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Hukumdar Online Interview with Gameogre

Discussion in 'MMO Interviews' started by GameOgreVideos, Nov 5, 2010.

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  1. GameOgreVideos

    GameOgreVideos Game Ogre YouTube Channel GameOgre Developer

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    When Gameogre heard that Gamersfirst was going to do the MMORTS Hukumdar Online we knew we wanted to talk to them about the game and their plans. The Producer of Hukumdar Brian Konar was kind enough to answer our questions.

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    Gameogre: Hukumdar Online: Battle of Kings, is a much anticipated MMORTS game by GamersFirst. Can you tell us more about what this game is about? What is the objective?

    Brian Konar: Hukumdar Online: Battle of Kings is difficult to describe in a short space. It’s very easy to go off on tangents about the in game Alliance and Stock systems, or the player controlled combat, and the hero building aspects of the game. The best way to summarize the game is it is a real time, politically driven, castle siege MMO but that barely scratches the surface.

    This game is all about expanding and managing your kingdom and striking political alliances to further your ends. The ultimate objective is to become the most powerful kingdom and alliance in the land. Will you be a just ruler, or crush the people beneath your iron gauntlet? All of your actions have consequences, and it is not unheard of for the unjust to be assassinated.

    Gameogre: What is the edge of Hukumdar against the other pre-existing real time strategy games?

    Brian Konar: Hukumdar sets itself apart from the other existing browser RTS titles out there in a few key ways.

    First, you have a more in depth political and governing system than what you’ll find in other titles – for example, there are major Warlords (NPCs) scattered across the land that control Kingstowns – if an alliance can conquer one of these Kingstowns (you better not try this alone!) they gain access to a piece of very rare and powerful weaponry, in addition to the ability to tax castles in the vicinity of the Kingstown. Other players can conquer this from you, so you’ll need to use alliance troops to reinforce the Kingstown, but you can’t have them out there starving right? You’ll need to make sure these troops are stocked with supplies too, or they might revolt. Beyond that, you always need to be concerned about how much your taxing your loyal citizens, and balance their happiness with your resources – you need resources to build, but if you work the people too hard, they’ll become angry and productivity will decrease, and eventually they will become so upset that they will gladly allow another player to lead them and take over your castle.

    Second, you have player controlled combat. Many of the browser based RTS titles I’ve played have no visible combat in game – you send your army to a castle, a little icon moves there, you see a low res graphic of swords clashing above your icons head, and then a few minutes later you get a battle report with results. While that functionality remains in Hukumdar, you are also given the option to take control of the battles – you then enter a turn based combat system where armies move across a grid and do battle with each other, at your command. It’s far more engaging, and it’s really fun to watch –I always get a kick out of the castle sieges and the troops getting blown apart by the castle defences.

    Third, your heroes are the real deal – you can level them up like in any RPG with full blown talent trees: all heroes start off with the Life Tree. From here they can specialize as a Warrior, Force or Mage type hero and then further specialize themselves with Light, Dark, Surge and Chaos skills. As you advance in the game, you’ll expand your roster of heroes with all kinds of specialties – some you might use to govern your cities, while others are more focused on leading your armies. There is a full range of equipment in game that you can forge to apply special stats that further boost the effectiveness of your heroes and the armies they lead.

    Finally, you have full scale dungeons to explore, complete with quests, rare loot, and bosses. You will find these all over the world map, but make sure you’re prepared to take on the monsters inside, or you might find your hero needing to be revived often.

    Gameogre: Can you give us a brief overview about the three races that are available? What are their different philosophies and abilities?

    Brian Konar: There are three races players can choose to play in Hukumdar Online: Humans, Alec & Shaba.

    Humans are intelligent, but lack the size of Shaba, or magic abilities of the Alec, and have a greater reliance on their technology from a lore perspective. The Humans are well balanced with solid melee and ranged troops that excel at defence.

    The huge and powerfully built Shaba value strength and martial prowess above all else. Having set their focus on forging a new world with the strength of their weapons, the Shaba are a dangerous foe with formidable warriors and the strongest physical units.

    The Alec are a race focused on magic, and are the most peaceful of the three races. Their potent magics have earned them the respect of the Humans and the Shaba, and when forced to war, their spells are as dangerous as the technology of the Humans and the weapons of the Shaba.



    Gameogre: The first time players enter the game, they will see an overview of their castle and the town they will control. What are some things new players should know and do the first time they log on?

