Mmm, I like that idea Orangy. I will muse upon it some more over next week.
Cas 
So, here are my comments, I basically only have good ones:
- immersion is awesome, both in graphics and sound!
- graphics, like in previous games are very unique (you seem to like dark ambiance right? ;)). Particle effects are really great!
- robots design is a bit to simplistic in my opinion. A bit of more details would be great.
- the sound volume is too high by default. That’s what I saw in the config screen and it reflects when playing. It’s really loud!
- playing instructions: do you plan to have them? Even some tutorial would benefit some players, if you target the casual market.
- if you could also display the game scenario at the beginning with some images it would be great. Those images are just polishing but it would be great nevertheless.
My config (yes I bought a new laptop! ;D):
- Vista home premium
- 2 gigs of RAM
- nvidia 8600M GT 256 megs
- Java 6 update 5
We’re going to add a few more hint screens in there (there are already 3 help screens in there - one of them, the main help, pops up the first time you try to play; the other two pop up when it realises you don’t know what you’re doing). If you’ve got any ideas for hints do tell.
Cas
A very good example I have in my mind is in the game Super Granny in Paradise. I know it’s not the same type of game but both are action games actually. I really like this approach because it explains one step at a time how to play the game. The tutorial asks you via voice to accomplish a task related to the way you’re playing the current level. The down side of this is development costs. It’s longer time to implement than using static text mixed with icons over the current level. This later approach is widely used in Super Mario Galaxy (which is one of the best games of all time in my opinion by the way. I bought it).
Another approach, the one I’m envisioning in my current game, is again to display static text mixed with icons for each game element one at a time. Each text is displayed in a translucent window (if necessary) and is displayed next to the game element with optionally an arrow pointing that element. To continue to the next text, the player must press enter or a key.
Please could you support (french) AZERTY keyboards too? It is very simple. I have done this for TUER, you should have a look:
http://tuer.tuxfamily.org/project.html#configuration
Works like a charm on Mac OS X Leopard with Java 5. One thing I noticed though is that you can see the tiles pop up left and right if you move fast enough. Could be that this has something to do with widescreen though.
Yes, actually some of the bigger diffuse light textures pop into existence. I could solve this with more offscreen map rendering.
Cas
Really great game!
(I like the controls, It’s like my own game gunslinger)
Works very nice on Macbook pro with leopard.
Ideas:
Make it a bit more factory-like. Have machines that actually constructs things that roll by on a conveyr belts.
The machines are dangerous with laser beams, saws etc (like in that starwars movie).
You can actually see things beeing made along the belt.
It gives negative points if you destroy what is beeing constructed.
Somewhere there should be a bot-factory. When you are within 5 meters it constructs a new droid every 5 seconds.
That could be your bonus levels. On the first one you have 3 or 4 droid factories that produce a droid every 20 seconds or so. You have to destroy all the droids and the factories within a time limit to get the bonus. Also you don’t get any points for killing droids on the bonus levels, you just get points for the factories and a big bonus for destroying everything on time.
[quote]I absolutely, with a passion, hate the change you made so that droids lose “energy” over time.
It forces a player into switching robots all the time and removing the whole purpose of upgrading the droids.
[/quote]
I second that. There must be lots of better solutions to this. How about:
- limit the number of armour upgrades (should be real easy).
- limit the number of overall upgrades (also easy)
- change the damage system so that all weapons can hurt everything, even if it is very little (I soo hate it when you have a regular blaster and the turrets are immune). But I realise that this could be somewhat complicated.
- make the armour upgrades degrade when the droid is hit, even if there is no damage (this, I think, is the best solution).
Even if you manage to keep a bot alive a long time, eventually you will find a really cool one that you just have to try.
One more thing (unrelated to this). I have found a really good way of disposing the bosses. Run into them and then they will die. I’m not sure what happens but it works. Almost to easy.
The game isn’t running anymore. But I guess you know that. I soo wanted to play it…
Should be working just fine… maybe you need to clear your cache.
Cas
I made it to lvl 60 and diead against the second boss. ;D
I hade a bot with max everything a long time. It’s the one outlawed in G12 countries. Shots a continous spread stream of red bullets. Very very good. Sharp bullets better than bouncing. but eventually I did not find a super health in time, a sad moment. :’(
After lvl 50 or so performance were bad sometimes when there were a lot of bullets flying at the same time. And some levels drop you in the middle of the shit, you only try tom evade the storm of bullets against you and franticly try to blast everyone and everything. It’s good once in a while to clear a big army.
I really like this game. But, I kind of miss a story a little bit. It only have to be a text and image every tenth level or soo. But something that makes me fight against a goal. Not just wandering around and mop everything up.
Markus - what’s the spec of your machine? It’d be nice to know in case I need to do a bit more optimisation!
I might put in a few seconds’ delay before the enemies start blasting to give you a chance when you’re surrounded. However after level 50 the game really is trying to kill you 
We did also think of sticking some story screens in every few levels but I think we’re just going to get it released as soon as we can now because we’re really broke!! Maybe we’ll put some in later.
Cas
3GHz Intel with 2Gb RAM and nvidia 6xxx-something (agp). I have problems with one year old (and newer) 3D-intense games. I have to play them at lowest possible quality. For instance, bioshock was a real pain to play.
It looks like every shot leaves a trail of particles that slowly fades (at least it looks like that with sharp bullets). On a danger stage when all the opponents are shooting autofire there are a lot of bullets. Also, in a tiny space with the G12-forbidden bot and bouncing bullets the room is quickly filled with bouncing shots. Lots of particles.
Wow I must say that game is cool/addictive for a basic game.
Hmm… you shouldn’t really be having any performance problems at all - your machine is somewhat faster than my 4 year old rig here (2.5GHz and 6800GT) and I never get near slowing down.
Cas
Nice game - like the style and graphics. Quick feedback is that it’s very difficult to capture a droid with a keyboard/trackpad setup - placing the cursor becomes quite a bit harder. Maybe have an option to lock onto the nearest enemy when capturing?
g
Works like a charm on my 1.8Ghz Athlon desktop with 512MB and Ti4200.
I absolutely love the sounds and music, and DAMN is it addictive!
Try using the space bar for transfer mode and see if it’s better.
Cas