There are randomized armors for your hero, which are similar to HC2 armor in that they have different attributes + some perks built into them. But weapons are a bit different... Your hero has 4 loadouts (standard, ranger, support, and anti-armor), which each have their own weapons and stat perks. You have to level up each load-out path to unlock new weapons. We also purposefully have made hero weapons more about preference as opposed to having simply better numbers (as well as some weapons naturally being better in different scenarios). The weapons are pretty diverse though, from short ranged shotguns, to "machine" rifles, to "defender" weapons with armor shields attached to them, to the 15mm "Tyrannosaur" Rifle, which is sort of like a scoped, high explosive elephant gun... to name a few. We also have some other neat randomized "loot" (in a sense) - the main one being special characters. Special characters are just that: notable, permanent individuals that you can recruit and collect that will lead your regiments in battle. We're working on cool little randomized backstories for each character you come across as well. You can recruit different levels of special characters, but low level characters can also level up on their own just by using them. So far, its a pretty cool addition that really adds personality to otherwise generic regiments and squads
New screen of dual Frigate Airships (4 broadside cannons on each side), in the WIP forest environment.
Wow this all looks so awesome! Only slight problem I have is all the buttons on screen.... I'm sure it will be fine cause Foursaken, but still. How are y'all seeking to rectify that issue?
Most of the buttons are actually "non-active" buttons, meaning, they're not really used often, or exist to make you press LESS buttons, if that makes sense We've really tried to give players across ALL spectrums of touch control comfortableness options to play (including players who hate touch controls or cant control with 3rd person controls at all - though of course they will be at a disadvantage). Here's a quick breakdown of the buttons... top left: command button - opens up a zoomed out, top down command view where you can give your units orders. On this screen you can give commands while the game is paused, or unpaused. Its actually pretty neat, as if you wanted to you could play the whole game like a top down RTS, including giving your own hero waypoint and target commands. next button down: "auto play" - gives total AI control to your hero. You can pop in and out of AI control whenever you want. With auto play on, you can also spectate other units on the battlefield. next button down: "cover hop" - press it and your hero will automatically run towards the nearest cover that you're looking towards. We constantly keep track of where enemy fire is coming from, so it automatically determines which side of a piece of cover your hero should run to. Since the game focuses a lot on cover mechanics, you could play 75% of a battle without even pressing the move stick, just by hopping from cover to cover. next button down: run toggle. eyeball button: test button (will not exist) arrow buttons: instantly snap to the nearest enemy to the left/right of where you're looking. on the right... there is an ammo button, which pauses the game when toggled; it rolls out some special ammo types you can swap between (explosive, armor piercing, etc rounds) then there is the shield and aim buttons (self explanatory).
I hope to see this on Nvidia Shield in the future, you could really go nuts with the bells and whistles.
Progress looks pretty good so far. Also I forgot, could you guys remind me what date you guys are planning on releasing this amazing game?
Not sure quite yet about Shield support... definitely would be cool though! Dont have a release date quite yet... still have another few months to go. But we have a unique dev cycle so sometimes projects wrap up quickly, so we'll see! We also might have a beta, so stay tuned for any announcements on that as well!
The Tyrannosaur Rifle! That sounds incredible. Cannot wait to see what other kids of wild stuff you've packed in
We don't have a final list of playable devices yet, so I can't say anything for sure. Most of our games end up playable in some form or another on most lower gen devices though, so if you've played any other of our games like HC2 or War Tortoise, you should have a reference point for iPad4 performance. Right now at least, I can say that iPhone5 and up, and iPad Air and up is what we recommend.
You guys have only developed for Mac/PC and iOS, correct? I would love to see one of your games make it on to other consoles one day, I feel like this could be a hit on the eShop, since it's rather lacking in games of the sort. A solid $7-$9 game? Not sure if the time a resources would make it worth it, but I bet it would be at least a bit easier than before since the Switch runs on Nvidia architecture.
So far we've only launched on iOS, Android, and Mac... PC is something we definitely want to get into at some point (Block Fortress has been Greenlit already). We've actually thought about how the Switch could be a nice platform for our "mid-core" games... but we only have so many man hours with such a small team and developing on our own engine (of course, probably THE single biggest drawback of not using a pre-made engine like Unity). Hopefully its something we can realistically explore in the future.
Are you guys going to add a server in East Asia for Block Fortress because whenever I play multiplayer with my friends I get a solid ping of around 256. A server around/in Taiwan would be nice if you guys could do it.
Understand completely! Also didn't know about Block Fortress, I hope that does well for you! Guess we've all got our fingers crossed that you have another mega-hit to allow some more of that development freedom. And please, NEVER use Unity!
