Thanks guys for the responses. In the last 15 hours my issue tracker has nearly doubled.
For the next two weeks I’m on holidays. After that I’ll deal with the problems.
greets
ceiphren
This is a great looking game 
Here is some things I found.
- I can’t run it in fullscreen in my native resolution, 2560x1440
- I would like to see a “Sure you wanna quit?” when pressing escape.
- When opening a saved game, the last saved game could be pre selected
- Maybe a healthbar on the ships?
- There are no shadows!!
- Music is not paused when the game loses focus, might be desired behavior though…
First and foremost --Thanks for sharing your creation.
Great job! Loads of fun : D It seems like the most prominent bugs have already been rooted out… Here’s some quick thoughts!
*Needs more chair sounds, other than that the sounds and music are great.
*The combat system is solid, easy to understand. It interfaces with the player in a very understandable / well portrayed manner. Oh, also… its satisfying to blow stuff up. I do like how you’ve represented the fact that ships do not really have very fine control over shooting. One click and the ship proceeds to spew out cannonballs for the next few seconds. It is a much better representation than one click for every cannonball fired (this certainly diminishes the Skinner Box factor that most loot games have…).
- The Mission system and interface provides a clear explanation of what needs to be done, and what the end conditions are . Satisfying to kill / loot, as both the mission itself and the incentive of improving your ship provide a reason for you to do so. I can see some interesting and challenging missions being built off from what you have so far.
*The GUI is very polished for an indie game. Easy to navigate, and understand what all of the stats/buildings/buttons do, while at the same time providing a thematic aesthetic (not a simple thing to accomplish!). The thing that stood out the most was the “Gold Orb” that fills up when collecting gold, as well as the numerical display of gold between orbs. Is getting X gold a prominent part and requirement of every mission? Are two forms of representation needed?
*Are there any mechanisms in place to prevent people from “farming” the infinite enemy ships that are in missions? Having them drop gold is a very good incentive (and hopefully a permanent one), for players to put on their blaster hat and truly enjoy the combat system you’ve crafted. The infinite ships also add a layer of complexity to combat such that even if you are outrunning all of your opponents and peppering them with cannonballs (which is easy to do if you put points in speed), new ones will appear in front of you ready to load you full of metal balls. But… a lot of gamers would love to exploit the fact that the infinite ships drop gold and ruin any difficulty curve you’ve painstakingly crafted, which admittedly is their choice in how they play your game and should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or 1/10 a grain).
Though… If you had the random ships and bosses generate their stats dynamically based on the player’s ship level. Any form of leveling up for a player still provides that priceless “ding” feeling and allows them to murder ships endlessly for fun, but basically turns it into a customization of play-style and skill rather than trying to increase their power faster than the opponent increases theirs.
Very cool and looks well polished from the video. Downloading now and will post some feedback soon.
Alrighty mate, graphics are wonderful and I had no technical issues arise. Went through all the missions with success.
Pros:
Has replay value, I can redo missions (I assume this is intended?).
Visually pleasing, well placement and use of objects and graphics.
Action packed as I am always getting bombarded by enemy ships.
AI actually has some intelligence, but could use some tweaking (maybe as a difficulty setting?).
Suggestions:
Being a PC game, which I am assuming is your target market, should have more support for the keyboard. I found it difficult to move around and navigate, especially with the large ship. Maybe even offer an option for a Flycam that follows the ship and a key mapping that suites it?
Changing through the resolution settings I noticed the UI didn’t re-size or wrap the text making it difficult to read and understand some of the options.
And of course, more content! Yes, I know it’s a demo, but I plan to play your game again! Maybe incorporate some lore or even a story line to each mission.
Congratulations on your accomplishment and look forward to each update 
Played on:
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
AMD Phenom II X4 945 Processor (4 Cores) @ 3Ghz
8 Gigs DDR3 RAM
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1Gig GDDR5
From the video it looks really polished now (compared to last time I tried it)
I tried it on some crappy PC (with Intel integrated card). Since it doesn’t have GLSL 1.2 I got an error “The caps GLSL120 are required …” for “Advanced Water” material. Is it possible to use the simple water effect if GLSL 1.2 isn’t available?
Very nice trailer, I wish I could have those models for myself. Is your game open-sourced?
Wow… Really nice, I enjoyed the demo a lot. Runs smoothly… Nice music
Some bugs I’ve noticed:
I farmed the 2nd mission for some gold, upgraded one stat on the small ship and then got the bigger ship and upgraded all the stats to 3-4 grade. Then I tried swaping the ships really quickly and boom, all my upgrades on the bigger ship were gone, I had the same one upgrade like on the smaller one. However in the right stats window I could still see the upgrades (Health 40+25, speed 17+5, damage 1+1.2 [don’t remember exact numbers]). Then I tried buying another $50 upgrade and yea, it overrode my previous upgrade in this particular stat.
Scrolling through the resolutions in settings - when I use the scrolling wheel I’m instantly on the end/start of the list (happens in my project as well, so I guess it’s nifty issue)
{I5 2500k, 12GB, gtx460, win7 64}
Greetings,
awesome responses. Thank you all very much. Also I’m very happy that you guys enjoyed the demo.
@emanresu: the left orb isn’t for the gold-amount. It’s the amount of rage. You can load up the rage-orb by hitting enemies. When the rage-orb blinks you can unleash a heavy attack.
@alberto.cartagena: Sorry, the project is not open source. But if you have questions about modelling/texturing feel free to ask.
@JohnBaker: I’m planning 17 levels including 5 boss fights for the final version. Also there will be a bigger ship, more buildings and more mission-types including escorts.
I’ll go take a holiday-nap for another week. Than the development of pirateHell will continue with a refreshed developer.
btw. pirateHell got some attention. I had an interview with the guys from betatracker.
So keep yer eyes to the horizon, lads. Adventures and booty awaits us.
ceiphren
Greetings,
I did a small update on the demo. Please see the first post for details.
ceiphren
@ceiphren, going to try out for Steam Greenlight?
@memonick
think that’s inevitable. ^^
Good luck
News from the frontline:
- added a new boss
- changed the keyboard/mouse-control (feels much better now and it is easier to control.)
- added new weather effects
- added bloom-filter (and an option to turn it off. Damn, the filter consumes resources like me coke’n cookies…)
- fixed an heavy crash while changing the resolution
- fixed an heavy bug on the upgrade-screen (thanks to @nuclycz for the report)
So what’s left to do?
More bosses, more missions, more stuff at all. I think the technical base is strong enough. Now it’s time to create all the cool content to bring pirateHell from an alpha-demo to a “game”.
I haven’t uploaded a new demo-version yet. But there will be one.
greets
ceiphren
3 Likes
This is so cool I’m afraid to play it though… I’ll never get anything done if I do… ah screw it… I’ll have at it tomorrow.
I so want to play this game, really looking forward to a new demo. I hope ceiphren will do the minecraft trick and sell alpha versions so I can become a customer and with loud indignation demand that it should be finished and quickly now
The pirate armada evolves. And some agents were able to gather information about them.
They say: “One of these swashbuckling scums is a member of the church called “The Church”. He is a fanatic, driven by voices he thinks there are from God. Others say he’s just crazy like hell. Or why would he build an entire church and a crypt on his ship?”
9 Likes
wow…you’re good.
wow indeed… Love the little story that the model tells all by itself. Makes you really want to hear the extended version of the story snippet that accompanied it.
Very impressive modelling, very impressive indeed