Okay, for sanity's sake, no game this month. But hopefully sometime in July. PLAY ONLINE FOR FREE AT www.RandyO.net! Arrow keys and mouse to shoot. Blue ships are navy, will pursue you. Other color ships are merchant ships. If you sink a merchant ship, its port will become aggressive and build another navy ship. While in a port circle you can click on the port name and buy health and ammo. You can stash ammo and money at your starting "Stash", and valuables/ammo slow you down the more you're carrying. It's challenging, sorta confusing, but I think it has potential! Tell me what y'all think. This week I'm working on the graphics and the feel of the game. Next week or the week after will probably be working on story/progression. Will post more later, and planning on the usual twitch Tuesday, though as has been happening lately I don't think I'll be streaming super long. Thanks everyone!
Glad you're looking forward to it Hellerphant! The latest idea has changed, just so I can get a build out, but the basic systems are the same. It's starting to feel pretty fun, but I realized that to get art working well and cleanly, I'm going back into the art and rebuilding some stuff to take advantage of what Unity does well. So today will probably be some just learning and teaching myself things. Anyway, yeah, feeling pretty good about the game, hoping to maybe get a build out to testers by end of week? And SirHanet, I'll include you in that!
I'm going to send out the first test build of Rogues sometime in the next couple of days. I will take up to 5 testers from TA. If you want in, PM me your email. I have these 2 testers already (send me yer emails): SirHanet kinshuksunil Pretty excited to see how this goes. I have been actively playing the game when I have a spare minute, which to me says it's on track. The big stuff to work on is aesthetic and progression. The game needs a bunch more visual work, though it's starting to feel good. It needs to differentiate the different ships and ship types. It also needs some story, though I'm still trying to figure out how to frame story elements. I want the story to be tied into the progression of the game somehow, and then there's a question of whether or not there should be carry-over between games. The game is feeling pretty darn good in a lot of ways, I just need to nail down the missing elements and then polish, polish, polish.
I sent the first build out yesterday, but apparently misspelled your email! Should get a new build out tonight.
Build 0.5 Report! Bugs: -The game screen does not fit a iPod Touch 3G -4 white lines would appear on the ocean -The ammo crates that come from destroyed ships appear white in the ocean -Ships including your own, can go through islands Other than that, the game runs like charm on my iPod Touch 3G 32GB! Overall, the game is really fun to play and just go to ports or destroy ships!
So far Randy, What kind of feedback would you like at this point? I could report on bugs, but they're most likely ones you will have come across... (Though there is a fairly game-breaking one where it lets you deposite more ammo into your stash than you currently have, putting your ammo into the negatives. It also removes the option to load ammo back onto your ship, this as far as I can tell can go on indefinitely (I gave up at -500 ammo, mad speed boosts were achieved however) In terms of performance the current build (and the first one for that matter) is working seamlessly on the iPad mini two. The control scheme was daunting at first, but once I got used to it (the new animations/ship graphics helped a lot!, and look pretty sweet) they were enjoyable and fairly easy to manipulate. My only slight annoyance is the fact that once out of ammo it's extremely hard to recover (but possible I guess). Loving this so far and keep up the great work!
That ammo bug is good to know, thanks! For the rest, those will hopefully get hammered out over time, I'm pretty aware of them. Mostly I want to know how people are enjoying the game: what's fun, what's not, what you had a hard time figuring out. @3mry5: Did you ever purchase ammo at ports? It is true that you could shoot all your ammo and then be stuck with none. Perhaps occasional ports or ammo crates should appear if you run out of ammo... Dunno, game balance/fairness thing that I gotta think about! @SirHanet: "The game screen doesn't fit" Do you mean the store screen is too big, or the wheel is too far off the screen? Can you screenshot that? The other things are known things, like crates have no art yet! Hopefully that and progression stuff next week. Thanks for playin, y'all! -- A couple of you might not have gotten the original email explaining the game, so that's at the bottom of this. There is no collision as of yet, that'll go in some point hopefully soon. The controls: -There is a throttle on the right side of the screen, its vertical position is your speed. -There is a wheel which you can drag or flick or whatever to steer. -Tap anywhere else on the screen to fire your cannons. Ships: -Each ship has 3 health, including yourself! When a ship is injured the color of the ship's wake changes; yellow for injured, red for critical. -Your sails are black. -Merchant ships are colored green, red and purple. They carry goods from port to port and if you sink one, it will drop money. The associated port will be aggressive toward you for a time and its navy will grow. -Navy ships are colored blue. If they see you, they will attack. If you kill a navy ship, it will drop an ammo crate. Ports: -Tap on a port name while in the port circle to purchase health and ammo. -Each Ammo crate carries 15 ammo. -Carrying lots of valuables and ammo will slow you down. -Your starting port is your "stash". At the stash you can store valuables and ammo, but cannot purchase more. -The arrows on the edge of your screen point to the different ports. When you die, your score is the total valuables in your stash and on your ship. Try to get 500 valuables! If that's too easy, maybe try to reach 1000!
Another bug: clicking on the port/stash pop up bar fires your cannons. And Yeah I did purchase ammo at ports, but money became an issue as it became increasingly dangerous to manoeuvre around to pick it up Really enjoying this and it's simplicity, best I've been able to achieve is 225. Also maybe an option to heal yourself at your stash as well? Also also what determines the amount of cannonballs you fire? (I've noticed it as sometimes three sometimes just the one..)
I'm thinking of pausing the game when you're at a port, though I like the action of not being able to do so, to have to get in and get out. Each side has a timer. The number of shots builds up on each side the longer you aren't shooting. I'll need an indicator for this somewhere!
Sorry Alan-C but I'm full up right now for testers! Maybe later on closer to release, but thanks for the interest! -I've been tuning and testing things this past week/weekend, like the friction of the wheel. It'll return to its straight-forward position now as soon as it can. -I'm also hoping to maybe get some preliminary sound in soon! One of my local composer friends has offered to work on the project, so that's super exciting for me, as I really like his work. -Later this week I'd like to work on getting progression, boarding merchant ships, and more ship tuning into the game. For example, when ships fire their cannons, those cannonballs don't carry any of the ship's momentum, so they aren't going quite where you'd expect. Also, the way the ship turns is not where it needs to be. -Maybe I'll get collisions in! (Collisions is a piece of work that has to be done, but it's a big chunk to tackle, so I'm going with other things in the temporary.) FOR THE MOST PART this week I'll be working on Spider 2 for Tiger Style. Spider 2 is starting to come along really well, so get excited for that this fall! Cheers y'all!
Art! I've also gotten progression in, so that's cool. Hope yer Saturday night has been going well. (Why aren't you in bed, yet?!)
