*= With my current broke financial status, I cannot guarantee any payment for the time being, I understand that this is a complete bother and limits my chances in finding anyone willing to help. I however felt like making an attempt regardless, because you never know.

Shades of the Ancients

Summary
Hello, and thank you for taking your time to look at my request! Shades of the Ancients is a little pet project I have been working on in my mind, and on paper in terms of story for a year or two now, and made a few small attempts at getting it in the air so far.. But now I feel confident enough in my knowledge in the engine I'm using(Oh yes, it's the dreaded Eclipse engine, I realize we do not have the best of reputation on the web, but being one of the few people there that knows their sh*t, I may hopefully get a better response than the average punk) and confident enough in my basic story that I am at the point where I'm starting on it all.

Shades of the Ancients, is what I would like to be a fairly story-driven ORPG, with tidbits of lore all over. NPCs that will tell you about recent events, conversations that lead to quests and signs, books and random scrolls hidden in the world for you to find and collect. The general story, or rather history of the location the story plays out in can be found in my original post on the Eclipse forums over Here.

Perhaps to you all, it sounds generic and maybe a bit dull.. I can understand, and I'm always open for suggestions, but that is not why I am here today(Our site admin recommended me to come over here, Marsh. So if anyone knows him, say hi for me ;])!

About Me
Me? I'm Joyce ten Boden, a Dutch IT student that makes a hobby out of programming stuff in her spare time. I have yet to program anything large and noteworthy, for the most part I keep myself to minor things or programs I simply never release and just use for myself to fiddle with as a learning device.

My motivation on this project is fairly high, and I've been working on and over some ideas for certain mechanics in the game for a while now, and am slowly starting to implement them into the base engine, or modify the engine as it is right now.

This may or may not be useful for you guys, but here is a general layout of the first 15 levels of the game:


The Job
Now here comes the fun bit, well.. Fun.. Sadly, in my current state I am unable to pay you, this bothers me quite a lot. Because I know it limits my possibilities, and I know graphical design is NOT something you pull out of your sleeves at random. I am terribly sorry however, I really can't afford anything aside from perhaps the server and website costs at this point. Nor do I intend to ever make any real money from the game, it's a project I do for fun. If it ever gets to a point where there is a possibility of gaining money out of it, then of course we can work something out. But for the time being, I want someone that considers working on a game with a potential on-line community fun and exciting. Payment is a second to me.

As for the actual job that has to be done.. Well, pretty much everything! I'm currently using RPG Maker XP graphics for placeholders to test features I create with, or tidbits with numbers for say animations, but I really do need people to do the GUI, the Tileset(s), Player Components and NPC Sprites. There may be some slideshows with lore explaining the adventurer's progress between certain zones too, but this idea is still something I am considering. The style I have in mind is both simple yet hard, it's somewhere along the lines of the older Zelda games, say Link's Awakening(See screenshot below). I like this style, and I believe the lack of truely vibrant colors shows the idea of corruption I would like to display in my game. Of course, I am open to suggestions and ideas on how you would like to see this done, or how to set it apart.



So to recap, I'll be needing help on the following components:
-Game Interface
-Tile Sets (32*32 tiles)
-Player Characters (32*64)
-NPC's, be they human or monsters. (from 32*32 up to 64*64)

Sadly, without any pixel work I can't really get anywhere, because I refuse to use licensed graphics, of course if I can't get anyone to help me with this.. I'll wait and save up for a future attempt.

Contact
You can e-mail me any specific questions at:
Joyce_Doofus@hotmail.com

or add me on MSN, or GTalk(JoyceDoofus@gmail.com)

Or, ask in this topic. I will check this on a regular basis to see any suggestions, and respond to any questions and fill in any blanks on the information. :]

EDIT: Corrected my Google Talk account. >_>

Edited by Scypher - 15 January 2012 at 4:12am