Ah, Gridz. A big shout-out to Green Dragon Creations. I played this game Gridz from 1997 on the family iMac. It was quite the compelling little game which for time looked spectacular to boot (if you are into those retro 3d graphics). So in 2014, just out of school and taking classes for other developer work, I attempted to re-create it’s classic, simple gameplay. The game itself is pretty simple. You can click a grid vertex to drop a deactivated pylon, or you can click a unit to spawn it at your base. That’s it. That’s all the player can really do. There are only three types of units as well. Attackers which kill other units, Builders which activate your pylons and expand your territory, and the Breakers which attempt to tear down enemies territory. The units will also just wander around looking for a target without real direction.
With this game as a backbone, this project was really just a simple goal with a hard-deadline I set for myself to get something completed and out there. It ended up being a great exercise in time management and a good excuse to learn modelling techniques such as UV unwrapping and model-skinning (original grids had a selection units for each unit type, for this project I decided to implement ‘factions’ with strengths and weaknesses)
While this was a game that I completed and was functionally complete at the end of my deadline, I certainly failed to capture the charm of the original and certain aspects of the game never felt as compelling in my version as in Green Dragon Creations wonderful work from 1997.
