I guess I should answer your questions. The reason I kept this hidden was that I feared it would be information overload for just hiring a 3d modeler.
****************
"How will game resources be collected, how many types of resources are there?" ****************
I've decided to have only one resource "NeoMetal" or "BioMetal", for the moment. Its a special rare type of metal that humans initially found on the moon and synthesized this metal to exponentially further their space exploration. Now that the humans have re-aligned themselves on different planets they are fighting over it.
From a gameplay point of view I feel that having more than one resource is unnecessary. Sure, in Starcraft, gas is an integral part to the game, it allows you to decipher otherwise hidden information. If a person gets gas early, its likely that the player is going to play "strategic" (As a progamer would say). You can even "steal" the geyser to limit the options a player has in-order to increase your own read and potentially punish the fact that the opponent won't have the tech to defend against your build.
Gas is one way to achieve the above gameplay options, some games have 6 different resources, however I never felt adding types of resources added to gameplay. I figure streamlining the resources, and instead making the most out of having one resource is a better idea.
For example
One of the major differences between BW and SC2 economy is saturation. In SC2 you do not transfer large groups of workers to other bases because saturation is linear almost all the way to the maximal amount. However in BW it is completely different, saturation becomes exponential towards the maximum. This means that in BW if you split workers evenly between 2 bases, you will gain a lot more income than having those workers work on a single base. This is not the case in SC2 unless you are super saturated.
So the first design goal is gaining exponential returns on economy per base count. We can do this by slowing the mining time of workers and also changing the patch layout. I will be using unique patch layouts that prevent highly saturated areas from mining optimally, such as circle layouts where workers can't mine from the middle, rather than lines.
Making much more fundamental changes like this I think is more important than adding complexity to the game often for the sake of complexity. Something as simple as this completely changes the way games are played, we will have players opting for really risky expansions knowing that by the time an aggressive push comes they will have double the economy to compensate.
The decision isn't as obvious because greedy play can still counter aggressive play. So your choices are to be agressive and balance the economies, be hyper-aggressive and try and bring him below yours, or be even greedier and double expand and overtake his economy. This means that there is much more on the line with decision making, but to the spectator the games are more interesting because the game will become more sophisticated and there won't be any rock-paper-scissors action going on, where if someone does one build by chance it could automatically counter the opponents (which is bad).
Now lets say Player A goes for a fast expand, so Player B reacts with a double expand. Player B risks spreading his defenses too thin, but it is compensated by the boom in economy from the third base. Now Player A has many more avenues to attack Player B, meaning the trade off for aggressive play and greedy play starts to even out. Because both players are spread quite thinly you start getting squad based play with attacks all over the map.
It then becomes a battle of how much damage the aggressor can do to balance the economies, rather than punishing greedy play outright. Now that players realise that aggressive play can only put them slightly ahead instead of finish the game, metagame becomes much more hugely important. If I am playing a greedy player, I can abuse metagame in a Bo5 by going for an all-in build that will finish him off in some games. However I can't "reactively" finish off the player, I can only get slightly ahead. Now the games start to become very deep.
You can initiate all this by simply changing how a player can access one single resource. And I plan to work on as many of these fundamental changes as possible.
*************
Will there be experience/veterancy, heroes or anything like that? *************
I don't plan to have anything of the sort. I don't think its a bad idea, I love Company of Heroes and Warcraft 3, it just doesn't fit within the scope of my game. Maybe I will add it for fun later down the track, but I don't plan to have it affect the game in anyway.
***********************
How will tech and techtrees work, for example will there be tier 1/2/3, research able abilities, upgrades etc.? ***********************
Teching will be similar to Company of Heroes and Starcraft, where buildings will unlock other buildings, researches and units.
You will have some structures that are designed for research, others for production, and others for static defense.
