Afterwards

Well, I for one am pleasantly surprised at how Thrones turned out! I must admit I've had my full share of doubts during its development. In this section, I would like to present a small history of myself and brainstorm on the development of Thrones.

First, a little about who I am. I am a college student at the University of Akron, working faithfully on my BS in Computer Science. I have been an aspiring game developer since I was 12. There has been a Mac in my house since my father bought his first 512k Mac, so there was always a place for me to experiment. I taught myself SuperTalk (a scripting language very similar to HyperTalk) and spent the next few years fiddling with programs. My family owns a restaurant, so I developed a client/server cash register and data-base system called "Auto Regi" when I was about 15 (It is still in use to this day). When I became a senior in high school, I joined the post-secondary program at Akron U and took Intro To C and Intro To Computer Science (basically C++). From here I bought a couple of mac game programming books (Tricks of the MGP Gurus, Black Art of Macintosh Game Programming...) and developed the tools to start making my games (my API). That pretty much takes us to the present, where I am currently working on my next game, Vortex, which will be available for both Mac and Windows (Being an aspiring game programmer I suppose I had better know the Windows platform, eh?) I would like to note that Thrones is a one man project and all of the programming and artwork were produced by me. Unfortunately, my talents do not cover music, so the music of Thrones was canned ;) You can learn more about me, see some of my artwork, see a preview for Vortex, and view my resume and some sample code at http://members.aol.com/thrones2/main.html.

(I am looking for an internship in game development, by the way ;)

From the first I didn't want Thrones to be just another Warcraft clone, where you tend to be a person in control of everything and anything. It's just not realistic that you are able to define each of your troops movements during the heat of battle... war was never that organized. This lead to the development of Thrones battle editor, the ability to design your strategy before the battle commences. This allowed for some control while not giving you the God-like powers of most strategy games. Also, I wanted to keep Thrones somewhat simple. Notice how the entire overhead map fits onto the screen, with no need for scrolling. This had the side-effect of shorter games, but simple, short war has its appeal too!

What went wrong with Thrones? Well, at first I decided to use a Finite State Machine for the AI. This, however, proved very problematic and chaotic at best. FSM are great for detailing individuals, but it doesn't allow for any overall cohesion between armies. In stepped Genetic Algorithms! Every since learning about this little bad boy, it has become my favorite form a game AI. It is surprisingly simplistic, yet it is immensely powerful in its scrutiny of situations. GA's had two BIG advantages over other forms a AI. One: it took all of the troops into account when planning its strategy. Two: It is uniquely able to do its calculations in the background, allowing for continuous updates to the strategy thus far.

What went right? BETA testers! Without all the helpful people out there, I would not have been able to make Thrones as accommodating as it is now. The testers helped me with everything from this manual to music, from game play to dialog boxes. Thanks guys!

Well, that's about all I feel comfortable in discussing (there's a whole bunch more that happened that I DON"T feel comfortable in discussing ;> ) I hope you enjoy Thrones, don't forget to register if you like it, and look out for the upcoming release of Vortex! You can see a preview for Vortex off of the Thrones Official Web Site!