    Brian Konar: Players should know a few things when they start. First, each player begins the game with 10 days of protection – you cannot be attacked for the first 10 days, unless you attack someone else, or level your Town Hall past level 10. Take advantage of this time to build up your town and prepare your defenses. Find an alliance to join, so that you can help defend each other and grow your kingdom with some mutual protection. You may even find some kind souls out there who are willing to share resources, or give advice on your strategy.

    Complete the quests – not only will they help you learn the game quickly, but you will earn valuable resources to help you grow your kingdom ever faster.
    Use your 3 daily lair passes – every day you get 3 free lair passes to let your hero use the Lair and level up. Go in there and explore, and use your downtime away from the game to let your hero rest and recover his wounds. If you die, that’s ok, you can revive your hero for a small gold fee and amount of time. As you level, equip the items you find, and sell the stuff you don’t need in the Auction House found inside of the Market.

    Spin the wheel – complete the daily quest each day to receive a free Chip, which lets you spin the Fortune Wheel. You can get all types of valuable prizes in here that will be very helpful to new and advanced players alike.

    Ask for help – ask players in game if you have questions, or check out the website game guide, or player written game guides on the forums. There is a lot of valuable info for new players, and we’re always adding more info for the advanced guys too.

    Gameogre: How does the currency system work in Hukumdar Online? How do players earn coins and items?

    Brian Konar: The in game currency is Gold – it functions like you’d normally expect, but the way you earn it is different from a typical RPG. In Hukumdar, you tax your citizens to earn gold – you set the tax rate inside of your castles Town Hall, and this, combined with your castles population, influences how much gold you earn every hour. As your kingdom grows, your population will increase, and you will earn more gold from the citizens. The amount you tax your citizens will directly influence their loyalty – loyal citizens will work hard and produce resources for you efficiently, but angry citizens will stop working and you’ll struggle to maintain resources. You can improve citizens loyalty with events in game, and you’ll have to balance this out with your available resources as well. Beyond that, you’ll need your gold for everything from buying resources from the Market, or funding expeditions to attack neighboring Kingdoms. Successful sieges of other castles will earn you resources, experience and gold.

    Gameogre: Can you tell us the differences between the Hero mode and Lord mode of combat in Hukumdar Online? There are also Hero and Lord modes for maps too. Can you tell us about these?

    Brian Konar: The Hero Mode and Lord Mode are like filters to what you see – for example, in Lord Mode you will see all of the nodes specific to expanding and growing your kingdom such as resource oasis’s, the various nodes you can build new castle sites on, etc. In Hero Mode, your view will be filtered to things your hero can interact with like treasure chests, purgatories, monsters, etc.

    Gameogre: There are four spell elements available; Fire, Earth, Ice and Air. What is the variation of each element in terms of their effectiveness and pre requisites?

    Brian Konar: Depending on how you spec your hero, you will open up certain spells that each hero can train in the Black Tower. Each hero can gain access to different spells based off of their spec.

    Each element has unique spells that can do direct or AoE magic or physical damage but in general, Fire is more focused on physical attack damage, and Air is more focused on magical attack damage. Earth increases physical defense and Ice increases magical defense. That’s pretty general, as each element has spells that do direct or AoE damage, as well as buff your defense or debuff the enemies defense.

    Gameogre: How do players build, train, and deploy their armies?

    Brian Konar: Building, training and deploying your army is a pretty in depth subject, but I’ll try not to give your readers an excuse to say “TLDR†(assuming they haven’t already).

    As you gain resources by upgrading your resource nodes, increasing your population, and adjusting your tax rate, you will spend those resources to train up troops. Troops are built in three general locations: the Barracks, the Abbey or the Arsenal. In the barracks, you’ll find your general “infantry†type units – these are the guys you’ll use to bulk up your army and soak up damage from enemy archer towers, traps, etc. In the Abbey, you’ll train your “elite†troop types – magic casters and mounted units. The Arsenal is where you’ll find siege weapons that you can use to destroy your enemies defenses, or smash some of his key buildings.

    Players can deploy their armies as long as they have an available hero to lead it. A hero is considered available as long as he is not dead, appointed as your town’s commander, or currently on an expedition or exploring a dungeon. From the Beacon Tower in your town, you can deploy armies and choose who is leading them, where they’re going and what they should do (such as reinforce an allies castle, or scout an enemy to see their defenses before committing troops to an attack).

    Gameogre: One unique feature of this game is the realistic display of politics and government. Can you give us a little more detail?

