Trying to find a developer to help us build a game inspired by Worms

[Metaman]

I can understand that reservation and appreciate that gaming represents a welcome departure from the world of commerce that's become hard to tolerate. Also agree that there is an abundance of scams in the space which is horrible. Our view is that it's not the players but the studios that will be disrupted. In many games you can buy power ups and packs of 'gems' for extortionate sums and we believe the players should benefit from that financial system rather than just being the ones supplying the liquidity. It's nascent and there are plenty of questions still to answer but I appreciate your perspective.

[King-Gizzard]

You mention in your post that you're a well funded project. According to your site, your plan is to 'mint' 8,888 images of war snails which will then fund marketing and the development of the game.  If you're well funded why can't you do that now?  What's to stop you completely abandoning the project after raising the money in NFTs?  It sounds to me like your business is in NFTs, not gaming. It doesn't sound like you have any game dev experience in the team. This could easily be a scam if, as I expect, no one is refunded should you walk away.

[Metaman]

We're well enough funded to get started, the mint process is akin to crowdfunding in early stage equity markets and allows us to hire better people, move more quickly and deliver on the vision more comprehensively. Like with equity crowdfunding we'll gain an early supporter base of super-fans with a vested interest in the success of the project. Honest answer is there's nothing stopping us abandoning the project post mint, that's a reality of almost any fundraise however and a consideration point for any early investors. Our business is in a new space that overlaps art, de-fi, crypto and gaming. Whilst the majority of projects in the NFT space do fall under the category of quasi-scam there are a growing number that have built partnerships with global brands, have raised significant capital to build awesome consumer experiences and are run by seasoned teams that see the bigger picture. You could run a scam if you were that we ethically inclined but that would be incredibly short sighted imho. We have modest game dev experience in-house but will be looking to partner with either a small number of freelancers or a studio depending on the success of mint.

Anyways I'm not here to defend the accusation that I am running a scam, I'm not but I appreciate there's no way for those on this forum to know that. I'm not asking you for any money, I'm simply looking for passionate game developers who are interested in the space. Thanks for your views.

[King-Gizzard]

So you don't have a game. You'll sell some randomly-generated pictures that no one really owns to generate a LOT of money for yourselves, and on trust, you promise to deliver a game but don't really have to.  That's pretty high risk isn't it, but zero risk for you.

You'll appreciate transparency and trust is key with these things.  As with crowd funding platforms like Kickstarter, people don't hide behind anonymous accounts.  What are the real names and backgrounds of Metaman, Rugman, Fomotion and Teazy? Investors probably want to know who they are investing in.

[Sycotropic]

I agree that it would be much easier to trust your company if you were more transparent -- care to elaborate why you're staying anonymous?

NFT discussion aside, you'll find that most people in this community are jaded when it comes to worms clones as they never seem to get to the core of what makes the 2nd generation worms games great (though some of the more recent projects are much better). A while ago I wrote up some of my thoughts on why the worms 2 engine is so great: https://swanky-okapi-1f0.notion.site/What-makes-the-Worms-2-engine-great-2f92695413064a5db5edafa4bad2a9d2

I'm generally interested and supportive of any game that takes inspiration from the worms series. I'd like to hear more about the direction you're heading with the game. Here's a few questions:

• How closely do you plan on taking inspiration from the W2 engine?
• Will the snails and other game entities be fully animated to the degree of worms?
• Will the weapons (strength, availability, drop rate, etc) and gameplay (timer, # of snails, health, whether or not terrain is destructible, etc) be customizable from match to match?
• How much will the meta-progression elements affect the game? Will there be a more competitive mode where meta progression doesn't impact the game? (Like Gunbound did)
• What game engine are you using?

I think offering these kinds of details will probably help to get people here more excited. You also need to overcome the hurdle of people being concerned that you're just an NFT company and not a game studio. I think for you to be taken seriously in the gaming world and by worms players, you probably should emphasis more specifics about the game rather than the NFT side of things. I think the last thing that most players (especially worms fans) want right now is a pay to win game. Most modern competitive games that have the loot-box/battlepass/etc model have purely cosmetic unlockables.

[TheWalrus]

I'll admit I don't truly understand NFT's, or at least the people that buy them, at the least, but from what I understand:

1.  People buy unique NFT's that your syndicate creates or 'mints' with real world currency

2.  After establishing a base of 'super fans' that buy up the NFT's, you have a nest egg to create a game based off the NFT's in question.

3.  You hire a developer to make a game based off your NFT's.

Sounds like an ass backwards proof of concept to me, but I never understood someone shelling out thousands of dollars or euro for an NFT in the first place, so it might work. 

[h3oCharles]

NFDEEZ NUTS

[Kradie]

Transparency is a necessary tool to build trust.

