[libGDX] Embersol Mercenaries - Online Shooter (v2.0.2 MMO update released!)

[sonnyg007]

I think there’s a theory out there that says you have multiply your estimate for how long something will take by PI. I originally figured I’d have the first release ready in 2 months, and in the end it took a little longer than 6 so I guess that theory was bang on. There’s not really a lot new from the last update. Just tons of bug fixes and tweaks along with the addition of achievements and in-app purchases.

-Achievements: I wanted to add something cool for paying players so for any in-app purchase you’ll unlock achievements and get rid of advertisements. At each achievement level you’ll get a neat graphic that will show up in game next to your ship. There’s only 3 levels at the moment but I plan on adding more with each update. There’s nothing in game to tell you how to get to the next level so for those of you who look at this post I’ll let you in on the secret.

1. None: Just make you’re first in-app purchase.
2. Pilot Ace: Have a single pilot get 5 enemy pilot kills.
3. Drone Ace: Have a single pilot get 100 AI drone kills.

Nothing too crazy, and let me know if you have any ideas for other achievement unlocks.

-In-app purchase: Servers are expensive so I’ll be trying to find a way to keep them up without making the game pay to win like every other multiplayer game on the app store. While playing you’ll get credit bounties for killing drones or other pilots. You can use the credits to unlock additional pilot slots, create mercenary squads or refresh your pilot energy. Right now I would say it’s a little too tight so hopefully as more people start playing and I get a better idea on server costs I’ll be able to loosen or entirely remove the pilot energy system.

Other than that just lots of fixing up any remaining bugs and tweaking other systems. The game is now released on the Google Play Store so give it a try, play a match, and let me know what you think.

[Herjan]

I tried to download it from the play store, but it said: “This item is not available in your country.” :-\

[sonnyg007]

sorry about that. I originally planned to have the release just in the US since that’s where the servers are. What country are you hailing from?

[Omnicrola]

Downloaded and played a bit on my Moto-G phone. First impressions:

• Good introduction/tutorial, I immediately felt comfortable with what did what. (coordinating my own thumbs is another matter)
• Gameplay is fast paced but graphics are nice and smooth, no hiccups

Suggestions:
The only thing to do currently appears to be doing Contracts? (I may be missing something)

I died, usually after leveling up once or twice, but I seem to have nothing to show for it? I’m all for rouge-likes if that’s what this is supposed to be, but I haven’t noticed anything indicating that.

Also, it is unclear what “cores” are used for (I may have missed that in the tutorial?).

---

Excellent game so far! I applaud you for getting something to the point where it’s actually up on the Play store, there’s a lot of effort involved in just that aspect, on top of writing the actual game itself.

[sonnyg007]

Sorry I missed your reply. Thought I was being notified of new posts on this thread Thanks for the great feedback! The tutorial was just a placeholder for a more dedicated training mission I’m working on but I’m glad it was enough to get you playing. I’ll make sure the final tutorial goes over the rogue-like play and cores. If you go in the personnel tab there’s a small hanger bay section where you can use your cores to unlock new ship graphics. It’s just a basic system, only 2 more ships to unlock and other than the graphics it won’t change the way your ship plays. Eventually the ships will change more than graphics and there will be new weapons to unlock. Also leveling up in game will either give you additional missiles or will upgrade your blasters. You can only get up to level 5 at the moment but you’ll be a killing machine at that point compared to a level 1. Balancing the whole thing will be a constant effort.

Contracts are the only thing to do and there’s only one so not a whole lot of going on. This release was more of a “get it out the door” so I can make sure the netcode and dedicated servers would work well. The last few weeks I’ve been fixing up the few bugs and issues that have cropped up and concentrating more on the gameplay side. So I’m working on the global territory map now, sort of similar to the old Chromehounds game. There will be two corporations you can fight for as either a mercenary squad or freelancer and you can capture territories for them, gain faction points, and use them for new ships or cool stuff. There is also a mysterious third AI faction that will take over zones from time to time so there will be a mixture of pvp and single-player/co-op. I’m hoping to get the first iteration of that out in the next few days!

[jrenner]

I checked it out. Had you released a beta before? I remember playing this before. Could just be my shoddy memory.

I think it’s quite impressive. I’m not real happy about the controls. But that’s a touch screen issue and not really your fault. I generally don’t play action games on mobile because I am never happy with the controls. Having said that, I thought you did a pretty good job with the controls. I had a hard time aiming at some of the smaller ships, but it’s probably supposed to be that way.

I found it pretty hard to dodge shots. Probably just because I’m bad at the game, but also I didn’t quite figure out how dash works.

When firing the gun and also firing a missile, it can be hard to graphically tell the missile has been fired or not.

I was able to shoot at a destroyer from beyond its firing range all the way until it’s death.

Looks like you have implemented IAP yet? I’m assuming something to buy more cores?

It looks like the game is multiplayer. I assume it is a mix of bots + humans?

