Hey all, for those who have been following the progress of Swords & Sandals III, it has just gone into live beta on my host site Fizzy.com. If you follow the link you can take part in the beta test.

Play Swords and Sandals III beta

The beta test will only run for a short time while I sort out server loads, balancing issues and fix bugs. ONce it's live and ready, I'll post a version here on Newgrounds and across the greater web community. I'm keeping it local for now until all the bugs are resolved.

Feel free to contact me with any feedback.

Known game issues so far

* Battles sometimes don't connect
* Challenge and accept challenge windows in lobby playing up a bit
* Occasional skipped turn during battle
* Weapons sometimes appear grey
* Game freeze when battles don't connect

All of these are being looked into and should be sorted out soon. Anyway, enjoy and have fun!

Cheers Oliver

Just a quick post today.... about three weeks left until beta release and I've just finished the spellcasting system. There are 50 odd spells to choose from , most of them are your standard fireball / poison blast attacks but there are some nice particle effects as this video shows.

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Spellcasting can be a powerful path in S&S3 , it forces melee fighters to close the distance quickly or risk being incincerated or hurled around like a rag doll. The beta test will be all about balancing the game so that one path is not hideously overpowered.

As a side note, this is the last game I'll be making using Actionscript 2 I think :) It really chugs the processor with all the special effects - since I started it last year it was just too much work to recode it in AS3. Have to wait till the next one for that hehe.

Enjoy, not long to wait now I promise !

Cheers Oliver

Morning all. I've been working some long hours on this game to get it ready for an August beta launch and it's about 90% of the way there. Just got to complete the spell system , add some armour and polish up some of the special effects , then balance the game and we're done!

Here's a link to some more battle footage and another game screenshot. I hope to tidy up the game a bit more before release!

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A lot of people have been asking various things about the game so I thought I'd list some answers - bear in mind nothing is set in stone.

Q) Is the game multiplayer ?
A) Yes it is multiplayer , with plans to make a downloadable single player campaign at some point soon.

Q) Will the game be free ?
A) Yes and no - there will be a free version available for everyone to play. As there is big bandwidth, smartfox server and database costs , there's going to be several other modes available to support the cost of the game. You wouldn't believe how expensive these things can be to develop.

I haven't worked out the details yet, but rest assured , there will always be a free version to bash each other up in, but it will probably be limited by level cap, less arenas to fight in, less weapons etc.

Q) Can I be a beta tester?
A) Sure , the beta will be up on my website www.fizzy.com in August . You'll need to be a member but it's a free signup - I'm limiting it to members as a lot of database stuff gets saved when you create/save your character.

Q) Why do you always release demos, nobody would ever buy a flash game!
A) You'd be surprised how many people do. There's a whole industry based on casual games. These things take many months to make and banner advertising and mochiads don't support any but the biggest games. For the rest of us, making a larger version for sale is the way we make a living. So please, enjoy the game but don't bother posting about how its a demo and it sucks, I don't need to hear that. I encourage any other flash developers to do the same thing !

Anyway, enough rambling from me. Enjoy the video!

Cheers all, Oliver.

Some more Swords & Sandals III news...

I've just finished building the character inventory system. One of the games I loved as a kid was Ultima , in particular UVIIL Serpent Isle... it has a great paper-doll inventory system that hasn't been used much in games since, except for those online dress-up-doll games that seem to be so popular here (lol) .

I've tried to emulate that here, in that you can click and drag items onto your character and they lock on. It's a nice intuitive system and allows you to switch between your weapons/armour fairly easily.

You can check out a youtube video of it in action here :

Swords & Sandals 3: Armoury & Inventory

So still a bunch of stuff left to do, spell system, lots of combat anims, a stack of armour still to draw and sound, but hopefully still on track for an August beta launch.

Cheers, Oliver

Hi all,

Swords and Sandals 3 marches on - I've just finished the build of the shop system. Pretty different from the previous version, all weapons and armour are now randomly generated.

Swords & Sandals 3 - Weapons Shop

I built a nice little weapon prefix-suffix generator that allows for a huge variety of weapons ala "Diablo", "Warcraft" etc, meaning you can have "Demonic Chainsaw of Frost" which adds to your strength and also gives you extra cold damage ... and so on. End up with some pretty interesting results.

The weapons you see in the video are pretty high level, meaning most items you'll see in the shop early on will be simply "Axe", "Two Hand Sword". Sneak preview I guess, haha.

I've also started work on the inventory system - it's a paperdoll, so you can just drag weapons from your inventory to the character and vice versa.

Cheers, Ol

Hi all, a lot of people have been asking me what's going on with Swords & Sandals 3.

It's been in dev now for about 4 months and I'd say it's about 50% done ... biggest holdups have been implementing the multiplayer components. Here's some early video of two human players fighting. There are no special effects etc but you can see how the game will work.

Swords & Sandals 3 - Multiplayer youtube footage

Let me know your thoughts and ideas for the game. I think it's going to be pretty big. Cheers Oliver!