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Hey there! Thanks so much for all the thorough feedback and for the kind words. I played Battlezone back in the day and Infested Planet and hadn't actively thought of them in some time. It's funny that some of those ideas must have been hiding out in my mind and then found their way into There Will Be Ink's design.

The game is very much still in development. Things have slowed down a bit lately (I had to take ft job in addition to part time jobs, darn pandemic), but I've never felt more devoted to or enthusiastic about the project. Lately I've been working through the next 8 missions (Act II) of the main campaign, adding tanks, new terrain, new badges and stats, and working on a full revamp of the stat system to make it more dynamic, scalable, and maintainable. More on all that in the next game update and dev log.

As for your feedback, thanks again very much for that. Some of the items are already on the to-do list, while others I hadn't previously thought about or are possibly already in the game. Here are some responses:

  • Game sounds: Things do need fleshing out, and many of those are on the to-do list, but some I hadn't thought about. Thanks!
  • Art: Adding sprint and roll animations are on the to-do list as well. I'll look into the blood pool, and good call on the animation speeds (and maybe additional water effects for wading).
  • I think the idea for AI units going for resupply was that they crawl away to a safer distance and then stand up, but I'll have another look at that and revise as needed. AI can roll, but only units of rank 2 and up as I recall (rank going from 0 to 4). I think they will only roll when moving to cover or when dodging rockets, but having them dodge bullets makes sense too. Rank 3 and 4 will also run when going to resupply.
  • I'll see about having the HQ icons expand in size when a player enters the building. I can turn zoom on for that too, sure. Tooltip scaling is on the to-do list as well. There is sort of a spectator mode right now, with the inspired name of "Grabby Mode" (Alt on keyboard, Select on gamepad). It essentially relinquishes control and replaces the cursor with a little hand, which you can use to take control of any (friendly) unit. Would you like to see something else in terms of a spectator mode? I have a rough kind of "free cam" mode that I use for trailers and such. I could perhaps polish that up and enable it in public builds.
  • I'm not quite finished with the tutorials yet. I'll likely add one more for "advanced tactics", but thank you for pointing out the gaps in the existing tutorial missions. You can also use medics to stop bleeding (if they are available), either by direct control or by calling for a medic ('M' on keyboard, d-pad down on gamepad).
  • "An explanation in the tutorial about special weapon boxes and why nothing happens when you walk over them as the basic rifleman would be helpful too...". Hm, which special weapon boxes do you mean? The ammo crates should work for all units, but there is no effect if you have full ammo.
  • For friendly fire, there are I believe three custom death sounds ("Gaw, I'm on your team!", "Traitor!", and "Aw why'd ya do it?") for if a player-controlled unit kills a friendly unit. Maybe I could add something for just hitting a friendly unit. The aiming cone also turns red when there is a friendly unit in your line of fire.
  • Good call on having units in a standing state when exiting the HQ
  • I see what you mean about the left-click/A to join, but I'll probably leave that in place. The idea is that, for local coop games, I'd like for any player to be able to take control, essentially taking turns when there are fewer units than players. But, now that I think about it, I could probably set it to automatically take control with kbm if there are no gamepads connected.
  • Haha, yeah I ran into that bug recently myself. I don't think I'll hotfix it at this point but instead just put the fix in the next update. In most games other than countdown missions, when victory/defeat is reached it's because there are no more units left on one side. Fixing the bug you mentioned should eliminate the need of relinquishing control except in those countdown missions. I'll still probably leave things as-is, in part because I'd like to add something like an "unsportsmanlike" badge for when a player kills a unit after the battle is over. (Badges are turned off by default in single player because some badges don't make sense in a single player context, but they can be turned on from the options menu if you want to see what they're about. I plan to rework the badge system to include single-player specific badges and have them on by default in the future).

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback and for playing the game!