Legacy Projects: Real-time Strategy

Yesterday I decided to post some vids of old projects that I've not posted about or which I never posted videos of. Today I'm dumping a few vids of RTS projects I've tinkered with.

They all use my RTS framework 'Warsmith', which I've been working on for many years. My old project Zyrtuul was where the framework originated. There are 4 prototype games that use the framework. My main focus has always been the framework itself, with the game prototypes being just a side effect.

The Bloody Glade Screenshots

I currently have three game projects on the go: No Crashy Spaceship (an infinite runner survival racing game with a Tron-like theme), Warsmith Zuul (a real-time strategy game) and, my most recent project, The Bloody Glade (a hack-n-slash action RPG slightly inspired by the original Golden Axe).

No Crashy Spaceship is almost finished, and I like to have more than one project on the go at a time (so that if I lose steam or become frustrated on one, I can switch to another temporarily). I was playing the original Golden Axe a few months ago (a childhood favourite), and I had the urge to put together a hack-n-slash game for the iPhone / iPad.

It's going pretty well so far so I thought I'd post some screenshots to show its progress.

One or two of the images are from a mock-up prototype, but most of them are plain screenshots. It's still a work-in-progress so some of it is still rough around the edges (the world map especially), but I'm still pleased with where it's at so far.

Warsmith Zuul Screenshots

I recently released Death Arena (re-branded as Doombot Arena so as to avoid a 'name-too-similar' clash on the iOS app store) and have been working on another mini-game (working title is "No Crashy Spaceship") which is also almost ready for release. However, the late phase always entails a lot of bug-fixing, adding polish and preparing the app for release (which entails a surprising amount of work and can be quite frustrating). Having already spent so much time on this recently I felt a bit burnt out, so I decided to take a break and focus on one of my larger projects (to allow myself the luxury of focusing on the more interesting aspects of development while I recharge).

I've been wanting to convert my real-time strategy game, Zyrtuul (which is a PC game), to be mobile-friendly so that I can release it on iPad and possibly iPhone.

Unfortunately, progress with Zyrtuul was so far in, and the differences significant enough, that I realized it would be more of a re-write than a conversion (though a lot of code and art assets are re-usable). I decided to use a different name for the iOS version (mostly to differentiate the two projects to myself).

The working title for the iOS version is Warsmith Zuul. From an implementation perspective they're completely separate projects that just happen to share a bit of code and some art assets. From a thematic viewpoint though they're clearly related.

A big part of the motivation for me wanting to do this was realizing that, although I was proud of Zyrtuul and happy with its progress, I could never compete with the larger PC RTS games out there (Starcraft 2, for example). However, the games on the mobile platforms (Clash of Clans, for example), while still larger in scope than what I'm aiming for (I think it would be unwise to even try), are at least not leagues beyond what a solitary developer can put together, given time and perseverance.

It's going pretty well so far and, since I haven't posted anything in a while, I thought I'd add some screenshots. They're pretty rough around the edges and not yet very polished (it's still in the early stages), but they should give some idea of where the project is header.