Membraine Studios has announced a significant drop of the base price for Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire from $19.99 to just $9.99 on Steam and Humble Store. Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire is a 3D turn-based strategy wargame that puts you in brigade-level control of futuristic infantry and armored companies, as well as huge super-vehicles. This is warfare on a massive scale that will appeal to those who enjoy games that provide both a strategic and tactical challenge, such as the Total War PC game series or tabletop games like Warhammer 40,000. Featuring a unique, streamlined command system for fast-paced battles with Chess-style alternating activations, customizable armies, and simple--yet deep--strategic and tactical play, the game tells a story from the Exodus Wars, a bloody civil war fought between the Guild and the Royal Empire of Man.

[ 2015-07-01 15:01:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

New features

• [Content] New map, "Barren", can be selected in the Skirmish setup screen. This map is available for both North-South and East-West play, at all three points levels.
• [Graphics] New navigation lines appear for each unit while choosing the unit's movement destinations.
• [Misc] Pressing Left ALT and F keys will now show a Frames Per Second counter.

Changes

• [Graphics] All unit models have been optimised for performance with new and much better LODs.
• [Graphics] Legionnaire Support unit animations now have more relevant animations.
• [Graphics] Tweaked all unit animations to look and feel more fluid.
• [Graphics] Increased all shadow draw distances so you can see shadows from a greater distance.
• [Graphics] Shadows now fall on units when you zoom in close enough for them to be viewable.
• [Graphics] Lighting has been slightly adjusted on all maps.
• [Graphics] Smoke on destroyed units is now removed after 30 seconds to save on performance.
• [Graphics] Decreased the number of bullet-to-floor particle effects to save on performance, which should also help with some audio issues.
• [UI] Changed Main Menu graphics for a better look.
• [UI] Force Selector screen Army Status panel has been moved to the top right and also now displays Points Used / Points Limit amounts.
• [UI] Force Selector screen selected formation details panel now moved to top centre of screen, giving a better view of the selected Unit model.
• [UI] Force Selector screen now shows a separate button for renaming a formation before adding it to your army list.
• [UI] Skirmish setup screen map dropdown selection will no longer show "01" in the map name.
• [Audio] Changed all SFX source files to an uncompressed format as they were decreasing performance.
• [Misc] Upgraded to Unity engine v4.6.3.

Bug Fixes

• [Graphics] Some units sometimes sank into the ground over time.
• [Graphics] Some units sometimes appeared to float above the ground.
• [Audio] Removed all references to enabling audio doppler effects, which were causing some audio stutter and sometimes stopped it altogether.
• [Audio] All SFX are now streamed from the hard drive and not from memory, which had caused some audio stutter and sometimes stopped it altogether.

Known issues

• [Gameplay] Rotating, panning and zooming the camera can sometimes clip into the terrain, which can impact game control. As a workaround, press SPACEBAR to reset the camera if controls stop working correctly.
• [Gameplay] Baron Behemoths sometimes rotate to the side when shooting at targets that are lower than its position on the terrain.
• [Gameplay] If destination markers have been set to a area of cover, they cannot be individually moved as when not in cover, unless you zoom in really close to them.
• [Gameplay] Panning sometimes will not respond with mouse click-and-drag. Use mouse at sides of screen to pan around map if this happen, or try resetting camera by pressing SPACEBAR.
• [Graphics] All REM squire animations show gaps at their gun mount points.
• [UI] Video playback and quality looks poor due to the method the Unity engine currently handles playing video files.

[ 2015-05-27 21:22:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 1.1 released

We've just updated the live build to Version 1.1. We've added a new Skirmish map called "Barren", which sees players attempting to out-maneouvre each other around the map's butes and other intervening landscape elements, and we've of course made a number of fixes and updates.

Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire soundtrack now included

At the request of a member of our community, we've also included the music of Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire -- you'll now find these files in the game directory; we hope you enjoy listening to them.

Complete Change Notes

The complete Change Notes for Version 1.1 will be available shortly for your review.

Thank You!

The Membraine team (Andy, Glenn and Mark) would like to offer our sincere thanks to our community for your feedback and help in identifying these issues -- as a very small team of just three guys, we rely quite a bit on our players to let us know of any issues they find while playing, so your help has been invaluable. Thank you for supporting indie development, and thank you for supporting us by purchasing our game!

[ 2015-05-27 21:19:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! Membraine is excited to let you know we launched the Full Release version of Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire today, a couple of days early. To celebrate the launch, we're offering 50% off all week! If you enjoy our game, it would be a huge help to a small indie like us if you would please tell your friends about our game—and if you would leave us a Customer Review that would be a great help as well. Thanks for supporting indie games development. We hope you enjoy playing Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire!

