Arcen Games
General Category => Skyward Collapse => : x4000 May 23, 2013, 12:32:29 PM
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The notes here: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Official_1.000
I'd appreciate any sanity checks you might be able to do, in case there is a need for a quick 1.001. ;)
At any rate, lots of good stuff in this new version.
And for those not in the alpha: the general public version of this will be available soon! Steam has to do their thing and get it live, and I'm working on the installers for our site and GamersGate. And Green Man Gaming has to wait on Steam's release.
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Cool! Congrats on the impending release. I've been busy this past couple weeks and not able to really alpha test as much as I would like. Come this Tuesday though, it's on!
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Already beat you to it :P
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Congrats on 1.0!
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Congrats!!!!!
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Thanks for the congrats! There was an issue with horses in the prior one (not a bug per se, but still an issue for the tutorial in particular), and now that's fixed. If anyone sees anything else, please do let me know!
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Congrats, this game is a lot of fun, hope it does well!
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Congrats!
Several things when you have the time (sorry to harp on about them again):
- Skadi's passive, creating archery units, still cost resources.
- Idunn's Sviagaris, Odin's passive, and Athena's Owl need to spawn better than than level 1 units.
Will play through Greeks to check whether I can stock up enough horses against a number of barracks so as to deploy Centaurs. They're the hardest primary resource, imo.
Will get around also to mythological unit usage versus cost analysis when there is time also. Trolls and Minotaurs are on my target list.
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Thank you!
And yeah, I know about a few little things like those; ultimately those are minor in the grand scheme, but I do plan to address those in the next couple of days at the worst.
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Just a quick look into how horses play into the current resource thing.
for most expensive meat (normal military) use based on single producer
Mutton 30 = 5 turns of sheep
Bacon 24 = 3 turns of pigs
Horse meat 6 = 6 turns of horses Horse production looks like it should be fine for meat Greek Cav haven't had any issues/ major complaints.
... for the whole horse
Norse Myth require
9 turns of horses
Greek Myth require
12 turns of horses (same as the cav)
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Post release wiki should start at 1.002 not 1.001 :)
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I was about to comment on Cinth's analysis, and then I realised my difficulty bumps up the resource requirements... :P Anyway, if you're not going to change the requirements again soon, I'll go make a topic telling players which building are synergistic in the strategies sub-forum.
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Yeah.. I should have noted that was on N/N/O. Requirements should be of similar scale though.
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For peopel who were in the Alpha and want a steam key, who can I contact for that?
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Congratulations on the release! :D
I can't wait to get home to check out the release version
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For peopel who were in the Alpha and want a steam key, who can I contact for that?
No one. :) I'm working on giving those out right now.
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Huzzah for releases!
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Whoohooo! Congratulations and GREAT WORK :)
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Thank you very much!
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Congrats! I have high hopes that this title will do well for you. Something's telling me it will.
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Congrats! I have high hopes that this title will do well for you. Something's telling me it will.
Thank you! It looks super encouraging at the moment, anyhow. Our sales so far are beating out any of our prior games by about 20%. That includes Valley 1, which sold amazingly well, 3x higher than anything else we've ever done, in its first month. That's the scale we're seeing right now, but it's only the first hour or two. That could all dry up in an instant, or just turn out to be a flash in the pan and then a disappointment after that. So there are huge numbers of crossed fingers here. But overall this seems like we made the right thing at the right time. :)
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I've often played armchair general and saying you made the wrong mix of things, at the wrong time, in a crowded market lacking distincting.
This though is a right mix of things, at a good time, in a somewhat crowded market however very distinctive.
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Quick look at the top-sellers chart too, seems higher than Valley 2 ever got to. Or Shattered Haven got to during its 75% sale. Promising start!
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Oh man, H/H/H game is kicking me in the teeth (probably should not have let those bandits get Singasteinn). I love it.
