$10,000 game budget.

[Mogus]

Ok,
my partner owns a few night clubs and bars and is looking to have his own Texas Hold-Em Poker Game at each of them.

We are trying to figure out if we should host a development contest or simple find a designer or team of designers and just pay them outright.

This game will run on a PC (modded small to fit on the bar like those Mega-Touch Type systems. They will run off of a 12' in LCD monitor.

The game has to be single player capable as well as multiplayer, networkable would help greatly. It MUST be impressive in both graphics and style.

The max budget is $10,000 and the game needs to be done within two months...

So, should we have a contest and promote it all over the web or do you think we would have any luck just posting on forums for people to send me links to things they have designed and hire someone outright?

I REALLY need as much feedback as possible as I have a meeting with my partner tomorrow to decide what to do.

Thanks guys.
Email me at MogusLand@hotmail.com with questions.



www.MogusLand.com
www.OpulentRecords.com :yes:

[Noor]

IMO contest won't help for many reasons, most important is:
1. This is a big project. ppl are going to spend a lot of time on it, and if they didn't win the contest, they'll go mad.

The best solution IMO is hiring ppl. Personally, I don't think 2 month is an enough time.

[bladder]

I agree with nkharrat, it will probably need more then 2 months. and hiring people would be your best bet (no pun intended)

[Mogus]

The two months is more or less to get a working demo. All of the fine tuning and possibly any 3D animated cut scenes etc would be added after the working model is complete.

I am personally leaning towards hiring people but so far, I'm not getting many bites. Some, but few.

[Noor]

what do you mean by a demo. usually, when a game is done, they do a demo. making a game doesn't necessary take long once you have an engine... If you want the fastest way out, you can buy an engine. Your game (Poker) doesn't require that much graphics, I guess. Therefore, I would recommend buying the torque engine as it's easy to manipulate. More info about that engine and others can be found in devmaster engine database. http://www.devmaster.net/engines/ This, surly will save you time and prob. money as well.

[Mihail121]

ehm.. what are ultra 3D engines used for in poker-games?

[baldurk]

It MUST be impressive in both graphics and style.
9531

ehm.. what are ultra 3D engines used for in poker-games?
9543

Nowadays if it isn't 3D the general public don't look at it.

[davepermen]

if its 3d and poker, it definitely needs good 3d fog to simulate the smoking ciguars..

[Mihail121]

Wait, that's a joke right? Hehe, funny one... It ain't a joke?

[davepermen]

me? no clue

[NomadRock]

I am actually working on developing just such a program in C#, but unfortunately I do not have the artistic skills necessary. Hopefully it will end up being a nice little program to play with friends. I plan on adding some handicaps like giving less experienced players calculated odds and pot odds.

- nomad

[davepermen]

you could extract the original cards from solitaire (they are in a dll), to use them as textures.. the rest you need is dirt, and lotsa smoke :D)

[NomadRock]

Well yes, the card art is fairly easy, but you need the rest to look nice as well, like a nice felt poker table and probably even art for the opponents and the dealer sitting at the table. That is the stuff I am not good with. I will code it independent of graphics though so hopefully I can find an artist to spruce it up once I am finished.

I wouldn't mind this man paying for a couple of semesters of school for me, but I would feel bad if I gave him a crappy looking game with programmer art.

- nomad

[Mihail121]

Never code independant of graphics! That's my advice and i give it cause the price afterwards is big!

[davepermen]

whats the style of his clubs/bars? nightlife? if so, i'd go for a very darkish style, so you can drop a lot (just build up a simple 3d mesh for the scene, and put strong ambient occlusion over it.. together with some layered fog.. uh oh.. dark.. :D).

depending on style (more mafia evil style, or party disco style) you put some shiny diskolights into with shadowmaps.

the only question is, what to do with the players...

no clue there.. i guess you need an artist for that part :(

[dustin]

Your best bet is to find somebody who already has created a poker game and license it from them. I am sure that there are a ton of poker games out there already, you should be able to take your pick with 10 grand.

[anubis]

if you wanted you could go really crazy with the graphics. getting the fuzzyness of the felt table right would probably be the biggest task, smoke ala dave...

[davepermen]

a grass/fur shader would do well:D

[NomadRock]

I think as the OP requested prerendered graphics are the way to go. This way it runs on even more systems. Of course using C# already limits you to modern windows machines. My course requires C# though. Perhaps later on I will transform it into a tighter server program in some other language and then make an XForms application to run on the client. Now that would be pretty cool.

[cjp88can]

Not to be an ass or anything but if your going to hire programmers and spend 10k you do know there is a risk that the game could be crap in the end and there goes Mr. 10ker

Think out your projects a bit more and think what can you do to the project to make it not fail, not what other people can do for you by programming a game that you tell them to without fully thinking it through.

The greatest tip I can say before you start the project; as in spend your $_$ Play a crap load of poker games to see what you could add thats not in there and think to yourself how you could make it better. Example: Camera Views (3d) AI, Level modes and more.

[Sprout]

If you wouldn't mind having your program done by people in a lower-wage country, post your project at www.rentacoder.com . There are Indian developer studio's there that would do it all (and quite nice as well) for under $5000 I'd guess (which sucks if you are an european developer like me, there is no way to compete really).

[lionel]

try http://www.rent-a-pro.com/

[Gendramen]

A good poker game = Meaby a 3 day's and a hav.. but to make it 3D and you want it with a Multiplayer... i think that kill a lott of time.. :glare:

[Polar Sleuth]

"Let's work the problem, people."
-- Apollo 13 --

What is required of the game?

3D Graphics
Not really. Use the graphics "core" from Programming Role Playing Games with DirectX and camera facing billboards - a simple script is all that is needed to get a card to "move" across the background (i.e., the table). Craft a good front and back of the cards, paste them to the billboards - DirectX can do the perspective transformations. Again the other "players" are billboards placed about the virtual table. For a game of six people, the maximum number of polygons is ... 52 before chips; 66 with chips in play.

Network Capable
Again use the network "core" from the same book. Limitation - all connected computers need to be PC's. Given the tight timetable and budget, accept the limitation for now.

Scripting
And ... the same above book comes with a simple scripting system that is powerful enough to handle poker.

Gee... that leaves two months to get the game play to run "smoothly." And the book costs $59.99 US without Amazon.com discount and before shipping.