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[Alex May]

Holy cow! Somehow I wasn't too interested in this competition and while I tried several games Dyson escaped me for some time. Now I have played it, however, and man, this is EXACTLY the kind of game I like.

It's the kind of gameplay I call "Konquest-like". There are quite a few projects of this kind - Pax Galaxia, Mayhem Intergalactic and one game that has been posted on the IndieGames Blog or TIGSource the name of which I can't recall - but this one is very, very stylish.

At first it crashed after ~10 seconds of gameplay but luckily everything is alright now. ^^

Geez - it'd be so great if you managed to make the game multiplayer (like e.g. Pax Galaxia, which I played a lot on the internet).

Several "real" suggestions, though:

- the number of trees isn't displayed in the "big" statistics, that is the ones displayed when you click on the planet, not hover the mouse over it

- maybe you should add some "control keys" to the clicks. While holding down the right mouse button is OK, I'd like to have the option to e.g. ctrl+click or alt+click on an asteroid to select increments of 10 and 50 seedlings respectively - I know that other games of this kind do it that way

- as to the visibility of trees - maybe they shouldn't scale as fast as the rest of the objects, so that while completely zoomed out you'd see a small asteroid with (comparatively) large trees on it?

- while I agree that so far the asteroid stats don't have much impact on the gameplay, you could make some visual indicators as to what type of asteroid you are dealing with - a similar system is in place in Pax Galaxia. What I have in mind is e.g. coloring the asteroid a bit in the shade of its most dominant statistic. E.g. if the asteroid were to be slightly reddish (its ownership is displayed by a halo anyways) you'd immediately know that its "strength" stat is dominant.

That's all for now, I think.

P.S. Does anybody know more "Konquest-like" games (turn-based or real-time)? I'm talking about games where you have planets and send ships (other stuff) around. I kinda collect them. Many years ago I started my first Linux-dual-boot setup only to get access to KDE and Konquest. ^^

Thanks for the feedback Lim-Dul!

A very similar game (the one you mentioned perhaps) is called GalCon. Great game.

The tree head up display will be removed and we'll have a more graphical display.

I don't mind adding keys but I'd like to keep the mouse interface intuitive. More intuitive than it currently is! We need to think about that.

The trees actually do scale in the way you suggested. But they fade out quite early. We need better LOD on them, which is tied into how we'll represent how many you have when zoomed out.

Yep, we'll be working on how the asteroid stats are represented. Not set in stone yet how we'll do it though.

[Lim-Dul]

A yes - GalCon was the game I didn't remember the title of. Of course I know it!

While I agree with the intuitive mouse interface I don't see how giving advanced players the option to control their seedlings a bit quicker would make it any less intuitive - it's not as if these keys were required to play the game.

The things you're working on sound promising. Keep it up! I would have donated something if I didn't have trouble with PayPal (as usual) - they have a bug in their system that doesn't allow me to re-activate my account after a "routine security check" and I've been battling with their stupid support staff for the last two weeks. -.-

If the asteroid stats play a greater role in the future: since currently seedlings inherit the stats of of the asteroid they have been produced on (which is logical) the game might become quite messy when you're not able to distinguish where the seedlings you're controlling came from. Maybe you should settle for a less realistic but viable option of making the seedlings inherit the stats of the asteroid they are currently on. That would amount to a similar gameplay to all the games I have mentioned (especially GalCon and Pax Galaxia where you have planets that are offensive or defensive etc.) and you could launch attacks e.g. from a asteroid that has an especially good strength stat.

Ah - there's another "visual hint" that might be needed. There is no quick way to check an asteroid's energy except for clicking on it and when you are attacked on several fronts this might be a problem. Maybe an "ownership" bar as seen in many, many territory control games would be a solution? It could be at the bottom of the hover box. Grey would mean neutral and all other colors would belong to the various sides. Then, it'd "slide around" once your seedlings would start attacking the core.

