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[Udderdude]

Strat Tech is a turn based strategy game similar to Advance Wars, except instead of focusing on hard counters and generic unit types, it focuses on specific unit classes and abilities.

There's 10 normal classes, and 10 elite classes, with 5 abilities each.  The normal classes are simpler and easier to use, while the elite classes are more challenging to use effectively.  However they make up for this by being immune to all disabling effects from the normal classes.

It's quite complex, so get ready for a bit of a learning curve.

Site: http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strattech/index.html

10 level demo: http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strat/index.html

[sevn]

[the reason I didnt play yours and cannot give feedback]
I'm a fan of turned based games, but its an investment of my time to play one.

[what I can say though]
Edit your post to include more information such as Controls, or how the game plays.

16 words, a link and a screenshot doesn't cut it, especially for a turned based type game.

[eobet]

16 words, a link and a screenshot doesn't cut it, especially for a turned based type game.

Imo, a picture says a thousand words, and his is very descriptive. However, what it tells me is that it looks like a game from 1990 and the UI seems to be from that era as well, and it's not done in a charming, nostalgic fashion either... unless there's some irony here I'm missing.

Also, without having played it, it's easy to spot some criticism: Both the symbols used and unit graphics are way too similar and it's not intuitively apparent what they represent.

And finally, are they floating in space, yet constrained by a circumference of walls?

Utterly confusing, but it's a hardcore genre, so enthusiasts might not care...

[s0]

Neat little game. Starts out a bit slow but gets more interesting as you get further into it.

A couple criticisms:

Interface: Game window is too large. I use a 15" laptop screen and have to scroll down to see the bottom menu. I'd say make the window smaller and use scrolling/panning. You have a minimap feature implemented already so that should take care of that. Also the unit sprites are too small and I probably need a microscope to properly see the health and energy bars. And lastly, because actions both use up energy and are limited per turn, you should totally show how often an action can still be used somewhere in the command window.

Mechanics: I feel that individual turns take too long in this game. It's hard to keep track of what happens in enemy turns because they're so fast. You should think about limiting energy and the number of times actions can be performed per turn more.

That's all, hope it helps.  

[nebuch]

i love games like "disciples 2" its most beatiful form of turn-based strategy. a little like, pokémon. this looks good too.

[Udderdude]

Neat little game. Starts out a bit slow but gets more interesting as you get further into it.

A couple criticisms:

Interface: Game window is too large. I use a 15" laptop screen and have to scroll down to see the bottom menu. I'd say make the window smaller and use scrolling/panning. You have a minimap feature implemented already so that should take care of that. Also the unit sprites are too small and I probably need a microscope to properly see the health and energy bars. And lastly, because actions both use up energy and are limited per turn, you should totally show how often an action can still be used somewhere in the command window.

Mechanics: I feel that individual turns take too long in this game. It's hard to keep track of what happens in enemy turns because they're so fast. You should think about limiting energy and the number of times actions can be performed per turn more.

That's all, hope it helps.  

Thanks for the feedback.  I've made the following changes so far :

Grid size reduced from 28x28 to 24x24.  Should fit in most browsers w/o having to press F11 now.

Added how many attacks/moves the unit has left to the info box at the top of the screen.

On Beginner and Normal, the enemy will take more time between moving each unit to give the player a better idea as to what's going on.

[Udderdude]

I've updated the game with a ton of new stuff, new levels, etc.  There's two new elite classes, the Defender and Archer.

The screen grid is now 24x24 so it should fit in most browser windows w/o having to scroll.

[Dr.Electro]

gave it a short test. definately playable.

maybe change the action grid according to the action at mouse-hover.
i was frustrated when i moved in position and realized that i cant attack diagonal.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for your feedback, I've changed it so the cursor turns into the hand cursor when hovering over a clickable object.

Here's a shot of all the classes in the new update :

[Cosr]

I like this.

