Players can enjoy them in both skirmish and multiplayer. TA: We’re excited to be bringing a bunch of awesome new weapons to Forts. SDP: What can PAX AUS 2017 attendees look forward to at the Forts booth? It’s a great opportunity, and we’re looking forward to making the most of it, telling more gamers about Forts. This time it feels like a real vindication of all the hard work we’ve put in, and the risks we’ve taken. We have enjoyed showing at PAX Aus in the prior two years Forts was always warmly welcomed. TA: It’s amazing being recognised like this. SDP: How are you and the team feeling about being selected as part of the Indie Showcase this year? Steam’s services to game developers have improved, solving the technical issue that blocked my progress earlier. I also acquired some of the knowledge I needed during other work. We had ideas that may not have occurred to us at an earlier date. There was a benefit to the extended life cycle in that the game design and balance had a long time to mature. There’s rarely a waking moment when I’m not thinking about how to improve Forts. Since then our motivation has only increased. It wasn’t until 2013 that I picked it up again in earnest and luckily Nick was still keen to finish it. Later on I got stuck on a technical problem that discouraged me and I stopped working on it. In about 2008 it got a shot in the arm when Nick re-skinned the game with some new art. For the first stage it was a hobby project and I had to motivate myself. SDP: Forts was in various stages of development for almost 15 years – was it hard to maintain your drive over this period of time and what were some positives and negatives of the process? Forts takes inspiration from a multitude of successful titles. There were other influences along the way, such as the unit balance of Company of Heroes, and the commanders of Advance Wars. The ballistics part of Forts draws inspiration from older games such as Gorillas and Scorched Earth. I was immediately taken by the concept and began working on it in my spare time. The second idea I had was to build tall structures, place weapons on them, and shoot at an opponent. I loved the physics and thought that there could be other gameplay to explore. TA: The main inspiration was a game called Bridge Builder by Chronic Logic, which I was playing obsessively in 2003. SDP: What were some of your inspirations for Forts? They hired me and put me to work on the multiplayer component of their racing games. In my spare time I wrote a side-scrolling shoot-em-up which caught the attention of Ratbag Games. I taught myself C and pixel graphics while learning other languages in university. Tim Auld: My earliest experiences of game development were tooling around with my dad’s C64, writing text adventure games in BASIC. Stephen del Prado: Tim, thank you for giving Player2 some of your time! How did you first get into game development? Player2 spoke to designer and programmer Tim Auld about the history of the title and his start in game development. A testament to the fortitude of those involved, this lengthy process has culminated in Forts being selected as a winner of the PAX AUS 2017 Indie Showcase. PAX AUS 2017 Indie Showcase – Forts EarthWork Games PCĮarthwork Games’ Forts spent the past 14 years in various stages of development before launching on Steam earlier this year. caught up with developers awarded a spot in the PAX AUS 2017 Indie Showcase to get a sneak peek at what attendees can look forward to. That constant push and pull is the mark of a good match, though it is fairly rare in the campaign.Independent development in Australia has been going from strength to strength over the past few years and the PAX AUS Indie Showcase serves to highlight some of the fantastic work being put out by local developers. Hitting the perfect shot and blowing up a gun emplacement is always satisfying and useful, though it hurts plenty when they do the same to you. By building and activating weapon emplacements, the player will take aim at the opposing fort and pepper them with rockets and mortars while defending with machine guns. All you need to know is that there’s a bad guy and you should probably blow him up before he blows you up. It can be fairly obnoxious, but there’s so little of it that it’s not really a problem. The whole thing is portrayed in a pretty silly way, with the Eagle Empire spouting catch phrases and hashtags and the Dragon Empire portrayed as bumbling Nazis. Oil has become an extremely rare resource, and the campaign sees the three factions, flimsy ciphers for the United States, Russia, and Germany, vying for the last major oil deposit. There is a story here, but it’s nothing to get super excited about.
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