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[michaelplzno]

BTW I like the changes you've made so far since I last played it.

[Derek]

The visuals are in this uncomfortable place where they're too spartan (very abstract and lacking in personality/charm) but also hard to read (many details that get lost in one another). I think you're going to lose a lot of people to the screenshots, which would be a shame, because it seems like you know a lot about strategy game design.

I did a quick edit to show you how I'd improve things (upper left corner):



Basic ideas:

- Darker outlines, less waste of colors, to make characters stand out more

- Connected, "3d" walls that are more readable and also make it feel like a real place

- Simple gray floor instead of confusing space floor, to make the characters/walls pop out

I'm not sure this is something your sprite artist can accomplish, but better graphics would go a looooong way in getting people interested in your game.

[Udderdude]

While I appreciate the effort put into revamping the art, I'm pretty sure a complete graphical overhaul like that isn't going to happen at this point.  The next version will have an option to disable the background, if that helps.

it seems like you know a lot about strategy game design.

This is the first strategy game I've ever made, and I don't usually play them.  I just took what I felt were good ideas (not only from strat games but class-based multiplayer games like Guild Wars) and removed other "Genre staple" ideas that I didn't like (randomness, leveling system, persistant hero classes, etc.).

[michaelplzno]

This is the first strategy game I've ever made, and I don't usually play them.  I just took what I felt were good ideas (not only from strat games but class-based multiplayer games like Guild Wars) and removed other "Genre staple" ideas that I didn't like (randomness, leveling system, persistant hero classes, etc.).

I could tell you were going for the MMO style team mechanic in your design, which is an interesting take on a strategy game. Part of what makes your game captivating is that you are looking at strategy from a different perspective. That being said...

You really should play "Advanced Wars" and pay attention to how their tutorial works. When I wrote my first feedback I looked at a "Lets Play" for it just to try to remember why I was so quickly drawn into it as opposed to your game. I almost want to make my own "Lets Play" where I pontificate about what your game can learn from it. I want to do this, btw, because I think your game has so much potential, not b/c I want to crap on it.

[Udderdude]

You really should play "Advanced Wars" and pay attention to how their tutorial works. When I wrote my first feedback I looked at a "Lets Play" for it just to try to remember why I was so quickly drawn into it as opposed to your game. I almost want to make my own "Lets Play" where I pontificate about what your game can learn from it. I want to do this, btw, because I think your game has so much potential, not b/c I want to crap on it.

I have played Advance Wars in the past .. I just re-did the first tutorial (Infantry vs infantry) and it's very text heavy.  I'll make some changes to level 1 .. the training dummy will have much less health, so it's possible to kill it with a single unit.  And there will be two Berzerkers in the red room.

Hopefully this should alleviate the "Level 1 is boring" syndrome.

[Udderdude]

I've put up a new version of the Strat Tech demo.  I've completely changed the hardest skill level so it's no longer ridiculously difficult (Before, when I was letting my twin handle it, I couldn't even play it w/o getting destroyed .. lol)

There's also the usual litany of bug fixes and AI stupidity taken care of.

You can also now hide the background in the Options menu.

Feedback on difficulty would be appreciated.

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

[Udderdude]

Continuing progress on this game.  I've pretty much got levels 1-20 where I want them.  The unfinished Red levels are ahead.  I had made the level layouts for them, but never added player or enemy units, or any scripting to them.

If you've been following any of my development threads, you'll know this is where things get ugly.  The enemy outnumbers you.  They have better stats and more powerful units.  In short, get ready for a fight!



I've also reworked the individual class AIs again, since there were a lot of changes recently.  Including rebalancing a lot of the ability costs.

[Udderdude]

AI stupidity today: Wizard was using purge, which removes a positive status from an enemy, on positive statuses which would have expired by the time the turn was over anyway

Stealers were using mind control on Mage illusions, which is entirely useless (illusions can't do any damage)

All units were attacking targets even if their attacks did 0 damage

My AI is derpin' it up

Thankfully, all of these were fixed promptly .. :p

[Udderdude]

I've decided to take some of Derek's advice and increase the contrast on the unit artwork.  They stand out a lot more now.  Yay for Flash allowing you to slap on a color filter with minimal to no effort .. :p



In other news, I made a pretty big change - moves no longer require energy.  To compensate I reduced the energy of all units by 1.  This should help a lot when it's a pain to get a unit into a paticular position .. there is an issue now with energy fields, in that it's possible to run off and on them 4-6 times and gain up to 3 energy, but then you're out of moves.  So unless you're already "In position", it's a pretty useless technique.  Hopefully it doesn't turn into an issue.  If it does, I may have to make some changes to energy fields.

[Craig Stern]

So, I gave this a really quick play earlier (quick meaning that I went through the tutorial level). I have two pieces of very early feedback for you:

1) I agree with what Derek said about the overall look of the game, in that I found it hard to pick out relevant characters and objects against the background. A cleaner, less busy background would make the game much more readable. (The character sprites don't bother me, though.)

