I’ve kept this a secret but really I don’t know why cause I can tell. You might have figured this out from the youtube idea videos I post. Link-Dead isn’t going to be a game like Soldat. If you say that LD will be worse than Soldat you’re right – in the sense that I don’t feel like I can do a game that has more action/speed/ease/. I never wanted to compete with Soldat and I won’t so I’ve been thinking how to make something unique. I’ve been actively trying to forget about Soldat. I haven’t played it for a couple months just to have a fresh mind. I haven’t even played any video game in the past months other than GTA IV for a couple weeks. I have an irrational desire to create the most awesome game ever and nothing can stop me. Even by making my life sadder by not playing my favourite game (the one starting with an S).
Since I released a press note about Link-Dead 2 years ago (which you can read on http://link-dead.net) a bit has changed. And it changed a lot about 2 months ago.
Link-Dead will be a real-time team strategy game with person control elements.
Not the other way around.
Soldat CTF in realistic mode is a person control game with team strategy elements. This is the reason why I have been working hard on making bots work right. Some people were asking why so much focus on this? Because the majority of the game will be controlled by your mouse and the bot AI.
Although I haven’t decided on this entirely yet (cause there might and probably will be some deathmatch kill’em all mode), there won’t be games for 32 players or so. Games will be rather played between 2 people, each controlling his team of soldiers. I’ve thought about this for a really long time and didn’t post anything about it, cause I thought it was crazy. There is no game like this out there and it won’t work. But eventually there is 1001 reasons for making this game like this and I am so deeply convinced about the awesomness of this game that I give a fuck about anyones opinion at this point. Link-Dead is gonna kick the nuts out of your sack and squash them. I am greatly inspired by this gameplay approach and it is one of the reasons why my productivity and focus has risen 500% lately. I know exactly what I want and how I want to do it. This means I’m ditching all the stupid programming libraries which have worthless features, I’m losing all my other commitments and projects, I’m ditching everyone involved in this project and am working alone. Like in the good old days when I was making Soldat and I saw that it was the best game ever to be made and I sat on my ass and all I did was create everything by myself from scratch and I didn’t stop working until it was done and thousands and thousands of lucky people could play it. This is the mind-state I am in right now. Let Odin be my witness Link-Dead will be the Greatest.
Strike while iron is hot! Steel is strongest – so say we all… 😉
you’re fucking amazing man.
this will definitely get all of these kids off your cock about Link-Dead not being “Soldat 2″
i say fuck more of the same, give us an incredible badass unique experience.
you fucking rock man.
Oh, one more thing, MM. If you are making some kind of promises take Tyr (Tir) for your witness 😉 He’s the God of promises as he lost his arm to Fenrir for not keeping his word.
“There is no game like this out there and it won’t work”
Cortex Command has the kind of control you’re talking about I believe.
This sounds like a very ambitious project, and if it turns out well then you will add another game to your rising status and career. I can’t say that i will play the game, but every good game attracts its own crowd and they would surely enjoy it. Just commit yourself to quality, and everything should fall into place.
I do have one question however. Once you have released L-D and Berserker, would you ever consider to return to Soldat or develop a sequal/spiritual successor to Soldat?
“This means I’m ditching all the stupid programming libraries which have worthless features, I’m losing all my other commitments and projects, I’m ditching everyone involved in this project and am working alone. Like in the good old days when I was making Soldat and I saw that it was the best game ever to be made and I sat on my ass and all I did was create everything by myself from scratch and I didn’t stop working until it was done and thousands and thousands of lucky people could play it.”
Fuck yeah!
Can’t help wishing you were talking about Soldat, though. :[
“Link-Dead will be a real-time team strategy game” My heart stopped for a good 1.2 seconds when I read that.
Ffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccck…I hate RTS (altogether, including worms). Good luck with the game MM, im pretty disapointed with the change but I cant blame you. Although I totally agree with what you said in this post. Ever since the game Gunbound + Sol…i mean the S-word, ive been looking for an online 2D shooter with some nice visuals that was just as fun and thought link-dead might be that game. But this change completely demolished my excitement for this game. No doubt im going to play this game upon its release, might be the first RTS I actually like.
@ Mateusz Jastrzębski – I was thinking the exact same thing.
ZeroG001: Worms isn’t Real-Time.
