Looking For Flash Programmer Thread

I'm aiming to produce a simple RPG in the vein of Monster's Den: Book of Dread ( Kongregate.com ). The game's character creation and combat engines have been play-tested in tabletop settings and are ready for a digital conversion. I can't currently afford compensation for the work, but that is bound to change in the near future.

I need a Flash programmer or someone who could otherwise produce a game in the vein of Book of Dread. Please PM if interested, or if you would like details on the game engine.

ActionScript should suffice; I just need a working model of the game to make playtesting easier.

This is a turn-based strategy game (roughly medieval weaponry/combat, but no fantasy elements such as magic) that introduces a few innovations to freshen up the rather saturated genre. Here are some distinguishing features:

Characters don't have one particular class; they have 20 class slots that, upon character creation, are randomly assigned 1 of 8 classes. When a character attacks, it chooses one of its classes to attack with. To determine success, a d20 is rolled; the character must roll below the sum of its slots containing that class in order to succeed. For example, if a character has 12 of its 20 slots filled with the Linefighter class, it has a 55% chance (or a 'range' of 1-11) of succeeding on its attack. Every time a character levels up, it has the choice of switching the class in one of its slots, ideally working towards filling all 20 slots with 1 class (a range of 1-19, or a 95% chance of success). Classes grant different conditional bonuses, so a character must balance between optimization and versatility. In the same manner as a character chooses a class to attack with, its opponent chooses a class to defend with. The character that rolls higher within its range wins the confrontation; different combinations of successes and failures yield different results for the attacker and defender.

A character's reliability in battle decreases as it sustains damage. HP is measured on dice, ranging from d1 to d20. At the beginning of the character's turn, it must roll below its current HP or lose its turn. A character with 10 HP on a d10 has a range of 1-9, or a 90% chance of successfully acting on that turn. After sustaining 2 HP damage, that character has 8 HP, and thus a range of 1-7, or a 70% chance, of acting on that turn. Note that, by this rule, it is impossible for a d1 character (1 HP) to successfully act on its turn; this issue is addressed with the Discipline stat, which allows characters to ignore the 'roll to act' rule for X points of damage (a d10 with 5 discipline would act unconditionally until it reached 5 HP, then start rolling at a range of 1-4). This allows a d1 character to act unconditionally with a discipline of 1.

Each character has a line-of-sight, peripheral, and blind spot. Attacks and defenses in a character's line-of-sight are rolled normally, attacks and defenses in a character's peripheral are rolled at a -5 penalty to range, and attacks and defenses in a character's blind spot are rolled at a -10 penalty to range (meaning a fully optimized character still has less than a 50% chance of succeeding on a blind attack or defense). Note that there are no bonuses to attack or defense in this system; rather, there are penalties applied to the opponent's range.

Each class has 2 bonuses; the character's primary class (chosen by the character) receives both of its bonuses, while all other classes possessed by the character receive 1 of the 2 bonuses. Here are a few sample classes:

Linefighter: The backbone of any fighting force, the linefighter is simply incredible in every aspect of close-quarters combat.
Bonus 1: The enemy's range is reduced by 10 when attacking or defending in the linefighter's line-of-sight.
Bonus 2: The linefighter treats the line-of-sight of any allies within its peripheral as its own line-of-sight.

Berserker: The berserker is nigh-unstoppable, returning blows and refusing to go down without a fight.
Bonus 1: The berserker automatically makes an attack against any opponent that attacks it (and is in range).
Bonus 2: The berserker can not fail to act on its current turn if it received damage between its current and previous turn.

Assassin: Striking fast and hard, the assassin is ideal for ambushes and utilizes gaps in enemy defenses to deal overwhelming damage.
Bonus 1: Attacks against a target's peripheral incur defense penalties as if it were a blind spot (-10 instead of -5)
Bonus 2: Attacks against a target's blind spot ignore the target's armor rating.

Every time experience is received, it is given to both the characters (soldiers) and player (army). Soldiers receive experience per kill, while the army receives experience per victory. Soldiers have 3 stats: Skill (explained above), HP (also explained above), and Speed (determines movement speed per round). Armies also have 3 stats: Discipline (explained above), Training (each point in training reduces each soldier's penalties by 1), and Tactics (measured on dice like HP, rolling for tactics takes 1 turn and is checked against the opponent army's tactics to determine success; a successful roll reveals the statistics of all enemy units on the field). Each soldier's stats affect only that soldier, while the army's stats affect all soldiers.

For both soldiers and armies, each stat has 3 ranks; stat increases are achieved at the 3rd rank. Stats are capped at the 3rd rank until the player decides to upgrade to the next tier, which increases the rank cap by 3 but also increases all experience costs by 1. For example, if a soldier invests 3 ranks in Skill, it can choose to focus on ranking up Health and Speed (at the rate of 1 exp/rank), or it can jump to tier 2, allowing it to achieve up to rank 6 in any stat, but increasing the exp cost of all ranks (including ranks 1-3 for Health and Speed) to 2 exp/rank. This forces characters to balance between the potency of 1 stat and the cost of all stats. A well-rounded player will be less powerful in any one stat than a highly-specialized player, but will earn its ranks more cost-efficiently, making it more powerful at any given level. Specialized builds can be highly effective, but only when utilized properly alongside other specialized builds.

There are bonuses for jumping to the next tier, which can be done any time after 1 stat reaches the rank cap for that tier (so if the rank cap for tier 3 is 9, the player can jump to tier 4 once any stat reaches rank 9). Upon jumping tiers, a soldier is awarded a Fate Point, which allows the soldier to force any single roll to be re-rolled, and is then expended. This allows high-tier soldiers to 'cheat death' and perform other acts of heroism. Upon jumping tiers, an army is awarded an extra soldier (at the beginning of the game, the army and soldier are both 1 character; with time and experience, it grows into a true fighting force). Amassing fate points and extra soldiers lends weight to specialized builds that would otherwise be at a disadvantage against well-rounded builds.

There's a brief snapshot of the system; there's quite a bit more to it, but that should give you an idea of what I've got.

Ah, sorry, I thought you meant the game structure itself. I don't need it to be a web game or anything of that sort, just an executable file that will crunch the numbers for me and give me a streamlined interface to work with (essentially a DM helper tool). This would not be a commercial application in its current form, so the cheapest/simplest program that would get the job done is preferable.

The game is set up as a tabletop (d20s and all). What I need is a digital version of it that will spit out results with minimal work on my part, like the spreadsheets used by DMs to help them calculate dice rolls, modifiers, etc. In essence, it comes out being a simple text-based RPG with a non-animated graphical interface to make things easy to keep track of (character positioning on a grid and so on). I don't need it to be browser-based, just a simple program I can put on a flash drive and use to help playtest tabletop concepts. This would be the first step in bridging the gap between a tabletop spreadsheet and a true videogame; I don't need it to be a full-fledged game quite yet, as I don't have the resources for that.

I asked a friend of mine what format would work best for something like that, and he told me Flash would probably be ideal, which is why I figured that was the best place to start. Since there would be some degree of click-and-drag and other interactive graphical elements, Flash seemed like the natural choice, but if it can be done in a simpler manner, I'm all for it.