Even if it would be 5.99 I wouldn't hesitate buying the game instantly, but don't go too high at the beginning (10 $ would cause many people to say bad things even if they don't know how absolutely cool the game is) Btw, I've never played any RTS games on the iPhone (well I've tried Robocalypse lite for a few seconds and then killed it again). I still stick to Warcraft 3 when i feel the need to play some RTS. But I think I will buy Warfare Inc. sooner or later, because it looks pretty nice and the level editor is a feature that makes this App a must-have for me Will you have a Level Editor (even if its only usable on PC/Mac)?
Technically, Red Conquest is a Prequel, Sequel, and re-telling of the events in Blue Attack and Blue Defense. It's going to be pretty epic by the time all four episodes have been released.
Probably not. I mean, I obviously have a level editor for my own purposes, but it's horrendously complicated and nowhere near user-proof. In an effort to get the game out sooner, I just work around crashes in the level editor - I know what crashes it, so I just avoid doing that manually, and it's all good! It would take a lot of effort to get a workable level editor into your hands - never mind being able to get your levels into the game itself (and building in failsafes so that new versions of the game don't choke on old level data)... So yeah, as the only dev working on this right now, I can say that I have no current plans. If you take up polls, and there's like 100,000 people that want this feature, I'd totally put in the effort, though.
Hmm, it would definitely like to see an editor Not for the first Version, but maybe as a DLC (since it doesnt have to do with the story it would be ok as DLC following your rules ) that you could add in an update. *can't wait to play the game* where's that time machine i stole from a mad scientist...
Hello, I'm really looking forward to this. As long as the price is under $10.00, I'll be one of the early adopters. I really enjoyed Blue Defense! and Blue Attack!. When you released Blue Attack! you went back and added to Blue Defense! and I was wondering if you had any plans for the older games at this point. Do you think you can add in a multiplayer mode for Blue Attack! at some later point? Maybe some alternative upgrades to shields, etc? I'm sure Red Conquest! will be awesome. Can't wait.
Update: My beta testers think that a speed slider would be a good idea - you guys said it here first, and It's going into the game. Also, I'm still thinking $4 or $5, so don't worry about it being $10.
Its already in beta? Whoo! But wragh im not one of the people who can already play this godlike game xD well anyways, i finally loaded defense and attack onto my phone again (i had attack before, i had to buy defense... Didnt appvee say it got no sound? Or did u add sound in an update? Anyway, its a very nice game, like attack i enjoy to see how you use the blue vs red story in so different game modes... It feels like attack and defense are two levels in the same app, because of the cool graphics and such ) I had an idea while playing defense... Is the level editor you made for yourself complicated? A level editor feature as DLC which also grants you acces to a kind of online user level database (with some features like level rating, so you can find the good levels) would also be nice in defense (i see im talking about level editors too much )
What constitutes a map, by the way? I remember something about asteroid fields, is there much besides that? Also, could you take a screen shot and sort of explain what we're seeing? The screenies in the blog post look awesome, but it'd be cooler if we knew what everything was, hehe
Mate, you've just earnt mega respect points for that! Brilliantly thought out plan! Also read the other comments since my last one, and you're really on the ball. Keep going, and relax knowing that you've got this community to support you!
Every map has the following features: -asteroid field density grid -starting position and unit(s) -resource locations -fog of war can be on or off -designated level music -graphical background -scripting the scripting can be as simple as "you have no more units, you win", but in some of the levels (especially the challenge levels), the script can do complicated things like spawn in new units, have alternate win conditions, direct AI to be aggressive or passive, or tell units explicitly where to go. The scripting can also trigger dialogue scenes where two or more character avatars are speaking back and forth, with text at the bottom of the screen. Cutscenes can be triggered before, after, and during a level, but in the first episode, I just have cutscenes before and after levels. There are also sub-goals in many levels, where you need to do something above and beyond the mission parameters in order to get a higher rank in a level - and some subgoals are secret! As an example, one of the challenge level types is defense - very much like Blue Defense - where wave after wave of units will spawn, trying to destroy your planet. The script takes care of spawning in new units, and where they come from, and the alternate loss condition is losing your planet - it doesn't matter how many other units you've built!
as you wish. This picture is the beginning of campaign level 3. Each unit can be scripted to say things, and usually they'll try to set the tone for a level, or encourage you to do something. The bar at the top contains your collected resources at the top left, and how many you are collecting or using just beside it. "+28" in blue means that you are collecting some resources right now, and "-10" in red means that you are spending more than you are collecting. The number in the bar on the right is the unit cap - "15/65" means that you have a maximum of 65 upkeep, and 15 is how many of that you are currently using. The foundry at the top takes several upkeep slots, but a battleship only takes a small number. A cruiser or scout would take 1 or 2 of your 65 upkeep slots. "65%" in the top right is the zoom level, and the top right icon is the zoom icon. Tap it to zoom in or out, or touch and drag to fine-tune your zoom level. You can also pinch or stretch to zoom the map. The flag in the top left is a contextual notification area. The flag means that your mission parameters (win conditions, subgoals, etc) have been updated. Crossed swords mean that you are being attacked, and an enemy face means that a new enemy has just been spotted. A hammer icon means that you have just built a new ship. You can touch and hold that icon to bring up a list of recent notifications, and see how long ago they were, etc. If you select a notification (un-touch when your finger is on any one in the list), the camera will zoom to the area the notification refers to. The icons along the bottom are contextual options. From left to right: -multimove -multiselect -cycle -fleet options -game options if you touch any one of them, they will expand up into more options. The cycle menu allows you to quickly move the camera around to a list of things. You can cycle through all of your units, all combat units, all builders, resource areas, enemies, planets, and bases. From the fleet menu, you can issue build orders to ALL ships in your fleet, or select only certain types of ships to send build orders to. You can also tell your entire fleet to converge somewhere or issue a stop order to every ship in your fleet. Game options will allow you to go to sound options, quit the game, set faction colors, etc. It will also pause the game if the game is local. If you touch the options menu and drag up, you can reopen your mission parameters list. Next post: what's on the map behind all that UI!
