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RTS They Are Billions - steampunk/zombie RTS from Lords of Xulima dev

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I won using my own strategies, I haven't finished the game mind you. I'm on map three but I don't use meta strategies or the most optimal one. Just saying there is other ones, well, expanding is important at least.
 

Ashery

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Joined
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Messages
1,337
I prefer Titans for two reasons: Maneuverability and scaleability.

The former means you can quickly reposition your units based on where the hordes are densest, while the latter simply means that, while a couple Thanatos units would outperform a single Titan, my money is on half a dozen Titans outperforming a dozen Thanatos. I could very well be wrong on that point, though.

Also, funnily enough, I've never built a shock tower.

I'd disagree on your point about never upgrading until you fill the map, though. There are definitely some upgrades to avoid (Use power plants instead of upgrading to advanced mills, for instance), but housing should be upgraded whenever you have the spare wood and stone.
 

DarkUnderlord

Professional Throne Sitter
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Messages
28,343
The former means you can quickly reposition your units based on where the hordes are densest
So far, there's been no point in me trying to relocate anything anywhere. Once you're down, you're down. Even a single wall breach requiring repair is a "quit, restart" event because it sets you back too far that you can't recover in time for the final wave.

The times I have managed to bring the army together to fend off an attack inside my base have been epic, but not a single one has ever been recoverable.

So far my experience is that you're either ahead of the curve, in which case you have enough defenses everywhere to survive and the game feels easy (tower defense) at least until that final wave. Or you're behind the curve, in which event you've already lost, you just don't know it yet.

The zombie hordes need better pacing too. They're all small and pathetic until you hit the final wave, so none of the waves actually test your defenses in any meaningful way. You can pretty much hold off most waves with just a couple of executors or whatever army you've got on hand - provided you can get it to the right location in time (which is where I guess Titans are handy, but a handful of static defenses at a choke point seem adequate for this, and radar is handy).

while the latter simply means that, while a couple Thanatos units would outperform a single Titan, my money is on half a dozen Titans outperforming a dozen Thanatos. I could very well be wrong on that point, though.
If I could save, I could test it out and actually learn something.

housing should be upgraded whenever you have the spare wood and stone.
Upgrading housing for me has never been about having spare wood and stone. Usually all resources are sitting at maxed out until I dump some walls / whatever down and spend them. It's always been about having the food, energy, and most often the gold. Usually I upgrade until I need more farms, which becomes an expansion problem, or I need to find somewhere I can dump another half dozen mills / power plant.

I've stopped upgrading to Advanced Mills because I'm finding I need the gold more than anything else, and those suckers chew gold.

And shock towers at every choke point. A shock tower, outside your walls, with it's own wall built around it works as a delay / distraction that also takes out a fair chunk of the swarm while executors back behind your main walls handle the rest.

do you have to take the whole map to win?
You need the resources to hold off that final wave. But that's provided you've got choke points. Expanding into the edges of the map where you're opening yourself to long walls doesn't seem to be a good idea - you have to waste too much on static defenses along the entire wall. The same defenses in a choke point will hold much better.

The game is very much about map control and setting up masses of defenses around natural choke points. A lot of that relies on map generation. Sometimes you don't realise you've got a terrible map until it's too late.
 
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LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
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Codex 2014
https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1666776116206169940

Development Update v.0.8.2

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Greetings!

Just a quick update on the game development.

Campaign Development

We are working now in two fronts, the Old Fortresses, where the tactic missions will be played, and the Trains system. In the next update we’ll talk more about them and we’ll publish new screenshots with new content.

Trains on Survival Mode?

As we said before we want to keep on trying to enrich the content of the Survival mode with elements from the campaign. Therefore we are also considering including the Trains in the Survival mode, but just as new environmental element. There will be a railway line that will cross the map and, periodically, there will be trains passing through the map. It will not only be a nice touch for the maps, but also an important strategic element. Obviously you won’t be able build over the railways so you’ll have to defend that parts in a different way (without walls). On the other hand the trains will destroy all those unlucky infected who happen to be on its way. That’ll certainly be something worth watching!

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New Version 0.8.2

These are the new features of the 0.8.2 version, which is available now:

New Army Buttons

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Many times in the game, you want to select all the units of the same type, for example, "Select all snipers to defend the North wall....". There is a new button on the left part of the screen for every type of unit (Ranger, Sniper...) that also shows the total amount of each of them. Click them and all the units of that type will be selected.

You can combine the mouse clicks with the Shift key to add the units to the current selection.

Press F2 to select all the Army

You can use the shortcut F2 to select all units available in your army.

