Paper Wars


Just played a game with Cloudef. His end froze halfway through :( . The system was still responsive so it was paperwars. Anyway, some constructive gameplay notes:

  • Copters are underpowered. They fly and move fast, but do VERY little damage compared to the retaliation. They are also expensive. The healing ability is great, but since it costs a 50 per use, it's a bit steep. A copter can't really keep a unit alive on its own without massive income, but just sway single battles one side or another. I'd suggest either lowering the copter price to something like 120 or healing price to 30, if you want to keep the mas support units.
  • The damage calculation is very random, and doesn't favor neither the attacker nor the defender. Usually these types of games scale damage based on health difference to give first striker an advantage, but here you can just stay put and wait for the enemy to waste his moves on attacking you until the last strike. There's no point attacking back if it's not for a kill shot, since you deal roughly the same damage back anyway through retaliations. We both first thought the defender always does 1x worth damage to reward the player using all his moves on attacking, but it's just the same.
  • I'd probably make infantry move 2 spaces by walking and tank move three. Moving is slooow right now and making any sort of strategic moves is hard because all your moves are used on getting an infantry soldier somewhere without draining all your cash in the form of papery gliders.


And some praise:

  • The game is smooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth as butter. I even forgot to set the clock frequency back up after suspend, but it was still very much playable.
  • Gliders rock!
  • Network play works awesomely

Oh also, I suggest adding some marker at which grids you will be asked to use glider and which not.


I was confused by that first and thought the grids inside outlines were the normal walking area and grinds outside the outline were for gliding.


Edit: New page, quoting B-ZaR's post.
 
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i'm on the phone so just short:


thanks bzar and cloudef! very valuable feedback. appreciate your playtestings. good to know that network is working.


cloudef, about the freeze are you in internal wifi? i've had big trouble with it and network mode and finally switched to an external adapter and issues went away. i have connection resume implemented if the connection drops out, but even with that it was not working good enough. or it could just be the sgx driver. or well just a bug on my side ;-)


bzar, movement distance is one of the points i've brought up recently to discussion with peter. i totally agree with you.


thanks again
 
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cloudef, about the freeze are you in internal wifi? i've had big trouble with it and network mode and finally switched to an external adapter and issues went away. i have connection resume implemented if the connection drops out, but even with that it was not working good enough. or it could just be the sgx driver. or well just a bug on my side ;-)

Yes, it was on internal wifi. Usually the SGX bugs lockup whole pandora.
 
Thanks so much for this detailed feedback! Your thoughts are incredibly valuable for sure. We really respect the opinions of this community! Most of your guys are probably more hardcore in your gaming then most people.

This is again sooooo smooth


A lobby system would be very nice. Also some labels on which mode I selected, since there's no highlight when I touch the mode "buttons". At first I wasn't sure I was selecting the network mode at all . I'm up for trying a match

Yeah, the menu`s are very not final at all. I`ll be sure to take this into account when I get to designing the new `beautiful` version. :)

Just played a game with Cloudef. His end froze halfway through. The system was still responsive so it was paperwars. Anyway, some constructive gameplay notes:

  • Copters are underpowered. They fly and move fast, but do VERY little damage compared to the retaliation. They are also expensive. The healing ability is great, but since it costs a 50 per use, it's a bit steep. A copter can't really keep a unit alive on its own without massive income, but just sway single battles one side or another. I'd suggest either lowering the copter price to something like 120 or healing price to 30, if you want to keep the mas support units.
  • The damage calculation is very random, and doesn't favor neither the attacker nor the defender. Usually these types of games scale damage based on health difference to give first striker an advantage, but here you can just stay put and wait for the enemy to waste his moves on attacking you until the last strike. There's no point attacking back if it's not for a kill shot, since you deal roughly the same damage back anyway through retaliations. We both first thought the defender always does 1x worth damage to reward the player using all his moves on attacking, but it's just the same.
  • I'd probably make infantry move 2 spaces by walking and tank move three. Moving is slooow right now and making any sort of strategic moves is hard because all your moves are used on getting an infantry soldier somewhere without draining all your cash in the form of papery gliders.