It definitely feels slow at first. Partly, I think it's just due to the mechanics; having multiple weak attacks, and the high number of abilities your units can use each turn. But once I got used to it, I started to like the feel of the system. The high amount of actions per turn, but the limit on how many times you can use an action, helps encourage the use of the full range of your units' abilities, which is nice.

The levels do ramp up a little slowly, though. I haven't played through all the levels yet, but they are getting more interesting. I guess I'm not really out of the tutorial levels yet (I'm at level 9), because so far I've always had a serious advantage over the enemies (I'm playing on Advanced and decided to play through the unit introduction levels). It might be worthwhile to introduce an element of challenge earlier. I figure the player will still be able to learn new elements while being presented with something that's not so easy. Bringing a bit of difficulty into the game sooner, I think, might make the earlier levels more interesting and engaging.

I think it's too difficult to tell if a unit is on a Field right now, and when they are on a Field there's no way to tell what sort of Field it is. Unless you've memorized the unit's basic stats I guess. Also, the little circular auras under each unit make it look a little like they're always standing on a Field. It might be enough to list the type of field the unit is standing on in their display of buffs/debuffs.

[Udderdude]

The next update is getting an entirely new set of tutorial levels that are more interesting and challenging.  They'll also be very challenging on Expert.

I know things start out slow, but when you've got this much stuff, shoving it all in the player's face at once can be a bit ridiculous.  The current plan is to introduce one class per level for 18 levels.  Yikes!

I'll see if I can add the fields as status effect thing.  Thanks for the feedback!

[Udderdude]

After lots of hard work and both me and Matt getting sick (ugh), we've finally finished the next update for Strat.  Lots of new stuff here :

10 new tutorial levels, replacing the old tutorial levels
11-15 have been redone slightly
16-20 are completely new levels, including the game's first boss fight!
Lots of interface improvements, new icons, option to have the info/command bar in a fixed location, etc.
Two new elite classes - Knight and Sorcerer
Finally added some music!

Any feedback is still appreciated.

[Udderdude]

Bumping this because I've updated the game with some new stuff - a zoom feature, and some improved interface stuff.  There's also a few merged/changed class abilities.  Still looking for any and all feedback on this game.

[Toeofdoom]

I like it and I think I will enjoy the strategy behind it, but it has a lot to grasp. Do you have any thoughts about communicating everything to the player more smoothly? That seems to me like it would be the big hurdle and I'll add some thoughts. (And it turns out I took a while to stop. UI design/usability is complex )

Clear, easily communicated changes:
Remove health/energy bar borders to make the actual informative bit bigger. Could make the bars disappear when full.
Make panning easier. Screen edge panning or click + drag should both work fine, maybe do both. Actually, I can't even figure out how to pan at the moment!
Zoom should probably support middle mouse control.

I'd almost skip zooming entirely and try working with everything being bigger all the time. It would help heaps with reading damage/ability text and seeing sprites properly. In the long run, allowing the player to choose a resolution would be fantastic to offset this.
If you make it bigger, you might be able to actually have the energy bar as pods - IE you can actually see that you have 9 energy left because there are 9 dots, possibly with grouping for easier reading.

In general I think a whole lot could be taken from the Desktop Dungeons unity beta (and some of the above suggestions are from there). They introduce a huge number of classes in a slow but interesting way and do quite well at displaying information to players - not just the UI but the unit sprites which are all extremely distinct. This applies to things like "fields" too - just stick a symbol on them.

The ability UI is okay and in the end I think it suffers a bit from the amount of information you're trying to cram in (8 abilities with costs, complex descriptions, times you can cast it different recharge rates). Not unmanageable, by any means. So uh, here's an awful ascii mockup that would probably be better:

Code:

 ---------
|         |
|  Attack |
|         |
|X        |
|0  ///   |
|   ---   |
|   ///   |
 ---------Q

If I'm actually good at this, the information will be obvious but I'm probably not, so we have:
Use counters on the left. Adds to current version by showing maximum uses, and is much more obvious when it changes (crosses should be red or some other obvious colour)
Little lightning bolts = energy use.
In my mind, the hotkey Q ONLY appears when you hover over the button, but players might not realise it's actually a hotkey. Anyway, a tooltip or making it actually say "hotkey" as well might be handy, but (correct me if I'm wrong) you shouldn't need that information all the time - hotkeys are useful because they're memorised.