Power Plant Changes

Now the Power Plant uses 10 wood units instead 5 wood and 5 stone. Before, building sawmills in the late stages of the game was something superfluous and by contrast, if you built several power plants you could easily run out of stone which is so necessary as the game progresses. We think that works much better now, as it improves the resources balancing especially in the second half of the game.

Stakes and Blades Traps

Judging by the screenshots and gameplay videos from players, it seems that the traps are underused. We think they are currently very useful, as they not only harm the infected but also slow them down. Another advantage is that they can be placed on the floor without restrictions and don't block the movement of your army (as the walls do).

Also they would make more sense in real life, where a fortress would have one or two rows of walls with a gate protected by a series of traps. Building lots of walls randomly just to block the infected looks quite weird :)

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So for all these reasons we have improved the traps:

- Stakes Trap: +20% Life. + 25% damage.
- Blades Trap: +30% Life. + 25% damage.

Pathfinding for Swarms: Improved Performance

There is a good reason why They Are Billions is clearly one of the games that manages more units in real time, units that are truly independent, every unit has their own AI and behaves always on their own. That's the reason why the infected swarms in They Are Billions looks so natural and organic.

The game engine is ultra optimized in every aspect, especially the path finding, which is one of the most costly operations.

In many other games with big armies, the paths are computed for a full group of units and generally those paths don't change with time as the environment is static and fixed. By contrast, on TAB every unit computes its own paths to reach its targets. This path is recomputed every few seconds to react to the changes of the environment (walls destroyed, structures built...). Thanks to that, the swarms can split in several paths or single units can leave the swarm if they have seen or heard something, as it would happen in real life.

Although the game system is already quite optimized, we have gone further. Previously, all paths were recomputed if anything on the map changed, which could lead to some frame drops when there are big swarms running to the colony. Now, only if something that can affect the current paths is changed the path is recomputed. For example, the infected don't care about walls; they ignore them unless they are blocking their movement in which case they will try to destroy them. So now, if a wall in their path is destroyed or built the path won't be recomputed.

What all of this stuff means to the player? We expect the game to run smoother, specially when big swarms are approaching the colony.

Survival Challenge: Score Factor fixed
It was an issue when computing the final score of the Survival Challenge. The Score Factor relative to the map type was not incorporated to the equation, so all score factors of the Survival Mode were 100% regardless the map type. Now that bug is fixed so your score will reflect better the real difficulty of the map.

And that's all for now. Thanks for your support and see you soon!
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1712943085780277947

Something Giant is coming!

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Greetings!

While we are working hard developing the Campaign of They Are Billions we would like to add some more spice to the current Survival Mode:

The Infected Giant

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The Infected Giant is a very special enemy with some specific features. The Giant is a mutated infected that has grown without limit for years and years. It is so huge that the earth trembles under its passage.

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When does the beast appear in the game?

From the beginning... They start roaming the outer border of the map, nevertheless, the Giants are so huge that you will always know where they are as their position will be marked on the minimap with a small icon. This is a great clue so you know where you shouldn’t expand your colony or move your units, at least not until you have a very powerful army to fight them.

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The Giant(s) appear on the maps with the Infected Population set at “Challenging” difficulty or above. So, new players don't worry, you won't need to face this beast during your first playthroughs.

The Tiny Brain of the Giant

Giants are huge and powerful but with a tiny brain. They cannot hear so they are not attracted by nearby activity. Also, they are almost blind, they react slowly to your actions, but be careful, once it detects a target it will chase it with terrifying speed and there are no walls in the world that can stop them!

Their Deadly Attack

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The Giant has the most powerful attack in They Are Billions. They have a very long reach and they hit everything in a 120º arc. Nothing can escape their attack, even other infected can be destroyed if they are within the Giants attack range.

I'm scared... What can I do?

Nothing. We recommend you avoid the Giants and don’t annoy them under any circumstance. But you can’t avoid them all game, you should kill them before the final horde comes for your colony, because they will join them as any other infected on the map. Believe us, last thing you want is to fight the final swarm and the Giants at the same time...

Version 0.9: More Features

New Difficulty Mode: Nightmare!

Are you one of the pro-players that think TAB is a piece of cake? Congratulations and welcome to your worst nightmare!

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This is a new value for the Infected Population, which increases the huge population of Brutal mode by 30%!!! And it also includes a gift of three Giants on the same map. We think it is almost impossible to beat the game on this mode but it will be great fun to try. If you can beat it in the desert, you will get a score factor of 800%!! Good luck!

