Yes folks, I am still working on OS Wars. And here’s some of the new character art as proof:
Fig. A- The heavy weapons… er… smiley.
This was done by Valerie Morrison, a great character designer. We’ve worked on a lot of projects together and I thought she would be perfect to do the characters for the game. And apparently she is, as evinced in Fig. A (above).
It looks like I’m two to three weeks out from releasing OS Wars. Things are starting to fall into place, but there’s a lot left to do. Vehicles, for example. How difficult could it possibly be to design a monstrous six-turreted beast with independently tracking weapons? Answer: more difficult than it sounds, apparently, because it took a freaking week longer than it was supposed to.
Anyway, the point of this post is that I need some beta testers. I don’t want to just release this on an unsuspecting public, because it’s a ridiculously complex game engine. If it’s going to go haywire, I’d rather it do so when there are only fifty people playing it.
So if you are interested in beta testing, please drop by os-wars.com and click “Enlist!” to send me a nice little email. In a week or so, when the game’s a little more stable, I’ll send you a password and you can begin the merciless grind of beta testing.
Also, Fury Creative has given me a quick-and-dirty logo to use for promo. Not bad for a few minutes’ work…
Doug over at Fury Creative got me the first finalized tank today. I’m pretty excited to see what he’s going to do with the big tanks- this one’s just a baby. Looks pretty slick, though.
Two Emoticons and two Heavy Beam Cannons. Sounds like a good time to me.
There was an age, long ago, when things were different. People were simpler and less selfish, taking only what they needed from the land and giving back what they could. The air was cleaner, the rivers were clearer, and small furry things cavorted with other small furry things.
However, all things must come to an end. Today we look back upon this golden age, this Elysium, and we weep for what might have been. We now live in a world filled with tiny transistors, a silicon hell. Contrast our world with the one I speak of, a paradise filled with larger, hotter, and less efficient transistors, and also the Pentium. I refer, of course, to the 1990s.
As much as things have changed from this fabled yesteryear, there are still some similarities. For a short time in these “nineties,” there were two categories of games: games that were Real-Time Strategy, and games that were not Real-Time Strategy. We have Dune II and Command & Conquer to thank for that short age of complete and ridiculous obsession on one genre. Thankfully we’re beyond such tendencies today.
Which means, of course, that it’s time to revisit them! I think it’s about time a decent web-based RTS was released. I’ve seen some attempts, but none of them has really taken advantage of what Flash is capable of these days. We have so many tools now: physics engines, 3D engines, particle engines, real-time communication between clients, &c. So here is where the experiment begins- a Flash RTS. Flash on a Core 2 should be able to handle anything that a 386 running Dune II could- and more. Why not take advantage of it?