Build 84

[rob]

Greetings and welcome Brave Testers! I just pushed build 84:

* Replace all ground tiles with new "glowy vector" substitues.
* Change a few enemy colors to improve visibility on new backgrounds
* Kill off starfield background
* Make Spectre a little smaller

Tim continued working on our tools this week while I made a pass over the ground tiles. The goal was to draw more of the world in the vector style, as opposed to the whatever-it-was style we were using for the tiles before. We'll probably make a few more cosmetic changes like this next week.

As always, thanks very much for playing! Please post comments below.

Rob & Tim
Jetbolt Games

[Kelsoo]

Well. I like the idea of adding beauty and more color to the game. But I can hardly see what is going on in game. The clarity that came with the previous design was very well suited and all the enemies contrasted very nicely.

That said I am not opposed to testing out new designs, but the new one is... its bad. To bright, to popping and straining. Edit: If missiles were a little hard to see before, they are near invisible now.

[tarbomb]

In general, I'm feeling pretty neutral about the new textures. My main complaint is that the thick lines and course textures (especially enemy/town ones) seem to feel out-of-place compared to the fine, smooth textures of tanks and enemies, but that can be fixed by making those lines thinner. The red background for enemies is a little jarring and could be toned down a bit. It's oversized for some enemies, too - GCT's background is almost comically large:



I'm beginning to find wildfire very useful again. I can kill an exterminator missile station in one cloak run now - the only annoyance is how long the cloak takes to recharge, which makes fighting exterminators mostly a waiting game.

[amitp]

Gut reaction is that I want the game objects (enemies, players, missiles) to look very different from the background tiles and UI. Since game objects are glowy lines with bright saturated colors, having background tiles be opaque solid squares with dark unsaturated colors would let the game objects stand out. But that's my first reaction after only trying it for a few minutes.

[amitp]

So I'm thinking something like this … but maybe it's too boring?

I also put up a mockup here where you can tweak the brightness and saturation a little bit.

Attachments:

[Kelsoo]

Jan 30, 2014 20:13:17 GMT -5 amitp said:

So I'm thinking something like this … but maybe it's too boring?

I also put up a mockup here where you can tweak the brightness and saturation a little bit.

Much less straining the the current design. It is somewhat basic but I feel it would let enemies and various other things pop out better. Dark and high saturation in my opinion looks best and provides the best look without hurting the players eyes.

Though the former design I still feel fit the game best so far.

[Kelsoo]

Aside from bashing the new backround style, there is one problem I have seen in the game that could use a quick fix. It is with the exterminator class missile stations.

The first knock I have against them is already implied with the new backround, which is that it is incredibly hard to actually see the missiles being fired at you.

The second is the fact that doing these solo is almost the only option you have, these stations will fire so quickly and so much that the only way to even stand a chance against them is when you don't have a another person there with you adding to the randomness of their shots. They do too much damage for how fast and undodgeable their bullets are, and they fire way to much of them with no delay for dodging, making these enemies only really able to be killed with hit and run wildfires. They have no real strategy, you would think from soloing that a group would make them easier, but that is just quite the opposite, groups only confuse the way they fire and cause even more bullets from other towers further away to start clustering the area with no actual ability to dodge any of the bullets they have.

They are blatantly put, boring instant kill enemies. One particular issue can be found on newly connected towns that still have the pesky things around them and is very common. Because of their massive range, a player who teleports to any of these towns has about 3 to 4 seconds to start moving before they literally are killed instantly with no chance to react even on a Herc. While 3 to 4 seconds seems like a long enough time for any player to react (and it usually is) players who have gotten into the habit of teleporting to towns and looking away for a few seconds or switching tanks on arrival or even to type a quick message will have no time to react as the towers bullets fly so fast and in such bulk that any player not instantly paying attention will be annihilated instantly.

[tarbomb]

Our old friend, the town level-up bug, makes a reappearance.

[zhevulture]

Just started testing, and I suggest you to make so the game asks if you want to use a newly unlocked tank or not. It gets annoying to change back to my currently used tank. Hoping the best

[Jufda]

1) Scrolling is awful. One bit of scrolling zooms 2-3x too much.
2) The background is too visible.
3) LTS should have 2 columns next to each other instead of pages when the 2nd page comes available.