[sonnyg007]

Awesome, thanks for trying it out! Ya I’ve gone though so many control schemes for the touchpad but I kept coming back to dual stick controls. At one point it was just a one button game. Your ship would either follow or be pushed away from your finger and the guns/missiles would shoot automatically if you were aiming at an enemy. It worked ok but a lot of people that tested it out had trouble with it. Gamepad support is at the top of the to-do list, it should play nice on all those java microconsoles coming out. There was a bug with the dash that will be fixed on the next update. You should just be able to click anywhere between the touchpads to dash.

In the new update destroyers will send out reinforcements after you if you try that But yes a destroyer without escorts will be pretty easy to kill as you can effectively kite them.

In-app purchase are available now. There are two currency types. Credits and Cores. Credits can be purchased but you can earn both in-game. Credits are used for utility upgrades like extra character slots or to create your own squad. Cores are used for anything that can be used to give you an in-game advantage such as new ships and weapons. You can only get Cores while playing so it’s sort of my take on creating an ethical free-to-play game. You can’t purchase anything that will give you an advantage over others players.

It’s a mixture of pvp and pve. Sort of like a MOBA with mobs to help you defend zones. Higher level players have a definite advantage over you and since it’s perma-death pvp you want to pick your fights wisely. At the beginning you’ll have to attack undefended zones, destroying AI opponents, and running away from higher level players hunting you. Once you gain a few levels you can start defending zones from other players and/or hunt them down. It’s not meant to be too hard if you lose your pilot. Going from level 1 to max level takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Also on top of all that there’s a global fight going on. Here’s the latest screenshot for the galaxy map. I’m hoping to get this out in the next couple days.

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/galaxymap.png

Edit: Forgot to say, ya I originally released the alpha as an applet version awhile back so that might be what you remembered. Applets are dying though and I couldn’t get the latest libGDX build to work with them so

[Shuster]

Wheb I try to download it is says that this game is not avaible in my country…

[sonnyg007]

Sorry, the dedicated servers are located in Atlanta so this was just a US release to start. The next update will allow for regional servers so I’ll release it worldwide.

[sonnyg007]

New update is ready for Android and PC/Max/Linux with the help of the excellent JWrapper! The first post on this thread has all the details and download links. I released it last week but some bugs cropped up that I wanted to fix before announcing it. The coolest addition is the galaxy map! Now there is an actual persistent fight going on that you can effect. It’s only at a basic level for now but eventually I will be adding faction points you can gain to unlock unique faction weapons.

I’ve also been making a lot of additions to the gameplay side, adding new attack patterns and abilities for the enemy drones. Fixed up a bunch of crash bugs that the excellent Crashlytics library caught. The conquest game mode is now just two teams and 5 capture zones rather than the three teams and 10 capture zones it was before. It should make the games more tight.

Future Plans.
The next update will concentrate on the pilot upgrades. So actually making the different ships have different play styles. I’m also in the process of adding new weapons. Currently there are three ships (Valkyrie, Minotaur, Fury), one primary weapon (blaster), and one secondary weapon (missiles). The new primary weapons will be a railgun and a laser beam. For secondary there will be a sort of nova bomb type weapon for close quarters.

So hopefully this will let players choose the play style that suits them. If you like playing the sniper then the quick Fury ship paired with a railgun/missile combo would work nice. Or if you like to get up close and personnel I’d go with the Minotaur ship with the extra shields and blasters/nova bomb. Please let me know what you think about the weapons or what you’d like to see in the game!

Screenshots:

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/embersolmercs1.1.0_6.png

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/embersolmercs1.1.0_3.png

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/embersolmercs1.1.0_5.png

Changelog
v1.1.1
-fixed galaxy tab crash bug
-conquest games will now continue if there are no longer any players connected
-added ‘F’ key to fire secondary weapon (for pc/mac/linux builds)
-got rid of rad bar
-decreased core cost of ship unlocks

v1.1.0
-added new galaxy map for missions. Fight in a global war and capture territories!
-added new co-op mission, Outbreak. Survive against waves of enemy drones.
-added new drone, quark. Annoying by themselves but dangerous if they swarm.
-added new drone, entangler. They’ll lob missiles from a distance but break easy once you get close.
-support for regional game servers.
-fixed text input for custom keyboards.
-fixed several crash bugs.
-fixed text dialog blocking touch input.

[sonnyg007]

I guess the new update and PC builds attracted a few new players. I went in-game earlier today to test a few things out and I got to have a short impromptu playtest with a few other players online. Big thanks to Apoptosis, GorrillaOne, and SpiritOfDeath who helped test out a few of the game modes with me. I got a ton of useful feedback and found a lot of things I need to work on and I figured I’d share it here.

Biggest issue was that the game currently puts too many barriers on getting players together. For example the Outbreak co-op game mode has separate match maker queues for the two factions. This combined with a bug that always joined you to the Devastator team when trying to join from squad chat is a critical flaw.
The next update will change the Outbreak mission contract to be from a single third party corporation. So everyone trying to play the Outbreak mission will be put in the same match maker queue regardless of which faction is in control of the zone you’re trying to launch from.

