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[DWWilson]

First of all, I've removed the entire plot from the game (the error messages). It was surprisingly difficult to delete essentially 40 hours of work, but there you go. I hope no reviewers bitch about the lack of any kind of plot, but I doubt anyone is going to review it anyway lol.

OK, failing colour, I think something moving would be best, like a spinning ring or something. I died once just now because I was getting axed and couldn't see where I was...

I've added a giant red spinning cross that pops up when you stand still for 5 seconds, I think it looks pretty good. If it's on all the time, it looks fugly, but when you're moving it goes away so it doesn't interfere. I think it's a good compromise between being able to see your guy and it not being ugly.

I was playing around with Juggernauts after selling all my buildings at the end and found a couple of bugs:

First, after selling all my stuff, I clicked the button to buy a juggernaut. Then, when I placed it, I was still in "Sell" mode, so it immediately exploded when I placed it!

Yeah that happens, it's a bit of a prick but having the sell icon disappear after you sell something would get annoying if you wanted to sell multiple things at once, and making some sort of auto dismiss if you buy something could be a pain in the ass. I'll see if I can find a nice workaround and add it to a future version.

Second, after driving around the 2nd juggernaut, opening the front and letting out the axebots, I tried to sell it and got this crash:

Fixed.

I tried the vehicles in general a bit more this time, and I'm even more sure there should be an enter/exit button. Also the way the vehicle always follows the cursor means it drives round in an out-of-control fashion if you're going to click something in the menus. Maybe hold right button to drive?

I just get out of the drivers seat when I want to buy something and hop back in afterwards. Have you tried some of the armours yet? I don't really want to change the vehicle mechanics, I'm happy with them and the no-button control scheme.

Thanks for finding that bug too, I can't believe I didn't notice that before.  

I still haven't fixed the menu button disabling the firing bug. Its one of those "can't easily replicate" sort of bugs. I'll get it one day though.

[Ed]

Sounds like good work... just to clarify something regarding selling:

Yeah that happens, it's a bit of a prick but having the sell icon disappear after you sell something would get annoying if you wanted to sell multiple things at once,

I'm not suggesting it disappearing after you sell something, just being much more obvious you're in "sell" mode (cursor not going underneath things, text prompt at the bottom, whatever). Even bug-free modal UIs are dangerous beasts.

Haven't tried the armours yet - I might have another go at some earlier areas in arena-shooter mode and try them then.

[DWWilson]

I'm not suggesting it disappearing after you sell something, just being much more obvious you're in "sell" mode (cursor not going underneath things, text prompt at the bottom, whatever). Even bug-free modal UIs are dangerous beasts.

Yeah I noticed the sell symbol going underneath a tank the other day, I thought to myself to fix that, but then forgot about it completely. I screwed up all the depths from constantly changing them around without writing anything down.

I have to fix them menus, add music and make a video. That's my homework for the next couple of weeks.

I'll make the sell symbol larger and stop it from going underneath things. I think I might also take that "hammered" look off the menu texture in favour of something smoother.

[Alex May]

Thankyou for playing it and having the decency to let me know what you thought. I can't fix things if no one tells me what is wrong with it.

You're quite welcome, I will play more and offer more feedback as I think the game is promising!

And yeah I *could* try and sell it for $15, but no one would buy it. With all due respect, You're Alex Fucking May, Eufloria got nominated for a IGF award that's the big time right there.

Come now, nobody had really heard of Notch (no disrespect to Notch) or many many other developers who randomly started to sell their games. Yes, I think Eufloria would not have done at all as well if we hadn't got on Steam due to IGF, but we were planning to take it to commercial release either way at that point, due to how many demo downloads we were logging.

What did you think of the actual game though? Or did that sound scare you away? How was the fps?

I didn't get past the tutorial as I was playing in work (day job) time which I shouldn't do really. FPS was totally fine, etc. No technical errors apart form that 1280x768 didn't work on this 1600x1200 monitor (just got a black screen which I had to kill from task manager - XP SP2, GeForce 7900GS, 3GB RAM; 800x600 worked ok scaled). The screenshots make me want to play more though.

Just based on the first 5 minutes of play + screenshots + the fact that Ed likes it, I think you could get people to pay money for this, once you fix up a few comfort issues (many of which you say you've fixed - any chance of a new build? ).