The descriptions up the top actually work quite well for their format - to improve significantly on that, you'd need a semi-graphical way of displaying them. I'll leave that to you as you actually know what the "language" would need to describe

Finally, a possible bug: There was some odd behaviour when using "restore" - It seems to do nothing, but use lots of mana. Not really sure what's going on there.

Uh, so, I hope it's helpful because the strategy seems to be cool.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for your feedback.

Make panning easier. Screen edge panning or click + drag should both work fine, maybe do both. Actually, I can't even figure out how to pan at the moment!
Zoom should probably support middle mouse control.

I'll definitely have to do something like this.  I don't like screen edge panning much but I'll consider it.  Zooming with mousewheel and drag+move are good ideas.

I'd almost skip zooming entirely and try working with everything being bigger all the time. It would help heaps with reading damage/ability text and seeing sprites properly. In the long run, allowing the player to choose a resolution would be fantastic to offset this.

Since it's a Flash game, resizing the game area is easy.  You can even use your browser zoom function.  I may add a maximize/full screen button somewhere.

The descriptions up the top actually work quite well for their format - to improve significantly on that, you'd need a semi-graphical way of displaying them.

It would be cool to have a different category for each ability, and display that icon for each (healing spell icon, self-status icon, status effect on enemy icon).  I'd have to look into it.

In general I think a whole lot could be taken from the Desktop Dungeons unity beta

I'm not sure Desktop Dungeons is something I'd take ideas from, as it's a roguelike where you only have to control one unit, whereas Strat requires you to control multiple units with different abilities, so it's quite different.  I only have access to the free downloadable version, anyway.

I actually have plans for making a dungeon crawler spin-off of Strat when it's finished, we'll see what happens though!

[michaelplzno]

I played till level 3 on Beginner mode. Lost level 1 on Expert mode. Figured I would try Advanced mode next and it said in a popup that I should complete Normal mode first. So I improvised and tried Intermediate mode instead. Played level 1 Intermediate.

Feedback:

I wasn't particularly captivated by the game. When I picked up "Advance Wars" I couldn't put it down for quite some time. I think it comes down to level design. I'll do the feedback in the order I played before giving up.

Beginner mode:

In yours the first thing you fight is a drone that cannot fight back. But after that you have just one guy and it doesn't really matter how you approach him, you just group all your guys around him and kick the s*&t out of him. The one trick is to wait a turn for your attacks to recharge rather than trigger the door prematurely, but that almost feels like I'm tricking the game. This isn't a particularly captivating fight. Indeed for the first fight you do want to be able to easily kick the s*&t out of your enemies, but there should be one or more, but not too many, optimal strategies that require at least a pulse to figure out.

Level 2: Same type of situation, I overwhelm the intro forces without strategy and then team up on and kick the s*&t out of two lone guys one at a time. I'm introduced to units that heal, but don't really need them.

Level 3: This level is a bit more interesting but first it starts with... all my guys teaming up on one enemy and kicking the s*%t out of him. The strategy of using the warrior as a tank made this beat-down a tad more interesting I admit.

It was at this point that I started my feedback but as I pondered it more and looked at other feedback I thought... maybe I'm playing at too low a difficulty setting, though the intro of the post says the game is quite complex with a steep learning curve and I am in fact a beginner at the game. And the no stress tagline was a big seller... b/c who wants stress?

