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Hi everyone! Let me introduce

(http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/6017/devas.png)

Introduction:

Devastated is a huge (to be :D) platform shooter with RPG and action/exploration elements. The gameplay is based in a open world full of quests and stuff to explore. RPG elements include of course experience points and leveling up. Leveling up gives player skillpoints which can be used to upgrade skills. Skills include weaponry, endurance, strength, vitality and dexterity. The game features awesome music composed by eatmeatleet (http://eatmeatleet.newgrounds.com).


Game storyline:

The world is devastated. Due the ecomnomical depression a insane dictator, Lance Holdeman, ascended to power and started the development of a gigantic atomic explosive, "The blast". Holdeman detonated the explosive and killed 80% of all life on earth. Fallout is global - every second people are dying. The blast caused smoke, dust, sand and debris to fly over to the athmosphere and thus blocking nearly all the sunlight.

In this world of eternal darkness, you, Subject 460-E, aka. "Edward" along with your team are going to assasinate Holdeman. However the plan turns into a disaster and soon you'll find yourself alone in the wasteland. The world's fate lies on your shoulders as you are the only one who can survive in the radiated world without equipment. Your mission - assasinating Holdeman - is waiting for completion!


Screenshots:

(http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/7484/screenshot102z.png)

(http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/9279/screenshot103hn.png)

(http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6411/newhud.png)


Trailer: Unofficial, yet awesome trailer by "Samppu"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5L6wXO4h-4


System requrements:

• Modern-ish Windows PC
• Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7
• DirectX 8
• 640x480 screen resolution

TEH DOWNLOAD LINKS:

LINK #1 (http://img4.gametrailers.com/community/images/userimages/1271572-1228080132-LegendofZeldaLink.gif) DOWNLOAD FROM GAMEJOLT.COM (http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/rpg/devastated/3543/)

LINK #2 (http://img4.gametrailers.com/community/images/userimages/1271572-1228080132-LegendofZeldaLink.gif) Alternative download mirror (http://www.yoyogames.com/games/145400-devastated)
olololololo

Comments are very appreciated! :)

Hope you don't mind me responding here rather than Gamejolt :)

The game's pretty good. At first I was worried that the inventory and the SCS are going to be overcomplicated, but they were not. Neither were the dialogues boring/tedious, which made me actually read them ;)

I liked the dark world and some slight deviations from a general "apocalypse happens" scenario. The style is uniform and simple. Oh, and like I said, the skill/inventory system is overally well-implemented.

My first issue with the game is that everything keeps refreshing by disappearing and reappearing (inventory menu, dialogues). I'm not sure if you can do something about it, but if you can, that'd be nice.

The second issue is lag, which appears in seemingly random areas. Again, it may be a purely technical issue, but - seeing how the game's areas are fairly simple and that the game is done in GM - it somehow hints at, let's say, inconsiderate object management.

And finally, there are some bugs, namely, mutants get stuck in walls and you can easily punch them to their deaths, grinding experience.

Apart from these, the game's character also moves a bit slow at first, which prompted me to put my first few skillpoints into agility, but after that, it ceased to become a visible problem.

Thanks for commenting! I don't mind where people respond as long as they respond  ;D

Glad you liked the game. May I ask you which parts of the game lagged, or was the lag inconstant and randomly appeared? I have tested this game on a "crappy 2003 PC" and it ran fine. :wtf:

The inventory flashing is an issue I've been working on ever since the first release. Because of the "alpha borders" of the boxes the popups are a bit trickier to program. I'll look onto it.

The enemies getting stuck in the walls are sadly a pretty common issue. The enemy movement needs to be tweaked a bit.

It was area-specific, IIRC, I just can't find anything the rooms that lagged had in common (possibly just a higher number of objects, heh). I think the "city" lagged upon entering it first, but seemed fine afterwards, and some of the areas east were laggy. Then again, I'm on a laptop which tends to lag more than an average computer, in GM games, especially (at least I remember it lagging when playing Spelunky). I'll try it again on my PC later.