[Ed]

Also, the sticky walls thing (and enemies failing to path around walls) becomes totally irrelevant (in a good way!) in the main game, because there are no walls.

I will get the latest build and have a got in arena-shmup style like I said I would...

Like I might have already said, I would actually be disappointed not to be able to spend $5-$10 on this, assuming some (not necessarily all) of the rough edges were smoothed off.
Only one copy though

[brog]

I'll play the game when my computer's fixed, but this just made me go "ugh":

* Can't skip the death screen.

Well, you need some kind of punishment for failing.

You don't need to punish the player for playing your game!  Please, please can everyone just learn this already?  Failure is its own punishment, be like VVVVVV and let me start again straight away (not necessarily from the same position, depends on the game).  Especially in a single-player game - in multiplayer (or other games where death is not the end of the game) you generally want there to be a cost for death or a reward for killing, but to be clear: a cost is not the same thing as a punishment.

[DWWilson]

You're quite welcome, I will play more and offer more feedback as I think the game is promising!

I didn't get past the tutorial as I was playing in work (day job) time which I shouldn't do really. FPS was totally fine, etc. No technical errors apart form that 1280x768 didn't work on this 1600x1200 monitor (just got a black screen which I had to kill from task manager - XP SP2, GeForce 7900GS, 3GB RAM; 800x600 worked ok scaled). The screenshots make me want to play more though.

Just based on the first 5 minutes of play + screenshots + the fact that Ed likes it, I think you could get people to pay money for this, once you fix up a few comfort issues (many of which you say you've fixed - any chance of a new build? ).

Ok I fixed lots of stuff last night:

- made the walls lighter and reduced the darkness around the edge of the screen.
- made it so you slide on the walls instead of stick to them.
- Changed the teleport sound (still sounds kind of feedbacky, but not so shrill)
- made it so the ini file can be deleted and it still works.
- made it so if you set the res to something your computer won't run, it doesn't fuck up.(you can set the res to anything from the .ini file if you really want to with the Vres and Hres keys)
- I managed to get some music out of my friend which is now in the game(only one 4 min loop though)

I added these things a few days ago:

- made it so it installs to where ever you want. (originally there was a plot that had spoilers if you went into the directory where it was installed which is why I tried to bury it in program files, but I have since removed the plot entirely so you it doesn't matter).
- the menu is now less opaque
- the menu has a less lumpy looking texture
- the menus are permanently white

I was one of the guys that played dyson back when it was called dyson. I loved the look of it, so clean and simple. I was trying to emulate it to some extent.

If enough people complain about the death screen I'll fix it too, but I'll wait a bit before doing that. It pisses me off when a game doesn't punish you for failing (and 5 second pause isn't that much for a punishment, you shouldn't be dying very often). I couldn't play Fable 2 because the punishment for dying wasn't severe enough to justify powering up my guy to avoid dying in the first place.

Give it a go if you have the time, I'd like to hear what you think of the improvements and what other things I could improve 

[DWWilson]

Also, the sticky walls thing (and enemies failing to path around walls) becomes totally irrelevant (in a good way!) in the main game, because there are no walls.

Yeah that's exactly why I hadn't bothered to fix it lol.

I will get the latest build and have a got in arena-shmup style like I said I would...

It's pretty fun using 1 guy to do as much damage as an entire base, but you gotta remember that everything has a cost. Some of my testers complained about this because it's a bit different to normal shmups in that you have to conserve expensive ammo. All the weapons generally fall into 2 categories: cheap to buy weapons with expensive ammo, and expensive to buy weapons with cheap ammo.

The former is intended to be accessible to all play styles, as a sort of "oh shit button" in case something goes horribly wrong and you need to kill a whole bunch of guys really fast spare no expense.

The latter is more a "bread and butter" weapon that is expensive to buy because it is more efficient over time and therefore should only be accessible to players that conserved money buy not spending it on buildings early on.

Like I might have already said, I would actually be disappointed not to be able to spend $5-$10 on this, assuming some (not necessarily all) of the rough edges were smoothed off.
Only one copy though

Thanks man, that really cheers me up if I can't sell this 2nd part, it would be the third time in my life that I've wasted a stupidly large amount of time on something that went no where. First was my degree and the second was a mushroom company that me and a friend spent 3 years building.

