Category Archives: strategy games

PSCD – meet Samuel

Time for another character introduction: Samuel. He is one of the homosexual romances playing as Alex.

Name: Samuel Bellamy
Nickname: Doc
Nation of Origin: England
Service Branch: Imperial Xenobiological Service
Specialty: Eco-Engineering

Description:
Ever since he was a child, Samuel had a deep love for animals, and his parents encouraged this behavior in their son. As Samuel matured, this interest widened into a fascination with alien life, and it came as little surprise when he graduated with top honors in Xenobiology.

Numerous organizations vied for Samuel’s attention, but he settled on the military, figuring this would give him the most exposure to alien life. This proved prescient since while he was out in the field, a disease struck the expedition he was on. The group’s doctor was among those afflicted, but Samuel was able to synthesize a vaccine, and earning the nickname ‘Doc’. This incident also brought a measure of unwanted fame to Samuel. For two years running, he was voted ‘Hottest Biologist.’

Samuel was assigned to Planet Stronghold because his knowledge has allowed humanity to adapt to various alien environments. This serves his own purpose for it allows him to research forms of life entirely unknown to humanity at large.

If he could be said to have a flaw, Samuel really prefers wide open spaces to civilization. Given a chance, he can often be found out in the wild, recording alien lifeforms in their natural habitats. He feels truly at peace when he can be one with nature.

Playing games is important

Yes you heard me well: is important to play games! Especially if you are a game developer like me 🙂

I have less and less free time now (especially this year with everything happening all at once, Steam, iOS ports, etc) and as you can imagine, when I have some I prefer to spend it with my wife, pets and doing outdoor activities.

However I still try to find the time to play for a few hours a week the new games. Because that’s the equivalent of “research & development” of other industries.

Some practical examples and games that inspired me while I designed and coded my upcoming RPG ToA: Seasons Of the Wolf:

– Guild Wars 2: from this game I grabbed the ideas of “solve all quest in an area” and “discover all locations” and so on, to get bonus EXP. From this game I also wanted to implement the idea of stat-derived enemies (no matter your level, all enemies would be a challenge) but after only a week of testing I realized that it wasn’t a good idea 😀
– Diablo 3: it’s nothing new, the random items I mean, but still while playing this game I thought that would have been cool to use random items with tiers even in my games, alongside manually created ones. I implemented it and people loved it 🙂
– XCOM and such the idea that the battlefield and environment should have a bigger impact. I implemented it in a limited way because didn’t want to risk breaking the balance too much, but I’ve added elemental conditions and some special ones (tunnel sewers where 2handed weapon do half damage, underwater where fire magic doesn’t work and ranged weapon do much less damage). I also implemented the damage penalty when hitting Thief class with Warriors. However the ideal would be to have a full tiled battlefield for this to work better. Maybe in future! 😉
– Everquest 2 and another MMORPG I can’t remember now, the idea of offering items as reward for quests. Again it was nothing new, but just playing those games reminded me of this feature which was missing in my previous RPGs.

So if you’re a game designer, try to find the time to play a few games. Your own games will benefit from it!

SOTW update

Rowinda’s flashback quest is totally… crazy ! (what you did expect?)

Work on SOTW is proceeding not really smoothly – I decided to adopt the latest Ren’Py to take advantage of a rewrite of the screen language which makes the super-complex game like mine run faster, but since is a beta… has issues. I’ve had old save games compatibilities broken already 3-4 times, even if somehow every time was able to keep the ones I use to develop the game. With the latest update though, they broke as well… so I have to go back to a previous version, because otherwise I can’t even work on the game myself lol. Needless to say, this is very frustrating, though obviously is not Ren’Py fault. I guess I was spoiled by the fact that in the past it always worked without problems! But is normal for a beta program to have such issues.

I should have the new tileset I need for Act 3 at end of month, so I estimate that all problems considered, the next act could be ready for beta-testing around mid or end of October.

The final game release *might* happen in time for end of year, since for the last act I already have all the art I need and I’ve already coded almost all of it. I’ve also commissioned some extra ending CGs from another artist (using the same one wasn’t an option, he wouldn’t have made it in time) and they’re turning out very nice!

PSCD – Meet Graciela Reyes

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Time for another PSCD character, one of the few humans with psionic abilities (in this prequel game they’re not common as in Planet Stronghold).

