Good day to everyone in our beloved MLP: FiM community.

I'm writing this topic today in hope that I can be able to attract and recruit potential helping hands for this hobbyist fan-project of ours. With a combination of dominant high/heroic fantasy theme, interesting multi-directional characters, and sensible portraition of group dynamic and social interaction, the nature of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic's universe allows great potential for creating journeys that explore in-depth questions about both personal/social interaction, as well as life itself. Because of that, me and some friends decided to initiate a fan-project that, hopefully, not just an establishment for learning, practicing, and having fun, but also for showcasing the great possibility that proper game design and development can bring about. This project is a single-player, story-driven, turn-based RPG with a number of unique features and mechanics that enhance both the standard model of J-RPG, as well as the experience of exploring character developments, the complexity of choices, and the consequences which affect the entirety of story/game progression. Core Features and Mechanics 1/The Scale of Practicality/Emotionality and Social Interaction: The main theme of the game is the scale between pragmatism/practicality and ethics/morals/emotionality. Because of that, the focus is on the pursuit of efficiency and appropriateness instead of a moral fight between good and evil. As such, there is no right or wrong choices, only choices that will influence on whether you make friends or enemies. There are benefits for both sides of a relationship; however making friends will be more beneficial than making enemies in many ways. Throughout the journey, the manes will come across many different characters with unique personalities of their own. When a character is met and relationship is established, you can interact with him/her through 5 dialogue choices based on the scale: Aggressive Practical Inexperienced/Experienced/Special Suave Emotional. Depends on how you treat that character, and on how him/her perceive you based on their personality and ideology, it will affect the Relationship Ratings on the scale of (-100) to (100). That rating will become prevalent and applicable with the next mechanic. Because the manes possess the Elements of Harmony, they are able to establish a Spiritual Link between themselves and the characters they are in relationship with, through the elements. With that link in effect, the elements can then draw on the power generated by the relationships itself and transcribe onto the manes, giving them various perks. Their effects vary depend on the specific character and the Relationship Rating between the manes and him/her. You have a maximum of 3 Spiritual Link slots to equip any relationship link you wish, and they are exchangeable at anytime. For example: - If you have a 50 Rating (Admired) relationship with Trixie, equipping her link into the Spiritual Link slots will give your entire party a 10% additional Magical Damage.

- However, if you have a -100 (Mortal Enemy) relationship with Trixie, equipping her link into the slots will give your entire party a 20% additional Magical Defense instead. This model portrays the benefits between making a friend/an enemy upon any character you encounter. Generally, making friends are more beneficial because they provide perks that will help you in the long term throughout your journey, as opposed to making enemies which generate perks that are beneficial to fight against the specific character in case you cannot avoid battle. 2/The Scale and Story Progress: Not only will the choices you make affect your social interactions and outcomes, it will also affect the progress of the story. Depends on how you handle the situations presented in each related quest/side-quest based on the scale of practicality and emotionality, the outcome will not only reflect the choice you made, but also reward you with an amount of Practical/Emotional points, depends on how efficient/appropriate you handled it. As your degree of efficiency and appropriateness build up throughout the progress of the journey, it will affect the story's ending based on how balance or extreme you are on the scale. 3/ Battle Action Sequence System: With most J-RPGs, a battle is carried out in a turn-based time-keeping system scenario, where the player can issue desired commands on specific Player Character (PC) and let them carry out the designated actions, leading to proper battle outcomes. However, the player does not have much control on the battle outcome due to the fact battle processes are based solely on dicerolling, giving less strategic management and more of a random element instead. For this reason, the battle system in this game is taken up one more notch to demonstrate a literal and symbolic application of battles. There is a fully customizable Stats System implemented in the game. Each pony has access to six primary attributes: Strength, Agility, Vitality, Magic, Knowledge, and Charm. Depends on the specific ponys affiliation with her own innate nature and talent, a stat would be easier or harder for her to raise as she level up. The above primary stats will affect a wide range of secondary attributes: Physical Damage/Accuracy/Defense, Evasion, Magical Damage/Accuracy/Defense, Critical Damage/Accuracy/Evasion, as well as Health Point/Stamina Point/Magic Point.

