Surviving Demo Released

Community Forums/Showcase/Surviving Demo Released

HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#1]
After 7 weeks of hard work, here is the demo for the game 'Surviving'

The game is a Defense Tower type with the control of real time strategy, it has 3 island, 4 difficulty mode, 43 levels, 7 tower type, 2 movable units, 1 link canon and thousands of ways to play it, hours of fun :D !

http://blitz.idigicon.com/filesystem_download.asp?NickName=TigerZ&ProjectName=Surviving&Filename=Install_Surviving.exe


GfK(Posted 2003) [#2]
Looks good, but there doesn't seem to be a download.....

[EDIT] N/M its workin now...[/EDIT]


RexRhino(Posted 2003) [#3]
Just a word of advice... you might get more people trying it out if you posted a screenshot.


Al Mackey(Posted 2003) [#4]
Looks like there's one over in the gallery, Rex.


makakoman(Posted 2003) [#5]
TigerZ,

At first I had some problems with it, but now that I have had a chance to play some 30-40 times :), this is a really good game. I can't believe you wrote this in only 7 weeks! I still think the EASY mode is tooo hard, but once I figured some things out, I was able to complete your demo.

A couple of simple suggestions, move your hud to the left or right corner. It takes up a lot of screen space in the top center. Also, make the Timer more easy to see. It gets kind of lost when your placing towers and in a hurry. Going all the way back to level 1 everytime you lose is very frustrating. A save between levels is essential!

I really enjoyed the demo. I just think the difficulty on EASY would stop me from buying this game. I am sure you can adjust that. An old guy like me doesn't have a quick mind or quick hands anymore! :(

Thanks,
MK


Pete Rigz(Posted 2003) [#6]
This is a cool game, got me hooked quickly.

That easy mode isn't easy though! I arranged my blocks so there was a nice bottle neck for all the abyss' minions to go down where I had 3 Arbaleste targetted with freezer towers to slow em up too, but I just didnt earn enuff money to make upgrades and withstand the onslaught on level 4 lol. Also 3 seems to be the limit on Arbaleste?

Make it easier, and have the tutorial tell u exactly what to do to win the first 3 levels so the basic strategy is picked up quicker (maybe even a rolling demo that you can watch).

Ok, since writing this I it occurred to me that u might be able to upgrade Arbaleste, and u can, so now my bottle neck worked and I completed the demo! But I still think it should be easier/point this stuff out abit better.

Think I might purchase the full version..Good luck with the publisher!


HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#7]
thanks guys :)

i am now changing the easy level to be easier, as alot of people have pointed it out, i guess ive played the game too much to realise how hard it is on new players.


Pete Rigz(Posted 2003) [#8]
I forgot something, the Arbaleste were hard to select with the mouse, seemed abit fiddly.


ckob(Posted 2003) [#9]
This is alot like the tower defense in warcraft 3 I love it


poopla(Posted 2003) [#10]
The difficulty was a bit of a concern, glad to hear your changing it :).


NTense(Posted 2003) [#11]
Other than the difficulty, I think this is an incredible game!!! Great Job!!


Tri|Ga|De(Posted 2003) [#12]
Nice work Mann!

But a little hard to play!


poopla(Posted 2003) [#13]
Theres two ways to look at this. 1.The game is way to hard.
2. The game is way too easy if you use flame towers.

What I'm saying is ya may want to look into having more beta testuers to help ya ballance this. :)


HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#14]
thats cause you havent played the full game, with flame towers, you will be owned by air levels, believe me ;)

i just reuploaded a mucho easier version for the easy mode.

and believe me, this is balanced


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#15]
Damn, I'm hooked. It seemed way too hard at first but once I figured out some basic strategy it got a lot easier; now I can do the entire demo without getting hit/losing a single life.

What you really need to do is improve the tutorial. For example, I can't figure out how to use the Arbaleste (which is probably just as well since the Marines are a waste of money; you mostly just want to build lots of laser, flame, and freezer towers.) Similarly, creating bottlenecks by clustering towers is a pretty basic necessity but you don't mention that in the tutorial.


HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#16]
ok sure, ill add the bottleneck suggestion, i always wondered what the term was XD

and as for the marines theyr essential if ur playing the full version, but about the arbaleste, what is it that makes it hard to use? is it the pointing?


JAW(Posted 2003) [#17]
Awesome game man. One of the few games made in blitz that I've went back and played more than a couple times. The terrain looks great too.

I agree the degree of difficulty is a little high on easy. The difficulty curve should be more gradual. Like say, have only one group of spikes appear at the first "level", then two, then three. It is hard to point the arbaleste in the direction you want. A suggestion to remedy that: have the target placed at the location of the cursor (or at the same angle) when you press space (with an arbaleste selected).


