Thanks! One more little tweak. I changed the icons for abilities that are not available to be greyed out / transparent rather than solid blue cubes. I think it looks better: new ability screen by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
Hey guys, coming a bit late to the party, I just got the game this weekend due to technical appstore problems and me. First of all a big congrat on a very interesting take on the genre after DR1/2. Second, just a heads up to what i feel is an unjust review of the game on pocketgamer. Anyway a couple of things on the game. The AP system is very confusing. I did not sift through the hundreds of posts but I had read already that you do not intend to change it and I respect that and that is not a reason for me not wanting to play (so much so that i only bought it this weekend).however, if I may ask and suggest, why not change the AP for movement (which feels to me is the main issue) to 5? I say 5 because I thing each hex movement is 10, if it is not please bear with me on saying the cost just gets halved. I know in later levels this might mean you can walk the map almost teleport like, but you can proportionately Increase the cost at higher character levels (a bit like ageing effects if you wish). One other thing is the shop and some "fluff" items. I have received items that basically do nothing, just to sell. On top of that the shop is selling those. My suggestion is just get rid of that. Make every item have some bonus. Two last things. 1 an undo button for movement (once more because of AP confusion). 2 the items. It should be possible to long press or even select to check out their properties without picking them up. It is soooo annoying. Sorry if some of these things have already been discussed but, heck, it's just my two cents. Thanks for being such a great dev
Oops forgot one thing that is a must. On the mission select screen, would it be possible that when you tap a mission you go to a mission briefing screen, instead of the dialogue? And get some kind of tick or a victory symbol after completing one for the first time. That way you can know which one are already done and also check the mission briefing to quickly glance at the mission before selecting it. Thanks
@Avaniar: Welcome to the party Movement costs actually differ between units. Some soldiers only need 8, I think (Medic?). Missile needs 12 afair, and some special units like Bots need 20 or more. And I can assure you that a) moving really isn't much of a problem. Unless you play all melee, I guess b) you can indeed rush across almost a complete map already, once your AP are high enough. To elaborate on #a) a bit: I usually play quite static, with my heavy-hitters staying in good positions and shooting long-range; so for me moving is not much of an issue. But even with a more mobile playstyle, it's pretty ok. You just need to plan a little more on who moves where, uses what skills, and shoots which enemies. I guesstimate that a tactics more mobile than mine roughly need 50% longer to finish a mission.
Tks Tks Nullzone Tks for the explanation, i figured as much regarding different move costs, but didn't have time to test it while writing the post. My team is Medic, PSI Op, rifter, SPECTRE, infitltrator and assault marine. I usually make my teams with members i find cool, not thinking of synergies. But really i wanted to make a team of 6 specters hehehe. Regarding my other ideas, what do you think nullzone, justified or not? Also two other things I found, one thing I think is that the power ups you find should show up what they do when you click the terrain tile they are at (maybe when you click on the terrain button their description could show up at the bottom). One other thing, i am playing on an ipad air and When i make a new game or load a game the first leftmost box (so the first game select box basically) is 90% covered by the window that says something like "please select the game you wish to load". My suggestion, just make that window smaller. One final thing, could the names of the people be random or editable? Not only that, but the portrait (with the respective 3d figure). Imsay this because, let us say i make a six specter team, it is weird they all lookalike and have the same name. I know this is a big thing because it means loads more assets (which i guess in the 3d images could just mean a colour change in the suit for example on the specter). Just an idea.
This is fantastic! Will this also pop-up when I have selected a unit and then press on another unit (enemy and friendly) to perform an action? Basically allowing quick access to all unit abilities (of the slected unit) in one place? If that's the case, I'd love to have i permantly on-screen but then it's probably better placed in bottom centre where you currently have the "Abilities" and "Quick ability" buttons (in patch 1.2). You obviously won't need the Quick Ability button anymore. However, I find the current " Abilities" button very usefull for providing detailed information, maybe this could be turned into a " Quick Ability" button (like the ones you have created now) but then obviously for the detailed info on all the selected units abilities, give it an icon like "i" or "?". Hope this makes some sense Is this logic, or something similar, also used for the warningmessage that pops-up if you end your turn but haven't used all AP? I think I had a few situations where I had AP left but wasn't able to do anything (e.g. all movent used, panic state etc.).
Another great addition! Of course I have request here also You have the total number of usages / cooldown time on this screen, can you add the actual amount used (or remaining) and actual time to cooldown?
@Avaniar: Your ideas are good. And most, if not all of them, are already somewhere in this thread You can rename your soldiers when you select them for your squad. If you didn't, just go to "Team" and swap a soldier out for another of the same class; you can rename him then and keep all his stats and equipment. @Wavelight: Since he's the second one to ask about renaming after initial selection, think you can add that in directly, i.e. without having to swap?
