I wouldn't, actually. I prefer to make a variety of interesting games. For instance, a lot of Nintendo's games haven't been stellar sellers (like Pikmin), but overall they produce more fun games than Blizzard does.

I'll just go from my experience,

I thought your feedback was great. I found it strange that you didn't mention anything about whether you liked the sound or music or graphics or story and focused 100% on gameplay, but that's still useful. Really, you do this so well that you should charge for it, haha.

There's already a destroy/sell button (pressing s when a tower is selected). But I don't think it'd work as well to make placing appear without precise positioning, because very precise (sometimes pixel-precise, when you're placing something near a Love Point and trying to maximize the coverage, or placing an Ortho Point so that it's attack overlaps the path) positioning is an important part of the strategy, and placing, selling, placing, selling etc. to get its position exactly right would be too time-consuming and frustrating compared to seeing where the tower will go exactly before placing it.

Making the graphic clearer when it's done was done a few times in the past, but I guess it's still not very clear; when it's done currently a sound appears and a circle appears around it. It's done very quick, and I guess the circle that appears around it and the sound might not be notable enough, but I'm not sure how else to make it clearer -- maybe changing the color might work.

Some games (particularly strategy games like this) probably can't avoid problems of confusion if you don't read the manual, tutorial, or even the story -- also I feel that if you skip the story you lose a lot from the game (it's very story-centric), so I really hope one time you might go through the story and tell me what you think of it, as we worked hard on it. The main draw of this game is that it's a story-based tower defense game, unlike every other tower defense game, so when you take away that it loses its uniqueness. It's understandable that not everybody likes stories in games though.

The idea to give a bonus tower after 10, 25 kills etc. is interesting, except that it would lead to this problem: when there are too many towers and tower-attacks on screen at once the game starts to slow down, so just giving a new tower so easily would be a bad idea. Perhaps if I did 25, 50, and 100 that might work, but even then on the longer levels with more, weak enemies you'd get more towers than on the slower levels with fewer, strong enemies. So for the gameplay balance I think getting a tower after the first few waves based on most kills works best. Besides, you often get the towers in between enemy waves, which gives you time to place them, whereas if you got them at random points throughout the level after you killed enough enemies the rest period between waves of enemies wouldn't make as much sense.

But you're still right that there may be a problem in that the mechanism of how you get bonus towers isn't clear if someone skips the story and the tutorial and the manual. But, there are many things which don't seem clear if a person skips those; they would never learn about the charge shot, how Love Points work, or even how to upgrade. I generally agree that a game should be playable without a manual, but the player can't expect to understand everything about a game without reading anything at all, that only works for the most simple games and clone games. Because this mechanism isn't similar to other games, there's no way I can think of to make it clear without text -- and the getting bonus points at 25 or 50 kills thing would also be confusing without text (because you wouldn't know why it was happening).

Even if you reset it every chapter, there's still the problem with the score system that I described; unlike other RTS games the money you earn carries over to the next mission, so repeatedly playing a mission with and without upgrading your mouse cursor would still be an exploit if it was carried over, even if it were reset on each campaign. I agree that there needs to be a feeling of progression besides cache, and when I add medals eventually (which increase the power of different towers and the mouse cursor after performing certain feats or achievements) that might give it more of that feeling. Also, the attack power of the mouse cursor already increases with each level, it gets stronger as the game goes on, so making it permanently upgradeable for cache in addition to that would be a bit redundant.

I still half-like the idea of making the mouse cursor upgradeable within the level and resetting it after the level, but I don't like the pause mechanism to do that, perhaps because it feels like it's too different from the other way of upgrading. A GUI button might be a better idea, but even that goes against my feeling of what would be consistent with the other way of upgrading the Points. And there's really no more room on the GUI for an extra button anyway, it's kind of full as is. Also, there's already (sort of) a way to upgrade your point: if you upgrade a Love Point, and fire when you're near it, your attacks will gain the same bonus that all the other attacks near the Love Point have.

