Yeah, the graphics is my core focus, so I can put a lot of time into. In an older unreleased version, the resolution was x2 larger and we had animated spinning wheels and tracks as well. That turned out to be way too heavy so we down-rez'd and removed those animation frames, but the turning wheels still remain.4xEmpire wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 2:31 pmI have played the game and here's my initial thoughts:Smooth Sailing wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:08 amYes. We took 29 galloons of 100% pure graft and injected it directly into the project. Glad you noticed. (What the heck is 'graft'?)
Yeah, do tell do tell. It's immensely helpful whenever a player out there plays and posts feedback. I've got plans but also dev tunnel-vision, so there's a lot of things that we miss that is obvious to the new player. Also, there's some items in there, like the map editor, which are available but has zero documentation, so if you want to figure out how to use it, just ask. We'll add better documentation once the features are more mature.
Yeah, we're use vanilla 11.3, along with some heavily modified libraries. We also have a lot of little tools we made in Love2D to help us with our workflow.
Things I liked:Possible constructive feedback:
- Detailed graphics (even the wheels turning independently as the vehicle turns!)
- Great soundtrack - it's fitting and professional
- cool CnC rts vibes - variety of units and options
summary:
- Speed is the biggest issue for me. The units take rather a while to respond to commands and move slowly. I imagine this getting more of an issue as more units enter the game + ai / other players. (For ref, my pc is 8gb ram, 2.5ghz)
- UI is not very clear. I was clicking on units to build but it didnt register my click so I thought nothing was happen. Then I look back and 5 of that unit has appeared
- the day-night cycle is pretty in some ways but too often it makes it hard to actually see what is happening.
It is clear you spent real time and effort on making faithful models of these cool war vehicles and buildings and that's great. You must have a true passion.
I recommend you to focus on speed and usability because right now the general feel is quite sluggish + hard to see what's going on sometimes. That may need to come at the cost of the graphics and other aesthetic features - it may mean some difficult cuts or optimisations - but anything that makes the game more responsive, playable and alive will be massively worth it. It would also be good to have a basic Ai, even if its not a very skillful one, just to get a sense of the gameplay.
Well done so far on your efforts.
Soundtrack will be getting more tracks later in the year. It's important, probably more important than visuals and it compensates for not having sound FX in yet.
As for the the speed, this might be partially due to lag. Even on my work computer, when I zoom out all the way, the whole game slows down. Additionally, the game is designed to be slower than CnC. In future, when our damage and weaponry stuff is more in place. There will be a lot of units out there that are going to be one-shot-kill. This is compensated by having all the units be slower and having longer aim-times on larger guns and weapons, giving more agile units a chance to escape.
Honestly, before optimization, you actually need a semi-beefy computer to run this game comfortably. We'll be adding multi-thread functionality and adopting a dds image format to make things faster and lighter sometime down the line.
The Day / Night cycle is currently around 2 minutes, and is there for testing and showcasing. In future, our day / night cycle will be 20+ minutes. We'll be tweaking the settings a bit too. The current day / night barely allows the headlights on the vehicles to be on for more than a few seconds.
Our game design is not yet complete because we don't have the sight system in place yet. In future, the player starts out, and needs to start scouting, capturing key resources and keeping an eye on chokepoints at the beginning of the game. Currently everything is visible and its not needed. Also, our maps and assets are not ready for that yet. Simple enemy AI is also locked behind map maker features as well as not having a complete set of faction assets completed.
We do have a "Swarm AI" which is just a simple spawner that will spawn specific unit at a frequency and time according to an Excel spreadsheet as long as their main base is in tact. That is honestly a genuine challenge, although once you figure out that all you need is to outflank with an artillery unit, its pretty easy to defeat.
Multiplayer, with luck, is coming back next week. Multiplayer will be the crutch we use for the time being. AI is a slow and hard thing to do, but we'll try to start it in earnest once the core features of weaponry, air / naval units, and map making features are complete. We'll just be copying the AI logic from CnC Generals, which I am familiar with.
It's a long road but we'll get there.
Cheers and thanks for your input.
