Post by Eldar Bogdanov in The Legend of U-101 comments

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Wow, this game is something else. In spite of a rather tedious and steep learning curve, its concept and look made me really want to play it. Unfortunately, I have neither mouse nor numpad. I was getting by fine until disembarking, but it seems like without mouse I literally can't move :D

It gives me a very strong X-COM vibe. (And X-COM is awesome.)

I have lots of questions:
- Is the version with alternate control anywhere in sight?

- Am I supposed to see my current coordinates somewhere? Those base coordinates don't seem very meaningful if I can't locate myself in the same coordinate system.

- Is the information regarding torpedo/shock range/damage, enemy stats, etc. meant to be in-game, or the player is meant to be somewhat in the dark on this account?

Also, was just wondering, how many people were working on this? Did you build it on top of some preexisting platform? What I've played so far was beyond impressive.

TajamSoft4 years ago (6 edits) (+1)

Nice to hear you liked the game!

- It will take me little time to add special controls, so I will upload it in a few moments. A mouse (or mousepad) will still be neccesary, but not the middle click button.

- Yep, in the sonar you can see the coordinates in the bottom right (Coarse coordinates are the ones you want, fine coordinates are "sub-tile" coordinates)

- I wanted to add it to the targeting system, kind of like an in-depth monster analysis, but ran out of time :P

I coded it myself, using the libtcod library and the SoLoud library (an awesome, yet very rare to see used, sound library. It's what powers the voice synthesis!)

TajamSoft4 years ago

There we go, update is uploaded

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago

Wow thank you for the quick turnaround! Also, this is incredible amount of work for a week - amazing job!

I finally got to destroy some nests :D The way that mode is structured is incredible - the real-timesness gives a sense of urgency, but pausing still lets you pick tactics. It's more dynamic, and in some ways plays even better, than X-COM.

The downside was that after destroying 4 nests, I didn't know what to do - going next to the bases did not let me disembark into them, and I was receiving no new radio messages. So it felt like my submarine lost its purpose xD (Maybe the second radio message I missed had some clues? More on that below)

Bugs I spotted (I'm playing on Wine, but I don't think it would introduce this kinds of issues):

- The radio buttons (both < and <<) scroll to the earliest message (and similarly, > and >> scroll to the latest), and since I had 3 messages to listen to, I never managed to listen to message #2.

- Alien nests don't disappear from the sonar after I destroy them, and keep suggesting to disembark

Other things:

- It's rather tedious to switch between different systems on the submarine - it would speed me up a lot to use key bindings. Although I understand that you probably don't want to overload the player with 20 different hotkeys either :)

- AI starts doing weird things when your crew members die, as if it doesn't realize they're dead - like hanging around them and ignoring the rest of my team

- The logic of auto-repair + assignment + return to positions is hard to control: I think I need to turn off autorepair, and ask to return to positions for them to do the right thing. I was confused when I kept assigning them to positions and asking to return but they kept running around the ship.

- No matter how much the enemies damage my submarine, it doesn't sink, and all the systems seem to work anyway. Is it meant to be this sturdy?

TajamSoft4 years ago (2 edits)

Yep! That radio message tells you what to do next! I will upload a version with the radio fixed (and also fix the constant disembark prompt).

Indeed, getting your submarine damaged cannot directly make you lose the game, it only makes the submarine way slower and harder to maneouver. I wanted to write some kind of submarine destruction (for example, the batteries exploding), but time was running low.

(For now atleast) I won't fix some of the harder bugs (specially the AIs), as I'm thinking of continuing this project further, which will need a lot of code rewrite anyways ;)

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago (2 edits)

Did you make the alien nests harder by any chance? I got 3 golems on the very first nest, and just generally (seemingly) more enemies on each.

That aside, my submarine came to a complete halt after sustaining some extensive damage. Even though my batteries are full, the current speed bar in the maneuvering system is just shimmering at one block:

Is that intended? I feel like it has to trigger a loss, otherwise the player is just stuck in limbo :)

TajamSoft4 years ago

Well, more or less, if you get fully flooded then pumping the water out is a very long process, so it's a "soft-game over", specially if you are being attacked.

I didn't change the enemy spawning code, the random generator probably gave specially high numbers!

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago

Hello again :) I'm back to your game - tried to go to the coordinates provided in the second radio message, but there seems to be nothing there :( Is it meant to be another alien nest, or something else?

TajamSoft4 years ago

Hmm that's weird, there should be a station (it's like an omega symbol). I'll check the code, maybe I have accidentally disabled their rendering or something.

TajamSoft4 years ago(+1)

Agghh turns out I was reporting the X coordinate of these stations twice! Should be fixed on next upload...

TajamSoft4 years ago

There we go! Thanks for all the feedback, it's incredible how many bugs I managed to miss :P

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago (1 edit)

Honestly I'd rather call incredible how much stuff you managed to implement. The larger the scope, the more opportunities to make bugs :)

Will dive back in later this week!

itch.io

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