Hi there,
I cannot say that I am the biggest fan of Soldat, but I really think it's one of the best games I ever played. And in the era of mobile I thought that there are be tons of ports of this classic hit, but to my disappointment the only 2 games that I found were:
and seems that there is nothing on other platforms.
After playing those games I was really disappointed. They did not feel even close to Soldat. For me Soldat first of all is:
- Speed
- Unique physics
- Pinpoint accurate controls
- Exploding bodies, blood, flying bullets
First three are the most crucial ones. If you cannot bring the speed, same feeling of physics along with easy and powerful controls to mobile, then making the mobile version looses any value. It will just feel fake.
So being a developer who has an interest in gaming I decided to take the challenge and propose my solution. I did some googling and found quite a lot of topics on this forum related to ideas of porting Soldat to mobile devices. What I learned from those topics is that people are pretty pessimistic about the outcome, since it would be hard to bring all the action of Soldat to mobile without sacrificing some key features. That might be very true, but nevertheless I gave it a try. My idea is to mimic the physics of Soldat and propose a controlling model that would allow to play the game in a fast and accurate manner. Something I have failed to see in the upper mentioned iOS games.
I have made a simple prototype, in which I tried to emulate the physics of Soldat in Box2D. This turned out to be quite hard, so the current solution is far from being adequate. The movement is done with accelerometer and aiming/firing by touching the screen. I see it as the only option that would bring a good enough player experience. Having fake joystick controls like in Doodle Army felt awful. Besides firing I left 2 most crucial gaming inputs that I see in Soldat: jumping and flying. They are moved to the sides as 2 huge, transparent buttons (just a prototype). Both sides have same sets buttons. This way you can easily switch hands to fire in either direction. The map for testing is ctf_kampf clone.
What I want from this thread is to hear your opinion about the proposed mobile version. If you say that it will never work, then I can take a rest knowing that I tried my best. However, if you think that this is something that you would actually play, then I can try to take it further. Maybe someone from Soldat team can help me with that. Give some mathematical input about physics, bots and such stuff to make the game more like Soldat.
The game is made in Unity, so I can easily compile it for every device and also desktop platforms if needed. Obviously, I cannot make the full multiplayer version of Soldat straight away. It just takes too much time and in Unity you most probably have to use some paid plugins for that. What is realistic at this stage is to make a single player version and then extend it for multiplayer if it will be a success.
Unfortunately, without paying for developer license I can make only android version. If you don't have android, then use the windows version.
Androidhttps://www.dropbox.com/s/49trfh2v7nudtfc/Soldat.apk?dl=0Open it in the mobile browser and press Download. The device will probably say that your settings do not allows installation from unknown sources and you will see an option to go to Security settings. There you should tick the box that says something about allowing installation from unknown sources. After that you will be able to download and install the game.
Windowshttps://www.dropbox.com/s/14bf7zvk11xxulj/Soldat.zip?dl=0Just unzip and run.
DISCLAIMERYou should never trust anybody that asks you to install and run any .apk or .exe on your device. If you don't trust me, then don't do it!
If someone has tried to run already, then post a message saying that it is safe for others
