Warsim: The Realm of Aslona
A downloadable game for Windows
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Warsim has finally hit 30k copies across Steam and Itch.io and has a 97% positive rating on Steams review system!
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Warsim is a deep and rich text based kingdom management game unlike anything else. Complete with charming ASCII graphics, navigate the millions of different procedurally generated races, events and areas with a huge emphasis on player choice. Don't let its look fool you, there is depth in every direction.
Features
Explore the rich and vast world filled with over 100 locations to be visited/bought/plundered, you can shape the world how you see fit. Visit a giant Blackmarket filled to the brim with mystery and wonder, discover hidden cities (yep multiple of them!), A scorpion fighting pit, Strange villages, and cult like towns. There has been an excessive amount of time spent fleshing out the world. Exploration is well rewarded!
In the throne room you are tasked with talking to and dealing with the people of your realm, be you a small kingdom with a line of 10 visitors, or a mighty empire with lines of 1000s of people. You will encounter gamblers, bards, tricksters, mercenaries, common folk, beggars, and everything in between. Over 1000 different encounters with complex solutions and reactions. How will you manage your realm? Will you install trap doors and send those foolish enough to visit you plummeting to their deaths? or will you hire a capable steward to deal with them in your stead! The choice is yours.
Warsim's unique and in-depth procedural race generation system has been developed for years and currently produces a total of 94,887,852 possible races, which pretty much means you'll never see the same race twice, in fact statistically the races you see will never have been seen by anyone before! you might find Seafaring Goblins, Fire Orcs, Eyeless Elves or the Famed Half-Turtles of the Western Turtledom, Orange Ogretaurs, Inbred Trench Dwarves, and millions more races you couldn't imagine!
Each of these races has their own birth rate, a level of civility (or savageness), three unique units each with different battle scores, their own laws and societal standards (like xenophobia), and varying traits depending on their racial prefixes pulling from a large list of unique racial abilities sure to make each playthrough unique!
It's not just the races that are massively procedural in Warsim, it's also the faces! The total number of faces is somewhere in the range of 100+ Quadrillion, which lets face it (I'll show myself out), it's basically infinite. This means that all of those enemy rulers, all of those staff members, and everyone who appears in your throne room are all faces seen only in that moment by you, and never again by anyone else in the world! Pretty cool huh?
Here are 10 of the 62,418,146,400,000 (62.4 Trillion) different orcish faces!
And another bunch of faces from various in game races!
The Arena is another important location within your kingdom, here heroes rise and fall while others are remembered for eternity, clever gamblers make their fortune, great and exalted tournaments are held, and the public sate their appetite for blood! You can find the Arena in a variety of shapes and can even take it for yourself, setting the cost of entry, changing the rules, and upgrading it as you wish!
Games within games? You bet! Ruling a kingdom can be boring at times and you may wish entertainment to pass the time, hire a gamesmaster to fill your time when you're bored or play one of the many games littered throughout the taverns and locations of the world, games that include: Snail Racing, Bat Racing, Rat Racing, Rock paper scissors, 21 the dice game, Dragon wench knight, Sudden death (4 different types), Coin flipping, Guess the dice, Swampy cup game, Thralls finger, Animal pit fighting, Scorpion pit fighting, and loads more!
Are you a lover of the procedural arts? Why not listen to the procedurally generated songs of one of the many bards of the Warsim world, or make your way to the musicians guild or the Goblinwood school of drums and try your hand at playing music yourself. The world is filled with all manner of procedurally terrible musicians, from Orc grunters, Gnome whistlers, Goblin drummers, Clickers, Vampire luteplayers, and several others! Hire one as your own personal court bard and train them to play better and faster!
Ruling a kingdom isn't all warfare and conquest, kick back, relax, and gather your people together for a celebration of your design! Or travel around and visit the exclusive celebrations of the peoples of the world, Including: The Blackmarket Century Festival, a huge festival held in the gem of the north, or if you treat them right the great GOBLINWOOD JAMBOREE! A once a-decade experience in the goblin town of Goblinwood.
Here's a goblin drinking competition! (it's pretty easy because goblins can't drink!)