Very cool! Looks very promising so far. I like the interface and the RPG elements.
I do think some of the dialog needs a little work though. Here's a list of some of the errors I encountered, but I'm sure there are more:

The guy at the beginning say, "as you know..." NEVER say that! It sounds terrible.
At one point the guy said "Listen, blah blah blah, so you have to listen to me" or something like that. Saying listen twice in the same sentence is redundant. I would recommend changing or eliminating one of them.
I noticed a lot of times people said "Trough" instead of "Through"
While in the helicopter, the main character said "Why we?". Should be "Why us?"
At one point he said "Who are you working to", should be "Who are you working with"
He also says "I'm a somekind of experimental...", should be "I'm some kind of an experimental..."

These are pretty nit-picky things, but when they are all over the place, like they are right now, it gets a little annoying. Anyway, it looks like this has a ton of potential, I'm looking forward to the rest of my playthough. I wish there were more indie games like this.

Update time!

I played the game on my (antiquated) PC and I didn't see any significant lag (some areas felt slower, but it wasn't really a problem), so I guess laptops just hate GM games. Still, I guess you could see if you can reduce the amount of objects somehow (not saying it's necessary, just a lot of GM developers have an unnecessarily high amount of objects for e.g. collision detection, which may be an issue for my laptop).

It also looks weird when your character bounces back and forth when you push against a lock. Can't you just make him stop, like in front of cliffs and other solid objects?

During the base mission, you can just leave/enter the room repeatedly until all enemies face away, and then backstab them, rather than facing fire. Maybe you should just give them preset directions rather than randomly choose them at the beginning? Then again, that may make the mission too hard (but less random and exploitable, at least).

(I love backstabbing, by the way ;))

I didn't get to the end yet, but it seems like the weapon prices are also way too high. $1500 for a machine gun? I can barely collect $300!

Also, a few typos, grammar corrections and such:

Intro sequence: "the our nation" -> "our nation"
Anita in the island village: "panicing" -> "panicking"
Note found during the base mission: "in radar" -> "on the radar"
Note left in destroyed Ashvale: "have the same fate" -> "meet the same fate"

What's that bad with "as you know", ninjutsu63? It's just cliché :P

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot - you should change the colour of the train (or maybe the colour of the background). As it is now, it's almost completely invisible. I didn't even know there was a train at first.

Edit2: Also, when you upgrade your health, it'd nice to increase your current health by 15 as well.

If the game uses GM's built-in particle effects, that might cause problems. GM's particle effects tend to be very slow.

Anyway, I played the game, and like Cesque said, the dialogue was pretty interesting. The gameplay also seems pretty good, but I couldn't really tell since not too much has happened yet.

Minor problems: having a font zoom in slowly in Game Maker like you have doesn't look good with all of the jaggedy lines, just saying. Also, I had a hard time exiting out of the shop, since X buys an item and Z doesn't do anything. And escape doesn't do anything either.

Lastly, the guard at the end of the room with the village kept on stopping me to talk to me and wouldn't let me through. I assume that's because you haven't finished the next part yet.

Right now the game is very engaging. Keep it up!

It's generally considered bad form to have two characters talking to each other about information that both of them already know. It makes the exposition very forced, and shows that you are only doing it for the player's benefit. Since the main character apparently has no idea what's going on, the "as you know" part could be easily removed, to make the dialog sound more believable.

It's sort of a pet peeve of mine :P

I believe you have to leave the village and go way left (past where you landed) until you encounter an NPC and find a weapons cache, completing a quest one of the other people in the village gave you. Then the guard will let you through the door.

Thanks for replies, guys!  :)

I see what I can do with the lag. If I reckon correctly, there shouldn't be much useless objects.

Thanks for pointing out the glitches and typos. I will definately do a major spellcheck to all of the game's text before releasing the next version.

Crap! I forgot to put that in. Will be added to next version.

The weapons are overpriced. I just randomly set them a price tag when I was adding the guns to the shop.

Nope, this game doesn't use GM particles.

The font zoom does indeed look a bit crappy, but IMO it looks cooler than just plain text. I think you are wrong with the shop keys. Actually Z buys items and X exits the shop. Maybe you didn't have enough money so Z did nothing  :-\

Yup, you can't get past him before you have done the quest "The weapon stash."

