CDV's Mike Kroll on Panzer Tactics DS |
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Cubed3 managed to get a few moments of Mario Kroll's time. The CDV Director of Marketing and Public Relations for North America talked with CDV about their upcoming Panzer Tactics DS.Here are some points taken from the interview:
According to Kroll, the main reason CDV went with the NDS was accessibility and programmability. The touch screen and the dual screens also make it ideal for turn-based strategy games.
Panzer Tactics DS has been in development for about one year and a lot of the labor went into ensuring the historical correctness (in theme, at the least) of the game.
They originally had 350 units on their drawing board but through development they reduced the number to 150, due to the constraints of the DS screen (which makes unit differentiation difficult) and to ensure that each unit is actually unique from each other. Kroll says that if they allowed the player to have both a Panzer IIIG and IIIH as unit choices, it would be very difficult to justify the differences each unit makes in gameplay. Instead of historical accuracy, they chose historical and historical-inspired battles that are more interesting instead of forgone conclusions.
To handle players dropping out in the middle of online games, they decided to enforce three things. First, players still get fame points even if they drop out. Second, repeated game droppers will be eventually flagged in the multi-maker matchmaking component. Lastly there's a surrender option now, where the losing party can bow out without being flagged - a sort of graceful exit.
There will be three multi-player modes: hot seat (swap the DS with the dude sitting beside you), LAN, and Wi-Fi. For Wi-Fi, ten maps are currently planned with the goal of having up to four players possible per game. Wi-Fi multi player will consist of someone creating a game. Then the creating player picks the map, sets the amount of Fame, the turn limit, matchmaking parameters such as friends or everyone, and the victory conditions. The victory conditions can vary from things like kill all enemy units to capture all enemy cities.
As far as interface goes, the bottom screen will primarily be the tactical interface. Movement, combat, re-supply, and requisition will all take place there. The top screen will be customizable and will allow toggling between a unit overview, a unit profile or an overall strategic display of the game. Basically, he says that they're adding in a lot of features here that they would like to have seen in Advance Wars.
As for making a Wii version of Panzer Tactics DS, Kroll says that he is aware that there have been many attempts before at moving strategy and turn-based titles to consoles, and that the results have been mixed. While he is personally very excited about Nintendo's console, he says that they will be very cautious about making a transition. In light of this, he says that they have invested R&D to help create a user-friendly interface that would aid in such a transition if ever they decide to pursue it.
Will they make the move? I guess they're going to wait a bit to see if other titles of the same nature make it big in next gen, and of course check if their own DS title does well.
Via Cubed3
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Comments [refresh]
Panze Tactics on Wii, controlled by the DS...
Large battle overview on the tv, control and select your troops with the DS.. Drewl drewl..