I hate this idea, it sucks really bad. This will turn out to be a game like cortex command, no skill necessary. Personnaly i like the old idea better, about hackers and soldiers, that will allow for more skill and add team play. Soldat didn’t become popular because you can control a body, neither did cortex command, soldat is popular because you control your player, deploy defence and offence skill and help your team to victory. CC is popular because you can build and destroy. And how on earth do you think this will offer more fun and gameplay than the previous idea? This new direction has killed my exitment aswell as another 17 people who were gonna play and pay for this game on release, now i highly doubt any of us will, we could just go buy CC if we wanted to control a body. Why even anticipate the next Michal Marcinkowski game, if its gonna be shit. This will be no viking training game, this game won’t kick our ass, this will be a women’s game that my little sister will even call shit.
I see I’m not the only one who thought it sounds like Cortex Command, except without the digging and the ridiculously detailed physics (and physics are a large part of what makes CC worth playing).
Unless you have some very unique and creative GAMEPLAY gimmicks up your sleeve — not just engine gimmicks — there won’t be any reason for people to play this.
Indeed, this does sound like Cortex Command.
On the other hand, without the focus on the pixel physics, that means that this one can actually get the strategy part right.
I must say, that it also sounds like awesome.
For all the doubters who know CC: The whole reason CC “requires no skill” is because of the pixel physics; Link-Dead has no pixel physics, meaning more arcade-y (or simply more optimized and action-y) physics, and probably also game play.
So yes, awesome. CC will definitely still have it’s own place (as will Soldat), but this sounds like a very good idea.
But, you are all considering this on it’s own, not comparing this to the old idea, with TEAMWORK and STRATEGY. This will be 1 on 1 bullshit, no gaming clans, no challenges, if you verse a pro, he will own you, period. With a team, you would implement strategy, imagine having a sniper to scout ahead while you creep across the level, sticking to the shadows, silently knifing your enemies, while a hacker works hard opening doors and keeping robots from molesting you. You can’t achieve that in a 1 vs 1 match.
This sounds interesting.
The problem is that forcing a player to rely on bot AI is a horrendous idea, because bot AI is either incredibly stupid or overpowered. It is extremely difficult to have it act in the middle ground as a human does.
@Makron666:
Are you saying you can’t implement strategy in 1v1 games? Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no reason what you just said couldn’t be controlled by a single person.
Makron666 made a good point. I hope Link Dead will be higly modable so everyone will be able to chose their own favourite style of gamplay – strategy or teamwork
Oh man.. I don’t really know what to say…
I’m not sad about this, it might still become a great game. But somehow all the hopes connected to it in the past 2 years are gone, simply because all of those hopes were connected to a promised experience and feeling in the game, which has now turned 180°.
Let’s be realistic: Why scare off the people that anticipated this the most? Would it be so difficult to keep your game as moddable as promised, so that you could make this “one on one tactics” only a mode of several modes in the game?
Picture this: The user gets to choose if he wants to play “soldat mode”, “link dead person control mode” or “link dead strategy mode”. And all other modes, created by users.
I don’t even think it would be that difficult to achieve, just the possibility for 32 players must be given and the necessary modding abilities. Sure, make your incredibly smart bots, but then don’t limit the game to that. It’s like you’re building a house for your dog and then forcing him to stay inside. But the house shouldn’t stop your dog from running around the garden!
This was the plan, to make this be so flexible, that EVERYBODY would eventually find a mod fitting to their liking. THAT would make it as awesome as you target it to be.
“I don’t feel like I can do a game that has more action/speed/ease/”
MM: Just wait for the Warp Speed
Im just wondering how you want to motivate the ppl to play when your game has no clan support. What do i need a clan for when the matches are 1vs1
Do you want to earn money ?
Just write Soldat 2 and everyone would play it.
Simple
@Tenshi.
Exactly what i was trying to say, everyone has had a certain feeling, an imaginary visual animation that we get every time we think of LD, slowly built up over time, kinda like a blockbuster movie. You wouldn’t change the entire premise of a blockbuster, just when it’s about to be released, it would just break the little mental pic you had. Sure the new direction is great, but we weren’t waiting for that.
I strongly recommend you take note of tenshi’s post. What other side scrolling engine has multiple control scheme support, and these awesome graphics?
btw, im typing all this with a ps3 controller, on my ps3’s browser, i have done so for the last 3 posts.