Expert Mode:

I got the warning that this is serious business and of course was not intimidated... but I should have been. This time the computer treated me to teaming up on me and kicking the s*&t out of me. It was revenge, I think. In the course of that beat-down I learned that the other non-basic attack and movement moves were useful.

So I Tried Intermediate mode:

Back to team up and beat-down. But, now with my knowledge of the usefulness of the extra moves it was at least a more interesting beat-down.

And then I gave up for real.

Music:

I really liked the bgm... but it does not hold up after looping. Had to mute it. As I'm listening to it for fun while I write this I realize that the part I dislike is the second part. Hard to describe in text but it changes to another instrument I guess right before looping. I don't like that part. But as bgm the whole thing is too "noisy."

Graphics:

I like the sprites, though they are kind of hard to see. I tried the zoom but everything gets all stretched and looks kind of bad. The health and energy bars are hard to see. I also had a tough time telling if a guy was a bad guy. I know there is a little dot of a different color, but to me this did not read well and I sometimes got confused in level 3 where there are extra guys showing up and so on. In terms of everything being hard to see its b/c everything is too small. The zoomed in mode should be the default. Also, the whole space background was kind of weird with sprites that are kind of "just there." The addition of "Cyber Trees" negates this b/c how awesome are Cyber Trees? Very awesome.

Story:

Story is cheap. Even a mediocre story could give your game significant extra spice. Also, based on the power balance and level organization I had to guess that I was the "good guys" and not some army of invading d-bags. Not that you can't make a game where you are the bad guys or with grey morality, its just that takes extra effort.

Difficulty Modes:

I'm kind of curious what your intent is on the various modes. Clearly Advanced mode was meant to be played after Intermediate. Do you think people will play the game 4 times through? I'm not sure you are doing yourself any favors by adding multiple modes. Each mode would need to be redesigned to properly work with the new mechanics at the correct difficulty and thus you might as well make 4 whole new level sets. No matter what you do, you could write the explanations of the difficulty modes more clearly. I basically spent my entire time trying to figure out what difficulty to play at and then got tired. Saying things like "your units have a 50% boost" isn't very helpful to someone who just opens up your game b/c they have no idea what that means in the game universe. In advance wars, for example, if your units had a 50% boost it would indeed make the game significantly easier, but there would still be good and bad strategy that would be satisfying in its own right.



All in all, you've definitely got yourself an interesting game here. There is a ton of content, so much so that I've barely scratched the surface and have written quite a bit. If you do decide to change the first few levels I'd be happy to play again and see if I was more drawn in.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for your feedback.

The first level is just there to get you used to the controls and interface.  It's always going to be a "Beatdown" type level no matter what.

I may make the later levels harder, and remove one of the skill levels (probably intermediate).

I had a story idea but haven't had time to add it yet.  It may or may not end up in the game, if it does, it may be very simple.

Edit: I've updated with a few changes - You can now scroll by putting the mouse on the sides of the screen, there's a full screen button, levels 2 and 3 have more enemies, and there's one less difficulty mode.  The descriptions for difficulty modes have also been improved.  I added the "Story" which is just one single screen for now.  Maybe someone wants to help me out and draw some actual art/cutscenes, but for now this is it. lol

[Udderdude]

This project has had some delays, but I'm hoping to finish it some point soon.  Samurai Fox (sprite artist) finished the character art/animations, and I'm going to try finishing the levels myself.  My twin lost interest in working on it, don't know if he'll feel like it at any point soon.

There's also now a page for the game.  Hopefully that "Coming soon" changes soon! I've put way too much effort into this game to just give up on it now .. lol :p

http://rydia.net/udder/prog/strattech/index.html

[Udderdude]

Spent the day going over the game's levels.  Definitely needed to make some changes.  Before, I was relying on my twin for most of the actual level design/unit placement/playtesting stuff.  Now I'm going to have to do it myself, so hopefully I'm up to the task .. lol

[Dragonmaw]

Needs a better UI. Otherwise, slick as fuck. Looking forward to it.