Category Archives: winter wolves games

news about my games, updates and patches I’m working on, and ideas for new games

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 🙂

Supernova 2: the crew

I’m working like crazy to be able to finish Supernova 2 by end of this month… and today made another good change to the game rules. I wasn’t satisfied by the role the transports had. In practice, how I could determine if they actually manage to capture a planet or a ship?

Also the whole thing was a bit unrealistic. I know it’s a game so don’t need to be realistic (expecially since it’s sci-fi!), but conquering a whole planet with just a small transport ship was a bit weird 😀

So now I changed the rules a bit: planets are conquered simply when you destroy the enemy ship(s) that are over it (maybe one day I’ll release an add-on that will deal with ground battles). Instead the transport ships can be used to assault and capture any ship in the game!

This means that in theory you can assault an enemy battleship and then use it for the rest of the battle. Pretty cool, isn’t it? 🙂 of course, each ship has a CREW value. The bigger the ship is, the more crew it has. So while in theory is possible to assault a battleship, will require more than 1 transport to do that.

After an assault, the transport is eliminated from the game, and the captured ship can be used only for the rest of the battle (doesn’t remain in your military screen after battle has ended). Even with those limitations, I think the transport will add a nice strategy element to the game, different from the other ships.

Supernova 2: unlockable alien technologies

Today I changed an important option in the Start New Battle menu. I removed the “Technology Race” because I realized would be pointless, since my game is heavily combat-focused, so there aren’t so many technologies to allow a proper technology race (like happens in Civilization games for example).

So I replaced it instead with another cool idea I had: each faction, beside a normal ship blueprint for each ship class, will have also another ship with a unique weapon, that will be available only if you conquer a specific starsystem containing an alien relic (his position will randomly change at beginning of each match to increase variety of gameplay).

This means for example that the Blood Legion will have, as scout ship, the Wildcat ship as the normal regular ship, but also the Fang ship that has the special attack “suicide bomb”, that will be unlocked only if you have conquered the starsystem containing that specific alien technology.

This game is getting really cool, I’m eager to play it myself! 😀