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[Worthless_Bums]

Hey, Sar, thanks for trying SM. I'll try to give answers as good as your feedback was


First let me saw I'm sorry about the crashing. If you would send a crash log (console.log) to me at [email protected] I could see what's going on. Crashing frequently/randomly hasn't been reported to me in a long time!


People have expressed frustration with facing requiring 1 AP before. The reasons for this are twofold. The game mechanics are there to encourage (pre)-positioning. It's very often the case that simply maneuvering units to fire on that turn is less effective than setting them up to fire for the next turn. So that's intended, although subject to change.

The second reason if because of the way vision is implemented. With fog of war and facing, all units can only see the tile behind them and the sides and a cone in front of them. If facing were free cone vision would be pointless. Actually it would be worse since ideal gameplay would be to move and face in the three other directions to look around you - you might as well just have circular vision. This was actually how SM used to have vision and firing if you want to see how it was:



Breaking down walls is so you can maneuver more easily in tight spaces. You can also knock enemies out into space for insta-kills which is just for fun factor The doors are still useful because they're guaranteed to open with 1 AP, unlike breaking a path through walls. Doors are also more obvious paths to new areas, although you can learn to recognize the wall tiles that indicate rooms behind them.

All items cost 1 AP to use, including Adrenal Shots so yes, that's intended. It is confusing, though, and I have plans to change the way items work in the future.

Tiles should never randomly blow up. Traps are placed after level generation and are marked by skulls. Any unit that moves onto the tile (walks, gets knocked back, etc) will trigger any traps on that tile. If this is not the case and you are stepping on tiles without traps on them please let me know! That would indeed be a bug.

The "Warning" text never changes. It's just meant to give new players a little bit of context as to where they are and what they're doing. It's placeholder

I'll look into the item pickup messages - thanks for the bug report!

Yes, the magic "you can't go there" invisible wall! I should just have my level generator spawn walls around all room edges and not place tiles next to the map. It's been like that for a long time now - low priority since it's only aesthetic  



(Edit: Whoops, forgot about the enemy spawning thing. Enemies currently only spawn in two ways - packs on level generation and they can randomly burst from grating tiles. Enemies should never spawn (at the start of a level) anywhere near your squad. But they can spawn from grating tiles and you should also get a little message when that even occurs. They spawn during the enemy turn but do not get that turn to act.)

[Sar]

People have expressed frustration with facing requiring 1 AP before. The reasons for this are twofold. The game mechanics are there to encourage (pre)-positioning. [...] If facing were free cone vision would be pointless. Actually it would be worse since ideal gameplay would be to move and face in the three other directions to look around you - you might as well just have circular vision.

Fair enough. Have you considered the compromise option of making one facing change (possibly just of 90 degrees) free per step, but further changes cost 1AP each? You're getting several free facing changes a turn just from movement, so it wouldn't seem so incongruous to me.

Doors are also more obvious paths to new areas, although you can learn to recognize the wall tiles that indicate rooms behind them.

On that note, is it intentional that you occasionally start in a room with no exits? I had one game today in which I'd moved through [the walls of] about seven rooms and found the first elevator before I first saw a door...

Tiles should never randomly blow up. Traps are placed after level generation and are marked by skulls.

Well, on one hand I hadn't noticed the skulls until today, so perhaps I just missed them completely. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I had a trap blow one of my guys up on a square that someone else had already moved through today... but perhaps I am just failing to notice the skull markers. I'll keep an eye out!

(Edit: Whoops, forgot about the enemy spawning thing. Enemies currently only spawn in two ways - packs on level generation and they can randomly burst from grating tiles.

Ahah! That makes sense somewhat, I guess. I'd not been paying particular attention to the various different tile types, I'd figured that it was mostly decoration.

I've sent you a console.log from a crash, I hope it's helpful; I'm looking forward to being able to play this for longer!

[Worthless_Bums]

Fair enough. Have you considered the compromise option of making one facing change (possibly just of 90 degrees) free per step, but further changes cost 1AP each? You're getting several free facing changes a turn just from movement, so it wouldn't seem so incongruous to me.

I think splitting the AP cost up contextually would just make the mechanic more confusing. I've tried movement only in the direction the unit is facing (consistent but tedious and not fun) and from way back not having facing at all (can fire in any cardinal direction at any time) but that was changed to have fog + cone of sight which I feel is a better tradeoff versus movement/facing cost realism.

There was an old Mac game I used to play called "Scarab of Ra". It was a first person dungeon crawler and in addition to move forward, left, right, and turn around, it also had look actions. Pressing look left would face your character left (at no action cost) but you couldn't do anything except release the look key and revert back to your original facing. I'm not sure how well it would work for SM, but it was an interesting mechanic in terms of using player time to look as opposed to character time. You could be bumbling around not looking down corridors and suddenly a monkey steals your food!