2) The UI needs some work. When my three berzerkers engaged with two enemy berzerkers, during the enemy turn, there were so many status effect notifications flying across the screen that I ended up with absolutely no clue as to who had undergone what status changes. All I knew was that a bunch of stuff had happened.

I also have an inkling that you might need to trim some fat from your system: having both a per-turn use limit and an energy cost for unit actions strikes me as unnecessarily complicated. Personally, I'd pick just one and balance the game based on that: but I haven't played too much of this yet, so I might change my mind about that later.

Anyway, this looks interesting! I'm looking forward to giving it a more thorough play-through later on.

[Udderdude]

Thanks for the feedback.

1. I'll make the background a bit darker.  There is also an option to disable the background completely now.

2. I'll admit knowing exactly what is going on requires a lot of familiarity with the classes and their abilities.  I'll make the AI move a bit slower on Normal so it's easier to keep up with.

3. It is necessary, because being able to dump all of your energy into attacks would just make the game boring.

Glad you liked it.

[Craig Stern]

Couldn't you just make attacks cost more energy, though? A high enough energy cost is a de facto use limit, after all: it's just one that requires the player to keep track of one resource instead of two.

[Udderdude]

It might be an interesting change, but unfortunately this late in the game's development I don't think I'd make a change as big as that.  It would require rebalancing of a lot of abilities, and the entire game's balance would likely be shifted around.

The amount of energy attacks would cost if they had no limit would be prohibitive anyway.  Around 3 energy per attack would be balanced, I think, but that's 6 energy if you want to get 2 attacks off but not any more, which leaves you with next to nothing to use for anything else.

[Udderdude]

The game is very close to completion, only thing left to do is more playtesting and iron out any bugs/balance issues.  I'm waiting to hear back from some testers at the moment.  It's soooooo close, after so many months of work on it, I can hardly believe it ..

I've made some changes to the Destroyer to make them more viable.  Feast now heals all nearby friendly units for 1 when you use it, and Sadism has been completely changed - it now forces an enemy to attack itself, doing it's own attack damage to itself.  Ouch!

[Craig Stern]

All right! I've put some more time into playing Strat Tech, and I have updated thoughts on it. First of all, I've come to quite enjoy the system you're using here. The juggling of numerous buffs and de-buffs has a nice complexity to it; you have to account for a lot of different factors at all times, which I really like. I especially appreciate the Warrior's Fortify ability. In my book, any time you give the player the ability to alter the battlefield, that's a big plus.

I can also see now why you have an independent limit on how many times you can use certain attacks. I still feel that this part of the system could use a bit of paring down: the learning curve is fairly steep, and it takes a while to get a sense of what each of your units can realistically do in a turn. It's not terrible, but it's still an accessibility barrier. Just something to consider for the future.

There is only one area of the game that really bothers me at this point: movement. All units can move seemingly tremendous distances in a turn due to (1) the low energy cost of moving and (2) the high cap on how many times a unit can move per turn. (This, I gather, is why there are doors and switches on each level: if these artificial barriers weren't in place, enemies could close distance with you from all the way across the map in a single turn—maybe two.) Personally, I think this hurts the game. Distance and positioning become dramatically less important when any unit can get anywhere at minimal cost. I know you're really late in development here, but if there were any one change to the gameplay I'd consider making, it's this: let units should move only once or twice a turn; or else, bump up the energy cost for moving to 2 or 3 per move.

On the visual side, I'm glad to see you turned the starry background off by default: this makes it way way easier to see what's going on. I have an additional suggestion for you concerning the GUI. Each unit's life bar and energy bar are currently surrounded by a semi-transparent white border. I assume you chose white to contrast it against the dark background of the battlefield. However, I'd recommend changing the border to an opaque black: the colors inside the bars are fairly bright, and don't contrast well with the white, making the actual information inside the bars hard to read. A high contrast border would improve this situation dramatically. (Have a look at my suggested edit below to see what I'm talking about.)



Anyway, I'm enjoying this; I hope it sells well, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do in future efforts.

[Udderdude]

There is only one area of the game that really bothers me at this point: movement. All units can move seemingly tremendous distances in a turn due to (1) the low energy cost of moving and (2) the high cap on how many times a unit can move per turn. (This, I gather, is why there are doors and switches on each level: if these artificial barriers weren't in place, enemies could close distance with you from all the way across the map in a single turn—maybe two.)

The real reason is because all throughout development, my twin balked at the limited movement range of the units.  He's used to games like Super Robot Wars, where units have gigantic move grids and are basically super-mobile the entire game.  So I kind of tailored it like that.  Personally, I don't think being able to move so much is a big deal, it's not like it'll help you defeat enemies any faster.  And low life units retreat much slower anyway.

Personally, I think this hurts the game. Distance and positioning become dramatically less important when any unit can get anywhere at minimal cost. I know you're really late in development here, but if there were any one change to the gameplay I'd consider making, it's this: let units should move only once or twice a turn; or else, bump up the energy cost for moving to 2 or 3 per move.

