DROID ASSAULT released!

[princec]

Droid Assault's out! (Quietly does it, just a few forum spams first before the mailing list etc)

You can grab the demo from this page for your respective OS.

Here's a screenie or 2 if you've not seen any yet:




Yes, it's only $9.95 too.

Cas

[Jack Norton]

Awesome! but... why you went with the $9.95 price tag

[princec]

Just to see how it does in its early stages as an impulse buy. Already had one testimonial to that effect too (and 5 sales ):

Props for a good game design! For $10 it was an impulse buy after playing the demo. Its not often there is a single player game I think is worthwhile, but this one makes me happy.

Cas

[Jack Norton]

That's cool, seems it started well!

[berserker]

Cool!

This is your first game I actually enjoyed a lot and played up until demo expired. I think concept of capturing other bots is neat but you have to explain it because I was puzzled about when I was able to capture it and when not.

Also game graphics looks to dark and depressive to my taste but I assume this is your style.
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FIFTH-GENERATION CHEVROLET CAMARO SPECIFICATIONS

[FlySim]

Nice, I will be digging out the credit card!

[Tertsi]

I really preferred the faster action Ultratron and alike. I uninstalled this after one play, it just didn't hit. Good thing that others don't seem to share my opinion about this game.

[princec]

Shame, you have no idea just how mental it gets

Cas

[Grey Alien]

Snaffled. Will you be affiliating this via BMC or Plimus or does it need a special build?

[princec]

BMT (product 18990018). Could do Plimus if I'm sufficiently hassled.

Cas

[Grey Alien]

Cool thx, I might post some news about it on Binary Joy and wanted a linkypoos.

Anyway, I like it. It's neat, like Ultratron and Paradroid rolled into one. Man you made that demo time out at a FIENDISH place ;-)

Are your other games on BMT without a custom build now? Dunno why I'm asking, I should just check...

OK now I'm confused. There's two Droid Assaults, which one is PC and which is Mac or are they different in some other way? (OK just checked and they have the same links right?) Also there's about 12 titan attacks and 5 ultratron. Which links should I use please? (Oh OK, so I use the cheaper ones, doh! ;-) (btw, I put Mac in my Holiday Bonus product title so it was obvious...). thx

[cliffski]

I'll be trying this, and hopefully selling it as an affiliate. good luck dude. but you are MAD to sell for $9.95. at least make it $14.95!

[AlexN]

Cas, just want to let you know it doesn't run on my Mac (OSX10.5.2) with Java 6. I'll switch to Java 5 and see if it works.

[Adrian Cummings]

I'll be trying this, and hopefully selling it as an affiliate. good luck dude. but you are MAD to sell for $9.95. at least make it $14.95!

This is a difficult area indeed now tho is it not - pricing?, I'm selling PC down at $7.95 online which as low as it gets for me when stuff reaches near end of line in my case and also given you can actually buy a lot of game on PS3/XBox store in digital form for around the same price now at the other end of the developer spectrum.

No offence but personally I think $9.95 is on the nose for princec's game in mass market reality really.

$14.95 to $19.95 everything or higher does not apply to all grades/types of software IMHO... sure some will pay it but many would'nt in the current climate for this type of game.

I stuck one of my last PC titles through a well known publisher in the last 6 months and they in turn released it at the now bog fixed standard of $19.95. Needless to say it's hardly sold at all - in fact I've sold many more than they have from day one after grading the software from $19.95->$14.95->$9.95->$7.95 over time in a 6 months period.

Different titles require different pricing approches I guess to shift them in any numbers to the consumer - not just to other fan developers on here perhaps

[Grey Alien]

I think it's a good price. The game is a neat retro affair, but it doesn't have a meta game and a long single player campaign that maybe people expect from a $19.95 game - it's just a well polished good fun short blast at an impulse buy price (same as two beers or a cheap DVD). Hopefully the Tomb game will be more involved and justify a $19.95 price.

[Grey Alien]

pimped it for you:

http://www.binaryjoy.co.uk/games/gam...ault-released/

[princec]

Cas, just want to let you know it doesn't run on my Mac (OSX10.5.2) with Java 6. I'll switch to Java 5 and see if it works.

Hmm, not entirely unsurprised. Need to ship with a DMG instead of a zip then I can symlink to the Java application launching stub provided with the JDK... but Mac is hundreds of miles away again, bah.

Cas

[princec]

Thanks for the p1mpage. $9.95 seems to be a good price point for it. And all our games for that matter.

Cas

[Grey Alien]

This game keeps on getting better, the later levels are tough but there are some robots with awesome firepower.

[elias]

Hmm, not entirely unsurprised. Need to ship with a DMG instead of a zip then I can symlink to the Java application launching stub provided with the JDK... but Mac is hundreds of miles away again, bah.

Cas

Make sure you use a recent lwjgl with x86_64 support compiled into the liblwjgl.jnilib, or else java6 on mac won't work.

- elias

[princec]

It's the latest of the 1.1.x series - surely that should work?

I suspect what it is is that the stub launcher that I've shipped isn't compatible.