I agree that if I could show the enemies getting damaged graphically gradually, the number indicators would be easier to turn off by default. But I still can't think of a way to show them getting weaker graphically -- I can't even think of any game that did that (except, again, FFMQ, and that had only three sprite states, normal, weak, and weaker). I agree generally with what you propose, it's just that I can't think of a way to show enemies weakening graphically, especially because they're so small.

Anyway, I don't want you to feel bad that I didn't take every single suggestion, I still have to use my judgment about what would be best for the game. The suggestion about proceeding to the next level rather than going back to the stage select is great though, and I think that I'll add that before release (some of the other things I'll also add, but after release in update patches). Thanks again!

Nice reply! Thanks so much.

The bug you mention ("can't read real") comes about on Eastern European or other non-US formatted computers, it has to do with using "," for "." to indicate decimals in certain country's numbering systems. I'm working on fixing that.

Actually the mouse cursor does increase in power as the level goes on, but it *decreases* in power when you use the boost attack (back to the starting level), so if you use that super attack too much you won't see the mouse cursor gain in power throughout the course of the level. This might not be the best way to do it, but I've tried different ways and that seems to be the most balanced way that I've tried, it creates a trade-off between using the normal attack and using the super attacks when you really need to.

The mechanism for placing and upgrading towers isn't perfect, but I've also tried many ways of doing that, including the way you suggest. The problem with the way you suggest is this: firstly it makes it difficult to place a tower exactly where you want if the tower just appears from holding the button down (which is bad for strategy), and secondly it makes it easy to accidentally upgrade a tower too much (like, perhaps you only wanted to upgrade it once, but holding the button down on it too long upgraded it twice). I think those are bigger problems than the problems you mention, so I want to keep the placing and upgrading mechanisms the way it is now; so what I mean is it might seem like the way you suggest is better, but when it actually works that way it created even greater problems which you might not have anticipated.

Not being able to select a tower that doesn't exist or one that you don't have enough money for is an interesting idea. I'll try out the first of those (not being able to select towers that have 0 remaining and can't be placed), but I'm wary of the second one (not being able to select towers that you don't have enough money for) because of this situation: sometimes you are ready to place a tower somewhere after you gain just a little more cache, and want to select that tower ahead of time in preparation for placing it after you do get that cache. I think that's useful and want to keep that. But there's really no use for being able to select towers that you can no longer place or can't place yet, so I agree about that.

The idea to make the towers that you don't have enough money for a different color is a great idea, though. I'll try that out.

The idea of "proceed to next level" at the end of a level -- perhaps also with options of "retry level" when you die...), and both having a ("return to stage select") option -- is a really great idea that I never thought of. I'll do that.

Upgrades for the Pointer using cache are an interesting idea, I'll consider that, but I'm not sure what the interface would look like, how the mechanism for "upgrading yourself" would work. Any suggestions? One possible problem with this is that I wouldn't want this to carry over between stages, because it'd then be possible to exploit the system (upgrading yourself as much as possible with a low score, then going back and getting a higher score -- because only the higher scores carry over to the next level, it'd be an easy way to cheat), so to avoid that I'd have to make the mouse cursor start at level 1 every level (and perhaps have 7 levels of upgrades, like the Points). I'll try this out if I can think of a good mechanism for how these upgrades would be handled in the user interface.

In the fifth or so level, the Courage Point describes the manner of gaining bonus towers; he says that you'll get a bonus Point of the same type as the Point that kills the most enemies in a wave of enemies (you get this a few times per level, for the first few waves, how many depends on the difficulty level). It's also described in the manual. I'm not sure how to make it clearer, but I agree that it's hard to understand at first.
 
I'm no sure what you mean by combining towers together; if you did that it'd probably be extremely time-consuming to code (there'd be 11*11 -- 121 combinations, so in effect I'd have to code for 121 new towers). They already are useful in certain combinations as it is, and some of them wouldn't really "combine" very well, so I don't see what it'd add to the game to do that. There's already a good variety in towers, and the different upgrade levels of each also often vary from one another in the way they attack, so I think that's already a lot of variety, and adding the option to combine towers would add needless complexity.

