When Orcs Attack!
by Jon Frisby · 09/06/2007 (9:13 am) · 12 comments
Just to follow up Magnus' blog:
Mac
Windows
The game is currently about 1.5 weeks away from shipping. Got a few bugs to fix, some animations to calibrate and some game balance work to do still but it's just about feature-complete* and ready to go. The download is just a bit on the heavy side, because of debug symbols being included. Naturally this won't be the case for the final release.
* - Ok, so it doesn't check for new versions yet and the high score display isn't done.... (Magnus! I'm looking in your direction!)
Mac
Windows
The game is currently about 1.5 weeks away from shipping. Got a few bugs to fix, some animations to calibrate and some game balance work to do still but it's just about feature-complete* and ready to go. The download is just a bit on the heavy side, because of debug symbols being included. Naturally this won't be the case for the final release.
* - Ok, so it doesn't check for new versions yet and the high score display isn't done.... (Magnus! I'm looking in your direction!)
#2
it doesnt make any sense
my towers react strange, you have weird descriptions for the enemy, very unpleasent mouse action
the fire tower doesnt even work
example:
"Mini electric one, imune to lightning" ...... "use lightning to kill them all"
"Orc Hero, slow and tough"<- this guy was insanely fast :S
the maze levels are really weird and dont work..
also, why do the orcs only come out on the third wave?
and then they come out with the numbers of 3 waves at the time...
and another question, why have you decided to make the player go through phases, the whole thrill of tower defense is to kill the enemys fast before another wave begins while i could let all the waves come at a time or do it real slow, when it is up to me, i dont feel excitement, while i am a big fan of tower defense games...
and i'm wondering why you cant change the camera, i mean, in magnus his blog, his showed off some pretty neat models, but whats the use of nice models when i only can view them from far away
and about the mouse action, it is pretty anoing that i cant deselect my current action with the right mouse button... its very unnatural to press esc or press to button every time...
and lastly, if the games is this buggy why did you even release it....
i was thinking that it is maybe because im playing the windows version or something, because i doubt Josh played this game for a hour and a half with the trouble i encoutered...
EDIT: PS. you said the download was on the heavy side, but the windows version is only 13mb.. that doesnt sound really heavy to me
09/06/2007 (2:24 pm)
wow,this game is so buggy :Sit doesnt make any sense
my towers react strange, you have weird descriptions for the enemy, very unpleasent mouse action
the fire tower doesnt even work
example:
"Mini electric one, imune to lightning" ...... "use lightning to kill them all"
"Orc Hero, slow and tough"<- this guy was insanely fast :S
the maze levels are really weird and dont work..
also, why do the orcs only come out on the third wave?
and then they come out with the numbers of 3 waves at the time...
and another question, why have you decided to make the player go through phases, the whole thrill of tower defense is to kill the enemys fast before another wave begins while i could let all the waves come at a time or do it real slow, when it is up to me, i dont feel excitement, while i am a big fan of tower defense games...
and i'm wondering why you cant change the camera, i mean, in magnus his blog, his showed off some pretty neat models, but whats the use of nice models when i only can view them from far away
and about the mouse action, it is pretty anoing that i cant deselect my current action with the right mouse button... its very unnatural to press esc or press to button every time...
and lastly, if the games is this buggy why did you even release it....
i was thinking that it is maybe because im playing the windows version or something, because i doubt Josh played this game for a hour and a half with the trouble i encoutered...
EDIT: PS. you said the download was on the heavy side, but the windows version is only 13mb.. that doesnt sound really heavy to me
#3
My fire towers work fine.
My orcs come out on the first wave at correct intervals.
And like he said, the game has bugs, but is definitely playable.
Only thing I would suggest is adding a visible timer for when the next wave is coming. And something like making the last level the only one where you can't use teleport, because its really easy to just teleport over and over again until the orc walkers are dead. I'll try to find some more things if you guys want.
And again, awesome game guys.
09/06/2007 (3:47 pm)
I'm on windows and I really didn't experience many of these bugs at all. My fire towers work fine.
My orcs come out on the first wave at correct intervals.
And like he said, the game has bugs, but is definitely playable.
Only thing I would suggest is adding a visible timer for when the next wave is coming. And something like making the last level the only one where you can't use teleport, because its really easy to just teleport over and over again until the orc walkers are dead. I'll try to find some more things if you guys want.
And again, awesome game guys.
#4
09/06/2007 (5:22 pm)
@Florian: I'll look into these problems. The right-mouse button idea is a good idea -- I'll see about adding it. The "Immune to lightning. Use lightning..." is a copy & paste / search & replace error. Good catch. Not being able to change the camera is a usability decision; since this is a casual game, the fewer controls there are to understand, the easier the learning curve. Can you explain a bit more what sort of issues you're having with the fire tower, the timing of enemies, and the maze levels? On every machine I've tried, all of these things work exactly as they are supposed to.