The next barrier was that when a player joins the game they have no idea who is online or what games are being played. If you happen to all join the same squad then you’ll get a list of player’s currently on-line or in-game. Also you’ll get a notification in chat when one of your squad-mates joins a game. This works great if you’re all in the same squad but this needs to be more global.
The fix I’m going to try is to bring back the global chat as the first thing you see when you log in. It will show who’s online, when someone deploys to a game, and a list with the number of players playing each game mode.

Last thing is a few small bugs and tweaks that need to be fixed. Missiles don’t reset the shield regen timer so PVP is just about impossible right now. Two players can just circle each other and the shields just regen too quickly to ever take down another pilot.

Probably the coolest thing I saw was SpiritOfDeath hiding behind a wall during the co-op game mode. The most dangerous part of that mode is right when an enemy wave jumps in and I could see they were using the physics wall to take the brunt of the initial attack. The environment physics right now are just in there as placeholders but for the next update I’ll be rearranging them to provide some actual tactical use.

I learned a lot of useful things, most important the need for actual playtesting. I should be done with this update in the next day or two, then get started on the pilot upgrades.

[sonnyg007]

The game is still in development but I had to take a short break the last few weeks as I finalized a move to Atlanta. Happy to report everything went great, got settled in the new place and the job search is going very well. I did have some time to work on those bugs and issues I posted about in the last post. I didn’t have time to do a whole news release but the new v1.1.2 is live with the global chat rooms up and lots of bug fixes. I’m currently working on the next release which focuses on pilot upgrades and thought I’d show a sneak peak. I’m working on some balance issues and also want to have the first iteration for game pad support up before releasing this one.

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/captialshipbeams.png

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/shipbeams.png

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/newhangar.png

[sonnyg007]

Hey all, so it’s been a long time with no update. I haven’t done a good job with keeping this thread or my dev blog up to date this past two months due to lots of new things going on in the personal side. Found a great new job so I’m now more of a weekend game dev warrior so the time available for this hobby went way down. Here’s the change log for Embersol during these last two months.

v1.1.4
-added HID gamepad support
-new “how-to-play tutorial” tutorial
-crash fixes from ui elements

v1.1.3.2
-fixed beam not disappearing at end of game warpout
-fixed hanger text overflow in tablet
-fixed capital beams graphics

v1.1.3
-New Pilot upgrades. Added thermal lance, capital nukes, proximity mines, and assault drone weapons.
-Updated particle engine
-Added health stats to bar
-Balance changes across the board

Also someone awesome over at indiedb.com thought the v1.1.3 update was good enough for the front page graphic rotation so I got a very nice bump in traffic a few weeks ago. I’ll continue to keep updates coming in at the indiedb page, this thread, and the dev-blog.

So I’ve gotten to the point where it’s time to take a hard look at the project as whole and see what direction to go from here. I could some help so if you’ve been keeping up with this project’s development please chime in. Here’s my thoughts on the game as it is.

The bad:
-The game isn’t very fun by yourself. Players have the most positive things to say if they are able to get into a large co-op or versus game.
-The game isn’t a good smart phone game. Most people that enjoy it are playing on a pc, tablet, and/or with a gamepad.
-There’s not a whole lot to do right now. There’s only two types of missions. Only takes about 5 minutes to get a pilot to max level. Perma-death PVP didn’t turn out quite as well as I thought.

The good:
Great and easy to use multiplayer backend. A lot of time went into creating the StrikeNetwork library(UDP based online replication, completely server side authoritative, encrypted, bandwidth efficient) and the TachyonNetwork(TSL secured, scalable, MMO network library with user accounts, session management, persistence, guilds, chat rooms, in-app purchases)
-One of the only real-time action multiplayer 2D games for mobile devices. There’s a couple other ones out there but from a combat point of view I’ll put Embersol head to head with them any day.

Roadmap:
I think at this point I can consider Embersol as it currently is as a very well done combat prototype. In terms of the metagame a complete redesign is needed. Squads, pilot progression, the galaxy map, weapons/ships, everything. The next few weekends will be mostly design work and I’ll see if I can create a new thread somewhere to get some advice on where to go from here. Thanks for sticking around.

Update

Heya everyone. The last few months have been pretty busy and once again, I haven’t been able to keep this thread and others up to date as much as I wanted. The new update is finally ready after months of hard work setting up a new database and backend, new features, and more bug fixes than I can count. You can grab the details from the links at the top. Hope you guys enjoy. If you have any feedback it would be a huge help.

v2.0.2
-fixed graphical issue for players using Android runtime (ART)

v2.0.1
-fixed merc pilot not appearing to warp out when disconnected
-fixed Flagship health slider not being removed if killed in another zone

v2.0.0
-Added Flagships
-New Research system for flagship and pilot upgrades
-Added DryDock to purchase upgrades for flagships
-New Hangar Bay for pilot upgrade purchases
-Added Tech Level system for player and enemy progression.
-New menu system. Users are always connected in-game with menu overlay.
-FTL drive and warp map to travel the solar system
-Random player discovery. Players in nearby zones will show up on the warp map for you to join.
-New Bridge menu tab with user information and in-system chat.
-Pilot leaderboards changed to weekly updates
-New database and messenging backend

http://www.playembersol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/combat_1_v2.0.0.png