Aww this looks so great I have no ideas at the moment, I just want the game Will there be a preview Video?
The only vital stats that are showing on the main screen are HP and the number of escorts. The fighters around each ship, when you actually see them moving around, are very easy to distinguish, since they move faster than anything else on the screen! Visually, when the game is in motion, you see several large things (base, battleship, etc), then the little guys are just graphical flair to show who's attacking who. The escorts flying around also let you know your escort attack range, because they fly out as far as they can, then turn back and return to the ship. So it's a visual indicator of your attack range. 1) resource areas rotate, which makes them pop out from the background really easily. That is something I noticed early on - the animation really draws your eye to them. 2) this level is actually a bit confusing to show off the resources, because the resources themselves are in the middle of an asteroid field. So you can see a pure asteroid field at the top of the screen, and also behind the resources in the middle of the screen. The bigger chunks are the resource areas, and when they rotate you will definitely be able to distinguish them from asteroids. The menu items along the bottom are quite transparent until you touch them. When you touch them, they go up to full opacity, and expand - some of them have several icons that pop up out of them, such as multiselect - you can touch a specific icon that pops out if you want to manually select units, do a ranged select, or select everything on the map. It brings up a context menu where you can re-select any of those options, but it's nice to have that option when you first enter multiselect mode. The default icon at the bottom is ranged select. There actually aren't any tilt controls in the game at all! I can't actually imagine putting in tilt-to-pan with the current control scheme. Basically, for controlling the map, think of how it works with the google maps app. The fighter escort auto-build essentially queues up an escort if the build queue is empty, so no - escort building never takes priority. In testing, it was never something that people desired - building new units is almost always more powerful than building more escorts - but escorts don't take up any upkeep slots! There's no shaking for anything in the game - I found it to be distracting early on in development. Looking back, just about the only thing I would put it in for these days is if a planet blows up (yes, there are exploding planets in this game... that's a major source of resources if you've got harvesters nearby!). But yeah, there's no vibration currently in the game. Is this a huge feature you guys want to see? Again, I found it merely distracting, since either a lot is happening on the screen or not much is happening on the screen.
Technically, the game doesn't adjust itself to play in landscape mode - but the only thing that really requires portrait is text, and that comes down to notifications and the little "tooltip" boxes that explain the UI. So if you know the UI already (like me), and you know what the little notification icons are, there's no reason you can't just hold the device sideways. The actual gameplay doesn't demand that you hold the device vertically (no tilt controls). Cutscenes are definitely in portrait mode, too. Holding the device sideways will probably work better for multiplayer. I will *definitely* be posting video of the game in action before it's released. I'll be starting that as soon as I submit it to Apple.
Just wondering could be have a compilation of Blue Attack and Defense, and possibly if you're doing another 'Red' game after this (this looks amazing - I suggest a tbs instead?) you could bundle the reds together or all 4 for an amazing experience.
Jeeze, you thought of everything! Sweeeeeet! Does the movement have momentum, so if you swipe it, it'll keep panning and you can just put your thumb down when you wanna stop? I guess it's tough to say, I kinda like it, it makes me feel bad ass when the enemies huge ship explodes, but it's easy to go overboard I guess, and make too much shaking... I think it adds something to the game play, if it only shakes a lot when something that's worth a lot gets blown up, and a little when a harvester or something does. It'd probebly get annoying for some people though, make it an option? I guess I can't really say if it'd be a good idea, I haven't played the game, haha, what do the Beta testers think? Oh! You should make the phone vibrate on the iPhone, hehehe. Also, what do you have in terms of relaying units? Can you set units to patrol? I remember an awesome feature from Supreme Commander, if you've ever played it, is being able to synchronize when units get to a certain place. The faster of the two will slow down to a speed equal to the slower one, it makes raiding and stuff much easier. If you really wanna go all out, you can have the time it will take. This game is going to be purely epic.