#5
I think a zoom in function would be nice to see more of the art. :D
Fun game and nice scope
09/06/2007 (10:18 pm)
The game is lots of fun, I havent experienced any bugs meself, sofar its been very solid. I like.I think a zoom in function would be nice to see more of the art. :D
Fun game and nice scope
#6
09/06/2007 (11:10 pm)
can't build anything on my mac :( i can see the markers for building but when I click just nothing happens... also spells etc. don't work... i can click icons etc.
#7
09/07/2007 (6:23 am)
@Christian: What version of MacOS X are you running? What CPU are you on? (PPC or Intel) Video card? Can you send me your console.log file (should be under /Library/Logs/Console/501/) after attempting to play a game?
#8
EDIT:
ok, this is the vid(3 min, 20mb, 640*480), i hope i made my problems clear...
it handles all the problems you asked
the video is made with fraps so i had 6 different pieces of 30sec video, so every 30sec there is a slight glitch
www.speedyshare.com/850518371.html
and about the learning curve, i don't think the game will get much more complicated with just simple camera controls, for example, i would like to see me tower from close killing loads of orcs in stead of from far away,
and i'm talking about something really simple, like, scolling you mouse wheel(or page up/page down) for zooming in and go with your mouse to the screen edges to pan, and make a button like home or something for reseting the camera, this is really simple, and it wouldnt even affect the learning curve, but it would make the game a bit more fun, to really see what your towers are doing, makes the player feel more involved i think
and the final problem i was thinking of is that its maybe my rig or something anyway, ill post it for you
VIA Technologies, Inc.
Intel Celeron 2.4GH
768MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (latest drivers as far i know)
Windows XP
so, i hope these things get fixed cause it seems a fun game to play :)
and one final suggestion, the mana regeneration rate should be way lower, or the mana costs should be higher, its a bit to easy to use spells at the moment
09/07/2007 (8:12 am)
this is really weird, ill make a vid...EDIT:
ok, this is the vid(3 min, 20mb, 640*480), i hope i made my problems clear...
it handles all the problems you asked
the video is made with fraps so i had 6 different pieces of 30sec video, so every 30sec there is a slight glitch
www.speedyshare.com/850518371.html
and about the learning curve, i don't think the game will get much more complicated with just simple camera controls, for example, i would like to see me tower from close killing loads of orcs in stead of from far away,
and i'm talking about something really simple, like, scolling you mouse wheel(or page up/page down) for zooming in and go with your mouse to the screen edges to pan, and make a button like home or something for reseting the camera, this is really simple, and it wouldnt even affect the learning curve, but it would make the game a bit more fun, to really see what your towers are doing, makes the player feel more involved i think
and the final problem i was thinking of is that its maybe my rig or something anyway, ill post it for you
VIA Technologies, Inc.
Intel Celeron 2.4GH
768MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (latest drivers as far i know)
Windows XP
so, i hope these things get fixed cause it seems a fun game to play :)
and one final suggestion, the mana regeneration rate should be way lower, or the mana costs should be higher, its a bit to easy to use spells at the moment
#9
09/08/2007 (2:40 am)
@Florian: I believe the problem is an issue of localization. Specifically, I think that because you have commas as the separator between the whole and fractional portions of numbers that a number of parameters are being parsed incorrectly. I will attempt to address this and upload a new build later today or tomorrow.
#10
09/08/2007 (4:04 am)
ok, i didnt understand much of what you just said, but i hope it helped :P 
#11
Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the game ... I did, however have an issue ... and i have this issue with most tower defense games, haha ... with the way the the tiling works out ... things don't appear to use a real tile system ... like a power of X based thing ... where say 4 small tiles can make 1 large tile space, etc ... the 'portals' on either side seemed to using one scale, where as the towers were using another ... so things didn't line out the way i would have liked them too ...
Great game so far, wish you the best of luck with it ....
09/08/2007 (6:29 pm)
just gave the game a quick play -- not bad, there's some issues I had with it ... like in medium mode, things were a tad bit too hard ... but in easy mode, they were WAY TOO easy ... to me, the complexity of the modes seemed a bit off balance ...Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the game ... I did, however have an issue ... and i have this issue with most tower defense games, haha ... with the way the the tiling works out ... things don't appear to use a real tile system ... like a power of X based thing ... where say 4 small tiles can make 1 large tile space, etc ... the 'portals' on either side seemed to using one scale, where as the towers were using another ... so things didn't line out the way i would have liked them too ...
Great game so far, wish you the best of luck with it ....
#12
09/08/2007 (7:17 pm)
@David: You're absolutely right about game balance. I've devoted about 25-30% of the development time to it and it still needs work. I'll have a blog post shortly about how I plan on solving that problem and what attempts I've made so far. As for the grid system -- it's a real grid system. The basic game modes have a 24x24 grid and the portals are 8x2, with the middle 4x2 being where enemies and enter/exit. Entirely the same scale. In fact, from the standpoint of the code, the portals are just another type of building -- nothing at all special about them.
Torque Owner Josh Caba