I may end up reducing the max moves per turn, but it could lead to some frustrating scenarios.  Maybe reducing it to 5 moves per turn.

Each unit's life bar and energy bar are currently surrounded by a semi-transparent white border. I assume you chose white to contrast it against the dark background of the battlefield. However, I'd recommend changing the border to an opaque black: the colors inside the bars are fairly bright, and don't contrast well with the white, making the actual information inside the bars hard to read. A high contrast border would improve this situation dramatically. (Have a look at my suggested edit below to see what I'm talking about.)

This looks like a good change to make.

Anyway, I'm enjoying this; I hope it sells well, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do in future efforts.

We'll see about selling well .. tactics games tend to be a very niche market, and I've definitely made a game that only real tactics fans can get behind - there's no fluff like story or leveling/gearing to "watch the numbers go up" that casuals will want to latch on to.

As for making another turn based game, if I do make another one, it's going to be simplified compared to this one.  I have many interests in genres besides turn based tactics that I'd like to make games with, so if it ever does happen, it won't be for awhile.  The Strat engine is definitely flexible enough to make another game using the same engine, though.

[Udderdude]

I did a bit more testing and tweaking of this game yesterday, taking a break from Twin Reaper.  Reduced max unit count in some of the later levels from 14 to 13, and increased enemy unit variety.

Also the usual AI stupidity fixes.  Caught an enemy Spark casting Empower (raised attack damage) on a unit that was Petrified and unable to act .. oops.  I've went back over all abilities and checked the code for any more crap like that happening.  With this many abilities, there's always something ..

Also changed it so cooldowns no longer make a floating text message appear at the end of a turn when they expire.  It was pretty ridiculous when a turn would end and suddenly zillions of floating texts would appear all at once!  Most of those were cooldowns expiring.

[Udderdude]

I've identified some major issues with the game as it is now .. going to have to fix this stuff up before it's released.

1. Once you beat up the primary force, the secondary force is very weak and poses no real threat; you steamroll them and it's very boring to play out.
  A. Reduce primary force and let player decide to trigger secondary forces earlier to make it harder on him/herself
  B. Remove secondary force completely - Map is basically finished once primary force is defeated
  C. Add "Killing blow bonus" - Any time a unit kills another unit, that unit gets a permanent +1 damage increase, allowing you to clean up the mess easier
  D. Make all 'Kill all enemies' goals 'Kill certian number enemies' with slightly less than required enemies killed counted

I'm leaning towards B here, as A is harder to balance, and B would make the maps take less turn count.  C and D might be ok.

2. Turns still taking 4-6 minutes
  A. Reduce unit count to 12-13 max (13-14 max currently)
  B. Make moves cost energy again
  C. Reduce overall unit energy

Leaning towards B here, maybe C.

3. Very defensive strategy required on Hard, since letting more than 1-2 enemy units move freely will likely lead to one of your units dying.
  A. Make Hard balance 30-35% more energy, 0% attack bonus
  B. Remove Hard mode life bonus, making enemies easier to take down

Not sure what to do here, as using the defensive strategy does require more skill but takes longer.  If anything, I would go for B here.

[Udderdude]

Got most of the previous issues ironed out.  Some later levels also need to be shortened.

I thought up two new classes and added them today.

Going to go over the red levels and fix them up similar to what was mentioned in my previous post.

---

Elite Lavender Piece - Name "Mesmer"

Yield - Targeted ally is less likely to be attacked (AI will never use this)
Haste - Targeted ally can attack one extra time this turn, only useable once per turn
Confuse - Targeted enemy forgets how to use 2 abilities, and reduces enemy movement range by 1, only useable once per turn
Crystal - Targeted enemy turns to crystal and takes no magical damage, only useable once per turn
Deceive - Tricks an enemy into giving the Mesmer a positive status.  Enemy also loses 2 energy by doing so.  Positive status given depends on class.

---

Elite Magenta Piece - Name "Tech"

Turret - Creates a turret that lasts 4 turns, only useable once per turn
Optimal - Targeted friendly unit is healed for 1 life every time it moves
Repair - Repairs friendly units for 2 life, or friendly non-units for 4 life
Sabotage - Targeted enemy's attacks also damage the enemy for 1 damage
Disable - Temporarily disables an enemy Turret or Zapper

[Udderdude]

Still working on stuff.  Got the new classes in there.  The Red levels keep needing more work for various reasons .. going to diversify the primary objectives in them.  Right now there's too many Destroy all enemies/Destroy Power Core objectives.

I feel like I'm still revising the damn Red levels over and over, they just keep needing work.  At least the new classes feel fun and interesting to play with.

Today's AI stupidity: Mage casting Freeze, which reduces a unit's move range, on a Spectre, who can teleport everywhere with impunity anyway.  Oops.

Also, a long-standing Priest AI issue .. the Priest was wasting energy on Infuse while nearby units were badly wounded.  Now, if there are wounded units nearby, AI Priests won't use Infuse until the unit is healed.