Love AI War and/or Tidalis? We could really use your help...

[Ozymandiaz]

Any expansions (hell, probably any games) from Arcen are insta-buys for me.

Let me ditto this as well.

I will gladly buy a AI War expansion. AI War has been the most interesting RTS game i have ever had my hands on, and I can happily spend hours on each of my campaigns. Its just so deep and interesting. Truly a gem among all the dull rocks in the gaming world.

I guess I like AI war since I need to think a bit more, and that all the focus is on gameplay. I do not know why it has not cached on more.

[keith.lamothe]

I guess I like AI war since I need to think a bit more, and that all the focus is on gameplay. I do not know why it has not cached on more.

Actually AI War has sold pretty well for its first 16 months (or something like that) of sales.  Considering that it's an indie niche RTS game it's done very well.  The issue is that eventually a given title's sales will drop off, and eventually it did.  We expected that and that's fine.  The problem was that our next product (Tidalis) did not do well (yet, we still have high hopes for it).  Thankfully Chris was really conservative in his estimates and we had a lot of savings.  But that can only last so long without having to really scale back basically everything.

[eRe4s3r]

I know I haven't posted much so you're liable to ignore me again, but I did explain what I believe to be a good part of the reason minecraft sells so well.

No no I was nay Ignoring you, only not reading through all the comments ;p If thats so then that is interesting - but Viral Marketing does not work on demand. Particularly not on /v/ or SA.. so not sure that is applicable to a totally NOT sandbox like Tidalis or AI-War. Still an interesting Theory

[mlaskus]

Earlier today I read some of the RockPaperShotgun AAR on Minecraft that Quinn is doing, and it looks like a lot of fun.

Yes it is

I haven't played much, only a couple of hours but I already have a few quite extraordinary stories to tell. Like exploring an enormous cave system for 10 hours to finally find my way back to the surface located, like 10 meters from my original entry point. Or creating an artificial waterfall at the top of a lean, tall mountain and then using it to hide a secret entrance to my mansion located at the top.

The only thing I don't like about Minecraft is how there is no demo version. You can play some outdated build, but it hardly gives you the right idea of how the current version plays. If you would like to try it out, I could send you my account name and pass in a PM.

[Ozymandiaz]

I guess I like AI war since I need to think a bit more, and that all the focus is on gameplay. I do not know why it has not cached on more.

Actually AI War has sold pretty well for its first 16 months (or something like that) of sales.  Considering that it's an indie niche RTS game it's done very well.  The issue is that eventually a given title's sales will drop off, and eventually it did.  We expected that and that's fine.  The problem was that our next product (Tidalis) did not do well (yet, we still have high hopes for it).  Thankfully Chris was really conservative in his estimates and we had a lot of savings.  But that can only last so long without having to really scale back basically everything.

That is good to hear at least, but non the less, for such a deep game I would have expected it to reach a huge popularity. I think it just that awesome what you guys are doing at Arcen. And despite me not being a puzzle fanatic, I really like Tidalis as well!

I guess many of us in the community is just not buying the games, as such, we kind of buy into the community, buy into the idea of Arcen. We believe in Arcen as a company. Maybe if you could try and convey that spirit, the spirit of Arcen, out more? I have no idea how that can be done, but I do know that people often buy into things if say the company clearly expresses a belief they hold and cherish, a goal of sorts that has nothing to do with monetary gains. I believes Arcen is such a company in reality, that you really do believe in making good games for the sake of making good games, but maybe to get that message out more clearly?

[keith.lamothe]

I guess many of us in the community is just not buying the games, as such, we kind of buy into the community, buy into the idea of Arcen. We believe in Arcen as a company. Maybe if you could try and convey that spirit, the spirit of Arcen, out more? I have no idea how that can be done, but I do know that people often buy into things if say the company clearly expresses a belief they hold and cherish, a goal of sorts that has nothing to do with monetary gains. I believes Arcen is such a company in reality, that you really do believe in making good games for the sake of making good games, but maybe to get that message out more clearly?

