A trailer for PocketCrusades & IndieGogo

Hey guys!

First of all, here's a little trailer I made the last days:

Secondly, and more importantly, today, in 3 hours, PocketCrusades will be on IndieGogo. So if you like the project, please help it get funded. It would mean the world to me, and it assures that this will become a high quality game!

I'll post the link to the project the moment it get's online!

So, till later ;)

The Stinker

Hello and good evening everyone, It's way after midnight here, so I'll keep it short. I finished the second Orc hero, the "Stinker":

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
(Kurt Vonnegut)

And here is his first spell:

Upon impact the Stinker destroys itself, but leaves the enemies stunned and deeply hurt.

Ok, that's it, I need some sleep.

Thanks for reading, good night.

Help me a bit

Hey everyone!

I'd be very thankful if you could help me boost my ranking on indiedb by clickin on this little button: Thank you, have a good one ;)

I'm way too tired!

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen!

First off all I want to apologize for the long pause in my posts, it's not that I haven't been working on this project, I just do not find the time to make an extensive post about everything that has happened since the last time. So here's a quick summary, maybe I'll find the time to go into more detail the next few days:

• Orc Hero
• Orc Tower
• Hero Spell
• Mana/Rage System for the Orc
• Particle-Sound-System - I'll definitly make a post + tutorial on that one, could be interesting for anyone using Unity. It's very easy: Let all the ParticleSystem have the possibility to add a sound that get's played alongside the System. Also show/play it in the editor to make it easy finding the right one.
• Human Start Building
• Human Hut
• Human Barracks
• Human Tower
• Human Worker
• Human Archer
• Human Warrior
• Human Oracle
• Basicly the complete Local-Game System
• ParticleEffects for Arrows (Archer & Tower)

In addition to that I have now pretty much everything planned on paper and in writing, and will soon create a little Guide or Manual for the Game.

But I still have a lot of work to do, here's my list for this week:

• food has to be reduced when dead!
• (Maybe) Highlight the selected unit some other way?! (Halo?)
• Only ONE! Hero (of one kind) alive at a time
• When hero did perform special attack, set ANGER/Mana to zero
• Terrain performance sucks, try making it a mesh (T4M?)
• Multi selector doesnt work now that race is implemented
• Hero hit needs sound
• Turn off NavMeshAgent when close to mine (Turn on after)
• Remove as much transparency as possible
•  Selected  Ring
•  Effects?
• StartUp? (Building etc)
• Add voices... Eg:
• On attack: "Get him", "Kill him"
• On hit: "Arrgh", "Uh"
• On kill: "Yeah"
• On Select: "What?", "Yes?", "Why are you bothering me?"
• On Build/mine: "Sure" (Annoyed), "Okay", "Hmpf", "Do this, do that...", "Gimme a break"
• On finish build:"And now?", "My work is done!"
• Add sounds... Eg:
• During build: Saw and Hammer

And that was just a summary. But, the game is making good progress, even though it costs me (way) too much sleep. Well, enough for today.

Thanks for reading, good night!

Just some screenshots for the Campaign, and some updates!

Hi everyone!

Easter is over, so it's time for some quick updates!

1.) The hero! He walks, he crushes bones, and he destroys everything that comes in his path. So what's left? The special ability! I hope I'll finish this tomorrow, let's see.

2.) The Multi-Selector! I don't know if I have ever written about this or not, nevermind. One big challenge when creating a RTS for mobile (and therefore touchscreen) devices, is the simple task: Select several units. How are you gonna do that? Well, I for one, tried to solve it with a little button that you can move over all units you want to select. And it WORKS! I'll show you how and why in the next video (hopefully also featuring the hero)

3.) The campaign! As you have seen in my previous posts, 2 maps are already (or nearly) finished. The game will have a single player campaign that stretches over 4 maps, and can be played with both sides. So, the last 2 days were spent making a campaign overview map, which will guide you through your process and provide some background story. Here some screenshots:

The burning mountain - As seen in my previous posts

Some snowy ice map

The forest map - As seen in previous posts

Just some details

The human capitol

The Ridge - Haven't even begun working on this, but that map is gonna be awesome!

The whole map!

So, that's it for today. Questions, comments, suggestions? Leave them below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Better late than never! Warriors and Archers - The movie ;)

Just kidding, there's no movie! But at least a two minute demo of them. Tell me what you think, comment and request changes in the comments please!

I'm currently working on the first hero for the orcs, which will be some kind of freaking huge warrior. The second one is gonna be some kind of Shaman. More information about that this weekend.

As always, thanks for reading/watching.

Here we go! Demo-Video!

Here it is, a little preview of the game!

