Onlinebandit

[kobie]

Hiya Pascal Oracles...

First the usual yalla yalla:
I'm the cofounder of a mediumsized project on the internet called Onlinebandit (http://www.onlinebandit.com).
Its a multiplayer online gaming site with various games like Backgammon, Tetris, Bust-a-move and other games and about 350k registered users. We were rated 5/5 at Tucows.com - and have existed for more than... (holy s*it I'm getting old) 10 years.
I have been browsing all over the net to locate the best source at which to find Delphi game developers, and this seems to be one of the best.

And now for the real stuff :lol:
Onlinebandit is developed in Delphi 7 using both home-made 2D engine for the 2D games & GUI-stuff and GLScene for the 3D game.
The Onlinebandit project started off as a just-for-fun time-consuming project, but due to the increasing popularity the project has turned into a tiny-but-capable-to-survive-commercial project. :D

We are currently looking for 2-3 skilled Delphi coders who will find it interesting to create:
- a 2D game or 3D game utilizing GLScene (and Bass)
- a game that will be played by 1000's of players all over the world
- a game where professional artists will make 2D sprites and 3D textures (and modeling) where it makes sense.
- a game where quality matters (also if it’s a rather simple game)
- a game being translated to 11 languages by professional translators
But also who:
- are willing to fight to the bitter end for a game
- are willing to fight for the details
- are willing to integrate the game into Onlinebandit framework (our SDK doc. suxx, but we are always online at MSN to assist you)

Depending on the size of the game, you will be paid 1000-3000$ USD.

Sounds interesting? Let me hear from you - kobie75@gmail.com, or here at the forum.

Here you'll find some screenshots from our latest 3D game – BanditRacing, here (http://www.onlinebandit.com/images/secret/sneak/sneak.htm)

Smiles
kobie

[jdarling]

Lets see if your going to read updates to your post :). How about you post up some info on the SDK and what is and is not applicable. Plenty of us have existing games that might be convertable. Some of us have engines that could also help out. Few of us have an engine with a full scripting language that lets you build out games quickly. I for one might be interested in migrating my engine to use your SDK as long as the engine source isn't re-distributed by your company and I retain rights to it.

Is Delphi a must, or is FPC acceptable?
Do you have a listing of games that you want created, or do all people who respond need to have a game in mind to build?
What info do you need related to a project, design docs, requirement docs, what???
Who owns the rights to the source when the game is complete?
Does the source have to be provided with the finished product, or are you expecting an EXE only?

Just a few questions that I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask.

[kobie]

Hi jdarling,

As regards to the SDK; well, we have some generic classes for:
- TCP/UDP IP traffic, the game has to use our optimized communication class and not raw socket communication. The communication class provides functionality like reduced traffic consumption compared to raw sockets, automatic reconnections etc.
- Form, the game has to run on our Form class (inherited from TFrom) this is due to some generic resize for preview features in Onlinebandit.
- User handling, the game has to utilize our User handling class for joining games (up to 12 persons), quitting games, saving results in DB, etc
- Resource, the game has to utilize our resource class (images, wavs, meta-data etc)
- Graphics, optional to use our 2D gfx lib in 2D (as long its on our form), GLScene required for 3D.

We of course have sample code and examples for above integration with Onlinebandit.

As regards to the "game engines" you are mentioning, well... :) Its never something we have looked into, I wont reject the idea, but we are extremely focused on keeping the size of the product VERY small - after all Onlinebandit has to be downloaded over the internet. The size is only 2,8MB today. Regarding the engine-source; no, we won’t re-distribute it. But of course, we will need to have the rights to the game it self, but not the game-engine.

