[CLOSED] Programmer/Artist for Fall Accelerator Program Game!

Hello there!

Before you spend time reading this quite long post, know that this hiring is done with the intent of creating a viable team for the upcoming remote Roblox Internship. This means that I’m about to put “Must Haves” in all caps so that people read the following bullets and don’t waste their time.

MUST-HAVES

  • You need to be 18+, this is non-negotiable due to US child labor laws.
  • You need to be free this fall for at least 40 hours a week, so if you plan on taking a full semester of college this might not be a good fit.
  • You need to contact us before June 15th as we will be getting back to all applicants on that day.

Now with that boringness out of the way, on to the actual pitch!

About Us

This game is headed by Nightcycle Studios, we make fun worlds for people to enjoy. We specialize in customization heavy games, whether it be characters, weapons, or in this case - spaceships.

The Team

@CJ_Oyer: Designer, Programmer, Builder, 2D artist, SFX creator
@You: Programmer? Maybe Artist?

Yeah, it’s just me at the moment - that’s where you come in!

The Game

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Elevator Pitch

“In this open galaxy space simulation MMO, you must design your own spaceship, assemble a crew, and explore the galaxy! Players can disable and rob other ships, collect bounties, deliver cargo, join empires, and even blow up planets.”

Design Document

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So let’s go into a bit of detail! The game has around 20,000 words / 75 pages of design documentation - so all the major design stuff is handled, we just need to make the game. You can read it at https://nightships.dev - but please do not unless you want to. It is quite long, and you won’t need the majority of the information anytime soon.

If you are to read only two pages of the design document, it would be the initial homepage that gives an overview of the game (which I’ll be summarizing here) and the roadmap. I’m hoping to complete phase II: fighting with friends during the internship. The current plan is to make the game free to play at the end of phase III. Don’t worry if that seems like a lot of work though, the game has been planned in a manner to make it a viable product by the end of phase I. That means if we think it’s the best course of action, we can release it for free earlier.

Unique Selling Points

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  • All ships will have fully customizable interiors, with reshapable rooms, placeable furniture, and even elevators!
  • Using Perlin noise, we’ll create a massive procedurally generated galaxy that can run on mobile devices! It’s the same technique that Minecraft uses, however, we’ll have it much easier as instead of generating terrain, we’re generating the placement of stars and planets.
  • Deploy drones and manned-fighters from your ship for dogfight style combat with other massive space vessels!

Inspirations

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  • Dynamic Ship Simulator III by @CaptainMarcin: The core of Nightships was inspired by this game. I realized while playing that my favorite part was simply walking around the ship while it sailed to a destination. I loved being able to look out the window while my character relaxed on a couch, or sat in a hot tub. It felt luxurious, and it had me playing the game for hours.

  • Welcome to Bloxburg by @Coeptus: You may not have heard of this small game, but it’s pretty fun! What Nightships took a lot of inspiration from was the community engagement aspect. There are numerous dedicated twitter accounts for posting cool Bloxburg houses. It was this creativity, this ability to make whatever type of house you wanted, that kept players coming back. It also lent super easily to monetization. These are aspects I want to encapsulate in Nightships, swapping-out houses with spaceships!

  • Keth Shipyards by @ZolarKeth: This game was hugely influential to my childhood. It had fun ships that you could walk around in, and it led to a lot of fun roleplays! While he has gone on to make Starscape - an arguably even more impressive game - at the end of the day the memories of all the fun space roleplays I experienced as a kid in the game were at the forefront of this Nightships’ design.

Target Audiences

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Platforms:

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  • PC: This game is designed with PC in the forefront
  • Xbox: PC to Xbox conversion should be fairly easy due to comparable memory and graphics
  • Tablet: Touch controls are achievable, and as space is mostly nothing it shouldn’t be too much memory
  • Phone: Should be achievable, with the biggest limitations being memory

Players:

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  • Casual players who enjoy immersive fantasy games
  • War clan players who need a place for their battles
  • Hardcore roleplayers who need a place for their imagination to let loose
  • Influencers who need to make frequent content (like maybe ship-building guides?)

What’s Done So Far?

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So far we’ve completed up to Version 0.1.6 of the game as displayed on the roadmap. This means that you can make a spaceship. Our main focus as of writing this is to improve the UX of the editor, but functionality wise everything is there. Feel free to check out the editor in action through the gifs we’ve posted! So far fans have used the ship editor to create these super cool ships! On top of that we already have an epic main theme composed by @BSlickMusic!