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Hmmm, maybe one slight problem with the steam store page is that the comic is not on it. Not sure if it's even possible to put the comic on there. Comic isn't directly visible on the Arcen store page either as far as I can. Not sure if this is intentional or not, just pointing it out.
Trailer is up now. Cool! I remember for Valley2 the trailer wasn't up for quite a long time after the launch as I recall.
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Congrats from me as well!
You are in for a hit, keep it up :D!!
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Cheers folks, thanks!
Few notes:
@chemical_art: It's always a hard thing to judge, and with long development times it can be particularly tricky. We also sometimes try something big and experimental and it doesn't work out completely like we hoped. But that's why I want to stay smaller (like this) for a while; it seems safer and smarter all around. Anyhow, thanks for the kind words!
@Pepisolo: Ah, I hadn't noticed that we are now the top sellers! I'm still not used to it updating so fast, it used to be on a 12 hour delay and so I don't even look for it much until that amount of time has passed. Valley 2 and Shattered Haven never did well on the charts, only getting up to the 60s or so on the top sellers list (less for SH). Seeing this at #32 already is good, because it's data averaged over time and thus the real rank is actually much higher. With similar sales numbers in the past, Valley 1 got I believe to #6 on the charts, and I think AI War topped out at #9. I think that's the range we're in so far for Skyward. It's so nice to -- knock on wood -- have things going right for a change!
@Pepisolo: Awesome on the trailer, I'd not seen that yet! That's a huge relief. In terms of the comic not being there, that is expected and I didn't even bring it up with them. I don't think it would work there, and GamersGate said as much to me. But we're pushing that in our press releases, and it's part of the game itself now, too.
@nas1m: Thanks! :)
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Oh, with release , I figure at least someone is going to do this...
An actual double diplomat rush won't work on Expert difficulty, but I did manage to create a traffic jam of diplomats. This brings back memories.
Maybe I'll try a signle-diplomat rush instead...
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I don't think it would work there, and GamersGate said as much to me. But we're pushing that in our press releases, and it's part of the game itself now, too.
Actually, seeing as the comic is now part of the game, you could quite reasonably have a screenie of the comic part of the game added to the list of screenshots. Extra little bit of eye-candy. No big deal, though, maybe you're better off sticking with pure gameplay stuff, anyway.
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Given that bandit camps in round 3 are now much more threatening, I think the lockdown woe on not hard difficulties can be reduced to 7 or even 5.
I prevented mass chaos in my tutorial game only through spamming mythological creatures.
Another thing...
Can the points values for units scale with level in some way.
Yet another thing...
Should mythological creatures be worth 15 (correct me if thats wrong)? I think they should be worth 50.
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I kinda like how all units and buildings have a flat point reward for death.
There are definitely reasons to upgrade units already, you pretty much need it to take on the bandits in the higher difficulties.
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Given that bandit camps in round 3 are now much more threatening, I think the lockdown woe on not hard difficulties can be reduced to 7 or even 5.
I prevented mass chaos in my tutorial game only through spamming mythological creatures.
Another thing...
Can the points values for units scale with level in some way.
Yet another thing...
Should mythological creatures be worth 15 (correct me if thats wrong)? I think they should be worth 50.
I agree that mythologicals should be worth a bit more than other units. They can be pretty darn tough! And can sometimes be even stronger based on certain god effects. They have alot of good uses, but more inherant risk than human units, so increasing their score by a bit is probably not a bad idea.
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I just checked and you're the number 4 seller on mac at the moment. So congrats there!
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Congrats on the release in general, I think.
It's been bloody fascinating watching this game take shape, and though it's taken ALOT of time to test and retest and everything, I was quite happy to be able to participate in that.
REALLY hoping this does well. Want to see expansions for this! I like strategy games alot, but this one really grabs me even more than most of them do, and that's saying something. So... yeah. Expansions!
Good luck!
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Congrats on the release in general, I think.
It's been bloody fascinating watching this game take shape, and though it's taken ALOT of time to test and retest and everything, I was quite happy to be able to participate in that.
