Now however they carry more people the closer they are to the keep. In previous games housing wasn’t really part of the game, you got X more population space for placing a house and it didn’t matter where, so people would place them in out off the way places, islands etc where they couldn’t be attacked. Things like AI, lighting and physics have also been brought up to modern standards, making for a more evolved set of mechanics, but my favorite new feature would have to be a simple change - which is the housing Sim. The mechanics of the game will be familiar to anyone who has played Stronghold before, but we have taken certain aspects from Stronghold 2 that we think worked well and even added in a few twists! Castle building for example is still a huge aspect of the game and now you can place walls, keeps and gatehouses anywhere and at any angle, instead of being confined to a grid system. What kinds of changes have you made to the core mechanics of the game? What’s your favorite new feature? Our Scottish office is almost completely dedicated to QA and community, so there’s a lot of internal testing going on as well, but feedback from the community is just as important to us. Players have fond memories of the original and we wanted to recapture its simplicity so if you played the original you should feel right at home with Stronghold 3. The decision was also a reaction to feedback from the community. We really want to live up to the legacy of the original with Stronghold 3, so it makes sense to go back to our roots and model it on that game. We decided to make a game closer to the first Stronghold because, much like Crusader, it gameplay was adored by critics and set the bar high for all Stronghold sequels. Using the Vision engine means that we can spend more time adding features and polish, rather than wrestling with engine design and refinement.
#STRONGHOLD 2 GAME ENGINE SERIES#
While developing the second main entry in the series we spent a lot of time developing our own bespoke game engine, too much perhaps. The biggest change since Stronghold 2 would have to be our use of Trinigy’s Vision game engine. What are the biggest changes since Stronghold 2? Why the decision to fall back to a game closer to the original Stronghold than Stronghold 2? How much of the improvements came via internal lists and how many came in from the community? We could easily I think have dumbed stronghold down as quiet a few strategy games have done over the last few years, but I think that then it wouldn’t be Stronghold anymore - stronghold needs to keep its old school style of gaming - else it will just doesn’t work IMO.Ĭonversely I think we also went too nuts on the Sim side with Stronghold 2 - our SIM crime system in particular was quite in depth - and many a time I would be playing it multiplayer layer and be swearing at the crazy amount of space needed to just stop people nicking my apples. Personally I think the best design decision we made was to retain our focus on the pure strategy aspects of the Stronghold games. The Stronghold franchise has been around for over a decade, looking back what have been the best decisions you’ve made in the design of the game? Conversely, what decisions do you wish you could go back and change? We are also all about castles, naturally!
#STRONGHOLD 2 GAME ENGINE PC#
Sure, so Stronghold 3, Stronghold Kingdoms and Stronghold: Crusader etc are all part of the Stronghold family of castle strategy games that we’ve been developing exclusively for the PC since 2001 (it’s our 10th anniversary next month!) Stronghold games are about a mix of RTS and simulation, giving players all the action and excitement of a quality real-time strategy game with an added layer of simulation that modern RTS tend to shy away from.
#STRONGHOLD 2 GAME ENGINE CODE#
My daily responsibilities generally include overseeing code and asset creation, making the tough design decisions on gameplay, story, environment and characters and answering a lot of emails!įor those who aren’t familiar with the Stronghold games can you give us an overview of the series? What are the defining characteristics of the franchise? Hello Gaming Nexus readers! My name is Simon Bradbury, I am CEO and co-founder of Firefly Studios, as well as Lead Designer on Stronghold 3.
The Stronghold franchise has been around for almost a decade and with a new game coming out at the end of September we pinged the folks at Firefly about what we could expect from the upcoming iteration in the franchise.Ĭould you introduce yourself to our readers and talk about your role on the project? What do your daily responsibilities on the game include?
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