[DWWilson]

You don't need to punish the player for playing your game!  Please, please can everyone just learn this already?  Failure is its own punishment, be like VVVVVV and let me start again straight away (not necessarily from the same position, depends on the game).  Especially in a single-player game - in multiplayer (or other games where death is not the end of the game) you generally want there to be a cost for death or a reward for killing, but to be clear: a cost is not the same thing as a punishment.

Well it's not a big punishment and it actually does have some function. When you die, the game pauses for 5 seconds and displays a message like "flamethrower fuel is very expensive" or "a spanner can be used to repair buildings" things like that. The other thing is that if you jumped back to the last checkpoint instantly (like it used to be), sometimes you don't even notice you died until you realise that half your base is missing.

In VVVVVV you die all the time, like once every 5 seconds, so it makes sense to not have a punishment like that. But in drone you shouldn't be dying more than once every 5 minutes tops.

There are heaps of games that punish you way harder than mine that are mega successful, like spelunky and demon's souls, but if enough people complain about the difficulty then I'll change it. Maybe make the death screen like 2.5 seconds long or add a skip button.

[brog]

There are heaps of games that punish you way harder than mine that are mega successful, like spelunky

Spelunky doesn't waste five seconds of my time.  There's a screen that can be skipped, then immediately I'm interacting again, then a second or so later I'm playing the game proper again, with my bombs and ropes restored.
(Haven't played Demon's Souls because it's not available on any real system, so I cannot comment on that.)

[DWWilson]

Spelunky doesn't waste five seconds of my time.  There's a screen that can be skipped, then immediately I'm interacting again, then a second or so later I'm playing the game proper again, with my bombs and ropes restored.
(Haven't played Demon's Souls because it's not available on any real system, so I cannot comment on that.)

Fair enough, I've added a skip button. No delay, straight back in.

[Noisefever]

I think the most have said so I can't give you much feedback here. I would prefer the player in another color, because I have really problems finding me when there is much action. But that was said too The glowing didn't help me much.

Aside from that I REALLY like your game! It's a great work!

[DWWilson]

I think the most have said so I can't give you much feedback here. I would prefer the player in another color, because I have really problems finding me when there is much action. But that was said too The glowing didn't help me much.

Aside from that I REALLY like your game! It's a great work!

Thanks man, I appreciate it:) I might try and make the glow bigger or the colour brighter or something. In the mean time I guess you could buy armour if you really wanted to stand out

[AuthenticKaizen]

I think the most have said so I can't give you much feedback here. I would prefer the player in another color, because I have really problems finding me when there is much action. But that was said too The glowing didn't help me much.

Aside from that I REALLY like your game! It's a great work!

Thanks man, I appreciate it:) I might try and make the glow bigger or the colour brighter or something. In the mean time I guess you could buy armour if you really wanted to stand out

i think he meant that the color should be permanent to distinct the player from the other objects and enemies... and that the glowing doesnt help in that case since it comes only when you dont move for a few seconds.

[Ed]

Yeah, actually when I think about when I had lost my robot amongst the other stuff, I was running round in circles (maybe to try and pick out which one was mine) panicking as the next wave came in. Haven't really replicated the situation with the big highlight so not sure what would happen. This is why I suggested a different color. Howver if it's technically hard to change the colour, a permanent alpha circle on top of the robot might do the same thing? Not sure how it would look though.

BTW the badges are a really nice idea. Would be nice maybe to have a third "find the combined optimum" type badge, or just a highscore tracker or something to also encourage the "middle ground"? Just an idea...

I have played a bit with weapons-only: The weapons are very satisfying, especially the railgun, RPG and pipebomb. This was mostly on the axebot-only level, so there was a lot of furious backpedalling (to be expected I guess), but getting the following bots into position for a bomb blast or rail shot was good. Another random low-priority idea: If (some?) axebots had some spreading-out behaviour so they came in a line abreast it would add a bit of variety to that level, but no big deal.

Oh, and since I was playing weapons-only the "fire a bullet whilst clicking a menu button" cropped up quite a lot. If I can reliably reproduce it I'll let you know.

AND finally... would it be possible when buying weapons and armour to automatically set it as "selected" in the inventory panel and (perhaps) set it as the current weapon/armour?
It seems like if you just bought something, you intend to use it pretty soon, you don't want to be switching tab and clicking stuff in the menu when the next wave of enemies is coming.

Glad to hear you removed the forced delay on death, I felt that 5 seconds quite a few times...