A demo for the upcoming Rome: Total War has been released, which you can grab from AusGamers. Rome is the latest in the Total War series, offering massive battles between thousands of units - the demo is definitely worth a look if you're into real-time strategy games. Rome: Total War is being (at least partially) developed right here in Australia; Creative Assembly's office in Brisbane is responsible for the sound, terrain and rendering.

I enjoyed playing Shogun and Medieval total war and Rome looks like it's going to be a very nice game indeed.

I'll say this much though the Demo is more like an interactive trailer than a demo. Then again if you have played the first two you probably have a fair idea of what to expect, so the demo is really only showing off the gfx.

I'll be buying it anyway :)

last edited by Taipan at 08:36:41 25/Aug/04

Does this d/load come with a tutorial of any sort...my boy loves these types of games but they can be a bit daunting for the uninitiated or newbs like me in RTS simulations.

:)

Yeah Psycho, there's a tute and an advisor type guy.

But I'd have to say that it's not a basic RTS, if your kid doesn't like board game (like Risk) style play this game is not for him.

Just finished the demo and I'll be buying it when it comes out....very nice detail in the combat.I just hope the "city building" part of the game is just as good.

^^ yeah have the same hopes myself :)

Just thought I'd mention in case nobody knew....half of this game was developed right here in Brisbane.

Creative Assembly has an Australian office located in Fortitude Valley.

Specifically, we did the terrain, rendering, and sound production.

Hope you like the game :)

I should have mentioned that in my news post; updated !

Hi Nozehed *snuffle*

Nice! very nice Nozehed good to see some local lads turning out such a sweet game :)

Nah.

Cool that some of the work is done in Brisbane. First locally developed RTS since Dark Reign that I can recall.

Heh, the advisor guy in the tutorial has an aussie accent, sounds so out of place; its like a cross between russel crowe in Gladiator and the guy from the Extraordinary. I missed the first couple of parts of the tutorial because I just couldn't get over the voice!

Ya, seems the voices we did are getting panned pretty hard so far in reactions to the demo.

I don't have a problem with the Aussie accents, maybe cause I'm from Canada originally :P

As far as the other accents, it's hard to find professional Egyptian voice actors here, so we had to adlib a bit :)

The Italian sounding advisor makes me laugh :) Like something from Monty Python.

No offense intended, Nozhead. I have no boubt it's hard to find an Italian who doesn't sound like he just got kicked in the nuts. They're like that as a group it seems.

is good is don

Its not that the voice work is bad or anything, it was just really weird hearing aussie accents in games, its not too often you do. Once I got over that fact though, its not like it ruined my enjoyment of things. If anything, it made it feel more like a movie, cos it kept sounding like Russel Crowe in Gladiator :P

Yes, it's all in English (although we localized it into 4 other languages as well...French, German, Spanish & Italian).

To me, the logic here is that the voices give you status feedback, which helps you play the game (it would help a real General on a real battlefiled too). If they're yelling in their native tongue, it would sound cool, but negatively affect gameplay...IMHO.

The voices were categorized into cultures...Roman, Barbarian, Greek and Arabic. The various factions share these voices. For example, all arabic type cultures have an arabic-ish accent (eg Egyptians and Cathaginians share the same voices).

This was to make the project manageable, and fit on the CD's. Even with these limitations there are 64,000 voice wav files in the game. Our dialog editor is currently sitting in a padded room :)

First locally developed RTS since Dark Reign that I can recall.

Well, first locally developed RTS since DR that is going to be released in Australia :(

last edited by sprayNwipe at 15:32:48 26/Aug/04

If you keep saying aussie voices and russell crowe in same sentence im going to scream...crowe is a kiwi not an aussie.

Well, first locally developed RTS since DR that is going to be released in Australia :(

buh?

crowe is a kiwi not an aussie.

really? s*** i didnt know that.

He's Aussie. He calls himself Aussie, that's good enough.

That actress girl from Whale Rider was born over here, but styles herself as a New Zealander. No accounting for some people's taste, I guess.

Just becuase he calls himself an aussie, doesnt make him one.

Yes it does. It's the rule.

Lot's of people who aren't born here are still Aussies. And there's plenty of people who were born here that we've since dis-owned, despite the fact they still call themselves Aussies, like Greg Norman.

Nah, Dark Reign 2 was done by Pandemic in LA

I didn't think the Brisbane Pandemic office was even around when Dark Reign 2 was made?

Yeh, they worked at Pandemic on DR2, but did so from LA :)

I believe they've done a lot with the interface this time rather than bouncing from one extreme to the next.