Community Creations

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Due to the editor being out, we’ve already begun to see some Bloxburg like custom ships made by the community! Some appear to be based on IP that Nightcycle Studios doesn’t own. We don’t condone the use of other people’s IP, however, we’re including them here as they really capture how powerful even this earliest form of the ship editor is. Here’s some of my favorites:




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Discord_dR6TZ21rT1 Discord_JDg6UOK0nm
Here’s one I had fun making in my free time :smiley:
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Also shoutout to @gbug for creating a few of those cool ships!

Why Join The Project?

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There are many games being made on Roblox, why should you choose this one over all the others?

It’s the Perfect Accelerator Game

New Experiences Created:

  • Design and Fly your own Spaceship!
  • Procedural Galaxy Exploration

Experiences Improved:

  • Space Exploration Games
  • Ship Simulator Games
  • Naval Combat Games
    [/details]

Experienced Team

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We’re putting an “I” in team for a moment, as unfortunately, the team is currently just me.

I have professional experience outside of Roblox due to my time as a student in the IU Game Design Major program for 2 years. I walked away with a nice portfolio and a completed minor in Game Art to work on Roblox full time. To see all I’ve personally worked on check out my website cj-oyer.com

Within Roblox I’ve been an active developer for 12 years, my games have been played almost 150 million times mostly across 3 successful releases. During that time I’ve even been an Accelerator twice already! Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy a third one this fall!

The Hardest Part is Done

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I’ve logged around 400-500 hours on the project already. The majority of this effort was focused on making a viable, powerful, and most of all enjoyable Ship Editor. There are still a few UX things we can improve, but 95% of the work is already done, and we’ve run over 55 playtests on the editor so far so we have a ton of great feedback to utilize.

Endorsements

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(all quotes used with permission)

“Nightships is an awesome concept” - @InsanelyLuke, a major developer on amazing games like Heroes of Robloxia & Egg Hunt 2018: The Great Yolktale.

“One of the few upcoming Roblox games I’m excited to play” - @tyridge77, developer of next-level game The Wild West

“I’m real excited for that project” , “It looks very promising”, “Gave me chills”, and “OH FREAK YEAH” - @NowDoTheHarlemShake, developer of Roblox classic The Normal Elevator

Growing Fanbase

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Despite not having been released yet:

  • There have been over 500 likes on Nightships related tweets.
  • Almost 150 self-appointed nightships fans on the company Discord

What We Need

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At the minimum, we need a person to join the team simply to get us through the 2-person minimum requirement for the internship. However, ideally, they would have skills in any of these categories.

Programmer

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If you have worked with any of these things, we want you to apply!

  • Fighting Mechanics
  • Vehicle Mechanics
  • UI programming
  • NPCs
  • Worked with Lua OOP through Module Scripts

Builder

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To keep loading times down, we prefer part-based models over 3D meshes (Though we still use them occasionally. If you have blender skills do mention it!). If you have built assets in these areas please apply!

  • Spaceships
  • Sci-Fi Weapons
  • Furniture

Compensation

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Roblox Internship Wages

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In previous years I was paid around 9-12k USD per internship. I cannot guarantee that we will get the internship, nor can I say how much they’ll pay, or if this amount will be reduced from the amount they paid in previous years due to this internship being remote. I can’t say anything on their part - that stuff will be worked out after we (hopefully) get through the interview and are sent offer letters.

It’s important to know though, the money they pay you is yours, whether the game succeeds or fails. In that sense, any project accepted to the program immediately becomes one of the most financially stable projects to work on on Roblox.

Game Share

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The compensation would come through profit shares of the game. Here at Nightcycle Studios we want to keep things simple - an hour of your time counts as much as an hour of my time. Once a month you’d receive a payout based on how much of the game you contributed.

For example, if by the end of the internship we both work 480 hours: 12 weeks at 40 hours a week (though it will probably be a bit less as not every moment is a loggable work task). Based on my current monthly work rates by August I’ll have worked on the game for around 600 hours.

So in total, there would have been 600 my prev hours + 480 of your internship hours + 480 of my internship hours, leading to a total of 1560 hours for the entire project. So your 480 hours would be worth 30.7% as that is 480/1560. I feel this is fair and in my experience encourages team members to continue working on the game than if they simply got a flat rate.

Contact Us

When contacting us please either attach an online portfolio or include links to previous works. You can contact me through:

Thank you for your time! I’m excited to work with you!

9 Likes

working for Cj is incredibly awesome he is overall nice and helpful I recommend it!

2 Likes

Having interned alongside CJ in 2017, I highly recommend applying! No matter what your specialty is as a developer, he’ll synergize with you.

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