[Worthless_Bums]

Knocked out a new build with new and improved enemy AI. They'll patrol in dynamically created groups, check nooks and crannies, use grates to move, and sneak around and flank you. Fun! Also, there's a barrier to getting out of the Command Deck now - a rather large one, in fact:




I also put up a Steam Marines wiki to try to consolidate basic gameplay information as I develop: http://www.steammarines.com/DokuWiki/doku.php

[Worthless_Bums]

It's been a looooong while since I updated here The big ticket changes are New Game Plus, Hard Difficulty, the new Revenant boss, and a bunch of art!


New Game Plus


New Game Plus allows you to start the game over with your current marines, all of their experience, ranks, talents and equipped gear, your inventory, and your score. Infinite NGP means your potential high game score has no limit.


Bah! Steam Marines is too easy!


Okay, smarty pants - I got you covered, too Have you been rofflestomping Brutes and Flamejacks? Do the antics of Thopters and Amputators merely make you laugh? Hard difficulty is here to make you shake a leg. How much harder is it? Well the Hard difficulty modifies your score by 125%. Which is probably very unfair. Speaking of unfair...


Ohai


The Revenant is back, and he's more of a jerk this time around. He has buddies. He spawns buddies. He's faster. He hates elevators that work. The aliens with energy weapons aren't too friendly, either. The new alien unit animations are being done by a Mister Jay Bramhall 


Art, you say?


Oh yeah. Art. For squad creation, for victory, for defeat. Fight and die in style. By a Mister André Marí Coppola



That's not all. Build v0.7.9a is huge - see the changelog below! As usual you can download the latest alpha build of Steam Marines from the official website or the forums. Thanks for reading and happy robot (and alien) hunting!




The changelog follows:

v0.7.9a
-------------------------------------------------
New/Changed Features
-------------------------------------------------
"Hard" difficulty mode added.
New Game Plus implemented. Reaching the elevator on the fifth level of the Medical Deck wins the game demo/alpha. This allows you to start the game over from the beginning with your current squad, all gear, talents, stats, et cetera. Score is not entered on the high score table until you actually lose the game!
High Score table now records the game difficulty and game version of that run.
Completion of the alpha is the first three decks; Command, Engineering, and Medical. Each New Game Plus adds 1000 points to that run.
Difficulty now affects score. Easy has a multiplier of 0.75, Normal of 1.0, and Hard of 1.25. Bonuses and penalties are scaled separately then aggregated because scores can be negative.
A New Game Plus counter was added to the high scores screen next to the final deck/level.
New Game Plus counter appears on the center/middle of the main menu screen while a game is in-progress or for a save state preview.
You cannot adjust game difficulty in New Game Plus.
On Normal difficulty subsequent New Game Plus runs are harder due to enemy stat gains.
The Revenant is now the boss of the Engineering Deck. Health, armor, and action points were increased and base melee damage decreased.
Revenions can spawn on any adjacent tile from Revenants. On Normal difficulty and up they can also spawn from Revenions.
Easy difficulty monster stats buffed across the board.
All weapons now have a flat 1 AP cost to fire.
When Guard Mode is triggered all available AP is placed in a separate AP pool used for Guard Mode shots. No more infinite enemy turn shooting!
Base trap damage reduced to 4.
Traps are now really easy to see. I will feel zero sympathy if you step on them!
Added new art backgrounds.
The New Game Button now clears any old save file and prompts you whenever there is a save file detected or a game is currently in progress.
Enemy spawn chance from grating tiles has been toned down to 10%.
The escape key now skips the introductory text sequence.
Dispensers potentially give more ammunition.
Increased dispenser spawn chance on open levels. Cramped levels have less chance to spawn dispensers.
Significantly decreased starting ammo for all classes.
Added steam vent animation to grating tiles.
Added wall pipes for environment aesthetics.
Added portholes which allow sight through the wall tiles they reside on.
Reduced firing delay for marines.
Increased the number of traps that can spawn per level.
You may hear tapping noises...
The Medical Deck gets a new ranged enemy unit. Beware!
Enemies are a lot more aggressive when searching out marines on Normal difficulty.
Amputators and Ripsaws are now more aggressive.
Amputators and Ripsaws are more watchful of marines on the player's turn.
Removed primary and secondary mission objectives on deck levels.
Added context sensitive button for using an elevator.
Added more armor variants/names that affect random stats.
Added more context sensitive marine dialogue and banter.
Fixed Grenadier class weapon "Howler" sprite and inventory icon bitmaps.
Escape exits the New Game Button prompt from the main menu when there is a game in progress.
Implemented a credits screen at the end of the game.
-------------------------------------------------
Bug Fixes
-------------------------------------------------
Dispensers again spawn in proper positions next to horizontal walls.
Fixed some walls being able to be seen through.
Fixed mouse cursor sometimes not appearing on the death screen.
Fixed trap positions on lifted tiles.
Fixed fog of war not always covering to the very edge of the map.
Fixed not being able to click on a marine's talent buttons on the bottom of the icon.
Adjusted potential long armor names and shifted swap/keep buttons to avoid text overlap on the armor swap screen.
The weapon swap screen can be cleared (current weapon kept) with the escape key.
Marine health overlay updates properly after environmental damage.
Fixed main menu scrolling starfield from freezing if escape key is pressed after game loss.
Centered and aligned certain UI elements on stat and end level screens.
Fixed squad creation screen not always properly synchronizing class portraits.
Fixed spelling errors.
Mouse move/face actions now properly short-circuit unit auto-switching.
Fixed being able to fire with non-fire keys with fire control toggled on.
Fixed close sync issue with layered GUI menus.
Fixed some enemy units spawning with mismatched current and maximum health.
Centered "I.S.S. Orion" on the main menu after game loss.
Fixed random key pressing sometimes breaking menu order (e.g. on the end level screen).