REALLY hoping this does well. Want to see expansions for this! I like strategy games alot, but this one really grabs me even more than most of them do, and that's saying something. So... yeah. Expansions!
Good luck!
This. Exactly this.
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Thanks very much folks! I think that, at this point in time, it's 99% chance that we'll be working on expansions.
A big mistake we made with Valley 1 was just working on free DLC for three months straight after release without any form of expansion content. That was bloody expensive and ultimately did a number on our ability to actually break even on that game (aka, we didn't).
For Skyward I think what my most likely course of action will be is to both start work on major free DLC post launch (aka more woes and all sorts of good stuff, along with general balance), as well as starting on larger expansion stuff that would be in a for-pay package. It may be worth it to make a thread about what people would want to see there. Personally I'd want at least one more faction, but I think limiting it to one might be best so that the rest of the new additions could be core ones that affect all factions: ie new buildings that everyone can use, new land tiles, etc. So you get the variety of a new faction, but also the increased scope across all factions (without directly adding units that would be exclusive to preexisting factions). If that makes sense.
Pricing for the expansions would be a tricky thing. If its $5 for the base game, is the expansion the same price? That's kind of going to cause customer rebellion. Is it $2.50? Holy heck, there's a limit to how much we can put in an expansion for that low of a price. Either way the expansion needs to be the same sort of "OMG this is a great value" sort of thing that the AI War expansions always have been. And I guess one thing of note is that the cheapest of those expansions was the one that was least impressive on that score. So that says something right there.
Anyway, it's not kosher to talk about expansions on day one I guess, but I think that doing that plus loads and loads of new free stuff for everyone is always the best course. I want to see the woe count in the triple digits! I want each of the ages to become increasingly distinct for reasons unrelated to the gods themselves (and the gods are just icing). I want, if at all possible, a more robust citybuilding sim that is more economy-for-economy's sake rather than everything backing the military. And I want, essentially, alternate win conditions relating from that. Still "survive to the end and reach a certain score," don't get me wrong. But a completely different way of accomplishing that.
Quests or great works of some kind could be interesting. Those literally could be alternate win conditions, like building a ship to alpha centauri in civ. Dangerous ways to win the game before the clock runs out could be interesting.
I've just described several expansions' worth of stuff, really; if we're going to do mechanics like that right, and really give each one a lot of details and variance, then each thing there would have a ton of sub-components that would warrant an expansion on its own, probably. The great works expansion, with tons of complexity on those lines, and lots of other things thrown in. The citybuilding expansion with economic paths to victory, and this whole "separate from the military" type of gameplay in it.
Who knows. There are a lot of things I've thought about, and a lot of things that I'm sure you guys have ideas for, too. I'm not sure what I'm most interested in pursuing yet, as my focus has been so tunnel-vision on this release (and not knowing how it would do). But I do want to do something. And in the meantime, of course, free DLC while we figure that out. Unless something drastic happens to our current sales trajectory. Knock on wood!
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That all sounds pretty good to me.
In particular, I'd like to see more options for city building. More building types or additional mechanics or whatever. Though, I dont think any changes need to be made to the base mechanics on that one.... the way the citybuilding works right now and it's underlying mechanics are quite good, by my view. There's alot of strategy there already. But yeah, adding more to it, that'd be pretty great.
More factions though I think is the one thing I'd like to see most, definitely, even more than more city stuffs.
Anyway, quickly going back to the patch and balance stuffs:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11648
I wanted to bring that one up because it's kind of a nasty balance issue that seems to have gotten overlooked. Both of those tokens (Norns & Brokkr) are WAY too strong for the fact that they both have no downsides (and they GIVE you points....). I'm thinking, change these in the same way that you changed Palladium/Cornucopia for the Greek. These are powerful and useful as heck, and should be much tougher to use, and have a strong negative score to them.
