New screenshots

[Zajoman]

First of all, the screenshots showing beta 3 look simply amazing. You must have conjured some real talent there. But, is it only me or does a city graphic occupy 6 tiles instead of 4?

[KGB]

Agreed. The graphics do indeed look awesome.

The latest shot looks 2x2. The one above that does look like it might be 3x2. But I suspect it's just an illusion.

What I found more interesting in the latest shot is that it appears there may be new terrain type(s). I see the obvious mountains/hills/woods/swamp/road. But then under the road is a plain brown terrain. That looks like either rocks or desert which would be great additions to the game along with ice/lava because then all the DLR terrain would be available.

KGB

[piranha]

Great to hear that you like the graphics.

Yes we have desert now, its going to be move cost 3 and considered open terrain fight wise.
There won't be any other new terrains for beta 3.
It would be really cool adding some more graphics but since we have to pay for it from our own pockets we need to be a bit careful to have something left to use to market ourself too.
Hopefully we will make money at some point and then we can use that to upgrade the graphics even more and add new terrains / units and things.

Our new model uses layers which means we can put borders around a terrain, so its just an illusion. The castles can go 20 pixels into the next square and so can the other terrain types.
If you look at the forest under the white city/castle you can see that the trees cover a part of it for example which is just the forest border.

[KGB]

Piranha,

Your desert definitions are exactly the same as the DLR ones. And this is great news.

Now we just need some unit(s) with desert abilities (Mummies/Giant Scorpions/Djinn/Phoenix...) to take advantage of the new terrain in terms of a move bonus/terrain bonus/stack bonus in that terrain etc.

I am curious about one thing with the new model. Will it be possible for example to place a castle on a hill. Or must a castle always sit on open terrain? In DLR for example you could create a large hilly area (say 10x10=100 squares) and place a castle in the middle of that hill area and it would be a castle on a hill in terms of terrain so that units will hill terrain bonus got those when fighting in the city. Or will you have to just create a 2x2 open area in the middle of the hilly area to place the city.

KGB

[piranha]

Right now grass is created under the castle, It looks okay with castles on desert and some other terrains but not so okay on some terrain. In terms of movement castles are always move 1 and fighting its always city.

I DLR would a castle on hill give city bonus and hill bonus? Or was it considered hill only?

[KGB]

Piranha,

It gave both. So you could be a Giant in a castle and end up with a +5 bonus due to hills and L3 walls.

KGB