next »

[thuyquai]

@ProgramGamer:

Yes our game could run on SP 3 I think, I haven't check it's performance though but SP3 has pretty high spec.

Pls give it a try: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B82O2Wq_M5SfMjZkVm05M19rYjA/view?usp=sharing

@msilver:

It was a terrain feature, if you step on it it will throw to another random position. The terrain's square will always be converted to spring after an unit step on it and leave, the next unit step on it will be throw and it's became stable square again. You could make some interesting positioning with this. But now that you said it maybe it look more like a glitch, so we may have to made animation for it to resemble a mechanical spring. We want everything looks obvious after all. Thanks for pointing that out

[thuyquai]

We are still working on the tutorial so it's a lots of play maker, still nothing interesting to share.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 10

While working on the 2nd tutorial scenario today, I came across a situation where I forgot what to do as a player and stuck for a minute.

Turn out the tutorial (which I wrote) told me to mouse over my unit to inspect it's stats.

That was unexpected!

So I have to add the temporary objective dialog on the screen in case others forgot their objective as me, hopefully it wont come as overkill for players.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 11

We are still making tutorial, and since it's tutorial, nothing new that could pique your interest I think.

Instead I'll post a new UI for unit management scene

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Looks interesting. How can I get the Demo? I'd be glad to give some feedback.

[thuyquai]

Hi Cristiano, thanks for taking interest in our game, pls help us by checking the newest demo here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B82O2Wq_M5SfakRJa3FicmNDbUk/view?usp=sharing

Thanks

[ProgramGamer]

After test: Everything is too small to see properly (max rez doesnt even match my screen) and the mouse is improperly placed, as in the cursor that is shown to me and the actual location of the mouse are different, which made playing the game, well, impossible.

Seriously though please make the text bigger I can't see a thing on my surface pro...

It does seem cool, but I'll only be able to play once the technical problems of this are fixed. :/

[thuyquai]

Sorry mate, I'll try to fix those. You use 2160x1440 right? I'll have to fix this. When we made our GUI, we thought 1920x1080 was ok.

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Hi Cristiano, thanks for taking interest in our game, pls help us by checking the newest demo here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B82O2Wq_M5SfakRJa3FicmNDbUk/view?usp=sharing

Thanks

No problem. I'll look into it as soon as I'm able to and get back to you here with the feedback. I totally forgot to mention I use OS X as my main OS, but I do have a Windows machine I cant test on.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 12

• The short tutorial campaign is finally done but we will need better avatars to catch player eyes.
  
• The leveling for robot ingame has changed. Your robot will now level up much faster so they could use all of their skill to provide richer experiences.
• We also add miss chance for robot whom attack an enemy stand higher so the terrain advantage is bigger. Get to the hill!
  

Also we continue to focus on Graphic update and match status indicator to help player understand better.
We will also need to consider super high-res resolution now, make sure the text is readable every where.

[Cristiano Vitorino]

[I wrote this before the latest update, please keep that in mind, it seems the devs worked on some of the issues I saw and plan to fix them]

Hello,
Here is my feedback based on the demo provided to me.

The overhead GUI that show the bots stats got stuck one time, and kept stuck during the cutscene, only after the cutscene ended the GUI element was gone.
You can't attack right way, even if it's your turn. Why? Is this on purpose? If yes, what purpose?  You need to move to a random location, just to be able to attack, move always come first, even if you could attack first.

Texts/font are too small, the font are too standard/no custom font, and they are really really small, and I'm running at 1920x1080p at 60Hz. GUI textures are really blury. I take you’re gonna polish those later since it’s just a demo.

The dialogues seems to float above the text box GUI, seems offset from it. Sharp texts, but offset from the background GUI, which is blurry. Try to blend them more and ajust the offset.

The lab system seems really interesting, invest more on that!

Some typos here and there, revise your texts more.

Campaign mode is very confusing, took me a while to know what to do or what I was playing, if it was a new type of battle system or not, turnout to be a overworld map.
The tutorial and combat was OK for the most part, dialogues are simple and clichê, but I understand the manga/anime influence/theme, if that's your target audience it's cool, but if it’s not, spice up the maturiy of the dialogues, try to be more clear and more straight to the point, I skipped a lot of it on the tutorial. The learning method you use is very comtemporary. I also undertand that that's a choice. As for myself, I would make the player learn by himself with trial and error, giving hints, intead of show him a text wall every 10s or stopping the game after every action, that takes the control out of the player hands, interrupts the gameplay flow, and can be frustrating. Again, that's my personal view in game design and is not a standard of any kind. In case you want to experiment with a more dynamic and oldschool way to teach the player, never interrupts the player to explain things with text or big elements on the screen, a few elements showing what the player did wrong are OK, but never pause or interrupts the gameplay, let the player discover. Explore the player's sense of curiosity, teach by level design, make it more natural and let the player be sure he always got control of the game. No need to hold the player hands.