There will also be a Command Tree that allows players to tweak their race to their style. The command tree is an external research tab that players can align their race to as the game progresses. As it is a tree, players have to strategically pre-empt the alignment of their race, because changing to another tree may be costly, and better researches will appear the further down a single tree you go.
This is to make mirror matchups much more exciting. Not only do we have mechanical/strategic styles defining the race characteristics of a player (for example in ZvZ one player may prefer to use hatch-tech play where as someone else may prefer hive-tech play), players will also have their race customisation.
Mirror-matchups tend to devolve into either rock-paper-scissors or extremely long turtle games, this happens because players have difficulty switching up their play beyond early game to gain an advantage, due to the fact that the other player can build the exact same units. So either you have to catch the player completely off-guard, or pummel him to death with pure attrition. Command Tree's allow players to switch it up even in mirror matchups to provide the same effect non-mirror matchups have
Currently I'm thinking of a way that players can figure out what command tree the other player is using, but right now I'm thinking it should just be a flag on the leaderboard or as a decal on the buildings.
*************
What's your main focus for balance, 1v1? or bigger games 4v4 etc. *************
1v1 most definitely. Its going to be a hardcore's game, which is why the focus is targeting a niche, rather than catering to a large audience. Which is why I'm not planning on making that much money out of it.
However this is for the potential side-effect of it forming into a "spectator sport". A game that people watch for fun and watch good players duke it out. A lot of top titles that try and become e-sports fail because they don't take it too seriously. The more successful e-sports have been lower budget games (counter-strike, quake, etc), my guess is this is because they are willing to take more risks with game difficulty than current top producers would.
I don't think its possible to make a casual friendly e-sport, and before you say moba games, dota took tonnes of skill. Dota really is a hardcore's game now and is very punishing and taxing on skill. LoL not so much, but we will see how Dota 2 fares over LoL a year after its released.
Once this game is finished, hopefully I will have more spare capital to be able to inject into tournaments, which will be my main focus once the game is complete.
**********
How micro intensive are you hoping to make the game? **********
Every unit is designed to have a huge degree on variance depending on how it is used. This not only has mechanical implications, but in strategy and tactics as well. Most units will either siege, or be able to move quickly and shoot for more guerilla oriented play. Light units that move quickly are a lot harder to control, because often you will send them to a base and if you aren't paying attention all the time they will die before you even realise.
The Confederacy has a large amount of mobile defense units. A player who uses this race will be one that thinks about the game in terms of territory capture. The howitzer and badger are units that cannot attack while moving, but do large amounts of damage once set up. The minelayer likewise, can only lay mines. This allows more mobile forces to punish a player who moves his army around too carelessly.
Because of the immobility of this race, it will have two support units. The Razer and the Destroyer. The Razer is a fast moving unit designed to slow down a rapidly expanding opponent who is trying to abuse the fact that you are very immoble. The destroyer will serve as a buffer for the mobile defense units and for taking down weakly defended bases, however only a player with a far superior economy can win with just destroyers.
A typical player will be constantly readjusting his siege units slowly creeping forward and capturing territory while running around limiting the enemies options as much as he can.
*
The United Front will have an easier to control army than the other races. However the catch is that this race is both less cost efficient face-to-face, and also cannot have the economy to back it up. So players who use this race need to be cunning and win through "death by a thousand needles" for lack of a better phrase. It is a race largely inspired by post-apocalyptic terrorist/guerilla warfare.
So while the core army might consist of a mobile army simply designed to keep the opponent at bay with defenders advantage, he will cause as much mayhem as possible and capitalise on key moments to win the game. So the micro intensive tasks are more tactical/micro.
Its planting hidden explosives while letting the enemy chase you and then wiping them out, distracting the player with a feigned attack and then blowing up an entire worker line, infiltrating structures, sneaking past the army, etc. Then capitalising on the advantages you gain out of that, until you can win with your cost inefficient army.
