Star Sentinel Tactics - Beta Demo
Community Forums/Showcase/Star Sentinel Tactics - Beta Demo
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| Hey, I still have a lot of work left to do on the game, but I'd like to start getting some early feedback. I'm particularly interested in bugs and compatibility issues, but I'm interested in hearing just about anything from anyone who is prepared to give the demo a really good workout. I don't really want to start all over again later on in the development cycle, so I'm afraid I'm only interested in people who are prepared and able to commit time to testing future versions as well. For the moment, it's just one level and a tutorial. The AI is extremely basic so that (in theory) no one should be able to die, and it's still a bit rough around the edges, but it seems pretty stable. Certainly the worst thing it could do is throw a runtime error and close the game. It's pretty much Shader Model 2.0 only. Technically it should run without it, but I haven't tested the fixed function fallbacks and it's likely the game will be butt ugly without shaders anyway. As I say, for the moment, the option is there, but it's unlikely to make the final cut. Please note that I'm not releasing any tools or documentation and I'm not offering any support for mods until the game is finished. However, that doesn't mean you can't start looking, learning and having a bit of a fiddle. If you are interested in making a turn-based tactics mod of any kind - I guess you could even do a total conversion if you really wanted - then getting in on the beta program might well give you a head start on everyone else. Here's a couple of screenshots to give you a rough idea. From the first level (in the beta demo)  From a later level (not in the beta demo)  If you'd like to sign up for the beta, please visit my website, and send me an email with all the requested information. You're not signing up for anything else, I just need you to send me an email so that I know who is testing and can keep track of all the feedback easily. I don't want to be scratching around various different forums looking for that reply that mentioned that feature I wanted to fix but now I can't remember when it broke. http://www.starsentineltactics.com/noflash/news4.html |
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| Looks terribly exciting. |
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| Looks good! In the first screenshot the 'bumped' terrain seems to 'bump' (for my taste), while in the second screenshot the ground seems to 'flat'. But I imagine that as it is a Beta everythin can change! |
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| Looks like one of the best looking blitz games I've seen around here. Nice to see good use of shaders too. |
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| Wow, very nice looking shots. Impressive game design as well. The description on your website is well written, made me want to buy it and I didnt even buy fallout. :) |
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| Totally agree with degac. But looking very impressive indeed. |
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| Impressive. Though the GUI at the bottom of the screen is too big for my taste. |
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| looks fantastic :) - well done gAb :)) - um...why dont you call it "Defoc8 Tactics" - jst sounds a little better is all... oh..and one more thing...its Oozing coOlness - gratz! :p |
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| Looks awesome! Good work! |
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| Thank you for the kind words everyone. I'll definitely bear that "better title" in mind, Def. I can certainly see that it would appeal to a certain audience :P The GUI does actually get hidden during cutscenes and while actions are taking place. I'll have a think about how I might make the GUI smaller. I certainly recognize the disparity in bumpiness between certain locations and textures, although I'm not sure what I can do to fix it. Some normal maps just look bumpier than others. Perhaps playing with the specular values will make a difference. Thank you to everyone who filled out a beta application email. I was hoping to be sending out download links to the first few people today, but network problems with the host have prevented me from uploading it. Hopefully in the next couple of days, I'll be able to go ahead. |
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| Yes. A Turn-based Combat. As Jagged Alliance. Very good memories. JP  |
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| Looks really solid! Your contrast may be a bit out of whack. Take a look below:  |
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| Skn, maybe its my display but the differences you made are minimal, and to me as a player wouldnt make any difference. Theres probably much more to bee seen there to you folks with actual artistic abilities :) |
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| Hehe yeah it is fairly subtle. Every time i look at the orginal shot my eyes kinda go screwy. Try looking at the characters and how they seemd to almost blend into the background. (EG same amount of detail, same color range, same contrast). The 3rd shot from the image I did, if you can see it, kinda has a very subtle 3D effect to it (things popping out more and looking less like a flat image) This probably illustrates the difference a bit better:  |
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| I would definatey alter the ground textures and scale them differently. |
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| This looks really excellent!! Well done so far. |
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| The terrain texture in the first shot doesn't fit. You have a roll cart thing and there's no way that would be able to roll over that type of rocky floor. Looks decent. Some of the textures don't seem to "fit" or gel together though. But I'm assuming those aren't real levels and you've just dropped some stuff down quickly without much thought, for the sole purpose of a screenshot. Good work. |
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| Hmmmm, this looks very nice! Good to see a game like this from you Gab. |
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| Thanks Taumel. Maybe it is the scale that's wrong. I'll fiddle with it. Cheers Wiebo & Ross. |
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| Looks great. HUD is very nice. |
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| I recognize a few of the creature models, but where did you get the chracter models? Those look really good. The portraits also look very well done. |
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| The character models (assuming you mean the soldiers) were licensed from Rocketbox GMBH. (http://www.rocketbox.de/) The Kryllith (green lizards in red armour) were custom modelled and textured by Andrew Osbourne, using custom concept artwork by Eric Chiang as a reference. The orginal character design is mine. The creature models you recognize, I assume those are the ones from Max Shelekhov. The portrait illustrations were all custom work done by Zdenek Sasek. I agree that they're very well done. I was very impressed with his work on those. |
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| Very polished looking game, star sentinel does kind of sum up some kind of Elite style game.... |
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| Thanks, BP. @Everyone I've actually had very little interest from anyone wanting to beta test, so I guess the closed nature of testing is putting people off. Or maybe they don't want to bother for a one level demo? I'm currently evaluating a few options for how I can make this more attractive to testers. One option would be to go with a "Mount And Blade" style open development beta, where people can "buy in" at any stage of development, and start playing immediately, but also get all updates until the game is finished, with some kind of early adopter discount as an additional reward. This would be a full 25+ level game beta. The upside for me is more testers, less timewasters (who wants to pay to slag someone off?) a bit of extra money to help finance development and testing of the entire game. The downside is a dramatic increase in pressure when people have already paid money, and it would be another couple months before I would be ready to do this. The other option is to just make the 1 level plus tutorial beta public. The upside is that I get the most testers and I can do it right away, but the downside is that I probably also get a lot more timewasters, no money and probably a lot more pressure anyway. So I'm leaning towards the first option but if anyone who saw this, considered testing and thought better of it would care to indicate why they thought better of it, what put them off, what would make them reconsider and which option they prefer, I'd love to hear from you. |
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| Gabriel, try posting your demo at gamedev.net and indiecoder. I didnt test yours because it was closed, and I dont have the available time to test more than once a day. If you open it up ill download it. The one level restriction doesnt matter to me at all, but i think alot of poeple cant be bothered to join up for this, or register on a forum.. a direct link would probably serve you best. |
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| I'd suggest making a private forum for the beta testing. Seeing other testers post and activating discussions (either by adding comments to people's questions/suggestions/opinions or by asking open questions) would give better feedback in my opinion. If you just wait for beta testers to give you feedback by email, you won't get any. If you don't want to bother creating/instancing/hosting a forum, I already have the setup and could host it for you. |
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| Wow looking great, good luck with it! |
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