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Author Topic: PIONEERS  (Read 40672 times)

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eigen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2012, 08:58:00 pm »
Oh, wow, thanks! I really glad you like it. You're right, it could be played for hours because of the pacing. It's quite slow but that's something I enjoy about games myself. And to answer your last question, I'm hoping this could sell a few copies. That's the plan for the future. I'm not really thinking about that right now because the game needs to be made first and that's what I enjoy doing.

Anyway, here's the new build. It's only for Windows right now but I'll get the Mac version up when I get to work tomorrow.

Download for Windows

FRex

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #16 on: September 23, 2012, 09:03:24 pm »
Were you at all inspired by Jagged Alliance?
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eigen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #17 on: September 23, 2012, 09:28:12 pm »
Were you at all inspired by Jagged Alliance?

I can't say that I have been. Why do you ask? Do you see similarities? :)

FRex

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2012, 10:07:58 pm »
Quote
Do you see similarities?
Both pioneers and mercs are in a team under player's control and have items, stats and skills(that are not always combat focused) that make every member useful for certain purpose(guessing that it's so in pioneers). Both games ask you to create first pioneer/merc at the beginning. In both games you explore big map with a very long term goal in mind, manage towns, deal/fight with locals and animals.
It really looks to me like JA2 few hundred years back and without so much violence.
In any case this is great, ja2 is extremely addictive because of these things.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2012, 10:16:13 pm by FRex »
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model76

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #19 on: September 24, 2012, 01:12:39 am »
... I'm hoping this could sell a few copies. That's the plan for the future. I'm not really thinking about that right now because the game needs to be made first and that's what I enjoy doing.
Oh, I think it could sell more than a few copies, if it turns out as good as I think it could.
But you are right: This is not the time to think about that. Thinking about money is not going to produce a good game. Putting love, care, and hard work into making an enjoyable and coherent experience will. Or at least it should.

Anyway, I did some testing, and here are my notes:

Many places in the game, tool tips would be really handy.

It would also be nice if you could skip the intro by hitting space, enter, escape, mouse click, or all of the above.

In the town:
  • It should be better indicated in the starting tutorial that the town is basically a menu. I spent some time wondering how I could move my character.
    You could also think about making the town not a menu.
    I was thinking that it would be fun if you could walk around and do stuff. It shouldn't be turn based, but work more like a single turn with endless moves. You should also keep the menu, so it would not slow the game down further. Exit the tavern after entering with the menu, and your character is now magically standing at the tavern entrance.
    Then I had the thought that if you tried to cut down a tree or harvest someones crops, your movement would freeze, and the town guard would come running and warn you that it was illegal, and if you did it, say, 3 times in a row, he would kill you on the spot. Game over. Sort of a fun little gimmick, but one that would bring immersion.
    You could even expand it further by adding the ability to buy property, once you have the status and resources to do so. Property could give small resource bonuses.
  • You should make it so that the first ship is paid for, and subtract the expense from the starting funds. On my first play, I went shopaholic in the supply store, thinking that I had plenty of funds, only to find out that I could not purchase a ship, and there was no way to progress.
  • You could think about omitting the die roll on the character creation for the first character, since you always get the same total amount of skill points. Having predefined 'good' values for each character class would serve as extra documentation for new players.
    I get that you probably have the randomness to encourage variation, but I think that limiting control over other party members stats would serve that purpose better. What if you had a limited selection of companions at the tavern, with little or no influence on stats?
  • I noticed that the item selection in the supply store menu sometimes acted strangely when switching between categories. Some times, but not always, a different item would be selected when switching category and then back again.
    The easy fix would be to make sure nothing is selected when switching to a new category.

During the expedition:
  • Are you sure it is wise to refer to the turns as days? It leaves a lot of questions that wouldn't come up if you simply call them turns. For me, it takes away from the immersion.
  • I would like an easier way to select characters. It is a lot of clicking to get to the next guy.
  • Next and previous item should be cyclic. It would also be nice with a list to select the item.
  • The 'walk-to' marker is invisible when it is in the fog of war.
  • When eating and drinking, it would be practical with 'eat/drink until full' buttons.
  • When picking up things such as herbs and berries, it would be nice with 'take all' and 'take all I can carry' buttons.
  • And then the game crashed when I was disembarking.

The style and coherency is still the strongest point of the game. It doesn't matter if it's pretty. That is a matter of taste, anyway. As long as it knows what it wants, it will have the ability to engage players. And with its distinct style, this game does so with abundance. I really wanted to explore that world further.

The interface is generally very fiddly, and a lot of my notes are about that. It is a lot of clickety-click, and it gets tiring fairly quickly.
This is probably the weakest area of the game, and what I think you should focus most on improving.
The games style is probably one of the things that makes it hard to get this just right, so be sure that you don't make any compromises here that takes away from that wonderfully coherent style.

You certainly made a lot of progress since that first release, and I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting and playing with the new features.

