Robokill Released

[HunterSD]

Hi Everyone,

I'm excited to announce the release of Robokill, the latest Flash game from Rock Solid Arcade. I'd love to know what everyone here thinks.

You can find it here.

Screenshots:

[princec]

It's good Be interesting to see how a hardcore Flash game sells.

Cas

[svero]

I tried it yesterday. Played through 6 missions or so. It's pretty fun. Definitely worth a look if the idea of a robot based crimsonland-esque shooter with RPG elements appeals to you.

[Nexic]

Great graphics, great gameplay, great polish.

My only gripe is that the sound (especially the explosions) is a little weak. I don't mean poor quality, I just mean they don't sound especially powerful.

[AlexWeldon]

It's fun, and it has lots of polish, but at least for me, success doesn't feel like success if there was no chance of failure. If you don't have limited lives, and the enemies you've killed don't come back if you die and respawn, you're guaranteed to beat a level as long as you kill at least a few enemies before dying each time.

I guess that sort of thing may be okay for casual gamers, who will get bored if they get stuck on a level, but from what I've heard, sci-fi action games don't go over well with the casual crowd.

What happens when someone registers the game? Is there a downloadable version, or what? I'm making my first serious game in Flex and, although it's going to be free, I may later want to find a way to make money off future games, other than through advertising. I was thinking that once I had several games on my site, I might do it as a membership thing, where users can register for free or just play without logging in, and still have access to a lot of games, but give registered users the option to pay small amounts for extra levels, multiplayer capability, etc. for their favourites. That's still a long way off though, so in the meantime I'm interested in seeing what ways others are coming up with to make money off AS-based games.

[spellcaster]

Fun game, need to try it with a real mouse instead of my notebooks touchpad.

[elias4444]

WOW! I love that game! I think my son even wants to buy this one.

Is there a way to save your game though? Tough to get so far and have to quit to restart over again later.

P.S. The graphics are amazing! I'm VERY jealous!!

[cliffski]

Thats amazingly polished and nice looking for a flash game. Nice one

[chanon]

Was pretty fun. My only recommendation would be to somehow make the doors that you already visited different from those that you haven't. They may be different already by I couldn't see how. That way it would be a lot easier to get around without having to open the map so often.

Also, I don't know if you have them, but seeking missiles would be cool!

[Jack Norton]

Interesting, ultra polished flash online game, purchase throught paypal and impossible to crack... why he would want to do a desktop version??

[DadTimesTwo]

Loving it so far. Would thoroughly enjoy a full screen downloadable version.

Question: From time to time, my character won't move. It's as though he's stuck. It might happen when I enter a room or when I'm in the midst of a battle. Does this happen when my shields are critically low?

Suggestion: A custom targetting reticule for when the mouse cursor is inside the game window.

[electronicStar]

Wow very good produciton values here, your company really deserves its name.
The diablo/RPG aspect is very well done. Overall a very good game.

Now what I didn't like :
-the demo gives way too much. I don't see why I would pay for more atm, I think I'll get bored before the demo is even finished
-It could use more penalties when I die, for example, it could use money and if no money left-> game over. It would slightly increase the life of the game and also make a use for all the cash I am amassing so far.
-The weapons are graphically too similar, it's difficult to differentiate them in the shop and also when looking at their effects in game. I would have enjoyed a bit more of variety in the things that I could buy too. More powers and stuff.

[elias4444]

I noticed when I died once that a room was repopulated by robots... I'd say do that EVERY time someone dies (at least one room). It seems like a good penalty to me.

I enjoy games that don't over-penalize you for dying, as it makes it much more approachable to younger players (not too mention, myself).

[oNyx]

It's ace.

Nitpicking:

- "Click here to buy" doesn't work with FF's popup blocker. I suggest to supply a usual link as well. (There is some way to work around this. GameTrailers recently started doing that for their pre-roll ads for example.)

- If the game can be resumed right after purchase point that out.

- There is no favicon. Try this one:

[Parthon]

Lots of fun, played through the demo and will buy the full version soon.

I liked the death penalty with the robots respawning and taking back rooms, but it didn't happen often enough, plus you could just rush in after you die and continue. It was a great idea, but not much of a death deterrent.

Otherwise I found the game excellent. Far better than most of the flash games out there.

Can I ask what you made it with?

[Grey Alien]

Good luck with the revenue model. Be interested to hear reports back about it in the future. I've posted some game suggestions on Blitz.

Regarding the death issue, I guess dying is not that scarey like it was in 8-bit games where you knew you'd have to start again, but that's good because I'm too busy for all the restarting guff. It's also a good idea to have rooms reclaimed as well. Perhaps there could be a XP loss too (that would make me more scared and I'd be more careful) and/or a Money loss as it costs to teleport a new one in, something like that.

[HunterSD]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Alex - we think the game is pretty hard core still. It gets harder! Rooms get reclaimed as you die so you do lose something. When the user buys the game it gives them an unlock key which they can use to play the extra episodes online. We probably won't be doing a downloadable version, at least for now.

Elias - The game saves your character stats and current mission, so you just have to play a mission at a time. Serializing the whole level took up too much storage.

Channon - Door indicators is a great idea, thanks!