Is being an honest and good natured ruler not for you? Would you prefer sending your loyal warriors to depths unseen to enslave beasts of the underworld for you to train and fight? If the answer is yes then you're in luck, build a monster pit in your kingdom and hold up to 3 of over 27'000 Procedurally generated monsters inside! Fight them and train them against any of 45 opponent trainers! Do you have what it takes?
A tough day on the throne? why not get drunk in one of the many different taverns around the world. Here you can find a myriad of different drinks with varying effects and tons of things to get up to in each tavern. Be warned though, drink too much and you may blackout and wake next to a sleeping ogress, or to a lighter coinpurse... And we won't even talk about the hangovers!
And believe it or not, all of the above isn't everything, there's still so much more to see and discover in Warsim!
Community
Warsim has an awesome community spread across a number of platforms. Primarily our community on reddit but also our discord and steam community.
I cannot describe how awesome and supportive the community has been towards me in my years developing this game and I can only hope to deliver a worthy finished product.
Thanks for reading all of this and if you do get Warsim I hope you enjoy it!
Updated | 2 days ago |
Status | In development |
Platforms | Windows |
Rating | Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars (40 total ratings) |
Author | Huw2k8 |
Genre | Simulation, Adventure |
Tags | ascii, Fantasy, Generator, Moddable, Procedural Generation, Roguelike, Sandbox, Strategy RPG, Text based |
Average session | A few hours |
Languages | English |
Inputs | Keyboard |
Accessibility | Blind friendly |
Links | Homepage, Community, Patreon, Steam |
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Where to find Warsim Devlogs!14 days ago
- Warsim 9th Anniversary!Mar 22, 2024
- New update live 1.1.3Feb 08, 2024
- Warsim 1.0.8 (THE LANDS BEYOND EXPANDED - Moar to explore)Oct 16, 2023
- Delving the Lands Beyond - Exploring Warsim's new random exploration systemSep 06, 2023
- Warsim 1.0.7 (THE LANDS BEYOND - Infinite Exploration Update)Sep 03, 2023
- 'The Lands Beyond' Update - Progress Update #2Aug 11, 2023
- 'The Lands Beyond' - Random Exploration Update Coming Soon!Aug 01, 2023
Comments
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hi.
the latest update here is march 9th, but on steam its on aug 20th?
I updated both yesterday so I don't understand how it seems that way haha
i meant in the devlog, it showed march 9th here.
Ah yeah I stopped updated the itch devlogs
Have had trouble with a couple of bugs. I'll attack adventurer groups, it'll tell me they're no more, but they'll continue to exist anyway. I've also had the game freeze when searching for new lands to conquer, this being the second time in my current playthrough that I've done this.
I'm playing on a debug difficulty (69) and have used 777 multiple times, so I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it.
That's odd mate, do you have any modded races in your game?
It's been awhile, but I don't recall using modded races.
The same with the rebels, they seized my land, but they still had 9 lands and left 9, I write this to my previous posts about the limit of 25 lands for bandits, 6 lands for Krut, and 8 lands for Erak, more lands they cannot capture, if these factions have less land, then the invasion proceeds normally.
Very weird, never noticed this myself so I'll do some digging! Thanks for the report
I found another bug when I captured all the rebel lands on the diplomacy screen like this.
The Rebels were destroyed by Bandits in the year of 60.
They have been dead for 1 years.
I also encountered this error in older versions of the game, I thought that it had already been fixed.
Weirdly same, I thought I'd fixed that. Will have to look further into it when I get a minute
Cheers for reporting mate
no, no one invaded them, and with the cool it’s the same as with the bandits, they are all fine when the cool has less than 6 lands and the bandits have less than 25 lands, after capturing lands from other factions, they cannot increase the land limit, I suspect that and another goblin kingdom cannot get more than 8 lands.
the same with goblin kingdoms, they seize land from another faction, but Krut, as it was 6 land, still has 6.
