   Wartide , An advanced RTS/RTT is Recruiting
Team name:Warshop Studios is an Independent Game Development Company well, with multiple games in development, and began as a start-up conceived originally to support the development of Wartide, and it has since grown.Project name:WartideBrief description:The following statement is taken directly from the Wartide Public Information Sheet;Wartide is an RTS/RTT (Real-Time Strategy/Real-Time Tactical) PC game being developed by Warshop Studios utilizing Terathon Software’s C4 Engine.  Wartide will focus on utilizing customizable automation- a design technique whereby the player is granted control over what actions should be automated and how they are automated thus allowing players extreme control over unit behavior and more- to introduce a massive level of combat depth without overwhelming players with insane APM (Actions Per Minute) requirements or boring them with uncontrollable automation.The game is set in a science fiction universe with some touches of fantasy (but Warshop’s dedication to fleshing out a realistic, believable storyline is never compromised through such touches) and includes technologies such as space travel via the eleventh dimension (reference M-Theory, a derivative of String Theory), coil (Gauss) guns, rail guns, metalstorm, scram technology, VASIMR derivatives, etc… The largest single nation in human space, the Protectorate, is facing internal crisis.  The Protectorate was born of a union between two nations locked in a cold war until the subtle appearance of an outside power, the Mactige Empire, caused the two hostile nations to militarily unite to fight the new foe.The two defending nations’ militaries forged the Protectorate in the heat of that war and built the economic and social systems to their whims while conceding to a republican governmental structure at the completion of the war.  Nevertheless, the military’s power and the Protectorate’s resource-based economy would drive its need to expand and grow for centuries.  But now its expansion has shifted it into a grave state of unrest.Not all habitants of the planets swept-up in the Protectorate’s waves of conquest appreciate Protectorate rule.  Many have chosen to resist, violently.  There is little doubt that other nations such as the Mactige Empire are subtly aiding the resistance groups as they find their own sovereignty threatened by the Protectorate’s continual expansion.  With such widespread uprisings the Protectorate’s forces have been spread thin and it has increased its flow of recruitment and accelerated its training programs.  In the Protectorate’s singleplayer campaign, the player will enter into one of these accelerated officer training programs and will emerge with command of a counter-insurgency task force.  The player will be assigned a sizable starting area of operation where he/she will need to leverage his/her forces to defend key Protectorate institutions and assets from attack and to sniff-out the sources of the resistance.  This will be no easy task because the resistance has no traditional RTS base just sitting in the open waiting for the player to bring his/her forces to bear on it- this will require real investigative management as well as tactical and strategic command of defenses and political considerations as the presently neutral members of the population sway back and forth between supporting the Protectorate… or its foes.Counter-insurgency won’t be the only element of the Protectorate’s SP campaign but it demonstrates the realistic depth that Wartide will achieve and the uniqueness of its SP component.  Multiplayer is also in the works and that will begin with three factions (one of which is inherently composed of sub-factions and another of which focuses entirely on guerrilla warfare), each of which bring a different play style to bear, supported by unique resource systems and unit acquisition systems.  Players will be able to develop and maintain persistent customizable automation sets to help them get everything they can out of Wartide’s deep tactical and strategic depth (and thanks to customizable automation, that depth is quite… deep indeed).Perhaps an example is in order to clarify quite a bit of the above.  The player wants to move his/her forces into a dense cityscape, but this is always a dangerous proposition.  The streets of the city are relatively narrow and there are buildings with windows all-around- not to mention plenty of civilian vehicles, benches, walls, and other prime sources of cover (and concealment).  The troops follow orders and march into the city… but that is a rather broad term.  Do they simply march down the middle of the street?  Do they scurry from cover to cover?  Do they crawl?  Do they run at quickly as they can?  Micromanaging cover-hopping would be tedious.  But automating it would remove control from the player- for example, perhaps the player just wants to get his/her units through the city street as quickly as possible- cover-hopping isn’t really efficient for that.  