next »

[Jad]

The portraits with the light/colored outlines do not read well at all at small sizes (such as the tiny circled portraits)

I think you had better 1. use darker outlines, 2. use more contrast between light and shadow in the portraits, 2.b maybe use a more painterly style or 3. an option I haven't imagined yet that solves the same problem.

All in all, I think, if the portraits aren't going to move, the pure disney-ish cel shaded style isn't doing all it could do - I think some extra effects or more painterly styling would tie the whole 'last century' feel together even more. If they're animated, disregard all I've said about that (but not the tiny portraits)

The setting and the environment art is gorgeous. The characters are also appealing.

This looks good! (I'm commenting mainly on the art, since that is my field)

[Netsu]

This is unbelievably gorgeous.

[lionfish]

Beautiful art!  Following now.  Looking forward to seeing your development

[BurritoJo]

Alright, quick reply to everyone.  We've worked our ass off but unfortunately we'll be releasing the build tomorrow.  As it's stands, there's still a couple of things that need to be addressed.  We're almost there but not yet.

Keep you posted!

BurritoJo

[Scott]

Pretty sure every single person here understands. Wait until it's ready friend!

[BurritoJo]

DevLog #4 09/09/2014

Big update: We are releasing build 0.4  ------------  

This is a big one.  We've put a lot of effort on building up a viable and instinctive UI.  It's a work in progress and nowhere near finished but if you would see our earlier versions, well... basically the stats were only text.

So now we've got a UI which is getting there, a  whole new map for your enjoyment, and a also a bunch of other stuff implemented in the game.

One important thing to consider when trying this build.  It is not a build focused toward balance and challenge.  This version is aimed primarily at testing the UI, UX and response of the user in terms of basic interactions with the game.

Our next sprint will focus mainly on re-implementing core mechanics that will add challenge to the game and coming up with a balance that is much more suitable. Currently the game is probably too easy, but then again i've played the damn thing so much that i know it better than i know my girlfriend so yea... maybe the game is not that easy for some.

Right after this post i start sending the keys to everyone interested.  If anybody else wants one, let me know, today is a free for all buffet with nothing but burritos in the menu.

For the beta itself, when you launch a new game it's the tutorial map.  Once you've played it and know the basics you can click on 'new game (b0.4 test map).  This is the main map code name 'upper city'

As a conclusion, a little challenge to anyone up to the task: Try to beat the 'upper city' map in as little turns as possible.

Post your result here.  Lowest turns to control all sectors of the map wins a succesful potato salad.

BurritoJo

 

[BurritoJo]

Ok, sent an invitation mail to:

Yaomon17
Impmaster

Sent a PM on TigSource to:
GameDragon
DrSchizo
Connor

Let me know what you all think!

BurritoJo

[yaomon17]

I'm going to write as I play

>Going into the tutorial, few mistakes in text (there's monsters, ennemy etc.). Font + textbox are a tad plain compared to the incredible game art.
>Beat the first guy. He stood no chance!
>Fortification mechanic seems really cool. No mouse lock to screen makes camera a bit annoying to move. Maybe add arrow keys cam movement.
>Cecaelia plowing through enemies. 
>wth so many sectors imma die
>winning leadership points, no idea what they do
>RIP guy in hat
>RIP Cecaelia
>Eat electrobomb!
>RIP Main dude and twerp kid
>Everyone revives except hat guy
>Hovering over the tavern pop up causes the sector pop up to go over it and I can't click things :<
>Recruiting Mekanist!(Mechanist?)
>Spamming end turn button with no enemies attacking and racking up leader points, can still only recruit the 10 point people though with 90 points.
>Hat guy returns!
> Hello monsters 
>Giant army killing everything
>2 weapons for my entire army 
>Leoric now an army by himself with 2 weapons.
>Click and drag mechanic really nice 
>84 combat stats kek
>mfw middle mouse button moves cam 
>Big samurai man
>Big mistake, micah vs 9 enemies
>RIP micah, jk withdrawl
>RIP Enemies
>Tutorial end.

Overall definitely an enjoyable experience. Art is perfect. Fortify mechanic definitely a great addition to the game. Not too sure about the summoning an entire army from the tavern thing, made things a bit easy. Combat is pretty simple and I think that is good, allows the player to focus on positioning in the overworld. Will play other map soon. Good work.

Tried the other map, got rekt.

[Impmaster]

Would it be possible to have a standalone download?

[Connor]

sent ya a pm instead of posting on here, hope you dont mind, it was just quicker since i had the window open
yah, i def would want a standalone instead of a webbrowser player.

[Gamedragon]

I too wouldn't mind a stand-alone download as my ISP data cap is quite low and a one time download would make the game much easier to access.