Yea, that spirit, so to speak, is why I'm working here.  But it's a tricky thing to try to spread the word about, basically only our customers can do that.  We can state our philosophy and motivation, but it's really only you folks that can testify to how true we are to that.  And from the discussions I've seen elsewhere y'all have been doing a very good job of that

[Ktoff]

Well the feedback from my friends was that it is too complex and takes ages to play. In virtually every other strategy game you move along a tech path that branches from time to time. Here everything is open from the beginning (after that you only unlock higher tiers).

This is not something i want changed in this game, but this makes this game (somehow expected) not very suitable for casual gamers.

[superking]

^ agree, this has made it difficult to introduce to my freinds. problem is, I am only interested in complicated games- casual gaming on the PC disgusts me 

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Well the feedback from my friends was that it is too complex and takes ages to play. In virtually every other strategy game you move along a tech path that branches from time to time. Here everything is open from the beginning (after that you only unlock higher tiers).

This is not something i want changed in this game, but this makes this game (somehow expected) not very suitable for casual gamers.

I tell all of my friends as well, and they look at the game and immediately feel intimidated. I explain at length how awesome and deep the gameplay is, and they like that, but at the same time, it's outside the realm of what they think a space game is. To be honest, I've never played a game like this, either. What would really help I think are:

* plots, some sort of rpg elements such as developing a main ship, or perhaps even collecting modules that only appear randomly and hidden inside of maps. Only by playing many campaigns can you even have a shot at finding them all, and realistically, probably not possible. This would totally expand the market for people who are collector type personalities. The modules themselves don't even have to be overpowered; it could be as simple as changing the gun color of your Mark two fighters ships, it could be unlocking a hidden zenith character on some planet, it could be a secret audio track, it could be a new ship type ( both ally and foe), you get the idea. This persistence across games would attract new personalities to your games.

Please comment on this! I'm getting more excited the more I think about it.  

* a story. I know somebody already mentioned this, and Keith you already replied, but I'm just going to say it... A campaign, even a campaign that is already set up a certain way like a mission... A story would be great for some people.

* I don't think graphics are a problem, however, some unique weapons would be nice between classes of ships or even Mark of the ship class.

* optional boss fights. The concept of bosses... People like the challenge of going after some hard to get boss, maybe even a random spawn... This is for achiever personalities ( do you think about gamer psychology?).

* Something to do after you conquer the galaxy. Maybe it is a rescue mission, a "return home" mission, maybe it is a random in-game cutscene.

* ranking at the end of the game. Have the AI analyze some of the game of events for proficiency and give a rundown or some feedback.. Perhaps a ranking like, "score: star commander" ,Fleet Adm., Brig. Gen., dreadnought supreme, so on and so forth....

* missions in game that would reward you with neutral allies, not just lowering the progress meter

Maybe I should be posting this in the suggestion forum? Oh well, what do you think? By the way, I think if tidalis attracted different gamer personalities besides just puzzle fans ( think achiever, collector, Explorer, social, mobile...), it would probably sell more copies.

[mlaskus]

Well, I'm almost finished with the banner. Though, I'm disgusted with how it looks after chopping off over half of the stuff that was in it.
Every scene was shown from a few perspectives and zoom levels, not only panned around. The text was nicely animated. And it nicely looped as the AI War logo appeared at the end and was moved to the edge of the screen before restarting.

This is how it looks with default compression... ~700kB


And this is the effect of me playing around with compression settings... ~300kB


The timing of some animations is a bit off right now, as I chopped them off and moved around a lot so expect an update later.

EDIT:
Ah, and I dropped the FPS from 30 to 24 to get under the 500 frames limit, so the animation is choppy...

EDIT2:
~380kB

[keith.lamothe]

Please comment on this! I'm getting more excited the more I think about it.  

