Center Space Alpha - please try

Ancalagon

Hi everyone,

I'm Ancalagon, founder of Heart Attack Games, small company (really just me and some contractors who have helped out) based in Joburg.

For the 13 months or so, I've been working on Center Space, which is a turn based strategy game, in which the player commands teams of giant robots outfitted with heavy weaponry. Each mech, or MCU in in-game parlance, is heavily customizable. Its inspired by an old Windows 95 game, Missionforce: Cyberstorm.

Alpha is here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3qEBWt5wYloWkRQSTZSczRlNlk/edit?usp=sharing

You'll need the Direct X redist:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3qEBWt5wYloUzVXc1d6c1A4clU/edit?usp=sharing

OpenAL:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3qEBWt5wYlod1lGZ2lfOFNYOFU/edit?usp=sharing

And the VC redist:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3qEBWt5wYloeGx2dzZZSDVqc00/edit?usp=sharing

Some of you may already have one or more of the above, in which case, you can obviously skip them. Note that DirectX redist refers to the SDK - most of you wont have this.

What else can I say?

Its the third game I have started development on, the other two never saw the light of day. Its by far the most complete.

The gameplay features are mostly there - obviously, it would need a lot of fine tuning and balancing. I imagine there is still a lot to be done gameplay wise!

Give it a shot and let me know what you guys think.

dislekcia

Any particular reason you can't lump all of those together into one installer? Or smack some video up for people whose dev environments are currently a little too fragile to risk messing with DirectX?

Keen to see the game. What sort of feedback are you looking for?

Ancalagon

No reason, just that its still an alpha, so I havent written an installer.

Well, gameplay feedback. What potential does it have?

Fengol

I'm downloading it now. Like @dislekcia said, can chance you can upload a gameplay video?

Ancalagon

Thanks for trying it out guys.

I'll see if I can do that tonight.

Fengol

I started up the game and I have NO IDEA what I'm doing! There should be a readme.txt or something at least tell me what the game is and what the controls are.

I got asked to create a profile and then pick a faction (but I don't know what the factions are).

Then I got to this screen and nothing except the Back button worked.



I eventually got into the game but all I got was...


I think you definitely need to update your first post with a little bit about what the game is, what the controls are and definitely add a gameplay video because you're in Alpha and user's aren't sure what they're supposed to see.

Looking forward to more!

Ancalagon

the MCU Bay is the least developed of the GUIs. What you would need to do, is select an MCU, and then click purchase. Because you didnt select an MCU, you couldnt purchase it.

There is a bug with the camera sometimes - it spawns at the origin instead of overlooking your MCUs. Zoom out using the mousewheel to see them.

EDIT: A little more detail...

So, first please note the camera bug - apologies, I forgot about that one. When you start the game, zoom out a little to see everything. Use either the keyboard or mouse scrolling to find your MCUs - you can also zoom in to move the camera, a bit like Supreme Commander. Also, hold the right mouse button and drag to rotate the camera.

Gameplay wise, you can move your MCUs a fixed amount each turn, based on the amount of energy they have left in their reactor, the efficiency of their drives, and the terrain you are moving over. Moving up and down terrain costs more energy. Weapons use your battery for energy first, but will use your reactor if no battery energy is available. If you can see red squares in the fog of war, that is an enemy - that is a radar ping. Move closer to it to target it and see what it is.

Select a square to see the route that your MCU will take to get there. Click on the target square again to start moving. Squares displayed in green are squares that you can reach this turn - squares in red are outside of your movement capability for this turn. Your MCU will automatically stop moving if it detects an enemy.

Once you find an enemy, select it to target it. Note the enemy information display at the bottom right - in particular, note shields and health. You must drop an enemy's shields first before you can damage it - use energy weapons, such as lasers and plasma cannons, for this. Once it's shields are at zero, you can use cannons and missiles to damage the machine underneath. Bear in mind that health is more of an indication, not an absolute. This is because individual components can take damage, and if a critical component such as your reactor or chassis is destroyed, the entire MCU is destroyed. Destroying a weapon disables that weapon for the remainder of the game. No repairs are possible until you have finished the mission, after which all MCUs are automatically repaired, no matter how damaged they were - for a cost of course (but its pretty low).

