As you may have heard earlier today, Sony Online Entertainment gave word that Ronimo Games’ WiiWare RTS plans to invade the PlayStation Network later this Fall. As part of the move, the game’s unique brand of animated mayhem and civilization conquering strife is getting a bump in the visual department as well as the online features.
Always looking to learn more about HD-ness, I managed to catch up with Ronimo’s Fabian Akker to find out a bit more about the work involved –
“The cool thing is that we had little work on the HD graphics, most of the assets were made in HD and then scaled down for Wii, so it was mostly just exporting the original high res files for PSN.
The visuals in the HD PSN version are really sharp and crisp, it helps the characters a lot. For instance you can now clearly see the skull belt on the viking berserker which was just a yellow blob on the Wii, so especially for our artists it’s great to see all these cool details as they were meant to be seen.”
Extra features for the game include PSN Trophies, but the online multiplayer has also received some serious attention with a new matchmaking system –
“The biggest feature is of course the online multiplayer, that one was on everybody’s wishlist. With an RTS you’ve got to have an online multiplayer. On the Wii we couldn’t do it, we only had one programmer at that time, and although he is the hardest working guy on the team, it was still mission impossible.
After the release on Wii the studio grew a bit, we have three programmers now and they did a great job on the online multiplayer. We have a special system for online play, which allows players to easily access the online menu by pressing the SELECT button at any time during the game, here you can select your faction, color and start searching for online opponents. Once you click search, they menu will close and you can continue your game mode, campaign level, whatever you were doing.
Once an opponent is found you will receive notification, the state of the game will be saved and the online match starts. After the match you will gain a rank on the leaderboard, because you are awesome and pwn everyone online, :) and you will return to wherever you left off. So no lobby, no waiting, only gameplay.”
Just to keep me hanging Fabian also mentioned some secret features that we can look forward to hearing about closer to the game’s release.
Love this game on Wiiware and if this gets those that don’t own a Wii to buy it then great since the developer deserves all the profit it can get. Won’t buy it again but that’s just me.
Comment by EdEN — July 17, 2010 @ 12:42 am
Looks like too much for me to keep track of. I get overwhelmed at games like this. Though I did enjoy Grim Grimoire which is the same type of game I think.
Comment by Ujn Hunter — July 17, 2010 @ 2:25 pm
Swords and Soldiers isn’t that hard at the start. Sure the more you advance the harder it gets (as should all games) but since it’s a 2D RTS it’s easier to keep track of everything. You should give a try Ujn.
Comment by EdEN — July 17, 2010 @ 5:49 pm