That's why you gotta prepare in advance. The zombie mechanic isn't just a thrown in thing at the last minute, its central to the gameplay and how you survive and play. This is a pretty unique shooter given most enemies travel a lot of squares and attack upclose, so preparing in advance is really beneficial and necessary!
We've actually left those sort of things out by design (well, you can see their health, but that's about it). May not suit everyone, but whenever did you manage to please everyone . The thinking here is that we didn't want to clutter up the screen too much, and also make a rather complex type of game slightly more approachable and... ehm... less "nerdy". hehe. (from the comments we're getting, I'd say we succeeded! And that we did the right thing here). We also noticed that people testing it (myself included) quite quickly started to be able to estimate how far the zombies would walk and how hard they would attack you. This becomes part of the strategy. Now, at least I, don't even think quite so much about it. I know from just looking at the playing field how far the zombies will reach. And I know "this zombie need to walk X tiles to get to me, so that means he'll be able to attack me Y times and roughly take Z of my health".
I played a bit more last night and this morning, and am thoroughly enjoying the experience! Grabbing weapons from the stages, worrying about conserving grenades, trying not to accidentally blast teammates, and the atmosphere is really good. Hopefully TacSol becomes as much of a success story as it deserves to be.
We also hope that it pays itself, so that we can make more games using our turn based middleware. We have lots of ideas - just unknown if the market is large enough. But here is for hoping!!! And thanks for your support and kind words. Additionally - feel free to hit us with top-3 things you want us to improve in upcoming updates. Besides more story content /Thomas
Ok someone PLEASE tell me there are headshots in the game or at least something close. How can you have a zombie game w/o exploding craniums that is basically a criminal offense. Also, how the heck do you exit back to the main menu once into a mission?
You can actually splatter a zombie - if you score enough damage vs. the health of a unit. Usually if you score a crit with a high damage weapon. Back to menu - right above the health kit there is a small X button. Opens menu (yes - not perfect location. Will look at that in an update) /Thomas
A bit further into the game now, observations: You can't save when you want to, it's automatic at preset checkpoints (which so far has not been an issue for me). You can restore where you left off when exiting the game with the home button though. Since there's no real inventory per character the 'pack mule' concept of keeping a guy in the rear with the gear isn't going to work in this game. When you have a pistol and pick up another, you simply loot the ammo and the spare pistol disappears forever. So you have to choose wisely since if you have a guy with no weapon at all, you need to let HIM pick it up. You can't carry a heavy weapon and a sidearm for emergencies. You also can't drop a weapon (or even put it away temporarily) and fight with your fists in emergencies. You can only reload your weapon when it's empty which seems illogical. You can't stop a move once issued. I had one situation where I fat fingered a square and the game's pathfinding walked me directly out into a mass of zombies and I died which could have been avoided with a cancel or stop command. You don't earn skill points per character rather they go into a pool you can then distribute to all, which is kinda nice. Opportunity fire is totally awesome! Update: When you run out of ammo you automatically switch to fisticuffs but you DON'T lose your weapon. The sniper rifle is freakin' awesome!
This games sounds very good but was wondering if anyone here has played 'Hunters' as it sounds similar and is a favourite of mine. If so, how does it compare? If it is the same type of game then I will most likely buy it.
I'm only into the game far enough to meet up with Sarge, but so far I am not disappointed. When I first read the description of the game a few weeks ago I was instantly reminded of Incubation: Time is Running Out. A squad based game I played the holy hell out of years (many) ago. My expectations were high and I was trying to prepare myself for some disappointment but so far, none to be had. It took a short bit to get the hang of the camera movement but now I'm wheeling the view around like a pro and enjoy zooming out to an overhead for planning and flying in to a tight POV shot for the battles. The hardest part right now for me is trying to take it slow and enjoy the game as I'm afraid of flying through it too fast and it being over too quick. I talked my brother (another Incubation fan) into getting the game also so we can work through the levels simultaneously and compare notes afterwards - always more fun to share in the experience. I had been getting my TBS fix via Highborn and Rogue Planet, but they are back burnered now as this sucker is my new obsession. And no, I have no affiliation with anyone on the design team, other than hoping the game does well enough to warrant further development or spin offs. One more thing, if you are into Turn Based Strategy a fairly unknown PC game I had a blast playing was War on Folvos. (and no, no affiliation there either other than wishing they'd come up with another game like that). Back on topic... Kudos on Tactical Soldier guys. So far I am one happy ass gamer! I'm already assigning personalities to my squad guys and having in game conversations between them. Maybe I've said too much.
Hmm, just encountered my first glitch- i was in the stage where *highlight for spoilers*you're in the research facility, and the zombies are in cells. You rescue a scientist who starts to inject himself with what he thinks is an antidote, but he then becomes an uber-zombie, so it's a bossfight *end spoilers* i lost first time to that boss, so reloaded from checkpoint. Shortly after that, i had to quit to my home screen. Every time i try to select 'continue' now, the screen blacks out like it's loading, music starts playing, then nothing, just a continual blank screen. Am i SOL with continuing? Guess it won't hurt to start over...
Funny you should mention Incubation, we all played it through (for must of us, played it through AGAIN ) before we started working on Tactical Soldier... So it's actually one of the bigger inspirations!
We've had a few other reports on this too. It's being looked at, and it'll hopefully be fixed in the next update. For now, just go into the campaign menu and select campaign 1. This will give you a list of checkpoints so you can just load one of the checkpoints before it went bad. (rather than having to replay the whole game).
First update in the pipeline BTW - very small for now. Will be released within the next days It fixes - ability to resume the game without it reloading (when turning it off for e.g. phone calls or task swapping - support for iOS 3.2+ vs. 4.2+ in version 1.0 The resume game bugger will also hopefully fix the issue about the black screen on continue that 2 of you have run into. Thanks for reporting!! We will start collecting feedback, logical glitches and improvement requests from everyone and start looking into next update. Please report whatever issues you found, improvements, balance issues (game too easy, too hard) in some specific places etc. Rest assured that we are working on campaign 2 in parallel. So content wise we will add several hours on top of the first game. New/additional enemies, 5-6 new levels, new environment, additional weapons - and new story most importantly. Happy gaming weekend!! /Thomas
Nice! I'm excited to see where the story goes! Its great when the devs are so active in their threads!
Does it mean(support for ios 3.2) that i can run it on my ipod touch with Ios 4.1(code.8b117). When i cant, please update it
@Thomas Lund and Blikstad: first-off, i just want to thank you guys for making such an awesome game- it really is great, and it's fantastic to see you guys keeping an eye on improving it. As to suggestions for an update, and although i don't like to complain too much, would there be any chance of a slight increase in responsiveness? For me, it seems that the interface lags ever so slightly- not enough to make it unplayable, but it is noticeable. That's probably my only wish, as it's brilliant stuff so far!
Yep I notice this too (using an iPhone4). Basically pressing on a character will often have a lag of a couple seconds before actually registering ingame which often leads to some mad tapping trying to get your bearings. It gets kind of exacerbated due to the 'double tap' nature of the game mechanics. It would actually be really nice if there was a more direct way to activate each character.
The time between touching a soldier and him getting selected is about a second -- I measured it. But it's not instantaneous, which is why it feels a bit laggy. You can, however, use the "pass" button on the lower right hand corner to get to the next soldier.