Hmm, I think you're right. I'll tweak the dialog and see if I can find a better way to say things :)

If I remember correctly, the game said you press X to buy things.

D'OH! You're right. I just checked it out and it indeed says "Press X to buy weapons". Gotta fix that.

promising game! fine engine. simple yet nice graphical style.
also like the effects and sounds.

maybe think about adding a crouch button in order to hit smaller enemies.
the font of the intro quote is shaking.
consider to just let the font appear without increasing its size to  get rid off that.

i also found 2 little glitches:

in town the brightness of the background changes when i jump at the position shown in the screenshot (this only happens in fullscreen)
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/6408/devglitch1.jpg

this mutant stops to walk when he falls off the edge.
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4232/devglitch2.jpg

Thanks for replying!

Glad you liked the game :) Crouching has never been suggested before, but it's a decent idea. Maybe I'll add crouching. Heck, that's a great suggestion, I'll make ducking decrease recoil when using automatic weapons and maybe increase accuracy of any gun.

The first mutant getting stuck is a weird issue and it will get fixed in the newxt update. I've got no idea why that happens, mutants on elsewhere seem to work fine. :-\ But the brightness glitch... Whoa, I've never encountered that myself. Maybe is't GM-orineted issue and I can't do nothing about it, but I'll take a look at it.

Meanwhile I take a look at the glitches, you guys take a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5L6wXO4h-4

It's an unofficial trailer of this game, so it's not made by me. It's made by "Samppu", a beta tester/supporter of this project. In the same channel youäll find a walktrough of this game, but it's narrated in Finnish. If any of you happen to understand Finnish, check it out.  ;)

The progress with the next version is on its way! The main point of the upcoming update is to add more stuff to do: side quests, arena, hunting missions etc. And of course more areas to explore. I have also modified the existing areas so they won't all look the same. Variables (eg. money gain) have been tweaked, and achievements (challenges) will be added, so stay tuned! :)

Hey Micco I liked the simple graphics and the music was great. The combat was okay but I expected alot of action after the plane crashed, only to land and fight cockroaches. Also, between the rebel camp and the first map there is a transition map that I got stuck on when trying to go back to the first map. That small corridor seemed kind of pointless to me and I noticed another one to the east. The self aware humor in the dialogue is great. Keep up the good work man. I'm looking forward to later builds.   :gentleman:

Thanks for feedback :)
Yeah, in the beginning you basically encounter cockroaces, but soon you'll also fight the mutants, which in the upcoming build will come in multiple types (normal, fast, high-leveled). Also the combat will be improved by a new feature: ducking. With ducking killing cockroaches and shooting in long distance will be easier. Glad you liked the game :)

I like the game so far. The dialogue (mostly before the crash so far) is rough, but I know that trying to provide back-story in-story isn't the easiest thing to do.

I felt that leveling up through fighting for experience vs. fulfilling quests a bit imbalanced but acceptable if you want to detour the player away from grinding.

I also found trying to sneak up on the mutants to punch them a bit more tricky than it was worth, but I might be missing a basic understanding of why it works perfectly sometime (like I hit a sweet spot) and not at others. I'll have to play some more to give you a better assessment about I well I feel the punch works.

Thank you for feedback! :) The dialogue is kinda rough but will be improved in the next update. I have also done a full spellcheck which should reduce the amount of typos and grammar errors. I have also replaced most of the swearwords with different expressions of frustration. ;D

What do you mean by imbalanced levling up? Too much/little experience is rewarded for fulfilling quests?

I was going to play a little bit longer before giving feedback, but I haven't had time to play in a couple of days so I'll just post up the notes I have so far. I got to a little bit after the part where you use the dynamite to that ammo room.

The first impression the game gives is really nice. The menu is really polished and looks and sounds really nice. The opening scene is a bit lengthy in my opinion but its not too long. The dialog could use a lot of work, like the others said, but I'm not really too good with that kind of thing so I don't really have too much advice in that department.

-I liked that you kept the training portion of the game short.

