Commando xenidis

[Firlefanz]

Hi AthenaoD,

setup your player(s), start a new game, watch the intro and in the shop save the game at once before buying.

Then you have an empty game with all your settings you can load everytime.

If you have FPS=1 in Spacelevel and Surfacelevel on the top left there FPS should be displayed I guess.

Okay, it seems the space level is a bit too hard. How was the surface level?

Thanks,
Firle

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Hi Firle,

I didn't make it to the surface... I don't have a lot of time to play... working on our competition entry :-)

When I get a bit more time, I'll give it a good beating... I'll try and get Spirit to play it too... she's normally pretty good at breaking stuff, then again, that could just be my code ;-)

[Firlefanz]

I'll upload another package today with Space Level 1 easier and some minor bugs fixed. Anybody else found a bug or found something bad?

Thanks,
Firle

[Traveler]

Hi Firlefanz,

I tried your game just now. I've played it for about 45 minutes or so. During that time I made a list of things that came up.
(Note I played on medium level)

Menu and options.
=======
- setup menu: the music tab is still in german.

- I noticed you've changed the menu since last I played it. Quite nice, though there are a few minor glitches. The hints and tips menuitem appears to be too small as the text doesnt fit.

- the hints and tips menu is not at the same place as the main menu.

- the + button for graphics doesn't go past 2, though I can go to 3 while pressing the bar next to it.

- When changing values of, for example, the sound and music bar, the background image seems to be changing place a few pixels.

- the texture of the mouseover image on the buttons isn't placed properly as it gives an extra line next to the button.

- The music and sounds buttons appear to do nothing at all

- I have selected just one player, but at a lot of places I have to opportunity to go to a next/previous player.

Pre game
-----
Upon chaning my playername, colors and such, I am unable to start the game. It simply wont load. I am able to start a game when using default settings.

After a level I have to opportunity to save my game. Its says there I have a difficulty 1. What does 1 mean, if I have selected a medium level difficulty?

space mission
--------------
This is too difficult. I died on my first try, made it a second time, but that was only because I was able to evade most enemies and bullets.
The cooldown on the primary weapon is simply annoying. I'm wasting a lot of time, waiting for it. It takes a lot of the action away.
The enemy fighters are tough too. They shoot a lot of bullets, and with gun working only half the time, its IMO pretty near impossible to get even 25% of all fighters.

The end boss is alright. Not too hard, not too easy.

Second level got even harder, only lasted for a minute or two.

I was also surprised to see that there's no extra ships. When you die its over. A bit of disappointing.

Ground level
-----------------
I found this way too easy. Perhaps even a bit boring. There's little action to be found here. Most of the time there's only one enemy to fight. Sometimes the little spike(?)dogs dont even move at all while shooting them. Those little guys with the guns are okay, but still easy to kill. Their aim is sometimes off tho, as they appear to shoot at places where I dont stand. When they appear from the bottom, near the end, they almost always first go past you and then start shooting apparently in a random direction.

My health never got below 90%, mainly due to the many health packs that lay around.

Another thing I noticed in both the space and ground level is that all texts have little lines above nearly each letter.

conclusion
-----------
Overall, I think its a pretty solid game. Still there's quite a bit of room for improvements though. Especially in the gamebalance and quality of graphics. While the space missions are really difficult, the ground missions are really not. As for the graphics, little things like menu items being off placed, textures that dont fit nicely and texts that have these lines give it a bit of a sloppy look.

[Firlefanz]

Hi Traveler,

thanks a lot. I will take a look at that minor bugs you told about, you are right.

Perhaps Space levels are bit to hard and Surface bit to easy, I will try to work on that.

I will think about that plasma weapon thing.

But no graphics will be changed at this point, the release will be within the next days, maybe even tomorrow.

Thanks a lot

Firle

[Robert Kosek]

I just found time to play and I have to agree on the difficulty of air/ground battles. I was able to reach and conquer planet 1, but could not even reach the 2nd planet.

I like the variation in enemies and ship types, and the squad-looking troops.

The controls are a bit sluggish on the ground, have you considered aiming and firing with the mouse but moving with the arrow keys? Most keyboards have trouble with more than 2 or 3 keys being pressed simultaneously. You also might want to look into making the ground missions a little more compact, since 60% of the first level was just reaching the first building. After that, the rest passed quite quickly.

[Firlefanz]

Hi Robert,

I made some minor changes in the final version, I release right now to make planet levels a bit easier.

I hope now it is good if not, I have to make them perhaps even a bit more easier.

A lot of people asked for Mouse aiming, this is not possible because of the multi player (up to 4) on one PC opotion and because we wanted it arcade style.

Thanks,
Firle

[WILL]

So how well did Commando Xenidis do on the Shareware market?

[Firlefanz]

Extremly bad, TombClimber is a year older and sells better still today.

[WILL]

I apologize if this question is a tad embarrassing, but how many copies?

And since it's brought up, how many and how well did Tomb Climber do?

I only ask as I'm going to be entering into the shareware market myself with my own title.