First off, thank you to everyone who has participated in the public play test of Proelium II for the past few days. It's been a lot of fun and I'm very happy with how the game has turned out. Despite having coded the entire thing, I found myself having just as much fun as people who were playing it for the first time, which is a great sign.
Now that we've determined that the game is stable and that there aren't any game-breaking bugs, I'm going to shift my focus to finishing things up for a full public release. This could take anywhere from a few days days to a couple weeks. During this time I'm not planning on hosting public play sessions on any sort of regular schedule.
One of my concerns is that the convoluted BYOND Guild system is getting in the way of new players finding this game. I'm wide open to suggestions for getting word about Proelium II out there to the majority of the BYOND player base, if that's even possible anymore.
Today will be the final day of planned testing, and the server is live right now! We have a brand new map and mode to test out today.
http://www.byond.com/games/SilkGames/Proelium2
ID:49076
 Oct 8 2008, 10:46 am
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My thoughts on the game so far:
Definitely plays a little different from Proelium; I think the slower pace necessitates fewer instagib abilities, to make room for strategy involving placement and usage. Grenades need to be toned down a tiny bit or given a repercussion; if the thrower can be damaged by his own nades he'll be less likely to toss them willy-nilly, which causes some pretty brutal havoc right now. Guided scuds are in the same boat. I understand that turrets are pretty strong in P1, and so they need an effective counter, but their strength was partially accounted for by the fact that people have learned how to perfectly place P1 turrets at this point in time. Turrets appear to be much less potent here, so an instakill that can turn corners seems too destructive. With that said, I like a lot of new playstyles that are emerging; much of combat hinges on "should I engage in melee or not...", and I will realistically be able to give out heals to my teammates as a healer. :) That's what I was able to gather from my short playtest. I hope you host a lot more! | |
I agree with most of your assessments, although I feel that Guided Scuds are just right. To balance the addition of the Guided Scuds, I've made the Engineer's Force Fields *much* more effective. A good Engineer is a force to be reckoned with!
That said, it might be good to give level 3 turrets enough hp to withstand more than one direct hit. Tom - I've got a couple ideas bouncing around in my head about how to improve the guild setup. I'll write up a post about it and see what you and others think! | |
Heh, I didn't get much of a chance to test out the durability and firepower of the engineer's creations, mostly because I was in a rush to try out all of the classes in the short chance I had, and also because I'm not secure enough in my masculinity to play a fugly chick.
Can you give a rundown of the subscriber classes(and also maybe subscription methods and cost)? I'm interested to know if we have any suppliers, hunters, or druids. | |
Zaole wrote:
Can you give a rundown of the subscriber classes(and also maybe subscription methods and cost)? I'm interested to know if we have any suppliers, hunters, or druids. Regarding subscriber classes, I'd give my left nut to see a class with the ability to hack enemy turrets, thus turning them on the team which built them. Granted, it'd have pretty situational use(and would thus be pretty useless in most games), but frankly, I can think of nothing more entertaining(or, if you're on the recieving end, humiliating)than watching that turret implacement the other team pain-stakingly set up suddenly change direction and open fire on their creators. | |
Reinhartstar wrote:
Regarding subscriber classes, I'd give my left nut to see a class with the ability to hack enemy turrets That's a really, really good idea! The trick would be implementing it in such a way that didn't make it too easy to hack the turrets. Actually, you've just given me a million ideas as to how I could make an entire dedicated "Hacker" class! Hmmm... | |
Zaole wrote:
Heh, I didn't get much of a chance to test out the durability and firepower of the engineer's creations, mostly because I was in a rush to try out all of the classes in the short chance I had, and also because I'm not secure enough in my masculinity to play a fugly chick. Was playing as one today, they are a difficult class to play as effectively. Firstly you have to pick a good location for the turret, one that will let it see some action, but wont get it instantly killed. Then you have to make a turret and upgrade it... Which is a long and annoying process. Unless you have a Volt Master on hand you will have to run back and forwards 3-4 times to build a turret (recharging energy), fully upgrade it then use a force field to protect it. This can take way to long, and half of the time a turret that is not fully upgraded/protected is easy pickings for the enemy, so it will be quickly destroyed. Setting up two turrets in useful locations is annoyingly hard, and I have never managed to do it. As for their firepower. It is nothing amazing, and in a 1 on 1 fight against most classes they would quickly lose. But due to the fact that they can fire diagonally they usually get in 1-2 quick hits before being attacked and if protected by a force field can usually kill people before being damaged much. However, classes with ranged attacks that can get in a straight line of the turret can easily destroy them by staying just outside of the turrets range and attacking it. They are a potentially useful class, but getting them set up so they can become useful is a difficult task (especially without a Volt Master). Also, they are kind of a boring class to play as. If and once you get two turrets set up and in a good position they have very little else to do but hide in a corner and not die. Except for the occasional replacing a force field/repairing a damaged turret. Though, I managed to quickly set up one turret in a good location with force field, and it racked up some 10 or so kills, and didn't get damaged once or it's force fields destroyed... The rest of the match I spent trying to set up another turret, without much success. I'd imagine getting them both set up in a good location would make the rest of the match pretty dull. | |
Zaole wrote:
Can you give a rundown of the subscriber classes(and also maybe subscription methods and cost)? I'm interested to know if we have any suppliers, hunters, or druids. My goal is to make the new classes as unique as possible, just as I've done with the eight basic classes. Some of the abilities from the Proelium I sub classes will probably appear in one form or another. The cost of the subscription will be $5, the same as the original game. Subscribing will give you access to the 4 subscription classes and the (hopefully) forthcoming map editor. | |
Probably the best way to get exposure is to get your game into one of the main BYOND guilds (wherever Proelium I is currently) and that way it'll show up on the front page.
[edit] Ah, I see you have it in BYOND Action already. So it should be in the regular banner and game-front-page rotation, as well as the frequently-visited "more games" list. The appearance of the game will now be correlated with its rank, so as more people favorite it it'll get more exposure.