- What is SectorMania?
- Is this a free game?
- So, is this an open source project?
- Who are the team behind SectorMania?
- Why call it SectorMania?
- What is the game’s story & setting?
- Is it a single-player or multi-player game?
- How is the game played?
- This sounds to me like you are making a clone of ‘Z’.
- I tried it and it sucks!
- What are the minimum system requirements?
- Is there a Mac and/or a Linux version?
- The game crashed and destroyed my computer!
- I found an in-game bug!
- Multi-player does not work for my friend and me!
- The game won’t start (Windows)!
- Units are passing through each other. Is this a bug?
- You didn’t answer my question!
Q: What is SectorMania?
A: SectorMania is our real-time action-strategy game in development. For now, a first prototype of the game exists, which can be downloaded on this website. For more information about the game, read the About page.
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Q: Is this a free game?
A: Right now, only a prototype exists, and we do indeed offer the prototype as a free download without any restrictions. There will be additional prototype iterations coming which will also be available from this website free of charge.
However, we haven’t yet decided whether the final game will be free.
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Q: So, is this an open source project?
A: No, at least not at the moment. Right now, we feel confident that we can stem the development of SectorMania without help from the community. We do, however, want your help in improving the gameplay, so we value your opinions, suggestions and (constructive) criticism highly. Please participate in our forums.
In the future, if we decide not to go commercial with SectorMania, making the final game open source is an option for us, but the decision hasn’t been made.
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Q: Who are the team behind SectorMania?
A: We are two guys who have been in love with RTS games for a long time. The first mod we contributed to was Earth 2150: Operation X (2003-2004). Since then we both have been on and off building games as a hobby, often interrupted by our studies or by work.
Technically, SectorMania is our third real-time strategy game. We started making RTS games in 2007. Back then we thought we could make a complete RTS game with bells & whistles attached in one go. We wrote a lot of C++ code, and we created a lot of 3D graphics. But the game was never really playable. It took us years to accept that this approach is not efficient. In 2010 we decided to re-think what we were doing and dumped our monolithic project. We built several tiny games. They all turned out rather mediocre. However, by making them we learned that if we worked in smaller steps, we could actually get things done. With our self-confidence back on track we took another shot at multi-player real-time strategy. This time we managed to create a playable prototype. However, it was no fun to play at all. So we changed our design again. And finally we liked what we saw (or rather, we liked what we played).
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Q: Why call it SectorMania?
A: The game is won by the player who bests his opponents at controlling sectors. SectorMania expresses this quite well, doesn’t it?
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Q: What is the game’s story & setting?
A: For the current prototype, you assume the role of a hacker who tries to gain control of a foreign computer system. This is why the available units in the game have names like bugs, trojans or DoS.
However, this setting is a placeholder right now. We haven’t put too much thought into it, and we may change it for future prototype iterations or the final game. Or we may keep and extend it. If you feel a particularly strong like or dislike for the idea, tell us about it – we value your input.
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Q: Is it a single-player or multi-player game?
A: Our focus is multi-player. Humiliating a human opponent is much more fun than beating a computer! In fact, the current prototype does not have a dedicated single-player mode, although there is a primitive AI opponent you can practice against.
The final game will feature a single-player campaign.
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Q: How is the game played?
A: You build and command units to capture sectors and to attack the headquarter of your opponent. The controls work like in most modern RTS games. Think Starcraft rather than Command’n’Conquer: the left mouse button selects things, the right mouse button issues commands.
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Q: It sounds to me like you are making a clone of ‘Z’.
A: Damn it, who told you? You are right – at this point SectorMania is very similar to the core of Z. Our goal, however, is not to clone Z. We just figured that the core gameplay of Z is a good starting point for us. There is no complex resource management that would distract from what we like most about RTS games: bossing units around and getting them killed. It’s easy to learn and just fun to play.
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Q: I tried it and it sucks!
A: Remember that it’s only a prototype. Graphics and sound are rather simplistic at the moment, and there are a few technical issues (like units passing through each other) that will get resolved in later iterations.
If that’s not the reason for your dislike, please let us know what you’d like to see improved most.
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Q: What are the minimum system requirements?
A: On Windows and Linux a modern low-end desktop CPU and 2GiB RAM will suffice. We have not tested the game on netbooks but we expect that it will not run well on an Intel Atom. Performance on Mac OS X is considerably worse. A 2011 Macbook Air will run the game at approximately 40 FPS. Sorry about that. We will switch to a more efficient graphics engine with the next iteration.
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Q: Is there a Mac and/or a Linux version?
A: Not yet but we plan to do both. The more requests we get for this, the earlier we will get a Linux and/or a Mac version out.
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Q: The game crashed and destroyed my computer!
A: Lucky you. Computers are evil, anyway. Please tell us what happened in the forums so we can fix the problem.
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Q: I found an in-game bug!
A: Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Please post your problem in the forums. We will take care of it.
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Q: Multi-player does not work for my friend and me!
A: If you are hosting a game by yourself, make sure that the port you are using (50189 by default) is not blocked by a firewall or used by any other program. You will also have to forward it (TCP) in your router.
To avoid these pitfalls, we are hosting a select number of dedicated servers on our website host which you can use. We also intend to improve the network code in the next prototype iterations.
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Q: The game won’t start (Windows)!
A: Make sure you have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) installed.
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Q: Units are passing through each other. Is this a bug?
A: Well, kind of. It’s not the intended behavior, obviously, but in our current prototype iteration, fixing it isn’t easily possible – the client/server model we use is just too primitive. We will address the problem in the next prototype iteration.
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Q: You didn’t answer my question!
A: We will gladly answer your question in the forums.
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