Blackstone Development, Ltd. IS Seeking Unity Designers For SOTA's First Megalopolis

Here ye! Here ye!

Large land acquisitions are currently being transacted in preparation for a Master Planned Community by Blackstone Development, LTD. Blackstone Hills is located mountain side with tiered housing from row & village homes (83400 m2) to "The Estates" section, comprising of town homes, city homes, keeps and castles (83400 m2). Located in a gorge, Blackstone Hills is protected by a military outpost(19,800 m2) which is separated by a peaceful valley for residents to enjoy(19,800 m2). There is also a dedicated, underground, crafting facility(12,600 m2) for the residents to use at their disposal.

Lord Blake Blackstone considers this one of his most ambitious undertakings and has drawn critical assets from New Britannia's finest. Currently a team of designers, architects, sculptors, writers, and financiers are working feverishly to achieve this great feat.

The town will be focused on arts and entertainment, so that residents may enjoy their life in safeties' sweet comfort. There are a multitude of creative attributes being built into the city(further information upon job acceptance).

The job:

Mark yourself as being one of the best Unity programers in the World!

The team of developers will give you detailed specs, plans, drawings, and show you scaled models of the entire development(currently being constructed). You will be responsible for inputting the designs into Unity and making them "game" ready. Your input on actual programming tolerances will be vital, but all artistic designs will be provided to you upon approval from Portalarium. It is our intention to make a polished product that Portalarium can put in game with very little work on their part, so they can concentrate on other aspects of development.

Compensation:

You will receive a lot(dirt) in the Estates Section, a TAX FREE Town Lot Deed, and any home of your choosing that will fit on that lot. You will live tax free in Blackstone Hills as long as you see fit; it will be your home to do as you will(pick-up, sell, trade). There will be no tax passed down to you through the Township or any association dues collected. You will receive all the benefits of living in Blackstone Hills Estates; Welcome Chest (Town Level), tickets to shows, stable services, crafting stations, and all other amenities.

When the project becomes a success, over 50% of the total units occupied, Lord Blackstone has agreed to present to you a z-scaled(approximate) Lord Marshall's Home cast in sterling silver to be delivered to your residence outside of the world of New Britannia. This will be a physical reward for yours to keep.

Expectations:

Lord Blackstone refuses to be around negative people. The applicant should be upbeat, positive, creative and enjoy this project. Also, you should be proficient with Unity.

Blackstone Development will also provide funding for needed assets through Unity. A budget will be set to cover the programmers needs for asset packs. Lord British is developing something that has been long awaited.... Let's help him change the concept of gaming once again.

"So as to bring order into this chaotic world, Blackstone Hills will be developed."
-Lord Blake Blackstone

If interested, please send sample work and a little bit about yourself to BlackstoneDevLtd@gmail.com.

******* Important******
Please note that all story lines, design features, etc. are subject to Portalarium's 100% approval. Above all, we respect the Portalarium team and will abide by their wishes.

 

I am slightly puzzled here. Are you looking for a ~programmer~ or a ~level designer~?
The description sounds much like you'd be looking for a level designer and one who's got access to Unity Pro at that since he's going to require profiling and Occlusion Culling more than likely. Please do not misunderstad me, I am not asking in order to be a know-it-all, but rather to check if town owners are actually allowed to design anything related to programming (which I'd consider fantastic).

 

I am completely ignorant of Unity. We are pretty savvy guys but our time is better spent physically designing instead of working on a Unity learning curve. The way I imagine this happening is, take an area (i.e. Mountain) that Port has put in the game and start carving out a town. Any input on the level of difficulty in Unity to accomplish this would be great. The valley, crafting area, and militia areas will more than likely just be templates town with some unique assets and BH(Blackstone Hills) & BHE(Estates) will take a little more polish and improvement.

I might be completely out of my mind and there is no way to accomplish this. But from what I hear, people have already designed assets, dungeons, etc. Still a lot of work and ok's from Port but this is just a start.