Wait, you're seeing the Krut launch invasions, succeed but not go up in land??
found a bug, when a bandit horde seizes land from goblins, then goblins lose land, but the bandit horde, as it was 25 land, still has 25 land, I don’t know it will have the same effect when a bandit horde captures land from some other faction.
when the bandits have less than 25 lands, everything is fine.
When they have less than 25 they are going up when they take land?
Just to clarify did anyone else successfully invade them at the same time? Cause it could be that they took a land, and lost one. Happens to me sometimes haha
Devplays - From Dying Kingdom to Empire (as fast as I can)
I have said this before, but ill say it again. Thank you for updating this game as much as you do.
Means a lot mate <3
Love the game! Thanks for all your hard work.
Found a couple of typos. Apologies, I can't remember exactly where but maybe you can run a search for them?
Thanks mate will look into them, although the last one isn't a typo afaik
No probs! "pendant" is a noun. "pendent" is an adjective. As far as I recall the context of its use was that an adventuring party had stolen a "pendent". So it looked to me like it should have been the noun "pendant" instead.
Ah I see, TIL :)
This is a wonderful game, with interesting random development.
Each new launch brings new events and random adventures!
The game is actively developing, and gets new interesting opportunities for managing the kingdom!
It is up to you to decide who you will be, a just ruler, or a malicious tyrant.
The game is also beautiful because at the start you can customize the world almost to the smallest detail!
And with recent updates, you can launch the game without settings and just play.
It would probably be great if there were new features at least after getting an achievement, or vassalizing kingdoms. New features such as:
The emergence of new kingdoms, without the destruction of old ones, the management of villages and cities encountered in the study of zimel, only under the condition of high social influence.
Control a rogue horde, and armies of demons with a void army.
With low influence.
Opportunities to create cities, settlements on the ruins of existing villages and fortresses from scratch.
Creation of an alliance of kingdoms, where you will be the main ruler, and after a certain time you will be able to influence some world processes that you could not do before.
For example, training residents from the wild lands, the goblin kingdoms, to improve them.
For example, after such actions, you will be able to maintain contact with those who were sinful and were stupid.
It is also possible to create independent villages, they will live and develop themselves, you will only help them. villages will bring glory to the king, fight, unite, and who knows, maybe one day a new kingdom will appear, which will also obey you!
But maybe the village will forget your merits and want to attack you?
There can be a great many possible ideas for the game, this is just the first thing that comes to mind!
If you liked something, I will be glad if something similar appears sometime.
Good luck in development, and may everyone enjoy this wonderful game as much as I do!
Thank you so much mate <3
with great respect to you, and to your titanic work on this game that has given and continues to give me many hours of fun and pleasure.
Ah thank you mate that means a lot <3
I noticed another bug in the game, when a miner from Monfort Mine comes to the throne room with the news that 3 miners died, then the number of miners in Monfort Mine remains the same 500, but in Shallowrock Mine if you have 600 miners, then it really remains 597, that is, the miners die in Shallowrock Mine and not in Monfort Mine.
this bug was in earlier versions of the game.
Thanks for the report mate, will look into this!
Just investigated and can't find anything in the throne room for Monfort Mine having miners die at all :S
I can only see shallowrock losing, or a monfort event where they sell the mine
yes
When transferring all factions to the new combat system after capturing the last land, the rebels and Goblin kingdoms do not storm the capital, for example, Erak the Cave Troll (Only in the Capital)
(300 battle points)
Aerak Ogre (capital only)
(350 combat points), elite rebel guard (capital only)
(175 Battle Points)
Rebel Lord (Capital only)
(225 battle points).
No fights for the capital and no fights with these units
and over time, the champion of The Brawlers Pit begins to kill his rivals with one blow, this was also in previous versions of the game.
I have the latest version of the game 1.4
here is a link to my save file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zloYgcdBfl2xSoZoODxe_paQvnxET3pe/view?usp=shari...
Hey mate, cheers for sharing, so wait the brawl pit champ turns into a permanent one hit killer and always first hit kills the opponent everytime? :o
Hi, does the itch purchase include a Steam key too?
It doesn't but I can definitely provide one
Thanks. I'll consider when I get it.