Name: Graciela Reyes
Nickname: Serenity
Nation of Origin: Spain
Service Branch: Imperial Psionics Institute
Specialty: Psionics

Description:
Graciela is among the rarest of humans; a person born with great psionic potential. As such, this made her highly sought after by many organizations to make use of her talents. Ultimately, she chose the military as it seemed to give the best training.

At heart, Graciela is a peaceful woman; after all, when you can feel another’s emotions, it makes little sense to cause them harm. She figured by joining the military, she would have an opportunity to use words where most would resort to guns.

This calm sense of self earned Graciela the nickname, Serenity, which was instrumental when humans made peace with the Xynthillians. A highly empathic the species, the Xynthillians never had to psionically shield themselves before, and thus were wide-open for what was essentially emotional assault when they first encountered humans. Graciela, underwent this pain when younger, was able to broker a peace by having the humans promise to stay away from Xynthillian space.

Unfortunately, even with her success, Graciela still faces discrimination. People fear the unknown, whether it be aliens or psionics, but Graciela hopes, given time, she can help people overcome this prejudice.

I’m still producing the art assets for PSCD, including the romance scenes. Once I have all of them will do some sneak previews as usual. There are some very interesting and unique settings for the romance CGs 😉

Seasons Of The Wolf update

Like in past week, spent this week working on ACT4 since I finished the ACT3 main coding but I’m still waiting for the tilesets. Please be patient, but at least know that I’m not wasting a single day of time 🙂

a sidequest of Act4 featuring some ferocious Gnolls!

PSCD – meet Diana Nelson

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Here’s another Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense character intro. This time we talk about Diana, the playable female character.

Name: Diana Nelson
Nickname: Tigress
Nation of Origin: Germany
Service Branch: Imperial Special Forces
Specialty: Sharpshooter

Description:
The middle of three children, Diana always knew she wanted to join the military which was something of a Nelson family tradition. Even when her parents divorced, and she moved to Germany with her mother, Diana’s military ambitions remained.

This drive made it rather easy for her to join the Citadel, the Empire’s top military Academy. Diana still holds the record for longest accurate shot made with a rifle.

Upon graduation, Diana was assigned to a remote detachment. It was supposed to be a routine mission, guarding a team of scientists verifying whether the planet would be good for eventual colonization.

Somehow, the Arnox detected the human presence. In a brutal attack, the aliens took out her immediate superiors, leaving Diana as the leading commanding officer. Rather than surrender, Diana withdrew all survivors, and conducted a guerrilla war which lasted over six months.

Eventually, human forces liberated the planet, and discovered how Diana’s actions actually kept the Arnox from causing trouble elsewhere. Her troops named her Tigress, much to Diana’s amusement, for she was constantly on the prowl.

Her actions caused one problem: while she is confident in her own skills, she sometimes has trouble relying on others. Diana realizes the others have skills she lacks, but she feels she should be able to do more on her own.

This feeling also has strained the relationship with her brother. When Alex was assigned as co-captain, Diana felt self-doubt, wondering whether her superiors were questioning her ability to defend the colony on her own.

As some users in forum suggested we’re going to tweak slightly Alex intro, explaining how his battle against the Robobrain was very useful to make progress in Psionics research, otherwise his background story was not at the same level of Diana’s.

Don’t worry, they’re both two tough and famous heroes/characters 😉 That’s all for this week, next Friday we’ll talk again of the Steampunk World of Roger Steel introducing nonetheless than Roger himself! 😉

Announcing Planet Stronghold: Colonial Defense

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I know what you’re probably thinking: Winter Wolves doing a Tower Defense game? 🙂

First of all, I’m getting a custom engine done. So don’t worry, the game will run great even on the oldest desktop computers or mobile devices. Is not made in Ren’Py, but using a Python+C framework coded on purpose for this kind of games (and other possible ones, like wargames and builder games).

Will feature real-time shadows, shaders, effects and so on. Currently it can run at 24 FPS unoptimized on my ancient Android Transformer 101 (single core!) so even when we add more stuff should still be playable!

Tech stuff aside, do you think I could just make a plain TD game? (not that there’s anything wrong with it). Of course not! I’ll make a story, VN-Style, that will accompany the player through it, and some tough choices moments that will result either in different missions or same mission with different features.

As always you can play as male or female, and have 2 romances for each sexual orientation (2 straight, 2 homosexual). Yes, I managed to put romance even on a TD game, that’s some kind of achievement 😀

Who is Alex Nelson?

