Warmachine: Tactics isn’t just another game; it’s the representation and realization of a decade’s worth of fantasy.
Utilizing the power and flexibility of Unreal Engine 4, this adaptation of the award-winning tabletop strategy game from Privateer Press brings a brutal and war-torn universe to life.
With the backing of nearly 20,000 energetic supporters in their strikingly successful Kickstarter campaign, Los Angeles-based developers WhiteMoon Dreams began working on the passion project using Unreal Engine 3, an infrastructure that the experienced team was equally comfortable and familiar with.
However, the ambitious task of delivering a long-lasting, scalable experience would lead them to a series of enthusiastic meetings that convinced the team to take their project to an exciting new level.
“Working with UE3 was nice because it was very familiar,” WhiteMoon CEO Jay Koottarappalli said, in an interview with PCGamesN. “But when Epic told us, ‘You guys should really consider developing in UE4, we’re really firing on all cylinders for that,’ we began an evaluation on it.”
The transition to Unreal Engine 4 proved to be beneficial almost immediately for the independent team, allowing for a less arduous development cycle, and a chance for the relatively small team to achieve the grand scope that they had always envisioned.
“We wanted something that was going to be scaleable, and I feel like the choice of the engine has been one of the best decisions that we’ve made on the project. It was really forward-looking.”
As any general knows, you need troops to win a battle. With this in mind, Warmachine: Tactics made its debut on Steam Early Access in July of 2014. Having direct access to player input was -- and continues to be -- invaluable to shaping WhiteMoon’s vision, and the convenience of Unreal Engine 4 is making it easier than ever to implement changes.
“One of our players last night told me that they had found a bug, I submitted it to QA, who verified it and told Engineering. The whole cycle took 15 minutes and the fix went out in a patch within hours. It took no time, no effort. It’s just wonderful.”
Clearly, upgrading to Unreal Engine 4 has already played a huge part in transforming the expansive dream into a digital reality, yet this is only the beginning according to WhiteMoon.
The developers plan to support Warmachine: Tactics well into the future, a future that Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprints is helping them prepare for. The toolset is a marquee feature of UE4, blending the complexity of a robust design suite with an intuitive and comprehensible interface, allowing programmers and non-programmers alike to create features independently.
“Being able to hire on new designers and have them learn a more visual scripting language is much easier for us. It’s more cost-effective and it’s easier to find those people. So once again we’re really ensuring longevity.”
A project built upon the foundation of change, Warmachine: Tactics is a game that is defined by evolution, from its rise from the tabletop to crowdsourcing, Early Access and beyond.
The game is available now on Steam. Visit http://warmachinetactics.com/ to keep up with on-going details and check them out on Twitter.