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Pricing for the expansions would be a tricky thing. If its $5 for the base game, is the expansion the same price? That's kind of going to cause customer rebellion. Is it $2.50? Holy heck, there's a limit to how much we can put in an expansion for that low of a price. Either way the expansion needs to be the same sort of "OMG this is a great value" sort of thing that the AI War expansions always have been. And I guess one thing of note is that the cheapest of those expansions was the one that was least impressive on that score. So that says something right there.
As a point of reference, The Binding of Issac is a $5 game and the Wrath of the Lamb DLC is priced at $2.99. I think there's a LOT of content in that DLC, though. Exactly the same pricing for Dungeons of Dredmor and its DLC. Seems to be working for those guys. A DLC of the same price as the main game would definitely get you hauled over the coals, I think.
Very pleased to hear that you are going to probably be working further on this game. A more robust citybuilding would be great! New factions! New Woes! Nice!
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On the dangerous-alternate-way-to-win-early thing, the idea that came to mind first was some kind of deal where if you place/secure/whatever these X special tiles, then it forces some kind of end boss to come out that's stupidly, stupidly powerful and dangerous (like "can end your game in a few turns" dangerous) but if the combined military of the world takes him down you win instantly.
... (looks at last AIW patch) ... maybe I'm not always very original ;)
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On the dangerous-alternate-way-to-win-early thing, the idea that came to mind first was some kind of deal where if you place/secure/whatever these X special tiles, then it forces some kind of end boss to come out that's stupidly, stupidly powerful and dangerous (like "can end your game in a few turns" dangerous) but if the combined military of the world takes him down you win instantly.
... (looks at last AIW patch) ... maybe I'm not always very original ;)
That actually sounds pretty cool, really.
I havent seen all of the woes in the game yet, are there any that do something like that? Like a rampaging boss, sort of thing, that you have to then find a way to kill? If there isnt, there SHOULD be, since that just seems like it'd fit the "woes" concept perfectly. Sounds like it'd be a fun one, and satisfying to beat.
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Siegfried Is Hired
It is pretty close to that. Siggy is a bastard.
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Maybe it would be like a "minor faction" where there's some bandit-like units out there who move (from random spawns, or from a particular spawn zone) to a particular tile and that pushes up some progress bar. When progress bar hits 100% the boss dude pops out.
So either you try to make sure they don't accomplish this at all, or you actually make it easier on them so they can get the guy out and you can kill him and win.
Maybe one of the two normal factions producing a particular resource (or other activity you can influence) increases the spawn rate of the "cultists" mentioned above, so if you really don't want to deal with it you have to be careful about that resource. Or if you're trying to bring things to a head you may want to crank it out. Maybe which resource this is changes from game to game, or from "phase" to "phase" of the progress bar.
Not trying to over-complicate things, but I think the above would be relatively lightweight as expansion-anchors (or mini-anchors, at least) go.
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And everyone would love it at release and gripe more and more as the next epo draws near?
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Maybe it would be like a "minor faction" where there's some bandit-like units out there who move (from random spawns, or from a particular spawn zone) to a particular tile and that pushes up some progress bar. When progress bar hits 100% the boss dude pops out.
So either you try to make sure they don't accomplish this at all, or you actually make it easier on them so they can get the guy out and you can kill him and win.
Maybe one of the two normal factions producing a particular resource (or other activity you can influence) increases the spawn rate of the "cultists" mentioned above, so if you really don't want to deal with it you have to be careful about that resource. Or if you're trying to bring things to a head you may want to crank it out. Maybe which resource this is changes from game to game, or from "phase" to "phase" of the progress bar.
Not trying to over-complicate things, but I think the above would be relatively lightweight as expansion-anchors (or mini-anchors, at least) go.
Hmm, I like this concept. It'd fit the theme of the game, too: Being able to decide for yourself wether you want to stop them in this particular game, or allow them to summon the boss. Where in most strategy titles you'd pretty much ALWAYS want to stop them, not as much choice.
