Messages

1

Skyward Collapse / Re: Depth of this game?

« on: Yesterday at 01:57:46 PM »

There again, that just doesn't really mean anything to me if it's not explained to me in great depth.  If I am a new player and a game tells me "Complacency: X" or "Unity: X" I'm going to not pay much attention to those numbers because they sound like a sideshow.  Versus "Unrest" or "Rage" or something more obviously negative gets my attention immediately.  I'm not saying Unrest is the only word I'll use, but nothing else has yet really been close to being better in my opinion.

I bet folks would have argued about AI Progress, too.

Very true. It's weird trying to make people notice those numbers initially.

2

Skyward Collapse / Re: Depth of this game?

« on: Yesterday at 01:52:39 PM »

What about calling it "Unity" instead of "Hatred" or something like that.

The idea could be that if the people aren't united in building a war machine to go against a foe (the other guys) they cause "Unrest".

3

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.815 (Alpha Round 2 Starts Now!)

« on: May 15, 2013, 10:54:41 PM »

Well, I just had my first mishap with a Woe, though I suppose playing on the highest medium with the fewest turns between woes them was really asking for it.

I got "Edge of Civilization" and lost a town on both sides.

Unfortunately, on the Norse side the only "town" that survived was a town center with NOTHING AROUND IT!!! 

There were bandits and the Norse were about to get killed off due to being just one building and "Fury of the Gods" was up next. I had Skadi on the Norse side so I did the only thing I could think of at the time to salvage the situation:
http://i.imgur.com/a5hDb7h.jpg

"NONE SHALL PASS!!!"

4

Skyward Collapse / Re: Rock Paper Collapse

« on: May 14, 2013, 04:35:18 PM »

To give my take on this I'll have to play the part of the a**hole again. (oh boy, I'm gonna regret this)

AVWW 1+2 and SH were not very well received at all on RPS, IndieGame, and some similar sites, and people there did not like how they looked nor how they played. The only game that was both well received and well known there is AI War (Tidalis barely exists for this purpose).

AVWW 2 and SH really made this worse. The former is seen as an attempt to correct it's predecessor that also failed again, and the latter seems like a cheap GameMaker game (whether it is or not doesn't matter here, people see it that way) that isn't well reviewed enough to be worth checking out.
Regardless of what happens internally or community-wise, from an outsider's perspective that looks very bad.

On top of that Arcen has a taste in aesthetics that, while not a bad thing in itself, does not conform to what is generally accepted as good compared to similar examples.
Unfortunately for that the majority matters in this case, and since the majority thinks it looks bad then it is bad for most intents and purposes regardless of the intentions behind it.


With the above perspective in mind, it's easy to see why RPS, IndieGames, and similar sites are not going to be very friendly, and that skepticism and even dislike are to be expected.
With the exception of AI War, Arcen does not have a positive reputation there anymore.


Anyway, that's more than enough of a**hole mode, time for more "Bang! You live here now and you worship this guy!".

5

Skyward Collapse / Re: Rock Paper Collapse

« on: May 14, 2013, 02:52:17 PM »

However, I do think a good rule to follow is that if you're going to have weak graphics, don't use 3D.

It depends. 2D and 3D have different criteria for what qualifies as "ugly".

In 2D you're not going to get bitten for lack of detail as much, but you can get bitten for style. If you're going to have more detail in 2D there are more annoying "unsaid rules" regarding what you should and shouldn't do and that's why most alternative 2D styles in games tend to be low detail.
In 2D you can often be criticized for being "ugly" and not know exactly what you are doing wrong. A lot of the notions regarding what is "good" aesthetically in 2D are rather entrenched and finicky, and aren't always apparent until you've already stumbled head-first into them.

I find 3D is actually more forgiving in that specific regard. Yes there's a lot that can go wrong with 3D, but usually in 3D you're more likely know what you're doing "wrong" and where you need to go to fix it (relatively speaking, there's a lot of vagueness in that but not as bad as 2D).

To me it's like trying to choose between the guy who doesn't ask for much but can be a very picky and a lying bastard at times vs. the guy who asks for a lot and is hard to please but isn't quite as picky and stays pretty honest.
Both don't sound good so it's up to you to choose who looks like the lesser evil.

6

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Steam

« on: May 10, 2013, 09:19:17 PM »

I'm pretty sure it'll be available via the "usual channels".

7

Skyward Collapse / Re: Q&A For Skyward Collapse (Plus New Screenshots!)

« on: May 10, 2013, 10:20:03 AM »

I'm not sure if you've noticed this already, but someone commenting on the moddb article for this Q&A has illustrated why a lot of people are going to hate with the graphics regardless the detail and work put into them.

http://www.moddb.com/news/qa-for-skyward-collapse-plus-new-screenshots

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21309241/skywardperspective.jpg

This illustrates how, as I've mentioned before, the building perspectives do not line up.
It's a tiny thing, but that's all it takes for it to look wrong and of poor quality. Many games with equivalent or lower art budgets and/or less detail will look "better" than Skyward Collapse because they either don't have these issues or are too low detail for it to matter. Unfortunately human brains really don't like this sort of inconsistency, as small as it is.

Most people are going to look at the game and feel that something is horribly wrong, even if they don't consciously know what it is right away.

It's finicky and extremely annoying, but that's how it works.


There's probably not much that can be done about it this late in the game, but it's probably helpful to know for later.
At the very least it's good to know where the complaints will be coming from.

8

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

« on: May 08, 2013, 10:34:19 AM »

There's no consensus here whatsoever.  Goodness everyone is divided.

Well, I guess at least that's normal. 

