Monthly Archives: May 2008

New game officially announced: Planet Stronghold

So, instead of taking 2 weeks of holidays I started working on a new game 😀

It is basically a Tower Defense game in space, but will also contain more management stuff in it than a traditional tower defense game. Today I finished the main menu (click to enlarge):

planet stronghold

I’m satisfied about it, I think gives a good feel of the game. For those “worried” about the other games, don’t worry. I’ll resume working on Tower of Destiny very soon 😉

Future titles of Winter Wolves & Tycoon Games

Today I did a plan on what to do next. Was hard since I have always so many ideas and so little time… 🙂

Anyway, here is the plan:

Winter Wolves

– working on Tower Of Destiny, a dungeon hack’n’slash RPG with first person view, character creation with party of 5 members, a general storyline, a pool of 20-25 heroes that will stay in town while you choose a party to go exploring the dungeon. The heroes that remains in town can train some of their skills meanwhile.

– thinking about doing a complete rewrite of UBM engine, as suggested by the feedback of some users in my forums. So creating first a generic engine that I can use to make both UBM2, but also a sort of “gladiator management game” 🙂 the idea could be very fun, especially if I manage to make it multiplayer

Tycoon Games

– working on a Tower Defense game using Supernova 2 engine. Not sure yet if will be fantasy or sci-fi. Imagine a tower defense game with a storyline, upgrading towers and mobile defenses like characters using special attack. Have still to decide if to do it turn-based or real-time, even if I am more inclined to do it real-time

– working on several updates for Supernova 2, like the addition of a skirmish mode, that will let the player buy ships and jump straight into the battle, without any macromanagement part. I plan also to add more ship/weapons and (probably later, next year) a sort of ship-design screen where you can design your own custom ship configurations

I am also experimenting with other languages (like Flash) and other ideas, but officially I’m developing those 3 titles/engines right now. I’m working a bit on every one, even if the game that will probably finish first will be the Tower Defense game, since I can use good part of Supernova 2 engine.

That’s all for now 😀

Supernova 2: saving in middle of the battles

I’m currently working on version 1.0.2, I’ve added the feature (requested by many people) of saving in middle of the battles. Indeed is a bit insane to play the battles without any chance to save, even if this can lead to re-trying the same battle by reloading a previous savegame 🙂

I’m also adding tons of minor improvement, not bugs but new features and in general things that help playing the game in a easier way. Expect a complete update within next week. I’m also working on the manual, but I am still unsure when it will be finished. I’ll first put it online on the official webiste, so I can update it day by day, then I’ll make it as PDF to put inside the game installation folder.

I want to thank all the people that bought the game so far, showing an impressive response. The best I can do is make a BIG update to help them enjoy the game even more. And after this big update, I’ll start working on the skirmish mode 😉

Supernova 2: FINISHED!!!!

Woot!!!! 😀

It has been a LONG LONG time, but in last couple of days (after some last minute bugfixes) I finally released Supernova 2:Spacewar!! I am really proud of it, since I consider it a complex game but with an accessible interface. I asked some classic “casual gamers” friends to test it, and they were all able to figure out how to play after “only” a few hours 😀

The version now is 1.0, and if you downloaded any demo or earlier 1.0 (it had unfortunately a crashing bug on startup on some macs!) please redownload it, as now I have fixed everything (at least I hope so!!).

To download the game visit this page: http://www.tycoongames.eu/freetrials.php

People on forums are already making good suggestions in my forums, like this one:

I probably should have mentioned this much earlier, but have you considered adding a skirmish mode also. By skirmish mode, I mean fighting one mission after another without all the macromanagement parts in between. For example, it would be nice to start with some units in battle one, and as you keep winning battles you gain currency to buy more of the same units or new units for battle two and so on.

Indeed I find it a very good idea, and not even much complex to implement in the game engine, so I’m probably going to make it. I have also other minor features to add, like auto-units deployments, and so on, to make the game even more accessible.

What about future plans? I started a classic dungeon explration RPG called Tower Of Destiny last year which I plan to work on. I’ve also started another “secret” project to make an ideal sequel to Magic Stones (yes a card-battles game!) and a sort of Princess Maker game… However for now I have to take a pause , both to relax, and think my strategy… 😀

Thanks everyone for the support! Days like this make me happy to be an indie developer 🙂

Supernova 2: almost done!

Yes, the game is almost done! I’m currently finishing the tutorials screens, and doing some final cleanup and last-minute unit balancing. I’m also checking that the game at maximum difficulty is really… impossible, since for my past games got some users complaining about the fact that they were too easy.

Well I can say that at maximum difficulty I have hard times myself to win just 1 battle… so hopefully should be hard enough!! 😀

The game release is scheduled for mid-May. Yeah, about 10 days – I’ll post first a beta version in my forums just to find some small bugs (never had a game crash so far) and then will go on with official release.

Meanwhile I halved the price of the first game, Supernova: Galactic Wars. If you missed it, you can buy it for very low price now, but be warned, isn’t a strategy game like the sequel, but an arcade one 🙂