next »

[PHeMoX]

I think you really need to make it clearer how many transfer points you have and how many it costs to transfer to a droid.

Yeah, it took me a while to even figure out that you spend transfer points at all. So I kept failing at transferring to better bots. I definitely like this game though, nice.

[princec]

Can't really make it clearer how much it costs to transfer (it hovers above the droids) but could possibly have a numeric score to show how many transfer points you've got left instead of the dit bar.

Cas

[Ciardhubh]

The display of transfer points is good in my opinion. You could add a flashing/pulsing effect in the area of the bar, if you have too few points and try to transfer. Other than that ... rather RTFM than clutter the HUD with excessive displays

[mewse]

I've been playing for a little bit, and have really been enjoying Droid Assault, even if I haven't made it as far as those on the leaderboard. 

As a first-time player, here are the things I had trouble with:

I didn't figure out the meaning of the "Enemies" HUD element until partway through my third game.  If it doesn't mess with your layout too much, it might be worth changing the label to "Enemies Left"?

I couldn't find how many transfer points I had available until my third game, either, which kind of made it difficult to have a real strategy while playing.  I wonder if this would have been easier for me to find if the game had made a bigger deal of getting and spending these points.  Perhaps animating the pips up from the HUD and to the 'bot you're taking over, and down from the 'points' value when you earn a new pip?  Just something that would really draw the eye down to the transfer points HUD element whenever a pip was earned or spent.

And I didn't notice the arrow pointing to the exit and nearby enemies until just this very moment.  Lucky I did, though, because I was just about to ask for one.     Maybe the arrow can be brightened up a little, or have its hue changed slightly so that it doesn't get interpreted as meaningless visual sugar?


But very, very cool overall!  It does bring back fond memories of Paradroid, but with a very different spin on the concept.  I like it a lot!   

[princec]

Droid Assault's out! (Quietly does it, just a few forum spams first before the mailing list etc)

You can grab the demo from this page for your respective OS.

Here's a screenie or 2 if you've not seen any yet:





Yes, it's only $9.95 too.

Cas

[moi]

Aha this graphic style is badawesome.

[Mischief Maker]

A few comments about the full version:

It's great fun and probably the best of Ultratron and Titan Attacks combined.

The in-game instructions are seriously lacking.  They say nothing about how being possessed damages droids over time, or how core and sensor levels affect the aggressiveness of droids not under your control.  I've found this is crucial info for playing well.

I love the special effect/low-rez aesthetics.  The unintelligible robot voices getting more and more menacing is a great touch.

Where is the patented puppygames score multiplier/difficulty scaler?

[princec]

Yes, the in-game instructions are somewhat lacking... it's nice to leave some stuff up to trial and error but I would have liked to describe the different robot brains a little more. Everyone seems to figure out about the eventual degeneration of the droid under their control so it's probably not worth mentioning in instructions screens. On the other hand I could go into a lot of detail about this in a readme file (trouble is hardly anyone reads them!!)

I tried really hard to work out a difficulty scheme for this game but was unable to find a balance that worked. As it is - I can't get past level 45! I had to cheat just to see the K911 and K999 robots. But if it doesn't get harder level by level like it does, it becomes tedious and boring to play.

In the end I just worked out what I think is the best points => transfer points balance to ensure you have a fresh but not limitless supply of droids; and I put in that combo thing for multi-kills which is nice and rewards mayhem.

Cas

[Ciardhubh]

It really turned out great . The variety of weapons and bots is nice; or maybe I've just missed them in the alpha version.

Difficulty after level 40 is steep but it's doable with a bit of strategy; got till 51. Unfortunately I was stuck with a robot that could not kill the last enemy with its weapon (took like 100 shots for 1 pixel and my bot was down to zero health due to decay).

What determines the level you can restart from when you die? I could restart from 11 for some time and now from 21. Is it 30 levels before the highest boss you've defeated?

Also: Yay 1st place ... well ok, in the in-game online highscore list. For some reason it's different from the highscore list on the homepage.

[princec]

Aha, deleted the old alpha version hiscores and there you are on top now. But only for a week in-game! The online ones are for all time.

Yes, after level 40 or so you really start needing to pick your bots carefully to make sure you don't end up blasting at something really armoured with an ineffective weapon. The game does actually detect the situation where you can't harm any of the enemies with any of your bots nor transfer to anything, and at that point it weakens (ie. removes) all of the remaining enemies' armour - but that's a pretty crummy way to end the level, as you're likely to tire out your bots and die from a single bullet.

The level restart thing - every 20 levels, the restart point increases by 10. So if you complete level 60, next time you play you get the option of starting at level 31.

Cas

[simon]

Dear Caspian and Puppy,

- thanks for another brilliant game. This is my favourite so far.

