Wars of Midnight

So what is this all about?

It's basically a game inspired and derived from an old ZX Spectrum game first released in 1984 called The Lords Of Midnight. The game back then was ground breaking in many ways and is one of the forerunners of the immersive RPGs and MMOs we see today.

The original game was written by a chap called Mike Singleton who sadly passed away in 2012. He was a hero of mine when I was playing this game as a teen and inspired me to get into programming in general as well as seed my interest in games like this.

In 1984 the game won many awards and was hailed as a breakthrough moment in game design. Many people have since made various versions of the original game so you have to ask why another one ?

Really this is a personal quest, I have never programmed an entire game before and if nothing else it is a challenge I would like to complete. What better way than to emulate one of my early boyhood heroes. But this is not going to be a straight port or anything like that.

My idea is to take aspects of the original and reinterpret it. So this game focuses on battle and leaves out the quest part of the game (at least for now). All of the original lords will be in it, plus a few more. It's early days for the gameplay aspect, so expect things to change, but I have the basis for battles working now.

The graphics I have chosen to use are deliberately minimalistic to keep some of the feel of the original game. Currently I can generate a map, then import it into the engine and walk around. Enemy movement is part programmed.

As mentioned; something new I have added in Wars of Midnight is the custom maps - these can be generated using a map editor and the ultimate idea is to allow you to create and edit maps to play and share with other players. Here's how the map editor is looking like at the moment.

This website will ultimately allow people to share the maps they create and meet new friends. I'll update as I go along, but in the meantime you are welcome to join the forum if you like.

Here's a short video I made. It shows me wandering around the terrain. The game will still employ a night/day turn system so in normal gameplay your moves would be limited. I will likely add a map touring feature so you can explore maps freely like this though. Some UI elements may change as I pull the game together and currently I just have randomly generated names for some of the armies.

I also had a professional font designer modernise the old ZX Spectrum font.