[ 2015-01-31 00:09:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 1.00 Released January 31, 2015 New Features:

• [Gameplay] Three new REM Squire Units to choose from when selecting your forces: Hussar, Predator and Tzunami Squires.
• [Gameplay] Skirmish matches now have a list of pre-set formations which it will randomly choose for the AI player and the player as a default army list.
• [Gameplay] Skirmish matches can now be played on one of two angles; North & South or East & West.
• [Audio] Music will now play when a match has ended (we currently only have a defeated track to play, but for now it will play regardless of match outcome).
• [UI] On the menu menu you can now find a new button "Exodus Wars Lore". It will give you some background info on the Exodus Wars universe.
• [UI] You can now adjust the voice audio volume from the options panel.
• [UI] Game over panel now shows how many rolls each dice face came up as well as its overall percentage from all dice rolls.
• [UI] Skirmish and Campaign loading screens now show an info message relating to the match.
• [UI] Skirmish setup screen now has an option to choose from one of two angle to play the map on: North & South or East & West.

[ 2015-01-31 00:09:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sydney, Australia – January 20, 2015 – Membraine Studios is proud to announce the release date of the Full version of Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire, with the game exiting Steam's Early Access program on February 2! This strategy title takes you to the brutal Exodus Wars universe with a PC game that stays faithful to its tabletop roots, delivering highly tactical and rewarding modern strategy gameplay. This is warfare on a massive scale that will appeal to those that enjoy a strategic and tactical challenge, such as Total War PC game series, or tabletop games like Warhammer 40,000. Work began back in 2012 after Membraine Studios released two iOS titles, Orbital Defence and Rushd. In Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire, the team has turned its attention to tabletop miniatures wargaming, capturing the feel of the Exodus Wars sci-fi setting without sacrificing the freedom and depth that fans of the genre demand. With a unique, streamlined command system, fast-paced battles with Chess-style alternating activations, customizable armies, and simple yet deep strategic and tactical play, the game lets you tell the story of the Exodus Wars, a bloody civil war fought between The Guild and the Royal Empire of Man. The game's theme is the Price of Freedom. Early Access fans can buy Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire now via the game's Steam store page.

[ 2015-01-20 09:07:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

It was brought to our attention today that players using a 32 bit distribution of Linux were unable to play Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire. This issue has now been corrected and players with a 32 bit Linux distribution should now be able to successfully launch the game as intended. We apologise for any inconvenience this may have cause in playing the game. Enjoy :)

[ 2015-01-08 12:15:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Early Access build 44 of Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire has been released. This release includes a vast array of modifications, changes and fixes. Numerous bugs have been fixed, but we've also enhanced and optimised the combat model so that shooting plays out faster (Baron Behemoths are now as deadly as they should be!). Another big change is that we've implemented a revised movement mechanic that makes the game feel more tabletop-like -- which we think it should, given we're trying to capture the essence of a miniatures wargame -- and as a bonus makes for faster, more fluid gameplay. We've also made various improvements to the UI to make it easier to learn the game and follow current events, and we've enhanced the Game Log to make that easier to read and understand. Last, but not least, we've enhanced Skirmish mode so you can now choose the points level for games to have 1,000-, 2,000- or 3,000-point battles on each map. In the near future, we'll be expanding the Skirmish options even further to ensure greater variety and replayability. The Release Notes extract below has complete details.

Release Notes

Version 0.44 : Early Access Released on 20 December 2014 New Features

• Finalisation phase properly implemented. Performs auto-regroup tests on formations to try and remove some suppression and Routed status (if applicable).
• Moving a formation will now draw an arrow from its previous location to its new location, indicating the formation's movement path.
• Message now displays when your opponent fails an order test.
• Message now displays at the start of each new turn, showing turn number and which player has the first activation.
• Skirmish setup screen now allows you to select the number of points you want each player to have to spend when creating their army lists (more options coming soon!).
• Unit tooltip now shows any units with weapons that have the Anti-Heavy Armour rule.
• Unit tooltip and unit details in Force Selector now show any unit with no ranged weapons as 'Close Assault only'.
• Message now displays at the beginning of your activation during the Deployment phase or if you are idle for 10 seconds, providing a hint to select a formation to deploy.
• Message now displays at the beginning of your activation during the Orders phase or if you are idle for 10 seconds, providing a hint to select a formation to activate.
• Message now displays on Force Selector, prompting hints.
• Music now plays from one menu screen to another.
• Units now play out a (placeholder) idle animation when not in combat.
• Order Report now shows any minor damages inflicted on units that can take more than one damage before being destroyed (e.g. super-vehicles like the Baron behemoth or the Enforcer heavy tank).
• When a formation is attacked, the camera will now zoom into the target formation and focus on a unit being attacked for a few seconds, and then return the camera and controls back to you.

