next »

[SpaceMammoth]

Feedback wanted for Mammoth Gravity Battles

Please go to our website, and you will be able to play the game, I would really like some feedback. I am specifically interested in how intuitive you find the controls and how difficult you find it, as I'm worried many will find it too hard. The final game will have a more gentle introduction with simpler 2D levels preceding a fully 3D mission like this.

Website with Game Demo

Description:

Mammoth gravity battles is a turn based strategy/artillery game similar to games like Death Star Battles and Gravity Wars. You aim the shots from your mammoth ships and watch as they fly in all three dimensions pulled by the chaotic gravity of the stars, planets, asteroids, moons and black holes in each sector. Currently being developed, for release in 2013 on Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows Phone 8, Windows PC, Windows 8 RT, Ouya, Mac and Linux.





Gameplay video:




As I said, please take a look and post any feedback.

[Walt Destler]

No sound?

I like the visuals of the sun and planets a lot, especially when zoomed out. The spaceships and U.I. don't look as polished though.

I found the "over the shoulder" perspective for aiming and moving to be very difficult to use. It's very hard to aim a shot using gravity when you can't see your target because it's on the other side of the sun. ;-) I would much prefer to play from the zoomed-out perspective. I bet it would be easier to judge distances and gravity that way.

The UI was a bit confusing for me. At first I didn't realize that I had to end my turn -- I had set up my aim and was trying to figure out how to shoot! Also, some stronger visual iconography for the various buttons would be nice, especially since the buttons are spread out across the four corners. (I'm guessing that's for mobile players?)

Speaking of "end my turn", I missed the instant feedback of most artillery games where I aim my shot, hit fire, and then watch the trajectory of my bullet. Without that instant feedback it's hard to improve my aim. If you really must wait until the end of the turn, it would at least be nice if the game only showed one bullet at a time -- all four is very hard to follow. Perhaps the camera can auto-track each bullet as it's fired.

I hope that helps!

[SpaceMammoth]

Yeah, no sound yet, but clearly there will be sound effects.

I hear what you are saying about the difficulty aiming, that is my main worry. I tried adding ghost lines showing the previous shot but it may not be enough. I previously play-tested controlling the aim with icons from the "map" view, and it was not successful, but I will think about ways to make the aiming easier.

You guessed the spread out icons is for Mobile, but I want the game to work on PC as-well, so I could re-position them for PC, nice suggestion.

Thanks for your useful feedback, much appreciated.

[erik]

A gentle introduction to the controls and mechanics would go a long way to make this more approchable.

The biggest challenge seems to be in dealing with the 3d playing field.  I find it hard to line things up the way I want to, and hard to understand the impact of my choices.

[SpaceMammoth]

Thanks for your comments. The game is difficult, and your comments are inline with what others have said. I'm in the process of making some improvements to the interface and changing the demo to first include a simpler flat 2D level before the much harder 3D levels. I'm also starting the coding for the campaign/story missions and I'm making the introduction to 3D levels nice and gentle. If I get it right, the feeling of accomplishment of successful hitting a target in a 3D gravity field will be immense.

[starsrift]

I haven't tried this yet, so half of the purpose of this post is a bookmark so I can find it fast later on this weekend, but if folks are having aim issues, why do you have an xz gridplane for reference and not a yz or xy gridplane?

[starsrift]

It is too hard, yeah.

Part of the problem is the FOV / real estate partitioning. You've got this huge star - which is quite nicely done btw - but it takes up 60% + of the playspace. Trying to keep track of orbits and everything the view focused in on this superlarge object is super hard.
Another suggestion would be trails of your previous shot and movement? Maybe even interactive trails, highlight and stuff? It's more complex with the two ships to watch.
I also couldn't seem to tell a ship to actually move, it just sort of sat where it was and kept firing at empty space.

And, there seems, uh...

... so that happened.

It looks very neat, though!

[SpaceMammoth]

It is too hard, yeah.

Part of the problem is the FOV / real estate partitioning. You've got this huge star - which is quite nicely done btw - but it takes up 60% + of the playspace. Trying to keep track of orbits and everything the view focused in on this superlarge object is super hard.
Another suggestion would be trails of your previous shot and movement? Maybe even interactive trails, highlight and stuff? It's more complex with the two ships to watch.
I also couldn't seem to tell a ship to actually move, it just sort of sat where it was and kept firing at empty space.

And, there seems, uh...
... so that happened.

It looks very neat, though!

Great feedback. Thanks for that. I don't know whats going on in that screenshot, it looks like the game stopped cleaning up old graphics objects, I've not seen it do that myself... hummm.... I don't suppose you remember what you did to cause it?

Ship movement, ok, good feedback, you need to set the movement speed (power slider) and even then they move very very slowly - I might add something to show the movement better, they have to move slow or the game is even harder! I'll experiment with different movement controls.

So the star in the middle - there are other level configurations, with larger/smaller planets/stars positioned in different places, some feel more confined than others. I'll update the demo to include a wider range of levels so I can see which feel better.

Good suggestion on the trails of previous shots. It does that a bit - they are shown when you aim, but I could make it more obvious and useful.

Again thanks for the feedback.
 

[starsrift]

I don't know whats going on in that screenshot, it looks like the game stopped cleaning up old graphics objects, I've not seen it do that myself... hummm.... I don't suppose you remember what you did to cause it?

I held down, I think, spacebar? It's not a major thing, it's that you can initiate a "complete turn" any time bit but you have no regulation on when not to accept the input. Ideally you don't allow the player to complete another turn while they are still watching the effects of their turn.

[Simon Barsky]

I'm in the process of making some improvements to the interface and changing the demo to first include a simpler flat 2D level before the much harder 3D levels.

That would be great, right now it's really hard to predict what will happen with your projectiles. Seeing the previous aim vector would be nice to have as well, so it's a bit easier to see how much you are adjusting your aim from the previous shot. It's certainly an interesting idea though, I'm sure if I ever landed a shot it would feel quite rewarding