PowerHeroes Windows game

PowerHeroes

Spikeone | Released 2017

First of all, if this game was written with anything else than Powershell 2.0 it'd probably be better.

Why did I decide to use Powershell?

When I started working on this, I was still an apprentice. My company was working with windows only, so Powershell is a quite powerful tool. When learning a new language, I always try to create something. So I started working on some tools using Powershell and Windows Forms. This resulted in some simpel tools, using Windows Forms as GUI. But I wanted to learn something about window management in applications, so I wrote a 2D engine (using Picturebox) which worked well and decided to continue and create a game.

Main Ideas of PowerHeroes:

Use 16x16 (or lower) resolution graphics
Use simple mechanics
Turn based gameplay
Maximum 1.44MB size (Floppy Disk)
Multiplayer, Singleplayer
Powershell 2.0
Take mechanics I know from other games (WC, Wesnoth, HOMM)

What is PowerHeroes now?

It's a mess, at least the code is. The game itself works as I'd like it to. You have to gather some resources, build buildings to expand your production, raise armies and finally defeat your enemy. The game supports up to 4 players, either local multiplayer or network multiplayer.

I'm not a fan of "reviews" from other people, so I will just stop writing, this is a free game, test it and have your own opinion on it.

RTX Remix

RTX Remix is a modding platform by NVIDIA, which allows modders to create stunning HD remasters of classic games (see all supported), with ray tracing and DLSS. Playing RTX mods requires a RT capable GPU. Learn more here.

PowerHeroes compatibility with RTX Remix is:

Status: Not Compatible
RTX Remix Runtime Version: N/A
Conf File: N/A
Captures: 0 captures - add new
Assets: 0 assets - add new
Mods: 0 mods - add new
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Version 0.8.0 has been released

Dec 29 2021 News

Hello Everyone!

I finally implemented the last feature I wanted for version 0.8.0 so here it is! Since I posted the last news a lot has changed. So what happend in the past 18 months?

Discord

Although I'm not a fan of Discord it is quite handy for lots of things. You can substitute websites by using Discord which is in fact helpfull. Thats why I 'created a server' for PowerHeroes. Click here to join!

Bugfixes

There is nobody except me who 'plays' the game and I'm not creating an issue for any bug I find and fix. Thats why it is hard to give a number on how many bugs have been fixed since. Most bugs were value synchronisation in multiplayer which eventually led to asyncs and not being able to finish a game then. Also some of the new features added introduced bugs to those which then have been fixed.

Features

Describing all features or changes to those here would take quite long. But I'd like to show you the most interesting.

Armies have been completly reworked. They do no longer have random graphics or regiments but level. Damage and maximum health are then scaled by the level. To level up an army, you simply merge them. But it is no longer possible to heal an army in any way and any random factor has been removed.

Army Merge

While browsing opengameart I found a neat tileset which is called Karto Tileset. So I simply had to add Fog of War as a feature. It's not a FoW as in most games but like the classic exploration setting in Settlers II.

Fog of War

Last but not least building fields felt quite strange. You had to build a farm and then you could build up to 8 fields around - next you destroyed the farm as there was no reason to keep the building after all. Now fields lose 1 hitpoint each round which means they can only exist for 4 rounds, then you have to rebuild them. This leads to several good effects. First you constantly need resources to build those fields, second players make mistakes as they may forget to rebuild fields and, you may guessed it, you can no longer destroy the farm as you will constantly need it.

Fields

Music

Working on other projects has it's benefits. That way I met Dantana who created a new theme song just for my little game. It perfectly captures the spirit I had with my previous attempts of finding some audio/music that fits and has the required license. You can listen to the song either ingame or in the video below.

Campaigns and AI

Multiplayer had a minor priority when I started this project. But for Version 0.7.X I wanted to implement an AI - but how does one play the game? I didn't know and thats why I improved to multiplayer first so I could testplay the game and find out how to play. That way I know how to implement the AI. So thats the next step, implementing an AI that is good enough for some skirmish games and a campaign. As there already is a framework for campaigns, I just tested if I could add a simple puzzle. The basic idea was inspired by Spellforce 1 which I'm currently playing and well thats the result.