Firstly, a big apology to all the fans who have written over the last month and never got a reply. I’m getting back on top of things again so please write again if you’d like a reply

Next, how about an update already? Before I go into any details I think it’s important to give a bit of the technical backstory of 2D isometric games on iOS.

The History

Given the popularity of XCom and iOS, you’d expect there to be many games taking up the challenge and taking a shot at the genre. But surprisingly it’s not the case. There are many rich strategy/tactics games so that’s not the issue. There is even a fair share of isometric 2D games. So why is it so hard to mix the two? Why is replicating a two decade old retro feel out of most developers grasp?

The problems start with doing retro on hardware optimised for 3D graphics. It’s not impossible but limitations are everywhere – they’re built to optimise vertices and triangles, not pixels.

The easiest way to make isometric games run at decent frame rates is to constrain yourself to 1 sheet of sprites. As each sheet has a maximum size for the hardware, this limits your creative options dramatically, but it’s far and away the fasted way to draw. So the main issue is bringing *rich* tactical games in Isometric 2D to iOS.

There are countless ways to cheat the graphics pipeline but each has its serious drawbacks. Only use 1 sprite sheet? sure, but don’t expect space for lots of varied and interesting maps or any animations when your soldiers move around.

Use multiple sheets to keep things varied? Sure, but now you have to switch textures many times in order to draw your isometric display in order and properly do per pixel alpha – and this will make your frame rate crawl.

So is it even possible to do efficient pixel-y type things on massive levels with many varied tiles that can be destroyed and still allows units to animate and walk ‘within’ the level?

For a long time I was almost certain the answer was yes but was unable to come up with a viable solution that worked on *all* the target devices with the required frame rate. But now that’s changed. I have just made a massive breakthrough in iOS isometric rendering. It’s a complicated, pipeline of steps done in just the right order for the magic to happen. I can’t go into details publicly about how it’s done but it makes a HUGE difference.

So that means that the last technical hurdle has been overcome – a hurdle that had to be overcome to make Isochron even possible. And for me and all the fans of Isochron this is fantastic news.

The Next Steps

So what’s next? When will Isochron be released?

Getting this far has been hard work. It’s been a massive drain both mentally and financially. On the plus side I’ve managed to create a set of tools and technology that tackle the iOS XCom genre head on from graphics to AI. But even with all that work there is still a lot more to do.

Content, Art, Story, Design and Balancing all have massive gaps that need to be filled and after going through the whole process over at TOME Studios to bring Danger Alliance: Battles to market I know that it’s far too much work for one person to do alone.

There have been some great volunteered contributions from fans but something this big needs to have full time dedication.

So while Isochron is crawling along alongside my full time work, the only way I can see it finishing in a reasonable time is to raise the required funds to keep myself and a team of designers employed to work on it full time.

The Dedicated Team

So how do I raise money to create the dream team? Well first, how much does one cost? The indie game Braid has an estimated cost of $200k and the complexities of Isochron would cost about that for just the tactical game with an extra $400k rounding it out to a complete geoscape game.

Services like Kickstarter have been gaining in popularity (particularly in the game areas) with 700k not unheard of for a game funding. It really needs to be an idea that has mass appeal though. How many fans out there would be behind an Isochron Kickstarter bid?

Another way is to take advantage of Film Grants that are now moving into computer game territories. The only issue with this approach is that it’s hard to sell the retro XCom game idea – investors can’t see the value in it.

And finally I could put the control of Isochron into the hands of the fans. If I set up a subscription service where you could buy in at $10 per month to have your say and vote on features and expand the scope of Isochron would you be interested? How about if the game was released for free by the end of it? What kind of deliverables would you expect each month from the team?

Tell me what you think!

So what are your thoughts? Now that I have all the technical pieces to make Isochron a reality, how do you think I should go about sourcing funds? And what would you do to help?

While nutting out all the details of what makes an awesome turn based strategy, we’ve been totally creative and produced our flagship product : Danger Alliance: Battles and the newest update has just hit the App Store! Help us out by checking out Danger Alliance and reviewing it on the store!

What have we added?

• ‘The Wraithmaster’ mini-campaign. Includes an exciting new game mode, new enemies and additional content.
• An additional weapon for the Captain. The ‘Dual Pistols’.
• A new ‘Star Rating’ system for all missions. Can you achieve the elusive ‘Five Star Rating’ on hard mode?
• 4 new music tracks to listen to while you battle.
• Drastically improved performance on all supported devices with updates to Joust, our in-house game engine.
• Faster games with quick enemy moves and no more battle report between turns.
• Many more features and fixes.

And what are people saying?

Fantastic strategy game! – ★★★★★

by MarcusWN – Version 1.1.0 – Dec 19, 2011

Fantastic strategy game! This has great 3D graphics for deep tactical gameplay. Really love the unique units and very well designed environments. Thanks for adding the min-campaign and music in the latest update. Love the wraiths Looking foward to future updates. Please add more campaign levels and more skirmish maps in the future.

Best turn-based strategy in the App Store. Period. – ★★★★★

by CrysisDaMonk – Version 1.1.0 – Dec 17, 2011

On v1.0.3, I said three things: (1) I’d give TOME Studios 10 stars if I could; (2) Danger Alliance: Battles is the *BEST* turn-based strategy game in the App Store; and (3) If you liked General Chaos and Advance Wars from back in the day, you owe it to yourself to play this game, period. Now with the latest update, not only do the aforementioned three points still hold but TOME has *somehow* managed to make this game even better! Just read the “What’s New in Version 1.1.0″ above and see for yourself. Let’s see here: superb graphics; cute characters; deep strategies; fantastic gameplay; and the list of improvements is simply ridiculous. You’re getting so much value with the small cost of this game it’s ridiculous. You still get your “10 stars,” TOME! Great job!

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So help us out so we can build up our team and rock the world with all the awesome turn based strategies we have planned!

Keep in mind that it’s a dev tool at the moment so you’ll be able to see from the point of view of the aliens when it’s their turn and you’ll see some damage text appear to let me know what’s going on.  Physics based ballistics is still coming, but the keen observer will see the following implemented:

• TUs
• Energy
• Health (and armour but that’s hard to tell from the vid)
• Full Line Of Sight with lighting
• AI Controlled aliens
• Team control
• An AP weapon prototype
• A HE weapon prototype (the mech shoots this one)
• And some other stuff.

I managed to mess up the sound so it’s very quiet, but some sounds are in there now too.  Stay tuned for some more, once we meet a good milestone in Lost Company, I’ll be putting a lot of effort into getting the unit equip screen back and finishing off the physics ballistics.

Enjoy!

I’m very keen to hear how you approach your tactical strategies and find out how you go about playing these kind of games.