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[Heytherejake]

Game Site

Collect, Construct, Conquer! is a class-based side-scrolling shooter for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Dig for resources, craft weapons, kill the other team, and destroy their generator!

I've been working on this game since about November 2010, and while I technically released it about a month ago, I've recently started promoting it. Essentially, it's a side-scrolling shooter mixed with Minecraft-esque terrain modification.

Notable Features
- Randomly generated maps
- Craft new guns and explosives
- Research for stat upgrades, such as digging radius and rate of fire
- Team-based combat
- Server-side plugin engine with a client UI framework.
- Server-side event handling to prevent most cheating
- Auto-updater
- Map editor for adventure maps

It's Java-based, so it's cross-platform, and free!

You can create a new server by pressing "Host a Server" in the menu, or by downloading the dedicated server jar.
(Keep in mind that it's in pre-alpha, so it's nowhere near feature complete, and there's probably a bunch of bugs. If you find any, email me at [email protected], post at the Studio878 Forums, or reply here)

Default Controls
(You can remap the controls in the options menu)
Mouse 1 - Attack
Mouse 2 - Actions Wheel
A/D - Move
Space - Jump
E - Use
Tab - Team Info
I - Inventory
P - Enemy Info
E - Player Statistics
T - Open Chat
` - Console
ESC - Menu
F2 - Screenshot
F3 - Toggle Debug Display
F4 - Hide UI

If you have any suggestions, post them as well!

[Heytherejake]

Version 0.14 is out. Notable features include:

• Fixed block placement and server bugs
• Build radius and dig radius research options
• Landmines
• 3 new blocks
• Graphical update (Including new player sprite)
• Adds crafting recipes for grenades
• Falling blocks are now animated

Full list can be found at http://www.studio878software.com/

[Theon]

Could be fun, but I'd advice you to pretty up the tiles with some nice border-transitions

[Heytherejake]

Yeah, I'm still trying to work out a way of doing that seamlessly. Hopefully for .15

[Heytherejake]

Version 0.15 is out. Notable features include:

• Blocks have rounded edges
• Added the Researcher class
• Added the Workbench, which is used to craft
• Fixed a crash caused by large chat messages

Full list can be found at http://www.studio878software.com/

Note that at this point, there is no difference in the two classes besides looks. 0.16 will come soon with specific class abilities.

[Theon]

• Blocks have rounded edges

pic?

[Heytherejake]

Sure thing. I'll update the top picture when I have time to get make a more action-filled one.

[Heytherejake]

Version 0.16 is out. Notable features include:

• Added the Corporal specification
• Specifications now have class-specific recipes and stat boosts
• Added the Research Bench, which is only usable by the Researcher
• Added the Flintlock Pistol, a gun for the Excavator
• Fixed a bug where research would not work

Full list can be found at http://www.studio878software.com/

[Heytherejake]

Preview for the next version, which will be by far the largest content update yet!

[Theon]

Love the lights/shadows, and the rounded edges look good, but what I meant to say that you should add is border-transistions between tiles of different types.
Dirt, rock and sand seems that they weren't made to ever touch.

Have a look at Terraria's tilesets, and you'll get a general idea of one way to deal with this issue; Making empty "channels" between tiles of different types.

[Heytherejake]

Yeah, I know what you meant, but I was messing around with it and it was looking awful. I'll probably spend some time on it this weekend.

[JimmyJ]

I'm trying to play the game, but in the server list it says it's checking on 157 or so servers, and when it's done it says no servers found.

[Heytherejake]

The server browser goes through a list of all servers that are registered, and returns the ones that are online. So if nobody's hosting a server, it'll still check all 157 or so, but turn up none. I changed the verbiage in the next version to make that more obvious.

[JimmyJ]

The server browser goes through a list of all servers that are registered, and returns the ones that are online. So if nobody's hosting a server, it'll still check all 157 or so, but turn up none. I changed the verbiage in the next version to make that more obvious.

Ahh, ok, that makes sense!

[Raptor85]

Created a server to try it out, it works ok but i noticed in the game log this when it's creating

java.lang.NullPointerException
   at E.run(Unknown Source)

Also when i tried to quit game the window froze and had to be killed.

