Hey everyone, My name is Art "Gedden" Griffith, and I am the lead programmer on Spacewars. For those of you who do not know me, I have been developing games now for about 15 years. I like to make 'off the beaten path' style games. Games that walk the line between being very familiar and totally new. Spacewars falls squarely into that category. I like to consider myself a 'community oriented' developer. I truly see games as living things -- player feedback is more than just important, its the food that keeps the beast alive and kicking. More often than not, the first people who discover issues in a live game are the players. I am not just talking about sexy stuff like game balance; UI, AI, even stuff like audio queues all factor into the game's experience. I want to hear about it all. Spacewars is a special game, and is being created for a specific kind of player. While its true that most game development starts with a design, Spacewars was really unique in this way. Much of what you would consider the 'core gameplay' was painstakingly designed by Vesuvius for years before we had even met. Its not every day that you start with a game whose balance has been tuned so very much before the first line of code is cut. Something familiar... Spacewars' roots in old school tabletop / RPG gameplay are very real. I believe turn based strategy games give the player time to think, and if you have time to think you can do something fun or cool. Players can come up with their own strategies, and really work to outsmart their opponents. I also feel when you play a turn based strategy game on a computer, you can still take advantage of your medium and remove some of the more mundane tasks -- calculating damage, evaluating line of sight and so on. Something different... In the old school table top games, you would setup at a friends house, and over the course of several weeks (and pizzas), the game would be come to a finish. Computer games tend not to do that so much in a multiplayer setting. Most of the time, the quest is the same for everyone, and everyone gets their turn to kill the villain. Spacewars is something pretty different here... If you manage to destroy a space station, its dead for everyone. If you manage to defend a shipyard, it gets to live. If one faction destroys the home-world of another, the game is over, for everyone, and a new "season" starts. I am looking forward to seeing how Spacewars unfolds. Looking forward to playing it with all of you as well!
Good to see you still active Gedden. Even knowing what you had been up to we have still missed you over on Pox.
After seeing everything you've done with Pox, I'm excited to see what you'll be doing with Spacewars.
Hey guys! I'm PoxZuo over on the Pox forums. On Pox I did a handful of runes and animated a lot of the sprites. Most of what I do for Space Wars is model and texture ships. I also make skyboxes, space objects, shaders and work on other unity tech stuff. I look forward to seeing you all in the game!
An all new Straight from Development has just been posted on Media & Updates section. Today the Mercury Light Cruiser and it's development process are being featured.
I love how this game reminds me of Star Fleet Commander from early 2000's. I am a big fan of Star Fleet Battles a turn based space combat game but the number of people that still play this game have severely dwindled. Hopefully, I will find cool people to team up with here
