K folks, been a while again, but I'm bax... and without anything I've every worked on (curse you microsoft). Getting down to it, I'm currently working on the design document for an MORTS based on Sengoku era Japan (one of many subjects on which I do alot of hobbyist studying) wherein players raise a "house" and control one of 47 prefectural territories and fight for eventual control of all the others, making "clan" alliances with other houses along the way.

This has all the usual RTS elements: gather resources, raise warriors, diversify your army thru research, and fight for areas containing resources needed to proliferate your forces.

What makes this design unique are the following fun facts form the document:
Players can customize their uchino hadao (house flag), commander unit armor theme (from about 50 templates) and base color for all other units.

The object of the game is to unify Japan (all 47 territories) under your house/clan, idealy by way of superior firepower. This was achieved historically by a lord Oda Nobunaga and his bushi riflemen. Because firepower is the last evolution accoridng to my design, it's assumed that whomever reaches this level first and with the best strategy of takeover will win final victory.
Because it's in realtime, players could spend whole afternoons or even days vieing for control.

The game begins with a totally disharmonious server of up to 12 houses with the potential to raise 1000 man armies (though not historically accurate, I imagine that a server can only take so much abuse) and ends when they have fought, developed, and claned their way to a Japan unified under one clan/house.

Other elements include prompt based clan forming/ (You know like "Lord (name) wishes your house to join (clanname). Y/N" or "Lord (name) has decided that alliance with the (clanname) no longer serves his interest."

Prompt based negotiation ex: "Lord (name) graciously offers peace in exchange for (resource demand). Will you oblige? Y/N".

There will be a subleveled map of Japan's 47 prefectural territories with accurate terrain and climate. 12 Players per server (subject to change pending technical working out).

The list goes on and on, but what I'd like to know is if there are programmers brave enough to take it on? As everywhere here, I can't pay right off the bat, but I am compiling the design document because this and another project in the future are guaranteed successes, which to me means it's a worthy matter with which to approach investors. So pay may or may not be available, you'll just have to faith it out and work with me .

I have worked a dozen projects before (some of which were recently destroyed in a building fire...OY..didnt destroy my comp but the drive corrupted anyway.. good ol HP fireproofing).

I'm correuntly doing 3, including this one. One an animated series I am writing, for which I currently have an investor watching my every move on,

I've signed with another programmer I know on a project that's turning out to be a big sigh...mostly because he's hijacked it away from my design cuz he thinks he knows better game design than me but he's actually warping it and overelaborating it away form the original game.

( He's the only programmer I know personally ...and the only one I know crazy enough to do the project we're doing.. so I have no choice but to put up with it for now.

And then there's this one, whos working title is Sengoku Online. Because whomever joins me gets a huge share, I'd like to bump heads and pull out my resources in order to get an investor onboard, because I dont have the cash, but I know nobody wants to hear "royalty split" anymore, lol. It's like profanity these days.

Heh.. nobody interested..? At least I didn't get baked by a horde of professionals with everything negative to say as so often happens, perhaps it's because I already covered most of what they would say, lol..

Oh well, it'll get done eventually. I suppose I'll have to learn to program C++ myself if I want anything done.

first of all i would at least wait 24hours before complaining about no response

i dont wanna be killjoy but there is one thing bothering me:
quite a time ago shogun total wars flopped for one big reason (here and especially in the states): it was a japanese background story
as much as you wont like what i say now but its unbelievable hard to get something covering this story and theme onto the western market with success. its not impossible but very hard and will be quite often reason enough for publishers to avoid a contract with you.

second and more important:
without having at least one basic prototype of your idea playable i dounbt any serious coder will even think about joining you. you are in a very bad position so you will have to invest lots of work to make up this minus points when fishing for crew!

btw.: its easy to get the interest of some investors. thas no issue, thats their job. it way much harder to get their money and a decent contract

cheers

A programmer brave enough? HAHAHAHAHAH, you're not getting people to join you as we see what you're like with a line like that.

@ FoxHound

o_O WELL..typically, RTSs are sort of avoided like the plague, mostly because they're AI intensive...so much so that every other place I've been to has had pages and pages of "It's too harddd" and " That's alot of programming..I can't do it". I would imagine something more advanced would have even fewer takers. As I've been a 3DGS User and patron of this place for a while, I tend to think there are far more men than mice scripters .

