Messages

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Skyward Collapse / Re: First Impressions/Initial Feedback

« on: May 23, 2013, 09:21:15 PM »

Another little tweaky thing, the 'you just got to turn 30' popup happens right after one god appears but before the other. Once it was done I was poking around the map for a while looking for the other god, since it mentioned mousing over both of them, and finding nothing. Then I noticed that I still had the 'fighting time' play/pause/skip menu at the bottom. Once I hit play again the other god plopped down. Might just tweak that a wee bit so that both gods appear before the the direction pops up, just to be nice and clean about it.

(Also that unit that was annoying me got killed after a few turns, and now that I've moved on to having several town centers I see it's not that big a deal to keep things so perfectly balanced since the sides aren't all that balanced anyway) Oh and we could probably use some tutorial details somewhere pointing out that (as far as I can tell) each town center can get any raw resources, but has their own finished resources, and also that unit producing buildings can only build units based on buildings within their same town center. Took me a few turns to figure out why I wasn't getting any units in my new towns until I read the mouseover tips.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: First Impressions/Initial Feedback

« on: May 23, 2013, 08:17:25 PM »

I can kind of understand not being able to build on tiles with enemy units on them, but I don't know why I can't build on tiles with friendly units on them. I've currently got a blue soldier who seems happy to continue standing on the last tile that's in range of this city center. There's no way to get him to move, so do I just have to accept that blue is going to be a little behind in the balance of resource building simply because this guy won't freakin' move?

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Skyward Collapse / Re: First Impressions/Initial Feedback

« on: May 23, 2013, 08:08:29 PM »

Direct Actions > Build Rep <- That's an odd abbreviation. That suggests to me that I'm going to be building reputation in some way, which confused me because there's no such thing as reputation in the game, and no way to build it. Considering it's supposed to be 'repair building', something like 'Bldg Rep' or 'Bld Repair' or just 'Repair' would probably make more sense. Or at least swap it around to 'Rep Build' or something.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: First Impressions/Initial Feedback

« on: May 23, 2013, 07:37:41 PM »

I have sort of tried to stay vaguely unspoiled for this game instead of trying to get into the alpha and obsessing over details. So, I'm going into it blind. And I'm already confused.

I feel a little dumb here, but I'm in the tutorial, and I follow through the hand holding in the first red building turn, then I'm fine with the less hand holding in the first blue building turn. Then I get to a turn where my directions are 'survive the first turn'. Ok... so what do I do now? Just build more stuff? The directions talk about units moving and spending action points and such. The only units are these two mythological units that I was told to place, but clicking on them doesn't give me any sort of movement options or anything like that. I'll probably figure it out if I poke around a bit more, but for a tutorial I don't think I should be running into a 'what do I do now?' moment so quickly. Like, I don't even know so far if I'm supposed to be spawning and moving units, or if that is something that happens automatically (which is kind of what I assume given what I know about the game).

Edit: Ah, OK, so I did just need to build some more stuff and end both turns. That's fine, but the tutorial text totally does not mention that at all. Maybe a little tweaking would help there?

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 05, 2013, 08:35:36 PM »

I've been out of touch with development for a while here, so I may not have anything useful to say. But in general I will mention that I'm the type of person for whom points don't work at all as a motivator. They're just too arbitrary. I can't see much interest in score attack style games. I play through it once and I'm done. I just can't get even remotely interested in playing it again for a high score. If the points actually do something, anything, that's more interesting. If you have to get score > X to unlock a new gun/hat/whatever then that gives some purpose to it. But if, at the end, your only reward for scoring X points is having scored X points... well that's just too arbitrary for me to even understand.

Probably also doesn't help that a lot of games tack on a lot of pointless zeroes to the end of your score. I never did get that concept. That just takes the arbitrary and nonsensical nature of scores and really brings it front and center. But again, I don't really know much about this particular game aside from the basic marketing releases, so maybe there's something I missed that makes this whole diatribe of mine rather pointless. (rimshot)

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Viva La Hexagons!

« on: May 05, 2013, 05:45:13 PM »

It will keep them from complaining about it though, since it doesn't have it.

Never underestimate entitled gamers' ability to complain about things. If it's there, they don't like it; if it's not there, they bemoan the lack of it.

Anyway, good to see progress on the new title coming along. Sorry I've been lurking for a while and not posting, but I'm intrigued to see where these new games are going.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Viva La Hexagons!

« on: May 05, 2013, 05:35:37 PM »

requests to redo the art two weeks before release.