A few things though.

1. Would be nice to have a link to the registration page in the launcher, and move the link on your game site to the top of the page (i didn't notice it as i hadn't scrolled thorugh all the stuff to the bottom)

2. instructions on how to run the game would be nice too, I don't use java too often and took me a few to realize i had to launch java with the "-jar" option for your game.

3. when in game, the jump controls aren't very responsive, it's pretty much impossible to move and jump at the same time.

4. it took me a few minutes to figure out how to dig...and i kept throwing grenades when trying. holding the mouse still in the tiny little grid is really hard and it's just really frustrating to dig, and it's not very intuitive. would be a lot cooler if you just dug in whatever direction the mouse is pointing when the button is held down (not having to hover over the exact brick itself)

5. the shovel is way too big, it kept getting in my way to where i couldnt see the blocks i was trying to dig

Also I had some weird graphics lag, i was barely getting 20 fps for some reason.

Looks cool so far, just got some issues to work out, I'll definitely keep a watch on this..I could use a new multiplayer action game to play

[Heytherejake]

2. Are you using Linux? Windows and OSX have executable launchers, but I'll add Linux instructions

3. It's a problem with hosting a server and playing on a less powerful computer. Because all movement is handled server-side to prevent cheating, there's a slight delay. I'm working on speeding it up though.

4. Digging is better with the upgrade that the Excavator gets, where you break more than one block. If I make it just directional, though, it becomes an issue of precision

Also, do you have an AMD graphics card by any chance? That could explain the graphics lag, I think there's something wrong with my LWJGL version, and I cannot test it as I have an NVidia card.

[Raptor85]

2. yes, 64 bit on a kernel configured for media (1000hz timer, low latency preemption)

3. wouldn't exactly call this a less powerful computer, it's a few years old now but when I built it it was designed to be a workhorse (i forget the exact model but it's the core2 duo 2.6ghz with tons of cache, and 8 gigs of ram). Out of curiosity though I tested it out, i fired up the server on my webserver and connected to it from my desktop (btw, the ping calculation is way off, it includes the search time for all the servers that don't exist).  My FPS was exactly the same, didn't change at all, I think it's graphics lag from the massive amount of tiles on screen, and actually it would kinda be cool if you could zoom in a bit, everything is super super tiny and hard to see. Not sure how java draws 2d bitmaps but i have a sneaky suspicion that since the fps scales pretty linearly with how large my window is that it's doing 7500 software blits per frame O_x
 
4. hmm, that might help a bit (though I couldn't figure out how to upgrade, instructions would be nice also). part of the issue I was having though are the blocks are super, super tiny and it's hard to not wander from the block while trying to click and hold on it. (which seems to cancel the dig, then i have to move the mouse back off and click down again to restart)

Graphics Card: nah, i gave up on AMD graphics cards a few years back, their drivers are terrible (and kinda slow). I've got a GF9800 GT using nVidia binary drivers.

A few more bugs I noted while trying this out.

6. if i click out of the window and back in (i did while typing this out) keyboard input no longer works, it still picks up the mouse though.

7. after joining the server, for the first minute or so i couldn't do anything but move around, then all of the sudden digging started to work again (there was nothing in the server logs, and it can't be lagging the server, the server i dumped it on a is a beefy dual xeon with 16 gigs of ram that's not doing anything else at the moment.d

also, i should note, the "freezing" when closing the game seems to only happen when running as a server, it closes down properly when running as client only.

[Heytherejake]

3. Yeah, forgot about the latency problem. Fixing that one now

4. The dig amount shouldn't "reset", that's a bug then

6. Probably a LWJGL bug, I'll check it out

7. There's a bug in .16 where when you first join, you'll be carrying a shovel. It's not actually a shovel though, it's a null item, so if you scroll though your inventory, it'll fix it.

Edit: 3 and 7 are fixed now, looking into 6

[Heytherejake]

Been sick for the past few days, so didn't get much done feature-wise, but there's a tutorial level coming in the next version, which is good.

[Heytherejake]

The new site is up at http://www.collectconstructconquer.com/. Registering and downloading is a lot easier now, and doesn't require you to switch sites.