- I have been wanting a place to congregate with other players, and this seems to be the best option. May I suggest a link from your site to here, and/or to an official forum/mail list/documentation wiki/irc channel ? More community, more word of mouth, more sales!

- release notes for today's update ? What changed ?

- the update has killed my mac leopard installation, unfortunately: Uncaught exception in main method: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError at startup. Good, I need to get some work done today.

- I hope it makes the q/e keys more usable.. right now they seem random, and I frequently lose valuable droids at tight moments!

- if it means anything, in full screen mode on a 1680x1050 monitor I see the bottom text slightly offscreen. Also it would be nice if the game could keep its aspect ratio in fullscreen mode, it's a bit too wide to play that way.

- no other problems here. Terrific fun, thanks.

SIM

[simon]

PS 1..8 keys to select droids would be nice!

[princec]

Doh! Got shafted by a beta version of LWJGL. I've just uploaded a new version that should run again. No Mac sales today for any games as a result

Todays version fix was just a few little bugs here and there, and one of the droids got its armour lessened and gun enhanced. The friendlies might shoot a tiny bit more now too.

I'll be rolling up some proper fixes in a 1.1 release maybe next month, like getting the order of the robots in the scrollwheel/Q/E done properly, putting in a bit more in game help, and making the instructions screen a bit more comprehensive - probably split over two pages.

Cas

[Lim-Dul]

I agree that this is your best game so far and I bought both Titan Attacks and Ultratron in the past (well - the Polish zloty is quite strong and the dollar is very weak - even buying them almost seems like ripping you off :-D).

As to the help and extended info - I'm willing to post some spoilerish stuff on Indiefaqs.com if you want to but this would require a bit of cooperation on your side (if you're interested). I already wrote that in the comments section of the Droid Assault news post.

Games like this make me feel sad that the editors in chief in the magazines I'm writing for rarely agree to let me write about indie games although I had a break-thorugh in convincing them with a recent four page article. =)

http://rapidshare.com/files/100802837/indie_games_ksg.zip (in Polish =)

If I were to write it today Droid Assault would make it into the article for sure. :-D

[lowpoly]

Cas, this game is fantastic, played it last night and had tons of fun with it. This is a definite buy, you guys keep outdoing yourselves! 

[princec]

Thank you all Lim-Dul/Jan, perhaps you should write another article eh?

Cas

[Lim-Dul]

Ha, ha - I wish it was that easy. I have to write what I'm told - that is, ABOUT what I'm told - that's the uncool part of paper magazines as editors have usually more freedom (and space!) when writing articles online. On the other hand I could submit a post to the http://playpc.pl blog, I guess. It's the official blog for the two magazines I'm writing for and allows for writing "loose" articles. From what I gather quite a few of our readers follow it closely so it could net you a dime or two especially since the game is distributed through online channels. =)

However, I want to concentrate on a kind of FAQ or something for Droid Assault first since that's what I'm interested in personally and not professionally. ^^
I'll get on it this weekend and then we'll see. Mainly I wanted to compile a reference where you could look up all the droids with their descriptions and stats (not as detailed as the XML file you sent me of course - just what is available and visible in-game).

P.S. Thanks for the files - "Bot Assault", or "Bot Attack" for further obscurity, is in the works. ;-)

[Akhel]

I installed the demo yesterday and tried to play it today.

After clicking PLAY, I get the help information; if I click PLAY again, I get the "BUY DROID ASSAULT" window. No matter which button I click next, the game closes.

Here's the last few entries from out.log:

Fri May 09 14:36:08 GMT-03:00 2008   Initing sound
Fri May 09 14:36:08 GMT-03:00 2008   Initialising window
Fri May 09 14:36:09 GMT-03:00 2008   Loaded cached wave sounds-mono.ogg.wave.LITTLE_ENDIAN
Fri May 09 14:36:09 GMT-03:00 2008   Loaded cached wave sounds.ogg.wave.LITTLE_ENDIAN
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped focus.down.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped cancel.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped select.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped no.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped focus.left.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped yes.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped focus.right.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:11 GMT-03:00 2008   Zapped focus.up.binding.alt
Fri May 09 14:36:25 GMT-03:00 2008   Nag: You know you want to!, false
Fri May 09 14:36:28 GMT-03:00 2008   Begin new game
Fri May 09 14:36:29 GMT-03:00 2008   Begin new game
Fri May 09 14:36:29 GMT-03:00 2008   You have played Droid Assault 0 times for 10 minutes
Fri May 09 14:36:29 GMT-03:00 2008   Max games 0 / max time 10 / max level 25
Fri May 09 14:36:29 GMT-03:00 2008   Nag: Your demo has expired!, true

 

[princec]

Hehe, sorry, looks like the alpha timed out the demo for you!

You on a Mac or PC?

Cas

[Akhel]

PC.

It timed out without me ever playing? Is it supposed to be like that?