This is mostly inspired by Saviors psychological/tactical warfare in BW. Where he would feign a muta flank, and then kill the main army while the opponent was distracted. Or wait until the opponents army has moved out, bury lurkers in front of the natural while his zerglings would run into the main, and his opponent wouldn't be able to return to defend his own base. Or keep his army out in the open to threaten a backstab and pump his economy, knowing it was deterring the other player from attacking.
The units in this race are designed to facilitate that kind of play even more.
*
The Brotherhood will use micro of a different kind. It will mostly consist of a cost-inefficient attrition based force. However there will be a large amount of micro involved because of that, there will be a lot of poking and prodding with squads while trying to lose as little as possible in order to boost the economy. It is the most mobile race out of the 3. There will be A LOT of running around, harassing and dropping with a primarily biological based force. Most likely this will be the most mechanically intensive race once late game.
In the late game I can definitely see the unit cap being a problem, so I have added a spell that will balance out the race late game. Dark swarm is what made Zergling's viable late game and Zerg extremely fearful when used in the right hands, I have added a similar ability called "forcefield" in this game. Because of the lack of smart-cast it should be a lot more difficult to use than the SC2 spell hehe. Meaning you can't just spam a line of forcefields to the enemy base, so the usage of it will be a lot more strategical.
It will also allow the player to control the late-game base count of the other races, which would be otherwise auto-win if it got to split-map. After this point, the opponent can no longer sit and turtle and will have to do damage of their own if they want to win the game.
Hopefully that covered your questions. Thanks for the input.
I am actually in the midst of completely changing my strategy simply because of the lack of interest here so far. The fact that a lot of artists are doing stuff for free means that its not all about the money, I guess. :P My initial plan was that it would be easier to get a hold of some modelers first to reduce some overhead, but I guess I'm not gonna be able to do that haha.
So one of the things I was planning to do was do a concept/blueprint of the models I want made, as well as design a website with the concepts, unit specs and gameplay discussion (I am a website developer after all so that part should be not too difficult for me haha), as well as just plain get started on the things I can actually do right now in the editor. Of course I am expecting at least a months work before I come back here and update. So I will be quite inactive till then.
But yeah having someone give me some more concrete guidelines and info definitely helped :)
Basically the $1000 is a price for maximum 5-7 models of starcraft 2 quality with animations and textures.(if they are made from scratch completely) Otherwise it will be some crap.
I'd be content with 7 models of good quality actually. Although 3d models on sites usually run for about $50 a model or pack of decent models. I think I want at least 10 models, I am expecting 20 max from $1000 though, so that's $50 per model.
$1000 is a lot more than the $0 budget of other projects though.
Its a free game, but I will be accepting donations. Or do you mean the actual game economy?
Possibly only one resource "ore". I plan to have each race harvest it differently (eg Brotherhood would use a structure instead of a harvester), but ill see how much that will have an effect on the game. The second resource I am tentative about, but its "oil" and will serve a similar role to vespene gas, but Ill see.
I have set aside $1,000 to create a prototype semi-original RTS game that I am willing to invest 90%+ of on 3d models. I am a software developer so I definitely have the money, but to show that I'm serious, I am happy to pay iteratively rather than a lump sum at the end. Make sure you have paypal. :)
The prototype will be a free game using the SC2 engine. I don't plan on making money out of the prototype, but I may be ask for donations just like Dota and whatnot. If it is successful I will start development on a standalone game, but I'm gonna be realistic and say that will be a long way down the road, and not really my priority at the moment. I just wanna make a fun game.
At the start, a lot of the units will be recycled from the engine. As we go along we will gradually replace as many units as we can. There will be some custom units that will need to be made from the get go however.
Just to make this clear, at the moment I am only looking for 3d artists.
0
Thanks Hookah604
I guess I should answer your questions. The reason I kept this hidden was that I feared it would be information overload for just hiring a 3d modeler.
****************
"How will game resources be collected, how many types of resources are there?"