[Sar]

The escape key now skips the introductory text sequence.

Woohoo! ;-)

[Weilard]

Nice art-style. Glad that find Tigsource. Many-many games which i like and which i want to have.  Tell to Mr. André Marí Coppola the best regards. He old school painter. This images (defeat, win) remind me movies from good old games.

[jonbro]

pretty slick! If I had one complaint, it would be that the control surface is too large, but I think that is just a matter of taste, and not that it works poorly in this game. I totally didn't figure out how to shoot until way too late, and I think I wasn't using the keyboard as intended. Will need to revisit and actually read the tutorial before playing.

[Worthless_Bums]

The escape key now skips the introductory text sequence.

Woohoo! ;-)

Yeah, I think I underestimate how fast some players die Some complained that it takes too long to start a new game and I should just cut that screen out entirely! I think it's currently four clicks to start a new game without squad changes. People have been asking me to retain squad member names/class combinations to make the process faster as well. I do wonder if doing that cheapens the death aspect, though.

Nice art-style. Glad that find Tigsource. Many-many games which i like and which i want to have.  Tell to Mr. André Marí Coppola the best regards. He old school painter. This images (defeat, win) remind me movies from good old games.

I like his work a lot! Hoping to get a few more out of him this year, too. I need some proper "win game" and maybe some tip splash screens as well

pretty slick! If I had one complaint, it would be that the control surface is too large, but I think that is just a matter of taste, and not that it works poorly in this game. I totally didn't figure out how to shoot until way too late, and I think I wasn't using the keyboard as intended. Will need to revisit and actually read the tutorial before playing.

Yes, the development seems to be 90% struggling against UI. People ask if I'll port to mobile and frankly I would like to but I have zero clue how I'd ever make that work 

Shooting is a bit unintuitive (tap shoot, once to toggle fire, again to actually fire), but the standard tap to fire has its own problems. Accidental firing, no non-cluttered way to designate weapon range/target stats. It was actually that way once before and more people seem to like the double tap method. You'd prefer the single tap mechanic?

[Worthless_Bums]

Made a gameplay video of the Revenant encounter on the Engineering Deck. I had a very nice setup to take him down without too much fuss!

[poe]

Be on tigsource more

[Worthless_Bums]

Shouldn't you be playing Doom on a stream somewhere?

[Pemanent]

A procedurally generated ship is a really cool idea.

[poe]

Shouldn't you be playing Doom on a stream somewhere?

I AMMMMMMMMMM

[Worthless_Bums]

It's been a long while since I updated! I've been pushing for alpha sale in late August/early September so that means polishing off some round edges and adding a bunch of content the open alpha builds don't have.

Some gifs of what I've been up to:


Alien Merchants (in tubes!)



Kill the Hulk; wear the chassis as armor



Crystal Rain for environmental eye candy and randomized game effects



Stupid double tap firing! I want to use ALL the ammo!




I've been having issues getting Steam Marines on the Humble widget for direct sales. Specifically communication on their end is kind of a black hole  Six weeks and counting and I can't get a yes or a no.

Oh well. Keep on poking.

[hube]

The art is looking great although the one thing that stands out to me is the breathing/idle animation... it feels too fast. I tried breathing with them myself - its so quick. When I look at that larger gif it almost looks like they're all bouncing in a club....

\

I think I've been listening to too much electronic super joy :D
http://dualryan.bandcamp.com/album/electronic-super-joy-take-it-to-the-club-feat-phi

[Worthless_Bums]

LOL. Point taken I've had a few people mention the fast animations but I felt it gave a sense of urgency to the game as a whole. Maybe I -should- revisit it... 

[Jondog]

Hi James :D

Going to follow this thread, easier to keep track of Steam Marines's progress that way.

[Worthless_Bums]

Oops, I forgot to post here 

Steam Marines went on alpha sale via the Humble Widget and Desura. I made a spiffy new trailer:






Fun fact: Germany and UK are fighting over the #2 spot for Desura sales demographics.

[Worthless_Bums]

Steam Marines launched for sale on Steam via Early Access: http://store.steampowered.com/app/253630

So that's kinda cool! Reddit post in /r/Games, too
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1ph1ml/steam_marines_now_on_steam_early_access