Fortress Europe

Any news?

Progress slowed down over the holidays and afterwards due to our own busy lives, but we're still making progress.

Nice :3

One thing we're working on at the moment is a game mode that replaces Annihilation and Victory Points as our default game mode. Instead of three or more Victory Points to control on the map, every sector is valuable and slowly trickles in points for your team if you hold it. The first team to reach 1,000 points wins. However suffering casualties eats away at your team's points, so you'll need to balance the need to control the map with not losing too much manpower. If a team reaches 0 points from casualties, they lose. This makes bleeding your opponent dry a viable strategy, or at least a way to even the score if you fall behind in securing territory.

The penalty for casualties is equal to a percentage of that unit's cost, so losing a single Shtrafniki is barely noticeable but a lost Tiger II is a huge setback. And of course what you allocate to your Battlegroup is the entirety of what you have to play with; if that schwerer Panzer-Zug (Heavy Tank Platoon) you added to your Battlegroup only had a single Tiger II, you won't be getting another one that match.

Once we've got that mode working nicely, we'll also consider spicing it up with special sector types and timed objectives that pop-up across the map.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that you start off with a couple hundred points, so early casualties don't immediately end the game. The exact amount is something we'll have to tune, so that you can afford to be a little aggressive at the beginning but not overly reckless

That sounds so awesome

One thing we're working on at the moment is a game mode that replaces Annihilation and Victory Points as our default game mode. Instead of three or more Victory Points to control on the map, every sector is valuable and slowly trickles in points for your team if you hold it. The first team to reach 1,000 points wins. However suffering casualties eats away at your team's points, so you'll need to balance the need to control the map with not losing too much manpower. If a team reaches 0 points from casualties, they lose. This makes bleeding your opponent dry a viable strategy, or at least a way to even the score if you fall behind in securing territory.

The penalty for casualties is equal to a percentage of that unit's cost, so losing a single Shtrafniki is barely noticeable but a lost Tiger II is a huge setback. And of course what you allocate to your Battlegroup is the entirety of what you have to play with; if that schwerer Panzer-Zug (Heavy Tank Platoon) you added to your Battlegroup only had a single Tiger II, you won't be getting another one that match.

Once we've got that mode working nicely, we'll also consider spicing it up with special sector types and timed objectives that pop-up across the map.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that you start off with a couple hundred points, so early casualties don't immediately end the game. The exact amount is something we'll have to tune, so that you can afford to be a little aggressive at the beginning but not overly reckless

Sounds a bit like the mechanics in Wargame: Red Dragon.

Great work so far, anyways! Loving the sidescraping!

*Bump


Any news guys?

Eliw00d injured his arm and life got busy for me for a couple months, but things are slowly getting back to normal.
Hopefully we can start showing off some new stuff in the coming week.

Oh shit what happened to him?

I accepted a job offer in January and had to move. Then I had an unfortunate fall in February and broke my right humerus. It only recently started healing, and I have been otherwise busy, so I have not been around the computer much.

But, my mobility has improved, and I am more comfortable now, so I should be able to resume modding. Contrivance and I have been keeping in touch and bouncing ideas off each other, so it has not come to a complete stop or anything.

Aw man, sorry to hear that. Glad to hear it clearly didn't keep your spirits down.

Looks pretty bad tbh

Looks pretty bad tbh

I know, which is why we've scrapped all our current progress and have started something new and exciting for Fortress Europe: we're now a MOBA.

Choose a General from WWII, dominate your lane, push past your enemy's tank traps and machine-gun nests, and destroy their base. Will you use Guderian's abilities to empower your panzer minions? Or Zhukov's operational expertise and crushing offensives? Kill enemy Generals and minions to level up and unlock even more abilities, and accomplish objectives on the battlefield to acquire new tech for your side. Collect coins, gems, orbs, souls, pelts, monster body parts, and dry twigs for NPCs who will provide mercenaries and other services to your side. Argue endlessly on forums and in team chat with your allies about why they should uninstall and jump in front of a moving train.

Fortress Europe: The MOBA, Coming Soon! (tm)

That sounds awesome! Much better than that historical realism crap you guys were talking about. But I hope there's at least gonna be microtransactions, so I don't actually have to play to unlock stuff.

Ayy lmao

How's the progress?

Progress has been somewhat slower lately. However, I have been picking away at the SCAR side of things.

One of the challenges we have faced is designing a GUI that covers every aspect of building a battlegroup. We have had a few different prototypes so far, such as the one we showed off last summer. While we have been fairly happy with them, we ran into cases where we needed additional functionality or room.

We are currently iterating over an updated design that, so far, checks everything on our list. Once we finalize and fully implement the design, we should have just a few more milestones to hit for a release candidate.

Cool, cool. That was a very specific mention of your roadmap which certainly shows off your progress.

*Returns to eager awaiting*

How's it going fellas?

Still progressing!

Our delay is due to realizing we had to rework our initial UI, both for future-proofing it and to make it fit with how different Nations were organized within our game. That and it didn't look all that great and had some flow issues.

One feature that won't make it until our first release, but will be eventually down the road, is a lot of Help and Information buttons through-out our UI. The Information buttons will give you a pop-up with details on the particular unit, vehicle, weapon, or item you're currently looking at, as well as drawing data straight from our game stats. For example, the Information pop-up on a tank will give an historical description of it, a table with it's armour plates with their thicknesses, angles, and an effective resistance value, a table of it's weapons with data on the shells they fire for comparison, and other stats for comparison.

To repeat, it won't be ready for our first release, but we want to make sure that not only is Fortress Europe historically accurate and authentic, but that it's also friendly for new players who are not history buffs, and that there's nothing obscured or hidden from our players.