Well, remember what I said earlier about not trying to shoehorn a different game into AI War  But we do try to see these kinds of requests to "bust the envelope" and try to distill them into changes that would only "push the envelope".  It's an incremental process, and we have to say "Ok, here's a concrete step we can take that will at least partially scratch that itch without messing up the rest of the game", then take that step, and then ask "Did that help?  Did that Hurt?  Does it look like we can take another step?".  The Hybrid Hives are a good example of this, and we're still in the evaluation phase because they aren't done yet.  But they are an example of a kind of AI that is totally contrary to the design philosophy behind the "main" AI.  But that's ok, so long as it doesn't mess with said main AI.  But because it's an incremental process y'all have to be patient

* a story. I know somebody already mentioned this, and Keith you already replied, but I'm just going to say it... A campaign, even a campaign that is already set up a certain way like a mission... A story would be great for some people.

Yea, and we do have some of the pieces in place to make that possible, and I have another step in mind for the November mini-expansion.  But this is the sort of thing we have to be really careful about, so it doesn't come off half-baked in some respect.

* optional boss fights. The concept of bosses... People like the challenge of going after some hard to get boss, maybe even a random spawn... This is for achiever personalities ( do you think about gamer psychology?).

Tried the Avenger yet?  Incidentally there's an achievement for killing it now, though I forget if that's in the public version.

* Something to do after you conquer the galaxy. Maybe it is a rescue mission, a "return home" mission, maybe it is a random in-game cutscene.

Not so sure about that, I guess it would be more a question of having a minor faction that isn't pacified after you "win", etc.  But mostly I'm interested in stuff that happens before the end-game, since that takes so long to reach anyway.

* ranking at the end of the game. Have the AI analyze some of the game of events for proficiency and give a rundown or some feedback.. Perhaps a ranking like, "score: star commander" ,Fleet Adm., Brig. Gen., dreadnought supreme, so on and so forth....

We did some work on that but I never got much farther, Tidalis happened, etc.

* missions in game that would reward you with neutral allies, not just lowering the progress meter

One of the minor factions Chris and I are thinking about for the November mini-expansion would be something along these lines.

Maybe I should be posting this in the suggestion forum?

If you want to, and normally we really encourage away from having massive catch-all threads, but in this particular case having this one coherent (hopefully) conversation is a good thing, I think.

Oh well, what do you think?

I think these are good things to think about, and I think we can come up with something you'll like.  But the initial steps are likely to leave you wanting more, just because we can't invent an RPG-within-an-RTS all in one go  Largely because we may get a step or two down that road and everyone realizes "Um, that wasn't such a great idea".

By the way, I think if tidalis attracted different gamer personalities besides just puzzle fans ( think achiever, collector, Explorer, social, mobile...), it would probably sell more copies.

Achiever: it has achievements, it has high score boards, it has a fairly extensive list of stats, and it has some very challenging levels.
Collector: it has a system of collectibles, and as you get achievements the size of the "plushy pile" gets bigger (of course, you have to find it first).
Explorer: the adventure has quite a few hidden puzzle levels you have to look for.  Granted, that's not "zelda" exploration by any stretch, but it is just a puzzle game after all.

Also, the adventure has a story, for folks who like that kind of thing.  And it has both brainteasers (which are not my cup of tea, though they're really well made) and action levels (which definitely are my cup of tea).

In short, Tidalis already has a lot of features to appeal to several different types of people, I don't know that we reasonably could have made it much broader in the timeframe

[keith.lamothe]

Oh, I forgot to mention a few things regarding Tidalis's features that (in theory) should broaden it's appeal.

You mentioned Social; well: drop-in-drop-out-anytime co-op (and competitive), both local on the same computer or over the network (or both at the same time, for a total of 4 players), an internet matchmaking service (granted, there aren't many people who use it because there aren't many people who use it), with handicap features for players of different skill levels.  FWIW it also has a twitter option for tweeting your high scores (or achievements, iirc).  It also has the editors we used to create the game content, so you can make your own levels and share them with others.