Changes

• Removed unit movement and movement animations due to feedback that most people found the movement animations annoying and skipped them. As an added bonus, we think this makes the game feel more tabletop-like.
• If an order has movement and attack actions, all attacks will happen after formation has moved.
• Removed individual unit movement path lines.
• Combat code rewritten to more correctly reflect the Exodus Wars rules for 6mm miniatures.
• Altered units stats, info and names to more closely reflect the Exodus Wars tabletop rulebooks.
• Changed Order Test suppression and maintaining momentum modifiers from -2 to -1, significantly reducing the risk of failing order tests, which feedback indicated most players found too irritating.
• Removed the Multiplayer button from the main menu until we have the opportunity to implement multiplayer.
• Changed unit suppressed colour in Unit tooltip from amber to red.
• Increased unit glow effect spread. This should be more visible now.
• Increased the speed of rocket/missile projectiles.
• Tweaked Baron Behemoth and Battle Squire movement sounds; however, please note these are still placeholder only.
• Tweaked infantry death and weapon firing sounds.
• Force Selector formation details panel has been cleaned up to better show units and their weapons.
• Slightly increased scale of the floating Formation icons.
• Colour on the floating Formation icons on activated formations is now a darker (50%) gray.
• Entries in the Army List when deploying will now turn gray when it's your opponent's turn.
• Altered scale of dead formation icon in Army List to a better look and fit.
• Removed pressing X key to skip animations (unnecessary given changes to how movement plays out).
• Upgraded Unity engine to v4.6.1.
• The Order Report now gives you time to read it before continuing on to the next activation.

Bug Fixes

• Routed formations were not falling back towards their deployment zone. This has been fixed.
• Selecting an Advance or Blitz movement, and then changing movement to Rapid Advance did not update the navigation widget positions correctly. This has been fixed.
• Leaving an Alpha message to play out at game start did not load the next scene when text faded out. This has been fixed.
• Legionnaire close-up detail textures were not set to be correctly viewable in the Force Selector screen. This has been fixed.
• Conscripts Heavy Weapon Team audio corrected to machine gun fire sound.
• Click-and-dragging a placement widget was not following the mouse cursor at the correct position on the map. This has been fixed.
• Sometimes the camera would fall through the terrain on some maps. This has been fixed.
• Units sometimes sunk into or floated above the terrain. This has been fixed, although a known issue remains with some units "popping up" upon the death animation triggering.
• Units sometimes did not face the correct direction when firing upon a target. This has been fixed.
• Various performance issues have been addressed. Performance should show significant improvement.

Known Issues

• Poor video playback and quality (due to the way the Unity engine handles video files).
• Rotating, panning and zooming the camera can sometimes clip into the terrain, which can impact game control. As a workaround, press SPACEBAR to reset the camera if controls stop working correctly.
• Highlighting on units (glow effect) does not always display as intended.
• Shooting range ring sometimes stays on the terrain when you mouse over a unit.
• Clicking into an area of cover in order to move a formation there does not set the destination point correctly unless you are looking straight down.
• If destination markers have been set to a area of cover, they cannot be individually moved as when not in cover.
• Baron Behemoths will sometimes rotate to the side when shooting at targets lower than its position on the terrain.
• Panning sometimes will not respond with mouse click-and-drag. Use mouse at sides of screen to pan around map if this happen, or try resetting camera by pressing SPACEBAR.

[ 2014-12-20 12:14:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire has joined Steam's new Holiday Sale, and is 50% off until the 2nd of January! Get it while it's on special! In other news, we're getting a new update ready to roll out very soon, before we take a break over the holidays. Keep an eye open for this update, as it has some significant revisions to improve game speed and playability, as well as performance optimizations and hundreds of fixes and tweaks. We think the game's been improved out of sight and we can't wait to share it with you. Big thanks to all of you who have provided your feedback (both publicly in the forums and direct via Facebook and email). We hope you like what you see when the new update rolls out. :)

[ 2014-12-19 04:33:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

We have released a new build that fixes the Unit Cohesion issue we mentioned in our earlier announcement. We have also implemented the tutorials we (*cough* Mark *cough*) had left out by accident. The full change log details appear below. Enjoy. :) BUILD 43.008

New Features

• Added missing Tutorial 4 placeholder tutorial "The Order Test" on the Tutorials screen.
• Added new Tutorial 5 placeholder tutorial "Unit Cohesion and Repositioning" on the Tutorials screen (moving other tutorials down one)
• The Army List panel now shows a destroyed icon beside any destroyed formation, and also changes its colour to black.
• The army list in the Force Selector for Skirmish mode now shows a default army list for your selected faction, that you can either play with as-is, tweak or delete.

