Fangorodrim

[djcityscapes]

Here's a little game I've been fooling around with in my spare time. This is a screenshot of my ship as it comes to the rescue of the Frenlees fleet getting stomped on by alien scum:
http://www.metalbuildingreplicas.com/syreal/screenshot156.jpg

Download link:
Fangorodrim (11 megs) (http://www.metalbuildingreplicas.com/syreal/Fangorodrim.zip)

1. You win by colonizing all of the sectors.
2. Should take about an hour to win on medium map and normal difficulty.
3. Tested on Win XP, Vista, Win 7 systems.
4. There's nothing to install, just unzip the file and double-click the exe.
5. Freeware single-player game.

This is a hobby project in progress. I'm open to change requests. Currently working on Trade Ports and Resource Zones.

Known issues: if you save a game while your factory is making a ship, the ship (and your money) is gone when you load that game.

[jdarling]

Downloading now to check it out, looks interesting from the screenshot.

[WILL]

Looks cool. How long have you been working on this game?

[djcityscapes]

2 or 3 months.

[jdarling]

Got a chance to play with it a little bit last night. Must say, it's A LOT harder than it looks. Overall solid idea and a nice combination of themes.

Some things I found a bit disturbing:
1) The controls, there are a LOT of them. IMHO too many for this type of game, a simple click and kill approach would have sufficed.
2) No tutorial :( I know, and I'm as guilty as anyone, its still in dev, but this is a must for this type of game.
3) Death to newbies, seriously I think I died 4 or 5 times before I figured out how to get warp and build ships :( Could be fixed with #2

Other than that, fun game and I really enjoyed playing around with it. Then again, I like the building type games.

- Jeremy

[djcityscapes]

Thanks for playing it! Btw, there is a tutorial in the main directory: _Turorial.rtf. I need to integrate that with the game menu, but I'm waiting until I figure out how to smooth out the in-game font. Another thing not explained very well is the ; key which fires all guns. Otherwise, don't know what else I can do to cut down on keys. WASD is standard keyboard movement.

[jdarling]

If I get some time I'll take a read through the tutorial. On the game play and controls, I got the feeling I was playing Starcraft or Warcraft where I would give a concept of what I wanted a unit to do rather than directly controlling a unit. Could be interesting to have a combination of both where you could setup a unit to perform a certain task and still directly control a specific unit as well.

This may be what you have in place, but I haven't figured it out yet :)

- Jeremy

[djcityscapes]

The only unit you control is the mothership. The formation editor lets you decide how your fleet is deployed. Everything else is automated.

[Galfar]

Nice game, I just finished it (on easy difficulty only though).

Are you planning to have some victory screen with various scores etc?
Currently there's just "You saved the galaxy!" label in the top corner
and the game seems to go on.

Also allowing to change the size of the window would be nice (not just small window/fullscreen options).

And maybe more levels of Logistics research? I've built fixer ships in visited sectors to repair
defense drones when my mothership was away, but later I've hit max ships limit and have to finish the game
with just 2 ships in the mothership's formation.

[djcityscapes]

Thanks for the feedback, Galfar! You raise some valid points. A nice victory screen is on my list (waiting for my artist to finish it). I hadn't thought of various window sizes.

The 8-point max logistics is a hard limit to force the player to decide between offense and maintenance. How about if 2 Fixer ships = 1 logistic point? That way, you could have 8 Fixers and 4 attack ships in your formation. Or 6 attack ships and 4 Fixers... you get the idea. Let me know what you think of that compromise.

Another item on my list is a "scuttle" option for buildings and ships.

[Tsunami]

This is great fun, just played my second game and won on default settings... hard mode next :D I think some extra customization of the ship would add a bit of replayability, though. The graphics could definitely do with a little polish, especially the unsmoothed fonts, but I can understand if that's not your top priority :)

[virtual]

great game , i don't know but the shape moved slowly . maybe its not a time based movement .


question : did u make the game with Torque engine ?