Anyway, not trying to dogpile on you, it just seemed really ironic in light of how much Tidalis does have to appeal to a broad audience, both in terms of gameplay and peripheral features

[TheMachineIsSentient]

Wow, are we talking about the same game, Keith? If so, this does not do it justice...(from steam)

Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new "streams" mechanic. The game is brimming over with riffs and variants on that core mechanic with 20 game modes, dozens of special blocks and items, and 115 levels in the adventure mode alone. The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose. In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.

If this sounds simple, that's because it is -- you'll be lining up lengthy chains within minutes. But you'll be surprised how much brainpower it takes to set up combos of multiple chains, and the many brainteaser-style puzzles include some real stumpers. Tidalis has co-op and competitive multiplayer modes (both online and offline); action-oriented modes and timer-less brainteasers; a lengthy, casual-friendly adventure mode; twenty unique game modes providing innumerable twists to the basic gameplay; dozens of special blocks and items; and over fifty minutes of beautiful music to go with the painterly art.

In short, several games' worth of content are built on top of this core mechanic, which you'll quickly find to be as iconic as it is novel.

• Puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new mechanic.
• Two-player co-op and competitive play (both local and networked).
• A wide selection of both action-oriented or brainteaser-like levels.
• Casual-friendly adventure mode, hardcore-focused custom games and vs modes.
• 20+ game styles, and dozens of items and special blocks.
• Rich, painterly art style and beautiful music.
• Players can create and share whole new themes, levels, and adventures.
• Options for colorblind players, players averse to lots of light and motion, and older computers.

• There is no mention of an Internet matchmaking service.
• There is no mention of adding to the plushy pile, whatever that is. I bought the game, but I admit I never made it past level III or so of the campaign.
• There is no mention of secret levels.
• There is no mention of twitter or social networking at all.
• There is some mention of a stream mechanic... This is your bread-and-butter of the game, but it comes off sounding like a gimmick for a match three instead of the innovation that it is. Don't get me wrong, I find the entire thing challenging, but this description of the game doesn't serve you well.
• No achievements are even mentioned.
• Describing the motion of selecting blocks is something you do in a tutorial, not marketing.

I don't mean to be overly critical, but this page is not good marketing, it said nothing about the exciting features that you mentioned to me in your post. I had no idea they were even in the game, granted I only played for couple hours ( I did the challenge tutorial thing ). Now I want to revisit the game because I think there's a lot more to it than what I thought it had. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way. What a shame!

As far as the RPG elements for AI War, I know it's a gradual process, I know it is iterative... However, I think that the idea of randomness where you can find and collect little modifiers for the game but don't break the game but add a little bit of functionality, maybe some visual changes, maybe a non-game breaking ship, this kind of thing encourages people to load up AI War more and more just to find the hidden treasures of the universe. Is worth it, really... Even iteratively, or expansion 4.0.

[keith.lamothe]

Wow, are we talking about the same game, Keith?

Are we talking about the same features page?

http://arcengames.com/tidalis_features.php

    At A Glance
    - Puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new mechanic.
    - Two-player co-op and competitive play (both local and networked).
    - A wide selection of both action-oriented or brainteaser-like levels.
    - Casual-friendly adventure mode, hardcore-focused custom games and vs modes.
    - 20+ game styles, and dozens of items and special blocks.
    - Rich, painterly art style and beautiful music.
    - Players can create and share whole new themes, levels, and adventures.
    - Options for colorblind players, players averse to lots of light and motion, and older computers.

What Is Tidalis?

Tidalis is a block-based puzzle game with casual appeal, hardcore depth, and an addictive new "streams" mechanic. The basic rules of the game are this: blocks fall down into the board and have a color and an arrow direction. If a stack of blocks exceeds the height of the board, you lose. In order to clear blocks, you must right-click and drag paths through the arrows to set up chain reactions of like-colored blocks.