-When seeing ammo on the ground  for the first time, I thought that it was some sort of hazardous spikes/rocks and jumped over it.

-There was some sort of weird message screen blip when reading the text boxes. Not sure if it was just my computer but I think you should try to fix it because it made the conversations hard to read through.

-The starting gun (semi auto rifle i think) seems way to wimpy. It was weird that I only have a limited amount of ammo with the gun and whenever I shoot it, it goes off in some random direction. It felt like I was shooting some sort of water balloon cannon or something. I could point my gun in the correct direction and not even hit the target when I'm standing almost right next to it. I guess 'aiming' wasn't one of the traits they genetically modified  ;D. It was frustrating that I had next to no ammo with the gun and I couldn't hit anything except if I got lucky.

-The opening scene using the same portraits (though flipped) was kind of weird. Especially because one of them is the main character. Maybe redraw the head in a different position or something(even if they have the same face) to more easily tell who is speaking.

-The enemy design wasn't that great. I think the only enemies I fought were the cockroaches and mutant things, but they had pretty much the same AI. Whenever they detected you they relentlessly followed you at a speed that almost matched your own. The movements didn't really seem organic, not to mention fairly difficult for the very first part of the game. It was very difficult to kill them without taking very much damage. It's hard to believe that I am going to assassinate some super villan guy whenever my guy has trouble killing a cockroach.

-The mutant enemy looks too much like a human/friendly character and I ran into him on purpose the first time I encountered one. He wasn't attacking me so I thought he was not an enemy.

-This is pretty much only a problem because of the limited ammo, but I kept pressing the shoot button when I was looking for jump and wasted some ammo. I would suggest redefinable keys, as I would for any game really.)

-As I said above, I thought that the menu and hud seemed really polished which gives the game a feeling of completeness.

-I really liked the graphics and the music and the general atmosphere the game provided.

-The landscape seemed a bit repetative without anything too new or different to look forward to between screens. Maybe adding in some unique tiles or landmarks in some areas to mix it up a bit might help.

Overall I thought it was a really good work in progress. I'll play through the rest of the game when I get a chance and let you know what I think. I'm really interested in seeing this game develop. Good work so far!  :wizard: :handthumbsupR:

Thanks for the long reply and I'm happy you liked the game. :)

The starting gun (semi-auto rifle) is indeed the suckiest gun of videogame history. ;D It has lousu accuracy, and the bullets scatter all over the place if you don't upgrade your dexterity skill.

I will make the player aware of the allies in the game somehow so the player won't run to the first mutant to see if he has something to say ;D And vice versa to the first friendly NPC.

In this version (0.2.1) there are 3 types of enemies. I know, that's pathetic so in the next build there will be more, and they will be different from each other. Also the areas will recieve some diversity, which can be seen from these sneak peeks from upcoming version 0.3.0:

(http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/6021/screenshot111m.png)

(http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/1264/screenshot112.png)

(http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/3382/screenshot113fc.png)

(http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/4049/screenshot114s.png)

:coffee:

Ok that makes sense. I still think that the amount of ammo is far too low if you don't upgrade your accuracy like I did. You hardly have enough ammo to kill anything (i played in the middle difficulty, hard i think.)

I also forgot to mention in my other post that your game reminds me of a sort of cross between iji and knytt.  :)

The new screenshots look nice too!  :gentleman:

Alright, maybe I'll increase the amount of ammo given from the pickups.

I have never played knytt but I've played Iji. An oh boy how awesome it is! :) I could say that this game is inspired by Iji and Borderlands. "Iji and Borderlands put into a blender" ;)

What? It's over? That's not fair. I was having an awesome time! Really promising game. I just finished the beta and can't wait for a new version.

Here's some ideas. Take what you like, ignore what you don't:

-> I second It'd be cool to have some more variety, or landmarks, in the maps. It'd be nice to be able to differentiate towns at first sight.

-> That weird flicker while reading messages is annoying. You get used to It eventually, but if you could get rid of It, that'd be great.  