[Pemanent]

I think this looks cool and I like the idea of a risk type game.

Though I must agree with Jad.
The UI doesn't stand out enough. The characters and really difficult to differentiate and for whatever reason it looks really bland zoomed out. I think the loss of detail makes it look more vector-ey, which is a shame since I really like the sprites when they're large. Also the blue cloud background is way to saturated. It competes with everything else a lot.
Your icons need to be less cluttered, and more basic so they're easier to identify.
Just some visual thoughts.

[Gamedragon]

So I started up the game and was pleased with it. It was an enjoyable experience with the gorgeous art that you have already been praised multiple times for. Something that I definitely liked was the music, whoever you're composer is tell him that he's doing a wonderful job. Manoeuvring my army around the battle field felt pretty intuitive except for a few times when I had to drag the icons several times to get them to stay, although this is most likely because of my laptops bad trackpad. I only have a few complaints and these refer to the GUI which doesn't seem to fit in with the game, although I suppose it can be excused a this is still in beta, and the icons on the map. While the icons look fine at a distance when zoomed down they start to lose something (I am not sure what it should be called). Another very minor niggle was that sometimes when your army has a lower power then the opposition they can still win although this has never happened to me. All in all a very good game.

[BurritoJo]

Ok.  Time for the replies to the feedback.

The portraits with the light/colored outlines do not read well at all at small sizes (such as the tiny circled portraits)

I think you had better 1. use darker outlines, 2. use more contrast between light and shadow in the portraits, 2.b maybe use a more painterly style or 3. an option I haven't imagined yet that solves the same problem.

All in all, I think, if the portraits aren't going to move, the pure disney-ish cel shaded style isn't doing all it could do - I think some extra effects or more painterly styling would tie the whole 'last century' feel together even more. If they're animated, disregard all I've said about that (but not the tiny portraits)

Very relevant regarding portrait.  I'll mention it today to the art guys.  Regarding movement and animation, while putting more animation overall in the game is a priority, the fact that we are a very small team gives us very limited possibilities.  They will be animated, but to which extent i do not know.  Therefore we'd be safer to do something that fits visually when static, to make sure we're not relying on something that might not happen the way we want.

I'm going to write as I play

>Going into the tutorial, few mistakes in text (there's monsters, ennemy etc.). Font + textbox are a tad plain compared to the incredible game art.
We chose a font not too long ago.  I guess it's time to implement it!

>Beat the first guy. He stood no chance!
>Fortification mechanic seems really cool. No mouse lock to screen makes camera a bit annoying to move. Maybe add arrow keys cam movement.
I'll put a note for that, will probably come later though
>Cecaelia plowing through enemies. 
>wth so many sectors imma die
>winning leadership points, no idea what they do
We havent really explained well the mechanic yet.  But we have a whole range of cool things you can do with LP's.  For now they are only used for recruiting
>RIP guy in hat
>RIP Cecaelia
>Eat electrobomb!
>RIP Main dude and twerp kid
>Everyone revives except hat guy
>Hovering over the tavern pop up causes the sector pop up to go over it and I can't click things :<
Known issue and very annoying yes
>Recruiting Mekanist!(Mechanist?)
>Spamming end turn button with no enemies attacking and racking up leader points, can still only recruit the 10 point people though with 90 points.
You need to control 2 taverns in order to unlock the level 2 recruitment.  The spamming of the end turn unfortunately doesn't have any drawback as of now, but mechanics like spawning of enemies will be re-introduced in next version which should prevent this exploit
>Hat guy returns!
> Hello monsters 
>Giant army killing everything
>2 weapons for my entire army 
lol
>Leoric now an army by himself with 2 weapons.
more lol
>Click and drag mechanic really nice 
>84 combat stats kek
>mfw middle mouse button moves cam 
Yea, i guess we'll change that
>Big samurai man
>Big mistake, micah vs 9 enemies
>RIP micah, jk withdrawl
>RIP Enemies
>Tutorial end.

Overall definitely an enjoyable experience. Art is perfect. Fortify mechanic definitely a great addition to the game. Not too sure about the summoning an entire army from the tavern thing, made things a bit easy. Combat is pretty simple and I think that is good, allows the player to focus on positioning in the overworld. Will play other map soon. Good work.

Glad you liked the fortify mechanic, it's one of our big feature gameplay wise.  I hope it wasn't too confusing to grasp.  It was in earlier versions.  For the tavern, we'll implement a cap, each tavern will have something like 5-6 characters hanging out over there and once you've recruited them you'll have to control another tavern in order to recruit more.

Tried the other map, got rekt.

Yea, the other one is the real thing.  Is it too hard though?  My face is litteraly in the game when i play, it's hard to be perfectly objective since i know more than everything in there.