[djcityscapes]

This is great fun, just played my second game and won on default settings... hard mode next :D I think some extra customization of the ship would add a bit of replayability, though. The graphics could definitely do with a little polish, especially the unsmoothed fonts, but I can understand if that's not your top priority :)


Its funny you should mention that because I just put a lot of time into smoothing out the fonts (a lot of people have complained about that). I think you will see an improvement in the next version. Btw, did you win with Mako or Dreadnaut?

[Galfar]

I hadn't thought of various window sizes.

Switching to Fullscreen crashed my PC (driver issue) so I won't try that again :)
Some more window resolutions would be nice - if it's easy enough in Torque, don't know.
BTW How do you like developing in Torque?



The 8-point max logistics is a hard limit to force the player to decide between offense and maintenance. How about if 2 Fixer ships = 1 logistic point? That way, you could have 8 Fixers and 4 attack ships in your formation. Or 6 attack ships and 4 Fixers... you get the idea. Let me know what you think of that compromise.

Another item on my list is a "scuttle" option for buildings and ships.

"Scuttle" option was exactly what I was looking for when I hit the max ships limit. Some ship
count indicator in the GUI could be useful too - something like "4/9 ships" to see how many
I currently have and how many more I can build. Or do it the way you propose to have Logistic points
and ship types could require certain amount of these. So the indicator on GUI could say "7/16" for e.g.
3 fixer ships (1pt each), 2 escorts (1pt each) and 1 cruiser (2pt each).


I'll try higher difficulty now.

[djcityscapes]

Those are some good ideas, Galfar. Adjusting the window may not be possible in Torque, but I'll look into it. Your suggestion about showing a ship summary & scuttle options confirms what was already nagging me in the back of my mind. TGB is great since it saves me a ton of work. Without it, I would have to create my own physics and particle engines.

You may want to download the zip again. v1.57 has some significant changes. The font is smoothed out much better.

[Tsunami]

Btw, did you win with Mako or Dreadnaut?


Dreadnaut - my first game was with the Mako and I died fairly early on. Looking back I'd probably have done better if I'd realised you can repair by hovering over shipyards! I did have an issue with the steering on the Mako, actually - the strafe controls being Q and E makes it hard to use them while turning. Moving them to the right side of the keyboard would make the Mako a lot easier to fly - say < and > or the left and right arrow keys?

[djcityscapes]

Its not documented but the arrow keys do control movement as well.

[Tsunami]

Its not documented but the arrow keys do control movement as well.


Ah, great :D

[mikade]

Ah, excited to try this. :) Downloaded it yesterday. Will give it a go and post feedback soon.

[mikade]

Hello again.

Apologies for the double post. I don't seem to be able to delete my previous one. Mod can remove it if they'd be so kind. xx(

SO! Fangordrim. I had to check to make sure I had the name right. :D

First off, great game you've set up. ;) Got a few comments/criticisms that could hopefully be useful.

My biggest criticism (and one already mentioned) is probably the keys. I felt like I would have enjoyed myself more if the keys had been a bit different, or ideally, if I could have defined my own choices. As it stands they are far too widespread. There's no way I could do everything without moving my hands all over the place. I want to do be able to do everything, or nearly everything without letting go of the mouse. (Fire and secondary fire? / fire all) should also be mouse buttons. Alternatively, I want to be able to play this game without a mouse, and be able to hit 1-5 for research / build options.

"Fire" seems to trigger by both keypress and hold. Er... What I mean is, that although fire_rate is set, I can fire faster than ultimate tech straight away by just tapping space furiously. Which made me iiiiiimmmmbbbaaaaa with strafe and a fast ship.

I was playing in fullscreen mode and I got stuck quite a lot on the edge of the map quite a lot. Most times, I would have to stop moving, and then try moving again after a second before I could go forward. Also at times I didn't seem to be able to warp out and would be tapping shift furiously and letting go and pressing the direction to make my ship warp. I think I would just make warp a single button push. User shouldn't really be pushing warp unless they want to warp anyway.

