Commando xenidis

[Firlefanz]

Hi!

We'll have 1-4 players on one PC using keyboard and or joysticks (up to 4), 4 different missions for each planet, one flying in free space, one flying inside the planet, one running around on the planet and one running in buildings.

We'll have shops with lots of extra stuff, and an online highscore list like TombClimber has. More screens of that soon.

Firle

[WILL]

If you plan to market the game, I'd strongly suggest network play. Co-op is something that is either not offered or poorly offered(same thing as single, but doesn't offer a good 2+ player experience).

It's always good to criticise yourself in development(NOT too harshly! ). But pick points from the outside point of view that could be a feature that *sucks* if you were some random dude plaything this game you downloaded off of tucows.com... And if you can improve it so tht you really can't pick it appart, you've improved your game and others will like it more. You probably will too.

[cairnswm]

On the indie games forums there are often discussions on creating network play for shareware games and the concensus is that it doen't repay for itself through sales.

[WILL]

Perhaps, but if Doom didn't have such catchy multi-player gameplay would we be seeing Doom 3 making sales for id Software as it is now? Nor it's CEO being able to fund private sub-orbital space ship test flights?

However, I'm not saying that they will MAKE your sales, but if you are going to have a feature in your game, don't pull an Activision and just toss it on top of the game like a sore thumb. The multiple people playing on one computer might be a great feature, but will your players really play your game like that?

However, this is only a meer suggestion or feature that I'd like to have in the game should I play it. Don't take any of this as a 'Golden Rule' or special claim to success.

[Firlefanz]

Hi!

I am very thankful for new suggestions, but in this case (going network) I think we won't have a network option. Maybe I'll think about it later, but right now I would say no.

Here are two new 2 player screenies (the silver blue one was me)




Firle

[Firlefanz]

Hello,

here some new screens, you can see some shots from the ground mission with (animated) water and (animated) lava , also some space-shots.







Firle

[Traveler]

I can see you're putting a lot of effort in graphics. There are a lot of different ships, animals, backgrounds etc. I was wondering though, how are you handling you're graphics? From the looks of it, you're using a lot of different styles.

The first couple of shots look pretty nice. Although, I think the ships could benefit from a bit more detail, to make them more interesting and a bit more variation in the textures for the asteroid will help too. But otherwise they're fine. Backgrounds are a bit too green, too 'nebula'-like, but thats me.
Some objects I can't quite place though, like the golden asteroid(?) in the first 3 shots. And that key-like object in one of the newer screenshots. What are those? Same with the blueish thing at the top of that last space screenhot. I can't make anything of that.

The last few screens however, those with the soldier, look,... to be honest quite bad. Without wanting to sound harsh, it looks as if you're using heavily scaled md2/3 models. It works for the soldier, sort of, but imo doesn't for the orcs(?) and definitely not for the critters(?). With the current textures, its very hard, if not impossible, to make out what they are.

I realize all this is still very much wip and that a lot will change, but this is how I feel about the last few shots. You have a lot of different style going on. It feels very crowded, if thats the correct term. In one hand you have very smooth, nicely rendered ships and in the other odd looking 3d models. It doesn't fit well together.

Dont get me wrong though. The game itself looks very promising and I do think you're on the right track, just not with the graphics.

Hope you appreciate me being honest.

[Firlefanz]

Hi Traveller,

thanks for the honest critics, always good the get some of those.

The Playership is not finished, it will get some more different weapons, engines and wings too choose, and will so be more detailed.

the 'golden' asteroid is an older one and not in the current version anymore. the other asteroids have no textures, because my grafix maker decided so, but they are very nice rotating, looks good in motion.

the 'orcs' and 'critters' also look much better in motion than here on the screens, and the surrounding grafics aren't finished yet, maybe I'll have to think again about those models. The blueish think is a kind of jewel you find in asteroid fields and gives an extra if shot.

Thanks,
Firle

P.S.: And the nebula style is cool, I like it

[WILL]

Hey Firle, very nice so far. I'd love to see how this one plays.

Graphics are awesome and I love the nebulae!


A minor request on the screenshots though; Can you resize the images so that they fix inside the constraints of at least 640x480? I don't mind the displaying of larger images so much as they do in fact make viewing the page harder as it stretches the page wider than it would fit nicely on a 1024x768 res screen with a maximized Web browser(IE and Mozilla).

I believe that it is possible to use the larger image and resize it for an in-forum view and then you can make it stay inside of a URL tag that can be clicked for the larger view(linked directly to the image it's self).

[WILL]

Here is an example:

&#91;url=http&#58;//www.ericbehme.de/bilder/2111-2.jpg&#93;<img src='http&#58;//www.ericbehme.de/bilder/2111-2.jpg' width=320 height=240 border=0>&#91;/url&#93;

Example:




Try it with a preview and you'll see (just make sure you enable the BBCode and the HTML in your post )