Btw that was hilarious and a very nice review.  Thank you very much for your time.

Would it be possible to have a standalone download?

To Impmaster and everyone else asking for a standalone d/l, unfortunately for now we are not publishing a standalone version.  Do you think it's a major turn off for a lot of people?

The UI doesn't stand out enough. The characters and really difficult to differentiate and for whatever reason it looks really bland zoomed out. I think the loss of detail makes it look more vector-ey, which is a shame since I really like the sprites when they're large.
If i understand you right, this is a problem we have with Unity having to do with aliasing and native resizing.  We're investigating this and it has a huge impact but we're still not sure how to proceed and what would be the optimal solution.  I might inquire later on with people here to see what everyone has to say on the subject and if anyone has solutions.
 Also the blue cloud background is way to saturated. It competes with everything else a lot.
Will do
Your icons need to be less cluttered, and more basic so they're easier to identify.
Yea, it's the first time we are making a UI and a lot of people seem to say the more basic it is, the best.  We'll have to follow up on that

So I started up the game and was pleased with it. It was an enjoyable experience with the gorgeous art that you have already been praised multiple times for.
Thanks, we never get enough of it.  We put so much effort on visual aesthetics

 Something that I definitely liked was the music, whoever you're composer is tell him that he's doing a wonderful job.
I'll tell him

Manoeuvring my army around the battle field felt pretty intuitive except for a few times when I had to drag the icons several times to get them to stay, although this is most likely because of my laptops bad trackpad.
This also has to do with the game itself, BurritoAl will be optimizing that

I only have a few complaints and these refer to the GUI which doesn't seem to fit in with the game, although I suppose it can be excused a this is still in beta, and the icons on the map. While the icons look fine at a distance when zoomed down they start to lose something (I am not sure what it should be called).
Refer to the earlier quote from Permanent.  This is highly annoying and we've put that issue on the backburner for a while but we'll have to issue that very soon.

Another very minor niggle was that sometimes when your army has a lower power then the opposition they can still win although this has never happened to me. All in all a very good game.
I'm not sure, is that a good thing or a bad one?

So all in all, thank you tenfold to all of you.  The feedback has been very constructive and is directing us in the right direction.  I am new to this community but it is already giving me so much.

BurritoJo

[DrSchizo]

Nice work, it's definitely the kind of game I could spend hours on.

It is indeed really easy for now. It is not only you.

There should be a button to select all the characters on a single location. When you start to have a real conquering army, it is a bit tiring to have to select every one of them at each turn.

The introduction scenes could be improved. I'm not a big fan of the big text box. Speech bubbles could look much nicer, as at 0:20 in this video from my game.

At first, I didn't understand how to organize sections. I didn't notice I could drag and drop somebody in the circle. I had to restart the mission to better read the instructions.

It is a bit complicated to have to mouse over every section to see which one are interesting to organize. It might be better to show the informations at all time, directly under the flags. Small icons could do the trick (one per possible income). You could darkened the disabled income, so the player will know if the production can be improved.

All information boxes could have a time limit and/or a close button. Reward notifications (LP) could disappear after a short limit of time.

I would prefer if movement were restricted, for instance 3 cases by turn.
If would be nice to have hospitals were you could heal people. Or adding a healer class.

[Ziz]

This looks really nice.

What do you use for making it?

Will you make a Linux release, too?

[Impmaster]

Um. Without a standalone I have to wait a few hours each time I want to open the game. (I actually haven't managed to open it yet, it's so slow).

[BurritoJo]

There should be a button to select all the characters on a single location. When you start to have a real conquering army, it is a bit tiring to have to select every one of them at each turn.
It will be implemented soon

The introduction scenes could be improved. I'm not a big fan of the big text box. Speech bubbles could look much nicer, as at 0:20 in this video from my game.
For now we are leaving them like that but will change the borders

All the rest is very good criticism, we are working on all of those issues.  The geolocalisation (movement restricted) would be a nice addition but it might change a lot of mechanics and we're not sure if we'll have the window to do that

@Ziz
We're using Unity and BurritoAl is making a lot of scripts in C Sharp.

@Impmaster
I am very sorry about that.  I admit it's very cumbersome for people not having a fast internet access.  We have a huge job of resizing assets and optimizing the game if we would make it a standalone as the thing is around 500-600 megs currently.  I really hope it's not gonna trouble a lot of people for now and i am sorry you are one of those person.  Thanks for trying.

BurritoJo

[Impmaster]

Oh well. Hope you guys get good feedback anyways

[DrSchizo]

One thing I forgot to mention: it could be nice to have a small map of the area and maybe another way to move character (alternative to the drag'n drop). It is sometime tiring to move one group from a distant location.