If this sounds simple, that's because it is -- you'll be lining up lengthy chains within minutes. But you'll be surprised how much brainpower it takes to set up combos of multiple chains, and the many brainteaser-style puzzles include some real stumpers. Tidalis has co-op and competitive multiplayer modes (both online and offline); action-oriented modes and timer-less brainteasers; a lengthy, casual-friendly adventure mode; twenty unique game modes providing innumerable twists to the basic gameplay; dozens of special blocks and items; and over fifty minutes of beautiful music to go with the painterly art.

In short, several games' worth of content are built on top of this core mechanic, which you'll quickly find to be as iconic as it is novel. Get the demo now!

What Makes Tidalis Unique?

What happens when a notable indie strategy developer makes a puzzle game? We have no idea. Our first game happened to be a notable indie strategy game, but we've never considered ourselves tied to any particular genre. Truth is, we made Tidalis because we like puzzle games and we wanted to take our opportunity to innovate in that space.

The "streams" mechanic employed by Tidalis is what makes it so unique -- chain reactions with a dozen blocks are trivially easy to create. This makes the game really easy to get into, but also makes the creation of advanced multi-stage combos more challenging than in other block-based puzzlers. At an advanced level of play, it's the difference between Chess and Checkers; with Tidalis in the hands of an expert, there are more variables to keep in mind as you set up truly elegant interactions.

But never fear: the easier difficulty levels are quite relaxed, and our Zen mode provides a particularly no-rush style of gameplay. The core mechanics are so simple that the two-year-old daughter of one of our staff enjoys playing along with him. And we suppose it goes without saying that many of our mothers are hooked on it, too.

Whether you're just looking for a casual fun time, a deep and strategic puzzle experience, or a series of brain-bending puzzles, we've got you covered. About half of the five staff members working on this game are the hardcore puzzle types, and the other half have completely casual tastes. We've approached this with our usual attention to detail: the mechanics of the timing, chain merging, and other mechanics have been refined to a ridiculous degree to provide an optimal experience in all play styles.

As of 7/14/2010, Version 1.000, The Game Includes:


* Supported Platforms: Mac OSX "Panther" 10.39 or higher, Windows 2000 or later
* Game Styles: Normal, Zen, Sun & Moon, Line Clear, Graviton, Frenzy, Featherweight, Trampoline, Light-Up, Item Survival, Water, Wind, Jumping Bean, Limited Streams, Eater Defense, Solitaire, Speed-Up, Block Swap, Shuffle, Bumpers
* Difficulty ranging from 0-10
* 115 Adventure Levels, 69 Brainteasers, 9 Ranked Boards, 5 Sampler Levels
* Block Sets: Smooth, Faces, Pixel, AI War, Organic, Shapes
* Music/Art Themes: Cavern, Fishing Village, Fishing Village Night, Forest, Forest Night, Night Marsh, Night Marsh Variance, Open Plains, Open Plains Cloudy, Rainy Mud Flats, Tidal Wreckage, Volcano, Windy Mountaintop, Jeweled Palace, River, Snowy Lowlands, Temple, Foothills, Hidden Theme 1, Hidden Theme 2, Hidden Theme 3
* General Special Blocks: Glass, Stone, Tinder, Fire, Ice, Bubble, Charred, Eater, Direction Locked, Color Reactive, Metal Grille, Turnip, Magnet (Repulsor), Magnet (Attractor), Quad Repeater, Flipper (180), Flipper (45), Crystalizer, Color Blocker, Emission Statue, Pit Monster, Sick, Cured, Living Stone, Inverter, Energizer
* Puzzle-only (or special mode) Special Blocks: Plastic, Metal, Wall (Passable), Wall (Solid), Water Fish, Water Balloon, Sponge, Apple, Golden Apple, Empty Block
* Easy, game-integrated game updates
* Mouse or keyboard controls, with keyboard control customization
* Multiple adventure savegames
* In-game tutorials
* Combinations of game modes in custom games
* Fun adventure mode story: Intro Cutscene, 45 Main Story Cutscenes, 6 Hidden Cutscenes, Ending Cutscene
* General Items: Place Color Block, Place Special Block, Can 'O Beans, Extend, Constrain, Crystal, Quake Hammer, Lightning, Question Mark, Huge Boulder, Rainbow, Flood, Icer, Turnipalooza, Color Popper, Fence, Hourglass, Running things on your feet, Feather, Barbells, U-Turn, Wind Burst, Scrambler, Insta-Streams, Molasses-Streams
* Puzzle-only (or special mode) Items: Safety Pin
* VS Modes: Garbage, Endurance, or Freeform
* Co-Op-Only Modes: Sun or Moon, Block Vaporizer, Item Buddies
* Limited Vs AI
* 64 Achievements
* Adventure collectibles and brainteaser titles
* Level Editor, Adventure Editor, and Theme Editor
* Per-player handicaps, co-op items
* Local high scoreboards (daily and overall)
* Network play for up to two computers, with up to two players on each computer (so 2-4 players in all).
* Alternatively, local 2-player multiplayer on a single computer.
* Server listings and filtering.
* Ability to sumbmit high scores and achievements to twitter.
Windows System Requirements
Windows 2000 or later, 32 or 64 bit

