Hey everyone! I thought I would make a post about Evo, as I have just put it up on itch. As a sidenote, I am extremely pleased that itch has become such an amazing platform. It really is awesome!

So as some or (more likely) none of you may know, Evo has been around for a long time. I've been working on it almost exclusively by myself for about 8 years. Over that time it has always been in a playable state, but I have added more and more features, units, etc. I commonly joke that development will only stop when I eventually die :-D It is a labor of love, and something that I have thrown years of free time into, and will continue to do so.

Games typically last about 10 - 18 minutes. The gameplay is centered around the fighting. Yes, base building needs to be done, but from the moment you first play it, you will see that it is all about the combat. Units are highly responsive and intelligent. For example, all units will fire while moving, and all units will automatically target other units to whom they can unleash their full damage. The controls are simple to use, and the ability to select a unit group and then right click and drag a unit formation makes it so that you can constantly reposition your army in the midst of a fight to get the best angles.

The resources are pretty simplistic. 

Metal is used to build things, but in a twist, it is also intrinsic, and what I mean by that is that you get metal income in graduating amounts as long as you are alive. You do not need to gather metal. 

Energy is used to power units guns, shields, and other utility purposes. Energy is a resource that you need a lot of in order to fight most effectively. Energy is used to form the projectiles that units fire, so if you run out of energy, your units effectively don't have ammunition.

The tech and upgrading system is also quite simple to understand. You start out with tech 0, which allows you to build the most basic of attack units and buildings. Building a tech facility unlocks tech 1, and from there, you can upgrade the tech facility all the way to tech 3. Additionally, upgrades and tech level are not linked. Factories can upgrade themselves regardless of tech level, all the way to Mark IV. Of course, tech level will limit what units you can build from that factory, but it is entirely possible to have a factory that is mk4, pumping out mk4 tech level 0 units.

The gameplay is based around area control. There are control points spread throughout the map that you must control, in order to maintain your "Score". Score works exactly the same way it does in the battlefield FPS games, where controlling points causes your tickets to countdown more slowly than the other team.

There are 3 win conditions:

1. Your opponent's score hits 0 before yours
2. You destroy your opponent's Overseer (main starting unit and builder)
3. You annihilate your opponent entirely

The game has quite a bit of depth and is a lot of fun. I highly encourage you to give it a try is you are into or are interested in RTS games! :-)

https://forboding-angel.itch.io/evolution-rts

So what made you spread to Itch, rather than Steam? Me and Hamster were gonna try to talk to you about it, but it appears you beat us to it.

I don't really understand the question. It's already on steam. This is just spreading to another platform. Fwiw, it's also on Desura.

Honestly, because I have been a fan of itch since I first heard about it when I was doing a Ludum Dare. When I found that it had been turned into a proper platform, I was THRILLED. Since getting the process started, I have come to realize exactly how cumbersome and antequated the steam build system is.

The itch build system is far superior in every way. I sincerely wish steam would get their act together. That said, Itch is a very large community of open source players and developers. These are people who are probably better equipped to deal with a game that doesn't have a 60 million dollar budget behind it with a tutorial that holds your hand every step of the way. I'm not disparaging steam users here, but you know as well as I do that many of the people that come from steam literally have no idea how moving a unit around on the map works.

Without a ton of developers and people making tutorials and stuff like that, it becomes very hard to teach. This is why I have put so much effort into the wiki and youtube tutorials. In the hope that people who aren't familiar with RTS games might watch them.

Also, with this being an open source community, it is more likely that they will be more forgiving of shortcomings (like our lobby, which isn't exactly that easy to use). I try hard to mitigate these shortcomings, but the fact is, it's my hobby, not my day job, and as a result, there are limits to what I can accomplish.

I should note that it works for linux as well, but I don't have the linux itch.io package ready yet. Coming really soon.

Linux builds are up! Please report any issues on the forums!

Also, make sure that you have libsdl2-dev