Paper Wars

[u9i]

Hi traylorpark, as promised on twitter i'll elaborate a little on my "seeing what opponent does+more diff in 1x/2x/3x actions."

First of all, the camera solution you guys have is great. Works really well. By "seeing opponent" i mean to see their moves while they happen. Maybe the camera could quickly pan to the moving unit. But that could also break the flow of the game making it feel less real-time. It is just something i noticed while playing. For the most part, i had some thoughts on what the opponent was doing, and every now and then i would look over and check.

As for the 1x/2x/3x actions. What i mean is that i think it is not clear enough what the opponent did. I mean the difference in the animations from a 1x shot to a 2x shot to a 3x shot is too subtle. That could be fixed as easily as just writing 2x or 3x ontop when the animation is played.

Another thing i noticed. The health text is white making it difficult to see when over sand and such.

This sounds like a lot of comments and criticism. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love this game, the graphics, the mechanics. And definitely also the camera. My comments above are really very minor things that came up while playing.

I'm really looking forward to trying this against someone

/Uni

EDIT: Btw, i understand your desktop-build comments, and to some extent i also agree. But the desktop option was included so that people could get their game to as many people as possible, since not everyone has every handheld. It was in the spirit of cross-platform cross-community that they are allowed.

 

[Blackcurtain]

I tried Paper Wars earlier today and I really liked the style of the graphics. Though I thought the controls were pretty clunky and unclear. I found it hard to know how and where you are allowed to move a unit. At times I clicked the screen 10-20 times in frustration when attempting to move a unit, but to no avail. I was also surprised that you could only have 2 units at a time, which made it pretty hard to win against the enemy that had tanks.

 

[RetroVortex]

I tried Paper Wars earlier today and I really liked the style of the graphics. Though I thought the controls were pretty clunky and unclear. I found it hard to know how and where you are allowed to move a unit. At times I clicked the screen 10-20 times in frustration when attempting to move a unit, but to no avail. I was also surprised that you could only have 2 units at a time, which made it pretty hard to win against the enemy that had tanks.

?

I had like 5 or 6 tanks, 2 infantry, and 2 helicopters on the screen when I was playing.
(are you sure you have enough resources to build units? The top left corner says how much funding you have, and tapping on the buildings allow you to build new units, or repair existing ones)

You are limited to 3 moves in a turn. That includes creating, moving, healing, capturing, and attacking

Also remember that infantry are the only units that can capture buildings.

I love the game, nice visual style, interesting take on Advance wars-type gameplay.
(Though a little slow, and a bit fiddly one the touch screen)

Is there also a lack of sound in this release as I didn't hear anything.

Also the AI moves a bit too quickly to follow.

 

[traylorpark]

Hi traylorpark, as promised on twitter i'll elaborate a little on my "seeing what opponent does+more diff in 1x/2x/3x actions."

First of all, the camera solution you guys have is great. Works really well. By "seeing opponent" i mean to see their moves while they happen. Maybe the camera could quickly pan to the moving unit. But that could also break the flow of the game making it feel less real-time. It is just something i noticed while playing. For the most part, i had some thoughts on what the opponent was doing, and every now and then i would look over and check.

As for the 1x/2x/3x actions. What i mean is that i think it is not clear enough what the opponent did. I mean the difference in the animations from a 1x shot to a 2x shot to a 3x shot is too subtle. That could be fixed as easily as just writing 2x or 3x ontop when the animation is played.

Another thing i noticed. The health text is white making it difficult to see when over sand and such.

This sounds like a lot of comments and criticism. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love this game, the graphics, the mechanics. And definitely also the camera. My comments above are really very minor things that came up while playing.

I'm really looking forward to trying this against someone

/Uni

EDIT: Btw, i understand your desktop-build comments, and to some extent i also agree. But the desktop option was included so that people could get their game to as many people as possible, since not everyone has every handheld. It was in the spirit of cross-platform cross-community that they are allowed.