I use the phrasing brave enough, because I've yet to meet one willing to take on the work. This, however, says nothing much about me. -_o Anybody here who knows me (comprising about 3 developers and a couple other programmers who've been here a while) knows I'm not such a bad guy, though. I'm sorry if my cheesiness offends you:) (but dont expect me to commit suicide in apology ).

@ Blaatsalat

Ey bro, been a good while.

I hear what you're sayin about the difficulty of reaching western society with eastern themes, buuuut:

If it weren't for the marketing, and the cheesy inclusion on Jean Reno in Part 3, Onimusha shouldve failed as well. Also..I don't plan to make it strongly themed, not so much so that it's unapproachable by westerners just not malignantly innaccurate.

Anyone with a samurai obsession, love of true war strategy, desire for simulated conquest, or who has the capacity to spend hours playing any given game online, would at least try it.

Also: No programmer besides the greedy bloodsucker I work with who'll just try stealing my idea from under my pen when it gets somewhere (meant in the nicest possible way if he's reading )= No demo capacity...as I am a graphic artist... I'm all visual.. ALL visual.. total right brainer.. Annnd I DO..or DID plan to share a design document once completed (as I do want to be taken seriously ). It Isn't quite done, bout another week or so before everything's worked out..buut I take my work and my brainchildren seriously.

Also.. maybe I shoulda waited a day or two before I said anything, lol. It seems not only didn't I get any sort of related inquiries, I got exactly what I wanted to avoid getting.

It's ok though, I'm a walking talking jynx, lol. If I havent already, I'll take take your criticisms into consideration .

just a short none topic input:
but i loved to play shogun tw (yes, that single person playing this game on this continent was me )
so you would hit my taste quite good with a samurai game. especially as i think this whole topic and far east history has tons and tons of interesting stuff to show and tell.

so maybe this thing would help:
use the power of the visual and history part of your idea. For example a nice drawn main hero samurai might attract some people. tell a little bit about the story (since its unusual for an rts game this might help as well).

show a beta level (btw battle realms was a good game as well) of some nice asian landscape and building maybe with just the main samurai unit standing or running arround and i am quite sure this would help to change this post more into your expected direction.

make somehing a coder would at least look twice at and maybe say ... "gee, an army of samurai kicks ass...look the melee combat on the battlefield..... and over there some hero special unit. he is preparing for his master dragon slay move...this wavy cherry trees, the high rice grass and swampy deep green land .... this sounds like a good basement for some good rts´ing"


i like the theme a lot so i would take a very close at the game as soon as possible...

cheers

Anyone who right out says "I can't do it" isn't someone you want on your team. Someone who says "I can't do it yet" is. A programmer must be willing to push himself beyond his limits to get better, or he/she will be nothing. Every project I have done has been beyond my grasp when I took the project on but I pushed beyond myself and figured it out. Check out the "go to guy" at your work/school/whatever, he seldom knows how to do something, he usually knows how to figure out how to do it.

This does not excuse your wording. It's childish and makes me think a 10 year old is asking me to join his "leet game krew".

I'm makeing a an rts too and I have made very much yet, but i don't find a modeller.
I think you won't get one too.

mfg destruktor

@FoxHound,

Yeaa that's mostly what I've run into tho. Not here, but elsewhere there have been programmers who just dont want to push themselves. Not downing them or anything, buuut... can't get anything done with just me. Besides..Sir..it was like 60% joke . I'm nothing without a little formality. BTW, I WAS the go-to guy where I'm from ..It's actually how I got good at the many things I do..

@ destruktor

You might be on to something.. and yea I KNOW there's a huge enouhg market, if you just reach out and touch em with the marketing ^_^; there's no shortage of American japanophiles and we all know this, lol. Anyway.. Even tho I'm not a programmer. I COULD..do something of a demo cinematic.. YEA.. most-def.

Good idea, destruktor. You're a genius!

Off I go to do some sound engineering and animation then . Keep the comments comin (hopefully one will actually be interested in contributing but I welcome the nontopical scrutiny).

@FoxHound: You must always become better but starting a project that large without the needed knowledge is its death. You can't rewrite pathfinding over and over again, you can't rewrite ai all the time. rts' are complex games and need complex planning concerning design as well as code and its structure.