* 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
* 1.4Ghz CPU minimum, 1.8 Ghz recommended for background animation or multiplayer
* 600MB Hard Disk Space
* 800x600 or greater screen resolution (32 bit color, 1280x720 recommended)
* Internet Connection or LAN required for networked multiplayer
* There are no particular graphics card requirements; anything from the last 5-8 years should be fine.

Mac OSX System Requirements
Mac OS X "Panther" 10.3.9 or later, Intel or PowerPC based

* 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
* 1.4Ghz CPU minimum, 1.8 Ghz recommended for background animation or multiplayer
* 600MB Hard Disk Space
* 800x600 or greater screen resolution (32 bit color, 1280x720 recommended)
* Internet Connection or LAN required for networked multiplayer

Of course, the steam page is the one much more often seen, but honestly there's a limit to how much we can cram on there.  Perhaps there are some things we could shuffle out and shuffle more important ones in, dunno.

As far as the RPG elements for AI War, I know it's a gradual process, I know it is iterative... However, I think that the idea of randomness where you can find and collect little modifiers for the game but don't break the game but add a little bit of functionality, maybe some visual changes, maybe a non-game breaking ship, this kind of thing encourages people to load up AI War more and more just to find the hidden treasures of the universe. Is worth it, really... Even iteratively, or expansion 4.0.

Well, I'm not seeing any kind of concrete steps towards meta-game gameplay-affecting collectibles... but if we ever got as far as an actual campaign (which will be a journey in itself, getting there) and a campaign-with-a-story (another significant several steps) then in theory it could unlock certain other scenarios, etc.  But that's certainly a series of serial hypotheticals

[keith.lamothe]

Well, I'm almost finished with the banner. Though, I'm disgusted with how it looks after chopping off over half of the stuff that was in it.
Every scene was shown from a few perspectives and zoom levels, not only panned around. The text was nicely animated. And it nicely looped as the AI War logo appeared at the end and was moved to the edge of the screen before restarting.

This is how it looks with default compression... ~700kB
(first image)

And this is the effect of me playing around with compression settings... ~300kB
(second image)

The timing of some animations is a bit off right now, as I chopped them off and moved around a lot so expect an update later.

EDIT:
Ah, and I dropped the FPS from 30 to 24 to get under the 500 frames limit, so the animation is choppy...

EDIT2:
(third image) ~380kB

Wow, thanks for working so hard on that, it's looking very cool   Though I know what you mean about mixed feelings after taking something that's what you want and cutting it to something that fits within the "deployment" restrictions.