Hey u9i! This is great feedback. Honestly, no detail is too small, this is the level Crow and I were scrutinizing our own work as well. The eventual goal is to have something very “professional” and more importantly, engaging and engrossing. Little details can both pull someone in and out of the experience.

Having the camera move to show the other team moving is an interesting idea. It highlights the decisions made by the computer, the result is the computer’s presence and decisions become even more prominent. The computer almost gains a personality.

The trade off is the immediacy in the player’s command input. When only having 3 moves until your turn is up, the constant changing of the camera may become an annoyance.

The archetypal system in turn based strategy games, is to move ALL your units one time, then the player’s turn is over. This means that each player’s turn can be rather long depending on the amount of units on the screen. Thus, the camera bringing attention the AI’s moves is not a jarring experience.

Kind of related, we had the “Blue’s Turn” “Orange’s Turn” notification banner originally appear in the middle of the screen. We found that the banner appeared so often (just after 3 moves), that it was getting kinda annoying. So we moved it to the bottom of the screen, also allowing the player to start inputting commands JUST AS the notification of their turn began to appear.

After all that thought process babble, I’m still at least interested in the moving camera idea. Anything to make the experience more immersive. At least it is certainly something to try! And if we can’t work it into the gameplay the way we want it, we could always make it a toggle option


For x1x2x3 shots. Good crits! Thank you. Currently, there are 2 different shooting animations per unit. One for Return Fire and X1 shot, and one for X2 and X3. There are 3 different Shoot “explosions” and Hit “Explosions” for Return Fire, X1 and X2-3.

More notifications, as too which is which, would be nice for the player for sure. Sound effects would help of course. Perhaps some more graphical effects would help the player “feel” the difference. We can always use a text pop-up if that’s not enough.


That sand color causes so many problems! haha! My personal design notes include things like, “...everything looks better when the ground is darker.” This is especially true on the Caanoo’s horrible LCD and uneven backlighting.

I agree, the white text is hard to read. That will be adressed.


For the camera/navigation solution, I really want to compliment Crow on making it just work. I had an idea to “bind” the camera to a plane. Pressing the analog stick would move the camera across the plane but not effect the rotation.

Crow made this idea possible, and allowed me to create any shape “camera plane” I wanted in 3D in Blender (like angling the plane to match the rise and fall of the terrain). The camera only rotates when you have a unit selected and move the camera away, so the camera works to try to keep the unit in it’s field of vision (with a cut off point of course). The camera will only rotate to better view a selected unit OR reset itself IF you move the camera with the stick. Crow reasoned that a player would only move the camera if they aren’t happy with it’s current location. So, if you don’t touch the camera, it won’t correct itself either.


Well, I’ve probably answered your questions ad nauseam. Apologies for that! But really, thanks for the feedback!

 

[traylorpark]

I tried Paper Wars earlier today and I really liked the style of the graphics. Though I thought the controls were pretty clunky and unclear. I found it hard to know how and where you are allowed to move a unit. At times I clicked the screen 10-20 times in frustration when attempting to move a unit, but to no avail. I was also surprised that you could only have 2 units at a time, which made it pretty hard to win against the enemy that had tanks.

Apologies for the game being unclear for you BlackCurtain. I made this video here *link that goes over the basics if you wanna check it out!

Basics Tutorial

For moving ... look at the hexes that appear around the units. The solid, inner hexes are the ones that tell you where you can move. The out ring hexes are how far you can shoot. Each unit is different. Targets you can shoot/capture are automatically highlighted.

As RetroVortex mentioned, you can build units at your Base. When you have enough paper/money to build a unit, the option will automatically appear when you select a building.

Hopefully that will help you a bit!

 

[traylorpark]

I love the game, nice visual style, interesting take on Advance wars-type gameplay.
(Though a little slow, and a bit fiddly one the touch screen)

Is there also a lack of sound in this release as I didn't hear anything.

Also the AI moves a bit too quickly to follow.