EOF(Posted 2003) [#18]
Quality game TigerZ. I don't normally play these types of games but I just wanted to state how fantasic 'Surviving' is overall. Good animation/control/sfx/visuals.
I believe this game will rank alongside other top Blitz games out there such as 'Juno Nemesis' and 'Platypuss'.

Suggestions then:
a) How about an indicator above the selected character?
I don't know which marine is active after clicking the shortcut for instance.
b) Change the fonts for lives remaining & timer. Probably separate them from the box. How about an energy bar for the lives indicator?


jhocking(Posted 2003) [#19]
Another suggestion for your tutorial is to make the text more obvious. At first I didn't realize there even was text showing up at the top of the screen; I just figured it was a crummy tutorial. You need to make the text more obvious, like the message which pops up before monsters attack.


HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#20]
ok, ill try and find a better way to control the arbaleste, since its small modification.

ill also change the color of the lives remaining and timer so that its clearer to see.

and ill check on that marine thing.

thanks for suggestions :) keep em coming, ill change what i can if it doesnt take too long to recode or give more bugs.


Not Available(Posted 2003) [#21]
TigerZ,

This is a really great game, I played it for 1/2 an hour until I worked out how to get enough cash for the Mega Tower weapon.

Some notes:

- I dove right in without the tutorial and found it very intuitive except for:
- money; how much I had wasn't immediately apparent, perhaps using a dollar sign would make this more obvious? (or at least a symbol that stands out a little more)
- it wasn't apparent to me that you could move the marines etc. when the enemies were attacking, I was under the impression that you set everything up and watched the battle (i thought that was cool though)
- the Abalaste (spelling?) didn't do anything (ie. didn't attack enemies)
- I found the scrolling to be too fast; and the cursor keys to be a little out of place in terms of control. ie. Age of empires scrolls when the pointer reaches the edge of the screen. I think this is pretty much the standard in these types of games. (starting with command & conquer)
- I think the graphics are excellent, however the star things (when killed) look like they gush blood before melting into the ground. I'd be more satisfied with a hearty explosion followed by some scattered debry (followed by smoke trails) it kind of looks out of place
- There is no animation or effect when a creature reaches your ship, sure - the life counter decrements, however it would be nice for some sort of flash or something to occur. I was playing with the volume down & found myself staring at the life counter at times where creatures were under heavy fire but just reaching the ship.
- Going back to the money thing, you could make your money-in-the-bank counter flash white & decrement the amount of money by 1 (say every .2 of a second) in a loop when you buy stuff. That would make it instantly obvious whats going on. (ie. it counts down, like a poker machine)
- In my opinion the difficulty is fine, I beat the game on my second attempt - I was wanting more!
- There is a bug that I haven't been able to reproduce where after playing a few games in a row the main menu ceases to function properly, ie clicking on start takes you to options
- Rotating around the landscape would be cool, as well as zoom. Especially zoom, I found myself wanting this badly.
- I favor the left mouse button for building, although I got used to the right button, I notice there is an option for this in Age of empires; so some others must feel the same
- Flying things could benefit greatly from shadows
- After I spent the big dollars on the Mega Tower I was dissapointed in it's intelligence, for some reason it didn't attack those closest to my ship, for that matter all the turrets seem to behave in this manner, i think they should put a priority on attacking enemies closest to your home ship. ie. I had a situation where I built a long corridor with the ship at the end, at the entrance I put 5 towers - at one point I became overun and a few enemies started down the corridor, they were ignored over the incoming enemies some distance from the entrance.

In addition, on my VAIO PCG-FXA47 notebook it looked like nighttime (the landscape was black) until I was positioning a building, at which point the game looked normal - however after building the tower the landscape reverted to darkness. It was unplayable in this incarnation. Graphics card = 8MB ATI RAGE MOBILITY M1. On my GeForce 2 card it was fine.

Ok, now I've spent time giving you some feedback - can you do me a favor? I think the text effect on the credits screen is fantastic, how did you do this?

Cheers,
-R


HNPhan(Posted 2003) [#22]
ouch, thats a long comment
ill have to investigate on that start button menu bug u just mentioned.
There has been issues with ATI graphics card, TNT2 generations and higher are supported, but less then that i was never able to test on them except on voodoos, which seem to have no problem.
you can scroll and rotate and zoom with the mouse, check the tutorial ;)
flying things? what flying things? i dont remember putting a flying level....
the towers always attack the closest enemy, this is done so that you would concentrate more on your strategy then rely on the AI to do everything for you. Im assuming you hacked the money to get the mega tower? dun worry about hacking part, i too hacked my own game to see how easy it was to do so, not very hard :P

ill see what i can do for those 'effects' you mentioned, it would probably help the player more.

and for that effect, its a motion blur effect hard, by grabbing the screen and re apllying on a quad in front of camera.

thanks for your long comment :P