No worries mate :)
When you transferred all the fractions to the new combat system after the seizure of the last land from the rebels and the Goben kingdoms there are no assaults of the capital, for example Erak Cave Troll (Only in Capital)
(300 Battlescore)
Erak Ogre (Only in Capital)
(350 Battlescore), Elite Rebel Guard (Only in Capital)
(175 Battlescore)
Rebel Lord (Only in Capital)
(225 Battlescore).
There are no battles to seize the capital and no battles with these units
Thank you mate, I'll get this noted down and try and look into it soon <3
Hi! I don't have a reddit account so I'll report 2 bugs here. I hope they are reproducable but they should be, don't seem too random. Wish I had the time to recreate them but I didn't sleep a whole night because of playing this and have to catch up work and sleep so I'll just explain how I ran into them. Playing the newest version 0852
1. When I recruited a fifth champion the message was along the lines of "you recruit Xyz Of Whatever as your first champion". Pretty sure it happened consistently.
2. I defeated a faction, and at capturing their last land was asked about their monarch's fate. I had him join me as a champion. Then I visited their refugee camp and recruited the same monarch as another champion so I had two of a kind (or even... two of a king)
That said the game is great fun. I was about to wait for a gog release but couldn't resist after playing the demo for 2 days... when I thought that You supposedly earn more at itch.io it was enough a reason (and I'll buy or gift the gog version anyway to drive sales). I always wanted to make a game a bit like this and am envious and inspired. Keep up the good work.
Hey mate, sorry for the late reply and thanks for taking the time to write this!
Will note down and have a look into those bugs asap and make sure you get the credit for any fixes
Thank you so much for the kind words and support mate! <3
I started playing video games around 1980 as a kid. My first game was Zork. Of course, Warsim is light years ahead of Zork as it has tons more depth but I am so glad there are those that still appreciate this style of game. Great graphics are just fine, but in the end, it's the GAMEPLAY that matters! I am a GOG user and happened to see that this game will be there soon...BUT...I just could not wait to play it so I got it here and would be happy to support it on GOG as well! It's great to see that this game is still being improved...would love to see where it can still go!
P.S. I carry this game on a thumb drive so I can play anywhere/anytime!
Hey mate! Thank you so much for taking the time to write and share this, hearing that you carry my game around on a thumb drive is absolutely magical so thank you for that! Made my week I think haha
I totally agree with you too, gameplay is the most important element of any good game. I'm still in the process of getting it released with the lovely people at GOG, but thank you for supporting the game here first mate! Appreciate it a lot
TLDR: 10/10 made my week
there is a bug in the game that is pretty consistent. I go to fight the demon lord and I win. After that, a command error message pops up along with some recorded dialogue. No matter what I push, the error never stops coming and the message never stops playing, so I believe the two are connected.
Hey buddy, what's the error message? That's an odd one
The message came from skipping through the battle too quickly. Even when I told the game I wanted to see no battles, it still made me see this one and it was getting pretty long, so I tried skipping it, and it crashed the game. So, I bit the bullet and tried again, and did not skip the battle, and it went as planned.
Hmm, that is very strange, if this is still happening can you send me a save file so I can catch the error.
Really awesome ASCII game. I played now for a few hours and had a blast. Now there is the little issue in my run.
When i started the game, i turned the demon horde on and i think they are a nice idea and execution for the game itself (They are meant to be a threat and the game also shows). Though i played a bit against them and since it was my first playthrough, i didn't played 'optimally', meaning the demon horde overruns my Kingdom over time. Is there a way to turn off the demon horde during an active game?
If not, it is also not a problem. I expected to fail with that Kingdom anyway and got way further then i thought i would get ;)
About the rest of the game, as i said earlier, i really enjoy it. The humour is neat and the decisions you have also feel like they have influence shaping your Kingdom or relations with foreign factions. The randomness of the game also adds to that.
A really nice game for Goblin friends... or foes.
Hey thank you for writing this and I'm sorry for the delay in replying, I've been away for a bit :)
So for the demon horde, you can disable them by using the debug menu.
