Ternadim Progress

Uh oh... what should I write. This is the first blog post ever about Ternadim, but I'll get down to business right away.

During the past two months, Ternadim got a lot of not-so-obvious additions, tweaks and fixes. Here are some hilights:

Map generator now generates cliffs (they're awesome)

Grass and sand now have visible grids. I have been alternating between not having and having a grid, and I think I will now stick to having a visible grid.

Fog of war is now based on line of sight - you can hide units behind trees, hills and in pits.

Now the AI respects the fog of war! If you stay hidden, they won't know where you are - but they will search for you.

The mission editor was almost completely rewritten - it is now based on a simple keyboard-based interface. The old interface was too clumsy for actual usage; using this one is quite enjoyable once you get the hang of it.

And now there are two re-made campaign missions for each faction, representing the somewhat altered style in which they all will be created.

[progress intensifies]

So then, time-travelling to about two weeks ago, I was once again playing a randomly-generated Ternadim mission just for the fun of beating the silly AI in some unexpected situation (if you haven't tried, you should!), and...

Well honestly I don't even know when I first thought of it, but in any case I decided that making a very streamlined online mission and high score repository would fit the usage very well.

So there comes...

...this thing called "Ternadim Online".

The basic idea is obvious: You play stuff, and if it appears to be a good challenge, you input some nickname and press "Upload" to send the mission (wherever it came) to the Ternadim server. Or if you just finished it, the mission is sent along with the high score, and the server sorts out whether it's a newly uploaded one or not.

At any time, anyone owning a copy of Ternadim can browse and play the uploaded missions.

There are three things to point out:

This system does not do anything automatically in the background. You only contact the server if you press an "Upload" or "Download" (or the "Online") button.

It does not use usernames or passwords. When being downloaded, each client gets their own client key (the key.dat file), which the server will check. These can then be used for mitigating abuse. You're free to use any nickname or remain anonymous.

The user interface is brutal: You directly see hashes (checksums) of the missions and the client keys.

Other

Mission file format

Since Skirmish Alpha 2 (a looong time ago), the file format was reworked. It is now based on JSON and should be quite easily interoperable with third-party tools if needed. There's some info about it in the README.txt file distributed with Ternadim. However, the format is still subject to changes.

Alpha

Here you can download a copy of Ternadim Online Alpha 2:

Unless I decide to release a yet another alpha, this alpha version will have access to the server all the way until the official release.

You can come and chat about it on IRC at #8dromeda @ Freenode. (webchat) There's no forum or anything at least yet. (Reddit works too, though.)

Next

Next I'll be putting all of my silly ideas into the campaign mode of the game, possibly adding some other stuff along the way.

The release will be absolutely glorious!

Pricing

Once finished to version 1, Ternadim will be sold as pay-what-you-want. You will get an online key if you pay $1 or more.

I have decided to use Gumroad as the selling platform - it's very indie-do-whatever-you-want friendly and has just the right amount of integration ability. One thing worth noting is that it does not support PayPal, but it's credit card checkout is extremely simple. (I tested it; now I wonder why anyone would use PayPal for something like this...)

- A of 8Dromeda