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[Destral]

Replayability is always a great value-adder. An 'Endless' challenge mode is usually a good addition to a TD game (for a good example, check out Army of Darkness Defense on the iPad, it's free and you can likely unlock the endless mode in a couple evenings of play).

[larsiusprime]

Great suggestions! I think I could pretty easily add some "endless" challenges that are unlocked after you beat the game - perhaps one for beating the game on each challenge mode?

That way, the player could really squeeze every drop out of the gameplay mechanics. Theoretically you can have up to 36 defenders (not including the "mcguffin") on the field at once, and boosting them all the way up to boost level 5 each ... that'd require being at like, level 80 or something. It'd be interesting to see a challenge that takes you all the way there and beyond.

[Destral]

Exactly. That way players of each skill level have an endless challenge that suits their skill, and less hardcore players can gradually ease themselves into the higher difficulties and have a reason to.

[larsiusprime]

Hey guys! Just added a windows installer torrent file

http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html

Mac and Linux versions will follow in the next week. The installable version has some extra video features, such as fullscreen, resolution changing, etc, so you can play the game the way it was meant to be experienced

[Destral]

Getting

Something I thought I noticed, but I just confirmed: I don't see a place anywhere on the party menu, or the map screen, that shows you how much scrap you have. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the only place to see how much scrap you have is in town, when buying/hiring. Any chance you might put that in somewhere?

[larsiusprime]

That is a super correct observation. That was on my list of to-dos once, but I totally forgot about it.

The party screen itself is jam-packed with information, so I'm not sure I can think of a natural place for it to go there. Probably the best other place would be in the blank space on the bottom bar on the overworld screen?

Got any ideas?

ALSO: I've tested the windows build without getting any super horrible bugs, but that doesn't mean you won't experience any! Let me know if you get yourself into any kind of trouble. In the rare case that you should get an illegal resolution problem you can't fix, you can manually edit the config file in:

C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\DefendersQuestDemo\Local Store\config.xml

I would have stuck that file in the program's install directory, but file write permissions won't let me. I'll probably distribute the final version of the game with a simple "edit the config file" app that DOES live in the local directory.

[Destral]

That's what I was thinking, the bottom bar next to the Audio button.

Just got to the end of the demo, and I'm really stoked to play the full version. It's really cool that you have the option to export your save file from the demo. I'm half tempted to keep playing to get a full set of class3 characters up to the same level as the rest of my guys.

I didn't come across any game-exploding bugs so far. I did notice that the game over music in the windows version is not the same as the one in the demo. 

[larsiusprime]

Yeah, sounds good, seems like a natural place to stick it.

The audio is different? Really? Interesting - must have been a conditional compilation flag I set wrong. What's the different audio sound like?

[Destral]

The song is different. The one in the demo sounds like

(placeholder, possibly?). In the windows version it's a different tune altogether.

[Devenger]

This is rather wonderful. I would describe it as a tower defence game with persistent characters rather than an RPG, though. I see something as an RPG if I play the role of a character in some world, often on a personal level. This is more a game about preparing for, and fighting, skirmishes on a battle map - even if it does have a (moderately intriguing) story.

One issue I found: selecting 'Movies' and the first movie of the first chapter (Opening) made the game go black and not respond to input. Frustratingly, I can't reproduce this issue (it seems to work fine now, having reloaded my game - thank you for making it autosave), and can't really make educated guesses as to the conditions that trigger it (beyond that I'd played through the entire demo and viewed every cutscene in the game so far, in that single sitting). This is in the latest stable release of Google Chrome, with the latest stable version of Flash Player.

[larsiusprime]

Hey, thanks Devenger!

That information alone is enough to help. I can throw some error-catch functions around the beginning and end of cutscene instantiation and force the game to dump to an error report stage should it happen again. Not enough to fix it now, but enough to make sure it tells us something next time it happens

Question:

Right now the game aggressively auto-saves, pretty much every time you beat a battle, buy a thing, assign a skill point, watch a cutscene, etc. Many games (RPG's especially) have a more explicit manual-save feature. There aren't too many decisions in Defender's Quest you'd likely regret, but do you think we need an option to turn auto-saving on/off?

[Destral]

I wouldn't think so, from what I've seen so far. Is there any situation where the player might make a decision that messes them up for later (to the point where they'd have to start the game over)? The only things I can think of, off the top of my head, would be:

Is there a binary choice in the game later on that the player cannot undo?

Is there any single battle that you can't replay?

Is there an item in the game that costs enough that buying it would require a significant time investment in order to make back the amount of money spent?

Is there a way to reset and redistribute your skill points later in the game?

[larsiusprime]

1) There is a binary choice late in the game - without spoiling it too much, you can basically choose to fight optional battle X (which immediately results in ending A), or continue down a harder path of battles (resulting eventually in ending B). If you ever get ending A, however, you're just sent back to the title screen, you can reload your save, and go forth and get the other ending.

2) There's no single battle you can't replay. There is a town or two that we destroy through the story, but you can get the things available in them in later towns.

3) There are some unique items that you can get as rewards from certain challenges, that if you sold at a shop you literally couldn't ever get again, but I could fix this by just letting you buy them back at the shops you sold them to (provided you didn't sell them to a town shop that is later destroyed...)

4) There's no way to reset and redistribute your skill points later in the game as of yet, but I could always put in a respec option.

Let me think - there's no way to "dismiss" a hireling, nor is there a way to rename them or re-configure their color combinations, at least not within the game itself. (In the final version, players could export their save file, fiddle with the XML, then re-import it). I could fix this by either letting you dismiss hirelings, or have some option for re-naming them, re-coloring them, or re-spec'ing their skills.

So, those are some things I imagine people might want manual saving for, but in each case, I can think of another solution that directly addresses the problem without needing a manual save feature.

[Destral]

So it sounds like you don't really need a manual save feature.

You could always put in all of the things you've mentioned (respeccing, changing appearance, buying one-off items) and allow the player to unlock them when they finish the game - which would make it really convenient/nifty for players who choose to continute playing in endless mode, accumulating more money/exp etc. You could have the respec/appearance change cost money or exp, or both. You could even put in some new colour options and items that can only be obtained after finishing the game.

[larsiusprime]

Hey guys!

Just added a linux installer!
Get it now!

I haven't tested the linux version extensively, so if you run into any trouble, please let me know. The main thing to test will be if the video / fullscreen options work correctly.  If it screws up, let me know so I can show you where it puts the config file, which you can manually edit in case the game is stuck on an illegal resolution or something.

Also, if the game throws up an error page, let me know so I can debug that for you

EDIT: Found and fixed the audio problem you mentioned. Turned out, I had an old placeholder track in the browser version. Fixed that with the real music.

[larsiusprime]

Sorry, my servers went down temporarily.

Fortunately, all the links to the game files still work:
Windows torrent (dropbox)
Linux torrent (dropbox)
Browser demo (mochi)

[larsiusprime]

Looks like we're back up again! Sorry about the problems!

[ShadowTiger]

I played through the demo in Opera and it was pretty fun. Hopefully you can expand it with more unit types and upgrades in the future, as right now its pretty straightforward. Also, some of the upgrades, particularly for the archers, don't seem to do anything after 1 or 2 points. You should either fix that or disable the upgrades at that point.

If this really is only 2/7ths of the game, then I think the final product will be pretty good.

I really like the customization system, it would be nice if you threw in some different hairstyles.

[larsiusprime]

Hey, thanks!

There's 6 classes in the final version of the game.

I'll check on the skills system - what exactly are you noticing? Is the problem that after you put 1 or 2 points into the skill, the next point doesn't give any visual benefit?