Category Archives: winter wolves games

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

Magic Stones Postmortem

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Last year was contacted by a person from idevgames to write a postmortem about my game Magic Stones. Since over 1 year has passed already and he didn’t post anything in his site, I thought to post the postmortem in my blog, so at least I didn’t waste my time writing it and maybe someone could find it interesting, who knows.

Here it goes – enjoy it!

Overview

I always liked the idea of making a fantasy-card game, so I started to outline the basic idea on a piece of paper. Yes planning was essential in this kind of game, I knew it from the start (and luckily I did it).

I decided to base everything on celtic mythology, so I first started to do some research both in local library and also on the net. Found the celtic runes and thought to assign to each one of them a spell or a summoned avatar in the game. I divided the runes into 4 elements (the classic air, water, fire and earth) even if their original meaning is a bit different (but hey is just a game!).

So after sketching out the general features, statistics, skills, creatures, background story, etc of the game, I put all those numbers together in a spreadsheet page.

Then had to solve a big problem, to make the graphic of such a game, and found in Poser a very good solution. Bought several ready-made 3d models, and after several weeks spent on various renderings, I had the basic 48 avatars ready (20 avatars for the 4 elements plus many neutral/evil ones).

I added a roleplaying element to the game, so that in addition to your “deck of card” you had also an in-game alter-ego, with an inventory of items that could affect your power and a set of basic skills that would influence the game in general.

Tools used

I used xCode and a very simple but really powerful 2d programming API called PTK (website http://www.phelios.com/ptk) that I had already used in all my previous games with great success.

As I already said, for graphics I used mostly Poser 5/6 for the monsters, characters, etc and photoshop to design the interface of the game.

For the music I just bought royalty-free music from one of the many online stores.

What went right

The game had since its launch a good group of loyal followers. This maybe also because I decided, shortly after I released version 1.0, to add “bonus pack” or “expansion packs” with new game features and new avatars/quests, completely free for registered users. This was both a hard move (once I had announced it, I couldn’t change my mind) but also a winning one because it helped greatly to improve customers loyalty and is keeping my game always “on the news” thanks to those frequent updates (about every 2-3 months usually).

What went wrong

Despite I had planned everything, as always happens in this sort of games, you’ll need to TEST TEST and TEST. When you make a simple match3 game, is hard to have bugs after hours of playing (because game mechanic is always the same). With this kind of game instead, I had many bugs in the initial version 1.0 because I didn’t took the time to test it properly since was too eager to release it (a mistake I will never repeat in any future games!).

Conclusion

I can say that it was both a very rewarding experience (got so many enthusiast email feedbacks!) but also very stressing. The day after release was working 10hours a day to fix all the bug and I had also a tight deadline to deliver the first expansion “The Bone Lord” in time for Christmas 2005. Keeping the game updated also is not so simple, since need to add more content like new art/sounds, and new gameplay elements. But overall I like this kind of games so in this case the passion plays an important role.

New server and introducing Tycoon Games!

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In past 2 days I upgraded to a new server (again)… actually was like a forced upgrade since my hosting changed datacenter, anyway now I got a even slightly more powerful server so I’m happy. I’m not too happy about the fact that on the new one I have troubles with some php scripts, like the contact form on my main site… so if you had problems, just email me directly (the email is on the same page as contact form anyway!).

I also thought a bit about the future of my games, and decided to start a new site called “Tycoon Games“. Why that decision? For several reason. First of all, originally I made Winter Wolves only with sports / simulation games in mind (UBM, The Goalkeeper, USM1-2). Then I slowly moved to rpg games like Magic Stones, but all are quite “casual” oriented.

Instead I felt the need to create another site, featuring really niche games. Like the upcoming Supernova 2, that will be put on that site (even if I am making it as always, without any external help). And I plan to make more wargames or complex strategy/simulation games.

Another difference is that on that site I’ll sell using as base currency the eur instead of the usd. Before you scream in horror, it’s actually a good news because I’ll keep prices lower, so even people buying in USD will find the games there not more expensive than usual.

