[INDIE] Soul Arena Looking for Art Talent (Screenshots) (Updated 7/2/08)

[jchmack]

Team Name
Eclipse Interactive

Project Name
Soul Arena

Brief Description
Truly 3d Fighting Game with two teams of 3 fighting. Base Engine has been in casual development for 3 years. Our main goal would be to compete in the Intel Game Demo contest.

Target Aim
Freeware

Compensation
Freeware. This is a project for artists who want to see their material in an actual game engine. This is a good opportunity to experience a full production pipeline. Our production pipeline is already complete (although admittedly the tools aren't as polished as the engine). So you don't have to wait a month to see your work in action.

Technology

Programming
- C++
- Ogre3d Engine (with many plugins)
- Flash (wrapped with Hikari)
- PhysX for Physics (wrapped with NxOgre)

3D Modeling
- Our engine uses the .mesh format that is default on Ogre3d. But it is easy to get any work out of Maya, 3dsMax or just about any 3d software.

Animation
- We would prefer our animators use motionbuilder so we can easily transfer animations between characters.

2D Art
- The Ogre engine can handle the following formats: bmp,ico,jpg,jif,jpeg,jpe,jng,koa,iff,lbm,mng,pbm,p bm,pcd,pcx,pgm,pgm,png,ppm,ppm,ras,tga,targa,tif,t iff,wap,wbmp,wbm,psd,cut,xbm,xpm,gif,hdr,g3,sgi
so any software that can export into those format will be acceptable.

GUI
- Our engine supports interactive .SWF files. This will allow users to create their own custom GUIs with any flash editing software (see screenshots for more info) but we would still need an artist to create the base GUI.

Talent Needed
3D Modelers - Anybody experienced in Maya or 3ds Max is welcome. We have experience with exporting from these packages. We are open to anyone who uses any 3d package that can export to Collada, FBX or any of the commonly accepted file formats. But be warned that we may not be able to get your work into our engine unless we extend our production pipeline.

Animators - We would prefer MotionBuilder users. But anything you can get into Ogre3d we will accept.

Texture Artists - Would be responsible for creating texture and texture effects. Smoke, Lightning Trails, Magic Effects, Etc. Preference for people with experience in photoshop and the ogre material system. The Ogre engine can handle the following formats: bmp,ico,jpg,jif,jpeg,jpe,jng,koa,iff,lbm,mng,pbm,p bm,pcd,pcx,pgm,pgm,png,ppm,ppm,ras,tga,targa,tif,t iff,wap,wbmp,wbm,psd,cut,xbm,xpm,gif,hdr,g3,sgi
so any software that can export into those format will be acceptable.

Flash Artists - Anyone experienced in manipulating .swf files is needed to make a base GUI.

Sound Effects and Music - We have sound implemented through OpenAL and can accept the .ogg and wav formats ( mp3 isn't free =( ).

Webmaster - CLOSED Position filled by Paul A.

Team Structure and Previous Work
Jchmack(me) - Lead Programming/Design/QA
I have 7 years experience in programming and am an avid gamer. I have designed many small games for school projects and little things like that but nothing notable. I will be in charge of much of the Programming and Design. I played a wide variety of games both casually and competitively. Notable win would be placing 3rd In MLG (Major League Gaming) Houston for Tekken 5.

JRA64 - Lead QA
World class Tekken Player. Competed in the EVO2K5 World and EVO2K6 World Fighting game Championships (<a href="http://evo2k.com"> EVO 2008 Championship Series </a>) and placed 4th and 3rd respectively. Although not as renown he also plays Smash Bros relatively competitively and got 2nd in teams at EVO World 2K5(also called MLG Vegas). There really is no counting how many tournaments this guy has won and how much he understands about competitive gaming. He has beat international players from all across the world (notably Japan and the UK). He will be in charge of making sure our game is nice and balanced and will probably help design our online tournament system (later on).

Tekken 5 JRA64 vs FilthyRich Evo World 2006
Youtube link is down right now =(
(<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=24918253"> this will have to to for now </a>)

Kimberly A - Artist
Kim is an aspiring artist who is interested in 3d modeling. She is really young ( Junior High ) and is just trying to build an early talent.

