Feedback please.

[C_Coder]

I have uploaded the latest Alpha release of my first game Titan Assault. Any feedback will be very welcome!

Thank you!

[papillon]

... If I point these things out, no one needs to hire a proofreader!
... If I don't point these things out, no one *thinks* they need to hire a proofreader! :)

Very front of your webpage - 'Breathe', not Breath.

Also generally on the board people like to have convenient links to screenshots and some idea of what the game is before they go downloading it. Yes, there are pictures on your website, but we're lazy!

[C_Coder]

Thanks for the Breathe thing...I never noticed it! :p

Do I need to upload attachments to put pictures in the post or can I link to the site directly? Or could I just make some links to the site? :o

[C_Coder]

Ok so lets put it this way. This is an overhead Real Time Strategy/Action based game within very small maps. The reason for the small maps is to make it more action oriented.

Screenshots: 1 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot07) | 2 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot08) | 3 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot09) | 4 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot10) | 5 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot11) | 6 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot12) | 7 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot13) | 8 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot14) | 9 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot15)

Ok like this? :D

[Dan MacDonald]

Very cool little game. I think it has great potential.

A few things, the tutorial on level 1, seemed like I was always ahead of it. It didn't seem to keep pace with me, so I spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for it to tell me what to do next.

It would be nice if the cursor changed when it was near the edge of the screen to indicate that it will scroll the screen.

For the tanks, when you right click on them. To me it felt that they should use more care like handling. Up arrow is forward, down arrow is reverse, left and right turn the wheels left or right. For the helicopters etc, the current control scheme is great.

I think the gold bolt logo takes too long to fade out.

Overall, very nice. A good example of keeping things small and straight forward but then polishing them up nice.

[C_Coder]

Thank you for your feedback.

I felt the same for level 1 and 2 so now I'll just script them up to respond to the players actions. I'll see if that comes out better.

I feel that the manual control system is quite good since it is mostly used for fast vehicles. Maybe you still need to get used to it? :p
I wanted the feeling of controling a unit with the left hand (or right hand if using the arrow keys) and assigning attack targets to the controlled unit by using your other hand on the mouse... For me it works out brilliantly. :)

P.S. You can skip the fading logo by pressing any mouse button or the escape key... ;)
[but I'll consider the option to shorten it...]

[Dan MacDonald]

Oh, I like manual control. I like targeting with the mouse and "driving" with the left hand. All those things are good. What I was suggesting was that when driving a "car/tank" manually holding "W" and "D" would actually cause you to drive in a circle to the right, instead of move diagonally upwards. After a few levels of playing I got comfortable moving the cars this way, but I always kept wishing it would be more like driving cars in other games. With the helicopters etc, the control scheme of moving in the direction indicated by "W" "A" "S" "D" felt quite natural. It was only when driving 4 wheeled vehicles that I kept expecting that "A" and "D" would turn me left or right, instead it would add a horizontal vector to my direction.

Anyway, dont feel you have to implement it. I just wanted to give my impressions. I'm sure everyone who plays will have different little quirks.

[C_Coder]

I think it is a good idea to implement it as an option...
I have put it in my task list for future implementation if it fits my deadline! :p

[stay]

Cool! The game seems cleanly done with a nice amount of polish. I like it.

Unfortunately, I had a major problem: The individual menu items are invisible on my system. When I roll my mouse over an item, the animated highlighty effect works, so I can see the name of the menu item then, but otherwise the menus are all blank. Two exceptions are the "Exit Game" menu from the main menu and the "Restart Game" menu from in the game. On those cases, I can see the menu text but in all the other menus I could get to by wandering around, I couldn't see anything. Since the highlighty effect only seems to happen sometimes in the game, I couldn't even figure out how to exit the game once I had started one - I had to use the task manager to kill the program.

This was a problem in full screen and windowed mode. I'm running the game under Windows2000 + DirectX 9.0c, with a GeForce3 Ti200.

