TL;DR – Considering commissioning help on new project. See below for details.
Some followers of The Ditty of Carmeana have perhaps been noticing that I’ve been making updates a bit more often lately, and they are mainly content updates, not fixes. I made a large update to add a new sidequest (something that was labeled “Future* DLC” on release) and many little updates and minor improvements. I even made a (real) DLC which was just new items for pots.
Well, the reason is kind of simple. When I released the game, I was pretty frazzled. That game had been with me every day for seven years. And although it wasn’t a lot of guilt, there still was this little tiny background of guilt I had any time I decided to not work on the game, and even that little passing thought I’d always have got to be oppressive. So when I finally released, I was like, okay, now I’m going to enjoy living without the guilt, and I’ll just fix bugs and crashes for awhile, and any content updates will not be because I have to, but because it amuses me. And that’s what I’ve been doing. But over time it has amused me more and more to work on the game, and at last I feel the creative void has opened enough to that I am ready to start a new project, with its associated background guilt.
I have project in mind. (Actually I have two, but one’s pretty small, and I’m not talking about that here.) As with The Ditty of Carmeana, this is not going to be anything approaching a triple-A game. Or double-A, or even single-A. Nevertheless, I would like to up my game in two respects: the quality of artwork, and combat.
For these, I am looking for outside help. I actually did this quite a bit for The Ditty of Carmeana; that mainly meant buying stock artwork, or using free (Creative Commons) artwork. But in several cases I hired out artists to produce characters. Even the stuff I commissioned was pretty low end (my instructions for the artists were, “Make it detailed enough not to be mistaken for a cartoon”).
But I want to do a little better. Also besides the art, I’d interested to outsource combat programming (which I did not do at all forThe Ditty of Carmeana, in fact, every line of code is still mine). Combat is not something I like to program; in fact I was actually considering having no enemies at all in The Ditty of Carmeana (well, one enemy), and I decided enemies would be in the game mainly for the sake of one joke. So, I’d definitely be interested to outside help for combat programming.
… I guess I should say I would also consider upping my game on the music, but honestly, I have never cared much for video game music. It has never been a factor in how much I like a game, and has to be very, very bad to for me to stop playing a game (like, so awfully bad that I couldn’t stomach playing even when I turn the music off, which has happened a couple times). If a game has good music, it’s just a bonus. If it has bad music, or good but annoying or distracting music, I just turn the music off and I don’t care, it hardly affects the experience for me. When I play games, I just want the music to be okay, not distracting, and not annoying. So you can probably understand why, for The Ditty of Carmeana, I just grabbed a bunch of stock music and tried to make it sound appropriate to the scene. For instance, for the overworld theme (which a lot of people liked) literally all I did was to go to FreeMusicArchive.com and browse around till I found a decent song that sounded like an overworld theme. But, I could probably do better. I especially think atmospheric music would be helpful to have a composer for. (You’d think atmospheric music would be a lot easier to find in stock music libraries, but that wasn’t at all my experience.)
And finally, one thing I will need later is someone to help with marketing and promotion. I hardly promoted The Ditty of Carmeana at all; all I did was to make social media and Steam posts here and there, seen almost exclusively by people already following the game, and I notified one particular streamer it was out. Based on the sales after a big-name streamer played it, I estimate that I’d have had 3-10 times as many sales if I’d have marketed the game well. But I really, really hate marketing, so I just did what I could stomach. For this reason I also seek someone to help with marketing. I won’t need marketing help for the new project right away, but I wouldn’t getting some marketing help with Carmeana in the meantime.
So. I am looking for help in these three areas. And I’m posting here (with links from my social media feeds) to see if any followers of Carmeana would be interested, before I go post jobs on some exploitative freelance website.
If interested, send resume and portfolio to info@tamperedevidence.com. Here are the areas where I seek help.
- 3D Artwork – Characters and scenery. Maybe a bit of animals and items. Let us call it a slightly more modern time period than Carmeana, but not present day.
- Combat Programming – Third person. Be able to work in Python
- Music – Mainly I look for atmospheric and game-situation-appropriate music (i.e., shop music, menu music, intro music, stuff like that)
- Marketing/Promotion – Social media, and things like working with influencers.
For artists, I expect a respectable, up-to-date, and maintained portfolio. Those interested in programming or marketing must have demonstrable experience. Right now, the business relationship I am looking to start with is a paid commission. Perhaps, maybe, someday, I’d be open to make it a more partner-like arrangement, but I’m a pretty private person who does not easily allow people right into large parts of my life, so for now, paid commission.
For those looking for some advance hint on the content or schedule of this new project: NOPE.
