Most of you (or rather all of you
) don't know that apart from being a HoMM fan, I'm also a computer programmer and a member of a programming group Artifex Mundi, most members of which are students and PhD students at Silesian University of Technology. For the last several years we've been working on our graphics engine FRS (Flexible Reality Simulation) and as now it is at quite advanced stage of development, a year ago we decided to write our first computer game based on the engine and send it to the Europrix Top Talent Award, which is "Europe’s contest for students and young professionals who work on innovative projects in the field of e-contents and design - using whatever multimedia channel or platform" (quote from the site).Several days ago we finished the first version of the game, The Scriptarians. You can download it from our site here.
The game is based on a very old idea of Core Wars, in which you had to write your own programs in a simple assembler-like programming language and then watch them fight. Here, you are supposed to write programs of animated, 3D fantasy warriors in a high level language called Scriptarin (that's why the game is called The Scriptarians
). A few teams of warriors are already written, so you can arrange multiple battles and watch them fight. Four maps are available of which Get Out Of Here! and Donkey Island (guess where the idea of this map comes from ) I would say are best. In the download site you can read a bit more detailed game description. Moreover, there's a very detailed documentation provided with the game, which will be available from Start menu after you install the game. One out of four documents is still in Polish, as we had no time to translate it, but this is the one dedicated directly to those, who want to learn much about writing the warriors' programs and write challenging and effective teams. It shall be translated in the future. The whole Artifex Mundi site is in Polish, but the linked The Scriptarians download site is in English. Moreover, I have started an English language thread in our forums, so I'd be very grateful if any of you would write some comments about the game.
The game is still in development, so we are aware of the fact that there are some bugs in it - we're working on it and soon a newer version will be releaesed. However, any information about detected bugs might be very helpful, so please, write any of your comments and suggestions here.
Thanx in advance!
P.S.
Important: the game will not run if your graphics adapter does not support pixel and vertex shaders 2.0. You can read more about the game requirements in the installation manual in the download site.