Via customizable automation, the player can set-up the default behavior for this situation but can also modify this behavior on-the-fly (usually by selecting units and having them flip between pre-created situational behavior sets).The player smartly chooses to have his/her units hop between pieces of cover- but there are minutiae even to this.  Do the units all act independently or do they coordinate together and cover each other as they cross through the open?  The player has chosen to group his/her infantry into squads today (in Wartide, squads are not preset but rather player-created and squads can contain multiple unit types in them), and focusing in on one squad we see a scout darting out of cover to the next likely spot while his squad-mates cover him with heavy coil guns and coil assault rifles.  The scout reaches the next piece of cover, quickly checks for any nasty surprises such as proximity mines, checks the surrounding area to ensure that it is indeed good cover, and then waves on additional members of the squad, providing cover from his position while remaining squad members provide cover from theirs.Just when most of the squad has gotten to the new piece of cover, a series of mortars (fired from a single metalstorm mortar launcher) impact the position and shrapnel rips into the scout’s leg.  The medic quickly rushes up from the former position while the squad members at the current position fan out and search for the target while covering the medic as he works on the scout’s cut leg.  The squad recognizes that the mortar fire is coming from behind a wall to their right.  The player’s customizable automation kicks-in again and the squad recognizes that it is acceptable in this case to utilize limited munitions to blast the wall apart with shaped-charge warheads fired from heavy troops.  The wall crumbles under this assault and the squad’s sniper quickly takes-out the operating crew of the mortar.  A logistical troop with bags of ammunition assigned to support this squad and others trundles over from the APC’s covering the assault from behind and hands-out fresh ammunition to the heavy troops that blew the wall with their warheads, restocking them.  All of this takes place because of intuitive reactions between units- when different unit types are placed in a squad together, they will work together (there are default interactions but the player can go and tweak these to their whim via customizable automation), hence the instant aid of the medic and the heavy troops blowing the wall with the sniper instantly ready to take-down what was behind it.Hopefully that example sheds some light on how Wartide is leveraging customizable automation and more to support additional depth across the board (though that only dealt with low-level tactical depth, customizable automation also has a major impact on higher-level tactical and strategic depth)- players can focus more on commanding their troops rather than babysitting them but at the same time players still have complete control over low-level unit functions and interaction.Wartide’s initial release will be only the beginning.  Warshop Studios plans to consistently support the game post-release, adding new campaigns, maps, modes, factions, units, etc…As much as Wartide will be about the content developed by Warshop Studios, it will also be about moddability and mapability.  Robust tools and support will ensure that budding developers and hobbyists can bring their completely unique visions to life for everyone to enjoy- and we are keen on ensuring that Wartide is an ideal base to build from.Wartide’s current stage of development remains within the core areas for now as core mechanics are being implemented into the C4 engine, core toolsets developed, artistic design cemented, and designs finalized.  Nevertheless, once these core tasks are mostly completed, Warshop Studios intends to expand and grow its Wartide team to build and iterate off of those core elements to create and complete the first release of the game.Target aim:Our aim with Wartide is to focus on the SP RTS/RTT experience and to push that significantly beyond its current boundaries in the genre by allowing the player to partake in very open-world but story-driven scenarios, to leverage customizable automation as a means to increase tactical and strategic depth on both the SP and MP fronts, to introduce a new take on indie (and perhaps full commercial) game distribution, and to support and foment mapping and modding.Compensation:We will be offering profit sharing where each member will receive a proportional percentage of the profits from the game based on his/her status with the project- exact percentages cannot currently be ascertained as those will vary depending on the final team size.Technology:Wartide is being developed for the PC using the C4 Engine and all associated tolsets, and is being programmed using the C++ language.Talent needed:We are currently in need of Programmers, Artists, and Audio Engineers, but we will consider any and all applications.  