Thanks,
Blake

 

It's a great idea but you might want to check on the customization allowed for player-owned towns. If I'm not mistaken, Port. employees were going to set them up based on specs from the owner, and I don't think they were planning on offering that much customization. You might break new ground here though.

Check out the FAQ: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=19#faq_341

 

Ya, we are hoping Port will give us a little leeway since we have bought LOTM, 2 metros, holdfast, and 2 hamlets. Plus we are dedicating story writing, and tons of player driven stories.

 

Sounds like you want to create a world within the world!

 

We are thinking of it more as an add on "module". For the merchant, politician, artisan, etc. Heavily Role Played instead of fighting monsters, pvp, etc.

 

This is what I thought the project would be, currently it is not, nor has a lot of support for this type of development.

While people have in fact done assets, there is a review process that takes some time. And while others have done dungeons, there is no workflow nor pipeline for ingesting them currently. Hopefully that will be something that could be started 9+ months from now after the current roadmap is accomplished.

Port. has a review tool under review (irony!) that a couple people built to help this process along; however, that is more about static assets and not full fledged adventures (models, music, books, etc...)

A few of us have been waiting for the announcement along the lines of what you have above about being able to make full scenarios for in-game use, there is just no API/SDK to accomplish it.

Maybe you can convince them, but even with a few LoTM purchases, that will most likely require a lot more than even 100k worth of investment.

Cheers.

 

While I fully understand the desire to create unique assets, it is also true that these assets must be incorporated into the game and thus downloaded by every player.
Therefore there is a strong incentive for any new location to consist of recycled existing models, textures, etc.
That is why Portalarium prefers minor alterations (mainly positioning, I suspect) to existing town templates.
If you are given permission to develop your own assets, the only way I can see it happening would require them to be approved and taken over by Portalarium, and made generally available for use throughout the game.
Otherwise you are forcing players to download assets that they cannot use, and imposing maintenance costs on Portalarium for assets that only serve one relatively small group of players.

However, if your Megalopolis is constructed entirely from Dev+ kits provided by Portalarium, then you may stand a considerably better chance.
Your work would still need approval, but it would consist only of existing models and textures, and the impact on the game would be minimal.

PS: Good luck with your project. I'm sure it will be a great addition to the game.

 

Not exactly how it works, but ...
The level of difficulty utterly depends on what you want done. Creating a scene out of prefabs is a manageable task for everybody skilled in level design. If you want to be sure that it could make it's way into the game in theory, you'd have to profile the bottlenecks and adjust them accordingly (which would require Occlusion culling and Unity Pro). Else the level designer might create a splendid level, but have spots where the framerate drops to 2-3 FPS, which logically wouldn't work out well in a MMORPG which carters for PvP (even though optional).
You wouldn't know the exact look unless you'd know the detailed light settings Portalarium is using, so there might be a bit of a tricky part here and if you are going for "custom" assets, you won't know the LOD level settings either, which further complicates the plan.
I'd rate it as ticky, but possible, all in all, depending one how much "plug and play" you/Portalarium would expect to see.

The difference here is that they seek to design a town, not a dungeon. And here's exactly why I was inquiring if they meant a programmer or level designer. If they are just about to create a non interactive scene (as in no custom interaction), they wouldn't require any form of API and could simply use Unity Pro as SDK. Design a scenario, submit it and it would be easily plug and play upon review through a level designer. That's the beauty (and misery) of Unity.
This wouldn't require as much workload to review as a complete "adventuring scene" either, so I'd assume it could be well within prize for the package that was purchased.

Erm. The download would be a non issue, as it's done upon installing the game. The reason for reuse of textures (or to be more concrete materials) in a scene in Unity is different and performance related. As for the maintenance cost, Blackstone Development, LTD stated they would pay for the assets. Once that's done, where would you see a maintenance cost? ~looks puzzled~ Not like virual environments suffer from decay

 

Maintenance occurs for example when the game engine version changes, or when a global change is made (e.g. to lighting, which occurred recently). As for downloading, you are most likely correct, even if several groups follow your lead.

