Monday, February 25, 2013

iWar II (WinWar II) Production

Here's a sneak peek at iWar II, the successor to WinWar II, and also a sneak peek into my development environment on the Mac.

Over the next few posts I intend to describe different aspects of iWarII game play, and how it's shaping up overall.  In this post I'll focus on production.

Like I envisioned a few weeks (or was it days?) ago, you no longer will simply select what units to produce, click a "build" button, and presto!  Now, you more realistically divide your incoming resources into the different unit types available.  See the list of units along right right, with sliders next to each one?  You use the sliders to control how much of the incoming resources toward producing that unit type.  The little dials next to the sliders show you what percentage of that unit is completed.  If you distribute your resources among several units types, we start getting realistic build times for things like battleships, measured in a few years.  Of course, you can pump all of your resources into a single unit type, in which case said battleship could probably be produced in six months or so, depending on your inflow.

There's a pretty sophisticated resources production engine running under the hood here.  All your zones have a value, which determines how many resources they produce.  The resources are then automatically "shipped" to the closest factory zone.  The farther away the factory zone is, the more resources lost due to shipping inefficiency.  Shipping over sea zones if 5 times as costly as over land zones.  The most beautiful part of all this is that it's completely under the hood, and the player won't need to manage any of it.  However, the players who bother to learn the game will be able to benefit from their knowledge.  For example, prudent players can build factories in other zones to increase their production efficiency.  Of course, these factories themselves are items to produce, so they take some time to build.

4 comments:

  1. I just love this game, i really like the fact that after all these years the game keeps adapting, thanks Dion.

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  2. This game was life changing to me. Thank you for your continued dedication to your fans Dion.

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  3. I would love to see the game finished ...

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