Wearing Multiple Hats, PR, And The Secrets To Success As An Indie

I've written a couple of new articles today targeted at new or aspiring indie developers.



The first about the challenges of wearing multiple hats as well as some PR-related stuff.  Essentially, many indie developers seem to struggle with balancing the business side of their work with the game-development side of their work.  I know I do, and this post breaks down some of why this might be, as well as reasons and goals for overcoming these challenges.



Case in point: by any objective measure, I really messed up the PR for the release of Tidalis.  We had far too little PR, and now that awesome reviews are coming in it's still too late for the actual launch of the game.  This has led to sales being about ten times lower than my minimum expectation for the game, even though the game has still been very successful compared to most indie games in its first two weeks.  It certainly beats the pants off of what AI War did at first, and AI War went on to sell around 30,000 copies of itself and its expansion.



So what does that mean for Tidalis?  Is it to be permanently harmed due to the lack of advanced press before initial release?  Short answer: No.  That certainly wasn't the case for AI War, and the reviews are even more positive for Tidalis than they were for AI War.  Longer answer: I wrote a second article about the secrets of Arcen's success as an indie company, which outlines how we took AI War from a complete unknown to a cult classic.  It's worked for us, I suspect this is what worked for Dwarf Fortress, and I know this is what worked for the likes of Doodle Jump and similar on the iPhone.  And best of all, it's the sort of thing that big companies by and large would never do for their customers.



Happy reading!

Bill Harris of "Dubious Quality" Reviews Tidalis

"This is easily the most interesting, unique gameplay mechanic I've
ever seen in a puzzle game. It's terrific."

Bill
Harris

Tidalis for Mac Chosen As Brothersoft Editor's Pick

Tidalis has been chosen as an Editor's Pick for Mac Games on the Brothersoft download site.  Nice!

The Reticule: The Rise of Mac (and Linux) Gaming

Chris Evans from The Reticule recently wrote a rather interesting article about how Mac (and Linux) gaming is on the rise lately.  He interviewed Doug Lombardi from Valve, as well as a number of indie developers, including Chris Park from Arcen.  Particularly interesting is the discrepancy in opinions between long-term Mac-only developers (who seemed rather jaded on the platform), and developers more recently supporting the Mac in addition to their prior platforms (who were really feeling more positive). 



For those interested, the full article: The Rise of Mac (and Linux) Gaming

New System For Arcen News - Update Your Feeds!

For as long as Arcen has had a presence on the web, our site news format has been a little less than stellar.  The main page of the site was something I was maintaining by hand, and then I was posting a second copy of the news items in the News section of the forums, which not everyone even sees (most of the forum regulars hang out in the AI War or Tidalis sections of the forum at this stage).



So there were three big issues with our old way of handling the news, at any rate: 1) only I could do news updates to the front page; 2) visibility was relatively low; 3) to post comments or subscribe to our news you had to join the forums.



The new system of news posts that we're now moving to uses the Blogger platform behind the scenes, and the most recent 15 posts will automatically show up on the main page of the site.  All of our staff will be able to post news from now on, so expect to see more behind-the-scenes posts, more preview information about stuff we're working on, and in general more timely notes about all that sort of thing.  All of our prior news posts have also been ported over into the new platforms.  And there are now handy categories for the news, which makes it even easier to find the sort of news you're looking for.  Nice!



If you're currently subscribed to the News forums to have it send you emails when new posts are made, be warned that this is the last news-alert email you'd get through that mechanism.  If you want to subscribe to our news posts, you can now do so easily via RSS:



Arcen Games
News - Atom

Arcen
Games News - RSS



We look forward to having a more active relationship with our fanbase and customers outside of just our forums (and we'll still be there as well in the game-specific sections, don't worry -- those aren't going anyway).  Thanks for reading!

More Tidalis Reviews!