 

A game engine version change has no influence on the prefabs as whole, or any part of them. And I'm not sure what you'd consider a global change, but I have serious doubt they'd redesign their lighting model from ground up again, as in requiring different shaders/textures.

 

I may be wrong or misunderstanding, but it seems you are looking to do something similar to what the Bear Tavern is already doing for their Metropolis. If so, then the link below could be used as an example of what you looking for.

Bear Tavern - Berans Reach Unity Model

 

Someone else recently mentioned they had bought two metros but it turned out that was a falsification. They were also offering out town lot's for people to do work for them but then RageQuit and never paid up for any work completed. I am not saying you are that person or doing something similar but it sounds awfully alike. Could you elaborate on where you raised or why you spent over $25k on digital property to help ease some peoples minds who may be willing to help?

 

First and foremost, the group of friends who are doing this grew up together, played D&D together, along with the Ultima Series. After UO wound down(Trammel/Felucca split) we have quit playing and have been disappointed in crappy MMO's ever since. UO had ruined it for us because it was such an open sandbox. Just like you guys, Im sure you have a million good memories of UO or at least have heard a few from someone at some point. One that sticks out in my mind, is that back in the day we opened a casino on the road between Britannia and Skara Brae. We the limited in game assets and did it ourselves. We let people bring their tamed animals in to fight and took bets, had some silly system with bags and a gem that people could play, and made up some sort of game with the dice(similar to craps)...

Anyway, my buddy kept telling me that Sota was launching a kickstarter. Its been nearly 15 years since I have played a game seriously. Ive played Star Wars Galaxies, Conan, WoW, Eve, and a bunch even crappier than this. Eve and Star Wars galaxies were pretty good but they both have Auction houses that destroy entire segments of an MMO economy. I basically quit gaming all together(outside of Nintendo software-they rock). I briefly got hooked on Minecraft because it is pretty open and you could build stuff.

My friend told a few of the old UO guys(we all know each other in real life and are close friends) about it, and they signed up. I waited a lot longer and said to "hell with it"
and bought a citizen account to get the house. Some point between then and a few weeks ago I upgraded to knight. Up until release 8 I had little faith and thought the game was going to fail. In retrospect, I don't have what it takes to be a pre-alpha tester. All of the people that I knew, who had pledged, thought the game was looking shaky. We had written it off to another MMO not worth playing.

R8 hit- The graphics were 10x better(or at least it seemed), decking system?!?! was cool, and housing was completely coming together. Hadn't even put the time in to test out crafting. This was pretty exciting so I started to actually look around the store and pledges to see what was going on.

In the gap between UO and now, its been a pretty common thing to talk about Ultimas and what we would do if we could design a game. The running joke is that if we hit the lottery we will design a game.

Perusing the online store, I came across a metropolis. For me there was no turning back. I am in the real estate industry and my other ambition is to develop an actual neighborhood. The only problem is that I don't have a few million lying around.

I do have money in the $1000's. None of the guys doing this are wealthy but we are are somewhat successful in our careers. For me, it kills two birds with one stone. I get to develop a neighborhood and role play story lines.

Do I plan on making money on Blackstone Hills?
Sorta. As I said, I am not rich and 25k+ is a lot of money to the commoner. I look to make my money back and then try to do it again. It won't be a business per se but it will allow us to achieve our mini dream of developing cities and developing story lines(kinda making a game, inside the game) . I look at it as sorta buying a module for the already existing game. You pay X to live in this super exclusive neighborhood with events and amenities and such.

I consider all the people on the team pretty talented at writing, art, media, sales, etc. What we are lacking is unity designers(its ok to laugh). A lot of the guys are very proficient with a lot of programs(i.e photoshop, final cut pro, protools audio, etc.) but, at this stage of the game nobody wants to deal with, or has the time for, the learning curve of building in Unity. We think that Shroud of the Avatar is going to be a success and want to get this up and going as soon as possible. Try to set a standard on the quality of game play in cities. In my research, there are already people/companies selling "dirt" for $9.99(10x15, 150m2). I want to link these people directly to my website in case any Blackstonians need storage space for some reason(sarcasm).