Minor graphical issue - if you strafe and push up, (then let up go) your engine turns off. So it looks like the ship can strafe without engines. You obviously don't intend this, as the engines activate if you just strafe normally.

On graphics, the backgrounds were all really nice! ;) I liked the collapsing menus and that it took my ship a second to come to a stop after I killed engines. It's the little things that really help make you feel like you're in the game world. I'd like more of a story block when you "win" the game. And maybe more support / text from your allies / the guys whom you save.

The strafe... dunno. I think that maaaaaybe I'd like to be able to engine forwards and back whilst strafing. I also struggled to discern what direction I should push to strafe at times. This is largely my own fault because it is logical, just confusing. As an experimental option, you might try consider what direction to strafe the ship based on it's orientation. That is, it would flip round once your ship rotated past 180 degrees.

The alien technology was a little unclear / unexplained at times. I didn't know I had to push ; to use the laser, for example, and was sad when the game told me I found amazing new alien technology but my weapon remained the same. Maybe just add a "push ';' to use" message.

The game definitely needs a scrap/scuttle ship option. On my first playthrough I got stuck with all the first, rubbishy ships and couldn't replace them with my allies' awesome tech. On my second playthrough I played harder difficulty and they all died, so I guess it was fine. ???

All in all. Nice work. Keep it up. I'm keen to see new additions when they arise. :)

[djcityscapes]

Hi Mikade, thanks for the great feedback. I always appreciate it when someone writes a great review like this. All of your criticisms are valid and I'll definitely work on them. Right now everyone's biggest complaint is the keys. A good objective is to permit the user to define his own keys. Anyway, v1.59 is out and you can scuttle buildings/ships by right-clicking on them:
http://www.metalbuildingreplicas.com/syreal/Fangorodrim.zip

Thanks again!

[User137]

Enjoyed the game, but as a hardcore RTS fan came up with couple suggestions too.

- Controls: The strafing ship is too difficult to control, mainly because fire keys are put so far away in weird place. What i'd find comfortable is arrow keys, L to fire, K held down the left and right keys would strafe instead of turn. Possibly L primary fire, K some secondary fire, J strafe and I for Warp. ... or maybe let us change keys ourselves :)

- Warping: It is too unpredictable. I'd like a screen for target selection, also a more complicated starmap would be cool. Planets in a starsystem are orbiting in quite different way...

- Enemies: Very arcade-like. I'd be happy if enemies had only all the tools and gameplay ways that player has. Ships are spawning out of nowhere and AI doesn't build or take control of planets.

- Minerals: There should be ways to build some basic harvesting facilities from beginning. If player currently does not go for power first he will lose the game, because he will run out of power. There could be research for more advanced facilities that give resources faster, and that might mean that player has to scuttle out previous plant for room.

- Defence probe could be mobile. If you place it in wrong place, with short range it is useless. Enemies come from all directions anyway.

Hope that helps ;)

[djcityscapes]

Good suggestions.



- Enemies: Very arcade-like. I'd be happy if enemies had only all the tools and gameplay ways that player has. Ships are spawning out of nowhere and AI doesn't build or take control of planets.

- Defence probe could be mobile. If you place it in wrong place, with short range it is useless. Enemies come from all directions anyway.


I wonder what version you have because starting with v1.54, the enemies don't spawn from all directions, only from existing warp lanes. If you think a sector is sealed off, but aliens continue to invade it that means another sector has access that you are not aware of.

[User137]

I did use the latest version, and i don't mean like "all directions" as 360 degrees. Just in large map there can be many directions (left,right,top + maybe some variants) they come from, when you start in down-middle.

[djcityscapes]

v1.63 is uploaded:
http://www.metalbuildingreplicas.com/syreal/Fangorodrim.zip

This implements some of user137's suggestions with Trade Ports, Hangars, and additional strafe keys (</>). I'm getting ready to wrap this game up and move on. It's been fun!

[WILL]

Any screenshots or video of the new version in action?

[djcityscapes]

v1.66 is the final version (as of now). The screen shots have not significantly changed. I'm currently working on another game.