The idea to independently adjust the volume of the music and the sound effects is on the wish list, the problem is it'd take a long time to set up and I'm not sure it's worth days of work just for an option that's mainly of use to a few people (most people just use the default levels anyway when separate options for this are available, including me). However, I'll consider doing it at some future point, it's a nice option even though it might be more work than it's worth (e.g. I'd rather use the time to make extra levels or polish other things that would have a higher time spent vs. quality boost return).

The "Do you really want to quit?" message for the stage select screen (or perhaps even when you press X in the window) is a good idea, I'll put that on the wish list.

The reason the pointer fades when placing a tower and you can't build a tower is that the red lines indicate *why* you can't place a tower, and if the pointer was at full brightness you wouldn't be able to see why you can't place the tower (you'd cover up some of the lines telling you why you can't). It's probably not the most elegant option, but it's all I could think of doing. Another option would be just to put the red lines above the mouse cursor -- I could try that.

I'm not sure about getting rid of the numbers indicating the amount of damage by default -- although it speeds up the game and makes it cleaner, it makes it impossible to tell how much damage you're doing to the enemy. Of course, most TD games don't indicate the damage numerically and have no problems, so you might be right -- I'm just more used to the Final Fantasy style system where numbers appear indicating the amount of damage. I'll ask a few of my dedicated playtesters what they think.

Making the enemy slowly being destroyed is an interesting idea, and I want to do that some more (right now all that happens is their shield graphic becomes progressively more faded as they're damaged), but I'm not sure how better to represent that graphically. I don't think it's necessary to draw a new sprite for each enemy to indicate different damage levels (I don't know any game that does that, besides Final Fantasy Mystic Quest), but it's possible some type of effect could help. There's already a mini health bar on an enemy showing how much HP he has left, so it's not too difficult to tell which enemies are weak and which are strong, but if you have any ideas for how to graphically show damaged enemies I'll consider that.

I might add more to the background at some point, but I might not, I like the idea of it being all black personally. Also, you are *not* in space, that's actually part of the story, you're in pathspace. So if I showed like a star field in the background it would go against the story, the idea is that you're in a higher dimension two levels above space, you aren't in space, so you wouldn't see stars or anything in that space, just the beings that live in that space (the things that float around the screen in the background). There's also Indra's Net, those green lines connecting things far from your mouse cursor; so overall I think the background is interesting enough as it is, but if I come up with a good idea for another background effect I could use that too.

Another problem here is that Game Maker is very sensitive to drawing time, the more I draw on the screen the slower the game will run, so I want to keep it as simple as possible (it's already a game that runs slowly on a lot of computers).

I'm not sure what you mean by the green mouse pointer having a split personality?

But that's an interesting point about making the mouse pointer more characteristic of the player. I'll think about it, but I also like the idea of the player being unseen throughout the game, it adds a bit of mystery to it. But you also have a point that the green triangle is a bit boring, so at some point I may try to replace it with something more interesting to look at.

I plan to reduce the effects for the next version, yes, since more people are annoyed by it than find it pretty. I also plan on making the mouse pointer brighter so that it's not as easy to lose it among all the special effects.

I plan on making the default difficulty 30 or 40 instead of the 50 it is now, so the next version would be easier if you play on the default; the adjustable difficulty level is there though, if you find the game too hard, try it out on a lower level. There's no penalty for doing so, you don't get anything special if you beat the game on the default difficulty as opposed to an easier difficulty.

Thanks for the responses again!

I'm not sure they have the talent to be original; sure, they have a lot of talent to polish old games and innovate them, but do they really have the talent required to make something totally original? I think those are two different kinds of talent.

Also, If a company releases 10 or 20 games a year, it has room to be experimental. But Blizzard releases about 1 game per year, so it can't take that risk. If I were them I'd release more games than they currently do, but the reason their games are so polished is because they only focus on about one a year. Nintendo can do more experimental titles because it has smaller teams that focus on a dozen or so games a year. I think that's probably the better approach, but you can't have it both ways: they can't maintain the kind of polish they have now if they did experimental games.