-> The minimalistic graphics are fantastic, but I had some problems to distinguish some objects from the background. The first time I got to a train station I didn't notice the train in there until It moved. Same for the projectiles of the tank or the computers in towns. Maybe you could try a different combination of colors?

-> Near the end of the game, I had to talk to a questgiver called James (before I could go down the fortified tower to fight the tank). However, James didn't have an exclamation sign on top of his head. That got me disoriented for a moment, since I thought there were no quests left in the game.

-> I'd try to find a way to call player's attention to that nice scene where you talk to a woman about some bad news. It's easy to miss that cool bit.

-> Also, when I walk into the mines, in the darkness, I hear a shotgun sound effect playing there. Am I missing something?

-> Some might say the game is too easy, but I enjoyed the difficulty level. I was never frustrated and It was the variety of the quests that kept my interest all the time.

So, keep It up. The new screenshots look great. We'll be looking forward to a new release  :coffee:

Thanks for the feedback!
In the next version more variety will be added. As for the flickering, I'll see what I can do. It seems that some computers suffer this more than others, and mine primary PC doesn't suffer from flickering nearly at all. :-\

Thanks for the graphics tip, I think I'll add somesort of border etc. to make things more nociable.

There are various exlamation marks missing, thanks for pointing James out. And the island woman scene is kinda "hidden" there, so if you visit the island before going to Ashvale and realize that it has been raided the dialogue/option choosing won't trigger.  It's kinda hard to make players notice her, maybe if I put and exlamation mark over her head :)

Shotgun sound effect? :-\ I've never noticed that. Maybe if I listen to the background music and concentrate...
He he! Now I got it! :biglaff: It's only a part of the music track. It has nothing to do with the game. I couldn't have noticed that myself if someone hadn't pointed that out  ;D

Good thing that you found the difficulty alright. May I ask you in which difficulty setting you played?

BTW, I just counted the screens of the game. At the moment there are 104 SCREENS in the main game plus 4 screens in the training session. :o

Micco,

I like this game. I think the style is pretty. The sound is great. I found the control a little fiddly at first but soon got used to them. The little tiny enemy's were frustrating because my bullets couldn't hit them. Also, I found it hard to distinguish who was an enemy and who was a friend I should talk to. Perhaps the humanoid enemy's should be a different color than you allies?

This looks fun! Downloading it now. I will post up my thoughts tomorrow as i'm just off to bed.

Glad you like it :) About the enemies and allies getting confused, I've made a short monologue to the next build to make things a little more clear, something like "Geez, I believe that's one of those mutants the sarge told me about. I think I need to kill him." :durr:

Hi there guys!

Just wanted to write here what's going on with Devastated since it has been a long time I last posted here.

Anyway, the progress is doing great. The game areas will nearly double in size when the next build comes out. In total there will be 172 screens in the next update. The next build will also feature lots of more stuff to do, including quests, arena, achievements ("challenges" in Devastated), new player abilities, improved movement engine, more enemies and much more. A lot of thought has been given to the new areas - no area is alike and they all have different background scenery and landscape.

To track the development progress, check out the newly established Devastated development blog at: http://devastated-game.blogspot.com/

Stay tuned for version 0.3.0, guys!  ;)

Version 0.3.2 released! After months of, ummh, "work", the update is finally here! The new version features a lot of new stuff to do, including new areas, quests, somekind of an arena, new enemies, challenges, new scenery, an another boss battle and much more!

You can get the game from here:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/rpg/devastated/3543/
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/145400-devastated

If you have played 0.2.x and would like to start from the end of the previous version:
There is a cheat code for just that! Do this and you'll start where you left:

• Start a new game with the difficult level you wish to play
• In the first screen, after the dialogue press and hold DOWN ARROW and X
• A cheat entry box should appear. Wipe out any extra X's you may just have accidently typed and type carefully skip content and press ENTER
• Confirm the content skip
• Read the epic comic if you want. You will have to make one selection and choose which level you want to start on
• You should spawn in the screen where the tank used to be. Because of a glitch the HUD is invisible but will re-appear when you change screen. You will now start automatically to level up until you reach the selected level
• Start playing!

Comments are appreciated :)