If you can do this one to where there's benefits (and downsides) to both options, I think it'd be a pretty great addition. A bit more "intense" than the usual bandits. Yet of course, the usual bandits would still interfere!
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Grats on release! I picked up 3 copies so me, my wife, and my friend that always play AI War together can give this one a go! Looking forward to trying it out this weekend!
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Question: do people have any particular use for this (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13186.msg148777.html#msg148777) kind of leaflet? If not, I won't work on it.
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Question: do people have any particular use for this (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13186.msg148777.html#msg148777) kind of leaflet? If not, I won't work on it.
I had a look at that: that type of thing actually might be good to put up on the site to help new players. A good idea.
And on the note of balance and such:
http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11658
Minotaurs. Holy crap. These guys. They need a nerf. Badly. Currently they're just a tad of an overpowered mess.
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How do minos stand up to giants?
To elaborate, if the giant kicks its ... then the mino should be fine ;)
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In my experience, minos pretty much own everything. Buildings and units alike.
And while we're on the discussion of unit balance, I feel archery units in general could use a buff. They went from overpowered machine guns to single-shot pop guns. I think they should get one extra AP so a stationary archery unit can fire two shots, but a moved one can only fire zero or one.
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How do minos stand up to giants?
To elaborate, if the giant kicks its ... then the mino should be fine ;)
The only real advantage the giants have over these guys is their large amount of HP. The minotaurs though still have alot of health themselves as well (AND a high auto-heal).
But it's the part where a Minotaur can destroy up to 10 buildings in a single turn that really caught me, lol, as far as this goes. Not to mention what they do against units of pretty much any type.
There's just too many things wrong with these guys right now, really. I saw the complaint about them originally on the Steam forums, and decided to test them out myself in various situations.... and so came to this.
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Also, does anyone else find it a little ridiculous that siege (and rams in particular) will pretty much destroy units just because they happen to be standing on a building? This didn't really happen when siege units used to have a building modifier, but now that they have huge attack in general they make it very difficult to defend.
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How do minos stand up to giants?
To elaborate, if the giant kicks its ... then the mino should be fine ;)
The only real advantage the giants have over these guys is their large amount of HP. The minotaurs though still have alot of health themselves as well (AND a high auto-heal).
But it's the part where a Minotaur can destroy up to 10 buildings in a single turn that really caught me, lol, as far as this goes. Not to mention what they do against units of pretty much any type.
There's just too many things wrong with these guys right now, really. I saw the complaint about them originally on the Steam forums, and decided to test them out myself in various situations.... and so came to this.
Maybe bring them down to troll levels? Trolls are fairly nasty too.
Greeks have the best military units. It would stand to be that their siege weapons would be better too. It's a pain you bring on yourself ;)
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How do minos stand up to giants?
To elaborate, if the giant kicks its ... then the mino should be fine ;)
The only real advantage the giants have over these guys is their large amount of HP. The minotaurs though still have alot of health themselves as well (AND a high auto-heal).
But it's the part where a Minotaur can destroy up to 10 buildings in a single turn that really caught me, lol, as far as this goes. Not to mention what they do against units of pretty much any type.
There's just too many things wrong with these guys right now, really. I saw the complaint about them originally on the Steam forums, and decided to test them out myself in various situations.... and so came to this.
Maybe bring them down to troll levels? Trolls are fairly nasty too.
Greeks have the best military units. It would stand to be that their siege weapons would be better too. It's a pain you bring on yourself ;)
Aye, bringing them down to a level closer to trolls would be good. Trolls can be strong, but they're nowhere near being "unstoppable" or unmanageable. And the Greek arent supposed to have mythological units that are quite on the same level as the Norse ones anyway; the devs can correct me if I'm wrong on that one, but I'm pretty darn sure that's the design idea for them. Stronger military units, weaker mythologicals.
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That's the idea as I understood (and have been parroting).
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I split out the expansion discussion stuff into a new thread here: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13250.msg148968.html