****************
I've decided to have only one resource "NeoMetal" or "BioMetal", for the moment. Its a special rare type of metal that humans initially found on the moon and synthesized this metal to exponentially further their space exploration. Now that the humans have re-aligned themselves on different planets they are fighting over it.
From a gameplay point of view I feel that having more than one resource is unnecessary. Sure, in Starcraft, gas is an integral part to the game, it allows you to decipher otherwise hidden information. If a person gets gas early, its likely that the player is going to play "strategic" (As a progamer would say). You can even "steal" the geyser to limit the options a player has in-order to increase your own read and potentially punish the fact that the opponent won't have the tech to defend against your build.
Gas is one way to achieve the above gameplay options, some games have 6 different resources, however I never felt adding types of resources added to gameplay. I figure streamlining the resources, and instead making the most out of having one resource is a better idea.
For example
One of the major differences between BW and SC2 economy is saturation. In SC2 you do not transfer large groups of workers to other bases because saturation is linear almost all the way to the maximal amount. However in BW it is completely different, saturation becomes exponential towards the maximum. This means that in BW if you split workers evenly between 2 bases, you will gain a lot more income than having those workers work on a single base. This is not the case in SC2 unless you are super saturated.
So the first design goal is gaining exponential returns on economy per base count. We can do this by slowing the mining time of workers and also changing the patch layout. I will be using unique patch layouts that prevent highly saturated areas from mining optimally, such as circle layouts where workers can't mine from the middle, rather than lines.
Making much more fundamental changes like this I think is more important than adding complexity to the game often for the sake of complexity. Something as simple as this completely changes the way games are played, we will have players opting for really risky expansions knowing that by the time an aggressive push comes they will have double the economy to compensate.
The decision isn't as obvious because greedy play can still counter aggressive play. So your choices are to be agressive and balance the economies, be hyper-aggressive and try and bring him below yours, or be even greedier and double expand and overtake his economy. This means that there is much more on the line with decision making, but to the spectator the games are more interesting because the game will become more sophisticated and there won't be any rock-paper-scissors action going on, where if someone does one build by chance it could automatically counter the opponents (which is bad).
Now lets say Player A goes for a fast expand, so Player B reacts with a double expand. Player B risks spreading his defenses too thin, but it is compensated by the boom in economy from the third base. Now Player A has many more avenues to attack Player B, meaning the trade off for aggressive play and greedy play starts to even out. Because both players are spread quite thinly you start getting squad based play with attacks all over the map.
It then becomes a battle of how much damage the aggressor can do to balance the economies, rather than punishing greedy play outright. Now that players realise that aggressive play can only put them slightly ahead instead of finish the game, metagame becomes much more hugely important. If I am playing a greedy player, I can abuse metagame in a Bo5 by going for an all-in build that will finish him off in some games. However I can't "reactively" finish off the player, I can only get slightly ahead. Now the games start to become very deep.
You can initiate all this by simply changing how a player can access one single resource. And I plan to work on as many of these fundamental changes as possible.
*************
Will there be experience/veterancy, heroes or anything like that?
*************
I don't plan to have anything of the sort. I don't think its a bad idea, I love Company of Heroes and Warcraft 3, it just doesn't fit within the scope of my game. Maybe I will add it for fun later down the track, but I don't plan to have it affect the game in anyway.
***********************
How will tech and techtrees work, for example will there be tier 1/2/3, research able abilities, upgrades etc.?
***********************
Teching will be similar to Company of Heroes and Starcraft, where buildings will unlock other buildings, researches and units.
You will have some structures that are designed for research, others for production, and others for static defense.
There will also be a Command Tree that allows players to tweak their race to their style. The command tree is an external research tab that players can align their race to as the game progresses. As it is a tree, players have to strategically pre-empt the alignment of their race, because changing to another tree may be costly, and better researches will appear the further down a single tree you go.