I'm adding a medal icon that will appear on the special mission icons once you've finished it. That way, you'll know which missions have been done or not. award badge by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr For having full mission briefing information available from the mission select screen, that will be very hard to do. It would be a lot of manual work so I'm not sure I would do that any time soon.
The problem with having a fixed movement cost per tile is then I cannot have slow characters that have lots of AP for abilities or attacks. Fast creatures would be the only ones with enough AP to perform high AP cost abilities. Now the 1.2 patch includes different coloured tiles that make this much less confusing. You will know at a glance how far you can move with an attack and without an attack. The 1.3 patch will also include the indicator to show you how movement will impact your AP for abilities as well. This makes it very easy to decide your movements. It's a little harder to do that due to the way the random item generator works. I've modified it so that the shop should rarely have any no-effect items. Early levels will reward you with poor items (usually) and making these all have effects is difficult. I'm going to try to put in an undo button but it will be hard to code, so that's why I'm not sure I'll be able to put it in or not. However, I'll give it a shot. Are you referring to pick up items or equipment items?
In the 1.3 patch, I've changed the look of the power ups to be much clearer as to their purpose. However, I can easily add a note in the terrain window that explains if the tile has a collectable and what it does. I'll add that. Yes, I'll fix that. You can change the name of the character when you first select them or during the team reselect button. Just click on the character in your selected team window and a button to change the name appears. A visual indicator to differentiate two characters of the same class would be cool. Not sure how I could do that. I don't think there's an easy way for me to give them a different shade but I'll look into that. Different icons for portraits would be easy except that I have almost run out of space on my texture atlas that I use for the GUI. If I make the texture atlas bigger to include extra portraits, it would add another ~30 MB of texture data in RAM and I really don't want to do that. If I can find a workaround for that, I'd happily incorporate that function. I might be able to use a separate texture atlas for the character faces, but that would have a different performance impact. I'll give it some thought.
So just to clarify, this isn't a panel that allows you to activate any skills. It comes in only when you click on a tile to move. It calculates the cost of the movement to that tile to your AP and then gives you a quick visual to show you which abilities you could perform from that position. Once you move there, you would need to activate once you get there. The problem with quick ability buttons for all abilities is that there are very few abilities that you would really be using multiple times in a single turn. The only ones I can really think of is the Command skill and maybe the Hunker Down / Guard. So having them be as quick activations will take up a lot of space and result in a lot of accidental clicks. I think I've tweaked the unused AP confirm to ignore units that are either panicked, stunned, or have abilities disabled in the 1.2 patch. In the 1.2 patch, if the player confirms that they are okay to end the turn with unused AP, the system will check if any characters can Hunker Down and if they can, they will automatically do so.
@WaveLightGames Thanks for all the feedback. I must say upon getting to lvl 3 (for me after complering the first batch of missions), the game really opens up in terms of movement and abilities. Also, in terms of differentiation, how about putting the characters names and professions on the battle ui under their portrait?
Yeah, it definitely opens up once you have levelled up once or twice. Yeah, could definitely add that if there's space. I'll take a look.
Added the collectible details in the terrain window when you select a tile that contains one: terrain info update by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
@WaveLightGames: Ok, finally was able to play some more today. The shooting through walls bug seems to get worse, or more likely, it's more noticable because I have more AP to spend compared to the earlier missions. It happens primarly near doorways / opening in combination with shooting under an angle. I've made some screenshots that hopefully illustrate this. Unfortunately it's happening in each level, so not just on the one I used in my earlier post about this. Also the abilities (e.g. Grenade) or shots sometimes go in the opposite direction of where I'm aming. However, this doesn't occure frequently though (maybe happed 5 times in total and I'm now on mission 20). More troublesome is the chrasing or maybe more accurate "hanging" of the game. I had this one time in a mission at the end of the second chapter, but now I have experienced it 4 times during mission 20 in chapter 3. These (4) occurences are all related to the use of the Regeneration Point ability of the Medic. As soon as I've selected the tile for placement of the forcefield nothing happens... I can still move the screen, select other units via the Next button and I can see in the Log that the forecield is placed successfully but nothing else happens. The forcefield doesn't appear and although I can press End Turn, nothing happes. I've re-created this issue 3 times on my device (iPad Pro 9.7, iOS10.3.3.3 14G60). I've tried restarting the mission from scratch and rebooting the iPad but get the same results. The reloading of "in mission" savegames also seems to be a bit buggy. I've had one time where the boss unit was all of the suddend dead (I think this was in chapter 2) after reloading the in-mission savegame. During recreation of the issue with the Regeneration Point, I noticed I lost the forcefields my units had delopyed (double checked with the Terrain button to see if it wasn't just a graphical glitch, but all stats read 0). Interestingly, buffs were still in place. If there is more information that would be helpful for you to investigate and hopefuly fix this, please let me know. On a more positive note, I see some great reviews for the game appearing. Congrats! @WaveLightGames: Edit: I'm unable to post the screenshot from my ipad, can I mail them directly to you?
