Crowdsourced spiritual successor anyone?

[AraneusAdoro]

Hey all, I'm new on the block,

So if any optimistic soul still had any doubts, it's quite clear now that Ubi is determined to drive this series into the ground.

Which is why I'm here. I propose starting the open-source development of a spiritual successor to the series. What I'd like to know is how many of you have necessary skills and are willing to contribute.

I myself am a programmer (virtually no experience in gamedev though) and a passable worldbuilder (hopefully). Don't expect any sort of dialogue or art from me though.

There is also another programmer who's (tentatively) up for this. What is needed in the core team is a couple of programmers, an artist and a game designer.

There's also a Reddit discussion here.

Edit [16-Jun-2017]:
Subreddit: https://restorationofheroes.com/
Dev blog: https://www.reddit.com/r/RestorationOfHeroes/.

Make Heroes great again or something.

P.S. Is this the right branch of the forum for this?

[Pol]

There already is project from Quantomas. I would recommend to contact him first.

PS Yes, everything apart from true M&M titles is Heretic. ^^

[AraneusAdoro]

There already is project from Quantomas.

I saw that, but I still can't figure out if he's going to pursue that on his own. If I knew how to contact him, I would. I did see he's been on the forums about a month ago, so maybe he'll see this and comment.

[Pol]

@AraneusAdoro
Write in his thread or send him PM.

[Panda Tar]

That would be my suggestion as well, AraneusAdoro. Having something of our own is really inspiring, but perhaps following and helping Quantomas might be much more attainable in due course. Besides, wondering whether Ubisoft would sell its right or not, making a Spiritual Successor would always bump into possible Copyright issues of something so loved, and could bring more harm than good in the end, even if it was for free. Maybe the safer and more possible path of a dream is a collective dream, better yet if this dream is already on the making in the source of cloud lines of code.

[Dalai]

Copyright issues are highly unlikely, unless you just copy game name, some texts or graphics. Game idea and setting can not be protected by copyright.

I am very skeptical about the idea though. Some kinds of work should not be started without budget and accountability. And we all know very well how fast our ideas diverge when we "design" the "game of our dreams". To have any chance of success a game designer must be a dictator, which is pretty unrealistic in community efforts.

Just ask your prospective team members, will heroes be on battlefield or will they stay on sidelines? Will there be one per army or several? Will creatures walk alone or be carried in hero's pockets? Will creatures be upgradeable or not? Will you use turn based or initiative based combat? ...and so on. Each question will discourage half of your people from going on. Imagine the initial pool of people you need to be able to lose those and still be able to do the huge project.

I wish all the luck in the world to anyone who attempts it though.

[AraneusAdoro]

Some kinds of work should not be started without budget and accountability. <...> To have any chance of success a game designer must be a dictator, which is pretty unrealistic in community efforts.

Excellent point and one I did not think about. Any project of this size must have firm control to remain focused.

To be fair, right now I'm thinking having a core team of at least 2 programmers (one of which would be me), one artist and one map designer (the list is courtesy of erouth on reddit). Maybe crowdsource isn't the best idea when developing the game proper, you're right. (Should be fine for bug fixes and minor changes though).

Which brings me to the budget part, actually. I was hesitant to bring it up since I have no idea how to distribute donations in a crowdsourced project, but if we have a core team that's doing all the heavy lifting that is not that much of an issue anymore.

Thank you!

[Dalai]

I was hesitant to bring it up since I have no idea how to distribute donations in a crowdsourced project, but if we have a core team that's doing all the heavy lifting that is not that much of an issue anymore.

Donations don't solve the problem. You don't need to distribute donations, you have to pay a salary.

To be able to do that you have to either find a company ready to invest in your game, or start a crowdsourcing campaign like Kickstarter project. Both options are highly unlikely to succeed if idea and team is all you have. You should have something to show (alpha/demo/proof of concept) before you start talking about money/Kickstrarter. And after a full circle we are back almost where we started

You may rely on a slim chance that you can create a demo on enthusiasm or you can persuade 3F (friends, family, fools) to finance your demo.

Another point of concern is distributed networked structure. I firmly believe that all things being equal the team that can gather around the same table can do stuff twice as fast. May be I'm just old, idk.

There are few people who want to create spiritual successor to H4 more than me I thought about it a lot. And my conclusion is: you have a snowball's chance in hell without money. Even if your colleagues and teammates are ok now and have a good income - we are talking years of commitment here. You have to plan for 1 war, 1 national default, 2 hurricanes, 2 across-the-board bank collapses and several unforeseen crises. If you are lucky

[AraneusAdoro]

You are correct, this is a big longshot as it is right now.

For kickstarter there has to be something visually pleasing. There is no way that I can see for the project to generate profit before that other than donations.

There is also no way to realistically gauge how long this will take until the demo.

To be clear, I'm not planning on assembling the team right now. I still need to finish the GDD and make some base for the game before that.

[Panda Tar]

For kickstarter there has to be something visually pleasing.

And be very careful here not to do a "Ubisoft" move.

[AraneusAdoro]

For kickstarter there has to be something visually pleasing.

And be very careful here not to do a "Ubisoft" move.

I don't follow.

[Panda Tar]

Raising expectations with visuals and eye candy, but then, failing with the real content, you see.

[AraneusAdoro]

Don't mind me, just bumping this with some links:

https://restorationofheroes.com/ & https://www.reddit.com/r/RestorationOfHeroes/.

I went back to thinking this should be purely fan-made. Maybe not crowdsourced per se, but at least purely fan-made. Yes, I work in the Department of Redundancy Department JFC

[Croze]

oh, it is so hard to see heroes games being so miserable.
Most of luck with the project. Hope you get it done!
I will be following your progress for sure.