Cas

[elias]

No, only the latest 2.0 is compiled with 64 bit support (a side effect of fixing mac os x 10.5 builds, since java 6 weren't out at the time).

- elias

[princec]

Drat! That's still in beta. I suppose I could try it out - I don't use FMOD or DevIL after all.

Cas

[mot]

Doesn't Info.plist in the Mac zip bundle include an entry that specifies the required Java version? Usually there's something like "1.4+" in it, what about changing it to "1.4" to force the older version?

[Agent 4125]

This is awesome. =) I will probably pick it up as soon as I have some free time to kill. Definitely a worthy successor to Paradroid.

[princec]

Doesn't Info.plist in the Mac zip bundle include an entry that specifies the required Java version? Usually there's something like "1.4+" in it, what about changing it to "1.4" to force the older version?

Hm, spose I could... it doesn't rely on anything other than 1.4. I'll try LWJGL 2.0 tomorrow and see how that goes.

Cas

[Grey Alien]

Yeah it has that paradroid addictiveness but the fact that you don't totally die if you have other robots in your squad is a stroke of genius.

I had a few suggestions that would have made it even better for me:

1) An ability to transfer immediately to your other droids even when they are not in line of sight by pressing keys 1-8 for example. Sometimes after my main bot dies I get put in the body of a bot I don't want to control and I want to swap to another one instantly rather than having to go and find it (and sometimes they are hard to find). I can think of some good tactics I could use in such a situation. Perhaps it's OK to say you don't need to do the whole "transfer in line of sight" thing with droids already in your party as they are already under your control? Anyway, just thought I'd bring this up.

2) Walls that look solid. Later on there are holes in the floor you can fly over if you have a hover bot and you can shoot over them. The problem is that they look just like walls so I'm often confused between the two. If walls had some texture or plain colour or diagonal lines (think "thrust") this would make them look different from holes.

3) Would be nice to find out the stats on your current bot mid-level somehow. Perhaps via a little computer you can logon to.

4) Shop! Oh how I'd love to spend that money upgrading my droids between levels and healing the damaged ones.... I realise a shop is a big thing though to add to a game and it would affect gameplay, just thought I'd mention it.

5) Perhaps it would make it too easy but a map/scanner upgrade would be cool. You could also see your other bots on it if you needed to find them and seek them out to transfer to them.

6) Squad tactics. The other bots sometimes really help out, but other times they just get killed dumbly. Be great if you could say, "stand still", "follow me", "defend me", "attack nearest enemy", etc.

7) Ability to blow up mines somehow other than rolling over them!

8) Escape should bring up an in-game menu with "resume game" and "save and exit" instead of immediately exiting and saving.

9) Mouse click to resume from pause. Pause and Unpause is P, but often I pause mid action (due to family interruptions) and I have to press P to resume then quick move my hand to the mouse whilst I'm getting shot at - and that one second of hand movement is just too long ;-)

[princec]

1) An ability to transfer immediately to your other droids even when they are not in line of sight by pressing keys 1-8 for example.

That's already implemented - use Q/E or PgUp/Dn or the mousewheel. It feels a bit random mind.

2) Walls that look solid.

Under consideration.

3) Would be nice to find out the stats on your current bot mid-level somehow. Perhaps via a little computer you can logon to.

Thought about that but couldn't see it fitting in with the fairly frantic live action (you'd typically step on a terminal shooting by accident and the action would suddenly stop, probably by accident).

4) Shop! Oh how I'd love to spend that money upgrading my droids between levels and healing the damaged ones.... I realise a shop is a big thing though to add to a game and it would affect gameplay, just thought I'd mention it.

5) Perhaps it would make it too easy but a map/scanner upgrade would be cool. You could also see your other bots on it if you needed to find them and seek them out to transfer to them.

6) Squad tactics. The other bots sometimes really help out, but other times they just get killed dumbly. Be great if you could say, "stand still", "follow me", "defend me", "attack nearest enemy", etc.

That, I think, is for another game

7) Ability to blow up mines somehow other than rolling over them!

Maybe I quite like the fact they're a PITA.

8) Escape should bring up an in-game menu with "resume game" and "save and exit" instead of immediately exiting and saving.

Maybe one day will do this for all my games (it's part of the base classes)

9) Mouse click to resume from pause.

Best way to pause is simply to alt-tab away from the application, then mouse click resumes. P was a safety catch sort of pause.

Cas

[Adrian Cummings]

LOL can't be arsed then more like?

Thing is you slave over a game for months and months, test it, beta it, test it some more, publish it here and there and make some sales then some bugger always comes along later and says yeah but you could add this that and the other then I might buy it or you would sell even more mate.

Save it all for you next game is a good idea else you'd never get anything out the door if you listen to what 'everybody' wants in this world.

I've done that for 20years and I'm still here so there is only so much listening you can do to please the wants of others in this short life LOL

[princec]

Yeah, made that mistake with Alien Flux and Super Dudester, ruined 'em both.

I'm off to write an actual casual game now, w00t!

Cas