About the discussion here -- what hasn't been noted is that what a lot of people WANT is SC with updated graphics and new units. People want that, Blizzard is making people happy by making this game. It's not a risky game, it's not an experimental game, it's just them making a game that people (including me) really want. I don't see why we should hold it against them if they make games that people want.

It's true that they used to be more innovative (remember The Lost Vikings?) but their focus is now on making three games (Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo) over and over, that's what they've chosen to do, and they do it well.

Besides, some aspects of SC2 do look pretty innovative (what other RTS has a super-strong unit that you can only have one of at a time?). And the game's not out yet, maybe it has a lot of innovation we just haven't seen yet.

Interesting sound bug, I've not heard that reported before, I'll investigate. Does turning the sound on and off on the stage select screen (the switch toggle) stop the looping?

I'm considering a medals system for a post-release update, but it'd work differently from what you describe. You'd get medals for certain achievements, which would then increase your abilities (for instance, if you killed 100 enemies in a single level with a Courage Point, you might get a 15% boost to the range of all Courage Points after that).

The only achievement right now for spending less cache and still getting 100% is a higher score ("New Highest Score!") message at the end of the level.

One thing I also am considering is to one day add an online high score system (so people could compare their highest scores in a level with others'), that might give more of a feeling of achievement, but I don't know enough MySQL programming for that yet.

But I'm not really going for a "highest score" feeling of achievement in the game, the main part of the game is the experience of playing through it, following the story, etc., so I think a type of "Gold Medal! Silver Medal! Bronze Medal!" system that Advance Wars has might actually cheapen the game, it'd make it feel like an arcade game, and feel less epic.

Thanks for playing the game and the bug report, but I'm kind of at a loss to explain the sound looping bug, I'll go over the code again, but because nobody else has had that problem it might also just be a sound driver incompatibility or something of that nature.

Harlock, because Derek said he hasn't played it, by portraits I'm assuming he means the bottom GUI bar, not the intermission portraits you refer to; and the GUI portraits and GUI to which he refers aren't the ones that have been re-done, unless you've replaced them all without mentioning it.

Derek, thanks, and I agree that some of the graphics need to be improved for it to compete with your Aquaria graphically (haha), but also, others have said that the game looks much better in motion than it does in static screenshots, so I'll be happy to see what you think of the graphics & polish after you've played it. But also, sprite graphics aren't its primary focus, it's not meant to be a pixel-based game, but rather an effects-based game, more in the style of Fl0w or Geometry Wars.

I think I still want to experiment with it -- if not for v1.0 for release, then definately for later versions (I plan to continue updating the game even after release, with some challenge levels, a level modification feature, etc. etc.).

Oh, that level! What you should realize is that the enemies become weaker again in Campaign 2, so you don't need thousands of points of cache to play well in it, a hundred or two (or even 0) is enough, because the first level of campaign 2 again has weak enemies; the Raberata in the final level of campaign 1 mentions that (that it's a fresh start).

I don't think it'd do too much harm to make the cursor brighter, maybe I could even give it a glow effect... although also notice that if you turn the effects meter down (it defaults to 50) there will be fewer effects and you'll be able to see better.

Thanks all!

In reply to Haowan (point by point)

Losing the mouse cursor in the action is not something anyone has mentioned before, but it's a good observation as I occasionally lose it too. I could perhaps make it brighter, or flash more notably... I'll try a few things out.

Good point on the X, I'll see what I can do there.

I may set the default difficulty lower than 50, seeing as a lot of people are saying it's too hard at 50 (personally I think it's too easy at 50, but I made the game and know all the tricks, it's not until 70 or 80 that the game challenges me). Currently it doesn't matter what difficulty level you beat a level on, the score carries over the same, so sometimes you can get a higher score on a lower difficulty level (but sometimes not, as lower difficulties mean lower HP which means less cache).

A good way to get a high score is spend as little as possible -- sometimes this can work very well, and sometimes it's even more important to your final score than getting 100% (although to unlock the secret campaign you'll need to get 100% on every level, note).