[C_Coder]

Strange...I have tested this on a GeForce 4 Ti4200 128MB, a GeForce 2 MX200 32MB and a very old 8MB Savage 3D/MX card on my laptop. I can assume that since the GeForce 3 is better than the GeForce 2 then there shouldn't be problems. :confused:

The thing is that they were all installed with Windows XP. :rolleyes:

Can you send me the output of the dxdiag application please? To any of the email addresses on the site please. Thank you!

Also can you please send me some screenshots of the problem by pressing F12. This will save a BMP file in the game folder.

[C_Coder]

I would really appreciate it if there were more people giving me feedback. I really want to polish the game to the max to make it mostly enjoyable!

I thank you all in advance!

Game Description:

The first game I am developing is an overhead Real Time Strategy/Action based game within very small maps. The reason for the small maps is to make it more action oriented and to keep the time to complete each level minimal.

This is an Alpha version which is pretty close to Beta.

Screenshots: 1 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot07) | 2 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot08) | 3 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot09) | 4 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot10) | 5 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot11) | 6 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot12) | 7 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot13) | 8 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot14) | 9 (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?shot=shot15)
Download (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?down=tasetup082a.exe)

[Yossarian]

Played a little, had a couple major issues:

1. When you have a menu open, it should NOT take your mouseclicks as thinking you mean to move a unit. I got my little tank killed on the first "real" mission trying to navigate menus. I think you ought to at least considering going the more traditional RTS route and have the menus be side or bottom bar items. Hideable is very good, but the transparent effect mixed with taking up most of the screen just didn't work too well for me. You can't see enough behind the menus for it to be helpful to keep an eye on the battlefield, and it makes the presentation of the menu items a little rougher graphically.

2. Your game should not end if you have purchased reinforcements and they are enroute. I lost my tank while I had spent my money on bigger tanks and they were about 10 seconds from landing. But when I lost my starting tank, I had to restart the mission, and I lost the money I spent on reinforcements, AND the 1000 to restart. Meant I had a game over in only two tries on the first mission.

3. I'll second the fact that the tutorials moved horribly slow. They did a good job of explaining basics, but man they dragged on. They need to check and see if their goal has been completed, if so, they need to move on to the next part. They should *not* be timestamped to display for X time regardless.

Minor thought: I'm not sure if I'm sold on the map size. I need to play more to be sure, but "more action" doesn't mean a better RTS all the time. I can't judge overall gameplay too much at this stage, but it just seems like the ability to work in actual strategy to such a small area will be hard.

More action generally just means managing money to have the bigger tank rush, which *is* a tactic, if you are Chinese, but otherwise I like to have a little more subtlety to the gameplay.


Otherwise, a pretty solid go at this. You've got the vast majority of controls and aspects that you except from an RTS. I'll have to delv more into it to see how it plays out at later stages as well.

[C_Coder]

I saved this. I'll work on it.

1. Menu - I noticed that...It's in my task list for fixing. :p
I want to keep the view are as big as possible. I don't think you need the menu that much unless you are buying units. (Hmmm...)

2. Very good thought! It shouldn't take me long to do...

3. I'm scripting level 1 to make that possible. (I use lua for that :) )

I have shortened the range of fire of units to compensate for the small area of map. I had the idea of making a 'crimsonland type of thing' but it ended up as an RTS with small maps. I'm refining the levels more so that to adapt to the small area map. I'll just have to see how it comes out.

Some more things: I just added area effect and a bonus depending on how well you did in the level. Also added some more units (now there are conflicts between other 'neutral' units) and polished up some other stuff...

There are only 7 levels in the alpha test but I will add more for the beta demo.

I really big thank you for your feedback! Happy new year!!

[wazoo]

I'm impressed with it C_Coder and have been playing it off and on for the last couple of days..

One comment I had, and I'm not expecting a green light here, is that I was wondering if there could be an option to flip mouse buttons.

I'm too terribly used to the WarcraftII interface where the RMB does everything, while the LMB is just used to select units.

This one's like C&C which used the opposing style.