Changes:

• Removed the steam_appid.txt file from the public builds as it's not needed.
• Decreased the Command & Control (C&C) value for REM Squires and Behemoths from 3+ to 2+ to improve their chances of executing their orders correctly. This is a trial to see it balance is maintained at this C&C level.
• Army lists for REM and Guild have been decreased to be below the 3,000-point threshold for default Skirmish matches on the Desolate map.

Bug Fixes:

• Spacing between all units in a formation has been altered so they should no longer deploy out of cohesion (Skirmish and Campaign).
• Army List was not showing already activated formations as grey (grey = formation has already been activated this turn).

Known Issues:

• Some units (e.g. Baron behemoths and Conscript Heavy Weapons Teams) do not fire as many times (roll as many dice) as they should when they shoot at range, making them a lot less effective than they should be.
• Poor video playback and quality.
• Rotating, Panning and Zooming the camera can sometimes clip into the terrain (use SPACEBAR to reset the camera if controls stop working correctly).
• Units sometimes sink into or float above the terrain.
• Highlighting on units (glow effect) doesn't always show as intended.
• Shooting range ring sometimes stays on the terrain when you mouse over a unit.
• Clicking on a area of cover to move a formation to doesn't always set the destination point correctly.
• Clicking a 1x or 2x movement range, and then clicking within the 3x movement range will not let you set the formation's destination correctly. Clear the order and start over as a work-around.
• Sometimes, the Baron behemoth will rotate to the side to shoot at targets lower than its position on the terrain.
• Sometimes, units do not face the correct direction when firing upon a target.
• The Army List panel should show formations as grey when they cannot be activated or have been destroyed.
• Sometimes panning will not respond with mouse click and drag -- as a work-around, use your mouse pointer at the sides of your screen to pan around the map if this happens.

[ 2014-10-04 15:01:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a quick announcement to let our current customers know that we are aware of the unit cohesion issue that can occur on Skirmish maps. This is due to a deployment issue where the units in question are deployed too far apart (i.e. out of unit cohesion) when first placed on the battlefield. We've put some information in our Steam Discussions forums to provide a work-around that should enable you to rectify this yourselves (namely, by Shift-clicking on the offending units to bring them back into cohesion with the formation), but we will update the build as soon as we can with a fix to deployment so this does not happen going forward. As it turns out, the ability to Shift-click to reposition units within a formation is something we utterly failed to mention in the tutorials. This is of course crucial to smooth gameplay and we (Mark, in particular) cannot apologise enough for this transgression. This, too, will be rectified in the next build. Please note that this issue should not affect the Campaign mode, which you should be able to play through end-to-end as both REM and Guild -- this should affect Skirmish play only.

[ 2014-10-04 03:10:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

This announcement was going to be used to celebrate the fact Exodus Wars: Fractured Empire had launched on Steam, but not only is the game now available, but -- less than 24 hours since the launch -- and we've already released the first update with a fix for two serious bugs that were causing cover and the Skirmish AI to not work properly, so now we've got two things to let you know about. The full details appear below. Enjoy. :) BUILD 43.007

New Features

• Added a new "Hints & Tips" panel that will communicate helpful bits of info to players.

Changes:

• Removed concealment, for now. Cover will still work as normal.

Bug Fixes:

• Areas of cover were always concealing any formations inside the area.
• AI player did nothing on its turn on Skirmish matches.

Known Issues:

• Poor video playback and quality.
• Rotating, Panning and Zooming the camera can sometimes clip into the terrain (use SPACEBAR to reset the camera if controls stop working correctly).
• Units sometimes sink into or float above the terrain.
• Highlighting on units (glow effect) doesn't always show as intended.
• Shooting range ring sometimes stays on the terrain when you mouse over a unit.
• Clicking on a area of cover to move a formation to doesn't always set the destination point correctly.
• Clicking a 1x or 2x movement range, and then clicking within the 3x movement range will not let you set the formation's destination correctly. Clear the order and start over as a work-around.
• Sometimes, the Baron behemoth will rotate to the side to shoot at targets lower than its position on the terrain.
• Sometimes, units do not face the correct direction when firing upon a target.
• The Army List panel should show formations as grey when they cannot be activated or have been destroyed.
• Sometimes panning will not respond with mouse click and drag -- as a work-around, use your mouse pointer at the sides of your screen to pan around the map if this happens.

[ 2014-09-30 14:41:45 CET ] [ Original post ]