JSeuss Tactics and Strategy Game Blog

Danger Alliance Upgrade Released

JSeuss — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:02:02 +0000

As many of you know, I’ve taken my turn based engine over to TOME Studios and together we’ve been pouring our energy into it to get it ready for all the awesome turn based strategies we have planned.

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!

Pixel artists?

JSeuss — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:06:42 +0000

In the gap between posts, the AI and tactical engine has progressed a lot. Content and art has not. Does anyone know any good pixel artists/animators for hire?

Video of Isochron Dev Tool in action

JSeuss — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:29:56 +0000

When I get a moment to work on Isochron, I’ve been having fun playing around with the new dev tool to try out new weapons, mechanics, LOS, and a new AI. The rewrite to use the new strategic engine (the same one used in Lost Company) is going so well that it was time to show off a video of it in action.

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!

Let’s talk Strategy

JSeuss — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:25:10 +0000

Having a good strategy on the battlefield is vital for success, so what strategies do you use in a tactical TBS? Jack of all trades units or specific archetypes? Heavy use of smoke to sneak up or just run right in? Blast first, ask questions later – heavy use of grenades and rockets to clear an area? Rookie scout sacrifice while the experienced guys hold back? Do you save the game after every move or just let things happen and deal with the consequences?

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

Isochron Tactical Game Tool

JSeuss — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 06:12:58 +0000

Over the last few months, much of my time has been put towards a generic strategic/tactical grid based engine for creating a range of TBS games. Primarily it was created to support the development of Lost Company and it’s doing a fantastic job of modelling the rules there, but it’s always had the ability to do much more.

When coming back to Isochron after working on the engine for so long, I took a stocktake of what could be upgraded in Isochron to make use of the new technology. The bad news was that nearly everything needed to be updated to utilise the new tech – the tactical engine, the pathfinding, the LOS engine, the GUI, and the non-existent AI to name a few. So I started rewriting Isochron from scratch and pulled relevant bits from the old project.

The good news is that with the new features of the game engine, I was up and running with a tactical prototype tool that provides a playable Isochron + AI opponents in about a weekend.

So you can move around, the Line Of Sight updates as you go, you use up TUs and can shoot at enemies (with accuracy calculations that make it harder to hit units further away).

When you end your turn the AI will hunt down anyone who gets too close. And the levels are generated by piecing together parts from the Isochron Module editor (a download is still coming, but waiting on some art first).

There are still a few vital pieces missing to make it a bit more engaging, but it’s now very close. When I have time in between Lost Company work over the next few weeks I’ll be porting them across or implementing them. Some of the things are : Redo the unit equip screen so you can choose weapons, Implement opportunity fire for when units move in your field of view (currently only happens on melee attacks), doors that can open/close and bullets that hit surrounding terrain/units when they miss (the physics based bullets aren’t moved over yet so each unit can only hit or miss).