It's not even close to finished, but I think you can see in which direction this is going. 

I have to apologize for the bad audio quality, the microphone I used was, well, shitty.

I'll arrange a better one for the next video, which will be uploaded in the next few days,

showing the barracks and the first warriors.

Thanks for watching!

Phase 1 - The idea

Hi again!

Sorry for the delay, but I got injured playing Volleyball, and after being at the hospital, I had to organize a few things, which kept me busy from writing here. That was the first downer of the week, the second one was, at least for me, even worse. While I was working on this project my working environment crashed and left me with a corrupted project, which ment I had to start all over. Well, bad for me, good for you, as I'm able to show you now everything from scratch. So let's start, shall we?

Basics

I will use Unity3D as my game engine. Even though not exactly cheap, it's perfect if you want to publish for different environments, in my case: Android and IOS. Another thing that I absolutly love about Unity is its AssetStore. Let me be clear, I'm a programmer! I know how to use Photoshop, but I'm not creative enough to make my own textures, GUI and so on. I know Maya a bit, but I'm not even close to making professional Models. That is why a lot of things I'm using in my games are bought, at a reasonable price. Even if you are a "Programmer-Designer-Modeler", doing everything alone would take forever, and I want to finish this game in my lifetime. 

The Idea

As you might imagine, every project starts with an idea. Coming up with an idea is easy, but finding out if it's possible to make it, if it's a good idea that people will like, and, and that is the most important thing, if you like it yourself enough that you will actually finish it.

Since my last project was a strategy game, I figured, I should do something in this direction again, since I already have most of the Know-How to create such a game. This time I want to make something like WarCraft. It won't be a clone, but it will have certain aspects of the game. Since I want to build the game for mobile devices, it has to be short, by which I mean one game shouldn't take longer than maybe 10 to 20 minutes. In addition, this game will be a lot less complex than WarCraft, making it easier to develop, but also easier to understand, which is critical for mobile games. It should have a both singleplayer and multiplayer to keep the game interesting, so that people will buy some InApp products.

Look and Feel

Well, long story short, here's a screenshot of my GUI so far:

Top right: The inventory - there will be onlygold and food to keep things simple.

Bottom left: The map

Top middle: This will be a dragable component to multi-select, send and cast spells. (More on this coming soon)

Bottom middle: This will be components that show up when something is selected to let you build or attack things. Example: You selected a worker, now these show the different kind of buildings you can build. Drag them onto the world to build them.

Bottom right: Here you will have the informations about the thing you currently selected, in this case a townhall.

The Plan

I want to have a running prototype (Menu,one map, single player and multiplayer) before march, so I'll try to stick to this:

27.01. InGame-Setup (Starting the level/map - setting of players, buildings, mines, etc.)

29.01. BASIC Interaction (sending them around) with RTSUnits (Workers, Warriors etc.) 

19.02. Complex interaction with Workers - Building things

22.02. Running Inventory-System

26.02. Menu

14.03. Complex interaction with Warriors - Attacking
20.03. Complex interaction with Heros - Casting spells
23.03. GameOver/Won - conditions

28.03. Multiplayer Setup

Thats it for today!

Thanks for reading!

PS: Almost forgot: Here's some artwork so that you can imagine what this game is going to be/feel/look like.

Let's get this started

First off, a few things about me:

I'm Alexander, 23, from Graz - Austria. I'm currently working as a Programmer for a local company, besides being a student, and did start my own company back in November last year. But, let me start a bit earlier!

When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I first got interested in creating my own games. Back then I made my first steps like everyone else, with the the RPGMaker2k. This tool was great for learning, but soon enough I wanted more, at least one more dimension. So I (or lets say my mother) bought an edition of the GameStudio3D. In hindsight this was probably one of the most important things in my life, since it made me learn programming, which I do for a living today. From age 15 on, I stopped trying to create games, I had other things - like everyone this age - in mind. This was the case till about 16 months ago, where I had an idea, and said to myself "Fuck it, let's do this". It took me till December of the last year - about 2500 hours o f work, and way to much money for licenses, the server, etc... - to finish it. But I did, even though I have to admit it's a bit buggy - I'm still trying to improve it. Here's the trailer:

As you see, I decided to develop for mobile platforms. Why? Because- with a lot of work - you can compete with big companies in terms of graphics, which is not unimportant. At least that was my reason.

Now, after a month of relaxing, I'm starting something new, a fast strategy game with the name "Pocket Crusades".And this is going to be the development blog for this.

Tomorrow I will tell you what it will be about, show you parts of my development plan, and give you some insights into how to make a decent looking game - alone!

Thanks for reading!