    Brian Konar: It’s actually quite interesting how the game incorporates politics and government – after joining an Alliance, players are now part of a group that is more than just friends. They work towards common goals and contribute to their actual alliances performance. As an Alliance grows, players can donate gold into the technology efforts of the alliance, and are rewarded with shares of stock. These stocks gain or lose value based off the alliances performance in game – investing in alliances can have big returns, or big losses, and you can even invest in alliances that aren’t your own.

    Another interesting function is the Diplomacy feature in game – you can join into friendly diplomacy with other alliances, or declare them enemies or neutral to you, so that members of your alliance know who to work with or who must be crushed into submission for not obeying your rule.


    Gameogre: Can you tell us a little about the Alliance System of Hukumdar Online?

    Brian Konar: Alliances are critical to your survival. The game plays in real time – even when you’re not logged in, you’re under constant threat of attacks. If you’re in an alliance, that’s an immediate level of protection, since most players fear retaliation from multiple sources if they attack an alliance member. Furthermore, alliance members can reinforce your town, share resources, and contribute to building up their alliance – gaining further alliance specific bonuses. Alliances can even band together to form friendly alliances, or mark other alliances as enemies. Capitalizing on the politics of alliances is essential to undermining the strength of your enemies, and turning their allies into your strongest weapons.

    Gameogre: What are G1 credits, and how can they be used? How can players get G1 credits besides filling out the surveys on the game’s homepage?

    Brian Konar: G1 Credits are the cash currency used by all games at GamersFirst.com, including Hukumdar Online. Basically, they are used to purchase items from the in game item Shop such as Building Permits, to increase how many buildings you can build at once, or Advanced Castle Teleporters to allow you to move the location of your castle. Players can purchase G1 Credits from our Marketplace at Marketplace – Free2Play, MMO, Knight Online World, War Rock, Sword 2, Go Go Racer, Animax LaMB, Victory, Taikodom. To be clear though, G1 Credits are not required to ever play Hukumdar Online – it’s totally free to play. It’s essentially a trade off between time and money – if you have lots of time, you can probably get by without ever needing one of these items, but if you don’t have a lot of time, you can purchase these items to make things easier on yourself.

    Gameogre: Is there terminology that players should be aware of when they start to play Hukumdar Online?

    Brian Konar: There isn’t anything that is overly obscure – most of the terminology is easily recognizable to players who have played an online or RPG type game before.

    A few things players will probably want to know:

    Resources: These are the resources you generate from your town and use to purchase or upgrade buildings, fund your troops and research, etc.

    Resource Nodes: These are the farms, saw mills, iron mines and quarries found in your town that produce resources. Upgrade these to generate resources more quickly (but make sure your citizens loyalty is high, otherwise it won’t matter what level these are!)

    Oases: These are spots on the map outside your town that you can conquer for bonuses such as 30% increased food production, etc.

    Hero: You can have multiple heroes based on the level of your town hall, your tavern, your garrison, and rank/title.

    Expedition: This is the same thing as attacking someone.

    Gameogre: Anything else you would like to tell us about Hukumdar Online?

    Brian Konar: Hukumdar Online is a totally free to play, browser based game – there is no download. Many players think “browser based? It must be really easy or boring†but nothing could be further from the truth – Hukumdar Online has extreme amounts of depth to the game play, while still being pretty easy to get into. You could spend months playing the game and still not know all of the various features and functionality within the game, it’s really impressive.

    I’d encourage anyone interested in playing the game to give it a try – feel free to let me know what you think by sending a PM on our forums (forums.gamersfirst.com) to Sullimo (that’s me!).

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  2. Sullimo

    Sullimo Ogre Newling

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    I wanted to give a huge thanks to Catica & the GameOgre team for giving me the opportunity to talk about Hukumdar Online: Battle of Kings. Hopefully I didn't hit you guys with a wall of text and you found what I had to say about the game interesting. If you do come over to try the game out, please say hi on our forums and introduce yourself!

    If you have any questions, don't hesitate to come drop me a line on our forums or facebook (I'd give the links but it appears I'm restricted from doing so as a new member) - you'll find me under the name Sullimo there as well!

    Brian Konar aka Sullimo
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 5, 2010
  3. GameOgreVideos

    GameOgreVideos Game Ogre YouTube Channel GameOgre Developer

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    Sullimo Ogre Newling

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    Thanks Catica for your help! I'm interested to hear your thoughts on the game :)
     
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