"Having played a variety of games in different genres, I will say it
has been awhile since I have found such a
great PC puzzle game. Seeing me testing this game for the review, my
fiance even gave this game a try, leading to
us buying a second copy of the game for its multiplayer capability.
If you are looking for a great game that will
be enjoyed by your entire family for some time, I recommend
downloading Tidalis and giving it a try. You will not
regret it."

Sensor,
PuzzleUniverse.com (9.5/10 Score)



"Tidalis is a highly polished, cleverly designed puzzle game that
is saturated with content, and detail in a way
that even many larger studio developed titles often don't compare to.
I'm not typically a fan of puzzle games
personally, but I found myself highly entertained, and quickly hooked
on this title."

Jordan Rivas



"I will be playing this game years from now and still enjoying
every bit of it. It has depth, complexity, beauty
and richness beyond many other puzzle games currently available."

KingIsaacLinksr,
A Paladin Without A Crusade...



"Tidalis promises to take you to unexplored realms, both through
its fantastical storyline and its fresh take on
the match-three puzzler. You'll still be matching up some familiar
coloured blocks, but the way you do it differs
considerably from other games in the genre."

Jon
Mundy, GameZebo (4/5 Stars)



"Het maken van lange stromen en combo's is iets waar je je
urenlang mee kan vermaken en biedt de vernieuwing die
zo vaak afwezig is bij genregenoten. Met de combinatie van
vernieuwing en content heeft Arcen Games dan ook bewezen
dat dit genre nog verre van verzadigd is. "

Roland van
Dorrestein, EuroGamer.nl (9/10 Score)

Some of the first Tidalis reviews are in, and the game is getting top marks!

"Tidalis is a match-3 game that doesn’t feel tired or repetitive: I actually want to play it, which says something considering how many puzzle games I’ve reviewed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Tidalis is one of the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. Simply put, if you like puzzle games (and even if you usually don’t), you need to get Tidalis. Right now. Go!"

James Allen, Out of Eight PC Game Reviews (8/8 score)



"Overall, this is the most robust and interesting casual game I have seen in some time. There is so much to do
and so many ways to play I don't even know that casual actually suits it. Yes the gameplay is casual but this is a
highly developed, well-rounded, offering from Arcen Games that puts many games of higher price to shame. It's got
numerous ways to play and very successfully takes an old genre, turns it on its head, and shows you just what can
be done when you think outside of the box."

Christophor Rick, Gamers Daily News (GDN Gold Award, 9/10 Score)

Assorted FPS news

Lets start with the big news for today :)

A new version of Cube2:Sauerbraten was released today: Justice Edition!

Changes include two new player-models, 30 new maps, a mini radar and the new hold and efficiency game modes. For a full change log click here.

The blue base!

The new game mode "efficiency" gives you a set amount of ammunition and all weapons, and you can only "reload" when re-spawning and in the "hold" mode you get points when holding the flag for 30 seconds for your team

Upcoming changes in AlienArena

In this other open-source online arena FPS (sadly also with un-free media) some major changes in the rendering engine have been announced recently. Version 7.45 will include the new IQM skeletal animation format, which speeds up and increases the rendering quality tremendously on all somewhat new GPUs!

Furthermore changes to the shadowing code have been made:

Improved self shadowing

Edit (07/29/2010): 7.45 was released today, get it here.

ZeroBallistics completely FOSS???

Ok maybe I am jumping the gun here, but this interesting post has recently appeared on the Phoronix message-boards. It seems like the former commercial indi game Zero Ballistics (an unrealistic tank battle multiplayer game with pretty sweet graphics) has gone completely FOSS (GPL including the media and even the .blend model source files).

Zero Ballistics trailer

Details are a bit shady, as there was a post on the currently offline webpage about ZB going to be released for "free", but no mention of the exact licensing. However now a complete repository has appeared on the Sourceforge page (tagged as GPL), so speculations are that it is completely FOSS!

We are currently trying to confirm this with the authors listed at the sf.net page, but so far there was no response :( But lets wait and see!

