One of the contributing devs made an open source version: warfront.io, which openfront is forked from and then heavily developed.
Warfront did not have any multiplayer so Evan, the creator of openfront, made it multiplayer and together with contributors made lots of new features.
Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront repo. Warfront added webgl rendering, and hopefully Openfront will have be inspired. Openfront does not work nicely on mobile and low end devices currently.
On mobile I go for Coop and try hard to just support other players, by giving troops to the right player. Having good backend players is vital in Coop.
> Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront repo
Yeah, seems there is a for-profit company running the show now, so expect some squeezing in the mid-to-long term.
Also, latest gameplay change seems to be trains, anyone had time to play around with it yet? I've played quite hours of Openfront and not sure how I feel about the train addition yet.
> For-profit company running warfront or openfront?
Talking about OpenFront. Seems to be run by a "OpenFront LLC", supposedly based in "SACRAMENTO, CA 95816" according to their privacy policy. Playwire (A "revenue amplification company") is also involved somehow into the operations, as you get redirected there when you hit "Advertise with us" link, I'm guessing they might be the publisher or something?
As for the actual people working on the codebase, it seems like there are two main authors which based on the activity seem to be full-time employees working on the project, or at least contractor-based.
Thanks a bunch of clarifying all the details! Maybe worth putting the info in some FAQ or somewhere on the website as well, always good to have somewhere for when people go looking :)
Thanks a bunch for OpenFront as well, it's a really fun game I've spent lots of hours with already, although it's really hard :P Excited to see how the trains will be worked in, but it's also really enjoyable as it is so again, thanks for working on it!
The coming update has trains and factories! The game is mainly about managing compounding growth with discrete losses (having more land and cities increases you population cap, and your population follows a logistic curve, so you want to reserve an amount of population to maintain growth, and it's programmed so that you want to use a discrete amount for attacking instead of a constant trickle)
A good strategy that works well for me is to prioritize moneymaking and win by cleaning up a nuclear wasteland. Some tips for that strategy aka trademaxxing:
* The fastest way to make money is to get lots of ports and ally with people near and far. Boats give you more gold depending on their distance traveled
* Set up turtled-in bases on islands and have warships patrolling near them to shoot down potential land invasions. This combined with your small land area will make it less appealing for the big countries to focus on you
* Once you have enough funds for a MIRV, maintain strategic deterrence by having multiple missile silos - so you can launch the MIRVs any time
* Continue to trademaxx and wait for the big countries to nuke each other into oblivion
* Once the time is right (and you have enough funds for multiple MIRVs), move in to clean up the nuclear wasteland. Get some cities but don't spend too much money. If another country starts attacking you at this point, you can MIRV them again. You are also much more resistant to MIRVs since your assets are in money instead of structures and can rebuild quickly
If you're planning on diving in, the linked "how to play" video is two minutes long and gets the basics across very effectively: https://youtu.be/jvHEvbko3uw
Super addictive. To be fair, I still don't really get what the best strategy is, especially at the beginning, so I'm getting steamrolled by human opponents pretty easily...
I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers in. It seems that for the first 30 seconds or so you need almost all soldiers to expand fast, but after that?
There's a lot of luck involved too, sometimes you'll just get dogpiled by two neighbours and there's not much you can do, but at least it's fast.
> I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers in.
In the beginning I tried out a bunch of ratios and never found any strategy that seemed to have worked. Now I just leave it on default for entire runs, won a handful of times in free-for-all, seems to work out OK for most cases.
In the first ~1 minute or so I keep 1K soldiers "at home" at all times, and whenever it goes above, I send them out in the "non-taken land", so basically medium-sized expansions until there is no land left. Then start attacking bots in the order of the money they have available, and once there is no bots left, start attacking humans.
Your population growth depends on your population size, so you have to not over expand at the beginning.
Get allies at the beginning so that you may aggressively conquer bots without worrying about being conquered.
Those ally may cross you, but they'll have a penalty so they are disincentive to do so.
The speed of capturing depends on the ratio of soldiers attacking/defending. It appears to be better to accumulate extra soldiers and then do a big push
I'ts fun, I think it needs queues for different game modes because with 150 players you almost always get horded by neighbours. Being able to queue for a team game would make it a bit easier to learn I think
ended nuking my self by mistake and tanking my run, wish it was in a separate menu than all the buttons for building stuff, I assumed clicking it meant I was building more nuclear facilities.
