I haven’t worked on anything major since I finished Spamocalypse – I just needed a break, and work has been burning me out a little in the meantime. However, I’ve started working on two new projects, trying to decide which I like more. One is best described as a smaller-scale version of Hearts of Iron, and the other is a real-time tactics game. Both are set in a fictional world I’ve had kicking around my head for a few years now.

The world
The original premise of this world is that some hills in my part of Ireland were once inhabited by dwarves, or humans who started living underground during the Iron Age. However, during the mid 19th Century, something goes wrong, and the whole area turns into a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-style forbidden zone. Among the many, many things that have changed is that humans in the affected area have turned into orcs (AKA Fomorians…or trolls).
Galway is controlled by the Anglo-French Empire, the result of the British and French forming a military, then political alliance in the face of the Habsburgs of Spain/Austria forming a superpower. The Firtollán League, the alliance of the dwarven city states of Ireland, has been forced to ask them for help in keeping the Fomorians locked up in the peninsula.

HOI-style
The first one (Governor) player is the recently appointed governor of Galway, some time around the turn of the 19th/20th century. After a long, distinguished career in the Anglo-French colonial administration, Galway is your final posting before retirement. But can you last that long? All you have to do is approve various budget decisions, and try to avoid being sacked.
This would be based on managing several different factors: your popularity with the locals, the opinion of the press outside Galway, what the dwarves/Firtollan League thinks of you, your budget and your troops. The first three influence what your superiors think of you; if that becomes too low, you will be sacked, forced to resign or…forced to face a Full Independent Inquiry!

Tactics game
I was originally going to do a turn-based tactics game in the style of Jagged Alliance 2 or XCOM, but I’ve changed this to a real-time version. The only definite part is that it will build on what I learned from Spamocalypse – in particular, planning out systems so I can test more efficiently, using mock components. However, it will probably focus on hunting various monsters, including the Fomorians. I’m leaning more towards this one, purely because I can recycle some of my previous AI code.

So, it’s taken me three months to write this. I should probably decide on one of these and get on with it 🙂


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.