As a RTS this is inherently menu heavy, don't know why you're making the Menu a Part of the Map.
I don't think its useful to name the Stuff Lifeblood, Magnetism, whatever, just name it damage, health and so on. Clarity is pretty important here. Also the Summoning Cycles are really slow, I kept waiting on new Units to spawn most of the Time instead of doing anything.
Seems to be bugfree from the short Time I played, map generation isn't very nice tho, either use premade Maps or generate better ones. There isn't really any Strategy, I'm just waiting for Units to cap, then sending them over to wherever to do as much Damage as possible until they die.
I don't like that the Summining Circles are just there, at fixed Locations and kind of bound into the same Bonus Values etc. for each Area they spawned in. So if I need 1 Archer and 2 Knight Productions, I can set them up that Way, but I'd still have bonus health for all of them, instead of only the Knights. Unless I split that into the 2 Covens, but then I'd have 4 Knights and 3 Archers i.e. instead of 5/2 split if I wanted that. Also that only Works if I happen to get 2 Areas with Knigth/Archer Covens, if I get one with Bacteria/Dolls I'm forced to basically waste production and Time on getting those, even if I don't want to.
Hotkey binding works well.
Got a Loading Units: 17 in the Middle of the Map for whatever Reason, and apparently the Map expanded then?
Dropships can load more then they hold onto them, but it just gets lost in the Warp somewhere.
It does not get cleared from your Unitlimit however, so I'm no permanently a bunch of maximum Units short.
Since Dropships, Robots, Bacteria and Dolls are useless, from my 3 Coven-Areas, only the first one with Knights and Robotarchers is actually useful. Great.
I don't understand why the building Selection is also random, and not matches the Stats needed by the Units in that Area, or why their Size is random.
Also everything you use is on a Square Grid, so why did you decide to put it onto a Hex one?
Sometimes Circles apparently also produce random Units I didn't select to. I set all on Teddybears and RobotArchers, and I'm still getting Knights and Healers.
Units don't move in any Form of Formation or Coherency, so my Archers always rush forward to die, before any of the Teddies reach the Enemy.
Apparently all the Units I had lost in the Transporter appeared somewhere in the Corner after a while, so I send them to their Doom to make Room again.
the Yellow Mechas do not fire, regardless of if I just let them stay somewhere in the Hopes of enemies getting close neough, or move them, or attack move them or whatever.
So the Mecha/Dropship Combination is completely Pointless.
Why do I have to search invisible Dinosaurs in Fog of War in order to be able to attack the Enemy?
Great, I now have a Production of Stealth Dinosaurs which can produce nothing, because there are some on the World somewhere, that are apparently considered mine, which I can not see but which still attack me.
So my own Units are preventing me from producing more and killing my other Units.
Also I can "deplete" Witch Covens, but no Idea what it does.
Apparently I lost because when moving my Witch King, an invisible Dinosaur somewhere on the Map decided to attack them. My invisible Dinosaur I should add, since it was still preventing me from getting Pirate Ships.
It lacks a clear Goal, or a clear Art Direction. Pathfinding is wonky at best, Gameplay wants to be an RTS but turns into a "wait until you eventually overrun a Place, then move on to the next hoping no Bugs cost you the Game" kind of reverse Tower Defense with endless Units.
There's a lot of feedback to provide on this one- it's difficult to try to organize it all.
Command card options should all have hotkeys. Extra points if those hotkeys are customizable. Shift Queue for moves and attacks feels a little weird and doesn't always seem to resolve correctly. Determining the edge of the map from the fog of war is very weird - I'd recommend different colors for this. Losing an entire coven's production uptime for upgrades is very harsh. Populations being per coven is extremely weird to keep track of - needs some kind of UI in the corner like SC2. Witch King doesn't appear to benefit from any upgrades which makes him slow and clunky as you upgrade harder. Unsure if upgrades have an upper limit. Ranged units bodyblock each other a lot. Evil Eye is cute. Getting an explanation of what the upgrade does only after investing in the upgrade is weird. Being able to sacrifice upgrade structures for more powerful units would be cool. Select all army hotkey would be useful instead of doing it through command cards. Select all army through command cards seems to be limited to only units from that particular coven, feels weird. I hope the pixel artstyle is the winner in this battle of styles. It feels like this game rewards passive play instead of active, aggressive play? Waiting for units to spawn hurts me - can I sacrifice Witch King HP to turbocharge my summoning rates or something? Maybe I simply missed it, but it's kind of unclear what benefits any particular artifact bestows upon a particular coven. Some kind of jump between bases with the camera hotkey would be cool. Summoning Circle rally points do not seem to take effect for the currently-summoning unit; only the next one? Effectively scouting the scrolling worldspace as it wraps in on itself is extremely weird. Main screen with options is absolutely adorable but not being able to adjust music volume in-game feels bad. Probably more stuff - I recorded a blind play! It'll be over here when it's done processing:
Hey there. You’re probably the first player ever to use the command queue feature…
Command card options should all have hotkeys.