Once you have destroyed all enemy MCUs, the mission ends. After you first mission, you will receive a promotion, which will grant you access to more technology.

raxter

tip from my perspective: If you want more people to try out your game, post screenshots or even upload a video showing off your game, it is 100x more likely to attract people to go to the effort of downloading and starting up your game if they can at least see something (even if it's early stages, just seeing a picture that hints at the gameplay is). Not saying it's a killer, but the principle is the fewwer barriers to entry, the more people will try it out. Investing a little time into an installer or a video is usually has good rewards. Also people like me who use a Mac at work can't even try your game, the most I've seen are screenshots posted by other people. The UI art looks slick, it's just from a bugged screenshot so I'm left wanting moar. Post some up yourself, especially if it looks good, people are more likely to get excited and go to the effort of trying it out for themselves

Ancalagon

Thanks, good point.

If you guys want, you can check out our website at http://www.centerspace.co.za

I'll see if I can get a video up tonight, and I also want to see if I can repackage the game so that it doesnt require the DX SDK install.

Ancalagon

Okay... I have updated the zip file containing the game files to contain the necessary DirectX stuff, so the SDK installer is no longer necessary. Video will be up soon, in the meantime, here are some screenshots:

Ancalagon

Just an update, I built an installer of the game that does everything and does not require anyone to install the DirectX SDK. You can find it here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/fs1758

Gazza_N

I adore giant robots and anything to do with them, so I downloaded this on the quickfast. Very reminiscent of oldschool Battletech, which makes me happy. The mech designs themselves are pretty cool (in teeny-tiny-vision :P). Will we have the option to customise MCUs, or are we stuck with stock configurations?

I'm likely going to come across as terribly harsh now, and I realise it's early days, but I really want to see a kickass TBT mech game, and you've got a good thing going so far. :)

I should firstly point out that the mission selection radio buttons on that screen don't appear to depress or highlight when I click on them - impossible to tell whether I've selected a given mission or not.

I should also point out that interface elements appear misaligned or obscured by each other, such as the last weapon button/s of the Warthogs being obscured by the bottom-right-right hand status display. I'm running at the default resolution under DX9 with no option to change. That said, once I dicked around a bit, the UI ended up being fairly intuitive.

Only one huge niggle at this point - communication of stats. In any game that has several resources (like TBT games for instance), it's essential to clearly convey to the player via the UI what resources are being consumed, and how much. I love the idea of reserving excess reactor capacity for weapons fire, but I had no way to tell how much reactor juice would be used in a given movement, which limited my planning. Likewise, I had no idea what the energy consumption of my weapons would be (or if I would start dipping into reactor reserves), or their potential damage, or their range, or accuracy, or anything I needed to differentiate between them. These needn't be spot-on predictions, but a good estimate will help inform my tactics, as opposed to just trying and hoping I get out with enough react-o-fuel at the end. There's generally way too little communication of gamestate and decision data at this point. I didn't even know when my new turn had started!

Also, please, please, please let me double click my unit icons to centre the camera on that mech. ;_;

I should also point out that the game crashed on the conclusion of the enemy turn on my first playthrough. I wasn't able to reproduce this, nor do I know which mission it was on (see first point).

So yeah. A fine effort up to now, and I can't wait to see how you improve this. Ratchet up that UI a little, and you'll be cooking with plasma. :D

Ancalagon

No, you aren't being harsh, I appreciate your feedback.

Yes, you will be able to customize your MCUs. In fact, the MCU bay is working, but it is so massively unpolished compared to the rest of the UI (and I'm not saying the UI is finished), that I decided to disable it for this build. So, your Commander starts at Rank 3 instead of Rank 1, and has equipment to match. This is just to make it a little more fun to play.

EDIT: Just to clarify, you get additional equipment available as you level up, so at Rank 3, you have more options than at Rank 1. This includes things like which MCUs you can buy, and what equipment you can mount on them.

Yes, I quite agree on the UI feedback issues - very important. I'll see if I can work on that.

I'm glad to hear you like it!