Dragonshard Interview

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Written by BuckGB on July 1st, 2005

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Q: Do the individual maps play to the strengths of one race over the other? What unique challenges have you faced tying in two different types of gameplay into a single game?

A: In single player, yes- the level can lend it self to certain sides. For instance, in one later level, a main lizard city is completely overrun with Umbragen- so much so that they do not even have a place to start building a town to produce units. Instead they must battle and sneak around to recruit additional forces. The Lizardfolk faction is not a great "sneaking" faction. That sort of work is usually best left to the Umbragen. However, they are made up of some fearsome warriors, so they have tools at their disposal (tough, scale covered tools that regenerate!).

In multiplayer, no- we don't want to create an unfair advantage for competition. We desire as level of a playing field as we can create in multiplayer.

As far as unique challenges for the two different types of gameplay, I'm sure we could write a book on the subject. The biggest challenge is trying to get it to feel like an RPG while still play like an Real Time Strategy where it needs to (things like balanced units, real-time spells instead of spells per day, damage of attack instead of die rolls, etc). The most unique challenges have all been related to the nuances. Getting traps to disarm and having cool monsters at the end of the dungeon. It was a fun albeit tough challenge to get something so essential to D&D as the concept of "the dungeon" to work right in an RTS game, but I think we've done an awesome job.

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