Go to options then 7) Extras
In there go to the cheat menu and then enter 399
Return to the main game menu and you'll notice a new option at the bottom '15) Debug Mode Options'
Enter 15 and then choose option 5
Here you can make any tweaks to the demon horde you want. Then when you want to be rid of the menu, go back to the developer debug mode and enter 12. Or just back out and keep the debug menu accessible there, but may also unlock debug menus in random places in the world.
As for the thoughts on thje game, I really appreciate them. It means a lot that you enjoy the humour. I'd definitely class myself as a goblin friend haha
Also love the flag in your profile image :)
Thanks again for the lovely comment and I hope you enjoy the game even more <3
I downloaded the demo and played it on easy until the unstoppable demon hordes showed up.
It was a very enjoyable experience which brought to mind the good old days of BBS door games.
I have a few suggestions. First, it was unfortunate that there was no default for the Enter key, so I always had to type in a number, usually '0', which added a lot of unnecessary key strokes to my experience. This also caused army battles to be overly complicated. Battle would be streamlined if it were possible to default-none or default-yes the Enter key for various army types. It is also not possible to fire or sell the unique soldier types you can hire from Independent nations, which made my battles unnecessarily complex until the demons killed them all.
I also suggest the demo end in some way when nothing is left but the Demon hordes. The post-demon horde game is kind of empty, so the dev might as well just end it purposefully. Give information about why we should buy the complete game. It was not obvious to me what was missing, though there were some parts of the explorer pages that were marked "???" and others "not coded yet". Are these included in the final version?
Congratulations on your project.
Hello mate,
I'm glad you enjoyed playing the old version of the game. As for the suggestions I can't really take any for the old version of the game as it's been so many years of development and so many thousands of new additions that the old version is significantly outdated.
I plan to release a good proper demo of the game soon that shows it off for what it is now.
I'm glad you enjoyed it though and happy new year mate :)
i have question. on my pc when i try to open the game, i get something that says windows dialog but the game never opens. i must say though i am using a screen reader, that i feel this means nothing. don't know whats blocking this from opening but windows defender, the program that likes to remove stuff is turned off etc. if someone can help some how i will be grateful thanks.
Hey mate, I've seen a discussion of this on the audoogames forum. I don't understand screenreaders or NVDA but it seems to have become an issue lately when it previously has been ok so I'm hoping the discussion can help figure out what's happened.
Warsim has worked with screen readers for years and years so it's strange so many people are having issues with it now.
I'm sorry it's happening to you too!
If you can, join on the main thread here and share your issue as the helpful people might be able to help us get it sorted
https://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=16553
well, in truth it would take almost all day to go through that thread to see the solution to something like this. i'm not sure its a screen reader thing sense the game isn't even opening. from what i've read, it seems people are having issues when playing the game with a screenreader witch for those issues that seems to be something that was fixed. my issue is the game isn't opening as if something may be blocking it or something of that nature. cause it says windows dialog but it doesn't say anything else after that. i'm gona try turning the screenreader off and see if it starts then turning screenreader on. if it still doesn't start then this will prove that this isn't a screenreader issue. yet can't find whats blocking it.
I found a solution one of the users posted there, I don't know if this will be any help
https://forum.audiogames.net/post/683834/#p683834
hears the thing i think we are missing hear. i can't get the exicutiable to open. all i've read or that u showed me is that people using NVDA not reading properly in the game. this might help again, if i could get the game to open? seeing how this is the case ware the game won't even open for me to try, this about NVDA is well, rather useless. the application in the zip file itsself will not open to play. so i'm not even able to try this after paying to support this. for sometime windows defender would erase this for whatever reasoning. however, i fixed that issue sometime ago. but again now it won't even open saying window dialog. or windows dialog. this causes me again to not enter the game and nothing on the link that u sent me fixes this issue. it just fixes issues for those who can actually play the game but have used NVDA and found issues in playing. my issue is with the ex file opening to even start.
Damn this is very strange, I don't know why this would happen?
another qn i wana know is does this game run on 32 bit windows and does it work on windows 11 yet?