I hope you can use my notes! :)

eigen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #20 on: September 24, 2012, 07:04:40 am »
Thank you so much! That's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. I'll work trough these this evening since I don't have much time right now. About the crash, is it reproducible? Sounds bad. How do you disembark? Do you choose the action from the sidebar or right-click the terrain? Would you mind help me debug this? I'd send you a couple of exes and see which one at which point crashes since I can't reproduce it on any of my systems.

Quote
I would like an easier way to select characters. It is a lot of clicking to get to the next guy.
You can actually switch between characters using the TAB key. This should be indicated somewhere other than the help window which usually gets little attention :)

Quote
Are you sure it is wise to refer to the turns as days? It leaves a lot of questions that wouldn't come up if you simply call them turns. For me, it takes away from the immersion.
They don't have to be days but since there are seasons (each of which lasts 90 days), time has to advance in rather measurable steps. Or do you mean simply replace 'day' with 'turn'?


About the town. Yes, it's basically just a menu right now. I would love to add more interactivity to it but I didn't want to take on any big developments as it would've postponed the release even more. It's definitely on my TODO list.

And you're right about the interface. There is a lot of clicking I'm hoping to get rid of. I have worked on it in some aspects. Trust me, it was worse in the beginning  ;)


Thanks again for the super feedback. I'll work it trough once I get home.

edit: I fixed a couple of things uploaded again. Made the inventory selection cyclic, changed day/days to turn/turns, added the tip for changing between characters with TAB and made pressing escape skip intro to the point where you make your first character.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2012, 10:43:43 am by eigen »

model76

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #21 on: September 24, 2012, 11:15:01 am »
About the crash, is it reproducible? Sounds bad. How do you disembark? Do you choose the action from the sidebar or right-click the terrain? Would you mind help me debug this? I'd send you a couple of exes and see which one at which point crashes since I can't reproduce it on any of my systems.
I haven't tried to reproduce it yet, but it seemed random. I had been disembarking a number of times in the same fashion.
I chose the action from the sidebar and left-clicked the terrain. That is when the crash happened.
This week is looking to be pretty hectic at the moment, but if you send me the files, I will see if I can make time.

You can actually switch between characters using the TAB key. This should be indicated somewhere other than the help window which usually gets little attention :)
There is a help window?! :)

They don't have to be days but since there are seasons (each of which lasts 90 days), time has to advance in rather measurable steps. Or do you mean simply replace 'day' with 'turn'?
I simply mean replace one word with the other. It removes questions like "Why did my guy just eat 3 kilos of dried meat and sleep for 5 days?"
But now I see that you already made that change. Nice!

About the town. Yes, it's basically just a menu right now. I would love to add more interactivity to it but I didn't want to take on any big developments as it would've postponed the release even more. It's definitely on my TODO list.
I didn't mean to say that you should focus on that right now. It was more of a narrative of what I was thinking while playing the game. I was simply having ideas pop up because I got inspired.

Soul

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #22 on: September 24, 2012, 05:08:46 pm »
this graphics looks very nice i love 8bit <3

eigenbom

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #23 on: September 25, 2012, 09:24:06 am »
Haha, nice to see you on this forum too Eigen. :)

eigen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #24 on: September 26, 2012, 10:30:37 am »
this graphics looks very nice i love 8bit <3

Thanks! But in fact it's 4 bits graphics (4 sets with 4 colors each, 16 in total = 4 bits) ;D


Haha, nice to see you on this forum too Eigen. :)

You too. I've seen Moonman around. He's cool cause he likes SFML like I do.

axus

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #25 on: October 02, 2012, 07:13:50 pm »
Congrats, I enjoy seeing a fun game develop.

eigen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #26 on: October 03, 2012, 05:08:52 pm »
Congrats, I enjoy seeing a fun game develop.

Cheers, mate! Let's hope we see the fun game get completed eventually :)

Haikarainen

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #27 on: October 03, 2012, 09:24:20 pm »
Looks really impressive, cant try it since im on linux. Can I have a go with porting it to linux? Contact me via PM/Mail if youre interested, I'm not new to neither C++, SFML nor maintaining crossplatform software.

If you are interested, I'm really interested in maintaining an ArchLinux AUR-package as well (a package in the arch user repository).

Mario

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #28 on: October 25, 2012, 03:44:17 pm »
Serious suggestion: Add this game to Steam Greenlight and Desura, even if it's meant to be freeware. :) Once done so, let us know to vote on it - or did you do it already? Haven't had a too close look yet.

thePyro_13

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Re: Pioneers
« Reply #29 on: October 25, 2012, 03:53:23 pm »
Serious suggestion: Add this game to Steam Greenlight and Desura, even if it's meant to be freeware. :) Once done so, let us know to vote on it - or did you do it already? Haven't had a too close look yet.

It already is on Greenlight. Though it's only in the concepts section, it's still good for a look in and vote. :D

link.

 

anything