Jason Dees has redesigned our site.  Giving us a little more room to breath on our blog pages, and a big more professional look.  

You'll also notice that the comments should be working now!  So seriously, drop us a line and we'll try to answer your questions as much as possible.

I'm sure that everyone reading this is anxious to find out more about our progress on the game.  All I can say is that we're going to have a little something for everyone to play around with soon.

I'm a regular reader of Gamasutra.com and try to remember anything that I think might be useful for the future.  An article that I read today really caught my attention.  It's called Slaying the Dragon and it's about being a small indie developer in an industry full of massive publishers, triple A developers, and heavy marketing.  Things we may never get to use or see, but we still have to compete with them.

The article asks, "So why should someone buy your game instead of Activision’s latest?"  I've thought through many answers to this question since we've started development on the game and I think that I want to write down our answer so that I can come back to it in the future.

Warlord: Tears of Taltos will be one of the first RTS games that allows you to start with an entire army that you built from scratch to start the game.  We will also allow a player to field a small group of elite heroes and remain competitive against an armies of mindless swarms.  Our factions will be diverse and plentiful with up to 20 that may be included in the game before long.

I think that's enough to point out how Warlord is going to be better than other RTS games out there.

Now here is a game that you probably weren't expecting, Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate 2.  It was something I randomly picked off the shelf while browsing a game store, so very long ago.  This game single handedly changed the way I would play video games forever.  Offering an immense world to explore with an unbelievably deep story and unforgettable characters.  It gripped me by the hand and stole away those long months of summer vacation.  It became my all time favorite strategy and tactics game.

Baldur's Gate hit a gaming chords that I didn't even know existed.  I'll hit on the major points that are now shaping some of the mechanics of Warlord, but know that there are plenty other reasons to play this game.

The ability to customize your character into something to call your own and the ability to add and remove members of your party, creating a unique group everytime you played, was all new to me.  I would weigh the pros and cons of each character's class and personality, building out the perfect party to tackle the game.  Reading through the dozens of spells, picking the the right party member to fill out the role that I'm missing.  The numbers game is something D&D does well, and the game taught me what a min maxing bastard I could become.

The depth of combat was nothing like I've ever seen.  The strategies a player used were completely based on how you wanted to form your party and what you enjoyed doing.  I could gear up some warriors with a druid, a priest, and mage to boost their offensive and defensive powers then crush every kobold I find.  Or I could use the same warriors as a wall to protect my squishy mages and slow down the enemies with web and grease, then blast them into ash with explosive death.  I enjoyed a lot of explosive death, and it's something that Warlord will feature plenty of.

A group of characters could be choosen that fit your personality.  If you're a nice person and you wanted to do the right thing, there was a group of digital friends you could adventure along with.  If you wanted to murder the innocent peasents, there were some crazed bastards that would love you for it.  Many actions had consequences, and the encouragement or dissaproval of party members made me think differently than usual.

The last thing I want to cover are the astounding locations.  Every single new icon on the games global map was full of amazing and new locations.  I want to end this post with some of these locations, and I want everyone to think about what it's going to be like to wage all out war on such a map, because that's our goal.

Gnoll Strong Hold:

Baldur's Gate:

Windspear Hills:

Ust'Natha

Brynnlaw

Umar Hills

So I'm sure you have read our quick blurb about what we intend the game to be, but I'm sure that everyone wants to know more about how we intend the game to be played.  To do that we have to first take a look back at some of the influentual games of our time and decide what features we loved, what features we hated, and how it's going to influence Warlord: Tears of Taltos as we move forward.  Each week I'm going to continue this article until it results in some of our first gameplay footage.

The first Real Time Strategy game I ever played, and probably my first encounter with creatures known as Elves, Orcs, and Fantasy as a whole.  Warcraft 2.

I imagine this game was many gamers introduction to RTS.  The screams of my blazing 56k modem would let me connect to a friends computer and test my newly discovered Orc Grunt rush attack against his Alliance Keeps.  We loved every moment of the game, it was new, it let us think and strategies evolved from lunch room discussions.  The sweet sound of death and decay eating away an enemies farms as your Bloodlusted Ogres bashed his Knights into a bloody pulp.  It was beautiful.