The game concept in general seems really interesting, I'm not a fan of health bars/HP points on tactical games, I like whole takedowns, as in a traditional chess game, but that's a matter of personal preference of course, and if you address the technical issues I observed, I think the game will flow really nice, with custom bots you build, a plethora of different abilities, etc. The difficulty seems good, challenging, which I like and think is a must in a tactical game like that.

Keep working! Looking forward for progress.

Best regards,
Cristiano Vitorino

[danieru]

Your visuals are nice. The water and lighting on the terrain work well together. I see though you have hit the same dilemma I did about how to fill the empty space outside the map.

It sounds like you have also hit the whole "I've got more bugs than I can count" issue too. Just keep at it! You'll make progress. What you have looks good, you're going in the right direction.

[thuyquai]

Wow Cristiano Vitorino.

That was very detailed feedback. I can't thanks you enough for your effort . This will definitely help us greatly.

You can't attack right way, even if it's your turn. Why? Is this on purpose? If yes, what purpose?  You need to move to a random location, just to be able to attack, move always come first, even if you could attack first.

We have a Skip Move Button at the bottom of the screen to skip the movement and we also made a tutorial to it after the demo. But I fear it's not enough, we will add the choice for player to just click on an enemy unit if he could attack it instead of having to click Skip Move button.

Texts/font are too small, the font are too standard/no custom font, and they are really really small, and I'm running at 1920x1080p at 60Hz. GUI textures are really blury. I take you’re gonna polish those later since it’s just a demo.

The dialogues seems to float above the text box GUI, seems offset from it. Sharp texts, but offset from the background GUI, which is blurry. Try to blend them more and ajust the offset.

He, sorry about that, I place them as place holder texture and still waiting for 2D art, I will post some screenshots here when it done.

The lab system seems really interesting, invest more on that!

I'm having some upgrade choices with this feature. Do you have any idea of your own? What would make it better?

Campaign mode is very confusing, took me a while to know what to do or what I was playing, if it was a new type of battle system or not, turnout to be a overworld map.

Yeah! I'm planning to add a small tutorial for world map, or some sort of highlight or objective. I'm weighing options for this. But campaign is in it's early stage and will be upgraded immensely.

The tutorial and combat was OK for the most part, dialogues are simple and clichê, but I understand the manga/anime influence/theme, if that's your target audience it's cool, but if it’s not, spice up the maturiy of the dialogues, try to be more clear and more straight to the point, I skipped a lot of it on the tutorial. The learning method you use is very comtemporary. I also undertand that that's a choice. As for myself, I would make the player learn by himself with trial and error, giving hints, intead of show him a text wall every 10s or stopping the game after every action, that takes the control out of the player hands, interrupts the gameplay flow, and can be frustrating. Again, that's my personal view in game design and is not a standard of any kind. In case you want to experiment with a more dynamic and oldschool way to teach the player, never interrupts the player to explain things with text or big elements on the screen, a few elements showing what the player did wrong are OK, but never pause or interrupts the gameplay, let the player discover. Explore the player's sense of curiosity, teach by level design, make it more natural and let the player be sure he always got control of the game. No need to hold the player hands.

This is really helpful, I think I'll have to modify the current tutorials to give players freedom. The dialog is what I want to go with though, the campaign will use lots of this for dynamic events system. But they will be cut short to not interrupt player too much.

I have really thought about tutorials and it seem, the system like Fire Emblem Awakening is best suited for our game .

Once again, thanks you really really much . If you want my help in any case pls ask me and I'll help you if I'll do my best if I can.

[thuyquai]

hi danieru,

Do you have a devlog on that? I want to see what you did with it :D.

We also added backgrounds for our battleground as a solution to this.

Edit:
Nevermind, I found your project on the signature, it seem to have Advance War vibe, tracking it

[danieru]

Sorry I didn't mean that post to be a plug for my devlog. Its here if you are curious.

In all I have seen a few solutions to the out-of-map issue:

1. Continue the terrain (Modern Fire Emblem does this)
2. Use a background (Braid does this)
3. Never let the player see past the map edge (Advance Wars does this)
4. Use a gameboard theme (My game uses this, as did Psychonauts in the diorama scene)
5. Continue the terrain using an ocean (Tropico does this)
6. Have a thick cloud at the edge of the map (Offworld Trading Company does this)

Personally I think approach #6 would work best for your game. The problem with backgrounds is they break the 4th wall and change the visual scale. Meanwhile a thick cloud continues the physical metaphor and just looks pretty cool IMHO.

This is how Off World Trading company does it: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/K5hu2k6zR6Q/maxresdefault.jpg The tiles along the outer most edge cannot be built on. This method works well to keep the player focused where the action is. That's why I think it would work for you.

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 13

Update effects for gumshot today, and it looks so so cool

Have a look

[Cristiano Vitorino]

Wow Cristiano Vitorino.