This is to make mirror matchups much more exciting. Not only do we have mechanical/strategic styles defining the race characteristics of a player (for example in ZvZ one player may prefer to use hatch-tech play where as someone else may prefer hive-tech play), players will also have their race customisation.
Mirror-matchups tend to devolve into either rock-paper-scissors or extremely long turtle games, this happens because players have difficulty switching up their play beyond early game to gain an advantage, due to the fact that the other player can build the exact same units. So either you have to catch the player completely off-guard, or pummel him to death with pure attrition. Command Tree's allow players to switch it up even in mirror matchups to provide the same effect non-mirror matchups have
Currently I'm thinking of a way that players can figure out what command tree the other player is using, but right now I'm thinking it should just be a flag on the leaderboard or as a decal on the buildings.
*************
What's your main focus for balance, 1v1? or bigger games 4v4 etc.
*************
1v1 most definitely. Its going to be a hardcore's game, which is why the focus is targeting a niche, rather than catering to a large audience. Which is why I'm not planning on making that much money out of it.
However this is for the potential side-effect of it forming into a "spectator sport". A game that people watch for fun and watch good players duke it out. A lot of top titles that try and become e-sports fail because they don't take it too seriously. The more successful e-sports have been lower budget games (counter-strike, quake, etc), my guess is this is because they are willing to take more risks with game difficulty than current top producers would.
I don't think its possible to make a casual friendly e-sport, and before you say moba games, dota took tonnes of skill. Dota really is a hardcore's game now and is very punishing and taxing on skill. LoL not so much, but we will see how Dota 2 fares over LoL a year after its released.
Once this game is finished, hopefully I will have more spare capital to be able to inject into tournaments, which will be my main focus once the game is complete.
**********
How micro intensive are you hoping to make the game?
**********
Every unit is designed to have a huge degree on variance depending on how it is used. This not only has mechanical implications, but in strategy and tactics as well. Most units will either siege, or be able to move quickly and shoot for more guerilla oriented play. Light units that move quickly are a lot harder to control, because often you will send them to a base and if you aren't paying attention all the time they will die before you even realise.
The Confederacy has a large amount of mobile defense units. A player who uses this race will be one that thinks about the game in terms of territory capture. The howitzer and badger are units that cannot attack while moving, but do large amounts of damage once set up. The minelayer likewise, can only lay mines. This allows more mobile forces to punish a player who moves his army around too carelessly.
Because of the immobility of this race, it will have two support units. The Razer and the Destroyer. The Razer is a fast moving unit designed to slow down a rapidly expanding opponent who is trying to abuse the fact that you are very immoble. The destroyer will serve as a buffer for the mobile defense units and for taking down weakly defended bases, however only a player with a far superior economy can win with just destroyers.
A typical player will be constantly readjusting his siege units slowly creeping forward and capturing territory while running around limiting the enemies options as much as he can.
*
The United Front will have an easier to control army than the other races. However the catch is that this race is both less cost efficient face-to-face, and also cannot have the economy to back it up. So players who use this race need to be cunning and win through "death by a thousand needles" for lack of a better phrase. It is a race largely inspired by post-apocalyptic terrorist/guerilla warfare.
So while the core army might consist of a mobile army simply designed to keep the opponent at bay with defenders advantage, he will cause as much mayhem as possible and capitalise on key moments to win the game. So the micro intensive tasks are more tactical/micro.
Its planting hidden explosives while letting the enemy chase you and then wiping them out, distracting the player with a feigned attack and then blowing up an entire worker line, infiltrating structures, sneaking past the army, etc. Then capitalising on the advantages you gain out of that, until you can win with your cost inefficient army.
This is mostly inspired by Saviors psychological/tactical warfare in BW. Where he would feign a muta flank, and then kill the main army while the opponent was distracted. Or wait until the opponents army has moved out, bury lurkers in front of the natural while his zerglings would run into the main, and his opponent wouldn't be able to return to defend his own base. Or keep his army out in the open to threaten a backstab and pump his economy, knowing it was deterring the other player from attacking.