Edit (07/29/2010): I can now confirm that ZeroBallistics is indeed completely FOSS :) Stay tuned for a more in depth preview here on FreeGamer.

Official Steam Community Group For Tidalis

For those interested in Steam Community Groups, there is now an official one for Tidalis: http://steamcommunity.com/games/tidalis

Two Articles About Arcen In the Chapel Hill Herald-Sun!

There was an article just yesterday in the Chapel Hill Herald-Sun about the upcoming for-charity micro expansion that we're doing for AI War. I didn't even know that article was going to be coming out!



Charity accesses games for children's hospitals



This is the main article that was in the Chapel Hill Herald-Sun yesterday, discussing Arcen a bit in general but mainly Tidalis. That was pretty exciting to see in the news stands.




A video game for all ages

Tidalis Officially Launches -- and 10% off for a week!

The day that puzzle fans have been waiting for has finally arrived!  After three months in public beta, the official version of Tidalis has finally launched!  The game is now out on Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, GamersGate, myGameIQ (who just had their own launch this week, too, by the way), MacGameStore.com, and our own site store.  In celebration of this event, Tidalis is 10% off of its normal price of $9.99 for this first week.  We've also got a new launch trailer to share:











Not Familiar With Tidalis Yet?


Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new "streams" mechanic.  
The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a
stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose.  In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag
paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.



If this sounds simple, that's because it is -- you'll be lining up lengthy chains within minutes.  But you'll be
surprised how much brainpower it takes to set up combos of multiple chains, and the many brainteaser-style puzzles
include some real stumpers.  Tidalis has co-op and competitive multiplayer modes (both online and offline);
action-oriented modes and timer-less brainteasers; a lengthy, casual-friendly adventure mode; twenty unique game modes
providing innumerable twists to the basic gameplay; dozens of special blocks and items; and over fifty minutes of
beautiful music to go with the painterly art.



In short, several games' worth of content are built on top of this core
mechanic, which you'll quickly find to be as iconic as it is novel.





For Those Who Prefer Bullet Points:

* Puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new mechanic.

* Two-player co-op and competitive play (both local and networked).

* A wide selection of both action-oriented or brainteaser-like levels.

* Casual-friendly adventure mode, hardcore-focused custom games and vs modes.

* 20+ game styles, and dozens of items and special blocks.

* Rich, painterly art style and beautiful music.

* Players can create and share whole new themes, levels, and adventures.

* Options for colorblind players, players averse to lots of light and motion, and older computers.





For Those Who Prefer Really Long And Over-Detailed Lists:

* Supported Platforms: Mac OSX "Panther" 10.39 or higher, Windows 2000 or later

* Game Styles: Normal, Zen, Sun & Moon, Line Clear, Graviton, Frenzy, Featherweight, Trampoline, Light-Up, Item Survival, Water, Wind, Jumping Bean, Limited Streams, Eater Defense, Solitaire, Speed-Up, Block Swap, Shuffle, Bumpers

* Difficulty ranging from 0-10

* 115 Adventure Levels, 69 Brainteasers, 9 Ranked Boards, 5 Sampler Levels

* Block Sets: Smooth, Faces, Pixel, AI War, Organic, Shapes

* Music/Art Themes: Cavern, Fishing Village, Fishing Village Night, Forest, Forest Night, Night Marsh, Night Marsh Variance, Open Plains, Open Plains Cloudy, Rainy Mud Flats, Tidal Wreckage, Volcano, Windy Mountaintop, Jeweled Palace, River, Snowy Lowlands, Temple, Foothills, Hidden Theme 1, Hidden Theme 2, Hidden Theme 3

* General Special Blocks: Glass, Stone, Tinder, Fire, Ice, Bubble, Charred, Eater, Direction Locked, Color Reactive, Metal Grille, Turnip, Magnet (Repulsor), Magnet (Attractor), Quad Repeater, Flipper (180), Flipper (45), Crystalizer, Color Blocker, Emission Statue, Pit Monster, Sick, Cured, Living Stone, Inverter, Energizer

