About the design doc i''m changing it anyway and I do think the storyline needs a bit of work. About the characters I was thinking normal sort of weapons like: swords, bows, daggers... ect (I did not want the character to be magical because he''s supposed to be a travellor). with the battles you''ve got all your builders/miners and fighters back at your base, then you chose some (or lots) of fighters and tell them to follow you and you walk down to there base and your guys protect you or you can tell them to go and "whop'' some ass".

So, is the game mainly menu driven? So would you talk with people and then issue them orders from there?

Or does each NPC do what they want based off of what they think of the player''s character?

Do resources/NPC''s stay between missions?

How tough is the main character?

What sort of character can the main character be?

Do weapons/equipment upgrade?''

Single player or multiplayer?

Just some things to think about.

here a suggestion for the story(a bit long):

what if the good king has become old and absent minded
and many people in the kingdom has grown tierd of his leadership.

this is where the evil king sees his chance to overtrow his rule
so he uses one of his spys, also an advisor of the good king, to
lure the good king into beliving that villages to the south are
being plundered by a rowing band of barbarians(which is partialy
rigth, but extreamly exagerated)

so the good king leads his army to deal with the barbarians while the evilking seizes power by inciting a revolt.
the good king hears of this and heads back north to the capitol
to vanquis the evil king and his army.

then one of the good kings advisors has a horrible vision that
they are gonna lose to the evil king and only a young storng
leader can restore the kingdom to its greatness.

the goodking heeding his word sends out 5 of his best men in
different direction in case the vision comes true.

the goodking and his amry gets ambused by the evil king and defeated.

to stop possible revolt the evilking orders his assasin to kill all the young men which the goodking had sent out.

they are all kill but one which is left for dead.
he is found by a traveling (egyptian?)merchant(you) and his band
and pleads for their help.

soon after they find themselves attacked by assasins(or maybe barbarians) and the game begins...



ideas for gameplay:

- much of the challengs will be trying to convince people that
the evilking must be overtrown.
- possible cooperation with the barbarians

- helping rebels

- rescuing the good kings advisor(s)



hope you like some of the idea''s, and pardon all the typo''s
i KNOW there are alot

It sounds cool and all but here are some potential problems:

1 Useing a single character to issue orders and such would create a "bottle neck" in the flow of information...If the player sends some guys to one side of the map to do some task...What happens if the player changes his mind and needs those guys to come back before they have completed the task? Does the player have to walk over to where they are and tell them? Doing something like this would slow the game down to a crawl as the player must constantly go from one place to another telling his units what he wants them to do....given the time frame the game takes place in...the only way to issue orders from one location is to use messangers...lots of messangers...but going to that length of reality...players shouldn''t have a realtime map available to them as the only way players could know of things outside his imeadiant field of view is through messages relayed back to him...then, of course, this is unreliable as things can change by the time it would take for a messenger to go from place to place...

2. how do players increase the size of thier force? If they must go into towns scouting for potential allies then haveing the ability to build a structure that generates units (as in most RTS games) is kinda pointless.

3. How do the RPG aspects fit into the game? Are players going to personnaly engage in combat or is that left up to his/her units?

RPGs are built around "my charactor"...while RTS games are built around "my army"...mixing these two game genres can be difficult as they are often at odds with each other...there are lots of ways it can be done...but sticking it in a midevil fantasy time frame limits some game design options available that would help...

here is my take:

The player controls the ghost of the dead good king...this ghost can pop into the bodies of units on his side, effectively controling them...from these bodies the player can issue orders to his troops and while doing so the unit he is controling can build experience...then when the need arises the player can jump across the map and pop into the body of another unit giving commands to the units over there...

And between battles the player (in control of one of the bodies) can go into town to raise more troops, etc...the key to this is that the player must be in control of a body to effect the game...when players pop out takeing the ghost form, they are not even seen...but in ghost form they can increase the attack strength of nearby units (even tho the units cannot see them)...this would create a dilema for players as in ghost form they could stand in the middle of a battle increaseing thier armies attack strength...but in ghost form they couldn''t actually issue orders directing the battle...so they would need to pop into the body of one of thier units...but doing so would cause the nearby troops to lose that attack bonus makeing the battle harder for them

Thanks for the replys everyone,

To NutFruit: I like the idea but I think there are some faults:

"....if the good king has become old and absent minded
and many people in the kingdom has grown tierd of his leadership."

If the people have grown tired of the good king whats the point of calling him the good king and the bad king, the bad king. Remember the character is supposed to beat the bad king?

Also:

"while the evilking seizes power by inciting a revolt."

You are supposed to get people to help you get rid of the evil king, If the people revolt against the good king how are you sopposed to get people to help you to get rid of the evil king?

"to stop possible revolt"

Didn''t you say that the people revolted against the good king?

Anyway besides that I like the idea and might do something like that( sorry if it sounds like I''ve been crisizing it).


To MSW: I have a few ideas about number 1: How about the character has to go with units if they go out of your town, or, maybe (unrealistic) you can just order them from where they are ( this is unrealistic but, it would make it a lot easyer) could you please tell me if you have any ideas.

2: I was thinking if the game had a skirmish game thing then you could create units in that but in the single missions you would have to get more guys to follow you.

3: If your guy is in the front of the army it would increase the guys attack, defense and to stop it being more of are RTS I would make it so you could only have small armys.


Thanks for the replys, keep them coming!

I like the idea - I think it makes an interesting blend of RTS and RPG. I only really have one real problem with the design as presented, and that is MSW''s first point - By making the interface too RPGish you make it harder to coordinate the RTS elements of the game. I would recommend something like SliverMyst''s Flag (TM) control system for this, rather than a dialog or menu based system.

Oh and the name Uprising is already taken.