Some technical info about this mode: We have optimized TAB even more in the 0.9 version, allowing the engine to move more and more units. That being said, this mode requires a good computer with many cores and a high speed. Using a lower spec computer can cause the game to suffer, dropping frames and running slowly when the big swarm heads towards the colony. However, the game will continue to be playable.

Armor System Refactored

In previous versions of TAB, the Armor value of the units are subtracted from the damage, for example, an attack of 8 against an armor of 3, deals 5 life points of damage.

Now the Armor decreases the damage as a percentage instead of an absolute value. For example, an attack of 8 against a 25% armor deals 6 life points of damage. This means that now, small damage attacks like the weak infected are not as reduced by the armor as before, but the deadlier attacks (Harpies, Chubies, Giants....) are much more reduced. Also, with the new armour values, Soldiers and Titans are much more resistant to damage than the Rangers and Snipers, which is more realistic.

  • Ranger and Sniper: 5%
  • Soldier and Titan: 40%
  • Lucifer and Thanatos: 25%

New Map Features

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You can find on the maps new elements to loot, food crates that add food to the Command Center and old batteries that provide extra energy to the colony. Also, we have added some more decorative elements.

Some more Balancing
  • Traps life increased.
  • Soldier and Titan damage increased.
  • Veteran Soldier and Veteran Ranger attack range increased.

New Achievements
Four new achievements:
  • Giant Slayer Level 1: When you kill your first Giant.
  • Giant Slayer Level 2: When you kill your two Giants on the same map.
  • Giant Slayer Level 3: When you kill your three Giants on the same map.
  • The Most Wonderful Colony: When you build all the Six Wonders in your colony.

And that's all for the moment, we hope you to enjoy this new update. In the next one we will talk and show more screenshots from the Campaign.

See you soon!
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,805
What's wrong with the walls?

They stack horribly. Why allow 2 tile wide walls when they could buffup standard wall to twice hp and would reduce whole ugly looking sprite work that can't cope with two titles large walls.
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Isn't it a resource decision though? Some areas might just require 1 wall, while you would want to reinforce with two walls in some places. I mean having to make that sacrifice.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,805
Isn't it a resource decision though? Some areas might just require 1 wall, while you would want to reinforce with two walls in some places. I mean having to make that sacrifice.

True but it would make much more sense to have 1 tile separation between walls. Instead you have 2 stack wall and then 1 tile separation. At least until they would fix sprite work.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Introducing the campaign: https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1705066860309820589

Campaign Development (I)
27 SEPTEMBER - NUMANTIAN GAMES

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Greetings!

I hope you’ve had a great summer! It’s been a while since our last update. It’s not only because even the most devoted developers need to take a break sometimes, but mostly because we’ve been working hard on the game, making big changes as we develop the Campaign Mode. This, unfortunately, has prevented us from updating the Survival Mode with new content for now.

So with this post, we would like to inform you on the game development and what we’re currently working on.

The Campaign

When we originally envisioned They Are Billions, the Campaign was the main gameplay mode and the Survival was just conceived as a quick game for fun, played in a random scenario, that allowed us to test and balance the game. We decided to release it in Early Access on Steam at the end of last year, as the players who played the Survival Preview (the backers) loved it. To our surprise the success of the Survival mode was so great that we decided to improve it over time, as you surely know, by continually adding content and putting a lot of work on it. But then... what’s happening with the Campaign?

We’re now in a paradoxical situation in which the development of the Survival takes time away from developing the Campaign and vice versa. And both modes need to grow together since they have the same core. Otherwise, we’d end up having two different games. So now, it’s the Campaign’s turn, which is also a good thing, as we’ll include many of the features implemented in the Campaign to enrich the Survival Mode.

And How is the Campaign development going?

The Campaign development has been much more time consuming than we anticipated. We’re committed to delivering a great Campaign and not just a bunch of survival scenarios that you have to play in sequence. We want to add there all that is lacking in the Survival Mode, to have a perfect and rounded experience.

In the Campaign you’ll have a big World Map where you’ll be able to choose what kind of missions to play to reconquer a big territory from the infected. Every mission accomplished will unlock new missions, but be careful because infected swarms will block your path to new territories. You’ll have to destroy them with your personal Imperial Army.

These are the kinds of missions you’ll encounter:

- Colony Building: In this mission you have to build a colony on an outdoor map and achieve specific objectives (resist X days, get X colonists, get X resources...).

- Swarm Attack: You’ll need to grow a big army from the Empire using your Empire Points to hire your troops. Lead them against the swarm that’s blocking your advance on the map and reach new territories where you can establish new human colonies.

