Warparty
Warparty is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Warcave in the Unity Engine. It was my first professional project as a Game Designer.
Warparty features a world set in an alternate pre-historic timeline where man and dinosaur live together, battling on the ruins of an ancient extinct civilization known as the G’on.
Premise
A large scale battle between the Wildlanders and the Necromas factions.
When I joined Warcave, the Warparty game had already been in development for nearly two years without a dedicated Game Designer. It started as a MOBA, then became a hack-and-slash before finally settling on the RTS genre, using the assets that had been created so far to fill out the roster of units, buildings, powers, etc.
A beta was being scheduled at the time of my joining of the team, and feedback informed us a lot of of work had to be done to create a full fledged RTS game for the market.
At the early stages when I joined, Warparty technically only had a single faction. By selecting a chieftain at the start of the game, you were then given access to a series of “Talents” unique to each chieftain that sort of changed how the faction played, albeit not by much.
The first goal was to split this singular faction into three unique factions. For Early Access, we wanted to have two fully developed factions ready, with the third being available on release.
I set to work to make “Mika” and “Char”, the two Chieftains available at the time, into their own unique factions.
Mika would lead the “Wildlanders”, a hybrid faction that relied on the bond between Human and Animal. Their playstyle would be very balanced, as that was the narrative theme of the faction in the lore.
Meanwhile Char would lead the “Necromas”, a cult of death inspired heavily by African culture, which featured a more aggressive playstyle that forsook defense for more offensive gameplay.
Feedback from Early Access was very positive, with each faction feeling very unique. With making mostly minor balancing tweaks (aided by a veteran RTS player who we hired for testing and feedback purposes), work could start on the final faction.
This faction would be the “Vithara”, led by a Sage character which was originally a scrapped unit for the Wildlanders. This faction took on the theme of “Life” and would rely heavily on fast, cheap units to quickly swarm the enemy. The whole playstyle was inspired as a hybrid between the Zerg from Starcraft and the Tainted Coil faction from Brütal Legend.
Three Unique Factions
The three chieftains, Mika, Sage and Char, each representing their faction and associated biome.
Gameplay Design
A shrine under control of the Red player.
We quickly gathered from beta and Early Access feedback that we had an interesting challenge ahead of us. A lot of RTS players grew up with the classics (Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft, …) and expect a certain sense of familiarity from these games.
At the same time, they also wished for some unique twist on the genre, since there was very little reason to switch games if they’re nothing but reskinned copies of an existing version.
Thanks to our Chieftains, we had a start similar to Warcraft III, where hero characters would lead the armies. Rather than level up, players would improve their base in order to access new skills and talents for their Chieftain. These talents always offered a choice of two, allowing players to switch their strategies on the fly or prepare certain “builds” that fit their playstyle.
Each Chieftain came with a unique starting mechanic that altered their gameplay. “Mika” would train villagers faster and cheaper, “Char” summoned a zombie minion every time they killed an enemy or a unit of their faction died. The “Sage” can ignore wild dinosaurs and tame them at the cost of resources, and capture shrines without having to clear it of guardians.
Another major twist were the Shrines. These points were placed on the map and guarded by wild dinosaurs which the player could hunt for Food. Since they’re placed at mirrored locations, they’re heavily contested. When cleared of guardians, the Shrine can be captured by the player simply by placing units on them. Once captured it would start generating a resource known as “Power”, which allows the use of unique faction abilities that can quickly turn the tide of battle. In one unique case, the “Vithara” faction uses this resource to for more purposes, featuring a very different style of play compared to the other two.
This mechanic would force players out of their base, and promote more engaging, aggressive playstyles over camping inside a heavily guarded base.
To create a challenging adversary, I was given a variety of tools made by our programmers to create and balance a variety of AI types which would become opponents for the players.
A mixture of “Cheats” and a set of rules and priorities would make the hardest AI a tough job even for veteran players, while more casual players would not stomp the easiest AI, but not feel overly pressured either.
AI Design
Wildlanders making a stand against AI created “waves” of enemies in the “Survival” game mode.
Campaign Design
The Necromas faction preparing to attack.
The case of Warparty is rather unique, where the Campaign was created last. This was due to our focus on early access and multiplayer first. The result was a tight deadline on creating the campaign.
To offset the workload, each campaign scenario would show a battle between two factions, with the player being able to pick a side. This enabled us to reuse maps, which drastically decreased the workload. Exceptions were the first missions of each campaign, which introduced the player to each faction in a more safe environment without a harsh AI to fight. The final mission featured a 1 vs 1 vs 1 “King of the Hill” scenario which is the same for each faction.
All things combined we managed to deliver a full fledged campaign where every mission offered a twist on a regular battle against the AI, with unique objectives, bonus objectives and secrets to discover.
Due to my experience with coding in C#, I supported the programming team occasionally by programming some of my own tools or implementing new mechanics.
Examples of the mechanics are the Trading System as well as some of the Talents and Powers.
I also supported the AI tools and customizing the A-Star Pathfinding tool.
Programming
Since Waparty was developed in the Unity Engine, nearly all code and scripts were written in C#.
