Also, can you tell me what you think the premise of the game is?

oh shit ARTGAME!


I'm not really sure, otherwise I wouldn't have said I couldn't follow it. Obviously, you have some art vs religion going on but I've always seen the two as working together - many famous works are religious in nature. There's also some revenge business with Hydorah v God, but it doesn't seem to carry too much.

Personally, I would have preferred a more serious branching story with a nonlinear campaign, though I'm not sure dungeons would've worked with this - perhaps something more along the lines of FF Tactics? I dunno! Nothing wrong with short story structures either.

For your first game, though, it was really well done, and applause!


Also just a tiny note, on some screens (unit purchase screen I think?) you call Realists, Romantics.

I really like this game.

The music is what really grabbed me, more than anything else. I dunno if Marky Spark is an individual you know or just the formulator of some public domain music, but it's very very nice and I thought it fit the game well.

The gameplay is simple, good, very nicely done. Reminiscent of Disciples, but nicer.

Some bugs/issues:
1) No way to get to the menu screen from in game.
2) Possible to break the game by spending all money on upgrades while you have no units... game then stuck.
3) Possible to break the game by repeatedly buying the same upgrades. This makes most of the health & damage upgrades useless as it's cheaper and better to buy the +25 all health & damage upgrades, except for perhaps the Baroquist +65 dmg, and the Cubist +100 health. The tech trees and graphics seem to indicate this shouldn't be happening, and it seems to unbalance the game, though I've only gotten to Chap 3 so far.
Edit: Hmmm, maybe the damage isn't going up when you buy it for the second time...
Edit #2: The main health & damage ones don't seem to be bugged (except you can pay for them again). The character ones are, however. I wound up taking on God (true ending) with 4 Futurists, 1 Cubist, 2 Baroquists, and he died in the second round. My Futurists were doing 5000 damage a round each (1250 x 4 attacks). The Baroquists were obsolete by that time, doing only two thousand or three thousand, and the Cubist didn't do diddly in comparison. I had also stopped spending money after the House of Flying Daggers - I think I could've upgraded and took God on with 3 Futurists for a more even battle. Oddly, buying the Symbolist to Modernist upgrade twice bugged the unit back to a Symbolist, and then it wouldn't change again no matter how many more purchases of the upgrade I made. I didn't test all upgrades and never used Realists, though I will second time round to see if I can double HP to infinity and break GM's numerical limit(probably a byte?).
4) Enemy AI is stupid and insists on moving to it's maximum range, even if it's a melee unit and that makes it unable to hit my units.
5) Along with all the other stats, it'd be nice to have a # of attacks remaining on the sidebar.

Fluffier issues:
1) I wasn't quite sure what the premise of the game was. I think a little more backstory/introduction could help.
2) Where'd Hydorah go? He's still talking and leading armies after God killed him, but he's not a unit on the field?

I dunno, I think people who understand the implications are going to understand the scope a bit better before they get to that point. Things are always more complex than you think starting out, but in the back of our minds we know that too.

That sounds like a really good explanation, but it happens even to experienced AAA developers - only in their cases, it usually results in things like missed milestones, budget overruns, etc. They have a larger impetus by nature of monetary investment into their time, so perhaps it's not intimidation exactly, but misevaluation of scope still strikes on all levels.


@Bobo, I think strong focuses on prototyping is a really good idea and can churn out some amazing things. At the same time, I also think it limits development by chaining the design to a single or single set of, mechanic(s). So yes, it avoids intimidation by keeping the scope small, but it doesn't necessarily answer the question of how to deal with a realized larger scope than intially concieved of. More relevantly, prototyping has also been the answer that I've been trying to apply in the situation that prompted this topic(trying to encourage someone else to put something together), and it's not working.


Hm. Well, maybe if I come to understand it in the future, I'll put such an article together.

Fist Weapons (with training), Spears (with training), Staves (with training)

Historically speaking, fists, spears, and staves are the simplest weapons and even homo habilis used them to great effect. How do you justify requiring training for these skills - are Hunters just that stupid as soon as they enter the class?

I feel like self-intimidation, realizing that you may have come with a concept too big or too complex for you right now to finish, is like a pink elephant in the room - hardly anyone talks about it. I must be wrong though, and just looking in the wrong places! Aside from Hecker's (in?)famous rant, anyone know of some articles/essays on dealing with self-intimidation on projects?

Obviously the post is just designed to look like a blatant self-promotional post. In actuality, it's an encrypted set of paragraphs that convey something completely different to someone in a particular place who's waiting for the green light for their black op. "Tell" keywords are "pyro", "strange town", "tactical", "musketeers", "slay the...king", and "demo".

[fall 2011]
fez
spelunky (xbla version)

[summer 2011]
saturated dreamers

I stopped reading this post here. Book it. Done.

Voice overs? Hmmm... Could it cope with a string of insults well-put enough that any military D.I. would be happy to repeat?

/ You look like the midwife cut away the best part of you at your birth.

words

 
Damnit! You used words! I'm only reading this thread for your am(us/az)ing art. :D

[only ones worth reading]

My posts amongst a few other people's are the only ones worth reading in this sewer.

Actually I think Dragonmaw made the most read-worthy post. Quoted below:

This is dumb. Who is "icycalm" and why should I care?

Nobody and you shouldn't.

Portal 2
Melolune
Dungeons
TES5
DNF
Mass Effect 3

That old platformer, Fire & Ice?

Oh, you did not do that, did you? You did! It's on! And I shall win! Because 3p > 2p!

Good luck! I'd buy you a beer of comradeship, but I have no idea where in the world you are, so I can't drug you from here.

Paint By Numbers: Microsoft?

Cool concept! But not much 'versus' here I guess

I think it'll be quite chaotically vs, actually. After all, it's in the pilot player's best interest to try to crash and destroy the ship any time the scores are somewhat even, while the turreters are trying to get more kills than each other, and stop the pilot's suicidal inclinations. It's a bizarre love triangle involving shooty death.

Feature List Creep!

- Some upgrades in guns for turreters, speed/maneuverability for the pilot, shield. Any player could buy any upgrade for each other.
- Different stages with different view angles, ie: Starfox style

[reserved]

I'll throw my hat into the ring as well. Wow, there's a lot of hats in here. My concept is a little reliant on double mice, it may not be tenable and there might be something completely different here, later! On the other hand, three players, two mice, ensures that nobody will ever actually play this game nor can one person test it. By that standard of awesomeness, it will reign supreme!
....Until I add network coding, probably post-compo.

My concept is shmup. One player flies the ship, other players are in turrets that fire 180' arcs to either side, maybe a tiny bit of overlap.
Turret players try to get more kills than the other turret. Turret players both use a mouse. (So, two mice.)
Pilot player flies the ship, dodges obstacles, wins if neither turret player gains significantly on the other. (say 5-15% of total kills, playtesting will prove)

Each game lasts 1 or 5 rounds, round ends when ship is destroyed or reaches stage end.

Gonna start (t)arting it up tomorrow.

Oh yeah, Aquin's good at hunting people on the net. Should we hire him to kill Derek? Or just stalk him?

To make Derek a delicious indie game of course - the likes of such that would prompt Derek to never play another AAA title.

The game mechanic is neat, here. Simple, but nice. Continue with it.