* Puzzle-only (or special mode) Special Blocks: Plastic, Metal, Wall (Passable), Wall (Solid), Water Fish, Water Balloon, Sponge, Apple, Golden Apple, Empty Block

* Easy, game-integrated game updates

* Mouse or keyboard controls, with keyboard control customization

* Multiple adventure savegames

* In-game tutorials

* Combinations of game modes in custom games

* Fun adventure mode story: Intro Cutscene, 45 Main Story Cutscenes, 6 Hidden Cutscenes, Ending Cutscene

* General Items: Place Color Block, Place Special Block, Can 'O Beans, Extend, Constrain, Crystal, Quake Hammer, Lightning, Question Mark, Huge Boulder, Rainbow, Flood, Icer, Turnipalooza, Color Popper, Fence, Hourglass, Running Shoes, Feather, Barbells, U-Turn, Wind Burst, Scrambler, Insta-Streams, Molasses-Streams

* Puzzle-only (or special mode) Items: Safety Pin

* VS Modes: Garbage, Endurance, or Freeform

* Co-Op-Only Modes: Sun or Moon, Block Vaporizer, Item Buddies

* Limited Vs AI

* 64 Achievements

* Adventure collectibles and brainteaser titles

* Level Editor, Adventure Editor, and Theme Editor

* Per-player handicaps, co-op items

* Local high scoreboards (daily and overall)

* Network play for up to two computers, with up to two players on each computer (so 2-4 players in all).

* Alternatively, local 2-player multiplayer on a single computer.

* Server listings and filtering.

* Ability to sumbmit high scores and achievements to twitter.





We Would Like To Thank...

... our staff for their incredible dedication and the long hours it took to make this game a reality.  Everyone on the team was working long hours and into the wee hours of the morning on their parts of the game, which is something Arcen would never demand of staff -- but the enthusiasm of everyone on the team for this project was so great that people were doing this of their own accord.  June was admittedly pretty intense, but we pulled through and the game is better than we could have ever expected.  On that note, we would also like to thank...




... the family and friends of our staff for their support and help as well.  Many of them acted as alpha and beta testers, contributed design ideas, contributed levels or art or even more significant chunks of content.  Thanks for your understanding and aid during this long project!  And on that note, we'd especially like to thank...




... the fans who supported Tidalis during the beta, both with their patronage and with their ideas, comments, suggestions, and bug reports.  The game wouldn't have been the same without you folks, and your encouragement helped us to make the game ever better.  And next to last, a big thanks to...




... the existing AI War fanbase, for their understanding during this last month when AI War hasn't gotten the attention that we normally would give it.  There are big things coming up soon for AI War (the 4.0 version as well as the for-charity micro expansion), but June and July have definitely been an unusual dry spell for the game.  Thankfully there has still been a lot of discussion and involvement of the community on the forums, and this next official release for AI War is going to be extra polished thanks to all the time folks have had to work with the beta versions of that.  Lastly, we'd like to thank...




...all of our amazing distribution partners!  It's always a challenge to be an indie company, but our partners in a very real way are the ones that make it possible for us to be in business.  They provide us with a level of visibility and a level of access to potential fanbases that we never would have access to without them:




   

   

   

   

   





Upcoming Tidalis DLC!

We are planning some free DLC goodies in the coming months, so keep an eye out! The game is already jam-packed with features and content, as you can see above, but we still have a lot of good ideas that we would like to explore post-release.  Tidalis won't be in "perpetual development" in the same fashion that AI War is -- we just don't have the staff to maintain that -- but we plan on dropping in some goodies for Tidalis from time to time on a running basis.  If there are a lot of custom levels, adventures, and such submitted by fans on the official forums, we might also do a community DLC release that we push out to all customers of the game.  So there's still a chance to see your levels (and your name or nickname) become part of the official Tidalis package!  Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy Tidalis as much as we enjoyed making it!

Convergent evolution?

