Pazette and the Dungeon Zoning Board

[Ixis]

TL;DR
I need a programmer(s), download the demo folder below and check out the game/coding and laugh at me. *BAM*

The Basics so you don't have to read paragraphs of bullshit rambling
So I'm working on a game in Ren'Py. It's exciting because Ren'Py has all the tools I need to make my game fun and easy to manage, but at the same time I'm taking said tools and jamming myself in the eye. I know diddly shit about programming, and it's pretty much getting me nowhere. So I need a programmer (or programmers... like, sexy asian twins ~3~) to help me do the meat and potatoes, blood and guts (make out on my persian rug), actual hardcore gameplay stuff.

What the hell is this shit?
Pazette and the Dungeon Zoning Board (or PatDZB, or we'll just call it Paz or something) is an RPG Adventure Visual Novel kinda game. Wait! I can see prospective team members ready to click the back button, but hear me out! It's not actually an RPG (aka: you won't need to program AI, random battles, XP, levels or even MOVEMENT! .) The game only has the illusion that it's an RPG. In actuality it's a point-n-click visual novel adventure game with a clever system of choices that appears to be an RPG. Basically imagine a Lucasarts style adventure game, now rip out that verbal command Scumm system and replace it with Final Fantasy's combat system and you get the idea. There's a visual explanation thingy in the demo posted below.

But what the fuck is the story about? (Shit, can I say fuck on these forums?)
The world is dominated by Heroes, Villains and the Dungeon Zoning Board, a bureaucratic company that acts as a semi-mediator between the two. Ever wonder why boss monsters are always at the end of a dungeon? Why monsters only seem to get progressively harder the deeper you go into a dungeon? Why you'll always conveniently find a room full of healing potions or a fire sword in the ice dungeon? It's all thanks to the Board.
Pazette is an odd violent child who lives on a floating castle in the sky. The castle tells her to kill people and devours towns, cities, small orphanages, etc. Pazette's really good at murder and getting around traps, making her perfect for the Dungeon Zoning Boards Enforcement Officer division.
Enforcement Officers break into the lairs of impossible villains. Dungeons run by bad guys who've decided not to work with the Board. These are castles, lairs and caverns deemed impossible for heroes to traverse. And it's up to Pazette to break through quixotic traps to issue the villains Citations of Neverending Hit-point Deductions.

Characters



I'll post more about them if people are interested in the game.

Umm, I don't know what else to type...

Here's the demo:
http://www.mediafire.com/?u6261i85uvh8vd6

Here's my dA profile with some of the work I've done on this (WARNING, NSFW: Lotta dick jokes. Not gonna lie.)
http://ixis.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[TyranX]

Thats quite an amazing idea story you have there. XDI'd be honored to help in any non-art related shtuffs. Unfortunately Mediafire (seems to be down?) at this moment so i'll download and take a look at the game later. Meanwhiles, I wish you the best of luck good sir/madam, err person~

[Ixis]

Got a couple of offers so I'll check out everybody's work and make a decision later today!

[Ixis]

To the people who responded (or anyone who may be more familiar with Ren'Py than me), how long would it take to create and implement that RPG system I want to go for?

[Topagae]

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

[desulishor]

I thought about that rpg disguise thing one day. if it's a setup where the right options leads to next screen and wrong ones produce game over it could be done with simple menu and jump commands:

label battle1:

menu:

"magic"
jump magic

"attack"
jump attack

label magic:

image animation: (fireboltframe1.png, 0.25,
fireboltframe2.png, 0.25,
fireboltframe3.png, 0.25)
"used firebolt, enemy burns to death"
jump victorytheme

label attack:

image animation: (attackframe1.png, 0.25,
attackframe2.png, 0.25,
attackframe3.png, 0.25)
"pazette attacks. It's not very effective."

image animation: (frostboltframe1.png, 0.25,
frostboltframe2.png, 0.25,
frostboltframe3.png, 0.25)
"enemy turn: frostbolt, pazette freezes to death."
jump gameover

well, something like that. too lazy to write proper code in quick replies.

[Jake]

Completely skill dependent. I got some professional Python threads who could do it in a day. People just starting out? Couple weeks maybe.

I'd agree it's completely skill dependent, but... did you actually look at the demo?!

Doing it in a day seems a little unlikely, unless you're talking about 'writing just enough code to implement just the exact things shown in the demo shown earlier' rather than actually 'writing a generic system which can be used to provide all kinds of functionality of the same class as the things seen in the demo, and reasonable estimates of what the other undemonstrated features might be'.

Anyone doing something like that in a day more than likely isn't testing their code properly and is writing the kind of hacky code which will bite you in the arse later. And/or working absolutely flat-out for 24 hours, which isn't realistic because humans need things like food and sleep. Conversely, someone just starting out would more than likely take a hell of a lot longer than a couple of weeks, since they'd have to learn how to program, a language, and the Ren'Py API. And in a couple of weeks, they probably wouldn't have time for the turnaround on more than a handful of questions asked online, so they'd have to do it all themselves.




If I were doing something like this, I expect it would probably take me about a week of full-attention evenings (noting that I don't really have whole weeks of full-attention evenings) to get something usable, depending on exactly what's needed for all those features that aren't completely described, and probably another couple of weeks to polish everything to a releasable state. But that's just a guess, and of course it'd probably need further lightweight coding to add all the puzzles using the framework code written in the first week, as the game gets written. Unless you're confident enough in your Python to do that part yourself, anyway.