David L - Artist
David is a very talented character designer. The work he has shown me thus far is A+.

Paul A - Artist/Webmaster
Paul is our Webmaster and is also helping with character development. He has great artistic talent and is a welcome addition to our cause.

Orville V - Artist
Orville is our newest artist and will be designing our first female character. I look forward to seeing what he make us =).

We also have a few others(Many competitive gaming QA guys and a few artists), but none whom I would say are permanent team members.

Website
None at the time.

Contacts
all inquiries should be sent to:
jchmack@gmail.com
or just pm me here =).

Additional Info

Screenshots:

Base Engine - Fresnel mapped water surface with a few boxes showing off some materials:


Animation System - Our Block/Hit/Guard system in action:


Skill System - Our use of the PhysX engine allows for mass scale physics effects. Most people use a lot of boxes being knocked around to show off their physics but I wanted to be a bit unorthodox so I used one of the skills we created:


Skill System Cont - There will be some long range attacks as well, but for balancing issues we cannot make them overabundant. After all Soul Arena is a close range fighting game at heart.


Scalability - We want the game to be accessible to a whole range of computer systems. Ogre's Flexible engine allows us to turn down or turn off many of our more advanced features allowing users with lower end systems to play. This also gives our more competitive players an option to simplify the game and max out frame rates. This is our engine on a lower end computer. The water surface is automatically turned to a much simpler material and some of the more complex materials will either be scaled down or turned off completely:


Flash Based GUI - This is an example of our GUI system in action. This is a popular flash called "Mk vs SF3". We plan to make our GUI completely user customizable. Here is a link to the Flash for anyone who wants to see it:
MK vs. SF 3


Flash Interactivity - This is that same Flash on the surface of a cube. In the future we hope to have an interactive material system that would allow users to interact with flash surfaces such as this one. This would open up all types of user content. It would be interesting to see Streaming media such as youtube videos in a game engine =).


As you can see there is a lot of programming already working. We even have some basic networking already done. We will use a technique called Backward Reconciliation to make sure there is little or no noticeable lag in the game.

The main thing we lack is artists. All of this art is placeholder =(. The character is from ut2k3. The sword is off of turbosquid (from the anime bleach). The level is from the ogre demos and the flashes are from the internet. We want a Japanese fighting game look, But other than that the creative direction for now is really open ended. Besides the Japanese look itself is really open ended.

Thank you for reading. We hope to make this into a rewarding project.

Feedback
All Feedback is welcome =)

all inquiries should be sent to:
jchmack@gmail.com
or just pm me here =).

edit: 7/1/2008.
We have found an excellent modeler/texture artist/rigger. We welcome David L to our team. He will be creating some of our characters. We still have openings in a wide variety of positions.

edit: 7/2/2008
We have found a great 3d artist / webmaster. We welcome Paul A. to our team. He will be setting up our homepage / forums / SVN and will also be doing character development. This closes our webmaster position. We still have openings in just about every other area. 2x updates in 2 days positions are going fast guys.

edit: 7/10/2008
We have found another talented 3d artist. We welcome Orville V. to our growing team. We still need talent in concept art, texturing, Level design, and GUI(flash). I am also willing to take on a few more character artists.

[jchmack]

All comments are welcome even if you aren't inquiring about a position =).

[AlexanderSmith]

Very impressive. While I cannot help you out, I would like to comment that this project looks very nice, and I am very impressed by it. Good luck with it!

[jchmack]

Originally Posted by AlexanderSmith

Very impressive. While I cannot help you out, I would like to comment that this project looks very nice, and I am very impressed by it. Good luck with it!

Thank you. I have worked very hard =).

[jchmack]

Thank you for the outpour of inquiries guys. In all my response emails I try to ask how you guys found out about our little project. I must say that all the responses i have gotten from game artist are consistently high quality. You guys are doing something right . But we do still need a lot of artists in just about every position.

Thank you for reading =).

[jchmack]

Original post updated. We welcome Orville V. to our growing team. We have found a few concept artists as well, so for those who didn't want to work without concept here is your cue =).

Also I am not seeing a way to change the thread title. I want to update the Last update part but i cannot see a way =(.