NFDEEZ NUTS

Oh wow I didn't know you watched YongYea

[King-Gizzard]

I find all this quite fascinating so I joined the discord and asked a few more questions publicly. At first Metaman said he had no problem 'doxxing' himself, then he went back on that saying :

"I founded one of the UK's leading investment networks, QVentures, if you take 2 mins to research this you should get the confidence you need in my long term approach and fundraising abilities" ... "For this project we've chosen to use pseudonyms in line with almost everybody in the space. That's not to say that we won't answer questions of those that want to dig deeper or that we're trying to hide anything. Having a modest level of anonymity provides a level of confidence that we're not going to get the small majority of 'crazies' turning up at our doors or trolling us. I think this is a right that deserves to be protected, especially when operating in the metaverse."

"To earlier points, investing into NFT projects is risky, even with fully doxxed teams, there's no recourse either way and for those that have multiple ventures they've spent years working on (as our team does) there's a value in keeping things siloed. I can tell you that we haven't built a smash hit game before, we haven't had a successful NFT project and we haven't built a massive de-fi protocol before."

"What I can tell you is that in the core team you have a very successful entrepreneur that knows how to raise money and bring in the talent that's needed, a PhD technologist who works tirelessly to solve problems and obsesses over the detail, a veteran artist who is passionate and very highly regarded with an exceptional network and a younger artist with mad skills who sweats blood to get the details right."

What's interesting is they don't plan to formally engage with developers until they've reached 75% of their 'mint' target.  That's 6666 out of 8888 NFT's which at 0.08 ETH each is 533 ETH, which is about $1.6 million at todays value.  Even if they only move 50% of their NFTs, that's a million dollars in their pocket and no game.  At least with Kickstarter, backers get their money returned! 

99% of the activity on the Discord is hype around the NFT's, very few details about the plan for the actual game but they say it will have 100 weapons plus special edition weapons released periodically.  No one on their Discord is cynical about it because those who plan to buy NFTs are obviously looking to flip them for a profit, so they pump the hype as well.  IMO, the game promise is just the dangling carrot to help create NFT value. I'd be amazed if they produce any game.

[h3oCharles]

this is also assuming that they even make a game, cuz this may as well be something similar to a pump and dump scheme

[TheWalrus]

They are on crack if they think they are selling 1.6 million in NFT's for some snails with slingshots strapped to them

[King-Gizzard]

I'd agree but nothing surprises me any more in clown world.  Check out these Voice NFT's that sold out in 10 minutes, 8888 of them! :  https://opensea.io/collection/voiceverse-origins-nft

I think these guys will make enough money for their efforts to be worthwhile, then they'll either pull the rug and disappear or make their excuses, "we never hit our target but thanks for the cash... enjoy your snail pics! BYEEEEE!"

[Monata]

We're well enough funded to get started, the mint process is akin to crowdfunding in early stage equity markets and allows us to hire better people, move more quickly and deliver on the vision more comprehensively. Like with equity crowdfunding we'll gain an early supporter base of super-fans with a vested interest in the success of the project. Honest answer is there's nothing stopping us abandoning the project post mint, that's a reality of almost any fundraise however and a consideration point for any early investors. Our business is in a new space that overlaps art, de-fi, crypto and gaming. Whilst the majority of projects in the NFT space do fall under the category of quasi-scam there are a growing number that have built partnerships with global brands, have raised significant capital to build awesome consumer experiences and are run by seasoned teams that see the bigger picture. You could run a scam if you were that we ethically inclined but that would be incredibly short sighted imho. We have modest game dev experience in-house but will be looking to partner with either a small number of freelancers or a studio depending on the success of mint.

Anyways I'm not here to defend the accusation that I am running a scam, I'm not but I appreciate there's no way for those on this forum to know that. I'm not asking you for any money, I'm simply looking for passionate game developers who are interested in the space. Thanks for your views.

I have some developer friends who were interested in running a scam, I've sent the link to your website. They will contact you if they're interested 

[Lupastic]

Butters has always been the best character in the whole series

[FireRat2]

Hmm.. from a programmer's point of view...

Generating an image from a (random?) seed? Check
Drawing circles (explosions) into an image? Check
Pixel perfect collision? Check
 -> Tweaks? Check (I could be wrong but Worms can climb just slightly (and not just stick to floor); I don't play terrain that much to have sure)

References can be used to match timings and sizes, the actual hard part though are the values. There's gravity, jump forces (3 different jumps), tweaks (i.e. the line between a bump and a crash into a wall with the ninja rope)... and there's little to nothing documented on that; though as far as I know it's possible to check some weapons through Project X, at best.
Part of the magic of W:A and what makes it so addicting, is that you can get more than a surprise during gameplay.

That is, without willing to debug or reverse-engineer the game somehow. Matching all values just right by eye? ... uh. Probably it might still not be enough, just check W:A on GameBoy, which is built from scratch and can also do everything I listed above, uses all possible references from original material (and probably including those magic numbers), yet feels completely different. The other ports are far closer because... well, they've ported the original engine (with WWP on GBA being the worst one). Also, any discrepancy in the physics can break many missions.

For comparison: