Calling for Artwork

We at Train Wreck Games are doing our best to create a compelling, enjoyable online gaming experience in Arcane, and between the lot of us, we’re pretty good at a lot of things, but illustration is not one of them. We realize this isn't something you can really fake, either. Our stick figure drawings would not really lend themselves to the kind of game we’re hoping to produce. So we’re reaching out to the artistic community to ask for some help. We need images for our game. I’ll provide specifics of what we’re looking for below, but first let me give a high level overview of the project.

Arcane is a fantasy role-playing game. Gameplay centers around the creation of a character through whom the player can interact with a world primarily through the game’s map. This world is wild and full of magic, with indigenous creatures of various types. The story brings some original flair to the fantasy genre, but the archetypes we're using are fairly well established.

For the images, we want something that adds a sense of character to the game, but that uses an art style that is not so specific to one artist that we will struggle to expand the game down the road. We have some samples that we’ve been working from and that we like, which we’ll include for reference below, but we’re open to a lot of options right now.


The types of images we need are as following:

Portraits. We need portraits to use for the player characters, enemies, non-player characters, and monsters. We’ve been using bust portraits so far (head and shoulders) but the whole torso would be okay too. We like having a fairly close up look at the faces, so I don’t know that we need to do head to toe. We’ll want male and female. They should be on transparent backgrounds. These samples give a sense of what we like.

Map Avatars: Each portrait should have a matching avatar that goes on the map. They will be fairly small but should be recognizable and should match up well enough with their associated portrait to make sense, although they don’t have to match precisely in every detail. Below are two types that we’ve seen. The ones on the left are okay, but we prefer the ones on the right that look less pixelated and old school.

Item Icons: The player will collect items of various types throughout the game, including weapons, various pieces of armor, scrolls, potions, and other assorted bits. We’d like a variety of icons for these. Samples below.

Skill Icons: Characters can learn a variety of skills to aid them in combat. Skills fall under the categories of attack, defense, and magic and come from four magical disciplines of earth, wind, fire, and water. We can provide details for specific skills to interested artists. Samples below.

General Icons: We will need some general gameplay icons for things like gold and books and such. Samples below.

Maps: We’ve built a tool that lets the character move around in a large map while only seeing a portion of it at a time. This tool can take any image and load it into our game, so we need maps. We would love to have a large map of the Arcane world scaled appropriately to the size of the map avatars. It should feature towns, villages, cities, and a variety of geography. We’re pretty open about this one, but we would want it to fit with the story we are writing, so there may be some specific elements we’ll want included eventually. The game also has the ability to incorporate multiple different maps accessible to each other by magical portals. They can be big or small. In the end, we love variety, as long as the overall style and scale is consistent. Some samples we’re currently using are below.

(Click for full size image)

Okay, now for the agreement details.

We’re pretty flexible about what we’re after, so long as our interests are protected. We don’t need exclusive images at this point, as long as we have permission and rights to use them legally. We don’t care if someone else has used them before us or if you want to keep them to use again after us, as long as whoever else is using them doesn’t care either. We will want rights to modify them as we see fit, typically to use one image as a base to make more images with color changes and such (we can make many monsters out of one image if we make slight changes). We’re happy to give name credit and a link to contact the artist if desired. We’re hoping to generate a lot of traffic with this game, and we hope that will be a plus for the artists who provide collateral.


Now for payment.

Obviously, we would love for some talented artists to come to us and say, “Hey, you guys need art. I need my work advertised, let’s partner up,” and we’ll get our stuff done for free. We would also love for some talented artist to say, “Hey, I have some time. I can throw some images your way and you can pay me when Arcane starts making money.” However, we do live in the real world, and we understand how this goes. We’re discussing what kind of budget we would be able to allocate to this side of the game right now, so what we would like are some samples of your work and what you would charge for your services. Whatever price structure you prefer is fine, just make it easy for us to calculate, whether it’s price per image, price for a whole image set, etc.


If you're interested, please contact us

I think that about covers it. So please, if you’re interested, give us a shout. We’re actively looking for someone who can help us out here. We have a lot of ideas and plans for this game, as well as for other Train Wreck projects, and we’d love to find some quality artists who we can work with now and in the future.

If you’re interested, please send us your name and contact information, as well as some samples of your work that you think would fit what we’re after. You can contact us through our website at http://www.trainwreckgames.com/contact. If we like what you have to offer, we’ll get back in touch with you and talk in more detail.

Welcome to the Arcane Private Beta

Welcome to the private beta of Arcane. If you're visiting this blog, it's because you were invited to participate in the beta by someone from Train Wreck Games. First off, thank you very much for your willingness to beta test Arcane with us. We've been working hard on this project, but there's still a lot to do, and we need your help to ensure that we're headed in a positive direction.

