Month: July 2014

We’ve finally had a game without any major technical hitches! No desyncs or crashes; even in a new large scale map which allows for large forts. This map, called Long Shot, uses the ‘longrange’ mod. This mod simply scales the aiming arcs to make it easier to shoot when zoomed out further than usual. I’ve also reduced the weight of materials slightly to allow forts to be built to a larger scale.

At the moment we’re preparing to showcase the game at the Game On event in Brisbane: a local game developers conference. It’s looking quite stable and the usability has improved dramatically.

One of the discussions we had during the recent play session was about how the end game would play out. We had one long game which dragged on, where the underdog could build and repair faster than the winner could destroy. There were some factors which gave rise to this from the map design, so perhaps this end-game defensive stalemate would not ordinarily be a problem.

In a typical map there would be sufficient resources and space to amass larger weapons and fire them in quick succession. The stakes increase dramatically as this happens. Various aspects of the game design are supposed to encourage large forts, and this is one of them. In order to get past defensive players, several high powered weapons may need to be built and fired carefully and in combination. This increases the chance of breaking through to the reactor, or cause structural failure of the fort.

In the screenshots below I had built three cannons, grouped them, and fired them at once at the AI team. They withstood the first barrage but the second one got through to their reactor.