That's always tricky to answer. The alpha was announced to start shortly on June 30 last year.... With the beta ongoing, the project can't be more on its tracks now though. I can't see how the beta could last for less than one month, especially since there's still the second half of the game to complete. Add a few weeks for final preparations and submission. It will also depend how far we push the game and that strongly depends on the interactions we have with players during beta. So at best, in July. At worst, in September hopefully.
Anyone else having difficulties with controls? Maybe it's just because I don't have a good enough boat, but I'm finding them unresponsive (that, or I just suck.) With all the timing on little bumps needed, it's virtually impossible to get the gassing and breaking perfect, and I often found that those series of little bumps cost me a lot of speed. Also I find that I take my finger off to hug the wave, but my boat stills shoots off. Maybe I'm not taking my finger off long enough/early enough. And I find the fact that you lose almost all your speed upon landing rather "unfun." It makes jumps not very exciting because you know your boats going to slowly plop and have no speed.
Sticking to a wave is meant to be as much as possible as a one-touch equivalent to a real racing game where you have to brake before a curve to take it. How long before a curve you have to brake will depend on your braking capacity and your grip (downforce here). So that very much depends on boats and the first boats sure don't handle the best. When shooting off, releasing the throttle helps most of the time because it makes you fall faster, so that's like a second chance when making a mistake. It would be hard reducing speed drop while in the air since without that, there's no more difference between staying in water and jumping, meaning that how well you race would not make a difference (there would be no 'well' nor skills involved) and remove the drive in a drive and shoot game. (not completely closing the door on that, if it turns out it's a necessity). Again, releasing the throttle in the air should help keeping your speed. Obviously those are early games difficulties to overcome with practice and new boats. What I hear is a strong plea toward 'the game is too difficult' for which we would have to bend the difficulty curve and add clarifications (notably, make the AI a bit weaker early on, make it easier to get new boats early on and perhaps boost downforce on weak boats). How do people like license tests? Because if their fun they can be used to add a few more training tests to get better prepared for the races.
For the records, it took about 1H for doomfan to complete the C racing class, about 30 more mins to get his class B license, around 5H till he completed the B racing class and around 7H to get gold trophies everywhere. There's a bit more replay value than I thought, which should bring the total game to at least 20H. From what I've seen, people starting getting the hang of it toward the end of the first string of racing events and start being comfortable 90 mins in. Right now, I'm confident about what the game has to offer from that moment, thought I'm concerned about what happens before that 90 mins. Thought a bit more about downforce. It's probably not completely clear that it is not sufficient to brake right before the top of the wave to stick to it. it relates to the ratio of current speed / top speed, which is affected by the downforce statistic. So it is necessary to break before the wave, which is also affected by the braking statistic. I could change the formula to relate it more to the current speed instead of the ratio of current speed / top speed. This would mean that slower boats would have a higher facility to stick to wave, which would mean an advantage for early boats though a disadvantage for late boats with low downforce.
Oh, don't remember if I mentioned it before, but in training you can against your ghost, which is rather good to learn a track and see where to improve.
Sounds good! Just to let tester know, our current goal for the next build is to tighten beginning of the game, smooth the difficulty curve and polish the general experience at the beginning of the game: - Touch-ups to first intro race - probably getting rid of the second intro race - Shorter and a bit more instructive licenses - Dumber AI early on - Easier access to new early boats - Changing downforce formula to make early boats more sticky - A new class C champion side-story, Ramboat (or Raft Punk) - New shortcut for shop from race, and shortcuts between shop and races in menu - Several new clarifications/notifications in menus - New newspaper after events - New menu music/sfx
Could the newspapers be personalized with player names as they come up? Just a thought.. Would be neat to have boat that shot sticky bombs..bomb could stick to a boat in front and carry bomb into a pack and be remotely detonated after a time.. Can't wait for next build!
Name in newspaper would be cool, the only problem is that it would force to chose a racer name right at the beginning of the game, which breaks the flow a bit but we'll see if we sneak that in before release or not. Sticky bomb would be a cool idea to add on the last stretch, along with other new gun behavior if we get some other ideas
The new build is out! The final list of modifications looks like this: - Changed downforce formula to make early boats more sticky (easier to control) - Reworked licenses, made them easier and a more instructive - Dumber AI early on - Easier access to new early boats - A new class C champion side-story, Ramboat - New shortcuts (shop from race), and (between shop and races in menus) - Added ghost replay in license tests - Dug on the parody side through pilot names - Several new clarifications from conversations - Air drag won't slow you down to 0 now (no lower than about 40% of top speed) - Touch-ups to first intro race - Got rid of the second intro race - Fixed a bug where you had to finish 2nd in championship to unlock next licenses, instead of 3rd - New menus music/sfx
Beta Tester Im really interested to be a new beta tester, I have made a TestFlight account and send a request! I can report any bug there is!
Thanks! In the light of the first wave, the second wave will be very important and we might even have a third one. I'm not sure if we'll wait for most content to be completed before starting it, so it could start earlier than expected. While waiting for more results coming from the latest beta build, we started worked on Class A content. New button for boats having 2 guns or active systems, new tracks.
Oh, 2 weapons sounds very cool.. What if there were some boats that had forward and reverse gun turrets? They could have a cool off period or only shoot one at a time to make it interesting..would love to see what your AI boats would do with that.
The core idea behind having 2 action buttons is to have a shield and sword mechanic where you block with one and hit with the other. Of course, various combinations will add more combo possibilities. Had not thought about a straight reversed turret (we already have mines). That could be interesting, as long as we don't give a big front and rear gun to a single boat or he'd end up having no competition hehe.
Working on active systems. Touching the second action button will turn these systems on while they have energy left, releasing it will stop them. At this point, the list includes: - Active Shield - Active Acceleration boost - Active Area Stun (disable guns and slow down) - Active Repair - Jump (to avoid projectiles, obstacles, pick-up power-ups...) not sure about this one yet
Wow I cant believe i havent noticed this game! Its looks great may I ask what the pay model will be like?
The current direction is for a premium launch, with a price tag of 1.99$ or 2.99$ (we'll discuss the price tag with the testers once we hit the final stretch). There could be facultative IAP, but we're trying to balance things for a premium experience so the game is made to be played without.
Sounds great! Can't wait. I would say add iAP but make it a side choice for those people who throw their money at any iAP, maybe boat bundles or currency (if there is any)? But overall i'd say stick to the premium side as much as you can. Also, i couldn't find this info but whats like the progression system like? I would assume you level up to unlock boats/weapons and buy them with currency. Is this correct? Anyways, i love the concept and the art style. Cant wait to get my hands on it
Thanks for the good comments . Exactly, in this model, IAP would be more like a service offered to those who prefer it. If things go well, end of story. Otherwise, if we have to switch to a freemium model later on, we'll proceed like we did in the past and make sure that premium users stay unaffected and end up with advantages compared to freemium users. Progression wise, beside the 4 'chapters' (everything is split in 4 racing categories with its own boats set, license tests, etc), you have to earn trophies in races to unlock boats, where you also earn coins and tools. From there, you use the coins currency to buy boats. Each boat has it's own set of equipment systems and characteristics. Tools can be used to install/upgrade those systems and thus further develop your boats.
