Sharky Extreme: What will the various traps in Strifeshadow be like? Good enough to turn the tide of a battle?

Zileas: Well each race has one damage trap, and two "other" traps. They are placed by the worker unit, and can generally be removed by worker units or, in some cases, by artillery. They can only be detected by worker units. Traps are super cheap, though they do cost some resources. They are designed to augment base defense, augment offensive pushes, and as the name implies, lay traps (such as an ambush setting). Traps can do anything from slowing units down, to teleporting units, to just doing raw damage. Each races' raw damage trap is different than other races. All of the "other" traps are, of course, unique.

Sharky Extreme: Strifeshadow includes 3D card support. How will having a 3D card improve the graphics in the game?

Zileas: It does a lot of stuff, mostly in terms of making spell effects and transparent units (Ghosts) look much better. I can have very large numbers of alpha blended units on screen with minimal performance hit on my TNT 1. We also have a 2d mode, which makes the spell effects and transparent units not look as good, but I guess that's why people buy 3d cards. We don't actually render any complex multi-polygon units or anything. We only use the 3d for some basic features like blending. The game is a 16-bit colour 2d game with 3d support basically; I can't think of another 2d RTS with alpha blending that isn't 256 color.

Sharky Extreme: Our thanks to Tom "Zileas" Cadwell for a most informative and interesting interview about Strifeshadow: Tournament Edition.

Pete Closs
Games Editor