9

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - New Tutorial

« on: May 06, 2013, 05:04:30 PM »

Oh, I didn't know you only ever needed one Carpenter per faction.  I was building one per woodcutter.  The same for the other buildings.  Good to know.

I think it's per town (or Town Center) rather than per faction.

10

Skyward Collapse / Re: Player Feedback requested - Victory Points

« on: May 06, 2013, 02:02:35 PM »

Unless I'm missing something, aside from maybe being required to win (maybe), it sounds like VPs are pretty much scoring with less finicky granularity.

Do they need to be called Victory Points? It sounds like most of the actions mentioned so far would be the sort of things that would suggest to a faction that "The Creator is on your side", so maybe just for theme they could be called "Belief Points" or something similar.

I must admit this VP system while it seems OK, doesn't float my boat to nearly the same extent as an overall Carnageometer.

I don't see much reason why this couldn't also act as a "Carnageometer" (I kind of like that term by the way). It just wouldn't be as fine-grain.

Getting VP for a faction taking a town sounds pretty reasonable.

Perhaps you could also get VPs for things like keeping unit production going or for having units in combat.

I guess to pull a rough example out of my ass (with a little thematic justification):
+1 VP every 10 - (number of unit types being consistently produced) with a minimum of 1 turns in a row a town is producing units. (factions like seeing their army grow)
+1 VP per connected building when an opposing town center is taken. (factions like taking the other faction's stuff, especially big stuff)
+1 VP every 5 turns where a faction kills at least 1 opposing unit. (factions like seeing their soldiers fight effectively)
+1 VP every 3 turns in a row where a faction has the majority of kills. (factions like winning)

(Yea this is probably rubbish as I just pulled it out of nowhere, but you get the idea.)

11

Skyward Collapse / Is there a way to see edicts during game?

« on: May 04, 2013, 03:42:08 PM »

I can't seem to find where to see my edicts in game. Is this not working yet or am I being blind?

12

Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: Feedback, first impressions, horrible text wall

« on: May 04, 2013, 01:24:54 PM »

Resources do have storage, so the way I was attempting to figure out how many Carpenters, Butchers, or Bakeries I would need was by checking if my Woodcutters, Pig Farms, and Wheat Fields were empty and how much of those resources were in storage at the Town Centers. (the latter seemed more useful for this so I just checked the former to know whether I had enough people shipping the stuff back and forth)

Whether that's a good way to do it I'm not really sure. Doing that it appeared that one bakery could handle wheat coming from a lot of fields.

13

Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Re: SC Score Contest!

« on: May 04, 2013, 01:19:16 AM »

Finished my first with 319,000

http://i.imgur.com/8UceV7k.jpg

14

Skyward Collapse LPs/AARs / Alpha Feedback

« on: May 03, 2013, 09:49:55 PM »

I played until I got a "Fatal Error" (I'll attach the error file to a Mantis entry).

I didn't have that much trouble figuring out how stuff worked and the tooltips were pretty helpful for the most part.

It feels like the player might need a bit more information though, mainly what has already been built and how many resources total each side has. Fortunately, there seems to already be a Mantis for the former.
(heh, resources are shown at Town Center, I must have missed that somehow    )


I did notice something rather interesting.
It is possible to build a faction's buildings at the opposite faction's town. This results in most of or at least a good portion of the opposing faction's units to turn back to kill it and can work as a way to temporarily "hold" units in town until the building is destroyed or you smite it.

It doesn't really seem like a problem or anything unbalancing yet, but I haven't played far enough to what affect it might have mid or late game.


I also ran into an amusing situation where one of the Greek "archers" (whatever they're called) found his way behind a few mountains and started picking off people in the Norse town. The Norse weren't doing anything about it and he was causing quite a bit of trouble, so I tried plopping down mountains to block his line of sight. It delayed him a bit but not by much. 

15

Skyward Collapse / Re: Q&A For Skyward Collapse (Plus New Screenshots!)

« on: May 03, 2013, 11:28:13 AM »

The problem is not that they're 2D, the problem is that some of their their light sources and perspectives don't line up.

Most of the buildings are OK because they seem consistent with how the land is angled, but some things look like they're lying flat on their sides or aren't standing in the same direction.

It's a tiny thing and seems insignificant, but it's still really jarring because of how our brains do perspective and automatically qualifies as "bad" to a lot of people even if they don't notice exactly what's making it look awkward right away.
I imagine now people are going to complain about how units of them look like their traveling up and out of the board rather than along the board, which is yet another finicky thing that seems small at first but is jarring because of how our brains process it.


Actually, in a way you could say the problem is that they are 2D, because 2D art that isn't limited by resolution or style carries high expectation of quality. Most devs don't bother with with higher resolution and higher detail 2D graphics unless they can hire much more expensive artists and spend much more time on them, or they are already talented artists themselves.

This is why you have so many indie devs churning out pixel sprites that all look the same even though they're getting old, overused, and a lot of players are getting tired of them, because the low resolution avoids running into that problem. That is also why devs that choose to avoid pixel sprites tend to use low-detail styles that are mostly outlines with very little detail, because again they'd rather deal with criticisms related to that than run into people's high expectations for the alternative.
It's one of those rather frustrating and annoying situations where you'll be less criticized for not trying.

It's very finicky, problematic, and limiting in a lot of ways, but that's how things have turned out.


I could go on a rant about how the situation with this type of art is frustrating and harmful in a lot of ways and why I would personally rather not deal with that whole mess in any projects I do, but this is more than enough negativity and frustration for one post.

Instead I'll wonder why I'm not smiting villagers with godly wrath right now.