Then, there's a random idea that might only complicate the game and I'm not really insistent on: how about making "supply routes". I mean, making an asteroid send all its produced seedlings to another one automatically. That would be a behavior similar to Pax Galaxia, which, mind you, has quite different gameplay, especially since the universe is discreet, not continuous, so you have predetermined routes.

P.S. How exactly do the stats affect the seedlings and asteroids? Energy seems pretty clear to me - asteroid HP and seedling HP. Strength seems clear in the case of seedlings - but is it kind of the "defensive value" in the asteroids' case? Speed - does it control the speed at which the seedlings are produced as well as the energy regen? For seedlings it's their, well, speed, I guess. ;-)

P.P.S. How about making an icon for the executable? It looks ugly in my Steam games list (yes, I use Steam as a "launch center" for all my games =).

[Lim-Dul]

After failed peace talks with the red swarm yellow considers its strategic options. ;-)

[Rudolf Kremers]

Great stuff Lim Dul :-D
Will reply saturday when I can think again (just got home VERY late after a long day but am delighted with the feedback. :-D

[Synnah]

Congratulations on the Edge mention, guys! Thoroughly deserved.

It took me three attempts to complete Dyson. My first attempt was interrupted, but I learned a few techniques that would be useful, like shifting seedlings to a single asteroid to bypass the limit of 32, and the Colonisation Run. I still got rolled over in my second game, however. I think my mistake was attempting to reclaim asteroids of mine that got taken over, instead of forging onwards. Also, is the number of enemies random? In my second game I encountered about 5 other colours, whereas in the third I saw only 2. Chances are the other teams got wiped out before I could discover them. I feel like I got a bit of an easy ride in my third game, at any rate, so I'll definitely be playing again.

[andre-yu]

I loved this game.

Suggestions:

During travel, flies should like get distracted by enemy flies and probably fight if they encounter flies. This would stop like, travelling through loads of enemy asteroids unharmed.

I think flies should take random paths to the core. Developed planets would take longer to conquer this way. And also, it would be cool to watch flies take random paths and eventually popping out on the other side of the planet or something like that..

Harder AI, and.. yeah.

[Alex May]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

I've opened up a feedback thread in the Feedback forum for the game.

Mods: Should I lock this one now? Or leave it open?

[Krux]

You have used the Tao library, that makes the game perfect for a Linux port. If i can help you with it, please let me know it.

[Alex May]

Thanks Krux, I've been trying to get it (or at least, Cottage of Doom) working on the Mac with little success. There's a dependency on kernel32.dll for QueryPerformanceTimer, but I think I only need that for debug, so I'll try to take it out for the next build, at which point there shouldn't be anything in the way of running it on Linux.

On the Mac, it's a matter of packing it up into an .app file, which is doable but not so easy for someone with no bash-fu, and I don't know how to get any information out of crashes; the window flashes up and disappears again and gives me no more info.

[Krux]

i think it is the easyest way, to start the Game from a terminal. Just enter these two commands:

Code:

cd /path/to/Dyson
mono Dyson.exe

Of course you have to correct the first command, but then all mono runtime crashes will be send to the Terminal.

hope that could help you.

[Alex May]

That's the problem on the Mac, you can't do it this way - has to be packaged into an app I think.

[Krux]

if you really need to pack it into an app, i think i can't help you with mac support, cause i've never heared of that ending. I've never used a mac for more that 2 minutes, except that very very very old one that could only dilplay green color and used these big floppies. And with this computur my skills were reduced to playing frogger.
back2topic:
I think, if we can manage it somehow to let the Game run on Linux, i think the step to Mac isn't far anymore.

[Alex May]

I'll see about getting an Ubuntu distribution installed at some point.

[dmoonfire]

I'll see about getting an Ubuntu distribution installed at some point.

If you get an Ubuntu, I'll port it over to Debian if you want.

[Alex May]

Wouldn't it just work on either?