Transcription
Tweet by Sandy Petersen @SandyofCthulhu:
In 1997 I got hired at Ensemble Studios. My first task was to create a magic-based RTS game to be a sister product to Age of Empires. Tim Deen was my lead programmer, and Scott Winsett my lead artist. They were (and are) great devs. We had other artists, and later on a few more programmers.
I named it Sorceress, based on the plot (which I won't go into here), and here is how it worked.
You'd design your own sorcerer, outside the game, and put him into a stable of sorcerers. You'd then load up one of your sorcerers when you started a game. You got 4-6 points to customize him. A point might purchase a group of spells (typically 2-6 related spells, plus their upgrades), extra starting Numina (our word for spell points) or a pre-generated band of warriors who would appear a few minutes into the game.
There were four realms of magic, each with its own preferred style. These were Dawn, Sun, Twilight, and Moon. The map had magic items to find, and immobile objects of value that you could derive magic or troops or spells from. These could be obelisks, moonstones, volcanos, magic groves, etc.
The random map generator included "supertiles" which let us have gigantic things like a Temple of Doom or one of those big skull mountains you see in cheap fantasy art.
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You had two resources. Numina and Energy.
Numina is spent to power spells. Your sorcerer has his own personal Numina, and some creatures also have Numina which you can spend. Numina regenerates slowly, so you want to conserve it if you can.
Energy comes in the four realms (Dawn, Sun, Twilight, and Moon). This determines which spells you have available, based on how much Energy you have in that realm. For instance, the Werewolf permanently turns a human soldier into a werewolf. It costs 5 Numina, but you can only cast it if you have at least 50 Moon Energy. The Energy isn't spent - it's a requirement. This forces you to build up your Energy level over time to get good spells. It's also a unit limit. If you have 50 Moon you can only have 50 Moon worth of moon creatures and buildings. Weak creatures take 1 Moon to exist, stronger ones might cost more. So Energy is also a unit unit limit.
This is how I had you ramp up your magical power over time. You'd start with a little Numina and almost no Energy. Then as you built shrines and wizard towers and started tying yourself into resources, your Energy would increase, and your wizard would level up (more Numina) and he could summon familiars and mine magic rocks or harvest magic fruit (or whatever) for more.
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You could train apprentices, who then became mobile spellcasting turrets. You could also give them magic items. Basically, an apprentice lets your sorcerer be in more than one place at a time. They can be killed, resurrected, captured, and even ransomed. I had set ransoms that the enemy had to release your apprentice if you paid.
Resource gathering and production was completely unlike Age of Empires. A Sacred Grove was a map feature. Once you attuned a Grove, you could train Green People from it (the lowest level of elf archers). You can then upgrade it to a Bower, which lets it shoot arrows, making it a defensive tower. If you find a magic stone, you can take it to the Bower, and now it starts accumulating Dawn Energy at the rate of 1/minute. Other upgrades make your Green People better, or the Bower's arrows more potent, etc.
I'd worked out 36 unit types by the time the project ended. They ranged from Sea Serpents to Vampire Trees to Basilisks (which turned enemies to stone which could be mined) to Crossbowmen to Amazons (who rode chariots) to Lizardmen (who were fast & strong in the day and weak at night) to Wraiths (who were deadly killers at night and weak in the day).
There is lots more I could discuss, but when Age of Empires 2 poached all of my people, I decided we couldn't do a whole RTS game with three of us, so we did Rise of Rome instead.
For every completed project, I have at least three canceled ones. No doubt there's an alternate universe where we never did Rise of Rome, but there's an awesome Sorceress game. But also Age of Empires 2 was delayed by a year because they didn't steal my team. Is that a better universe than this one? Who knows?
Anyway if you want to know more about Sorceress, let me know below.
