I'm designing a strategy game that will be played via PC, but it is not a video game. basically the game is a collection of images that must be displayed in proper format along with the option of being able to place sticky notes over the images like you can in Adobe Reader. The following is a very rough form of a design document for the program I require. What I'd like is an estimate on what it might cost to get this built.\/programmed for me. If there's anything that is unclear, please let me know and I'll be happy to explain. Also, in the future I intend to get some visual concepts made to make the presentation easier to understand for any programmers I hire. Here's the design document: A first look at the launch interface After double clicking the launch icon the player will see a splash screen of the game. The splash screen will have the game’s title, some really cool concept art, and whatever credits are due before the splash screen disappears and the program launches. The program will probably be a plain background, though there will be a bar at the top of the player’s screen where the minus, box, and X will appear on the far right. On the left of the bar will be a “File” option, whereupon clicking it a drop down menu will appear with the following options: Options, and Credits. Upon choosing Options in the drop down menu, a dialogue box will appear in the center of the screen giving the player the option to chose how often he/she would like the program to auto save. The credits will be much the same, except there will be nothing to change here, maybe just some website links and of course, whatever credit are due to the developers of this system. Palettes The game is essentially a collection of images that must be displayed by the program in a certain fashion. These different collections of images are called Palettes, and the program must be able to save exactly what Palette is being displayed and at what zoom levels the images were in before the program closes, as well as where note-sprites were placed and what other textual information said note sprites contain. Note sprites The best example of note sprites I can give is adobe reader. If you’ve seen or used the “notes” feature, then you know what I’m talking about. The only difference with this program is that it will probably have several hundred different styles of note boxes. Also, players must be able to rotate the note boxes as well as be able to easily delete them via keyboard shortcuts. How the program will essentially function\ As I’ve stated before, a Palette is a collection of images. These images will be gathered into a main folder, and other sub-folders which the program will read and then display. Example: Pallete01 will be the main folder for a Pallet, and within that folder will be other folders marked: Sub-Pallete01-X, depending on how many Sub-Palettes are necessary. At the right of the “File” option, players will have another drop down menu marked “Palettes.” The game is basically a strategy board game played on a large scalable map. This map, called the Cosmic Map and will be in Sub-Pallete01 and the game must know where to find this image so that it can be displayed on the players computer screen. Players will be able to play on Micro Maps which will be in Sub-Pallette02 folder. Each image will be titled accordingly so that the program knows how to display them properly. To the right of the Palette option, which is located to the right of File, there will be another drop down menu which will be titled “Micro Maps.” Players will be able to scroll through this drop down menu so that they can chose any one (there might be hundreds) of the Micro Palettes, whereupon players will be able to play on the Micro Map using the plethora of note box styles available. As a reminder, the program must be able to save what images (Micro maps and the Cosmic map) have been altered by note boxes players have put down before those images close. When the player chooses to re-open those images using the drop down menus, the data must be there. To the right of the Micro Maps drop down menu, there will be another drop down menu titled “Rules of Game play,” This drop down menu will display Sub-Pallette03, where the rules of the game will be stored. The rules of the game, like the rest of the game, will be displayed as various images. Each section of the rules will be separated into its own sub-image so that players can chose to have the program display specific parts of what will most likely be a very large set of rules. Note that it’s possible that the rules of the game will be stored in its own Palette, so that if there are several sets of rules, players may chose which palettes they want, without having to edit their existing palettes where the other parts of the game are stored. To the right of the Rules of Game Play drop down menu, players will have the note-box sprites drop down menu. This menu must display the various sprites available which will be used to place on very distinct sections of the Cosmic and Micro maps. There will most likely be several hundred options. It’s possible that it will be best that the note-box sprite drop down menu will be a button, whereupon when a player clicks it, a pop up box appears in the center of the screen displaying the various hundreds of styles of note-boxes. When a player chooses a style the pop up box will disappear, though the style of note-box sprite chosen will still be there, sort of magnetized to the player’s mouse pointer. When the player clicks somewhere on the maps, the note-box will drop and be bound to that spot unless a player clicks it so that he/she can move it again, or for deletion. To the right of the note-box drop down menu, and or button, there will be another button displaying a sprite which will look like an arrow. When the player clicks this sprite—in random order—the program must choose between eight similar sprites, though each one will be pointing in a separate direction. Directions will include North, South, West, East, North west, South east, North east, and finally South west. Finally, to the right of the random pointer button and between the minus, box, and X symbols will be the last drop down menu, with an option to chose between eight colors and to add player’s names under each of these colors. This is last drop down menu and is the “Player Turn” menu, and depending on what color is selected, Red for example, the program will disable popping up the notes of sprites that aren’t within the Red category. This will prevent players from cheating and reading another player’s stats during his/her own turn, and to keep track of which player’s turn it is when the game is saved before closing. That’s basically what the program does, and as you can see, the design is still in its rough stages and many kinks will have to be worked out. Again, if anything is unclear, let me know and I'll try to explain. What I'm looking for is an estimate on what this might cost to get made. The program won't do anything I haven't explained, like play music, or have animations, etc. Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you can answer my question.