But let’s introduce the first of the two main characters, Alex Nelson:

Name: Alex (Alexander) Nelson
Nickname: Lion
Nation of Origin: United States
Service Branch: Imperial Special Forces
Specialty: Leadership

Alex (he hates to be called Alexander), brother to John and Diana, is the youngest child of the Nelson household. He knew he was loved, but he felt he never measured up to the others, especially in a family where many people joined the military. It wasn’t until he discovered he had a talent for hovercar racing that he felt whole, sustaining him even when his parents later divorced.

Much to his surprise, Alex found most of this pressure was self-imposed. His parents encouraged him to find his passion, and in time, he actually made it onto the junior circuit of the hovercar racing league. Alex was about to go pro when the news announced a major defeat for the Earth forces on a distant planet…and one of the reported casualties was his sister.

Wracked with grief, Alex made the decision to join the military to avenge his sister. He passed through basic training, and was assigned to guard duty on a remote base. There was little of value to the base, but the Robobrains decided otherwise. Employing a series of sonic and psionic attacks to disorient the soldiers, the Robobrains attacked.
However, Alex possessed the strength of will to fight against this sensory assault, and rallied the others to mount an effective counterattack. The other soldiers started to call him ‘Lion’, and they were his ‘pride’.

Alex’s joy soon became overwhelming when news came out that not only was his sister’s death misreported, but she had decisively defeated the invaders.

While Alex is capable of inspiring his soldiers to follow him to hell and back, at times he still feels like he lives in the shadow of his brother and sister.

Stay tuned for more in the next weeks. I don’t have a fixed schedule but probably will alternate Roger Steel and PSCD characters intros.

Seasons Of The Wolf update

In the latest update, I’ve added fixed items with accompanying “lore text”, together with some other minor fixes/tweaks. I’m working on ACT3 right now and I’ve finished coding about 2/3, though I still have to get the new tileset and add it to the game, so that part will take at least one week.

Assuming there are no delays in art, I think ACT3 could be finished by end of September as I hoped 🙂

Undead Lily gameplay

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This is a mockup of the battle screen I made yesterday

How is Undead Lily going to play? I think the best definition is a mix between a strategy game and a RPG. I mentioned CCG (Collectible Card Game) before, but to be fair I don’t plan to have 200+ cards/avatars like those games do 🙂

Current plan is: at start of the game there’s a world map (being the underworld will be particular) with the two opposing factions on the extreme spots. The map will have a terrain, meaning that each cell will be linked to one of the 6 elements of the game: Life, Death, Nature, Fire, Water, Air.

There will be some “Power Nodes” cells, that once captured will give you more power (have yet to decide how it will impact the game). Capturing / conquering all the nodes would give victory to one side.

There are 6 characters on each side, and you can bring 3 to battle at time. I’m thinking that the main character (Undead Lily & Ace) must always be present, while you can decide who will be the other two battle members.

During the fight, there will be 3 roles: Summoning, Offensive and Defensive Aura. The character with Summoning role will be able to summon the avatars on the battlefield. The other two will provide a permanent bonus for the battle. For example in the screenshot above: Undead Lily does the summoning. Aquaria will provide a bonus attack to all targets, Ash will give a fire shield to all your avatars so enemies hitting them will suffer damage.

Still thinking if to allow the player to switch the superheroes role during the fight or not.

Thanks to the writer for this suggestion, it was very interesting ! 🙂

The bonuses will scale up as the superheroes gain more levels.

Of course the fights will be simplified, not like Loren. All the cards/avatars will attack the enemy in front of them (with some exceptions) and once they kill it, the next attack will hit the superheroes behind it. A mechanism common in those card/RPG games. Once all the heroes of one side run out of HPs, that side has lost.

So that’s the plan right now 🙂 there’s a small problem though: the battle screens were done by the artist, following my indications, so that there would be a lower part of it that would fit a one vs one battle. That means that it would be a bit problematic to fit a small army of 5-6 avatars.

I’m currently thinking if to put the avatars in rows facing top to bottom (blue arrows) or left to right (red arrows). The blue arrows would be the more logic solution, but the problem is that I want to have the superheroes on the left/right side of the screen, so I think that might look awkward to have the avatars fighting top/down and the superheroes left to right 🙂 Anyway, that’s not a big problem, the hardest part will be to design all the avatars and the battle rules. But that’s also the most fun part 😉

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva