Friday has come once again and it’s time for your weekly dose of Spartans. This week has seen the team working hard to get the latest build ready to show people internally (in our office block). It’s the first build that will technically see the “outside” world so we’re both excited and nervous at the same time. Excitement and nervousness seems to be a constant state of mind in games development - the excitement of wanting to show off something new to anyone and everyone followed by the nervousness of whether they will actually like it.
On that notion we would like to show you guys some new stuff! Firstly we want to introduce our Unit Selection UI. It’s fairly self-explanatory, this is going to be the menu where the user will select which spartan unit they want to enter the field and at the different capture points throughout the map. The player will only be able to spawn units at capture points they currently control.
At the moment we only have two units to select from; so the options are a bit scarce but it’s a start and we’re definitely happy with the style of it! A selection “wheel” is fairly atypical of gaming nowadays, it’s used frequently in console games and we think this style also lends itself to the touch functionality of mobile devices.
Luckily we found the funding (AKA we’ve actually implemented it into the build) to out fit our Spartan soldiers with all the equipment they need, you definitely wouldn’t want to mess with them now!. Actually, i’m fairly sure an unarmed Spartan could easily destroy most people. So, now they’re the embodiment of a human weapon, with extremely sharp spears…
Something else we’ve been toying with, which is apparent in the previous images is the implementation of our original idea for the art style. The entire premise of the game is to take the black painted vase style of ancient greek pottery and incorporate that with a low polygon style.
This, hopefully, gives the impression of the battles that are being depicted on the clay pottery coming to life in front of the player. We’re not quite there yet but there’s definitely been some progress.
In addition to everything else, we’ve also been able to finally include campsites on either side of the battlefield. The soldiers living quarters have been upgraded from large colourful, rectangular boxes to actual tents and even a campfire for good measure - Spartans do need their protein after all.
There’s been a lot of work on the performance side of things as well which may not be as glamorous or sexy as showing some of the more artistic stuff but it’s definitely a part of games development that needs to be taken into consideration.It definitely caught us off guard , we had an idea of how we wanted to implement the idea and the way we were going to go about doing it but theory and reality can be two completely different things and you need to be prepared for that.
As always, make sure you check in again next week for more updates on Rise of Factions: Sparta. If you guys have any suggestions or any questions for us then please, don’t hesitate to comment below or contact us through our many social media channels. We do have a mailing list, so you can get all updates from us directly into your digital mailbox!
Thank you so much for taking the time out to read this!
Steven
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