- Old Fortresses: This is a tactical-based mission. You’ll explore abandoned human fortresses with just a few units. In these Fortresses, you’ll discover secrets and valuable artifacts that will grant you advancements in Science, Technology and the Empire. These will boost your Colonies and your Imperial Army.

The Old Fortresses missions are themselves like a whole new game that we think will improve and enrich the experience. You’ll have to venture into these infected places with only a handful of warriors (and a Hero, but we’ll talk about heroes later). To survive, use the environment to your advantage. These fortresses hold the keys to you finding out how the world fell to the infection, with lots of lore and many other surprises along the way.

We have now new artists creating hundreds upon hundreds of new graphic assets for the game. Here’s a taste of what the Old fortresses look like. We hope you like the atmosphere:

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Incoming Game Editor

We expect to release a game editor soon, so players can create and share their Survival maps with other players. This will be officially supported and will be integrated with the Steam Workshop too. We’ll talk about it more in the next update.

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And that's all for the moment. Keep on fighting for the humans!

See you soon!
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Editor is coming very soon: https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1705068764288536160

New Version 0.9.2

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Greetings!
Just a quick update to talk about the new version published 0.92 and some news about the incoming Level Editor.

New Version V 0.9.2
It is just a minor update. It fixes some problems and bugs and also improves the general performance. It also includes these new features:

Custom Keys

Now you can customize most of the keyboard commands available in the game. You can do it from the Options screen, under the controls section. You can even assign several keys for the same command if you like.

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8 New Achievements

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We have added some more achievements that make the Survival Game more challenging and spicy:
  • Open Mind
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) without using walls, gates and towers.
  • Soldier Wrath
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) with just Soldiers in your army.
  • Ranger Revenge
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) with just Rangers in your army.
  • Sniper Slaughter
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) with just Snipers in your army.
  • No Towers Needed
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) without using Attack Towers like Ballista or Executor.
  • Peaceful
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) with no new units trained.
  • Unstoppable
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) without pausing the game.
  • Best General
    Win a Survival game (Score Factor > 100%) with no casualties.

The Game Editor

We expect to release the game editor in about two weeks under Steam Workshop. With the game editor players can create and share custom levels. The editor will be updated from time to time, growing in added features.

These are the main features included in this first version:

- Full map creation: Theme selection, terrains, forests, mountains, ornaments...
- Adding any game elements: Buildings, Doom Villages, treasures to loot, ruins, units...
- Adding interactive elements, like displaying a message when a unit enter in a selected area, or creating Units (Infected) generators.
- Create your own story by customizing the start, game win and lose, game events, neutral characters that join your colony. All of these with your own style and writing.
- Full control of game events: Roaming infected groups, swarms, win conditions, send all infected to the Command Center, grant or remove resources to the colony...

What do you think? We are confident that you will create great and original levels with this first version. Here you have some screenshots:

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And that's all for now. See you soon!
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Editor is live. Also ETA for the campaign is... Spring next year: https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1714079766526791246

Workshop & Editor Available Now!

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Greetings!

After two weeks of testing the level editor and the workshop, we are glad to announce that it’s finally ready. Thank you very much to all the players that joined the editor testing group and shared their feedback with the developers. Right now there are more than 80 levels to enjoy, and we’re sure there are many more to come soon.

The editor and custom levels access is now available with the new version of They Are Billions: V.0.10

Playing Custom Levels
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It’s very easy and straightforward. Just start the game and press New Game. There are now more options to play: Survival, Community Challenge and Custom Levels.

Select the Custom Levels option to access the Levels Dashboard. You will find there the list of all the levels you are subscribed to. Just select the one you wish to play (in some of them you can configure the map type) and good luck! :)

How to Get New Levels

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In the custom levels dashboard there is a link to the They Are Billions workshop. Select the levels you like and press the Subscribe button.

You can do it directly from the workshop steam page here:

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=644930

Press the update button in the dashboard for a refreshed list of levels including the new subscribed ones.

Every workshop item has its own steam page, go there to give feedback or any other info to the level creator.

New Level from Numantian: The 50 Days Challenge!

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One of the features of the level editor is that you can make the game generate a random Survival map and then modify the events, scripting and narrative to bring a new survival experience to the player.

We have created "The 50 Days Challenge" which is a survival game with just 50 days to build your colony before the Final Swarm arrives. But don’t despair, you will not be alone in this task. The neighboring colonies and the New Empire will try to keep you from joining the hordes of infected by sending help periodically.

Hope you like it! It’s a super fast game and a real challenge!.