Yes, Cat in a Box Games will be the official developer of this game. That refers to me, the lead programmer on this title, Victor Bui, my art guy, and Henry Truong - the composer and sound designer. Victor was also heavily involved in the design of the game system and plot, and Henry joined more recently and is currently working on his own project.
Now, the units beneath: from left to right, we have: Battleship, Base, Foundry, Battleship, Harvester. You can see faintly glowing harvesting lines coming out from the harvester and base, because that's a clump of resources just below your units. If your base and harvester are closer to the middle of that clump, they will be able to harvest resources more quickly. The pips on the right of each unit are hit points - bases and foundries are very powerful, and take damage slower than smaller units - so they have a lot of hp. The harvester can be killed pretty easily, and the Blue Scout class I think only has two pips of hp - but it's one of the fastest ships in the game! The angled pips on the left of each unit are your escort formations - you can see them snaking around, little strings of five red blobs. The blue ones look like formations of three fighters, like in Blue Attack. You can see the Base has 4 of 8 maximum escorts - you can build more in the build menu (which you can bring up by tapping on a unit, and selecting the build icon). Escorts help both your attack and defense power for a given squad, but only a base, foundry, or carrier can build its own escorts. From the multimove icon stack, you can select "escort multimove", which will allow you to transfer escort formations to and from any squad that's in range. the red curvy line near the bottom is the edge of your visibility radius. When fog of war is on, enemies beyond that line will be invisible. There is one exception: planets are always visible to all players. I think that's about it. I'll do the same for some more screenshots later.
This is the build screen for an individual ship. You drag the ships that you can build from the left to the build queue on the right. You can rearrange ships on the right by dragging them up and down through the queue. cancelling a build is as simple as dragging the ship from the right to the left, away from the build queue. the centre button at the bottom brings up a screen where you can choose what direction to launch new ships in. The button second from the right is your escort auto-build feature, which lets you tell a ship to build more escorts automatically if they are destroyed in battle. This ship is set to build more escorts if there are less than 4. Each ship has its stats to the right of it, showing hp, upkeep, cost, number of escorts, and various stats. Those stats include high defense, high offense, high speed, large sight radius, ability to build, and ability to harvest.
Whoa. The more you explain the game, the more impatient I become . This is definitely going to go on the first page of my iPod Touch and stay there. So you alternate between playing as red and blue at various points in the game, right?
Wow! Thank you! I really appreciate all this, it's so cool! It looks like you've solved a lot of issues players find very annoying in full scale RTS'. I'm completely blown away, this is fantastic. I had some thoughts - I don't wanna be too intrusive, I guess I kinda got carried away, haha. I'm sure half of these you've already taken into consideration, heard from Beta testers, or are too complicated for the release Will the stats of each ship be on all the time? They seem like they're very prominent, and being so, kind of distract from the game. Maybe a good idea would be to have only the vital stats be obvious, and even then, some what opaque. But you can tap and hold to bring up all the stats, like in the Brushes App, when selecting a color, the menu circles around your finger. Because the circle would be made of modular components (fighters, health, etc) you could make it adjustable, without compromising icon size, so people with big fingers don't complain. * Oops! I noticed those small dots I thought where main-ship related are actually the fighters, which where what seemed so overwhelming. I dunno I guess, maybe tone them down, bring the focus back on the main ships, and figure out some more vital stats to show when you tap? Also, the resources seem like they really blend in with the background, and it's hard to gauge the center. Maybe a glow effect to high light them, or much harder colors. The fade off effects at the sides - where they progressively get smaller, has a lot to do with the blending I think. Maybe if you make the edges feather a little less? Is the menus opacity static or not? Can you drag them up and down to make them disappear? It looks like they take up about an eighth of the screen real estate, and people prolly wanna be able to watch their massive armada destroy the woefully under prepared opponent without worrying about the chrome. Maybe be able to change the size of the icons, to? Maybe even disappear so experienced players can just fly around. * Oop, just noticed they aren't in the screen caps on the front page, I guess you can make them disappear. Flippin' awesome. And wide screen? Hehe. The button scheme would be great for that - have all four centered in the middle, or two on each side like a controller. You could even make it an option, with a couple more, so people don't complain about the placement, hehe. How do you pan around in the game? Do you have some kind of tilt-to-pan zoom feature? Dragging your finger is a major cause of thumb fatigue, hehe. This game looks so great! I can't wait! Again, hope I'm not too intrusive with the comments or anything, and offered at least a few new ideas *edit* Oh yeah, if a ship that's set to build more fighters when one is destroyed is currently building another ship, will the new fighter take priority? Maybe an option on each ship, so if the carrier you stashed away in the corner gets attacked, it can automatically make building fighters more important then the harvester it was half way through. I'm not sure how often a situation like this would occur, or whether anyone would logically want fighters to take priority, but just a thought. *edit 2* Does the screen shake when there's a lot of action going on? I love it when that happens, haha.
Cool Looks absolutely fantastic. The controls on this game really look like they were designed for iphone. I am so excited about this app. My only question is does the game play in landscape mode? If it was portrait only that is great I am just wondering. Thanks and I am super excited.