They do. It’s the grid on left side of keyboard. Bottom row is on zxcv in US layout. When opening a submenu via v, all entries also have the respective grid hotkey.
It feels like this game rewards passive play instead of active, aggressive play? Waiting for units to spawn hurts me - can I sacrifice Witch King HP to turbocharge my summoning rates or something?
Current options for sacrifice are "Deplete 1" via the King, which gives up one Summoning Circle, and "Hyper Boost" on Artifacts which uses up charges more quickly. Idk if you found those -- it felt like it was too much detail to include in the tutorial.
Generally the current singleplayer mode is meant to be on the more relaxed side of things. The initial motivation to leave your base would be to scout for Outposts -> accumulate a small army to destroy it -> claim the Artifact to make stronger units. But obviously it’s super easy to just sit back for 10 minutes and max out all 3 upgrades and army size and then get rolling. The only reason not to is that it’s slower (hopefully) and more boring.
Main screen with options is absolutely adorable but not being able to adjust music volume in-game feels bad.
You can toggle the menu/main screen any time via Backspace. (Yes, it’s clunky.)
Getting an explanation of what the upgrade does only after investing in the upgrade is weird.
There are 7 stats and they have static explanations in the UI, doesn’t matter which Coven they are built with. But I think I will now move those explanations into mouseover tooltips. That would also help with explaning what benefit an Artifact gives. (It’s just those same stats.)
Notes taken on all other points, too. Thanks a lot for the the detailed feedback and the recording.
Ah, wrote the first response before watching the video.
Shame about the Windows version not working, and the stutters. It runs fine on my machines, but they are quite strong and I mostly test the native versions. Wasm32 by itself is probably already slower on the pathfinding code. What makes it even worse is that the web version has rendering and logic code on the same thread, and rendering in the browser takes about 10x as much CPU compared to native.
If you have the time, could you download HyperCoven and Sdlcoven and test if they run natively on your Windows version? - You will have to run hcv.exe directly, the launcher is the same in all cases. - It would help me decide which version to focus on. The FrontierCoven build is actually no longer using SDL at all, but some bleeding edge hipster libraries.
Artstyle is some real schizocore, not sure if that's what you are going for, or if it's just because it's early / you're trying to settle on an art style.
Volume bar being a unit is VERY soulful (... too soulful?)
Rally points from circles should be clearer, I don't know if there is a special button you have to click, but IMO if you right click from a circle it should give you a super clear flag on the ground or a line going to where the units will rally.
I appreciate seeing an RTS on demo day, but I would also caution that even the most normal, "by-the-book" RTS is probably an uphill battle to get people to understand and enjoy, so the weirder you get the higher the filtering potential. We live in a society, RTS gamers.
I would also caution that even the most normal, "by-the-book" RTS is probably an uphill battle to get people to understand and enjoy, so the weirder you get the higher the filtering potential.
Yeah, in my boomer mind RTS was still a popular genre when I started work on this. It is what it is, now.
Build up an army of goons is always fun, although moving them around is rather slow. The art style also tends to clash with some unis, I assume thsoe are placeholders (the 3d ones)
Eh not really preference, I just thought since the main guy is 2D that 2D would be the default, so 3D looks out of place. I'm fine with either as long as it's consistent.
Played this again, could see a lot of improvement since last DD. I actually used the launcher this time!
First love the tutorial and menu. Super cool, super unique.
Gameplay is still solid and reminds me of AOE4 as a kid. I played the Archer + Knight scenario, and my first game I was getting stomped by robots and other large units around me. My next game went better, and I slowly expanded, getting tons of unique units. It was still fun marching them around and steam rolling people, but I did build more building and collect more upgrades this time, which made it an easier affair.
