WARLYTE'S PROFILE

Hi, my name is Phil N. Schipper and I'm hiring a few more people to round out my team for Learning the Dark Trade. It's quite ambitious by RPG Maker standards, but by getting a good team together, trusting their ideas, and tackling one piece at a time, I think I can take this project to its finish.

Excuse the fact that this post is going to be really long—I just want to give you as much complete information as possible.

The Game

So what is Learning the Dark Trade all about? Well, the protagonist is abruptly taken out of high school to go to a special college that only accepts those with magical abilities, supernatural backgrounds or other crazy talents. It focuses on various types of combat skills. Over the course of a four-year program, the player can choose classes to take each semester, and in turn learn the abilities that come from it. Whether they be magic spells, combat techniques, arts of sabotage or boosts to their natural power, these skills can be learned and relearned in order to increase their power, or practiced on the battlefield.



Similar to games like Persona 4, the story will move forward as time passes, but the bulk of the game's content can be found in the activities the player chooses in the meantime. There will be a wide range of randomly-generated dungeons to explore and fight through, some tied to the main story and others associated with each of the game's six party members. Based on a mix of mythology and plain imagination, I've already worked with a talented artist to create over 100 monsters to populate these areas—and that number will likely more than double as production continues.



Also like Persona 4, a major element of play is relations with other characters. However, this system is rather different. All of the game's party slots—the four that battle together and the two that are left out—are paired. By adventuring in these pairs, party members gradually grow closer and gain relationship levels with each other. At certain levels, special events trigger that further develop the connections between them. Eventually, the player may choose to continue these stories as either budding romances or true friendships.

Increasing the relationship levels gives quite a few benefits. Paired characters get major stat bonuses in battle based on this, and at a certain point may even get access to special joint attacks. In addition, by adding up a character's relationships with all the other party members, you get their overall bond level, which represents how close they feel with the group as a whole. By doing this, you unlock even greater milestones in their development. That way, you'll make them even more powerful, find more of their backstory and have further access into the dungeons they're tied to. The game's ending is also heavily tied to the characters that you've given the most attention to.



All in all, Learning the Dark Trade is one big love letter to its inspiration that seeks to offer more choices in the dungeon crawling sector, while developing a small cast of characters in a new and extensive way. The relationship system and the character progression through school classes offer a fresh spin on what RPG's of this type do, while the battle and dungeon systems call back to the ways of the old classics.

What's Happening

Currently, I have about a dozen documents full of story, characters, creatures, skills, items and more, plus about a half-hour playable prototype for the game itself. I'm in the midst of getting most of this information onto a Trello board so I can share it with the other team members. Besides myself, there are two artists working on this—one for characters and one for enemy creatures—and a soundtrack composer. All three of them are doing brilliant work for this game and they deserve more credit for what it currently looks like than I do.

Let me be perfectly transparent here. The total cash I have budgeted for this game right now is only around $750, and I expect those three to get over half of that over time, so my current task is to make this game presentable enough for Kickstarter. Once I've made the hires I'm here for, I'll keep paying everyone what they deem fair until that money gets low so that I have the best possible prototype to show off to the world.

The Kickstarter campaign itself will probably happen this fall or winter. I have only a few rough ideas and plans for that, honestly, but then again, that is another topic entirely. Just know that the goal will still be relatively low, and I plan to find other hooks to give it the highest possible chance of success, so with any luck at all there will again be funds that I can pass on gratefully to everyone that's working on this game.

In case the above didn't make it evident, it's already occurred to me that I may never make back the money that I'm spending to make Learning the Dark Trade. That doesn't matter to me, because I set aside funds for this purpose a long time ago. If it doesn't turn a profit in the end, I'll just think of it as my gift to the world. However, something tells me that if we all put some love into this, people will notice. Corny as that may sound.

The Jobs

Right now, there are three distinct areas that I need covered. However, if there is more than one that you feel you're suited for, by all means apply for them. Maybe you're a stunning visual artist that can do both environments and UI, or maybe you're a UI genius that can both visualize and program a menu.

For my sake and yours, communication about this would probably be best done through email. Therefore, please send a link to examples of your past experiences, as well as an estimate of the pricing arrangement you would be most comfortable with. Keep in mind that although I desperately want to give you the payment you deserve (and more!) there is obviously going to be major constraint on that as outlined above.

Scripting

For much of the functionality I've dreamed up for this game, I was able to simply find scripts that some very generous programmers have posted up online. With some adjustment and extra time spent understanding their functions, I found that I could usually get it to work.

However, there are some things that, quite simply, nobody's really done with RPG Maker before, or at least nobody's ever shown it publicly. The biggest example is the ability to show the menu where the player chooses their classes for the next semester, with the list of available ones, roster of what's currently scheduled, descriptions and the skills that can be learned. Furthermore, having events “scheduled” or triggered to occur at certain times is a complicated process, and although I think I may be able to achieve it with events, I would greatly appreciate, at the least, some advice on how to do it more efficiently, if not a script for that purpose.

Other than that, much of the scripter's job will probably be bug squashing. I obviously have quite a few scripts already. Some of them play nice with each other, some don't, and some I am not sure if they ever worked properly in the first place. It's just not all things I'm happy with.

Parallax Mapping

I think this job is probably pretty self-explanatory. Sure, there are randomly-generated dungeons, but that's not the only place the player will be. The college itself, for example, has a lot of areas that can be explored. For each map I want created, I'll have a basic tile version of it along with some notes. Generally I make them 32x24 tiles, because that matches my game's resolution of 1024x768, so that's the size you'll be working with. Note that as I'm using the Free Movement script by GaryCXJk, it is possible to add collisions that don't conform exactly to the tile grid, so you can play around in that regard.

If you're up for it, I would also like to have you help somewhat with the randomly-generated dungeons. Being comfortable with this isn't required in order to get this position, but I would still pay for this service. Basically, I would want you to find, choose or create tiles and settings that achieve the intended effects with this script ( http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/blog/121/entry-789-super-dungeon-demo-thing/ ).

UI Design

Obviously, creating a Window.png graphic and helping me find the right font for this game will go a long way by themselves. However, you (and to some extent the scripter) will have to answer questions like, how do we clearly show the pairs of party members in the menu? Does the battle interface match everything else? What might a quick tutorial window look like? Custom icons would also be an ideal. Overall, your job is to help me fool players into forgetting that this is an RPG Maker game at all.