Haha, yup, no sound. Well, there is ONE sound effect, when you capture something. During the last week, Crow and I decided to take the time to implement the shooting and getting hit animations (Crow has to animate the alpha transparency by hand in the code!) along with redesigning the icons twice.

Unfortunately, sound was the casualty of this decision.
I promise you though! After this competition, sound is going to be priority 1 A+!


“AI moves too quickly” is a very helpful comment, thank you. Perhaps moving the camera like was discussed with u9i might help. Or maybe just slowing them down a bit too. Regardless, needs some thought for sure. Thanks so much for your feed back!


Lastly, I’m glad you feel the game is “a little slow”. I feel the same way. There are a number of things that contribute to this feeling. Crow and I are currently considering more gameplay mechanics that could invigorate the early parts of a match.

 

[torpor]

To be honest, the game looks absolutely lovely and is highly intriguing .. but I couldn't really get involved in it long enough for some hot action. It'd be nice if there were levels that were more action-oriented, quicker.

But other than that comment, I love it. Its really a fantastic development and you guys deserve to be hired as pro's! Well done!

 

[kayuz]

watching other portable console's strategy games,for example Age of Empires for ds, so , i see that:
when you attack an enemy troop you don't see only the decrease of the number of the life but you see a little animations, like in Advance Wars too for ds.
so, you see your troops attacking the enemy troops, like 10 vs 10
i like it so much

 

[u9i]

I would like to add, that i think i experienced the clicking-problem that BlackCurtain is talking about. I think i started noticing that it was the health-number above the unit that got the click event instead of the tile on the ground. But i could be wrong about that though.

Also, it wasn't clear to me either when i could build new units. Just something you guys can thing about. Either teach me that i can see when i can build at the top, or maybe glow the base or something.

About the camera. Showing the opponent's move would indeed give the AI a personality as you say, but you might be right that it could quickly get annoying. It is something you guys will have to try out

Ok, i think i'm all out of feedback now

Oh, and if you would compile a Wiz and Pandora version, i'd love to add it to the download page

/Uni

 

[Blackcurtain]

I would like to add, that i think i experienced the clicking-problem that BlackCurtain is talking about. I think i started noticing that it was the health-number above the unit that got the click event instead of the tile on the ground. But i could be wrong about that though.

Exactly, I had no clue what to click on. Sometimes it worked clicking on the tile, sometimes it didn't (even tough I still had more turns to go.)

 

[traylorpark]

I would like to add, that i think i experienced the clicking-problem that BlackCurtain is talking about. I think i started noticing that it was the health-number above the unit that got the click event instead of the tile on the ground. But i could be wrong about that though.

Also, it wasn't clear to me either when i could build new units. Just something you guys can thing about. Either teach me that i can see when i can build at the top, or maybe glow the base or something.

Oh, and if you would compile a Wiz and Pandora version, i'd love to add it to the download page

/Uni

Great! I love to read these, thank you!

Not knowing when you can build something, yeah, I also agree that this must be addressed. Watching people play test the game for the first time quickly highlights the obvious problems ... one is ... "how/when can I build this thing?"

Regarding the clicking issues ... I went back to the game multiple times searching for this problem. I'm not too sure where the difficulty is, I wish I could see what you are talking about :unsure: If this helps, the clicking actions are as follows:

Touch a Unit or Building to select it.

Touch the solid "movement hex" to see the "move" icon.

Touch the icons to do that action.

The Inner Solid hexes represent movement hexes, the outer ring hexes represent shooting range. Things that can be shot auto-highlight in red. So, perhaps if you are clicking on hex that only has the outer ring visible, you might be wondering why you can't move there.

All the units have the same shooting range, but each unit has a different movement range. Soldiers - 1 unit, tanks - 2 units, copters - 3 units. Therefor, the inner solid hex and outer ring hex to signal to the user how far a unit can move and separately, how far they can shoot. Perhaps some kind of tutorial could help make this difference more obvious. Do you think more in depth tutorials are needed to play this game? More visual notifications maybe?