My main complaint is probably the same as last time, I want a bit more tactical decision making. Things like a way to take down a new coven beyond just marching your units in would be cool. I also think letting people customize and improve their witch king would be cool as well, and could give the upgrades some more variety. Stuff like faster movement time, activated abilities, buffing specific units etc.
but yeah, still enjoying it, and I can see the improvment!
Thank you for coming back and the input. I think the current sp game mode is kind of intentionally dumb, I have a very ambitious and stressful mp design (no one plays it) - the "Conquest" game mode I wanted to be a stress-free counterpart for just getting to know the units and dabbling around… I am now aware that there is interest in ~somewhat~ challenging solo RTS gameplay. Maybe I’ll cobble something together, could be fun.
the initial grind is pretty slow imho... i don't really know how to better pace the game
btw, even though i had no fregates, the relevant spawners were not creating new units. they said that i had 12/7 units, but i only had basic knights with me.
>btw, even though i had no fregates, the relevant spawners were not creating new units. they said that i had 12/7 units, but i only had basic knights with me.
It counts the neutral (AI) units, too. Normally when you take a coven, the remaining neutral units attack you, so it’s not felt much. But in some cases (like Dinos) the units cannot move since they are in "Stance" and the AI doesn’t know to un-stance them, and so they never reach you and are not killed until you find them on the map.
I’m definitely no RTS buff, not knowing all the mechanics in autistic detail stresses me out. The right crowd of MPers I’m sure would eat this up as there’s a bunch of really interesting ideas to pore over. How to get their attention though, I have no idea.
The schizo-ass mix of art styles really sells the experimental vibe. The music also goes pretty hard.
The mission after the tutorial works well for familiarization but there’s a lot of shit still unexplained like what all the resources mean (is that even what they even are?) and how much of them you have. I didn’t know what the structure building buttons did until I tried clicking them, but I guess just having a sandbox for doing that works. It will rely on someone being invested enough to actually experiment with the game though.
Hey there, thank you for playing and making the video.
You skipped reading half the text on screen, which might have helped make things clearer. But it’s understandable - reading is boring.
Indeed the point of the current game mode is just to destroy (and capture) stuff. If you like RTS, you just get a kinda randomized, replayable, slightly dumb RTS experience out of it.
Comments
Played for roughly 1.5h
As a RTS this is inherently menu heavy, don't know why you're making the Menu a Part of the Map.
I don't think its useful to name the Stuff Lifeblood, Magnetism, whatever, just name it damage, health and so on. Clarity is pretty important here. Also the Summoning Cycles are really slow, I kept waiting on new Units to spawn most of the Time instead of doing anything.
Seems to be bugfree from the short Time I played, map generation isn't very nice tho, either use premade Maps or generate better ones. There isn't really any Strategy, I'm just waiting for Units to cap, then sending them over to wherever to do as much Damage as possible until they die.
I don't like that the Summining Circles are just there, at fixed Locations and kind of bound into the same Bonus Values etc. for each Area they spawned in. So if I need 1 Archer and 2 Knight Productions, I can set them up that Way, but I'd still have bonus health for all of them, instead of only the Knights. Unless I split that into the 2 Covens, but then I'd have 4 Knights and 3 Archers i.e. instead of 5/2 split if I wanted that. Also that only Works if I happen to get 2 Areas with Knigth/Archer Covens, if I get one with Bacteria/Dolls I'm forced to basically waste production and Time on getting those, even if I don't want to.
Hotkey binding works well.
Got a Loading Units: 17 in the Middle of the Map for whatever Reason, and apparently the Map expanded then?
Dropships can load more then they hold onto them, but it just gets lost in the Warp somewhere.
It does not get cleared from your Unitlimit however, so I'm no permanently a bunch of maximum Units short.
Since Dropships, Robots, Bacteria and Dolls are useless, from my 3 Coven-Areas, only the first one with Knights and Robotarchers is actually useful. Great.
I don't understand why the building Selection is also random, and not matches the Stats needed by the Units in that Area, or why their Size is random.
Also everything you use is on a Square Grid, so why did you decide to put it onto a Hex one?
Sometimes Circles apparently also produce random Units I didn't select to. I set all on Teddybears and RobotArchers, and I'm still getting Knights and Healers.
Units don't move in any Form of Formation or Coherency, so my Archers always rush forward to die, before any of the Teddies reach the Enemy.
