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    Projekt Weltherrscher - "Phase 2"



    About
    It's been in the makings for over five years now, and I've been working on it almost every day since the release of "Phase 2" and spent most of my weekends writing code, creating models, textures, users interfaces and all the stuff that needs to be done for a game. But after all these years, I can finally release a first beta of "Phase 2" of Projekt Weltherrscher to the public!

    First planned as an addon for "Phase 1" (you can read up on it over here at PGD), "Phase 2" offers so many new features, functions and content that it should be seen as a whole new game, finally implementing (most) of the features I initially planned for this game.

    Some of the new features :
    • Turn-based hexagonal battle fields
      Just think of "Panzer General". You can now battle out attacks on regions by yourself on a 3D battlefield, with different visuals for different regions, fully modelled units with skins for each of the nations. This adds a lot of depth to the game, especially when going head-to-head against a human player
    • Global projects
      The beta includes the first batch of global projects. These are powerful projects that take lots of resources to develop, but on the other hand can turn around a game. There are aggressive projects likes nukes and pandemics, as well as passive projects like espionage sattelites.
    • Redone user interface
      The complete user interface has been redone, and after a dozen or so rewrites it's now where I wanted it to be.
    • Enhanced espionage and sabotage
      A lot of work has went into expanding this feature. It was a gimmick in "Phase 1", but now it's almost a game in a game by itself. You can fake data by puttin agents into your own regions, infiltrate enemy regions and wreak havok there and even infiltrate hostile data nets to get important information on your adversaries.
    • New military units
      In addition to separate skins for all units for each nation, there are also new units that are unlocked by researching the approriate technologies. Including hover tanks, rocket launchers, stealth bombers and more.
    • New technologies
      The technology tree was also expanded with new technologies. And once you've researched all technologies, endless research will be unlocked.
    • And many many more
      Including balancing, new features, minor tweaks, gameplay additions, etc.


    The game itself is a turn-based strategy game placed in the not-so-distant hostile future, with only five huge nations left that fight for world domination 'till the end. You can choose which of these nations you want to play with, and either play against the AI or against human (mixed with AI if wanted) players in hotseat mode. Describing all it's features would be too much text to write, but basically it's risk, mixed with Civilization, Panzer General and my own take on the turn-based strategy game. You manage your regions (construct buildings), your armies (construct units, manage divisions), conquer enemy regions (with fully 3D-turn based battles), research new technologies, unleash mighty global projects unto your enemies, manage your stuff and do all the other strategic things that are needed to succeed in conquering the world.

    The game was initially started with Delphi 7, moved over to Turbo Delphi (don't mention it, it was horrible) and is now developed with XE2 (which is much better, though still has it's large share of problems). It uses OpenGL for 3D graphics (the current beta needs at least OpenGL 2.0 with shader, framebufferobject and S3TC-support) and also uses some shaders for it's nice visuals. The linux port was made with Lazarus and FPC (though I could actually use that combo for the windows version too).

    And with the exception of the music (thanks to YD and Kevin MacLeod for this!) I did everything for "Phase 2" by myself. Not only the coding (currently over 120.000 lines of code, though that doesn't include tens of thousands of lines that were deleted over the years), but also the user interface (for which I wrote my own OpenGL-GUI library, including a WYSIWYG-editor with XML-Import/Export), all the graphics and 3D models, all of the game's content and everything else necessary to finish a game. And yes, that was a lot of work, my development directory for the game (excluding SVN) now stands at roughly 1,2 GBytes with over 3,000 files (art, drafts, documents, data, source).

    If you've never played "Phase 1" or aren't keen with turn-based strategy, it's always a good idea to take a look at the included HTML manual. It's got information on all the features of the game, and an interactive tutorial (like for "Phase 1") will also be added for a final release.

    So getting this beta out to the public is a huge step (and believe me, a great relief too) for me and I hope you guys over here at PGD enjoy this first version of the game.


    Important information
    But please note that this is STILL A BETA! It's still lacking some functionality (e.g. the politics part of the game), content needs to be added and there are bugs left in the game. But at the current state it's playable and showcases a lot of the features that have been implemented since "Phase 1".

    Also note that the game is FREEWARE! You should never be asked to pay anything for it!

    And also please DON'T DISTRIBUTE THE GAME (yet). It's still a beta and I don't want it to spread around the net. Though that'll change with the final release.


    Download


    Important note for linux users : Please run the "startprojectw.sh" script inlcuded in the download instead of the application itself. The game uses libbass.so (BASS sound API) which needs to be located by linux, so if you don't have this installed and run directly the game may not launch. That's why I created the start script to change the ld_path.[/list]

    If you don't want to start from scratch and just want to test out the features you can download the savegame pack for rev. #107 with premade savegames. Extract them into the game's save directory under your local user's dir, e.g. x:\Users\USER\Documents\ProjektW_Phase2\saves.


    Screenshots
    And last but not least some impressions from the current beta (thumbnails, click to enlarge) :




    Video
    Video of the current open beta (June 2013) :



    Community
    Projekt W is present on the following platforms :



    I hope you enjoy "Phase 2"! And since a freeware game won't get me any money, feedback is very welcome
    Last edited by Sascha Willems; 13-07-2013 at 11:15 AM.

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