In April 2021 we will be doing an incubator project, where coders, artists, and other enthusiasts gather together to work on a simple project to practice their skills and gain experience. This could, potentially, interest the participants in to work with use on game making projects in the future. If you code, design UI/UX, design graphics (2D or 3D), compose game music or FX sounds, …or have children who are good with crayons; you may enjoy joining the team.

As sometimes it’s difficult to get experience on coding projects one could use in their CV and effectively demonstrate, this could be a good way to start. The final product will be free on whatever platforms we manage to publish it. The participant names will be listed in credits as contributor, along with the elements you were responsible for. The final product will be available on GitHub to showcase. As a good warm-up, I’ve chosen the tried and true classic, the River Raid:

It’s difficult to innovate on a classic of such recognisability and simplicity, and maintain the project within a reasonable time constraint. A project of this size should not take longer than 2 weeks for a 4-person team, taken into account they will contribute about 15 hours a week. We may wind up with a bigger team or get things done faster. We may make it a scrolling shooter, or give the player more control. We can innovate on weapons, fuel, enemies; but the primary objective should be to be ready with first iteration (a perfectly playable game) after a week and with the finished product the week after. The tentative commencement date is the 9 Apr 2021. Starting on Friday, we may get a good head start not colliding with the work week.

What roles/tasks need filling:

• UX and UI designer - possibly most important and quite underappreciated role.
• If we have cross-platform UI designers with Unity Input System experience, we can go for multiple platforms.
• C# Unity developers
• player movement/behaviour
• enemy movement/behaviour
• weapon classes, projectiles movement/behaviour
• game stages design
• game menu, game over screen, high score table, credits, other manu stages
• Graphic designers - the game is 2D in nature, but sprites or interface elements could be 3D-rendered
• level designs - here we could use crayon-powered creativity!
• enemy sprites
• player sprites
• collectibles, projectiles, and particles
• interface elements
• Animator - to breathe life into enemies, plot paths and set triggers.

If you are interested, let me know through the [ contact form ], or any other means. If you have an idea on what part you could take on - great. If not, no problem, you can pick later, as we discuss the tasks.

Assignments will be coordinated through a Trello board or a similar collaboration platform.
We will communicate via email or im. Participants will have support of seasoned coders; if you're stuck, you won't be stuck for long.
We will run a synchronisation calls every couple of days to present progress and to make sure everyone's part is working well with the others'.
We will record screenshares to walk the participants through challenges, where possible, and post them on YouTube (see the playlist at the bottom).

Most of the game mechanics will bo not much unlikt this ancient Unity tutorial here:
[https://learn.unity.com/project/space-shooter-tutorial]

This tutorial is a bit outdated, but covers few general concepts that are still applicable.

Time commitment is different for everyone. If all you can contribute is a single sprite - that's great, too. If you find yourself in over your head - this is a great learning experience and we'll be there to help you out.

Any tutorials and help will be uploaded to this playlist:
[ YouTube Playlist ]

Firstly, even following a project like this is a good learning experience, if this is outside your comfort zone. Congratulate yourself for taking this step. If you'd like to spectate, use the same contact form, so we can give you the "spectator" access. If you change your mind down the road and notice a niche where your contribution could add value to the project: great! Let's discuss this.

Having said that, we can't guarantee seat availability after the lift-off.