Today we have a small biology lesson ;)

Have a look at this screenshot:

A nice warehouse

TeamFortress2, right? Well WRONG ;) It is actually a screenshot from one of the maps from the upcoming War§ow 0.55 release!

War§ow is a open-source game based on the updated Quake2 engine QFusion, and has already seen some quite successful previous releases. They focus on a fast, e-sports style game play and their general art direction is a pretty nice cell-shaded comic world.

Lately their their style has been for sure party influenced by TeamFortress2 however, which at least in my opinion is not a bad thing :) For a whole bunch of other screenshots and an update on what else you can expect from the new version, check out their newest blog post here. Overall there will be some pretty nice improvements, and probably a significant performance increase with VBO integration into the engine.

But maybe most interestingly, they will also include a new game play mode, Capture the Flag: Tactics. And guess what? It will be a class based team CTF, with turrets and ammo dispensers. Sounds familiar right? :p

Say Hello to Mr. Turret

Sadly I have to mention though that the art content of War§ow is completely unfree, and its development team shows a general lack of interest in the idea of FOSS... Yes the engine source code is available, but probably only because it is GPL and therefore has to be.
Second lesson for today, kids: GPL is good, mkay?

Strap-on-bomb Car: One-Button Mini-Racing game

Str.. Bomb Car!

Awesome! A one-button mini car racing game where you have to blow up your car in the most hilarious way thinkable!
No wait, that's not right. It's actually a time trial game but this kid [tinyogg] figured out what's most fun to do!

So you use the space bar to make the car either turn left or right but for whatever reason there is a bomb, where a bumper should be. Get it here in a .zip for OSX/Win/Lin32&64/src if your computer can run 3D games!

Both game content and source code are GPL-licensed. Only exception is the soundtrack: one track is BY-SA (good), one NoDerivs (bad) and one has no license (bad). DarkPlaces is the engine used by the game. Urre made Bomb Car and if I understand correctly, he is part of Kot in Action, who are currently working on the top-down shooter Steel Storm using the DarkPlaces engine. Not sure what their plan for licensing is.

Bomb Car trailer [tinyogg]

And yeah. We all agree that the name is funny. Shut up. :P At least it's not "open bomb car". (Speaking of weird names: while "kot" means "cat" in Polish and Russian, it means something different in German.)

Deep Adventure GPLed, Pretty HTML5 Pong, Red Eclipse Status

Feeling random! Bullets! Colors! (Sun does that to you! Don't go outside! Stay inside and make open source games!)

• Country of Origin is now GPLed
  

  You are in a computer game in which you have to find the essence of time and space.
  You could be tempted to think this quest is in vain, because you think that questions are more important than answers. But you are in a computer game.
  Games have solutions for they consist of puzzles. And as Thomas Kuhn says, although intrinsic value is no prerequisite for a puzzle, the assured existence of a solution is!

  
  Country of Origin
• Web Mega Pong is GPLed, non-forgiving and pretty to look at!
  
  
  Web Mega Pong
• I like Red Eclipse a_lot. I recorded a_lot of gameplay videos. The levels look great!
  Last time I asked, they were aiming for "Sportsy Sci-Fi" and BY-SA-compatible licensed art. Currently the (player/weapon model) style is retro-simple and there are a few non-free licensed assets in the repository. The map style is: cool. :)
  In my humble opinion, the simple/retro look of the players makes me tolerate/not notice the bot's occasional failures. Something about uncanny valley.
  One amazing thing about Red Eclipse is, that each time a new SVN commit gets committed, the official server updates automatically and you can only play using the latest SVN!
  
  
  Red Eclipse

MegaGlest 3.3.5 Pre-release special!

A new version of MegaGlest will be released sometime today! Once it is head over here to download it! A short changelog can be found here.

MegaGlest is a relatively recent fork of the quite well known FOSS Game Glest, which ceased development some time back. Now that Megaglest has taken up the development, things have advanced quite quickly (in contrast to the other promising Glest fork GAE) and Glest now finally has the long deserved cross platform multiplayer and a proper master-server with a games lobby! Furthermore Megaglest includes all the factions known from the Megapack before, bumping the total number up to 6.