For example, we aren't specifically looking for designers currently, but if an applicant really impresses us, we will definitely reconsider.Team structure: Design Division:    * TerranUp16- Lead Designer and Producer    * WG- Senior Designer and Web Administrator    * Chris- Storyline Designer (Temporary Leave)    * aja- Storyline DesignerArt Division:    * Shigee- Art Director/Lead Artist    * Grendies- Technical Modeler    * Angel Art- Modeler    * Foamy- Modeler and Texturer    * Falcoknight- Concept Artist and Texturer    * Dragonskull- Concept and Promotional Artist    * Whiplash- Texturer and Promotional Artist    * Cokemonkey11- Environmental DesignerProgramming Division:    * Death(TheOneKnownAsMe)- Acting Lead ProgrammerWebsite:http://forum.wartidegame.comContacts:contact us using our forums: http://forum.wartidegame.comPrevious Work by Team:The team itself is full of members with years of experience, though none we can ostensibly link here.Additional Info:Screenshots coming soon...Feedback:Any[Edited by - TheOneKnownAsMe on June 17, 2009 5:29:13 PM]
  I will give this thread a bump as its been some form of development for a quite a while. I think you guys should post some concept art and probably give a briefer brief description.   ;  Yeah, didn't see the formatting issue until after Death posted and logged-off for the night.  Seems he forgot that when pasting from a Word doc, the spacing doesn't carry-over properly.  Since I can't edit his post for him, going to have to wait 'til he gets back on.Would love to post some concept art but Shigee would prefer we wait instead for some "more interesting" shots and I'll not much argue with that (at Warshop, we do have a very good culture of allowing divisions a fair amount of freedom while still keeping all divisions on the same page)- but I certainly suppose it won't hurt to plop my usual signature image at the bottom of the post for now ;)Briefer description... For once I actually didn't write the above wall of text of my own accord but rather because fellow team members felt that anything shorter just didn't convey what it needed to, but a quick summary down here won't hurt:Shorter Summary:Sci-Fi RTS/RTT with a touch of well-justified fantasy.  The game will feature multiple, unique factions (each with their own resource system, unit acquisition system, and tech trees) with varying tech levels (though all currently-planned factions are spacefaring).Wartide views the Singleplayer and Multiplayer experience as two, different components that are each being developed as full experiences of their own- the propensity for RTS campaigns to be more or less "glorified skirmishes" will definitely be avoided in Wartide.  SP will take place in an open-world setting that has the player starting out by performing counter-insurgency operations (Wartide's complex though intuitive combat systems make this possible) and while the campaign will be story-driven, there are multiple broad progression paths that the player can maneuver him/herself into.MP will leverage the tactical depth and complex terrain of a game like Company of Heroes with the larger scale of a game like Supreme Commander (not in the same manner).  Customizable automation (which also is utilized heavily in SP) will allow players to exert control over all aspects of the battle while not being overwhelmed by the need for a massive APM (whereas Dawn of War 2 for example seeks to reduce the amount of entities that the player needs to exert APM on, Wartide instead accomplishes such simplification through the UI without sacrificing player control).  The detailed systems and terrain will allow for more realistic representations of unorthodox strategies and tactics such as guerrilla warfare.Finally, Wartide is as much about moddability as it is about Wartide itself.  We are fully committed to ensuring that the game is fully modifiable to ensure that users can create and share their own content as well as to build and gain valuable experience towards game development.  To illustrate our dedication here more clearly, we cast aside any chance of adopting Leadwerks 2 as our engine as soon as we identified the "no modding clause" that came attached to it./EndAnyway, thanks for the bump, auirs.  My apologies for the botched formatting above- I'll get Death (TheOneKnownAsMe) to fix that asap.  Otherwise, if this appears a little low-key for a recruitment post from us, it's mostly because it is.  At the moment, we are more or less passively seeking additional programmers and currently this is more "fyi we are looking for programmers so if you're interested in the project pop us a message and we can talk more"- it's not quite a burning need yet, but we wanted to get the word out even if that meant doing so before we quite have the material we'd like to showcase to support such efforts.  We will be amping recruitment up a bit more though in the coming months and we'll update our post here accordingly (yes, there will be eye candy).Lead Designer of Wartide   ;  Bump, i finally fixed the formatting.   