Eventually, I would like to make the icons larger. I think that would also make it easier to click on stuff. Otherwise, if you are still having difficulties, I might recommend you re-calibrate your touch screen maybe?


Lastly, I'll talk to Crow about porting and get his feedback. He is actually on vacation right now away from all internet access. I can't do any porting or packaging (even to PC) without his help B) useless artist.

 

[Orion4874]

Ok guys, i've been playing with this for a couple days now and must say that I am impressed to say the least. It's definitely one of if not the most polished and professional looking game imo and with some minor improvements/additions the gameplay will rival the aesthetics.

I like the 3 moves per turn but initially I would have liked to have seen the shooting ranges differ for the different units, but after thinking about it I can see how that would give unfair advantages and probably make the game nearly unwinnable in it's present form. For example, if you have infantry facing a helicopter you would have to get more than one unit there to be able to win but you can't with only 3 moves at your disposal. With only one unit you'd be dead before you even got into range. They only other way I can see it working would be to be able to combine units and make youself stronger.
Obviously the addition of music and sound effects will heighten the experience and should make the gameplay feel less slow.
Add vibration to battles.
I am in favor of showing the opponents moves since I always look to see what they did. The AI moving so fast is good for this as it won't make it annoying, slowing it down too much would imo.
An option to upgrade your existing units instead of building new ones may be a good idea. Maybe give each unit type 3 levels of strength and make minor changes to their appearance to make them look stronger after each upgrade? This would probably be alot of additinal work however.
I have yet to encounter the clicking problems in this version as stated by BlackCurtain and Uni. I do remember it in the demo though, so I presume that was addressed since then?

As a side note, my advice would be to get the game finished, port it over to ios and Android and make some well deserved money for all your hard work! Two thumbs up guys!!!

 

[crow_riot]

i'm back!

it's a bit much to comment on each ... but thanks for all your suggestions and comments regarding the game. it's far from being finished, but i still feel we've got some good game submitted. i'm currently trying to build the wiz version if it's still ok to submit it to the entries. nothing is changed, just compiled, so i hope i'm complying to the rules

 

[crow_riot]

regarding the touch issue, it seems i have found a bug - i need to check

 

[crow_riot]

just for information ... the wiz port is working. i dont know if anyone has something against me submitting it for the compo. it's really just a recompile of what i have, nothing has been changed gamewise.

 

[foxblock]

just for information ... the wiz port is working. i dont know if anyone has something against me submitting it for the compo. it's really just a recompile of what i have, nothing has been changed gamewise.

Just upload it somewhere and send the link to Uni via the contact form on the RIOT site, he will add it to your project entry.

 

[crow_riot]

just for information ... the wiz port is working. i dont know if anyone has something against me submitting it for the compo. it's really just a recompile of what i have, nothing has been changed gamewise.

Just upload it somewhere and send the link to Uni via the contact form on the RIOT site, he will add it to your project entry.

yeah, just did it. thanks.

 

[u9i]

Traylorpark, the clicking issue wasn't anything semantical. I understood the game, i just remember having difficulty clicking sometimes. But to be honest i might be confusing with the first prototype. Anyways, if it is really a problem you will get more feedback on it at some point i'm sure

Wiz version is uploaded, and pandora version will be available in a few hours.

/Uni

 

[traylorpark]

Traylorpark, the clicking issue wasn't anything semantical. I understood the game, i just remember having difficulty clicking sometimes. But to be honest i might be confusing with the first prototype. Anyways, if it is really a problem you will get more feedback on it at some point i'm sure

Wiz version is uploaded, and pandora version will be available in a few hours.

/Uni

I see what you mean, I'll be sure to spend some time seeing if I can reproduce the problem!

And speaking of Pandora builds... in the last hours of voting ... a Pandora build has surfaced!

Please give it a download and let me know what you think! (I don't have a Panda...)

 

[Blue Protoman]

It's beautiful! Check the RIOT thread on the official boards.