And believe it or not, qudobup and me tried to play a round (extreme n00b alert :D ), which we recored and commented here:

Megaglest Multiplayer: Julius vs. qubodup [HD .ogg (485M) | tinyogg | no-commentary .mp4 (364M)]

All done with Free software by the way :D (MegaGlest, glc, Audacity, PiTiVi and Mumble)!

Interview with the Megaglest team

For this Megaglest special we are also lucky to had the chance to make a short interview with the two main heads behind this Glest fork.

FreeGamer: For a start, could you please give us a short introduction into your team structure and what your motivation was to fork Glest in order to make Megaglest?

titi: Well teamstructure is... I started and Softcoder joined :) I have been working on glest mods for 2 years now because I like the game and there was so little content available back then. For Megaglest I also do some programming, but Softcoder writes more of the code than me.

Softcoder: But we also have contributions from time to time from others (like the GAE team).

titi: Concerning our motivation, I think we both work on glest because our kids like it :) Right from the start my children were involved in Glest modding. For example my son made nice tileset and helped me with my first mods; especially the Indians (as in native north Americans / the editor ;) ) we made as a coop production!

Softcoder: Yes titi & family are the heart of the community! But my boys also made a number of factions. Elimnator and Tiger are big into mods, and call their mods vbros packs :)

FreeGamer: Interesting to see that FOSS game development can really work as a family hobby! Not really the typical cliche of the lonely bed-room programmer in his teens ;)
But lets move on to the next question: Glest is for sure heavily influenced by Blizzard's Warcraft3, and thus caters to a similar type of gamer. Have you though about bringing some of the popular elements from that game over to Megaglest? Examples would be hero units, and of course the later added game-play modes like DOTA and Tower Defense.

titi: I think we both don't even know Warcraft3 :) I didn't played many RTS games up to now... well I think I played something called Dune2 on the Amiga before ;) Actually I'm more a FPS player.

Softcoder: I'm not a gamer at all. But yeah, the forums are filled with people who ask for features from those games. In short we will therefore likely bring lots of features that people like from there into MG.

titi: Personally however, I don't like all this special hero feature people talk about. Things get too complicated with this, and I think these heroes kill the usual RTS fun. But there are some fun ideas we will follow for sure :) But I see Glest as its own game; I don't want to build a Warcraft clone.
Concerning DOTA, well I guess HON is much better then we can ever be :) But there are mods who do this and when they grow we will support them if it fits to the game itself. Right now we have the current RTS game type in focus, however.

FreeGamer: Ok next question: Megaglest seems to have evolved out of a number of independent factions and tile sets, so the overall game design is lacking a bit. Are there plans to take a more "tighter grip" in order to get the balancing etc. right? Or do you consider Megaglest more of a "playground" and let someone else develop a "pro-mod" for balanced multiplayer?

Softcoder: I think the answer is a challenge of the community and the age groups. Many young people are working on techs, factions, maps etc, but we might need to be more careful to keep "themes" together. So we try to only allow consistent content as part of the shipped product.

titi: Well there are the Tech and Magic factions from the original glest, but the rest was basically made by me. It is something what I called Megapack before. But I learned more while doing this and so they look a bit different :)

FreeGamer: What I actually meant was not the art style but the game balancing and game design. Are there plans to restructure the factions, maybe limit them to 3 or so to be able to get balancing right?

titi: I think the balancing is quite good! Ok, some are better some are not so good, but thats like the players. It is meant like that, good players choose bad factions bad players choose good factions. But what's good or bad depends on the map too!
But I discuss with others in the forums and hear what they say... especially beginners always say this or that faction is too good, but after a while they often come to the conclusion thats its not as they thought :p

Softcoder: I also think the base MG install has that, e.g. a core game-play with good balancing. It is the add-ons etc... that create the "playground".

titi: But for me competitive game-play is also not really the focus. I want to make a game thats fun to play, not competitive! Especially coop gaming against the computer is a big part of the fun playing MG.