Well, that preempts my thread demanding pre-rendered CGI art assets for everything. 

It won't keep someone on RPS from asking for it.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Official 1.001-1002 "Mouse Aiming For Those Who Stood And Fought" Relea

« on: February 20, 2013, 01:41:11 AM »

With so many variable difficulties, I think this is fine. It lets those who prefer mouse play that way, and crank up the difficulty if they feel that it's removed too much of the challenge. I, for one, turned it on immediately. I've never been a fan of difficulty-through-inconvenience, which is the feel I got with the pure keyboard control scheme. I can aim in all the appropriate directions with pure keyboard controls, but it's just too fiddly for my liking. But for those that love it, go for it; now we have all the options.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Beta .803 "Just Give It To Me Straight, Okay?" Released!

« on: February 10, 2013, 01:52:48 PM »

We need a constant, obnoxious beeping sound whenever our health gets below a certain value.

Going old-school does not mean we have to thave the bad parts in too!

In all seriousness, a low health indicator would be nice.

Just make it an obvious beeping (not annoying, just noticeable) at the start and then fade it to inaudibility, or nearly so, over a few seconds. Some old school games did this. One of the Zeldas maybe? I forget. I always thought it was the best option. You know there's something to worry about, but you don't have to deal with BEEP BEEP BEEP forever if there's no handy health nearby. Although in this game you should almost always be able to go kill something for some extra HP, so it wouldn't be as bad as running around in Zelda 1 listening to a beep for 10 screens because nothing wants to drop a heart. I KNOW MY HP IS LOW, GAME, STOP BLAMING ME FOR IT; YOU'RE THE ONE THAT WON'T DROP A HEAL FOR ME! Ahem.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: Keeping knockback on player spells.

« on: February 06, 2013, 07:53:53 PM »

On the buggy knock-forward problem, wouldn't it be possible (caveat, I have no idea how programming works, you use a keyboard with just a 1 and a 0 on it right?) to have it always calculate the knockback direction based on where the player is, instead of worrying about where the spell is coming from? Or whatever it does now, it's kind of hard to tell. This might look odd in a few scenarios, firing a spell while falling and then having the angle to you change when it hits the monster, but I think overall it would lead to better, more consistent behavior. I know in Valley 1 I died a few times due to a whip or a melee range spell deciding to bounce a monster right into my face.

Whether knockback is kept as-is or relegated to just a few specific spells, having it always knock them in a direction that could be described as 'back' would be an important property, one would think.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Beta .719 "To One Who'll Stand And Fight" Released!

« on: January 24, 2013, 11:19:04 PM »

I was leery of a vocal track. That can go quite bad. So I listened to it, then I listened to it again. I feel silly for doubting Pablo, now. Great stuff. I do somewhat agree that it might be too epic for intro music, though. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it would be fair to tuck it away as end credits music, since that almost always gets skipped.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Rescue Suvivor

« on: January 15, 2013, 09:38:17 AM »

I've been running through the region looking for the survivor myself. I've got to stop assuming that I know how things work from AVWW1. I was convinced I was somehow missing a secret door somewhere that would lead me to them.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2: The backdrops need a lot more detail

« on: December 21, 2012, 11:05:38 PM »

The only thing that bugs me on the backdrops is the lack of parallax when moving vertically. Horizontal is great, and looks fine, but the layers don't move at all when falling down a long drop, for example, and it just looks really weird and off.

That, and that one green background where the hills, or whatever they are, look like giant fleshy blobs. That's just weird.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 alpha v0.704 released!

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:02:24 PM »

Maybe I was getting lucky or just wasn't going to city tiles before or something. But the difference between a desert tile with nothing in it and an abandoned town tile can be something like 5 to 7 minutes of extra running and gunning. It just overstays its welcome a bit, I guess. Probably once the platforming side of the game gets beefed up with some more enemies and behaviors it won't be so bad.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 alpha v0.704 released!

« on: December 19, 2012, 10:28:26 PM »

I don't see a .705 thread yet, but I just started a new game under it and is it just me or are some regions a little too long now? Like, having to go through 3 or 4 buildings with overworld stretches between them to reach the end. Or maybe that's intended? Right now since it's just the same handful of enemies over and over it starts to feel like a chore to do the platforming sections. With almost no exploration like in AVWW1 you're really just trying to get from point A to point B through a level that's effectively on rails. It's rather... boring? Anyone else getting that feeling?