Which is exactly why you should do it yourself. Tell me, what's smarter: Learning to draw your own sprites, or relying on people you know might leave you hanging after they accept your job offer?
I believe everyone on this site should be somewhat competent in all aspects of game development. Not saying you should be a genius, but you should be able to at least get to a point where you can program basic systems yourself, make half decent pixel art, know SOMETHING about interfaces and level design.
That way, if your programmer ditches you, it's all good, he programmed all the hard stuff and you can pick up where he left off and get the simple stuff finished. Your artist vanished? It's fine, you know enough about pixel art so you can edit his base to make overlays and different races. Your "mapper" is MIA? It's ok, you've practiced level design before and are able to make decent enough dungeons for the time being.
Of course, this isn't how the "real world" so to speak works, but this isn't the real world, this is BYOND where competency and motivation are scarce, so if you want to succeed using people from this community, you need to be ready to do some things yourself because a lot of people here simply aren't reliable. Most of the projects I've seen get finished on BYOND were made by one person. Most of the projects I've seen get started by "team such and such" and "herp n derp productions" never see the light of day. That should tell you something.
As much as I hate to say it... I have to agree almost entirely with EmpirezTeam. I do believe it's better to have at least one or two people to work with, not because you can't do it without them, but because they specialize in something you don't or they can take some of the work off.
However. Those people have to be people you know you can truly rely on, and that's rare; so you've got to be able to adapt and handle whatever you need to. I started off with pixel art. That wasn't enough so then I started learning programming. That should be plenty right? Nope. Started needing GFX but my friend who had been doing it wasn't around; so I learned some basics with that. Of course, as time went on I also had to learn how to make pretty decent maps. Now after a couple years, and mind you most months in those years I did little to nothing; I now feel I am at least decent in pixel art, programming, level design, and well GFX is a weak point but I can do some temporary stuff until better comes along. It's all about patience, and determination. Managing a project on your own is by no means easy, but it is simple. Anyone who is truly passionate about a project should have all the motivation, and determination they need to learn how to get a lot done with it on their own. The patience may be lacking, but if the projects worth it that shouldn't be a problem either. | |
Well I think in a few instances it was just people he thought he was "cool"with ya know? Everybody wants money. But I don't think he thought he would get stonewalled or ignored so 'thoroughly'.
I understand both angles believe me, but there is nothing wrong with taking a job then being unable to complete it due to better opportunity. I think his frustrations come from people saying /promising to do something then not doing it.