FreeGamer: Ok lets move on: With the current release focusing on getting the multiplayer working correctly (and hopefully getting a big enough online player-base), what are your future plans regarding the single-player part? Do you plan on implementing a campaign editor in the already much improved level editor?

titi: Well for me the next focus are graphical improvements. We need better terrain splatting (made by the gfx card), more lights and so on. And we will start to put in lots of new features once we proofed to be stable in multiplayer :)

Softcoder: I think its hard to answer! There are TONS of great ideas in the community, we will talk with our community and see what things are most desired. My focus is more for making my boys happy :) We want MG to be 'mega-fun'!

FreeGamer: Ok so what about editing & modding? Right now the units are rather limited in their special abilities. Do you think stuff like (air) transporters, non attack magic spells, stealth mode etc. (insert other cool units features from Starcraft/Warcraft) could be easily implemented? Or is that already possible with scripting, but not done yet?

titi: I wrote so many wiki entries , made so many forum posts to let people know how to mod glest, I think its quite easy now. The special unit abilities not implemented yet however, but when we think it is fun we will think how hard it is to do and then we do it :)

Softcoder: We plan to add many things like this, but slowly so that we don't lose stability and keep people happy. One example... we added better network play, masterserver AND cross platform play all in this last round of beta! That was TOO MUCH! But things will get done (faster if we have more help) just at its proper pace.

FreeGamer: We already had some remarks on the technical side of things, but lets get back to that again: The Glest engine sure looks a bit dated by today's standards... do you have plans to upgrade the graphics engine to support shaders and such?

Softcoder: Yikes! We agree with you! But I think we have to give hats off to Martino and the rest of the original Glest team that a game written in 2005 still is acceptable today!

titi: We need more speed and many of these features will bring us better speed and better graphics, since the GPU will do alot of the work.

FreeGamer: Ok, but to extent that: with normalmaps and such it often looks more realistic in style. Do you want to go more in that art direction, or stay with a more comic style?

titi: Normal maps are not the main priority, there are other more needed features. And normal maps need new textures, and that is really a lot of work :) So for now we are looking into things that can be done with mostly code which is easier to do.

FreeGamer: So but what weight would you give the development focus right now... more towards improving graphics, or more toward extending game-play?

titi: Both :) But we try to make small steps.

Softcoder: Game development is totally new for me (and Linux programming is fairly new), so priority also depends on how long it takes to learn and do it right! MG is my first graphics code ever, and also and my first Linux open source project.

titi: It is all new for us, no one of us did something like this before. I even learned C++ in the beginning of this year for this project! Same with php, the masterserver is the first thing I ever wrote in php.

FreeGamer: Well I think it turned out pretty well so far never the less :) I think this concludes our short interview. Thank you very much for answering our questions! Ahh, last but not least: Do you have anything you want to tell your players and/or our blog readers?

Softcoder: Yes, our #1 goal for MegaGlest is 'FUN'!

titi: Please come and play MegaGlest ;)

A short introduction into Glest modding

(Mega)Glest has an incredibly easy modding setup. Almost everything in the game can be easily changed with simple XML files, and the 2D map editor is very easy to grasp. Especially with the recent usability improvements in Megaglest (and included Linux editor binaries) it is possible to create a simple but nice map in a matter of minutes!

Edit: I was made aware that those editor improvements come mostly from the GAE project. Very good additions!

(Ok this was not done in minutes :p It's one of the new 8 player maps that come with MegaGlest)

But luckily all these editing features are also very well documented in the Glest wiki.

Last but not least, all single-player and co-op scenarios can be fully scripted right in the XML files with lua, a pretty powerful yet easy scripting language commonly used in computer games. Sadly it is not possible to create full singleplayer campaigns yet, but lets hope that gets added soon too!