The Custom Levels Editor

There are three ways to launch the Editor:
- From the game main menu, go to More => Launch Editor
- Or just press and hold the SHIFT key when starting the game and the editor will be launched automatically.

- In the installation folder you have a LaunchEditor.bat you can use to launch it directly.

These are the main features of the level editor:
  • Map creation can be manually crafted or let the game generates a random survival map when the game starts.
  • Custom events.
  • Custom scripts to enhance the narrative.
  • Advanced ZXCode language (variables and functions) to create complex gameplay mechanisms.
  • Multi-language support.

Of course, it will be updated periodically to include more features to create. One of the upcoming big features will be custom modding of game rules (units, structures, stats...).

The Level Editors Guide
Before playing with the editor we strongly recommend you read this short guide we have prepared. Here it is:
TAB Editor Guide

Forum & Support for the Editor & Workshop

Please, use this forum for all related info about the editor and workshop, comments, feedback, new features or bugs reporting. Also we will update there the development progress and version changes log.
They Are Billions Workshop Forum

The Campaign
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Now it the editor is ready we think it can expand a lot the content of They Are Billions so we can focus on finishing the campaign mode. We know all of you are asking us for the estimated launch date but we cannot give an answer yet. We would like and we will try with all our workforce to release the campaign on next Spring 2019. At the same time we will improve the Survival Mode with two new Map Themes and expanding the features of the editor to allow you to create even more awesome levels.

And that's all! We hope the editor will bring lots of fun and surprises for the great community of They Are Billions players.

See you soon!
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
The increased ambition of the campaign, which will be 40-50 hours of content: https://steamcommunity.com/games/644930/announcements/detail/1714084207986736489

Development Update

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Greetings!

First of all, happy New Year! We hope your New Year is off to a good start. We’re very grateful for how exciting last year has been for our studio. There are big plans for this new year and we are sure that it will be too for the great community of They Are Billions. Now, let's talk about the development of TAB, What are we working on right now?

The Level Editor

We continue expanding and improving the game level editor as it has proved to be very successful amongst the community. There are already more than 500 levels published, some of them really complex and sophisticated. We're amazed of what you’ve achieved so far, thank you very much guys!

Step by step, we will include more and more features, assets, and interesting new elements to enhance your awesome designs. Some things we are working on are the modding of game rules (all the game stats and parameters), new interactive assets, and more ornament assets to decorate your levels.

Also we are going to allow users to create campaign-like series of levels where the player must play them in order, so they need to finish the first one to unlock the second, and go on. That will be very useful to those great series you are creating so you can make sure the player is following the levels and the narrative in the order decided by the designer. We are also considering to incorporate some kind of persistent state through the series that can be used to create things like branched stories.

The Campaign

This is the big challenge for this year! We know you have lots of questions about it, let us answer some of the most common ones.

What happens with the Campaign, Why it is so delayed?

First, let me say that we really understand your impatience. The launch of the Campaign has been delayed from our first estimations, so we fully understand you can be a bit disappointed. But, be aware that all this extra time means that we are developing a much more ambitious Campaign than we originally planned. Given the success of TAB, we feel the responsibility to develop the best possible game. We've just got one chance to release the full finished game, and we would honestly prefer to be known as the ‘slow developers’ that have released a great RTS, than the ‘rushed developers’ with an average game.

Think that the Campaign is going to be like a new full game with 40-50 hours of content! We have literally created hundreds of new graphics for the Campaign. Indeed, the investment in the Campaign has been much larger than for all the Survival Mode.

When can we test and play the Campaign?

We’ve decided not to partially release the campaign under Early Access, but release it fully at the same time that we officially launch the game out of Early Access. We will perform all the testing internally here with our team of testers and, of course, we will keep on updating you about the campaign details here. We believe is better not to release the campaign "in pieces" as it would delay the development, and it would spoil everything. We want to surprise you with the full Campaign :)

Will the Survival Mode be expanded?

Yes. The current Survival Mode will receive two new map themes very soon. One will be the easiest one, and will be the first to be played, and the other that will become the hardest one to play, even more than the Desolated Wasteland. These will the biggest expansions to the Survival Mode until the Campaign is finished. We will give you more details about them in the next update.

Will there be more units in the game?

Definitely yes. We have already several new infected ready and, right now, we are working on the Empire Heroes. All of them are been reserved for the Campaign. There will also be new upgrades that players can research in the Campaign, like the Laser Titan. Once the Campaign is released we are thinking about adding new game modes and integrating some elements of the Campaign to the Survival. That’s the future we are working on!

And here some more images from the Campaign, hope you like them:

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Next update we will talk about the Reseach System in the Campaign. See you soon!
 

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