That’s all for now – I’m still working on both Supernova 2 and Tower of Destiny, even if during summer I’m a bit less productive… 😉

Supernova 2: starsystem and resources

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I’ve implemented the starmap, with nice animations of the stars blinking, and dotted lines to show the possible route you can take to conquer the neutral or enemy starsystems. It turned out quite nicely I think, it is still quite easy to look at but also dynamic, flashy 🙂

I made my decision about resources: it will be based on only one value that is population limit. Every starsystem will have N planets, and each one of them will have a max population capacity, depending on the type (I’ll have various planets like arid/desert, gas, barren, etc). So how it will work? you’ll be able to assign a certain percentage of the population to specific task/jobs. Like recruiting soldiers, officers, scientist, engineers, etc. The more you have in a particular job, the greater is the effects. For example lot of population allocated to be scientist, and your research will go faster, and so on.

Then you can use engineers to extract material from minerals. I thought to make it limited, but wouldn’t make much sense, so that resource will be unlimited, but in some way constrained by the max population/amount of % you have assigned to engineers.

So let’s say that 15billion are engineers, and each billion extract 10 tons of material. Then you’ll go in the build menu and there you can build stuff with the material. A new unit type factory could cost 150 tons for example, a new kind of civilian building another 50 tons, and so on. It will be all global, so you don’t actually build single starships, but more like you build research lab or prototypes. The once the ship is working, you can use it on the battlefield.

Then in the battlefield part there will be a way of building single ships of all types directly on the battle, but I’ll think about it later when it’s time to program the fight itself. I have already everything planned though 🙂

Supernova 2: resources allocation

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Today I was playing with the resources screen. It will be one of the 3 main screen of the management part of the game. They are: Resources, Galaxy Map and Build.

In resources you have to distribute your resources to the various field, in percentage. The total percentage will be 100%, and leaving unused resources give no advantage.

I thought about using a finite-resource system. I did some experiments though and doesn’t seem a good idea because it could lead to bad gameover and frustration for the player. So the resources will be unlimited, but will have a rate per turn.

For example if you control 1 starsystem you’ll have 15million of minerals and 20million of population grow each turn (just random numbers), while if you control 2 you’ll have a higher amount. So conquering new starsystem will only increase the production/research/population growth each turn – but you won’t be forced to conquer new ones because your resources are about to end.

In any case in terms of gameplay won’t change much – the more starsystem you own, the stronger you become. So the only difference is that you won’t run out of raw materials to produce units or out of space to grow population, that would be a bit strange since we talk about whole starsystems and not even just “one planet” 😀

The game will be more about balancing between research, military, production and population. I need more powerful military units, or more population? I need more scientist to research or more engineers to increase production? that sums up the core of the management part of the game.

Supernova 2: Select your faction!

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The select you faction screen is done 🙂 not much work, but had to render nice backgrounds for the 2 factions (Blue Army and Blood Legion) and their leader. Sometimes coding is like paiting. When you had the inspiration, you make very big steps in so few time!!! today I’ll finish the game setup screen. You can see an almost finished screenshot below:

If you click to enlarge it, you can see the main options that will be in the game. You’ll have 3 winning conditions:

  1. Galaxy Conquest: the factions that controls more than 75% of the whole galaxy wins the game.
  2. Kill Leader: it is possible to kill the enemy leader in battle to win the game. If disabled, the enemy leader will always be able to escape from battles.
  3. Technology Race: first one to discover the “Secret of Omniscience” technology wins the game.

Of course, if you completely destroy all the enemies you win anyway 🙂 but that was obvious.

The galaxy settings on the rights instead:

Galaxy Size: A larger galaxy will have increased travels costs thus delaying your encounter with enemy’s forces and will make the match last longer.
Planets Density: Planets density reflects how many planets each star system has. Lots of planets means bigger resources, few planets means less resources.
Minerals Planets: A high percentage of minerals planets will reduce your military and building costs.
Habitable Planets: A high percentage of habitable planets will help your population grow faster and increase your technology research speed.

I’m very happy with the results. As I said, this will not be a ultra-complex strategy game, but not a simplistic one either. Those settings should be enough for a long replayability of the title!

Now I’m off programming the main game interface. This will take more than a couple of days to finish!!