That was very detailed feedback. I can't thanks you enough for your effort . This will definitely help us greatly.

No problem. Glad to provide feedback, I know what is to be in the limbo with no consistent feedback, it's so helpful and healthy for your projects, so I try to do it when requested, see if I'm able to provide a bit of insight/help.

You can't attack right way, even if it's your turn. Why? Is this on purpose? If yes, what purpose?  You need to move to a random location, just to be able to attack, move always come first, even if you could attack first.

We have a Skip Move Button at the bottom of the screen to skip the movement and we also made a tutorial to it after the demo. But I fear it's not enough, we will add the choice for player to just click on an enemy unit if he could attack it instead of having to click Skip Move button.

Oh I'm dumb, didn't notice that, sorry. But yeah, a clearer way would be nice.

The lab system seems really interesting, invest more on that!

I'm having some upgrade choices with this feature. Do you have any idea of your own? What would make it better?

Upgrade feature huh, nice. But when I saw it, I saw so much more potential than just upgrades. First thing I thought was: "I'll be able to make my own robots!", and of course, if that was a feature, the main problem would be balance, how would you balance the stats for something that the player built? Maybe the parts have stats of their own, small bits, that when assembled make the sum for the full stat, that sounds so awesome to me, not sure if a good idea tho. That would make multiplayer so interesting. Balance always come to mind, maybe the parts and the sum would never go beyong a certain threshold, and you could mess with it whithin a margin that would not make the balance breaks, like setting up the player stats and skills on a D&D game, or videogame RPG.

The tutorial and combat was OK for the most part, dialogues are simple and clichê, but I understand the manga/anime influence/theme, if that's your target audience it's cool, but if it’s not, spice up the maturiy of the dialogues, try to be more clear and more straight to the point, I skipped a lot of it on the tutorial. The learning method you use is very comtemporary. I also undertand that that's a choice. As for myself, I would make the player learn by himself with trial and error, giving hints, intead of show him a text wall every 10s or stopping the game after every action, that takes the control out of the player hands, interrupts the gameplay flow, and can be frustrating. Again, that's my personal view in game design and is not a standard of any kind. In case you want to experiment with a more dynamic and oldschool way to teach the player, never interrupts the player to explain things with text or big elements on the screen, a few elements showing what the player did wrong are OK, but never pause or interrupts the gameplay, let the player discover. Explore the player's sense of curiosity, teach by level design, make it more natural and let the player be sure he always got control of the game. No need to hold the player hands.

This is really helpful, I think I'll have to modify the current tutorials to give players freedom. The dialog is what I want to go with though, the campaign will use lots of this for dynamic events system. But they will be cut short to not interrupt player too much.

I have really thought about tutorials and it seem, the system like Fire Emblem Awakening is best suited for our game .

Oh that game is so cool! Good inspiration. Have you ever played Bomberman Wars? It's japanese only, from 1998, but I played it anyways because it's the best TBS game I ever played. It sits it's roots in Chess, but do so much more, so creative, the tactical aspect is simple and so effective, fun to no end, played that with friends for years, and it's still an inspiration for me, and will always have a spot in my heart and always stay in the back of my mind haha. The only thing that caught my eye after that was Fire Emblem: Awakening, that I still want to commmit fully when I have free time.

Once again, thanks you really really much . If you want my help in any case pls ask me and I'll help you if I'll do my best if I can.

No problem man. Happy to be of some help. And absolutely! I will need heavy feedback soon, I'm entering alpha of my current project I'm working on. As soon as I'm ready to show it I'll post on Dev Log and let you know. Thank you for the offer, any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Do you have a Twitter account? Or Tumblr? Anywhere I can follow your work besides TIG.

[thuyquai]

Maybe the parts have stats of their own, small bits, that when assembled make the sum for the full stat, that sounds so awesome to me, not sure if a good idea tho

This was definitely what we are trying to do :D.
And with each part come skills for your choice. I'm planing on breaking the skill down to several small factor and each factor cost some points. You only got a certain points to spend.
I personally would like to play a game with this feature :D.

I'm posting on facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groundbreakersgame?ref=bookmarks
and indideDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/ground-breakers

I have twitter account but they're not frequently updated though: https://twitter.com/thuyquai29

I'm waiting for your project, call me anytime

[thuyquai]

Update Post Greenlit 14

Made some change to tutorials today according to Cristiano Vitorino's advice. The tutorials force players less frequently.

We also add the newly drew characters here since our artists finish some of the character's portrait.



We asked friend who literary can't read English and didn't play a TBS before to play test our tutorial and surprisingly, he could learned it and pass tutorials.

But he stuck at one of a tutorial. The same happens to 2 guys after him so I may have made a super hard challenge to help the newbie. Thanks god I encounter that before release .

[ryansumo]

Turn based tactics games are right up my alley. I would love a chance to test the game out.