Hey robloxers! It’s me, Sharksie, co-founder of RedManta and co-creator of Robloxian Highschool, Tiny Tanks, Store Wars, and several other great games. I’m sure you’ve seen that Roblox’s fall accelerator program will be held remotely. I’m thinking this is a great opportunity to get some more people involved on one of the games I’m working on, so I’m looking to build a team and apply for the program.
Who Am I?
I do programming, art, game design, management, pretty much everything. I’ve been making games on roblox for most of my life at this point. I’ve worked as the lead engineer on multi-million-dollar games such as Robloxian Highschool and Apocalypse Rising and I have years of management experience in Roblox game teams of all sizes. I’ve also worked directly for Roblox as a contractor, incubator, and intern on several teams. I have an extensive understanding of Roblox games, the platform, and the community and I want to bring these skills and experience to a new team to a develop my next game.
Who Am I Looking For?
I’m looking to bring on another programmer and another artist (3D modeler and texture artist) but I’m leaving it open-ended. I know you guys like to wear several hats and I’m more interested in leveraging your unique abilities than boxing you into a cookie cutter role. So if you think you’ve got something to contribute I’d love to hear it!
Experience You Should Have
You should have strong self-organization skills. You’ll be owning parts of the project and you’ll be expected to lead certain initiatives and get things done. Previous team experience is a big plus, but not necessary. A strong work ethic and a good attitude go a long way as well.
You should also be familiar with trade tools and techniques. For example, a modeler should know Blender and Substance Painter. A programmer should know how to use OOP and metatables. Everyone should know how to use Trello and Discord.
The Work Environment
It will be remote, of course. We’ll communicate through Discord and use Trello for task organization. In addition to the daily accelerator scrum we’ll have a daily team scrum. Later on in development we’ll have scheduled play tests as well.
As far as the person-to-person environment goes, I want you to bring your whole self when you come to work. Bring your opinions, bring your attitude, bring your hot takes. If I wanted robots I’d just write a program to make these games for me. Your input is valuable and I want to hear it, all the time, constantly.
The Games
We’ve got two options of games, both of which I’ve been working on for a while on my own. We’ll work on one of them, and the other will be shelved for the forseeable future.
Tiny Tanks 2
The sequel to the timeless classic Tiny Tanks. It will feature more gameplay variety, better progression and user customization, and enhanced social features. Tiny Tanks has been going for 5 years with minimal updates, and continues to make more than enough income for myself. This is a guaranteed success that will bankroll you for years to come.
The new tank models leverage mesh imports and custom workflows to rapidly prototype new designs
Everything has been completely rewritten from the ground up for performance and growth
Cooperative play has always been a major aspect of Tiny Tanks. Here you can see three players running locally on one machine using the new engine.
Rescue Squad
This one is a new IP. Based on games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Pokemon Rumble, this is a dungeon crawler that features a variety of cute animals to collect. Players build squads of rescuers and play through missions in randomly generated dungeons. The cute style combined with the fresh gameplay and arcadey combat will make this game an instant classic. It has massive earning potential driven by the collection and random loot mechanics.
Animals in the lobby offer helpful advive
Levels are procedurally generated for the challenge the player wants to undergo
Taking notes from games like Left 4 Dead, the enemy AI is carefully designed to allow for lots of actors doing intensive calculations like flocking and combat response. The emergent behaviors will keep players engaged with a consistent challenge.
This partially-functional interface will display the player’s current squad, their owned animals, and details about the currently selected animal. It’s been designed in a modular and scalable way so that the same design can be used on all devices.
Just like in Tiny Tanks 2, Rescue Squad leverages professional tooling and custom workflows to allow content to rapidly go from brain to game. This image takes a male texture, a female additive (eyelashese), and a shiny modifier, and automatically generates four textures for normal/shiny male/female animals. All right there, live in substance painter.
My Offer
I’m offering a percentage cut of the game’s revenue. The offer will be based on your experience, the jobs you do, and the value you bring to the team, so it will be different for everyone.
Also, the accelerator program already offers you a fixed hourly wage for participating. They also offer the team extra cash for equipment and other work essentials. Anything we need that they won’t cover, I’ll cover myself.
Legal
I’ll be forming a company to conduct this team once we get organized and prepared. You’ll be signed on as a contractor, which will give you all sorts of protections and allow us to act in an official capacity.
How to Apply
Send me a DM here on the dev forums. I’ll respond within 24 hours. Make sure to include what kind of work you do, examples of your work, previous teams you’ve been on (even the unsuccessful ones!), and any other accomplishments or info you want to include. And tell me which game you prefer.
But the accelerator isn’t guaranteed! What if we get denied?
We’ll do it anyway, we just won’t get paid hourly. 