Minor point, but it'd be kinda cool to be able to flip them (as a user option)..

Other than that, I agree with the earlier comments about the speed of the tutorials. I appreciate them, but they did kinda take a while..;)

Keep it going dude!

[C_Coder]

Consider it done...but...tell me exactly what the buttons should do 'cause I never played WC3... :D

I want to see if your control system suits better. I'm more used to Westwood's method since I played all their RTS games since Dune 2! :)

[Martoon]

Sorry I'm a little late on this thread, but I've just been playing this alpha and I was quite impressed and wanted to leave some feedback.

Overall, I love the control concept of this game (the whole "Crimsonland meets RTS" thing). Controlling a unit (or units) with the keyboard as it automatically fires on enemies is huge fun.

The sensory experience provided is also top-notch. The visuals are beautiful, and the various weapon firing and explosion sounds are effective.

There are a number of things that could improve the experience for me personally. Here they are in no particular order:

In the first tutorial level, it starts by saying you can finish the level at any time by killing the beacon in the lower left, but it's actually in the lower right.

Ctrl-G makes selected units auto-attack. Why not just G? On the help screen, it says G for autonomous mode and ctrl-G for autonomous resource mode (whatever that is). G appears to do nothing, and ctrl-G does what I expect. Also, why "G" (instead of another letter)? "G" suggest "guard" to me.

The best part of this game is selecting and manually controlling units. I find it a lot of fun to select multiple units and drive them as a group. I have to hold the ctrl key to do this, which is a little awkward. The shift key would be easier, but better yet would be some kind of easy toggle (for manually controlling all selected units). I think refining these controls is critical, since that seems to be what the game is all about.
Also, I personally like the driving controls the way they are (just push in the direction you want to go), but as Dan mentioned, some people may like "steer and accelerate" as an option (although this might be problematic for controlling a group).

It costs me credits to restart a level, which provides an interesting twist on the RTS. I'm not clear how the full game will work, though. Is there going to be a long series of levels (like a typical RTS campaign)? If so, what happens if I run out of credits on a level - can I not afford to restart, and if so, do I have to restart the campaign, back up a level (and hope to make more money), or what? I'm just not clear on how this will work.

I almost didn't try this game, because I thought it would be yet another RTS. I know you described it as an action-RTS, but I thought that just meant more fighting, less base-building (i.e., like Ground Control). Now that I've played it, I see it's something very different. When you start marketing this game, I think you'll want to find some way of making this clear.

I noticed the different unit types have names like xxx-xxxx. I'm guessing these are just filler for the alpha. When you do name unit types, please use names, not numbers (i.e., call the helicoptor a "helifox" or "raptor", and not "the L473"). Names are much easier to learn and remember.

If I drive a unit off the edge of the screen, it just disappears. You probably know this (and I realize it's an alpha), but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

In the menu screen that comes up when I hit escape, I see things about tech research and buying units. If research and buying are going to be a normal part of gameplay, I think there should be some kind of buttons on the screen for this. The escape menu should just be for things external to gameplay, like quitting, saving, options, etc.

The radar screen shows a highlighted rectangle for the visible screen area. I can't quite scroll this rectangle all the way to the edge, which is slightly confusing/irritating (I keep trying to scroll the screen a little further, because I think there's a little more to see over there).

The terrain tiles appear a little "squarish" where they meet the water tiles. This makes the grid obvious, and looks less like natural terrain. I only mention this because it's the one part of the visuals that doesn't seem up to par with the quality of the rest.

Anyway, that's what I've got. I realize this is just an alpha, so you were probably already aware of several of these points. Overall, this appears to be shaping up to a really nice game, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the next build. Good work! :)

[C_Coder]

When you press G - The selected units will attack what is offensive. I.e. any enemy that can fire.
When you press Ctrl+G - The selected units will do the same as G but will also attack anything else, like walls and beacons.
Also the unit will select the target to attack based on priority. E.g. Enemies that can fire have a higher priority than beacons.

