Predestination shown at QCon XIX, beta signups open

Thanks to the guys at Digital Circle, we had the opportunity to show off Predestination last weekend at QCon XIX, Ireland’s biggest anime and gaming convention. The game isn’t in a playable state yet, but we put together a special trailer showing some of the game’s main features and had an open signup sheet to get into the beta when it arrives.

I expected to get a few people interested, but was absolutely blown away by the level of support and enthusiasm people had for Predestination. I really can’t thank everyone at QCon enough, over a hundred people signed up for the beta in just two and a half days after seeing the trailer below: Read More

Tactical space combat: A prototype design

My original plans for tactical space combat in Predestination involved making a good attempt at turn-based 3D combat, which is something no game has done well yet. I had intended to make line-of-sight mechanics and area effects a big part of the gameplay, but every combat would have quickly become a chaotic mess. Our main goal with Predestination is to bring proper turn-based strategy back to 4X games, so after discussing the idea with the rest of the team we decided to use a classic 2D combat plane on which tactical decisions are much more obvious.

I started prototyping the combat system last week with a chess board and some coloured squares, but I quickly ended up with pages of complicated rules and movement/attack tables. The Art Director suggested a hexagonal grid and we quickly hashed out a very simple, intuitive system using that grid that we’re all very happy with. We prototyped the system using a big hexagonal gaming mat and paper cutouts and ironed out all of the flaws we could see. The end result is a tactical combat system I’m really excited about: Read More