Panzer Beta 1 Released!

[Quake Matt]

It's done! Sort of. I've managed to get a stable and playable version of Panzer made, ready for a bit of playtesting. It probably won't work too well over the 'net, so LAN's your best choice, since you really need two players to have any fun.

Download: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~moonrise/matt/panzerbeta1.zip

Check out the readme or the release thread over at QuakeDev for more information. Once you've had a playabout, let me know what you think, and what you feel would make it better!

Thanks for waiting!

[Spirit]

I think it is great! I just need to find someone to play against me. Awesome idea and I like how you did it. Wow!

[Error]

I'd play, but can't host servers

[Spirit]

I just played against myself by opening a game with Fitzquake and then connecting to it from Qrack. I then just bought a load of monsters for the Fitzquake one and played against these stupid opponents with Qrack. Rather dull but I found it funny

[Quake Matt]

Yeah, the experience is kinda lost with just one player! I'll probably be looking into adding a bot soon, if I can figure out where to begin - maybe I should pay a visit to the AI board...

[lth]

If you're going to post about a mod, it would be really helpful if you could actually talk a little bit about what it actually is. I know it's multiplayer, but that's it. Is it an RTS? Is it like Tanx? Am I missing something?

[Sajt]

I'm wondering the same things.

[Urre]

He talked about it during Qexpo I believe. He explained it to me in a pm session on IRC once, maybe he got confused and thought he had mentioned it on a forum. It's an RTS anyway, yet to try it as my computer sucks. Go Matt, u got mad skilz.

[Quake Matt]

You know, you're right - I haven't really explained it very well, have I? I think, after writing such an exhaustive readme for it, I couldn't be bothered to type anything else! I'm pretty sure I went into detail on QuakeDev, but it was probably a long time ago...

Anyway, it's basically Quake with strategy elements thrown in. Not quite a full-fledged RTS, although it does have simple resource, base and minion management. Ideally, it's meant for teams of 1v1 or 2v2, as any more and monsters start to get a bit overshadowed and useless.

Each team starts off with a home lair, and they lose the game if it gets destroyed. From the lair, they can purchase weaponry, health and minions through simple, wall-mounted buttons. Now, you need your minions, as only they can destroy enemy lairs, by walking through the enemy's summoning portal.

But before you think about doing that, you've got to amass an army, which takes resources. You can get plenty of resources by killing the opponent's minions, although you only get 50% of their original value. For a more steady income, you've got to take control of neutral runes scattered across the map and protect them from enemy attacks. Again, your monsters come into play here because there's usually more runes than you could possibly defend on your own! Fast monsters like dogs and fiends are particularly useful early on, since they can quickly cover the map and capture any neutral runes before the enemy.

It all plays very quickly, and strategy doesn't play a big part, since monsters tend to come in swarming hordes rather than surgical strike teams. Still, it caters pretty well for nearly any type of player - testing it against my brother, he likes to operate solo, spending all his money on some basic defenders and lots of guns and ammo, while I like to mass lots of mid-range monsters like enforcers and ogres.

Thanks for the feedback so far guys - after a bit more thinking and a bit more installing stuff on my new computer, I'll get back to work!