Apparently all the Units I had lost in the Transporter appeared somewhere in the Corner after a while, so I send them to their Doom to make Room again.
the Yellow Mechas do not fire, regardless of if I just let them stay somewhere in the Hopes of enemies getting close neough, or move them, or attack move them or whatever.
So the Mecha/Dropship Combination is completely Pointless.
Why do I have to search invisible Dinosaurs in Fog of War in order to be able to attack the Enemy?
Great, I now have a Production of Stealth Dinosaurs which can produce nothing, because there are some on the World somewhere, that are apparently considered mine, which I can not see but which still attack me.
So my own Units are preventing me from producing more and killing my other Units.
Also I can "deplete" Witch Covens, but no Idea what it does.
Apparently I lost because when moving my Witch King, an invisible Dinosaur somewhere on the Map decided to attack them. My invisible Dinosaur I should add, since it was still preventing me from getting Pirate Ships.
It lacks a clear Goal, or a clear Art Direction. Pathfinding is wonky at best, Gameplay wants to be an RTS but turns into a "wait until you eventually overrun a Place, then move on to the next hoping no Bugs cost you the Game" kind of reverse Tower Defense with endless Units.
Thank you for playing so long and listing all the bugs and feedback.
Gotta find some way to pace the learning curve better.
I like a lot about this demo so far.
There's a lot of feedback to provide on this one- it's difficult to try to organize it all.
Command card options should all have hotkeys. Extra points if those hotkeys are customizable.
CheersShift Queue for moves and attacks feels a little weird and doesn't always seem to resolve correctly.
Determining the edge of the map from the fog of war is very weird - I'd recommend different colors for this.
Losing an entire coven's production uptime for upgrades is very harsh.
Populations being per coven is extremely weird to keep track of - needs some kind of UI in the corner like SC2.
Witch King doesn't appear to benefit from any upgrades which makes him slow and clunky as you upgrade harder.
Unsure if upgrades have an upper limit.
Ranged units bodyblock each other a lot.
Evil Eye is cute.
Getting an explanation of what the upgrade does only after investing in the upgrade is weird.
Being able to sacrifice upgrade structures for more powerful units would be cool.
Select all army hotkey would be useful instead of doing it through command cards.
Select all army through command cards seems to be limited to only units from that particular coven, feels weird.
I hope the pixel artstyle is the winner in this battle of styles.
It feels like this game rewards passive play instead of active, aggressive play? Waiting for units to spawn hurts me - can I sacrifice Witch King HP to turbocharge my summoning rates or something?
Maybe I simply missed it, but it's kind of unclear what benefits any particular artifact bestows upon a particular coven.
Some kind of jump between bases with the camera hotkey would be cool.
Summoning Circle rally points do not seem to take effect for the currently-summoning unit; only the next one?
Effectively scouting the scrolling worldspace as it wraps in on itself is extremely weird.
Main screen with options is absolutely adorable but not being able to adjust music volume in-game feels bad.
Probably more stuff - I recorded a blind play! It'll be over here when it's done processing:
Hey there. You’re probably the first player ever to use the command queue feature…
They do. It’s the grid on left side of keyboard. Bottom row is on zxcv in US layout. When opening a submenu via v, all entries also have the respective grid hotkey.
Current options for sacrifice are "Deplete 1" via the King, which gives up one Summoning Circle, and "Hyper Boost" on Artifacts which uses up charges more quickly. Idk if you found those -- it felt like it was too much detail to include in the tutorial.
Generally the current singleplayer mode is meant to be on the more relaxed side of things. The initial motivation to leave your base would be to scout for Outposts -> accumulate a small army to destroy it -> claim the Artifact to make stronger units. But obviously it’s super easy to just sit back for 10 minutes and max out all 3 upgrades and army size and then get rolling. The only reason not to is that it’s slower (hopefully) and more boring.
You can toggle the menu/main screen any time via Backspace. (Yes, it’s clunky.)
There are 7 stats and they have static explanations in the UI, doesn’t matter which Coven they are built with. But I think I will now move those explanations into mouseover tooltips. That would also help with explaning what benefit an Artifact gives. (It’s just those same stats.)
Notes taken on all other points, too. Thanks a lot for the the detailed feedback and the recording.
Ah, wrote the first response before watching the video.