So let's get right to it, shall we? There are several things we want you to know before you start this beta process with us.

1. You've been invited to this beta because we trust you. There is some weight behind that statement. We trust you, meaning we believe you'll give us a fair shake, you'll try to help us improve the game, and you'll keep the confidentiality of our project in mind until it's ready to release.
2. You've been invited because we want your opinions, good and bad. We have thick skins. We want you to hit the game hard and tell us where it stands up and where it falls down. We have a lot of things still planned, and we want to know if those things will improve the game or not, in your opinions.
3. This is a very early beta. We're eager to get this game to market, but it's not complete yet. What you're seeing is a very early beta version, so please understand that it's a rough draft. Don't be surprised to see things unfinished or to hear us say things like, "Soon this will work differently." We're asking you to use your imaginations with us, if you can, and keep a high tolerance for the work-in-progress nature of the game right now.
4. We are building this as a specific type of game. If you've played other browser based Facebook type games, then you'll have a sense of this type of game. If not, try to keep an open mind about some of the differences in this type of game, as opposed to a full-scale PC or console title.
5. We need your feedback. We can't improve the game if we don't know what's wrong with it. As you play, please take some time to use the Beta Feedback link in the game and send us your thoughts and reports of anything you see as a bug. We want to know as much as you're willing to tell us. More is better.
6. We hope you'll stick around. We are already working on several more features that will be added to the game in the coming weeks. We want you to experience the game as it is now, but also to be willing to come back and look at the improvements we make as we make them. We hope you'll be patient with us as we progress and be willing to look at the game with fresh eyes as often as you're able.
7. We hope you'll have fun. In the end, that's what the whole thing hangs on. So we hope you have fun with it.

Okay, now for the game itself. We have most of the fundamental features in a functional state at this point, so we'd like you to try those out and give us your impressions. The following are some specific areas to look at:

1. Game Registration and Login: You'll login to Arcane through the trainwreckgames.com portal for now. We're working on a few UI issues on the Facebook platform before we'll ask you to try that in a few days. Register for a trainwreckgames account, which you'll use to login to the game through the "Arcane" link.
2. Introduction to the Arcane story. You should see an intro page telling you some story of the world of Arcane. Let us know if you don't get this page.
   
3. Character Creation: Name your character, pick a portrait, and pick a primary magic type. The magic type will define the type of skills your character uses, but for now it's not fully functional. You just have to pick one to proceed.
4. Map: The map is a core piece of the game. Double click on any location to move your character. Drag the map or use the arrow icons to move the map. Click on other character icons to interact with them, which currently means to fight them. You may encounter teleport icons, which will take you to other maps. Any movement takes action points, and your action points per day are limited, so use them wisely.
   
5. Combat: Another core feature of the game is our combat system. In a battle you will see your character and an enemy on the screen, each with three icons. In each round of the fight you will plan your attack three moves at a time. Click on any of the three rune symbols beside your portrait to pick your three moves in any combination of Attack, Defend, and Magic. Soon we will have a variety of skills under each of those move categories, but for now it's just the basic three. Your objective is to outmatch your opponent in a Paper-Rock-Scissors style. Attack beats Magic, Magic beats Defend, Defend beats Attack. When you've selected your three moves, click the "Ready" button and the round will play out. The results of your moves vs. your opponent's chosen moves will display at the bottom of the screen and any lost health and mana will be deducted from both players. You repeat this process until one of you has no more health. Let us know what you think of this system.
   
6. Shrine: The shrine is just a page you can visit with a link to recharge your health and mana. It is undergoing some design still, but it is functional. Go there after you fight to get healed up.
7. Store: You may notice in your first fight that you don't fare very well. Try going to the store, buying a weapon, then going to your character screen to equip it before a rematch. In the store you can buy some gear for your character to wear, you can sell gear you don't want, or you can discard items to the trash.
8. Character/Inventory: Use this screen to see what you're carrying and to equip gear on your character. You will also come here to allocate attribute points when you level up and to see a general overview of your character.

I think that's enough to get you started. Please use the beta feedback and tell us how we're doing. We also welcome comments here on the blog.

We have a tutorial storyline in the works that will be ready soon to walk players through the first steps of the game, but for now your objective is this: a bandit named Captain Carlson has been terrorizing the countryside. You need to find him and kill him. He's stronger than you'll be when you first join the game, so you'll need to level up a bit to take him on, and you'll need to find him.

Have fun!

www.trainwreckgames.com