These secondary attributes will become important in the application of the next major and possibly most important mechanic in the game: the Battle Action Sequence System (BASS). Not unlike a standard J-RPG layout, when a battle commences, the player will be able to issue desired commands on the specific pony for her to carry out the proper action. However, instead of depending on the dice-rolling for the action outcome, the player will have to influence the outcome through the BASS.

When a desired physical or magical attack is issued, a Chance to Hit (CtH) check will be run against two variables: the PCs Physical/Magical Accuracy and the Enemys Evasion. Depends on the outcome of the Chance to Hit (ranging from 5% - 95%), a proper Action Sequence difficulty will be issued to accordingly to the player to successfully execute. Additionally, another check for a Chance to Critical (CtC) against the PCs Critical Accuracy and the Enemys Critical Evasion will also be issued along with the CtH check to determine the proper Action Sequence critical difficulty issued to the player. When the calculated difficulty is presented to the player, he/she must properly carry out the sequence in order to register a Hit or Critical attack. If the player fails, however, the attack will be deemed Miss and be bypassed.

With this model in place, a literal and symbolic application of battle outcome will be properly portrayed: Stats Points -> Primary Attributes -> Secondary Attributes -> Chance to Hit/Critical -> Difficulty of Action Sequence -> Strain on Players skill -> Action Outcome => Player and Character are symbolically one entity 4/The ReACT System: During battle, each participant of both sides will have their turn priority determined by a statistic value called Base Reaction Point (Base RP). This numerical value is dependent on each characters innate agility plus his/her knowledge of logistics, and might be influenced accordingly depending on the events happening during the course of battle. Player can improve each PCs Base RP by modifying her AGILITY and KNOWLEDGE attribute. Each 1 AGILITY/2 KNOWLEDGES will contribute to 1 BASE RP. All opponents have a fixed amount of base RP that cannot be modified like a PC due to a lack of usable attributes. However, the base RP of both a PC and an Opponent can be increased/decreased during battle due to the effect of specific buffs/de-buffs being casted on them, which will affect the amount of RP and its progress throughout the battle. More in-depth information on the system can be found in this document: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&p...3OTg0&hl=en_US Art Style The game will be presented in cel-shaded 3D style to maintain the cartoonish nature of the show. A reference can be seen at the top of the post, with the models and materials being made by KPShadowSquirrel. Project Scope and Goal Our current goal is to finish a proper playable concept demo that incorporate a number of core features and mechanics of the game, mainly the battle system. We hope to reach that goal in an

optimal period of 4-6 months, after which we will decide on further expansion, full implementation and completion of the whole game upon feedback provided through the demo. Recruitment Info Our current team consists of 4 members: + MrEvergreen (me) - C# Coder, Concept Designer, and Project Manager + ctrlx - C# Coder + Mill - 3D Modeller and Rigger, experienced with NewTek Lightwave + nukeiffum - Main Writer, responsible for handling and executing the story. We are currently looking for the following: + A maximum of 2 additional C# Coders. + 1 3D Animator - Character most desired. + 1 Concept Artist + 1 Texturer (These positions might expand to additional slots depends on our need of additional assets.) Please show us your portfolio when attempting to contact us, for even though this is a fun hobbyist project, we are still aiming at making a proper and serious game. You do not have to be advanced at your skill, but you must be able to demonstrate that you are acquainted and comfortable with what you do. Also, you do not have to be a brony or deeply invested into the series, but being one is a good bonus that can help making everyone's job much easier. Additionally, as this project is intended as a non-profit establishment for learning and having fun, make sure you are able to and willing to commit to the project, for it would be most inappropriate of us to put strain or stress on any potential helping hand. When participating in this project, you can be rest-assured that we will treat everyone properly to make sure everyone is in good shape, as it will also affect the game as a whole. And finally, we do not allow or tolerate any attempt to break the cooperation and integrity and group dynamic nature of all members, so apply only if you are willing to behave properly and work as a team. Please contact me through Skype screen name: james0375 or

E-mail me at [email protected] Thank you for reading this collaborative topic, and hopefully this project will be intriguing enough to attract any potential talent out there. I do not intend for this to be a bother to anyone in the community, so if this topic happens to offend someone in anyway, I sincerely apologize. All the best to our community, and once again, thank you! (Adding a little GUI design for good measure...)