Topic: [ANN] [soon on GLBSE] Project Battalion: Genesis, BTNG (Read 3276 times)

Thanks for the link, but with the ease at which GLBSE evaporated, how will the owners of cryptostocks keep it running if they too are used by scammers, and get the attention of those who can easily adversely affect them?

To me it seems the hard lessons of life are being re-enacted by the bitcoin community. Regulation exists because of human nature; MtGox learned that, Nefario learned that (as stoutly as he believed in his libertarian ideals), and as your business grows you may see that too. I would rather live in society and play by its rules than try in vain to have the best of both worlds, and as such, I am not seeking to list this on any bitcoin exchanges for now.

Private investment is still open and encouraged, and I have secured enough personal funding to squeak through production until this project is ready for the public. Such is the life of an Indie Game Developer.

On the bright side, PAX is coming to Melbourne next year! I'm going to try my best to get a stall there as a developer.

or you could just list on https://cryptostocks.com

Nono, not at all, in fact I'm spending pretty much all of my time coding, and sorting this stuff out when I come up for air . I'm way too personally committed now to let this one go.

Yay! I was begining to think this project was dead.

Just a note to anyone watching this thread, since GLBSE has shut down, I won't able to go through with this IPO. I'm still willing to talk to individual investors for amounts above BTC1k, but I will be looking at opening the project on bitcoinstarter as it launches. If you don't already know about it, it's a crowd funding website that raises funds via bitcoins, and you can sign up to be notified of launch here: www.bitcoinstarter.com.

I will likely edit the OP in the coming days to reflect this new development.

It's all good, and it's mostly project related anyway. I appreciate your questions, as I'm sure other do too.

I've played through the game mechanics hundreds of times in my mind and in prototyping over the last two years, and all I can say is that I'm really excited to getting this all out into code. The only thing I'm not fully decided on is the flight mechanic (newtonian vs dogfighter), but I'll figure that out when it's ready for feedback...otherwise I believe I've designed a highly innovative game that is simple to start but has enormous complexity for players who seek it. My hope is that when finished, it will be regarded up there with the other indie greats. I need help producing it, and in return I'm offering to share the spoils with those willing to do so.

First I'd like to pologize for hijacking your thread I only just realized what I did.

So I'll try to be breif

Nailed it on the head in Multi RTS and sounds like you might already have if covered.

Spell Domination was what I called the "Win" spell but I also liked the Unique spell specializatios and trading for spells.
City building was selecting where to colonize to get best resource bonuses THEN what race of city and objects to build inside leading to different trees.

Do you mean rts/fps hybrids and not straight rts?

If so, yeah it poses an interesting problem; you can't have multiple people in charge due to competing direction. I envision a system where by players are ranked by their performance in the map, and all orders are actually requests put through the carrier. AI ships will have a request and order system, generally doing as requested unless ordered by someone who out ranks them. They will all ultimately fall under the control of the carrier (which will always out rank a player). This means a destroyer might actually do what a noob pilot asks them to do unless they have a more important objective (like defend the carrier from direct assault).

I intend to make the rts aspects slightly optional - the game has to be playable even if all players in coop just want to fps attack only, and not worry about the RTS side of things - the carrier will be able to create rudimentary defenses and perform resource gathering to produce ships the players can use. If one or more players want to micromanage defenses, the team will likely do much better. Ultimately one will have more power, and it'll either be done via earned ranking, or which ship you're flying.


Yeah I figured I could just issue more shares anyway to make up for that. I haven't made a final decision on this yet, but I will before IPO.


What was the spell domination effect in the game, again? That part has slipped my memory. I vaguely remember spell researching and the ultimate "win" spell...was it something to do with that?

Yeah I didn't really like the "fixed city" aspect of HOMM...made it less of a strategy game. I wonder why a proper sequel was never made...it's got so many great aspects: Strategy, Fantasy, Research, Heroes, RPG elements. What do you remember most fondly of it? I loved the way heroes used to level in what was basically a civilization type game.

Good luck with multi I've yet to see any real time strategy game with multiplayer per side other than Natural Selection and that there's really only one commander.


Should be easy enough Hint:"Stock Splits"

As I said almost all of them were bad clones but yes you named the major ones that came closest but most dropped the city building aspect and had almost no "Spell Domination" aspect.
I called M.o.M. the 4x of fantasty games before space games sims got ahold of it. Yes Heroes was supposed to be and offical sequel but they focused more on the army aspect

Lol thanks, but I do have one that's much more detailed than what I could fit in a forum post. I suppose what I put there was an ultra light summary of production/marketing, which are the important milestones in my plan.

The "proper" business plan is in order, I just didn't know how much information I really need to put out here. I'm all for transparency, but I don't want to be naive either.

I have used this format, and I suppose I should have said this when originally asked to justify my valuation:

Summary (including vision statements, objectives and finance summary)
Business details
Management structure
Product positions / unique selling positions, pricing strategy, anticipated demand, etc
Innovation / IP
Risk Management
Legal Considerations
Operations
Market research
Environment analysis
Customer demographics
SWOT analysis
Competitor analysis
Advertising and sales
Detailed finanaces

This formed the basis of my business valuation.

