LO-FI GAMES IS RECRUITING FOR KENSHI

I need people who have any of the following skills:

Concept Artists

Aside from a few ballpark ideas and rules, you will be free to design the world the way you want. All other artists will be dependant on your designs, and the visual quality of the game will hinge on your imagination. Good art skills are always nice, but the most important thing will be the ideas you are visualising, even quick sketches will do most of the time.

Its not another fantasy clone, so I am looking for someone who wants to create something new and original.

If you have ever had a dream world burning away inside you, this is a chance for you to have it fully created into a living, breathing world.

Portrait Artists

Characters are represented in the GUI with 2D pictures. These are good old-fashioned hand-drawn portraits, like in the RPGs of old. As for the artistic style required, it will need a certain manga influence, but don't let that make you think its 'cartooney'. At this early stage its not set in stone, I am open to all styles for this so show me what you can do.

3D Artists

We need characters, creatures, buildings, towns, weapons, armour, items, rocks, everything, so whatever your specialty is, you can do it. You need to be good at both modelling ,texturing and normal mapping. If you can do concept art too, thats a big bonus. You will likely be finalising your creations in Scythe Physics Editor, and then you get to put your creations in the game yourself with the games Construction Set.

Level design, Terrain creation

Full team members only. The game needs 400sq\km of interesting terrain. And I don't mean someone who can just use a terrain generator to churn out random mountains, I mean you need to have a good imagination for interesting lands and have the skills to create it.

The level design is almost a separate field from terrain, and involves placing foliage, rocks etc and creating the layouts for towns. The fun stuff.

Shader / FX programmer

Full team members only. I need an awesome shader programmer to handle all the visuals, someone who can draw out the full potential of Ogre. This means sorting out materials and material templates for artists, as well as integrating cool effects like hardware shadows, HDR, pixel motion blur (gotta have that one), water and so on. You can also optionally do things like the environmental effects, weather, dust, blood, particles etc.

Sound Effects, Music, Voice actors

I'm not really expecting to find anyone for this, but if there is anyone interested feel free to contact me.

Who am I, to ask such a thing

I am a 25 year old game programmer and I work on this project full-time. I have been programming for 10 years and I am good at what I do. I have worked in the industry before, although not on any major title. I work part-time, 2 days a week to support myself so that I can work full time on my project. I do professional freelance work when I am desperate enough for money, but I don't enjoy it. Probably no one will believe me, but so far I have turned down 2 jobs in the game industry to pursue this project.

Technology

I am using Ogre for rendering, and nVidia PhysX for physics and collision (as used in Unreal Engine). I'm not using any children's "easy game maker" type engines, nor am I wasting time developing my own from scratch.

Progress

This is not just a vague idea, I have already put nearly 2 years of development in already. There is a functioning demo with physics, terrain, AI, combat, inventory system. I have no problem coding and finishing the game, but I need good artists to design and create the game world.

The game uses a handy GUI editor for editing the game and creating new items and characters, similar to Oblivions TES Construction Set. That means you can play around yourself adding stuff to and modding the game, and then playing it. Its not like other teams where you just email your hard work to the leader and never see anything happen in return.

The Deal

This is not a paid position, but you do retain copyright to any work you contribute to the project. That means you are free to sell your models on turbosquid if you wish. You don't have to commit to joining the team, if there are any artists around who just feel like modelling something for fun or experience you can just donate a single model if you want. One thing I can at least guarantee you is (if your work is used) a screenshot or video of your work in-game, that you can use for your portfolio.

If you join the team you will be entitled to a fair royaly share although obviously this is an indie project and there are no guarantees of publishing or profit, so don't join in hope of making money from it.

If you want to join the team, I need to see examples of your work, so please include a portfolio. Huge email attachments are fine.

If you just want to donate an item or two, you don't need to worry about a portfolio, but bear in mind not everything will be accepted.

Email me with your portfolio, and tell me what you do: chris (at) lofigames.com