Delphi a must or is FPC ok? Im sooooo soorry, but I honestly don’t know :). I have newer tried FPC with Onlinebandit, but I would say that: if it compiles with Delphi 7 its moooooooost likely ok! (Honestly I guess you know the answer to the question better than me, heh)

If I have a list of games? No, but we are very focused on not trying to integrate too huge games in Onlinebandit (yet). Let me try to give you an idea of the games that we are thinking of:
Arkanoid, Card games, Arcade style-game, Pool (3d), Worms/scorch-like game, Soccer game (steering only one person, not the whole team).
As you can see, we are very open - as long it’s cool, non-extreme-violent, and fun, we can talk about it. We know from our self that its NOT motivating to create a game you don’t like your self - that’s why we have taken this approach.

You are asking to related docs? Well, we agree to the "headlines" in the project and from there we take an eXtreme Programming approach. Releases every week for the 3-5 weeks the project is ongoing with clear go/no-go indications :)

Who owns the code after the release? We do. BUT - you are free to use the code to what ever you want after 15 weeks. Of course we would appreciate if you are not releasing a competing product after the 15 weeks, but in theory you could...

You are asking about the distribution of the source - basically an Onlinebandit game is "just" a Delphi Unit, not an .exe file. This allows us to rebuild it whenever needed (in case of later bug-fixes, optimization etc).

I hope above answers some of your questions,

Have a great day :),
kobie

[jdarling]

Well, FPC is the Free Pascal Compiler. So basically its not Delphi 7 compatable :), its more like a Delphi replacement :).

I'm going to keep this online for now with one more question as I'm a bit confused.

So you are looking for source that will be compiled into your existing EXE or are the games stand alone downloads (honestly I haven't taken the time to check it out)?

If I'm wrong about that , and you are building stand along games, then can you post up the unit or PM it to me here? I might be interested in porting a few of the things I've been working on to it just to see how it works. If I did, I would let you know and you could have them (unless explicitly stated otherwise).

[kobie]

Hi again,

Well, sorry for keeping you confused :)

Just to clearify, yes, the source will be compiled into our .EXE - this means that interfacing is internal and not external (like DLL, COM+ etc). We actually tried to implement external interfacing, but it turned out to be way to complex with comon proxy TCP access, Pipes, Forms etc. We had to redo too much core functionality.

So, no external standalone .exe games in Onlinebandit.

Have a great day,
kobie

[savage]

Plugin systems are are best implemented at the design stage. Retro-fitting them can be a nightmare.

Stay away from COM if you plan to make it cross-platform, plain DLLs and Share Objects on Linux should work just fine.

[WILL]

You know recommending the Free Pascal (http://www.freepascal.org/) compiler to someone who is used to Delphi is sometimes kind of like telling them that they improved Turbo Pascal. :lol: Even though that statement is party true and even partly false.

I'd recommend taking a look at Free Pascal, BUT I also recommend looking at a project called Lazarus (http://lazarus.freepascal.org/) aswell. It basically completes what is missing from the Free Pascal package that Delphi users are used to.

It's a 3rd party project and it uses slightly backdated versions of FPC, but as you can probably tell from the domain names the developers and communiy has extremely close ties to the FPC development team, which is great for both projects together.


Anyhow, please keep us posted on how Onebandit does, this is the place to boast your accomplishments aswell as post technical stuff. ;)

[jdarling]

I recommended FPC some place? I mentioned FPC and Lazarus, as I have moved away from Delphi as much as possible.

Anyways :) I was in hopes that the project used modules that could be developed in any language. I understand now that they are looking for games that can be embedded into their existing core. Honestly not sure if I have time to do anything like that or not. I was hoping to simply re-target my rendering engine and use the scripts I already have.

[savage]

Hi Kobie,
I'm just trying to get a handle on how you make money out of this.
The games is currently free, and you pay between $1000-$3000 for rights to each game made. So how to do you make money? What's your revenue stream? Advertising?

[kobie]

Hi Savage,

We sell merchiandice stuff like t-shirts, cups, ties... And arrange social events like parties (entrance fee, selling drinks etc), travels etc. However the biggest revenuestream is from extra member-features. It is possible for the users to pay a little fee and gain extra features (At Onlinebandits in Denmark and Norway)

Have a great day,

kobie