This game is absolutely amazing in concept and everything! Too bad I can't buy it right now because I don't have a PC/ I am broke :P . It's a wonder this isn't more well known! Maybe get gamasutra or rock paper shotgun or something to write about it, or make a gamasutra account and write about it instead of on medium :P .
Wow, I was planning a kingdom roguelike that has to do with pesonalities and would like to hear your insights on different personalities/character traits in your game. Also for it to be ~210mb for ASCII!! Just how much content is there or do sounds take up most of the space?
This doesn't do anything for publicity but I wrote about your game here.
Thank you so much for the kind words mate, I'm sorry to hear about your pc being broke but hope you can fix it soon!
I'd love to get Warsim more well known but we'll see how it goes when I get it out of early access finally. I've got a lot of things I'll be trying when it does.
What sort of things do you wish to know about character traits? In my game any characters that have gameplay effecting traits tend to be saved for specific kinds of people.
So kingdom rulers pull from a set of kingdom ruler traits, stuff like:
* Strange - Requires bizarre things to conduct diplomacy, such as sacrifices, communicates with very strange things (such as them sending you a letter telling you they have a gift of gold for you, which they threw into the sea)
* Hostile - Unlikely to make peace, hard to do diplomacy with, things can anger them and damage relations that wouldn't with other rulers
* Stupid - Makes terrible choices, will make peace/alliances on a whim, very easy to manipulate
* Merchant - They are all about the money, want a trade deal... pay a fee, want an alliance... pay a fee, peace? For a price of course
Where as staff like Stewards have a different set of traits that effect how they deal with throne room visitors.
Goblin slavers have another set of traits that define how many they recruit and what type of goblin they have.
Bandit gang leaders are the same etc, So there isn't one system of traits but several for different types of characters in game.
And as for the filesize, it's mostly the sfx, there are 100s and 100s in the game haha.
Thanks for posting, both there and on here, very lovely to see! <3
Wow, thank you for the information and it really makes sense. Different traits for different types of people. Gamasutra articles about this sort of things would be really nice. Anyway thanks for the information and good luck on your project.
Check this out! Unrelated though!
Unrelated completely but interesting facts
PS: I even forgot I posted on that other place until I got a notification >:-D
Realy keep it up! Keep on adding and adding to this game. Like-I don't know-if there was a council of games I would put this up there with minecraft and dwarf fortress and doom!
Glad to help mate, and cheers for the kind words! It's an honour to be compared to those great games :)
I bought this on Steam the other day, and I came here to say that this is an absolute amazing game!
I love the simplicity yet complexity of it, with so much to do, and it is so well executed.
You've even inspired me to make my own text-based console games with C++!
Thank you so much for all the amazing work you do on the game
Thank you for the support on steam mate, and the kind words! Means a lot
And that's amazing, best of luck with the C++ text based game mate! :)
Thanks again, reading this made my morning and I'm screenshotting it <3
Hey, just have to say I checked this out a while back when it was free and kind of forgot about it, until someone mentioned it again. Bought it on Steam and love it. I love the ability to turn off ASCII as a screen reader user. This game is super accessible being played in what is basically a command prompt window. It is hard to find fun, engaging games that are fully accessible without some kind of huge long mod process, so thank you from myself and several other blind and VI folks I know that play this.
Hey mate, just wanted to say that reading stuff like this makes my day. It's so so awesome to know that such kind and lovely people are getting enjoyment out of something I've made. I was invited to the audiogames.net community 6 years ago and I've found so many nice people on there who helped and inspired me to make this game as screen reader friendly as possible and it's been such a pleasure.
Thanks for taking the time to write this mate
Man, this is some amazing work mate!
Incredibly done!
I have no complaints or issues with it, so far it has run fantastic. So much thought and creativity was put into it, and my jaw legit dropped just playing through some of this. So much depth, yet so accessible!
Thank you so much mate, reading this made my day! <3
I'm so glad you're enjoying it and I hope you continue to :)
Would be nice to be able to select dominant gender of a realm. For example, the top screen lists soldiers as Men, what if I want to play as Drow where the presumed council would be female and the soldiers too would be female with males turning up less frequently? Could be cool.