A feature request would be a [Rage Quit] command that simulates flipping the table when I'm playing against siblings who keep taunting me while they crush my armies.
this looks cool but I'm really struggling to figure it out. I started a single player game which was really confusing until I realized I needed to click somewhere to choose my starting position.
It's where you click and then the node that has a thick yellow outline around it. But I agree, the whole startup/placement sequence should be made a lot more explicit and user friendly.
What's the fun in that? Almost half the fun of finding a new game is discovering how it works by trial and error. Watching hours of someone else playing a game I just picked up seems self-defeating. Are there really people who want to start new games and being good at them from the get go?
Another good player to watch is Corgi Circus who came to the game through being popular in the Territorial.io world, a similar but far simpler game: https://www.youtube.com/@CorgiCircus – https://territorial.io/ is worth playing as an alternative if you only have 5 minutes to spare though but the strategy is quite simple.
It is open source! Check out to GitHub and discord to contribute!
https://github.com/openfrontio/openfrontio
It is heavily inspired by territorial.io .
One of the contributing devs made an open source version: warfront.io, which openfront is forked from and then heavily developed.
Warfront did not have any multiplayer so Evan, the creator of openfront, made it multiplayer and together with contributors made lots of new features.
Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront repo. Warfront added webgl rendering, and hopefully Openfront will have be inspired. Openfront does not work nicely on mobile and low end devices currently.
On mobile I go for Coop and try hard to just support other players, by giving troops to the right player. Having good backend players is vital in Coop.
Sadly communication and cooperation is very hard.
> Recently there has been some new activity on the warfront repo
Yeah, seems there is a for-profit company running the show now, so expect some squeezing in the mid-to-long term.
Also, latest gameplay change seems to be trains, anyone had time to play around with it yet? I've played quite hours of Openfront and not sure how I feel about the train addition yet.
For-profit company running warfront or openfront?
All the developing of openfront is done for free by contributors, unless something changed the last week or so
> For-profit company running warfront or openfront?
Talking about OpenFront. Seems to be run by a "OpenFront LLC", supposedly based in "SACRAMENTO, CA 95816" according to their privacy policy. Playwire (A "revenue amplification company") is also involved somehow into the operations, as you get redirected there when you hit "Advertise with us" link, I'm guessing they might be the publisher or something?
As for the actual people working on the codebase, it seems like there are two main authors which based on the activity seem to be full-time employees working on the project, or at least contractor-based.
I'm the creator of OpenFront. I created an LLC mostly for tax purposes, but I maintain 100% ownership. No publishing company involved.
Playwire is ad company I'm partnering with. I recently quit my job to work on this full time, so need to figure out some form of monetization.
Thanks a bunch of clarifying all the details! Maybe worth putting the info in some FAQ or somewhere on the website as well, always good to have somewhere for when people go looking :)
Thanks a bunch for OpenFront as well, it's a really fun game I've spent lots of hours with already, although it's really hard :P Excited to see how the trains will be worked in, but it's also really enjoyable as it is so again, thanks for working on it!
Thanks for the game!
The coming update has trains and factories! The game is mainly about managing compounding growth with discrete losses (having more land and cities increases you population cap, and your population follows a logistic curve, so you want to reserve an amount of population to maintain growth, and it's programmed so that you want to use a discrete amount for attacking instead of a constant trickle)
A good strategy that works well for me is to prioritize moneymaking and win by cleaning up a nuclear wasteland. Some tips for that strategy aka trademaxxing:
* The fastest way to make money is to get lots of ports and ally with people near and far. Boats give you more gold depending on their distance traveled
* Set up turtled-in bases on islands and have warships patrolling near them to shoot down potential land invasions. This combined with your small land area will make it less appealing for the big countries to focus on you
* Once you have enough funds for a MIRV, maintain strategic deterrence by having multiple missile silos - so you can launch the MIRVs any time
* Continue to trademaxx and wait for the big countries to nuke each other into oblivion
* Once the time is right (and you have enough funds for multiple MIRVs), move in to clean up the nuclear wasteland. Get some cities but don't spend too much money. If another country starts attacking you at this point, you can MIRV them again. You are also much more resistant to MIRVs since your assets are in money instead of structures and can rebuild quickly
You must plant your nation during the generation fase, otherwise you wont exist in the game!!! (took me 10 minutes to figure out)
Yep. I had to lookup a tutorial on YouTube to figure out what I was doing wrong...
