Migration to Heroes Keep

Stickmen Wars 2 has now morphed into Heroes Keep. Be sure to continue following the action there!

So... Goodbye SMW2?
It seems appropriate to say a few words to mark the shelving of that great big beautiful baby Stickmen Wars 2.
What a time I've had! Under my twitchy fingers a whole world opened up, full of wonderful surprises ...and horrible shocks! I don't need to go into too much detail about how development went; it's all in this blog - what I would like to do is recommend doing something like this if you can. Though SMW2 'failed' in the commercial sense that it cost me money to do it, what I got back was worth every penny I spent and more (say about £1.50) because of the sheer immersion. Put it this way: How much would you pay for a game that kept you amused and involved every day for over a year? Ah, I can still recall the day that Jago Thumblifter first walked out of a bakery carrying a cake... *happy sigh*

Hey! It's been great fun, thanks for watching and please, would you now board the bus that takes us from SMW2 all the way to Heroes Keep!

Hexciting times

Sorry it's been a bit quiet here lately but I've been re-thinking the landscape system with both strategy and game mechanics in mind. One of the problems with the 'open' landscape is that there's just too many possibilities and too little delineation of different areas. The new hexagonal landscape offers many advantages. Watch this space for news of the game mechanic I have in mind - all I'll say now is that it involves solo, cooperative and PvP modes.

Fighting the fighting

The AI is too persistent here. Normally the AI dies when all its men are gone. I suspect this AI agent has a rogue serf somewhere I can't find so it keeps on building new buildings.
I love it when glitches have pretty side-effects. Reminds me a bit of Venice...

Down in the valll-ley!

Long term testing with the AI maxed out = lots of trees. I forgot to tell the foresters to stop when all the storehouses are full. It's pretty, but look at the FPS - 15! Ouch. I'm not 100% sure about those trees above the snowline either... Seems like there's always something to fix!

Happy New Year!

I'm still tinkering with the AI for village building. I love the unintended consequence of villages sharing resources. As you can (just) see from the mini-map the serfs quickly build roads between settlements to move stuff around.