Interesting idea for sure! Noted for something in the future potentially. Thanks :)
Really looking forward to playing this, ever since watching it on a YT video. I purchased it but when I try to launch it from the itch desktop app, it opens a cmd window (on Windows 10) and then ... nothing. Anyone have this issue, or any suggestions?
Hey mate I'm so sorry that happened to you!
Over the years several people have reported problems similarly, seems to be something to do with the windows codepage
Thread explaining it here https://www.reddit.com/r/WarsimRpg/comments/f3t5bz/i_cant_seem_to_start_the_game...
Solutions people have found
- Legacy mode enabling - https://steamcommunity.com/app/659540/discussions/0/2999926461248350662/
- Changing the code page to 437 - https://steamcommunity.com/app/659540/discussions/0/1743358239830339859/
- Turning off UTF-8 - https://www.reddit.com/r/WarsimRpg/comments/f3t5bz/i_cant_seem_to_start_the_game...
- One user 'Rage knight' suggested 'Search for the option of "system local" in region option in control panel under administrative tab. in there, there is an option to change system locale. if you option it, there is a "beta" check box. i think microsoft auto checked it on systems that installed japanese language pack. i think it was the issue.'
I have never personally experienced it but the people who did all seemed to have fixed it in the end so hopefully we can for you. Keep me posted and worse case scenario get a refund if we can't get it working. Shouldn't be paying it you can't play!
Once again though I'm sorry this is happening for you.
Cheers
Huw
Your game looks fantastic, I sent you extra $10:) Can you tell me more, about your game development process? Which programing language are you using, how you prepare plan (new stuff) etc. I want to develop game(s) also, but I always give up in some stage:( do you have some advices for me?:)
Hey Pavel, Thank you so much for the support and the extra tip, that's really kind of you!
So the games development process for me was an interesting one, the game is written in c++ and when I first started I just worked on procedural generation, I love proc gen stuff so when I learned how to do it I just spent all my time making little generators, weapon generators, ship generators, face generators.
I did that for a year or so for fun in some of my spare time, but I was sad that I couldn't use them in a game. I looked into c++ tutorials for game development online and started learning, I made a basic battle simulator in one of them, and then added troop hiring, then an arena, then desertion, then exploration, then mercenary groups, then randomised enemies, and so on and before I knew it I had a really early version of Warsim.
I didn't think much of it but it was turning into a legitimate game. I left the project for a while but when I came back I put it on reddit and here on itch.io and handfuls of people checked it out, many gave their thoughts and tips on what could improve things. Over time I would release updates and try and take on board player feedback as much as I could. After two years of developing it more seriously I decided to put it on steam and after that things really blew up for me.
I've now sold over 24000 copies in the three years it's been on steam, and the game has had 100s of updates and is far better than I ever thought it could be from the constant work.
So for planning I write down in simple .txt files little sections of features I'd like to add, over time as many were suggested by players the list grew massively, 1000s of things on there, I would go through and add and work on anything I wanted. Whatever I was most interested in at the time, or if something would be a quick and easy fix/addition I'd get it out of the way.
After a few years of working through the giant list I realised I'd be in development forever, I'm 5 years in right now and still in early access for example. So I spent a few days going through the entire list and spring cleaning it, I cleared stuff that wasn't really worth adding, categorised suggestions that were for the same area of the game, and I made a new list for stuff that wasn't essential to the game but could be added later as a post-release plan list.
In the end I got the list cut down from about 3000 things to about 500, then worked through that list by doing themed updates clearing whole blocks of stuff.
Honestly for motivation it can be super hard, for me having random generation in the game was nice because some of the content is different each time so at least all the playtesting doesn't get so boring but even that wears thin eventually. The biggest one for me is player feedback, having messages and comments was fuel for development for me and really made me want to keep working on it. I never used to get many but these days across Warsim's steam/discord/reddit etc there are plenty of new comments and feedback which always motivate me.
It also helps that I'm working on a game I like to play, and if I think of something that would make my playtime more fun I just add it, which was always what my dream of game development was.
