gargaj, ps and willbe but disagree with got, dixan and maali

one more thing:



probably lost in translation...