Introversion

[Chris]

One thing that perhaps isn't clear to regular readers is that although Subversion is my focus, i'm actually involved in a number of different projects at any one time. Chief amoung them is codenamed Multiwinia - our new Multiplayer game set in the world of Darwinia, and probably the next game we release. For this game i'm taking more of a producer/director role, rather than taking personal control of everything as I usually do. This is an experiment for us, to see if we can produce two games at once, and there's no shortage of extremely talented people working on Multiwinia - Gary is working on the game itself, Johnny is handling networking and multiplayer, and Stepan is doing the DirectX graphical work. The only part i'm personally handling is the new control method for managing your army. We've also got Alistair coming back to work on the audio (can't imagine anyone else ever doing our audio to be honest - where do you find someone who can do audio like Darwinia and Defcon?)

I think in the past we've misrepresented Multiwinia as some sort of Multiplayer addon to Darwinia. The reality is that Multiwinia is a totally new thing - it will be sold as a stand-alone multiplayer game and the original Darwinia won't be included. (We may end up bundling Darwinia in the same box, but that's yet to be decided, and it will still be a seperate product).

The original game Darwinia doesn't really suit multiplayer that well - fundamentally its about fast arcade action with the squaddies, punctuated by long periods of relative calm while you do the more sedade resource gathering, building capture etc, and prepare your next strike. This gives the single player game a nice pace - you marshal your forces and strike the next target, and the red enemy rarely does anything to proactively disrupt your plans. It's calm and serene, with moments of extreme concentrated violence, all under your control.

In Multiplayer, most of that goes out the window. Squaddies are far too powerful, and the indirect officer control ends up getting in your way, because you need closer control of your Darwinians during battles when your opponent is a real person. Herding Darwinians around with goto orders only works when your opponent isn't proactive, as in the Biosphere level from Darwinia.

In order to fix this we've been making some radical changes, and we've absolutely no problem with slaughtering any sacred cows that get in our way. We're aiming for a fast, brutal and hilarious multiplayer wargame, set in the world of Darwinia. Some people may be concerned about this - people who are particularly attached to some element of Darwinia perhaps. But Darwinia is Darwinia, and Multiwinia is something else. It's not a sequel and it's not an addon pack. It's an entirely new game, set in a world we've seen before.

A big problem we are having right now is what to call this game. Naming our games is always difficult, and codenames often last through 80% of the project lifespan - Terminal, Future War, Wargames. In this case it's even harder, since the world already has a name. The codename Multiwinia has stuck since the start, but it's not what we want - this name only means something to people who've played Darwinia. We are fairly sure we don't want the word Darwinia in the main title at all. We want something that represents the fun crazy action multiplayer game we are trying to make.

Other ideas we've had:
Stickmen Slaughter
Red versus Green
Attack Vector
Green War Machine

We'd love to hear your suggestions. In fact the main purpose behind this blog posting was to throw the issue open - tell us what you think, and if you have any ideas of your own please post them in here. If we see something we really like...well, you could have named Introversion's next game. We're willing to consider anything at this time.

Last edited by Chris on Wed Apr 09, 2008 2:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

[shinygerbil]

Sweet. Truly sweet.

/me thinks hard

[Xocrates]

Hmm...

Hmmmm.....

Edit: Curiosly enough, from the names I've seen up there, the only one that really appeals to me is "Digital Nightmare". Maybe a variant of that, perhaps?

Digital War? - actually this one sounds kind of lame

[earlyflash]

Herd Culling?
Beagle Slaughter?
Beagle Voyage?
Plinian
Pliniania

[KingAl]

I'm currently only capable of thinking up lame puns like 'Metawarphasis'.

[shinygerbil]

Heh. Mine aren't much less lame. I'm just refraining from posting them.

About the best I've come up with is "Digital Splatterhouse", or, perhaps, "Fractal Splatterhouse". It's a shame Splatterhouse has already been done, though

[Rkiver]

I say go back to the name Future War, or Digital War. Those who've been around long enough will the the nod to the old name of Darwinia during development, and since Multiwinia grew out of Darwinia, but is totally different, as different as Darwinia was to the original idea of Future War, it's a fun 180 turn around.

Or something.

I could just be rambling. Sorry shiney new graphics card is distracting me.

[Mas Tnega]

Future War. That's what it was, that's what it might as well be.

[Xocrates]

You know, since the original name is a derivation of Darwin, maybe something related to evolution and it's principles would be cool.

And personally, I think a one word title would be best.

[MrBunsy]

Chris wrote:

Stepan is doing the DirectX graphical work.

Does that mean it will be OpenGL and DirectX, or Windows only this time?

[thindigital]

great games n forum you got here devs cheers

so anyway, a name for your new game:

Sprite Wars

Bit War(s) << snappier than digital war

Attack of the Flat People <<

Code War(s)

anyway, keep up the hard work

kind regards

Steve

[shinygerbil]

Bit War sounds good - although I think Bitwar sounds even better

[thindigital]

'Bitwars' then maybe ?

[jelco]

I like the idea of 'Bitwars', but it sounds a little too simple. The word war isn't quite good for this, I think.

How about 'Codename Vector'? Or 'Operation Megabyte'? Wait, that last one sounds a little too obscure, even for an indie game...

Err... 'Flat Fantastic'? 'The Green Team'?

This one's good: 'Greenvolution'. It contains 'green', 'evolution' (as Xocrates suggested), you could see 'revolution' in it too, perhaps...

Jelco

PS: On a less serious note, you could pick 'The Green Beagles'. If you don't get the hint, you should look up Darwin.

Last edited by jelco on Thu Jun 14, 2007 4:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

[thindigital]

rally to the bitwars banner lol :-