Now is that a sign or what! Of course it also shows you how much I've really paid attention to them in the past however long it's been since they've been shut down
Just wanted to chime in for the general public following this game and say that after having played the tutorial and first level set I am totally blown away by this game! GSG has really put some serious work into this.
Alpha testing this. This game is destined to be a classic. Up there with FTL and Out There. Better than those games in some ways. My favorite sci fi IOS game and it's not even complete.
Pocket Tactics preview I couldn't agree more. I'm just a bit more optimistic about release date but it's definitely true they are perfectionists.
So, drelbs, can you still see any of Magic Realm in Galactic Keep? I've been on a quest to acquire a copy of MR since the day that you mentioned it in this thread. I managed to snag the rules...but that's it. I suppose it was the original token design that was reminiscent..and that's about it. Maybe the cryptic universe too
Not so much, MR plays at a more strategic level, GKB is down-n-dirty miniatures role-playing. And the way the pieces look and knock together totally remind me of the disks in the old Crossbows & Catapults game... These days the only place you're going to find MR is on Ebay - I just took a peek there and none of the sets available look complete. I do believe most of the parts are available as scans on BoardGameGeek if you haven't checked them out yet. And that reminds me, I owe you guys another playthrough with the new build.
I didn't think of Crossbows & Catapults at all (consciously) but there's a really good chance I may have been channeling C&C token design, it was a childhood favorite! I still have it but the box is a tattered ruin and both crossbows have been busted and 'rebuilt'. I keep an eye on ebay and BGG for crossbows... Someone on BGG usually has a copy of Magic Realm up for sale...but I havn't looked recently. I'm hoping to magically find one at a yard sale or junk shop. Here's a question/poll: A tester had some thoughts on the health bars (the curved red bars near the tokens). They thought that it was strange that the health bars turned from red to 'green', instead of the other way around. Honestly, I haven't thought about them in a long time! So what do you think? Would they be better as green (revealing red, possibly) or do you like them the way they are?
I actually thought about that myself the first time I played. I was a bit confused because I'm used to progress bars going from green to red when things are going "bad". I would personally like to see the color progression flipped, although that might confuse me again next time I play
I didn't really notice the colors at all on those health bars - the only thing that got me about them is that quite often they appear to zero/empty when they aren't, leading to some, "What? He's not dead?!?" moments. Can't remember if this was asked before or not - is there any possibility of user content? For some reason I could see this going gangbusters with a setup like Steam Workshop, with people sharing all sorts of adventures online... EDIT: Re-reading this I now know why the red seemed to fit - the counters have red borders!
That's one of the reasons...it looks nice in red, matches the enemy tokens. Plus on the small player card, the one that comes up with the tab, health is represented as red rectangles (and EXP as blue). About the 'no health but still alive', the bar reduces by percentage. There can be instances when an enemy has 3 health (for example) and that's not enough health to register the last pixel on the bar. It should be though...you should see some health if there is any, so we will look into it. I'm moving this discussion...
To be honest, before it was pointed out in this thread, I never noticed the red/green thing in the health bar, despite having completed the module 3 times already. I had to check it out after reading....I guess I never noticed because...well...it makes sense? The red bar is usually used for hit points, and here, where red is so abundant (like in the tokens borders for instance) really makes sense and is in line with the general presentation. The fact background is green when low (I never noticed) isn't for me a big deal. And, to be clear....enemies are so weird I can see them having green veins/blood....or robots green oil inside On the contrary, I too recently have noticed the fact than sometimes when I critical hit an enemy who has the bar totally near 0, he doesn't die. That's something I'm actually trying actively to reproduce and take screenshots about (of course, since I've noticed and take screenshots of the turn BEFORE the last one, never happened again). EDIT: The above sentence is false, was me just being dumb. There is a perfect (and awesome) reason why the enemy didn't die...alla I had to do was better reading the infos. I had to stop for a week testing the game...returning back to GK was fresh and awesome as the first time (and I generally NEVER replay story based games). So many new sounds!!!!
To your health! We're looking into the 'low health but no color in the health bar' thing. If we set it so that the last couple of pixels of color are maintained in the bar until the enemy has 0 health, that should fix it. Then you won't think an enemy is dead when they're not. About the color of the bar, we're thinking of doing a swap. I'll post some screens so you can see the difference...
bar colors Okay, so, check this out. This is JUST A TEST. We changed the health bar colors to green, desaturated the 'empty' bar and made it mostly transparent. Also, because the EXP bar was light blue, it was too close to the health color, so it was changed to purple. What do you think? EDIT: And here's what it looked like before:
To be honest, I prefer the way it's already in game (red). Don't really like the transparent thing, and not fond of the purple experience either. Obviously not easy like changing color...but what about having the red bar pulsating when low? Or, maybe more effective and easier....what about the whole screen becoming more and more red hued when you are low on health?
I actually like the transparent. If you did that and left the rest of the colors (red and blue) the same I'd be okay with it. My main gripe was that changing from red to green is counter-intuitive to anything I've seen progress wise in games in the past.
I had said that in my original post but didn't want to taint the waters! I'm glad you both came to the same conclusion that I did I'm a fan of the red. Not only does it make sense in the context of 'health' being 'blood', we have the red healing glow, the 'health tonic' that's red. Also, red happens to be my favorite color. We had thought that maybe we could do it green and then have it slowly turn red as your health decreased but there are more important things to work on. This is just a palette swap thing so it's easy. This is still open to discussion (obviously) but I think we're going to go with transparent and red (with the original blue exp). EDIT (to Pitta): just noticed that you said you *didn't* like the transparent thing. We're going to try it with red bars, white background (not green) with a little transparency, not as much as is in that screen. Honestly, it was really hard for me to look at those bars in green and purple after having it red/blue for so long! It just wasn't right. Taking the green out (it was supposed to represent 'empty' anyway) is the simplest solution. We can try it like this for a while...see how it feels.
Well it's just my taste. I like the green background in the bar because it seems to me like the green that you usually see in the board after you rolled marking places you can go. But hey, it's just me...maybe I'll change idea when I'll experience it first hand in future builds eventually. I never had a problem as it is now anyway. I'm trying another play through right now as a pure lone infiltrator... The temporal armor is my best friend. It's AWESOME.
