14 DAY TRIAL // Sometimes it takes for someone to achieve the impossible in order to convince the world that it was right within its grasp, and apparently that's what developer Ede Tarsoly set out to do with his full-blown real-time strategy game Meridian: New World.
When he began development on the project back during the summer of 2011, his goal was to make the perfect old-school real-time strategy game, in the vein of the great classics.
Three years later, he was able to release his creation on Steam Early Access, and it's frankly hard to believe that all this was done by just one single man and a bit of help from a few friends.
"I'd been working on Meridian's concept long before actual development, and by the time I started developing the game, I had many ideas in mind. The unit equipment options, the way the story is presented, the RPG elements with the commander profile, the various mission objectives that vary from mission to mission -- these all add up to a rather unique experience in my opinion," Tarsoly states during an interview with Gamasutra.
He started in his quest to revive the glory days of Command & Conquer, falling back on his extensive experience designing strategy games. In just six month, he already had a prototype with all the core system in place, ready for testing by Headup Games, Meridian's publisher.
"What helped after that was purchasing assets online (eg. trees, rocks, some units and buildings). I also had help from friends with cut-scenes, the remaining units and the ship interior," he notes, adding that while the idea of working on such an ambitious project for three years, all alone, may be daunting for others, it was very pleasant for him.
"Every single day I got to choose what I wanted to do next. Should I work on a cut-scene? Start composing a new song for the soundtrack? Maybe a little AI improvement? A new GUI element to make user interaction even better? I always tried to mix it up, and because of this, I never really got tired of working on the game and I was always very enthusiastic about the next step," Tarsoly explains.
After acquiring so much experience in the inner workings of real-time strategy games, he thinks that most developers these days don't pay enough attention to a vital area of the game, one that he is always trying to polish as much as possible, which is unit control.
In his opinion, if the unit control doesn't feel dynamic and fluid enough, the game is a failure, and it is the part of the game "that can't be polished enough," as there is always room for some improvement, and that the developers who manage to get it and do this are able to create the kind of strategy games that everyone talks about for years and years after release.
Meridian: New World is now available on Steam Early Access, fully playable, but in single-player mode only, for the time being.
