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[cutandreil]

I've nearly finished the post of one of my XBLIG games : Pioneerz.
The game has more than 1000 sales on XBLIG and I want PC people to be able to play it!

It's a sandbox game melting town managment and RPG.
"A pioneer's life : protect your town, gather food, explore the wilderness, fight hostile animals, conquier ennemies town... The road is harsh to make a peaceful kingdom."



You start on a tiny town with nothing.
And you must protect the town and help it to grow.
And it can grow a lot!



A big part of the game is exploration and fighting!
Against monsters but also against enemy towns.




I've focused to make the world living and dynamic :
- Town people will gather ressource like a RTS
- Plants will grow
- Herbivores will eat plants to make babies.
- carnivore eat herbivore to make babies.
And if it's not enought, a friend with a pad can join you anytime. 

The game is nearly finished, and I will apreciate some feedback to improve it.
The full version can be download here : https://www.box.com/s/f2f5450537defa338646
I plan to sell the game this summer. (Not sure when)

[James Coote]

Had a go for a few hours yesterday afternoon. I quite enjoyed it. It reminded me of a game I played years ago on psone called team buddies.

One game I played though, I won simply by being the only team left that didn't get completely killed by the excessive number of legendary creatures roaming around

Here is some more specific feedback:

• Graphics: Crashes on launch with my normal setup of dual screen 1600x900 ATI Radeon 5850. I had to switch to a screen resolution of 1280x1024 or lower on my primary display to get it to work
• Options: Percentage amounts should cycle round. So when on 0%, pressing left should change it to 100%. Equally when on 100%, pressing right should reset it to 0%
• Options: change "Sound" to "Sound Effects" as at the moment it implies it affects music level as well, which it doesn't
• Options: Default music level should be higher than 0%, otherwise people might never realise the game has Music. I would also have music play when on the main menu
• Help: Put the "interactions" (controls) list as the first thing in the help section, as it makes it easier for newbie players to learn
• Escape Menu: "Press start to join" at the top of the escape menu doesn't make sense for PC
• Escape Menu: Changing team and then changing back to my original team, the map goes all black / unexplored again
• Hints: The hint about collecting more berries, wood etc should come earlier in play. I spent a while wandering around not knowing how to help my town grow before that hint came up
• Hints: Pressing F to close the hints also causes the player to use their heal, which doesn't make sense
• Controls: When my hero has something in the backpack and I press spacebar to put it down, if there is something in the way, like a road or building or tree, the thing I'm putting down just disappears and is lost forever. I feel like it ought to not let me put it down if there is nowhere to put it
• Controls: For PC, Enter key makes more sense than spacebar

I also got a couple of bugs I couldn't reproduce:

• Bug: Woodcutters get stuck walking on a single spot, even though there is no tree or building or anything else blocking them
• Bug: Crashes when trying to load a saved game. This was when I first played the game, and after having played the tutorial for a bit, switching teams a couple of times, I left the game and then tried to load

[poe]

Are the graphics placeholders? They look like they are from RPG Maker XP.

[epcc]

Can't try it right now, but you should find someone to correct your spelling mistakes in game.

[cutandreil]

Thanks for the feedback!

I've don't really know team buddy. If it also have a town building part, I should try it!

- A friend should check the text (but he has no time for now)
- Yes, it's RPG maker graphism, I've bought both RPG maker XP and VX.
And It should be the final one. Is it a problem?

• Graphics: Crashes on launch with my normal setup of dual screen 1600x900 ATI Radeon 5850. I had to switch to a screen resolution of 1280x1024 or lower on my primary display to get it to work

I've never tried the game on dual screen. What's going on on the other screen?
I don't know where this crash come from...
I have a question to help me found it : does the game also crash on 4/3 resolution bigger than 1280*1024?

• Controls: When my hero has something in the backpack and I press spacebar to put it down, if there is something in the way, like a road or building or tree, the thing I'm putting down just disappears and is lost forever. I feel like it ought to not let me put it down if there is nowhere to put it

If we can't waste item, we can't create shorcut in the middle of a forest. (by grabbing and throwing resource quickly)

• Crashes when trying to load a saved game. This was when I first played the game, and after having played the tutorial for a bit, switching teams a couple of times, I left the game and then tried to load

Ok, I think I guess where it comes from.

Controls: For PC, Enter key makes more sense than spacebar

For the menu? or for all the game? (Pressing "Enter" to gather seem a little hard to me)

Escape Menu: "Press start to join" at the top of the escape menu doesn't make sense for PC.

If you have a pad nearly try to press start on a pad .
The game support 4 players in split screen.
(I know it work on 360 pad, I'm not sure for others)

One game I played though, I won simply by being the only team left that didn't get completely killed by the excessive number of legendary creatures roaming around

With random world generation, it's hard to predict how it will evolve ^^.
If you are the sol survivor, I guess you've protect your town well and merit your victory.
It's just a surprising ending (by the way, you can keep playing after the victory)


Everything else was clear and should be done in the next version!
A new thanks James, it's really usefull feedack.

[James Coote]

I don't have a USB controller so I can't test the start button thing. Spacebar is not a big deal, but I play most of my gaming on PC, and really I expected to use Enter

I tested some more screen resolutions. I don't think dual screen matters actually. It seems to work fine (though it will not display on the second screen, only the first one. This is the same for most PC games, so I wouldn't worry about it). I found pioneerz worked at 1366x768 but not at 1440x900 and not at 1600x900

[Liosan]

Game crashes for me on 1920x1080, fullscreen. Windows 7 64b.

Liosan

[cutandreil]

I don't understand the logic behind these crash...
I guess I must restart my screen handling from start 

[Liosan]

Don't you have any logs or something that I can provide?

Liosan

[cutandreil]

No  .
I will add a windowed version for the next build.
It should not crash.

[Liosan]

... but I want to play fullscreen on my native resolution

Liosan

[cutandreil]

I promise I will do my best to make it work in all resolution.
But as i don't know where the bug comes form, it can be long to correct .
With the windowed version, you'll be able to try it this week  .

Edit : Now I have replace the version of the game by the windowed version.
Nothing else has been change for now.
It's the same link, but it's a new file 

[cutandreil]

Finally it has been pretty easy to remake the resolution system.
Now I check if the select version is enable on the PC. (I guess it was the problem)
If it's still crashing at launch, tell me!

Most of the other feedback have been improved.
Except :
"- Hints: The hint about collecting more berries, wood etc should come earlier in play."
I'm not sure to understand, the tuto came in the first seconds.
And it's said a second time when yu have finished the tuto (2-5 minutes).
"- Hints: Pressing F to close the hints also causes the player to use their heal, which doesn't make sense"
After some search, I can't correct that...

Here is the new version :
https://www.box.com/s/f2f5450537defa338646