0
http://translate.goo...2/avr/16/40072/ (and click read comments).
Quotes like this from John would help to get some facts straight. Worth a try if someone has an account.
Quote
BFS was founded to be a contract for hire group in 2004 and have consistently done work for hire projects ever since. Sometimes it was just myself and other times there were others on board. Both games and military simulations. The last one being a 1.5 year stint with Tripwire on the latest Red Orchestra as well as some training stuff with the JFK Special Warfare Center and School at Ft. Bragg. I started Ground Branch in 2007 as an idea, a few renders and a set of design documents and set out to get it funded. I spent over a year and countless dollars trying to convince publishers to fund it with no success. I then spent another year trying to find a private investor with the same outcome. We started the forums and "announced" the game because we wanted to be a little different and provide insights to the community. This kind of worked against us a bit with some publishers actually. But that is how I wanted things to go.
During this time a small group of us were developing prototypes of features and making some art. We would share things that we could along the way. At all times though, everyone involved had other paying commitments whether they be jobs or contracts. So actual work on GB would go in spurts. We had times where 2 months would go by with no real work being done. Then have 2 solid weeks. This makes development very tough. To shorten the story, people had to leave the project and take on full time jobs to pay the bills or could no longer commit. I would be able to pay for help when I could and found a programmer that ended up taking those prototypes and building them into solid feature foundations. That was sporadic as well as I had to refill my savings to pay for the work. Along the way I learned UnrealScript so I to could help out on some basic things so that the project would not die.
So here we are today. We have a very solid foundation to work from, some good looking in game art and a working demonstrable game framework to build from. A lot of content needs to be made and features need to be finished and/or polished. A few secondary design ideas need to be implemented, but all pre-production is completed. Was the journey long? Hell yes, but it was also very non-typical with many starts and stop along the way. Self funding for an average guy like me is extremely tough.
During this time a small group of us were developing prototypes of features and making some art. We would share things that we could along the way. At all times though, everyone involved had other paying commitments whether they be jobs or contracts. So actual work on GB would go in spurts. We had times where 2 months would go by with no real work being done. Then have 2 solid weeks. This makes development very tough. To shorten the story, people had to leave the project and take on full time jobs to pay the bills or could no longer commit. I would be able to pay for help when I could and found a programmer that ended up taking those prototypes and building them into solid feature foundations. That was sporadic as well as I had to refill my savings to pay for the work. Along the way I learned UnrealScript so I to could help out on some basic things so that the project would not die.
So here we are today. We have a very solid foundation to work from, some good looking in game art and a working demonstrable game framework to build from. A lot of content needs to be made and features need to be finished and/or polished. A few secondary design ideas need to be implemented, but all pre-production is completed. Was the journey long? Hell yes, but it was also very non-typical with many starts and stop along the way. Self funding for an average guy like me is extremely tough.