Controls: I will try to make the controls more intuitive. Now that you tell me, I found it a bit akward myself! :)

If you are interested you can check out the news page on my site to see the list of changes done lately. News (http://www.goldbolt.com/default.asp?page=news)

I added bonuses depending on how well you did in the level so that you do not run out of money that easily.

As for level restarts, you can cheat in a way that you save the game and the load it again. I left this functionality there for anyone who wants to do it this way.

The buy units and technolgy menus can be selected from the game HUD. If you look at the top of the screen you should be able to see them.

The radar can show more of the available screen so that you can preview what is going to enter the 'action area'.

The terrain tiles were a little hack I added to make it more interesting. I have to make the graphics a bit more believable... :D

Overall Thanks for your feedback, it is very valuable for me! :)

[Martoon]

When you press G - The selected units will attack what is offensive. I.e. any enemy that can fire.
When you press Ctrl+G - The selected units will do the same as G but will also attack anything else, like walls and beacons.
Ahh, that makes perfect sense. Maybe the help screen could say something like "auto-attack threats" and "auto-attack all" ("resource/autonomous" wasn't very meaningful to me).

The buy units and technolgy menus can be selected from the game HUD. If you look at the top of the screen you should be able to see them.

Okay, I see them now. You may want to consider making them slightly larger and more obvious, and maybe adding a mouse hover tooltip. Actually, having mouse hover info could be really helpful throughout the game (e.g., showing info about a unit/structure when you hover over it).
Speaking of unit info, the game options lets me turn health bars on or off, but I'd also like an option to have health bars on all the time, even for non-selected units.

The radar can show more of the available screen so that you can preview what is going to enter the 'action area'.
That's what I concluded after a while, but my brain still keeps thinking I can scroll the screen a little further, then I have to consciously remind myself that that's a "phantom zone" I can't scroll over. Could you maybe tint that phantom edge on the radar map a little differently? I think it would even make sense to only tint the action area on the radar, and have the blips in the phantom zone appear outside the tinted area. You could even fade them in as they approach the action area (linear interp the alpha based on how far they're into the "phantom zone"). Just something so I have clear feedback that I've scrolled the screen to its limit.

The terrain tiles were a little hack I added to make it more interesting. I have to make the graphics a bit more believable...
Like I said, I realize this is an alpha. The hack terrain tiles are already better than a lot of indie games. They're just not up to that really polished level of the rest of the visuals.

Overall Thanks for your feedback, it is very valuable for me!
Glad I can help. I really like this game. I find it unfortunate that providing feedback necessarily involves pointing out all the things that could be better (gives a general negative vibe). But of course, I wouldn't bother taking the time if I didn't see this as a game worthy of perfection. ;)

[Nutter2000]

Well there's not really much I can add to what people have already said.
I do like the game, some interesting twists to the genre.

Not sure I like losing money when you have to restart, it surely makes it harder for the player each time?

I'm not sure if you're aware of it but when a unit is manual mode you can get it to do donuts infinately, but don't change that I quite like it! :D

All in all a few design issues but looking good so far

[cliffski]

just tried it, looks great, the tutorial is agaonizingly slow. It seems you have to go through the whole thing ebfore I can actually play and have fun? I bailed out before then (lifes too short). I'd let people jump straight in if (like me) they really want to, we can always go back to the tutorial later if you have done your job and made the game attractive enough to persuade the player to invest the time. Forcing a player to do a tutorial always seems a bit like punishment to me, especially for hardcore RTS players who could probably skip the first x minutes of the tutorial anyway.
It looks really nice though, and it ran perfectly for me. I'd prefer mroe terrain texture variety. Maybe its varied later, but as a gamer trying the demo, I don't know that.

[C_Coder]

I think it is time to post some new screenshots and a later version because many of the issues have been looked into.

Thank you all for your feedback, believe me it is all being considered! :D

[C_Coder]

Oh yes I forgot to say this: The first level, even if it is a tutorial, you use it to earn some credits be destroying the beacons. Anyway, I'll just post a new version...Will let you know in a new thread when I post.