The units in this race are designed to facilitate that kind of play even more.
*
The Brotherhood will use micro of a different kind. It will mostly consist of a cost-inefficient attrition based force. However there will be a large amount of micro involved because of that, there will be a lot of poking and prodding with squads while trying to lose as little as possible in order to boost the economy. It is the most mobile race out of the 3. There will be A LOT of running around, harassing and dropping with a primarily biological based force. Most likely this will be the most mechanically intensive race once late game.
In the late game I can definitely see the unit cap being a problem, so I have added a spell that will balance out the race late game. Dark swarm is what made Zergling's viable late game and Zerg extremely fearful when used in the right hands, I have added a similar ability called "forcefield" in this game. Because of the lack of smart-cast it should be a lot more difficult to use than the SC2 spell hehe. Meaning you can't just spam a line of forcefields to the enemy base, so the usage of it will be a lot more strategical.
It will also allow the player to control the late-game base count of the other races, which would be otherwise auto-win if it got to split-map. After this point, the opponent can no longer sit and turtle and will have to do damage of their own if they want to win the game.
Hopefully that covered your questions. Thanks for the input.
0
Thanks so much for the advice kinkycactus!
I am actually in the midst of completely changing my strategy simply because of the lack of interest here so far. The fact that a lot of artists are doing stuff for free means that its not all about the money, I guess. :P My initial plan was that it would be easier to get a hold of some modelers first to reduce some overhead, but I guess I'm not gonna be able to do that haha.
So one of the things I was planning to do was do a concept/blueprint of the models I want made, as well as design a website with the concepts, unit specs and gameplay discussion (I am a website developer after all so that part should be not too difficult for me haha), as well as just plain get started on the things I can actually do right now in the editor. Of course I am expecting at least a months work before I come back here and update. So I will be quite inactive till then.
But yeah having someone give me some more concrete guidelines and info definitely helped :)
Thanks for the heads up.
0
I'd be content with 7 models of good quality actually. Although 3d models on sites usually run for about $50 a model or pack of decent models. I think I want at least 10 models, I am expecting 20 max from $1000 though, so that's $50 per model.
$1000 is a lot more than the $0 budget of other projects though.
Its a free game, but I will be accepting donations. Or do you mean the actual game economy?
Possibly only one resource "ore". I plan to have each race harvest it differently (eg Brotherhood would use a structure instead of a harvester), but ill see how much that will have an effect on the game. The second resource I am tentative about, but its "oil" and will serve a similar role to vespene gas, but Ill see.
0
Dear modders
I have set aside $1,000 to create a prototype semi-original RTS game that I am willing to invest 90%+ of on 3d models. I am a software developer so I definitely have the money, but to show that I'm serious, I am happy to pay iteratively rather than a lump sum at the end. Make sure you have paypal. :)
The prototype will be a free game using the SC2 engine. I don't plan on making money out of the prototype, but I may be ask for donations just like Dota and whatnot. If it is successful I will start development on a standalone game, but I'm gonna be realistic and say that will be a long way down the road, and not really my priority at the moment. I just wanna make a fun game.
At the start, a lot of the units will be recycled from the engine. As we go along we will gradually replace as many units as we can. There will be some custom units that will need to be made from the get go however.
Just to make this clear, at the moment I am only looking for 3d artists.
Here is some stuff I have done on teamliquid to show that I at least have some sort of work ethic, game design analysis and can see things through.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=291291
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=154223
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=196232
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=132171
I am an artist too. Here is my deviant-art. I might be doing some concept art for the game.
http://sluggaslamoo.deviantart.com/
I play a lot of BroodWar (max C- on ICCUP), you may often find me doing funky builds on my stream on ladder.
http://www.twitch.tv/sluggaslamoo
If you are interested please post a portfolio below.