I think you should ask the beta testers what they think in terms of a minimap and click on minimap to go to that location. It seems to be a kidna of a big deal with hardcore RTS fans (based on following threads) so i dont want your game to get bad feedback based on that. Personally I hate vibration on games but as preview poster said, if its worth it (huge explosion) that would be cool
Update: savestate is implemented, and it works just like Warfare Inc. Leave the game, and when you load it back up you're right back in the action. There are 8 save/load slots, not including the auto-save file, fyi. In testing, having no momentum (at least on the size of maps that I've made) worked better - and sometimes it would start sliding off to the side when you actually wanted it to stay there. Maybe it was just my algorithm. Maybe I'll tweak it some more, and put it in as an option when I submit my first update? I guess it wouldn't be so bad as an option, or if I don't make it too pronounced. Another thing to consider is how much to shake the screen if you're zoomed out, would it be proportional? When you're 280% zoomed in, can the screen shake more than one screen width? This would take a bit of tweaking, to get it to look and feel right, with the way the game can zoom in and out. I've added it to my list though, and you might see it in an update later. I actually really disliked the minimap thing in warfare, inc. I think it was too small for my big thumbs! I couldn't tap on it very accurately. However, if it were any bigger, then it would take up too much screen real estate, and that would be bad too. So it's a bit of a conundrum. In this game, my testers and I agree that being able to zoom in and out easily overcomes minimap concerns - you can tap once to zoom out pretty far, and get an idea of what's going on. When the enemy comes into sight, you can tap on the notification to go there instantly as well. So you're one tap away from getting essentially a full-screen high-detail "minimap" view, and if something notable happens, you can zoom to it pretty quickly with the notifications icon. Also you can already know what it is from the icon - you'll know if it's a unit being built, or a new enemy was sighted, or you've come under attack, etc. You might not even need to zoom to the area right away. So yeah, I made a decision early on in development to not have a minimap, and the rest of the game was made with that in mind - so it's quick and easy to get all the information you need from the UI features that are there, and the "tactical map" zoomed out view gives you much more information than a regular minimap due to it taking up the whole screen.
This screen shot shows the notifications list fully expanded. The newest event is in the top left corner, with older events being further down the list. The list opens up if you touch and drag down from the icon in the top left. You can see that recently, you've been in combat (the swords icons), and you've seen some new enemies (the explosive angry face thing). Near the top of the screen, you can see some debris (4 chunks) from an exploded ship. If a harvester was nearby, it could pick up that debris and you could use it to build more ships! Debris from explosions eventually fades away, so pick it up quickly!
Added to my G.T.I.A.W.F.A.L.A.A.C. list. (don't ask) Btw john, when will this game be submitted? The game looks amazing!
Stop teasing me John . I just noticed you're Canadian. Go Canada! We got Eliminate first! (Along with those other "Canadians")
But I want to ask... Probably late next week, if not, then early the week after that. So I plan to submit it this month.
In this shot, I'm in the squad multimove screen, and I've taken two red battleships on the offensive. The blue forces I'm going to destroy are two Carriers and one Cruiser. Blue Carriers can actually build cruisers, so as blue you can send a few Carriers out on the war path and by the time they get to their destination, there might be several cruisers helping with the attack squad. There's another blue unit off to the left, that's a scout - it has no combat ability, but is very fast and has a large sight radius. Just above the red battleship on the right, you can see the debris from a ship that it just blew up a little while ago. Down below the blue carriers is a better look at a patch of resources, which surround the planet in this particular level.
also pinned this against a list of must haves. with apple speeding up the approval process recently i shall look forward to bashing away at this in between putting up xmas decorations
oh, the G.T.I.A.W.F.A.L.A.A.C list stands for: Games that I am waiting for and looks awesome and cool list. I can't wait to get my hands on this game!
Any sort of randomization in the campaign game levels? Any sort of randomized survival mode (I don't even get how that would work in this game, but I can dream, can't I?)?
That could work. On survival, the hordes of enemies keep on coming non-stop, so you cannot build and attack but defend the whole time. You start out with a bunch of guys and when they attack you harvest and build more guys to defend, the enemies will keep coming. There can be a time meter for however long you can last in the game. John, please add that. It would be awesome.
