Hi Footamateur, I think you are the same who posted something similar some time ago on TMF. There were actually some people there who said they would have supported your projects, both artists and programmers, included me.
In your last post on TMF you said you would have posted the address of a Yahoo group with docs about your idea of the game, but you never posted it...
However, I'm glad that you showed up again here 🙂
The idea is obviously good and exciting, but I don't know if VB is a good choice. The idea of clean_kitchen was good particularly because it was simple, simply realizable and he used a tool that is particularly good to make fancy graphics/animation things, that is Flash.
Planning to do something more complex could be risky, people could start that, then after a while they have no more much spare time, it gets more complicated than they thought, they get bored because it takes too long and so on.
Anyway, it is undoubtly worth a try 🙂 So, here some suggestion:
1) Make it a RPG, something that could possibly be played on line, allowing players to interact, like a MUD. That way, in my opinion, the game has more chances to live long, since it would let people experience a kind of enhanced chat, and it could end up being a valuable socialization instrument for tk community. Plus, in my opinion, RPG are extremely fun 🙂
2) To do something complex, it would be better to use something different than VB. A serious project should take in consideration a server part and clients; I don't know VB much, but I don't think it's the ideal thing to do something like that, specially the server part. I would rather use Java or C++. VB can be fine as a client, but, if you have to use a strictly Windows tool, I think Delphi is more flexible, Object oriented, good support for networking, and so on. One could think about taking advantage of .net architecture, that allows to integrate quite well components of different natures and written in different languages, but personally I would avoid Microsoft tools on principle: with .net you have to be tied to a specific SO, it only works with IIS, and so on. Plus, you have to give money to uncle Bill, while there are plenties of free/open sources resources to use.
3) Consider using Flash for the client: I don't know how the Flash support for networking is, but I have recently read that it can work as a presentation layer handler for server delivered contents. Maybe clean_kitchen can give us information on this. Flash is perfect to do animations for applications. As I said I don't know VB well, but I think it wouldn't be so straightforward to do serious animations with it, while Flash is born to do that. What kind of 3D engine are you using?
4) Artwork: If this project starts, and I really hope it will, you will need different people working on the artwork part, so I think it would be better not to limit it to manga style, there are many artists who could and would contribute that have no confidence with that style.
5) It would be great to know more about your project, what exactly are you planning to use, on the technical side, what kind of game you have in mind, maybe having a scheme of the system you're planning.
I would be glad to contribute, I think I can work on that 2 hours a week, even if probably not every week, but I'll do my best 🙂
I work since years with Java, Delphi and Python, have done many web applications, can also use JSP, Php, a bit of Perl, and can use C/C++. I think I could learn VB if it is necessary, and I'm fashinated by Flash, so if Flash will be used, I would certainly start to learn it and maybe I could help with it too.
I can also draw, but I'm not particularly keen on manga.