Psyched that you guys had a chance to get a multiplayer game going! You may be the very first Pandora Vs. Pandora of Paper Wars yet! Sorry that the game bottomed out on you though.


Here's a reply to your points:


Actually, the copters are just as equally powered as all the other units IF you verse them against the correct opponent. Try pitting a Copter against a Tank :ph34r: That is the ultimate point of the Copter, to keep the enemy's tanks at bay. On the maps with only one helipad, even just owning the Helipad without building a Copter is enough to give you the upper hand. If you can control the enemy's Tanks with your Copters, then your Soldiers can roam without worry, allowing you to capture more buildings and expand. That said, lowering the healing price could be considered. Right now the cost to benefit ratio is right on the edge of not being worth it.


Regarding damage ... there are a few things you should consider when attacking. Consider how many moves that unit took to get to where you are attacking as each move lowers it's attack power. Consider the height relation to the enemy as height is taken into consideration. Most importantly, consider which unit is versing which. The units are balanced in a rock/paper/scissors fashion. For example, attacking the enemy's Tank with your Copter, even after moving a bit will almost always result in victory. It's a bit of a different way to think about the game. A squad comprised of each unit, Tank Copter and Soldier is stronger then a 3 unit squad of all Tanks. With that in mind, things that should be considered on our part are the attack penalties for moving a unit and the retaliation strength.


Haha, on the conversations Crow and I have had about Soldier movement range. I am concerned that if we increase it's movement range, lessens the value of its ability to glide around the map. However, the soldier can also glide across gaps and over walls, that might be enough value for its gliding ability.


Also, another point was made about the clarity of the hexes. I understand it is a little unclear right now. New hex designs are in my personal todo. However, right now, if you see a number(price) pop up when you want to do an action, that means it will cost you money. We can work on better communicating this to the user.
 
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You may be the very first Pandora Vs. Pandora of Paper Wars yet!
Yay!

Actually, the copters are just as equally powered as all the other units IF you verse them against the correct opponent. Try pitting a Copter against a Tank :ph34r: That is the ultimate point of the Copter, to keep the enemy's tanks at bay. On the maps with only one helipad, even just owning the Helipad without building a Copter is enough to give you the upper hand. If you can control the enemy's Tanks with your Copters, then your Soldiers can roam without worry, allowing you to capture more buildings and expand. That said, lowering the healing price could be considered. Right now the cost to benefit ratio is right on the edge of not being worth it.
Oh, so more like Fire Emblem, less like Advance Wars ;) . Somehow I can intuitively justify helicopters being good against tanks but bad against infantry is not as clear :p . Anyway, knowing this makes the system make more sense.

Regarding damage ... there are a few things you should consider when attacking. Consider how many moves that unit took to get to where you are attacking as each move lowers it's attack power. Consider the height relation to the enemy as height is taken into consideration. Most importantly, consider which unit is versing which. The units are balanced in a rock/paper/scissors fashion. For example, attacking the enemy's Tank with your Copter, even after moving a bit will almost always result in victory. It's a bit of a different way to think about the game. A squad comprised of each unit, Tank Copter and Soldier is stronger then a 3 unit squad of all Tanks. With that in mind, things that should be considered on our part are the attack penalties for moving a unit and the retaliation strength.
This makes the system a lot clearer. Thank you :D


So, considering the attacker/defender balance:


The defender can choose position first, which gives higher ground. The defender doesn't need to move, which helps further. The offender can choose attacking units based on the defender's units, which gives potential type advantage. Mass advantage typically given to the offender is irrelevant as long as you have enough units to survive, because you don't get any advantage from more additional units.