How to write a business plan

That's good to hear! I must point out, though, that I'm not creating a direct Battlezone 2 remake - Battlezone 2's gameplay served as inspiration for this one (and coincidentally BZ2's story is also based on a Mars/Earth conflict). Battalion's connection to BZ2 is that it's designed as a real time strategy game, played from a first/third person perspective. You'll have to protect your Fleet and decide whether to focus resources on defense or assault, as well as partake in the action yourself. Depending on resources, it will sport coop and/or competitive multi-player too.


Hmm you have an interesting point here. I have set it up as an average price of 1.0btc per share...I'll see if I can change the structure but it might be too late for that.


Yes they do, my problem wasn't that I was a foreigner, but that I don't have access to an Amazon Payments account I can trust (which requires a US bank account). A lot of the people I've spoken to, who successfully got on kickstarter were either US citizens living overseas, or had a member of the production team that was from the US. The ones that didn't went to the US and started a company using their passports, and setup a bank account that way.


I saw that...it looks good, but I think it's a different game to what I'm doing. I'm looking forward to seeing it.


Hah possibly, I loved that game; haven't thought about it in years but I remember spending hooooours on it. Wasn't Heroes of M&M the spiritual successor? I remember that plus age of wonders having a lot of the same mechanics. I suppose they didn't have the same magic, though...that game brought a lot of stuff to the table. If I had the opportunity, that plus some sort of Elite or UFO remakes would be the top of my list of things to do next (except those two are already under development). We'll look at the situation when this is complete .

A) Let me start of by saying  I loved Battlezone 2 and would love to see a modern port so I'll be investing as soon as I can scrape together the coins.

B) What are you thinking of setting the Inital price to? Preference lower the better that way people like me can syphon their divident payments to your stock. IMO there aren't enough low entry point "bit dime/penny stocks"

C) I'm pretty darn sure Kickstarter allows foreign projects I'm going to use as an example a project I've backed ShadowrRun online. http://www.cliffhanger-productions.com/content/text/read/id/4 You'll notice they're based in Austria. I'd go for it and see how they/you can get around  that hurdle. Even better for for investors if you get kickstarted?  "EXCELLENT SMITHERS!"

D) I'd be careful just saw a new kickstarter project that might horn in on your thunder though "Planetary Annililation" by Uber Ent.

E) Any chance when you finish this game I can convince you to make a Masters of Magic update/port? There's been alot of BAD clones nothg that's gotten what the original did right.

No flaming necessary; it's a good question. It was the first option I considered, and I probably would be already if I were in the US (I'm from the land down under).

For Kickstarter, you need to have a US SSN (for amazon payments etc). This, combined with the desire to see whether people are willing to use bitcoins on an economic basis, led my decision to not pursue it further for now. I do have extended family in the US that could act by proxy, but because of the potential entanglement with the IRS (since technically they're the ones earning income from KS) and all that, I wanted to try simpler options first.

There are other similar sites to Kickstarter that I also looked at, but they tended to be much more poorly patronized (like pozible.com) and unlikely to raise what I need.

As part of the contract I sent to GLBSE, should I get any income from crowd funding after this share launch, it will count as revenue and be subject to payment to investors here (since it's mostly pre-order). I foresee a potential window of opportunity when production is middle to late beta...I'll have something more to show off, then, and it would serve well as a pre-order and wide-public launch platform.

I'll probably get flamed for this but how come your not on Kickstarter? I've seen ALOT of games get funded there HELL I've backed 14 projects myself

Yeah I'm looking forward to that, actually...I do want to separate what I'm doing from some of the less savory things on offer. I'm halfway through the verification process now.

Update for the thread: Game is coming along nicely, I recently re-wrote the graphics engine to be DX11 instead of DX9 and I'm just porting the rest of the code over now. I'm on target for a playable zone by December this year.

Regarding the IPO: Nef has said he'll look at IPOs after 15/9, around or after the bitcoin conference, so I'll announce the launch date once I know more.

GLBSE might have 3 tiers of securities so depending what extent you want to verify and be accountable to investors would depend which tier you can use.

Due to this thread and the decision behind it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=103221.0;topicseen

This IPO is currently paused until we know what's going on. It seems my timing could not have been better .

This project is continuing regardless, and as an alternative to GLBSE I am willing to consider a small pool of up to 20 private investors. I'm thinking along the lines of 20 shares @ 500btc each, for 1% net income per share.

Should a private agreement be formed with any investors, and an IPO then goes ahead, we will discuss whether to continue the arrangement, or convert it into shares on GLBSE.

nice

Yes I should think so, feedback is important, and the community is paramount for an independent game. I was planning on making the alpha publicly available to help the community seed, and as it came closer to beta I would restrict updates to paying customers only; one of the most successful indie games of all time did it this way (minecraft), and I believe this particular decision was instrumental in it's ability to self-fund quickly.

I'm not quite sure whether to go the login route or not, though. It made sense in minecraft, but I'm not sure it does here, even though it simplifies things somewhat from an administration and piracy perspective. Cd-keys are notoriously easy to circumvent, so perhaps logins are a necessary evil.