Now hiring: QA personnel
I made sure to set expectations low when I published version 0.1 of Domination. Maybe they were a little too low. A few people ran it, and to their credit, they did get back to me to mention that it didn't seem to work. But I knew it had a few annoying but ultimately non-critical bugs that might make it appear not to work. Plus I had, of course, tested the program quite a bit. I'd even smoke-tested it from inside the jar file, to make sure it worked from that way, by starting it up and moving a few units around. Everything was fine. Well, it turns out if I had just tried to play through to the next turn, I would have seen the crippling bug that stopped all my friends from playing!
As if that weren't bad enough, as soon as I shipped that program, I simultaneously moved to a new source code repository and ripped the game apart for a total rewrite. This meant I was unable to even publish a fixed version (the bug was quite minor). But I haven't forgotten you my dear and unfortunate testers - I've been hard at work over the past two weeks and finally I am pleased to announce: Version 0.2! As far as I can tell, this one actually works. It even has help, kind of.
Please play, enjoy, and tell me what you love and hate about it. I'm not planning on ever getting rich off this program, and I already have the final feature set (including multiplayer) in mind, but I think it would be nice if people eventually wanted to play it a little, so I'm interested in any advice anyone has that might contribute to that. Oh, and of course, if you want to get your hands dirty and write some code, contact me and I will set you up right away!
posted by Joachim @ 6:24 PM
16 Comments:
It works!
I played a few games. The computer kicked my butt the first 3 times. So, I kept playing, and on my 4th attempt, I kicked his ass. Since things are hidden in the game, it's hard to be sure, but I supsect there are some game balance issues. Starting position, for example, seems to have a lot of impact on who wins.
I didn't know how to change a city's production though (I just figured it out). So, I did it with tanks mostly.
I wish there was a button I could click with my mouse for next turn. I've been playing with mouse, mostly. So, switching to keyboard to hit enter is awkward. I guess there's a menu-selection for it too, but that feels awkward too.
There was a time when I wasn't able to do next turn and I wasnt sure why. Apparently, one of my units needed orders, but I couldn't figure out which one. It seemed like it should just let me do a next turn and assume I didn't want to move any unmoved unit.
One time, I saw the attack arrow of the enemy, but it was off the visible/mapped area of my screen. It looks odd and probably wrong. Though, it gave me useful information (in this case, that the computer was going to kick my ass because it had a lot more cities than me.
But, anyway, good job. It's fairly playable already.
Thanks, bill! You should be able to keep kicking the computer's ass, because it has a really lame AI. I don't know if I even want to improve that, since I'm planning on adding multiplayer. I definitely need to make the computer turns go faster. I'm not completely sure why they're so slow, though I suspect the UI is updating as the computer's units move, even though nothing is being drawn.
As for your other comments, they're all good and I will work on them in an upcoming version of the game!
I've played a little more...
I've got a game going now that is stuck on "Now moving: Computer Player". I see a rotating red-dashed outline around the computer's army, both otherwise the game is hung (when the computer moves, nothing seems to work, which I can understand, but it also makes it hard for me to gather anymore data on what's hung up now).
I think some sort of effort on a "fair" starting position may be key. I'm reiterating this. I recall that dross put a lot of effort into this with stella/mabel. This will matter with multi-user games too.
I deduced that an army take 3 turns to build, while bombers and tanks are 6. Is that fair, I wonder? Maybe you're basing this game on something that already figure out the right balance...
What happens if I change production, in the middle, do I lose accrued build points?
...
How does combat actually work, by the way. What's the calculation of attack vs. defense? How do multiple unit affect this? How is damage given out?
Is there a way to repair a damaged unit? In empire, you could move it back to a city for a little bit and it would heal.
One other thing...
If I do a sleep on a unit, then move it later, the sleep state on it seems to stick instead of clearing. In other words, on every turn after, it wont prompt me to move that piece.
I keep playing this silly game. Bored, I guess. But, I really wish you'd improve it as I feel like a loser.
Coming soon: Domination bugfix patch 0.2.1, only $24.99!
It looks like if one loses all of one's cities, one loses the game. I had a situation in one game, where I had a lot of units on the map, but lost my only city and I lost the game. Though, I could have easily reclaimed it.
I suspect this may be related to the bug where the computer player hangs-up (which has happened to me a number of times now). It seems to happen, when I'm winning. I suspect it may be happening when the computer has no cities. It's hard to be sure if that's the only cause, though.
It looks like if one loses all of one's cities, one loses the game. I had a situation in one game, where I had a lot of units on the map, but lost my only city and I lost the game. Though, I could have easily reclaimed it.
I suspect this may be related to the bug where the computer player hangs-up (which has happened to me a number of times now). It seems to happen, when I'm winning. I suspect it may be happening when the computer has no cities. It's hard to be sure if that's the only cause, though.
When I attack with the bomber, I notice that the spent moves counter does not decrement. When I move the bomber afterward, it goes down by 2. This caused me to crash my bomber, once.
Ah, or, perhaps, it's when any attack is made, but no movement results. You attack, but don't win the hex...
Anyway, fix it!
p.s. where do I send the $24.99?
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