Cool, proper indie now.
It’s nice knowing that you’ve done 100% of the work yourself, because in the en if you want something done – do it yourself.
Out of curiosity, what were the other team members reactions to this sudden change?
Only GTA IV for two weeks, huh? Must be bored out of your fucking mind now.
I don’t know. I have mixed feelings now. I’m confident you know what you’re doing.
However, I fucking hate rts’s. I don’t mind a shooter with some strategy or even a team strategy game, but 1vs1 where the player controls several bots or whatever at a time, isn’t my cup of tea. This is my personal feeling as I prefer a game that is more closer to Soldat. I don’t care if the action is slower – I want a game with stealth. I knew that L-D would involve strategy – but was hoping like I said – that that would be team strategy, where the whole team communicates and works together to gain their objective. Some times I just want to go into a server and “lone wolf”. I’m still helping my team, but not strategizing with them, instead I’m just taking care of enemies and business my own way.
If this is what you want.. go for it. But please PLEASE make the game and engine flexible enough that we can have more Soldat-like 8vs8 or even 16vs16 games of deathmatch, ctf and tactical assault game modes are possible.
Also, you should be playing games – every day. Why? Because it’s not just gameplay aspects that are important, such as physics, weapons, etc. It’s also player personalities.. how many campers are there in such and such game mode. How do players play in R/S in Soldat vs default mode? Why is ARMA 2 still too much for even the average hard core gamer?
If you aren’t playing games and start distancing yourself from these arenas, even though you are making a game that you know YOU are going to like, I feel the less and less you are going to know how your intended L-D players are going to like your game.
My two cents, take it or leave it. And yes, you will still get your beer when you finish this game.
Hmm, I just became a hypocrite. X( I mean’t to say something along the lines of, “I’m confident that you will produce a fine polished work of your vision… BUT”.
Because you’re working so hard on this project, I know it will be something cool, but as said, unless gameplay that is more like Soldat is an option for someone like me, I don’t know how interested I will be in it.
Besides physics and all that stuff, cortex command is much more than just that. The physics just make it more unpredictable and unique and fun in its way just like any rts game out there.
And the ability to control seperate units of your team can give you infinite possibilities in gameplay and design.
When I first heard about Link-Dead and read some about it, I thought it would work like soldat and team fortress 2 mixed together with a much slower pace and more tactical approach.
But it would still be playable like soldat where you choose your class and do get shit done. And it would be a massive multiplayer where many players with their classes would play together and cooperate to defeat the enemy or win.
As for taking this to a more RTS with the player count reduced dramatically and making it function in a way like Cortex Command… I say it will work I think and it might be fun as a slow paced tactical squad command unit where you might be able to control separate units which would be bloody awesome.
I really love this concept and have been simulating this in Cortex Command in its own way. Where you have this large base you must infiltrate and you have a team of specialized or not specialized units that you command and switch between like a squad and move them further into the base like a game of D&D
against the base defenses and its guards. Giving one unit some command to “make him do this and go there” while you switch to another unit and manually control him while the AI handles the other one. Its really fun, has massive gameplay fun and vast replayability factor.
I’m quite excited about how it will be like.
And for all those who are disappointed: you might want to help on the openSoldat Project in order to create mods you would like to play.
Somewhat dissapointing but… good luck Michal.
Hmm, been awhile since I cared to post. Great previous stuff though been reading weekly 😉 I don’t really care about another soldat or not, another great game would be nice. Controlling squads doesn’t really sound new/innovative to me to be honest. For example in Arma2 (3d though) its possible in a mod to order units and control them over the battlefield. Buy equipments etc etc. 1 vs 1 also doesn’t suit me, I am a team player and love cooperative game modes. Hope you work out your ideas nicely I am sure you can.
If I were you, I would keep the game all open for ideas like that. Hope you are adding loads of scripting to the game. Let the players decide whether or not they want to create a fast shooter like Soldat with the engine! Let them decide to create a RTS type of game. Also you got a creative community behind you which did a lot mods for Soldat for example, I am sure it will happen again. I think you can win much more souls that way.
Flexibility is win!
this guy is crazy. he thinks soldat is currently the best game ever made… hmm… i wonder why no one knows about it, and its dying everyday…
Disappointed.
Soldat is now officially “The Ass Game.”