DadTimesTwo - We didn't make the aimer a custom cursor because it'll lag when the frame rate gets low. Kind of annoying, but I think the lag would be way too noticable.

ElectronicStar - Well, this is essentially a free game, with extra content available for those who love it. If you get bored in the demo, that's fine! I might increase the death penalty (rooms repopulated) a bit.

oNyx - Fixed the FF popup thing! Good catch

Pkeod - We're not really interested in a desktop version right now, sorry!

Parthon - It's made entirely with flex

Grey - Yeah it's a big leap for us! Be interesting to see how it goes.

Thanks again for the feedback everyone!

[AlexWeldon]

Originally Posted by HunterSD

Alex - we think the game is pretty hard core still. It gets harder! Rooms get reclaimed as you die so you do lose something. When the user buys the game it gives them an unlock key which they can use to play the extra episodes online. We probably won't be doing a downloadable version, at least for now.

Thanks, I've just learned something new. I didn't know that Flex/Flash could store information on the local user's computer permanently (I assumed that the permission your game requested was to cache information temporarily...didn't realise it was to save progress). A quick search through the help turned up SharedObjects, which I assume is what you're using. That'll be helpful for my current project.

Question, though. People are saying this is unpiratable. Is that true? If you're storing the key locally on the user's machine, why can't the key be pirated?

[electronicStar]

Could I ask you where this information is stored?
I have stopped playing and I would like to delete it but I couldn't find it anywhere (Vista).

[chanon]

When you say you use Flex, does that mean Flex Builder?
Is there any reason why you use that instead of FlashDevelop?
Also, is this AS2 or AS3?

[Jack Norton]

Originally Posted by AlexWeldon

Question, though. People are saying this is unpiratable. Is that true? If you're storing the key locally on the user's machine, why can't the key be pirated?

Is easy, the key is stored locally but if gets shared or in any way blacklisted, he can just block it server-side. So the game refuses to run at all, and the pirate can't do anything

[Jack Norton]

IF he stores everything in the swf, yes. If he dynamically loads data from the server through the swf through a HTTP call that needs to be autenthicated with the serial code, will be much harder (impossible maybe? don't know ).

Anyway the hardest protection though was all data (including saves) on the server, I agree on that.

[zppz]

Awesome! It's been a while since a game made my coffee get cold without me even taking one sip...

I played for quite a while, up to character level 13. I could be wrong but one thing I noticed was that when you die you seem to respawn at the closest spawn point, as in geometrically closest? I was expecting to spawn at the most recent one I'd seen. One time after a long foray through the rooms, when I died I spawned at the very first spawn point, where the 'shop' is, and this made me lose my bearings completely.

[AlexWeldon]

Originally Posted by Jack Norton

Is easy, the key is stored locally but if gets shared or in any way blacklisted, he can just block it server-side. So the game refuses to run at all, and the pirate can't do anything

Tricky legal issue, though. After all, you have sold a product to someone... you can't legally then take it away from them. The fact that the key got loose isn't full proof that the original purchaser pirated it... someone else could have been using their computer... or some l33t h4xx0r wrote a virus that ransacks people's hard drives looking for keys for these sorts of games and emails them back to him...

I suppose you could put something in the TOS, but it'd still be sketchy, and likely to give your company a bad image the first time you invoked it.

[Jack Norton]

Well just take a look on how all those MMORPG works. If you lose/give away your username/password, it's not their responsability. If a trojan steal your CC info, isn't the CC company responsability either...
If you think about that is true...if you lose it somehow, not much they can do.
Works for millions of customers of WOW, should work even for us small indie businesses

[HunterSD]

Piracy is part of it, but only a small part of it. Really we want to be able to offer a really high quality experience and I think we'll be able to do that much better on our on web site. Though we haven't even started to do things there yet, we're trying to fill up the site first!

[flyaflya]

Not bad, I like shooter game.

[mrkwang]

Good game, or even great game. Everybody said about that before, so I'd write just bad things.

- Can't do Full Screen. : My monitor can't show me all of [Robokill], maybe due to size. If so, Full Screen could solve that situation, but [Robokill] doesn't have Full Screen option.

- Can't save in the middle of the mission. : Must continue at the start of each mission. Well. Somewhat annoying.

- Why must I purchase? : Every Demo / Trial version shows 'Why you must purchase' things, but I can't find anything about that with [Robokill]. You might add explanation about that, as "More Mission / Downloadable / Full Screen / (if available) More Additional Mission in the future" ... etc.

- Flash Save Warning : When I start the game first, that warning appears. Many people might be annoyed to see such a warning, because they don't know what to do. If possible, you might use some different method to save.

Good or even great game, but could be much better, as I think.

P.S. : Please check your mailbox, from me. Thanks.

[spellcaster]

Valid points.
Regarding the Warning: I don't think there is a good way around it, but explaining what the game will do (store progress) and explaining that the pop-up will show might be a good option.

[Jack Norton]

Originally Posted by mrkwang

- Can't do Full Screen. : My monitor can't show me all of [Robokill], maybe due to size. If so, Full Screen could solve that situation, but [Robokill] doesn't have Full Screen option.

Fullscreen is quite easy to implement. One of the few things I've learned from Flex/AS3 so far is how to go fullscreen when user clicks on a button or press a key