My advice for starting out is getting feedback, if you can get people who are willing to play your game and give you feedback it can be invaluable, I thought I had good vision for game development, but I was blind to so many things that just didn't occur to me until players mentioned it. No one is perfect and no one considers everything and sometimes working on a game and looking at it so closely we miss the bigger picture and really obvious things that need to be changed/added etc.
If you can get feedback and work on it to keep improving your project it will inevitably be a better game in time, obviously advice varies a bit depending on platform/target market/genre etc
I hope this all helps and once again thank you for your support!
Happy new year and greetings from Wales in the UK
Huw ~
Hello, just purchased this game from your website. I just saw that this is also available on STEAM in early access. As you make updates to the game, how do I update my downloaded version? I hope this question makes sense. Thank you.
Hey, thanks for the support.
So whenever the game receives an update it gets updated at the same time on both steam and itch.io. To update the game just redownload it from your download link, your save files will always be compatable with any new versions of the game.
Hope this helps and please enjoy the game :)
Huw
I've had a lot of fun with this game, I highly recommend it!
Thanks for the comment Julia, Glad you've been enjoying the game :)
I bought this game, and even threw in an extra $5. However... upon purchasing and downloading it, I found that I cannot play it. I'm running Windows 8.1, and when I click the launch button on Itch, the game will start, but its window doesn't play. I hear what I presume is the main menu SFX, but Warsim doesn't appear on any of my three monitors, nor does it appear when I alt-tab through my available windows.
I've tried restarting my pc and relaunching the game, but nothing happens. Any thoughts on how I can fix this problem?
Edit: I can launch the game through its install folder and it works properly, but not through itch. I don't know what could cause this issue, but at least I can play the game now.
Hey Klokinator,
Sorry I've only just seen this but thank you a bunch for the tip! Very kind of you :)
I'll be honest I didn't even know you could launch games through itch, but I'm glad you've got it fixed. Is everything working fine now?
Cheers
Huw
Yeah, I got it sorted. I want to play more of the game, however, the game window is very tiny. I have a 1440p monitor and it is a fraction of my monitor's size. I can barely read the text and it's giving me awful eyestrain. I'd enjoy the game more if I could make the window and text bigger in scale. Any suggestions?
Right click the top bar of the screen and select properties, from there you should be able to adjust the font and window size as you please :)
this is one of the most underrated indie games i ever seen, the potential is huge. even as it is its a great game and worth a buy.
but the marketing and pricing is terribly done, its worth 5$ not 3$ its disrespectful to pay any less then 5$ for this game. you can burn a lot of hours of fun with it. and there isnt alot of text based games like it, not that polished.
if i was this game owner/creator, i would upload a video about it every day, knock on every door, post anywhere they let me post. and even have a marketing budget targeted at indie game fans (rouglike/crusader kings/ casual game fans etc) you need a real targeted market research and good copywriting somthing that will talk directly to your target (your game description is OK). maybe use influencers, like that crazy sseth he did ascii based game reviews (maybe find a smaller youtuber influencer).
and a better way to monetize this, at this rate it wont fly, and this thing can. maybe a patreon. its so good i personally will throw more dollas at this just to get more content.
you made it in the product creation phase which is a great feat alone. but you need marketing/ copywriting too. learn those stuff, read gary halbert (his stuff is free gold). psychology of buying (why people buy). search on google anything you can find on internet marketing (and game advertising) free and paid seo etc (you can dominate some of your games keywords=free trafic in the long term).
in any case good luck.
Hey Yoel, thanks for such a kind comment!
I appreciate you seeing potential in it, The game is currently on sale on steam and I'm trying to get the discount visible and use it as an opportunity to gain more players.
I'm always happy to take on ideas around marketing though so I appreciate it!
Thanks a bunch :)
Hi! I just purchased your game here again (I already own it on Steam for some years now) to support your incredibly ambitious project and your dedication to continuously improve it. And indeed it gets better and better with every update and has become one of my favourites. I look forward to every new version. I wish you all the best with Warsim, I really hope it gets the attention it deserves.
<3 Thanks for the support! It means a lot
Is a macOS version still in the roadmap?
I would like to in the future! I have never gotten anything running on mac before but fingers crossed