There was a lot to love here, but there are some serious stand out traits that I love to see in video games to this very day.

1. A game that isn't too serious.  I love finding that hidden nook in the corner of the map where some funny encounter plays out.  It lets you know that you're in on the joke.  Too many clicks on an Orc when you're bored and the dialog stops getting serious and it starts getting silly.  The perfect mix between serious when axes are hitting faces, and silly when you are bored with finding that enemies last peon.

2.The diversity in units and colors were amazing.  An array of goblins strapped with explosives, trolls with blue mohawks, fat fleshy orgres, and dark mysterious death knights all made the Orcs stand out from one another.  The alliance was much of the same with feathery griffons, armor clad knights, blonde haired elves,  and those damn mages.

3. The UI was incredibly easy to use.  It's archiac by today's standards, but there is something just beautiful about how simple it was.  There were only a few things to choose from for each unit, and that was all you needed.  Move, Patrol, Attack, Guard.  Then you had your special commands for your wizards.  Sheep, Blizzard, Fireball.  So simple, but the depth at which you could use them was damn near limitless.

Despite all of the love I have for the game, there were some serious flaws.  I'm sure you're saying of course there are the game is 15 years old, but there are flaws that are being repeated even in recent games.

1. The long wait before action.  Watching that little peon hammer away at a strong hold, waiting for the next peon to be created, building a barracks, ugh.  So boring.

2. Ships.  Not every level had a place for them, and when they were useful they were annoying.  Looking back I kind of hate that they wasted resources on something that wasn't fully utilized.  More flying units or spend some time balancing the other units and making them different would have been prefered.  I guess there is a reason we haven't seen a return to sea warfare by Blizzard.

3. Sameness.  Both factions were mirrors of each other.  No true differences except for the spells, and Orc spells kicked way more ass.  To make the game dynamic it has to have variety.

Next up, is a game that many of you probably aren't thinking of as an RTS....

Our Kickstarter fund-raising program is slowly raising money.  Hopefully we have a big surge as we lead into the last month.  Tell your friends and family to pre-order the game so that they get all the kick ass bonuses like our sound track, beta access and more.

We also added a reward that allows the supporter to voice one of the characters in our game.  So if you want if you want the once in a lifetime chance to voice a templar hero or blood thirsty vampire this is it!

After a night of headaches we finally have our project under source control, backed up, and protected.  Moving everything manually was becoming a pain fast. 

I'll try to show off a few of our maps as I complete them.  I'm also thinking about holding a contest where a fan gets to help us design a map that will be used in game.

We have several new team members that have pledged to sweat and bleed until Warlord is complete.  I plan on updating our Team page with information on everyone soon.  That way you can get to know us a little better.

Our new volunteer artist has reinvisioned our Reptus models, and I love what I see.  As soon as we get the model properly rigged in the game, I'll show it off for everyone here.

I'm currently in Texas taking in all the geeky gaming I can as I spread the word about Warlord the video game.  I decided to take a time out and share our current start screen this morning while I chug some coffee.

So below is our current start screen.  The buttons are untextured, but functional.  You get an idea for part of the setting that Warlord is going to take place in, Taltos.  You'll see rolling hills, dark green vegetation, rocky cliffs, and red barely farmable soil.  It's a tough life in Taltos, but the spices and ore are plentiful.  Fortunatly this results in a strong population fighting for survival.

View the image to check it out in a higher resolution.

A month ago I tried to pull in some artists to do some volunteer work for us so that we could piece together a small video or even a demo of the game in action.  Unfortunatly all 3 of the guys that were doing 3D work didn't finish their models.  Dispite that their not done and may never be finished, I want to post them up and let everyone have a look.

Justicar:  The Justicar is a bread and butter unit for the Crusader Army.  So we thought it would be the perfect model to show our troop movements and unit instantiation.  Anyone familiar with Warlord knows who this guy is.

Long Striker:  The long striker is a reptus unit that has longer reach than other models.   It's a powerhouse compared to most other soldiers.  If we got the battle scripts completed in time we were hoping to show this model tear through some weaker units.  Unfortunatly the model will continue to hang in limbo.

Warlord the video game needs some help getting started.  Check us out on Kickstarter.com and support an awesome indie game.