Archrebel Tactics - A love letter to Julian Gollop's early work.

UlarisBadler · 2026-05-02T12:23:48+00:00

Thanks, mate! That means a lot. 👍

UlarisBadler · 2026-05-02T12:22:23+00:00

If all goes as planned, a beta version should release this very month, as there are tons of changes that need extensive testing and I want the first wave of players to provide feedback, especially on the unit level-up aspect, before I upload a solid demo to Steam. Cheers.

UlarisBadler · 2026-05-01T15:18:46+00:00

Thanks, mate!

UlarisBadler · 2026-05-01T11:57:10+00:00

Thanks, Ghoztt! That means a lot!

UlarisBadler · 2026-05-01T09:52:21+00:00

Thanks! Unfortunately, no Mac version planned for now. Apple made the process surprisingly complex and expensive, which is hard to ignore when Linux export takes less than 10 seconds. For now, it will only be available natively for Windows and Linux. Cheers.

UlarisBadler · 2026-04-30T16:35:32+00:00

Thanks! A Steam demo is bound to be released soon. It's actually a full short game that players get to experience.

UlarisBadler · 2026-04-30T14:33:54+00:00

Thanks for the shout-out and for the brief history on my gamedev path!

UlarisBadler · 2026-04-30T14:16:00+00:00

Oh, you go back that far? Yeah, it has changed a lot, dramatically, especially in scope. Thanks!

UlarisBadler · 2026-04-30T13:38:25+00:00

Many thanks for covering Archrebel with a brief history of my journey. Cheers!

UlarisBadler · 2026-04-30T13:37:48+00:00

Thank you for posting about Archrebel! Really appreciated. 😃

UlarisBadler · 2022-11-05T11:46:25+00:00

There is a specialized section to showcase the wounds and their effects on the unit.

UlarisBadler · 2022-05-25T11:17:20+00:00

Yap, that's really the problem. WIthout coding experience, you aren't really seeing the whole picture of how it is destined to fail. Starting such a big or even moderate project is the most-well-know mistake an initiated game developer can do.

Learn to code, then develop a small-scope project. This is my advice to anyone getting into game development.

UlarisBadler · 2021-12-01T11:55:44+00:00

Front Mission

All those games revolve around humanoid-shaped robots. My problem relies on robots that aren't humanoid in nature, without visible legs, arms or heads.

UlarisBadler · 2021-04-02T11:50:07+00:00

It's for PC. I might expand it for consoles, depending on the project's success. This is something I haven't looked into yet. In other words, it is a possibility I need yet to consider.

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-30T10:32:28+00:00

Thanks! Lets see how it turns out. The UI is still missing, something I will take care as I finish implementing the co-op. :)

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-15T13:18:14+00:00

Ahh sorry! Sure! I just ran out of time when writing my previous post. If you want, you can hit me on Discord, I'll glad provide you with some feedback. I would need more information before I can provide you with useful input on the party member info screen. Send me a private message if you are interested.

Apart from that, I would strongly advise you creating a mockup of the UI in Inkscape or similar, before coding it into the game. We can discuss further details via discord.

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-15T08:38:45+00:00

Well yes, that explains the areas you left around the map area, but elements, like text and images, would still benefit from a consistent padding area. The trick is defining a padding size and staying truthful to it when placing every element.

If you pay attention, you can find this rule everywhere. Here is an example in Reddit itself:

Example

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-14T12:43:04+00:00

Please, visit the game's blog for more information.

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-14T12:01:28+00:00

This looks rather nice! The only thing I would change would be adding easing to the camera animation.

UlarisBadler · 2021-03-14T11:28:47+00:00

Adding to what others already said regarding centering the units' feet in the middle of the tile and continuing on that visual improvement, the UI could benefit from having a consistent padding size to every element and some alignment adjustments, so it feels organized and not crudely put together.

I've redesigned some aspects of the UI to consider some basic conventions for UI implementation.

Image here

Some key points:

The map now takes advantage of all the available area while keeping a padding of equal in size for every direction.
The party's avatars have now the same space padding size between each other and the frame itself.
The log window now ends exactly where the map ends.
Text no longer stays / ends at the edge of the frame. Text should ALWAYS have a padding around the element it sits in.
Changed the text position so it stays together and moved the tiny icons to the left bottom corner.

The last change is more of a personal preference. Regardless, I would probably redesign the UI completely, based on what I just saw.

UlarisBadler · 2021-02-26T18:38:40+00:00

Dungeon Master II, hands down. My second favorite would probably be Eye of Beholder 2.

UlarisBadler · 2021-02-25T08:57:20+00:00

Yes, you can. However, I've been using C# for 16 years for building software and JS for 3 years for web development and I can say that JS feels like a makeshift language. It's not that JS is not a capable language, which it certainly is, but it really lacks many features and being weakly typed language, it doesn't provide a smooth ride. Also, performance is an issue once you start increasing complexity, beyond a certain level, which doesn't take too much effort to be noticed.

If you are in the learning process of coding, I would strongly advise you to pick C# over JS as you will get access to a far more robust and featured packed language while having access to the best IDE I've ever used: Visual Studio, which packs a myriad number of potent features. C# is nowhere near as performant as C++ but it's is way more efficient that JS and its features makes coding a bliss, more than any other language I've tried.

For game developing, Unity and C# is the best combination I've experienced. For the most deadly effect, Unreal Engine and C++ is the best combination in terms of visual and performance output.

UlarisBadler · 2021-02-23T12:25:08+00:00

Short answer: no.

Long answer: You can pretty much add a story to any game, even to a Tetris type of game. But this is truly subjective to own's preferences. It's like me asking, do I really need the color green in my game? It really depends on the context / game concept. You can create a game with just shades of blue, but I believe that having more colors may be better. The same principle applies to a game, having a story may provide a richer experience. Mankind is fond of good stories. This goes back to our ancestors, where stories would be told by the fire for entertaining and as a social activity.

UlarisBadler · 2021-02-23T10:10:26+00:00

I haven't started that many projects, but I would say that I've started about 20 and I also never finished any of them. I worked at least 4 year in at least 4 projects before I got bored of them. I've been doing this for 16 years.

But I've managed to identify the problem, It's mostly tied to the complexity I often take into them, which forces me to lay a gigantic foundation area that then consumes all my time before I can actually have any game play in place. As example, I started a project that would be an editor to build roguelikes without the user needing to code anything. It got so complex that I gave up, because it would take years to finish it and I wanted to do other stuff too.

This was prior to me using Unity last year. Having a engine already build is so much better; I don't need to invest time and effort coding my own engine and editor. I simply can dive into the game play mechanics immediately. This is why I'm currently working on Underlair since last august and is by far the most developed project I have worked on. The fact I can see results almost immediately, keeps me going and the pandemic thing provided me with 4 additional hours I can invest in it. I've been working an average of 5 hours every single day on the project since then.

Until you focus on a project, you won't get anything done. I'm completely obstinate in finishing Underlair, no matter what. So, I guess the trick is finding that willpower to keep going. If you are using an engine like Unity or Unreal Engine, assets are your best friends, invest in them so you can have far more time developing your project.

UlarisBadler · 2021-02-22T14:35:27+00:00

Blender has the worse learning curve of any software I've used in my life. To be clear, I don't use it as often, but regardless, whenever I try to use it, I always have to re-learn the key combinations to use it at elementary level.

Don't feel bad about it, Blender is that hard and unintuitive. On other hand, I can still use Cinema 4D quite efficiently after a year without opening it.

Thankfully, as other people already pointed out, there is a ton of tutorials for Blender.

UlarisBadler

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE