V0.9.1 – Alpha, Recruitment UI & Mechanics, Workers, Bugfixes

Hello again. A new year is almost upon us, and I thought it would be nice to have a new build to honor the occasion. I have bumped the versioning to indicate that the game is now in Alpha state – early Alpha mind you, but nevertheless, with an installer, a proper gui skin, tactical combat running in a 3d engine, arcane research, wizard towers, and many revamped mechanics, the game is getting much much closer to a playable state. You will still encounter crashes, save games are still turned off, some of the UI is pretty arcane, the AI is either massively aggressive or very passive, warlord and demigod mode are not enabled yet, etc. But there is a quite complex engine running under the hood, and the foundations are in place to flesh out features and content as the road towards Beta commences.

I would like thank everyone who reads this blog, even if you don’t post any comments. Seeing that people visit and read the stuff I write, maybe checking out a build now and then, is very encouraging, and at some point there will be a playable grand strategy fantasy game here, so keep checking back. I will keep working on getting it there. If you feel like sharing any ideas or feature requests, either comment on the blog or head to forums and make a post there. There is not much activity on the forums yet, but I do check up on them regularly, so if you have something to share, don’t be discouraged.

This build has an introductory quest chain guiding the player through some of the mechanics of research, tower management, recruitment and exploration. Another big UI improvement is the new recruitment screen, which gives a much better overview what can be recruited or summoned, showing unit statistics/abilities/upkeep costs, as the current recruitment/summoning queue. Workers have been added – these units can be tasked with aiding expansion of the wizard tower. I am working on the UI to allow sending them into the world to excavate ancient ruins, set up lumber camps, hunt beasts, etc. Hopefully it will be ready for next build, so that the economy aspect starts being a lot more playable, and you don’t have to either cheat or twiddle your thumbs a lot waiting for enough resources to actually do something.

As usual a bunch of bugfixes should reduce the number of crashes and glitches.

Here’s the installer: ClickOnce windows installer
Zip with build is here: http://wizardsandwarlords.net/files/WizardsAndWarlords091.zip

V0.08c – Quest System Rework, UI Improvements, Bugfixes, Mechanics

After a bit of a delay, here is a new build featuring a rework of the quest system. The first quest I have implemented with the new system is a small intro chain for wizards, giving a few bonuses to mana, influence and gold as the tower is improved, initial research completed, a mana node is discovered, etc.

I am almost done with the hint/tutorial system, that should help introduce how the UI works. There is now a tooltip showing how much movement an army has left and how much it would cost to move into an adjacent hex. The mechanics controlling recruitment, summoning, binding and upkeep of regiments have been improved, and that should soon lead to a much better gameplay flow around building up armies. After the tutorial, I will be adding some ways to increase resource production and giving the followrs something to do. This should allow wizards to actually have the resources to recruit and summon armies without using the cheat menu.

More crash and display bugs have also been fixed.

Zip with build is here: http://wizardsandwarlords.net/files/WizardsAndWarlords008c.zip
Here’s the installer if you prefer that: ClickOnce windows installer

V0.08b – Non-simultaneous movement, bugfixes

A new build with a lot of crash fixes. But the biggest new thing is that you can choose to play with non-simultaneous movement. That means you will move your armies around the map until they have no more movement points left, then click next turn, wait for the AI – and you can move your armies again. This is a bit closer to what most people are used to from games like Civilization and Master of Magic. Simultaneous mode is still available and will be used when multiplayer gets added.

I have disabled load/save for now, as it is not working properly. Next up is more work on regiment recruitment, spells, AI, income, better tactical combat etc – the foundations are in place and every build should add playability and enable manipulation of various gameplay elements. Followers and quest also need an overhaul, but that will unfortunately have to wait until the basic 4X mechanics flow better.

Zip with build is here: http://wizardsandwarlords.net/files/WizardsAndWarlords008b.zip
Here’s the installer if you prefer that: ClickOnce windows installer