Thank you; I thought I was the only one that did not get that
If you're planning on diving in, the linked "how to play" video is two minutes long and gets the basics across very effectively: https://youtu.be/jvHEvbko3uw
Super addictive. To be fair, I still don't really get what the best strategy is, especially at the beginning, so I'm getting steamrolled by human opponents pretty easily...
I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers in. It seems that for the first 30 seconds or so you need almost all soldiers to expand fast, but after that?
There's a lot of luck involved too, sometimes you'll just get dogpiled by two neighbours and there's not much you can do, but at least it's fast.
> I can't work out what the best ratio of soldiers/workers in.
In the beginning I tried out a bunch of ratios and never found any strategy that seemed to have worked. Now I just leave it on default for entire runs, won a handful of times in free-for-all, seems to work out OK for most cases.
In the first ~1 minute or so I keep 1K soldiers "at home" at all times, and whenever it goes above, I send them out in the "non-taken land", so basically medium-sized expansions until there is no land left. Then start attacking bots in the order of the money they have available, and once there is no bots left, start attacking humans.
IME, ports generate way more income than workers, so I go for pretty much fully soldiers
Your population growth depends on your population size, so you have to not over expand at the beginning.
Get allies at the beginning so that you may aggressively conquer bots without worrying about being conquered. Those ally may cross you, but they'll have a penalty so they are disincentive to do so.
It is amount of population and how much room is left so you want to continuously kill off soldiers to have a good growth/conquer ratio.
The speed of capturing depends on the ratio of soldiers attacking/defending. It appears to be better to accumulate extra soldiers and then do a big push
I'ts fun, I think it needs queues for different game modes because with 150 players you almost always get horded by neighbours. Being able to queue for a team game would make it a bit easier to learn I think
There is a singleplayer mode too, which is how I learned to play before jumping into multiplayer.
ended nuking my self by mistake and tanking my run, wish it was in a separate menu than all the buttons for building stuff, I assumed clicking it meant I was building more nuclear facilities.
By no means Risk-like IMO - territorial.io-like.
Haha - what is going on? How do I play this?
Is there a way to get more UI or feedback?
A feature request would be a [Rage Quit] command that simulates flipping the table when I'm playing against siblings who keep taunting me while they crush my armies.
Raaaaaaugh!!!
20 years ago I was addicted to a game like that named Globalcombat.com. Good times. Few years ago it was still alive. Now it seems gone.
Risk Games are kind of niche but have a hardcore base. Check out Risk Legacy SC2 custom map, and Line Wars on Steam.
I would argue that Risk games are not that niche, but I am currently too busy conquering 18 territories with 2 armies at least.
Very addictive. Beware.
Love this game, fast paced multiplayer that's super strategic.
this looks cool but I'm really struggling to figure it out. I started a single player game which was really confusing until I realized I needed to click somewhere to choose my starting position.
been playing this for months, absolutely love it
You need to make it clear what my starting position and color is.
It's where you click and then the node that has a thick yellow outline around it. But I agree, the whole startup/placement sequence should be made a lot more explicit and user friendly.
I would have given it a try if you didn’t implement that deceptive GDPR notice with 30 switches you have to manually unselect
I discovered this game through Ultimus Rex's Youtube channel. I recommend watching him play a couple times before diving in.
https://www.youtube.com/@ultimus_rex40
What's the fun in that? Almost half the fun of finding a new game is discovering how it works by trial and error. Watching hours of someone else playing a game I just picked up seems self-defeating. Are there really people who want to start new games and being good at them from the get go?
Another good player to watch is Corgi Circus who came to the game through being popular in the Territorial.io world, a similar but far simpler game: https://www.youtube.com/@CorgiCircus – https://territorial.io/ is worth playing as an alternative if you only have 5 minutes to spare though but the strategy is quite simple.
The last thing I need in my life is to get competent at these quick pick up and play multiplayer browser games. Sheesh.