While I've never written a blog post (ever), I do enjoy reading them from many different sources. I've read the ones that Christopher has written and relate to them very well. I also appreciate the kind words he says in public at least. Another blog that I followed closely is the Factorio game blog. Each week a new post came out detailing what the team worked on; or provided a deep dive into some of the concepts. As a player this made me really get involved in their work, and learned about the core mechanics. While I don't expect that I'll write this as often as they did, I would like to provide everyone interested with a similar level of insight to what we're working on behind the scenes at Arms of War.
Recently Christopher announced that we were planning on scaling out the Arms of War Universe. We've been discussing how this can work and we've got good ideas on cross-play between the different games.
For those that have played the game so far, you've played what we're calling Generals. In Generals there is a two team environment for you to join. Once there is an even number of players between the two teams, you'll be thrown into the map with few choices to do. The goal of this mode is simple; You'll send units down the line in order to defeat your opposing team. Each match is self contained, and lasts anywhere between 20-40 hours depending on activity.
Another concept we're working on is what we're calling Lineage. Christopher and I met while playing a PBBG called Talibri. This game had a catchy tag line "Master Everything" (which is considered ironic by much of the community as there is hardly time to master one skill). We were leadership positions for opposing guilds, and never really talked much. The game died down and is currently undergoing a rewrite; during which time we came together to discuss Arms of Wars. We hit it off and are happy to be working on this together. As tribute to our roots, and for the love of other PBBGs in this genre, we had decided we'd love to include a similar style game in the Arms of Wars universe. Thus, Lineage was born. This has started to take on a life of its own in terms of ideas. There are many features we loved from previous games, but also many that don't make sense, were lacking in design, or redundant. Exploring these ideas has been an exciting, yet time consuming process. Our prototyping has started and the excitement of our features is high. I'll be creating some posts detailing out some of the work and ideas that are being tested. Many other ideas we're working on will come as a surprise, and some we'll decide don't fit at all and we will happily toss them aside.
At this point I can't say I've never written a blog post anymore. Let's see how this compares to the next. Stay Tuned!