Developer’s blog

First Annual Report 25th November 2017 by Oliver Keppelmüller

FIRST YEAR OF THE CAMPAIGN A year has passed since we took the first steps in our new project, "Grand Tactician". During many sleepless nights and days, where the left hand was babysitting while the right one was coding, we managed to finish approximately 2/3rds of the battle engine, including some of most time consuming topics of the game, such as: Terrain generation, formations, moving functions with pathfinding, the sound engine and first unit animations. Not forgetting historical research that goes with all of this. Also a few really nice "additional features" have been added, with some more are on the to-do -list. But more on that later! Currently we are very busy creating the UI for battles before moving on to the last battle topics: unit interactions, fog of war, AI and statistics. And in the background, we are also creating the battlefields to fight on. So far our aim has been a very high level of historical accuracy and behavior, while also taking care that the game play will not be boring - as can easily happen with a deep, complex strategy title. Speaking of historical accuracy, have you ever seen the weight of powder charge play an actual role in a strategy game? We plan to finish the battle part no later than Q3 2018, after which we are already keen on implementing the first campaign related concepts. So while battle related functions and topics have been discussed in these developer’s blogs, the campaign layer will be the main focus in our game, and that’s where we think we will make the game shine. In addition to the core team of three working on the game play and functions, with Peter now officially part of the main line, we are happy to be working together with a talented lineup of artists and history enthusiasts. Their work includes historically researched art all the way from fonts to fifes and map graphics to battlefield signals, not forgetting 3D models or historically inspired soundtrack - recorded live! So the project is advancing nicely, and if all goes well, we will be able to introduce the historical era of the first game of our series during Q1-2 next year. The Grand Tactician team wants to thank you for your support so far and wishes you pleasant holidays! We will keep on working through December, and will return with more news from the front in January 2018. Stay tuned! Oliver

A year has passed since this project went from an idea to reality. Reading a bookshelf of historical data and research on the subject has been transformed, so far, into roughly 20,000 lines of code, and into game play features and development tools. While our core team of three is working on the main game play topics, a group of talented artists and history enthusiasts are helping us bring the era to life.

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