Good point on the boss level of campaign 1, it's supposed to be harder but not extremely such; I actually can win it just using Strategist Points, although it depends on which points Aa places and how he (randomly) chooses to upgrade those points; I'll consider making that level easier.

The detection for the quit menu things is a known bug that was discovered just after zipping and uploading v0.9 -- I'll fix it soon, should be simple.

The small gap in the loop I'll see what I can do about, perhaps it'd just be a matter of editing the ogg in Audacity and removing the last second of empty time.

I think I like the hectic part at the end of a level, but one thing I can consider (though this might make the game too easy) is increasing the rest time between the waves of the enemies, to give more time to upgrade. It's balanced with the current rest time however, so doing that would mean less enemies and easier levels, so to compensate I'd have to make them come out slightly faster during the period when they do come out -- which might break the balance (which I just spent about 2 weeks working on), but I'll experiment.

Thanks for the complements!

And, looking forward to your response Guert, especially considering how in-depth your responses are to other games :D

Thanks for the reply ^^

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the tower defense (sub-)genre, but for that genre I think it's pretty easy; compared to games like Desktop Tower Defense or Flash Element TD for example it's very hard to lose (although if you're going for 100% on every level it's pretty hard, yeah).

How would you suggest I improve it for it to be worth buying -- & out of curiosity, which shareware have you bought? I'm also hard to sell on shareware; the only ones I've bought are Shoot the Bullet and The Shivah.

I'm really looking forward to this -- StarCraft is the only online game I've ever really enjoyed.

EDIT: Newest version: http://studioeres.com/immortal/ImmortalDefenseDemo.zip

Requirements (estimated):
- Windows 2000 or later, DirectX 8.0 or later, 256MB RAM (preferably 512MB+), 1.0GHZ CPU (*really* preferably 2.0GHZ+, as the game's very CPU-intensive, but it's playable on a 1.0GHZ CPU if you set effects low and run it in full screen), 32MB 3D videocard (preferably 64MB+).

Games that were most influential on me personally,

Ms Pac Man - Made me like playing videogames, about 1983.
Zelda 1 - Made me addicted to videogames, about 1987.
Civilization - Got me interested in world history, about 1994.
Persona 1 - Strong positive effect on my worldview, about 1996.
Xenogears - Got me to decide to become a game developer (I made games before, but not as seriously) because it convinced me games are important, about 1998.
Sword of Jade - This is a game by two friends of mine, it influenced my game design philosophy, about 2005.

Any game that solidified a genre: Pitfall / Super Mario Bros. for platformers, Ultima / Dragon Warrior for RPGs, Wolfenstein / Doom for FPSs, Dune 2 / Warcraft for RTSs, Bejeweled for match-3's... basically, if a game has a million clones, it's influential.

I do, but only after a long, long period. I'm talking years. But after a few years, I can go back and play my games for fun, yeah. I do this with my first online-released game sometimes, which I made for a contest back in 2000, and I still find it fun & addictive.

I'm sorry, I don't know what "kick" is.

I disagree, you don't need a no-spamming rule, it's understood as net etiquette on forums, especially when it's a person's first (and only) post on a forum.

Most recently... Echoes (by binary zoo), MDK (by Shiny), and of course my own game in development.

I'm not sure what use a "name for yourself" is either. What matters, long-term, is how good you are at making games, not how well known you are.

Let me give you my history as an example. I spent six years making unreleased little games in QBASIC which only me and my brothers and sisters saw before I even released one publicly on the internet back in 2000. I spent another six years only releasing my games to a very small audience of a few hundred people on small Ohrrpgce-engine message boards before I even released one to a larger forum audience and various freeware download sites. During that time I created around twenty little games, each progressively better than the last, each teaching me something. I didn't create any of that for "a name" -- nobody knows who I am outside my circle of friends. I created them to learn how to create games, that's the important part. Maybe I personally am going too slow, but I really think at least a decade of experience is needed before you can claim that your game will be any good at all or any fun for anyone. Until you've tried making games you don't actually know how difficult making something fun and balancing it is.