I'd recommend two things found in some other games (for example weewar) that could make the game a bit more balanced:

  1. Flanking bonus. If you have units in hexes surrounding the attack target, you get a bonus from each since the enemy is being flanked. This makes it advantageous to attack one infantry with two by putting both next to the target and attacking with one.
  2. Zone of control. You cannot move from a hex next to an enemy to another hex next to the same enemy. This works in tandem with the former. In weewar air units are able to break zone of control, making them the ultimate flankers.


I considered both of these for my Wars game, but since I wanted to go with Advance Wars' model of square spaces they don't really work that well.

Haha, on the conversations Crow and I have had about Soldier movement range. I am concerned that if we increase it's movement range, lessens the value of its ability to glide around the map. However, the soldier can also glide across gaps and over walls, that might be enough value for its gliding ability.
The glider is still plenty valuable going downhill (the range is greater, right?) and over gaps. It's better to make the game altogether a smoother experience than to keep one ability more special :)
 
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there's a try to get some general chat/lobby sorted out:





including a speical paperwars channel ... be there if you're up to play.


i've been playing unreal tournament 3 a lot and this was the way to go if i wanted to play some online matches. join a channel, ask and go :)
 
Just to echo Crow,


We have a Freenode IRC channel here.


#pandoralobby-paperwars


Use this web based IRC client (or your own if you wish) ... just enter the channel and any nickname (except mine ;) )


http://webchat.freenode.net/


I squat there whenever I'm available!
 
You have entertaining skills! :D Nice Tutorial. Since I still can't play the game because of no AI, I may have the Idea to add a simple "me vs. me" mode in the game so I can control both sides and spend some time with the game to test everything out? ^^
 
Well, not so good news ... It appears that the lovely Panda's internal wifi and Paper Wars aren't very friendly. You can't even complete a single match.


The kinda good news is that if you have a handy little external wifi stick, the game runs perfectly!


Yay!
 
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I gave this a limited run (PTOD hurts my eyes so I'm just doing basic testing until that's sorted). Super smooth, with great animations. Can't wait to get into it properly later on.


A bit of feedback on map navigation: When moving around the map with the left nub, it gets a bit stuck at the map edges. If for example you hit the south edge, and attempt to move sideways by pulling the nub in a south-west direction (7 o'clock), it stays stuck until you pull the nub around to 9 o'clock (ie. it only unsticks when it's getting no south input from the nub). It should always allow movement even if a portion of the directional input is against a wall. In this scenario, slightly slower movement than normal would probably feel right - ie. you would be feeling the 'friction' of moving along a wall.
 
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Well, not so good news ... It appears that the lovely Panda's internal wifi and Paper Wars aren't very friendly. You can't even complete a single match.


The kinda good news is that if you have a handy little external wifi stick, the game runs perfectly!


Yay!
Tried with WLan powersave off? It can help sometimes to keep WLan stable. :)
 
Seemingly stupid question, but: How do I start this game?


This is what I tried so far:


After launch, first there's a Rebirth promotion screen, then the title "paper wars" slides in from top to the center, then nothing changes.


Tried pressing all kind of buttons, except L-shoulder (as mine is broken).


None triggered anything, except SELECT showing/hiding the FPS counter (59 FPS).


Quitting with ESC works.


I removed the appdata from the previous version, and restarted, issue still the same.


I used the 2012-04-11 build on SuperZaxxon Beta 3.
 
Seemingly stupid question, but: How do I start this game?


This is what I tried so far:


After launch, first there's a Rebirth promotion screen, then the title "paper wars" slides in from top to the center, then nothing changes.


Tried pressing all kind of buttons, except L-shoulder (as mine is broken).


None triggered anything, except SELECT showing/hiding the FPS counter (59 FPS).


Quitting with ESC works.


I removed the appdata from the previous version, and restarted, issue still the same.


I used the 2012-04-11 build on SuperZaxxon Beta 3.

Tap the screen :)
 
yeah i guess no-one reads the readme ;)


i'll add that "please please tap the screen, it's touchscreen based game" to the bootup sequence :)
 
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