I've included 3 missions, 2 ships and some of the buildings. The balancing is not final and some UI-elements are not finished. Also the music-tracks are in a non-loopable version. When the loop-tracks are ready, I'll update the demo.
So what I want from you?
Criticize it! 'Cause I want your opinion. (If you have nothing to complain and just think it's awesome than feel free to speak your mind, too. ^^ )
What's left to say? have fun.
ceiphren
update 09.09.2012:
I've uploaded a new version of the alpha-demo with some smaller changes (the big ones will take more time):
- missions can now be cancelled from the pause-screen while playing a mission
- escape-button does not terminate the game any more
- new music-track when switching from a mission back to the harbour. Tracks can now loop.
- music will pause while the game is paused
- the last played savegame is now pre-selected. Savegames are now sorted by date
- flycam is deactivated
- gold-drowning-time has inceased
- it is not possble any more to activate all mapping-buttons in the gamepad-menu
- implemented lightning and thunder (see the boss-mission for really bad weather)
Looking great and I’m only at the menu and new game screens
One thing I notice is that you put a lot of working into framing the shots really well… please, please, please turn off the scroll listener for the fly cam… It totally kills the perspective of the shot if you accidentally scroll
Hmmm, I wanted to give it a try from work before leaving for the week-end. It… hmhm started… slowly. about one (1) fps on the title screen. Of course It’s too slow to be playable (awww).
The GPU is a GEForce 6200 with 256 internal RAM. I use an old driver : 260.99
raises arm my fault with the loops, strange time warp here
This is really, really awesome work and I can already see myself playing this for quite a while ^^ Really nice polish and… everything really, hats off. but as you asked for it I of course have some criticism
On my MacBook with a PS3 controller connected the mapping of the buttons is completely different (almost all of them are on the “cross”) and more importantly the axes of the sticks seem to be very strange, it seems like the Y-axis is inverted on both sticks or something like that… oO
Lowering the level of the borders of the map would probably make it look a bit better as the terrain “square” is pretty visible now. As I know you’re not blind you maybe have an issue with this level being 0 already and thus would have to model the whole terrain again at another height? Some solutions might be trying to tweak the view depth of the water (idk what param of the water processor that was… xD) or trying to modify the heightmap so that the values below 0.01 or so lower the terrain exponentially or smth…
The M5 music would be great after a fight in the harbor, maybe with some yelling from a bar or market in between… gonna see if I find something Also what about some cheering people, maybe when you get good hits (is there crits etc.?) the people on your ship could cheer or something. Just to give some audible “pirate” context. And then of course the sea, arrr! A pirate needs to hear the seagulls and the waves crushing to the land, yarr!
Can’t play the game because I can’t control it. I have a Razer Nostromo on my machine, and even removing the Nostromo, disabling the HID driver to remove it from USB Controllers, the game says “controller check” “keyboard uncheck” and I can’t play Music seems really cool btw!
you can configure the inputs in the options-menu. Just click on one of the buttons and it’ll listen to the next pad-input. (and I hope the axis are not inverted. I didn’t think of that in the menu.)
Yeah the terrain-borders are often not “low” enough so that it seems that there’s an hard edge. Shouldn’t be that hard to fix that.
Seagulls and the waves! Great idea. I’m waiting for ye samples. Also the ships in the harbour-menu could make some creaking noices (my chair makes a similar sound. I’ll record that)
@shirkit: as by normen try to configure the pad in the options menu. If this doesn’t work, too you can use the mouse/keyboard. Just uncheck the controls-checkbox in the options-menu. then you can move the ship with WASD and aim with the mouse. Left button is primary fire, right button is rage. (btw seems like that the text is not very clear. It should mean: "Check the checkbox to use the gamepad, uncheck it to use the keyboard/mouse)
Btw. this bothers me really that pc-pads often have different button and axis-layouts. Has anybody an idea how to solve this in a more elegant way?
I wasn’t able to play for long because of the key mappings. It looks very nice, and seems like a fun game to play.
Here’s a list of the problems I encountered :
If you use the ASDZ keys on the title screen, you can move the camera out of the world.
The tutorial says “use the left stick to… use the right stick to…”, but I don’t have a joypad. I had to go to the option to switch to keyboard.
Configuration isn’t saved if you quit the game and you can’t change the key mappings which is a huge problem on foreign keyboards.
When you click on a “pad mapping”, it says listening. You can continue clicking on other buttons to make all of them listening…
On the mission screen, you can’t click on the little swords icons. The “missions labels” aren’t buttons, it’s not instinctive to click them.
The exit button quits the game without a confirmation “Are you sure ?”
The ESC key quits (kills) the game instead of displaying an option menu.
The keys defaults to moving north, east, west, and south. Why not increase speed, turn left, turn right, slow down… I have yet to try with a correct key mapping, but this feels weird. Also, sometimes the boat won’t move if you go east then suddenly west.
Is it normal the gold is sinking so quickly ? o.o
What are the objectives ? Only killing the other boats ? They seem to spawn infinitely (sometimes on the screen).
“You Lost !” - “Horray !” (errr, horray ?)
@ceiphren said:
Seagulls and the waves! Great idea. I'm waiting for ye samples. Also the ships in the harbour-menu could make some creaking noices (my chair makes a similar sound. I'll record that)
I'll check the archives :) Send me those recordings, original sounds with a bit of sound design are always much cooler :)
@ceiphren said:
Btw. this bothers me really that pc-pads often have different button and axis-layouts. Has anybody an idea how to solve this in a more elegant way?
Not really :/ Maybe a few presets? This is my PS3 Controller / MacBook config which might be common for mac as pairing them is very easy and built into the OS.
The configuration seems to be saved but not loaded somehow… Or overwritten by the defaults. I have the same issue saving as @ozonegrif but the controller layout is saved in the settings file, just not loaded when I start again.
Oh man this is so awesome, so polished and juicy. Running it on MacBook (AMD Radeon HD 6770M ), smooth sailing
But since you asked for it
What ozonegrif said: I kept trying to steer (keyboard only, I have no controller) by turning left/right but keys are north/south… I could get used to it of course but it just doesn’t feel natural.
Esc-key really should do the same as selecting quit (i.e. confirm dialog but that is just more polish - no big problem).
Keyboard Unckeck (notice typo, k instead of h)
I also noticed that you could move the camera on the title screen.
Settings (i.e. I’m using keyboard, not controller) is not saved.
Very nice, smooth, good effects, music, gui very polished!!
I have to agree the controls for the keyboard don’t feel so natural though, but perhaps that adds an extra element to the difficulty, or will just plain frustrate players :P.
Music seems really cool btw!
