Basic AI and Teams

We hope that you all have had a great summer! Last week we returned from our vacation, and now we're back in full development mode, primarily focusing on two major features:

• Basic AI (an AI opponent to practice against)
  
• Teams (2v2, 3v3, 1v2, FFA/free-for-all)
  

The Basic AI is an interim implementation that we have prioritized based on feedback and reviews. It’s important to know that this is not the full single-player implementation, but you can see it as an offline sparring partner where you can practice as much as you want without worrying about rank or feeling uncomfortable about anyone watching. The Basic AI will be non-cheating, and it’ll look at the battlefield and draw commands only using the knowledge that it can see in the clearings of the fog of war. Creating an intelligent AI opponent is complicated, so this first implementation will be used to satisfy the basic practice needs of players and provide us, developers, with knowledge for the future large scale implementation of an advanced AI.



Team modes are being worked on in parallel according to the road map. We are looking forward to implementing modes such as 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 3. We're also aiming to include asymmetric matchups such as 1 vs. 2, where a single higher-skill player can play against two lower-skill players simultaneously and free-for-all (FFA).

Implementing teams is a major undertaking. It may not appear that way, but there are many challenges, including picking phase, matchmaking, networking, UI, Fog of War, bandwidth, replays, testing, and scaling so units and UI can support many different team configurations and colors.

We don’t have an ETA on the release of Basic AI and Teams just yet, but Basic AI should come first during September, followed by Teams.



We've recently also released some minor patches to the current version. Some were well-needed balance changes, and some were bug fixes. The most important bug fix that we published today should eliminate the state that matchmaking could end up for a few hours where no matchups could be made. We had a few instances of that happening during the summer, but we've reproduced and fixed that bug now.



While we are working hard on this behind the scenes, we hope that you play and enjoy Line War as much as possible. We are aware that the player count has reduced following the release, this is normal for nearly every single game, and we want to focus our efforts on continuing to develop Line War rather than allocating time and funds to marketing.

We’ve seen feedback that the release of Line War was premature, but for us two developers, it was essential that the release took place so we could fund the continued development and gather feedback on whether or not the game-play was appealing enough to continue. Nearly all the negative feedback revolves around the lack of players, AI, and additional features, and through the release, we’ve secured the funds to continue development to implement exactly that and then perform a bigger marketing drive when the time is right. The strategic gameplay and command system is receiving excellent reviews, which is exactly why we are super encouraged to continue development and evolving Line War.

Don’t worry; Line War is not dead. We have a community of hard-core players (that are now beating us, developers, in matches big time), and development continues behind the scenes.