If one of the Dev+ backers decides to help us out, they will have access to full story lines, receipts, etc. I'll even ask Lord British himself to verify our holdings if that's what it takes for a comfort level. With all of that being said, I was trying to make things interesting by throwing it out there like a scene jam. If you are already a high level pledge tier, and could care less about the property package offered, I will pay designers in store credit. I want all of the design money paid by us filtered back into Shroud of the Avatar in order to get a better final product out of Portalarium. I'll pay designers $5 at a time if their is a trust issue but you will have to design first. Basically, you're gonna get paid if we have to escrow this stuff through Port somehow, lol.

Sorry this is such a wordy post and I hope that you guys can actually make it through it, but I want people to know that Im serious about this project. If, I can't get a Sota backer, Ill look outside of the community to get a Unity guy. I gotta at least get my money back or Ill have a pretty upset wife!

Ive given out a ton of information that I would prefer to be private. If anyone has any other questions or is interested, email me at Blackstonedevltd@gmail.com

Important note:
All of this is completely up to Portalarium and somewhat of a gamble by me. I think that this is the purpose and Lord British's(of course, this is my perception, and can't speak for him) vision of a crowd funded, player sourced, player driven, open sandbox MMO. More important than the money, is that the game succeeds. These guys know what they are doing and, at this point, I want to help out anyway I can. I can't program but am a pretty good entrepreneur. The beauty of it is that when Blackstone Hills makes money, Portalarium gets funded.

My belief is that, gaming platforms should just be designed in order to facilitate players in creating their own game. I think LB and the team is thinking along these same lines.

Thanks,
Blake Blackstone

 

API/DSK? Sorry..

Thanks,
Blake

 

You are asking for coders/scripters/programmers/engineers, so as one of the above, what are the intentions, as to what Logain said, that you require one?

If there is no "integration" into SoTA itself, great.

I can tell you from experience of having done some side development for SoTA and pledge tier reward items, they are going to handle any integration, there is no API (Application Programming Interface) nor any SDK (Software Development Kit) for an engineer/programmer to use, other than the base functions of Unity3d.

So, kind of what has been asked, what do you need a programmer to do? If you are asking for level designers, great, that is not someone who works with code per se.

You mentioned "Unity designers". I assume you simply mean someone to take models, in unity, and lay them out.

 

I have zero understanding of the process. Basically, if I could pull off what I wanted, we would develop/design(insert correct term) a city in Unity with the least amount of actual development time from Port. This way it is more likely to make it. If it is lighting or something crazy I expect them to touch it up to their standards( I am giving them a good chunk of change). Im hoping to meet with Portalrium in September since I am from Houston and its an easy commute.

I truly believe that it is not about the money for these guys. I mean, Garriott has already gone to space, what the heck else can money buy? What's it about to then? Lord British and the team want to give big studios the finger(maybe because Garriott was burned by EA) because they pump out crappy games. Also, and probably the real reason is it provides them a creative outlet and they get to share it. Thats my case, Ive already had more fun with the money Ive spent than with the motorcycle in the garage.

There was this building up of sandbox game through the Ultima collection and into UO. Then, it all died. Ive always wondered how things have regressed in games instead of gotten better.

I think Im on the right track that they think the engine should be built so as to facilitate a player run game. In other words, the digital game is the miniature set that you use to play D&D.

I may be completely crazy and they slam the door in my face when I get there and hand me some hexes on the map to throw some houses on, but I think Ive got a good shot.

 

Well, I don't think you are wrong/crazy/off, but you may be with this project as it stands currently.

While the project was billed to have some of these types of elements, currently there is quite a distance to go before this would be something I see them able to support. I feel they want to, but just don't have the means to do so, while still trying to get through the base part of the KS promise(s).

Also, while it may not be about money (for the end) it is definitely something that is required to avail the resources you are looking for to develop that part of the "sandbox" for users.

 

All I read was "work for me for free"... No thanks...