Shame about the Windows version not working, and the stutters. It runs fine on my machines, but they are quite strong and I mostly test the native versions. Wasm32 by itself is probably already slower on the pathfinding code. What makes it even worse is that the web version has rendering and logic code on the same thread, and rendering in the browser takes about 10x as much CPU compared to native.
If you have the time, could you download HyperCoven and Sdlcoven and test if they run natively on your Windows version? - You will have to run hcv.exe directly, the launcher is the same in all cases. - It would help me decide which version to focus on. The FrontierCoven build is actually no longer using SDL at all, but some bleeding edge hipster libraries.
Ah, turns out the Rust programming language as a whole has dropped support for Windows versions earlier than 10.
So I guess the other versions won’t work either. Too bad.
Artstyle is some real schizocore, not sure if that's what you are going for, or if it's just because it's early / you're trying to settle on an art style.
Thank you, blorb.
I would also caution that even the most normal, "by-the-book" RTS is probably an uphill battle to get people to understand and enjoy, so the weirder you get the higher the filtering potential.
Yeah, in my boomer mind RTS was still a popular genre when I started work on this. It is what it is, now.
Build up an army of goons is always fun, although moving them around is rather slow. The art style also tends to clash with some unis, I assume thsoe are placeholders (the 3d ones)
>I assume thsoe are placeholders (the 3d ones)
You prefer the 2D ones?
Eh not really preference, I just thought since the main guy is 2D that 2D would be the default, so 3D looks out of place. I'm fine with either as long as it's consistent.
Played this again, could see a lot of improvement since last DD. I actually used the launcher this time!
First love the tutorial and menu. Super cool, super unique.
Gameplay is still solid and reminds me of AOE4 as a kid. I played the Archer + Knight scenario, and my first game I was getting stomped by robots and other large units around me. My next game went better, and I slowly expanded, getting tons of unique units. It was still fun marching them around and steam rolling people, but I did build more building and collect more upgrades this time, which made it an easier affair.
My main complaint is probably the same as last time, I want a bit more tactical decision making. Things like a way to take down a new coven beyond just marching your units in would be cool. I also think letting people customize and improve their witch king would be cool as well, and could give the upgrades some more variety. Stuff like faster movement time, activated abilities, buffing specific units etc.
but yeah, still enjoying it, and I can see the improvment!
Thank you for coming back and the input. I think the current sp game mode is kind of intentionally dumb, I have a very ambitious and stressful mp design (no one plays it) - the "Conquest" game mode I wanted to be a stress-free counterpart for just getting to know the units and dabbling around… I am now aware that there is interest in ~somewhat~ challenging solo RTS gameplay. Maybe I’ll cobble something together, could be fun.
the songs slap.
>new dimensions have connected
woah...
the initial grind is pretty slow imho... i don't really know how to better pace the game
btw, even though i had no fregates, the relevant spawners were not creating new units. they said that i had 12/7 units, but i only had basic knights with me.
>btw, even though i had no fregates, the relevant spawners were not creating new units. they said that i had 12/7 units, but i only had basic knights with me.
It counts the neutral (AI) units, too. Normally when you take a coven, the remaining neutral units attack you, so it’s not felt much. But in some cases (like Dinos) the units cannot move since they are in "Stance" and the AI doesn’t know to un-stance them, and so they never reach you and are not killed until you find them on the map.
Thank you for playing
I’m definitely no RTS buff, not knowing all the mechanics in autistic detail stresses me out. The right crowd of MPers I’m sure would eat this up as there’s a bunch of really interesting ideas to pore over. How to get their attention though, I have no idea.
The schizo-ass mix of art styles really sells the experimental vibe. The music also goes pretty hard.
The mission after the tutorial works well for familiarization but there’s a lot of shit still unexplained like what all the resources mean (is that even what they even are?) and how much of them you have. I didn’t know what the structure building buttons did until I tried clicking them, but I guess just having a sandbox for doing that works. It will rely on someone being invested enough to actually experiment with the game though.
Thanks for trying my game. You’re echoing a bunch of my own thoughts…
Amount of unclarity will be reduced, in some way or other.
Video Feedback: I didn't really understand the point game too well.
Hey there, thank you for playing and making the video.
You skipped reading half the text on screen, which might have helped make things clearer. But it’s understandable - reading is boring.
Indeed the point of the current game mode is just to destroy (and capture) stuff. If you like RTS, you just get a kinda randomized, replayable, slightly dumb RTS experience out of it.