Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
Rank: Warmaster
Rank: Warmaster Transparency Message for December 2nd, 2023
An open and honest letter of where are things and where are they going
It’s the 2 year anniversary of the Early Access Release of Rank: Warmaster. This letter is more a transparency of what is happening and what has happened.
Short Answer: We aren’t dead (mostly), and more updates will be coming just far less often than updates happened when they happened regularly.
Long Answer:
The tragedies of the past year or so…
As posted in previous updates, there has been a lot of personal tragedy during the development of this project. Of the two programmers who worked on this project, Matt unfortunately died. I am the lead dev, head programmer, and man of many hats running the studio. Matt had been a close personal friend for well over a decade, so his loss hit me hard, and obviously greatly hurt the progress of this project.
After the dust settled from that, it was decided that my efforts might be better served to develop a smaller game, based in the same universe. The idea was that since Rank: Warmaster really didn’t gain the traction it needed because of it being our first commercial game, as well as not having the funding to advertise to a large enough audience to gain that traction, perhaps a less complicated game would gain the attention needed. So Rank Warmaster: Bunker Buster was born.
It’s a tower defense game, using the same custom engine. Part of the idea was as things were updated and fixed, it would flow back into Rank: Warmaster. And that is what happened for quite a few months. You saw previous posts hinting at this new project. Since most of the things needed to create such a project was already in existence as part of the current engine and game, it was felt it would be a quick project. Unfortunately, as anyone knows in Game Dev, things rare work out as expected.
Only a month into the development, my father was in a car accident, and while surviving that initial injury, he slowly deteriorated over the following months. I started to be responsible as power of attorney for his affairs before he passed, and then the executor of his estate after he passed. Between being the executor and issues with my son also being in the hospital for unrelated things, I just didn’t get anything done for about 5 months. I just couldn’t realistically, as much as I tried, to keep pace with the every two week release schedule that I had set for myself for Rank: Warmaster. There just wasn’t anything of substance to release so I stopped, as you might have noticed.
Where things are going
Things have finally settled down enough in the past month or so to get back to coding and Biz Dev and actually make progress. And I am, and I have a lot of progress on Bunker Buster. It will NOT be released into early access, since I don’t want to make that mistake again. It will be a 1.0 to show what can be done. All the things developed for Bunker Buster, if applicable, will be put in Rank: Warmaster. The hope is after Bunker Buster is finished, that work will more directly resume on Rank: Warmaster to do a 1.0 release and get it out of Early Access. In Effect, as a re-launch, hopefully.
The good news is more experienced people have been getting involved with Bunker Buster, so it should be a far more polished product than Rank: Warmaster has been. With that experience the hope is to apply what was learned.
I’m not going to set a release date for Bunker Buster but I do expect to have something for the public by first quarter next year. Considering it’s December, that isn’t too long.
I do appreciate those that have stuck with the project through all of this, and it was very important to me that you knew Rank: Warmaster wasn’t abandoned. And you deserved to know why the updates stopped and what was happening. I do appreciate your understanding and patience.
Pulse Turrets further tweaked (They really are accurate now)
Various Fixes
Rank: Warmaster News and Updates May 28, 2023
Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for May 28th, 2023. Things are still ramping back up from the hiatus from before. In the previous release it was found the turrets weren't as accurate as one had hoped. Testing found some flaws, which are now corrected.
Quality of Life
The above screen shot more prove that the pulses are finally being accurate. You can see the red trailing hit explosions as there are other shots incoming. The previous release in certain circumstances the turret would not track correctly. Interestingly, this actually ends up making the pulse turrets rather over powered because of the damage model. Admittedly, if a ship is changing course regularly, because there is a lag from when a shot is firing and how long it takes to travel to the target, it can still miss. However, that is the whole point of dodging.
Basically, a lot of tweaks are going on behind the scenes, and I'm hoping an announcement can be made soon. You can see hints above.
Short-term RoadMap
Further updates to the AI are expected. Some of the ship AI seems to be acting up, so I have to figure out why that is and fix it.
That's all for this update, stay tuned for more news next time! If you'd like to give Rank: Warmaster a try for yourself, pick up a copy on Steam and begin your conquest of Mars!
Pulse Turrets now appropriately lead their targets.
Internal sorting routines updated.
Various Fixes
Rank: Warmaster News and Updates May 13, 2023
Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for May 13th, 2023. Things are still ramping back up from the hiatus from before. The main change in this update is the pulse weapon turrets will properly lead their targets. The minor parts have more to do with internal sorting routines having tweaks to make them work better.
Quality of Life As things progress, more minor features are being fixed. The big one in this case was the pulse turret AI actually leading their targets. While leading their target has been implemented for the player for ages, the AI never used it. It always just used the "beam" logic, where it simply faced the target directly. When things are flying straight and coming directly at the firing weapon, this was fine, but obviously this isn't the normal circumstance. Pulse weapons have always been more effective when they hit something because they do all their damage at once rather than having it spread across the armor as a beam weapon would do on a moving target. The larger problem as, of course, being able to hit something with a pulse weapon is harder. Targeting pips always has existed for the players, but the AI that aims turrets have always been oblivious. In short, now pulse weapons are more effective, especially for ground turrets.
Another internal update was an issue with the internal sorting routine that handles a bunch of objects at once. Basically, a lot of tweaks are going on behind the scenes.
Short-term RoadMap
More discussions about making the UI for the RTS/Nav screen work better are in progress. Hopefully something can be settled on by the next update.
That's all for this update, stay tuned for more news next time! If you'd like to give Rank: Warmaster a try for yourself, pick up a copy on Steam and begin your conquest of Mars!
Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for April 29th, 2023. A progress update has been a long time coming, but it is here. The main significant update is that Admirals can now be ordered to attack other fleets or cities. Also, updates to the load/save system won't force a game restart when then internal structures get changes, so now updates between version shouldn't make your save games crash.
AI Updates There has been movement in the AI this release. While it's been a long time coming, this is a BIG part of the AI helper system. The Admirals now know how to attack cities and fleets. Which means the enemy can now do this too. But that means you can simply make an Admiral AI, and tell it to attack a city or ships, and then forget about it. It will start to build ships based on the designs available (if you have any. If not, it will request you design some). It will build a combination of assault ships and salvage ships. Once it has determined it has enough ships to do the job, it will order the ships to attack. After the battle, the salvage ships will be on hand to clean up the mess to get extra resources.
Quality of Life As a minor part of the update, save games now have a version code in them that is actually used now. This means that older saves from a previous release won't crash the game if the save format happens to change. I have always resisted changing certain internal structures of the game because I knew it would break people's save files. The new addition should stop that from happening when enhancements happen.
Short-term RoadMap
The Admiral AI needs a good shake down to make sure it is done. So expect tweaks in the coming weeks. Hopefully the usability issues in the RTS screen will now have time to be worked on.
That's all for this update, stay tuned for more news next time! If you'd like to give Rank: Warmaster a try for yourself, pick up a copy on Steam and begin your conquest of Mars!
Admirals now can be ordered to attack fleets and/or Cities.
They will build ships (and request designs) and send them to attack once a large enough force is made.
Knowing when to stop is still a WIP.
Save/Load now handles version changes. So Updated code no longer crashes on older save files.
Various Fixes
Rank: Warmaster News and Updates April 15th, 2023
Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for April 15th, 2023. This is more of a "We are still alive" announcement. Personal issues are settling down but came to a head in the past week, there isn't going to an an update to the code this week, as you can probably tell. However, there has been movement on the Admiral AI so I expect that will be updated in the next update. The next scheduled update will be in a few weeks as normal. See you then!
Greetings, Warmasters and Candidates! This is the newsletter for April 1st, 2023. This is more of a "We are still alive" announcement. Between GDC and personal issues, there isn't going to an an update to the code this week, as you can probably tell. The next scheduled update will be in a few weeks as normal. See you then!
