Board Horde Stats Update

farflamex

thanks for taking the time to check it out, and for the kind words.

I should have an update ready for tomorrow, which will include Sound Effects, a new potion power, a few updated graphics, and a new spawning mechanic that occassionally spawns more potions and enemies when they're getting low so as to keep things interesting.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of exciting new bugs to discover as well. Hurrah!

I know it's still in development and I'll keep checking on your updates because I'd like to help out with improvements, as you're helping me with mine (that's a point, I need to put up my latest version).

Right now, I found two things in your game I think could be improved. I know it's dumb, but I actually couldn't work out where the dice was at first, lol. Maybe have it start on a 6, then it'll look more like a die :)

Secondly, I dunno if you've started on the board itself yet, but I rolled the die and nothing happened. Am I supposed to do something to get started?

I know it's early days but the presentation is excellent and it just looks like the sort of thing that will do well when it's completed. I'll keep checking in.

farflamex

Typically, the one thing I forgot to mention when writing the brief 'how to play' guide at the start of this thread was how to get your characters on the board! Basically, after rolling the dice click on one of the HUD pictures at the top (the three at the top left are for the blue player, and the three red ones to the right are for the red player). You can only get one character out at a time, until you roll a six (at which point, HUD pics of available reinforcements will light up with a yellow border, and you can either get another character out or move a character already on the board).

Good idea about putting a six on the dice to draw more attention to it; its simple things like that which can so easily be overlooked. The dice was even harder to spot in the earlier version of the game, as it was half the size and exactly the same colour as the devils.

Anyway, after the update I plan for tomorrow, the next three things on the agenda will be; updated HUD pictures that actually match the characters, a How To Play guide on the menu screen, and some sort of rudimentary Village Idiot level A.I, as I'm fed up of having to play against myself, and lose all the time!

I look forward to seeing how your Frontier game develops (its a damn site more polished than mine!). I also enjoyed playing your robot game on the arcade - a good Puzzle Bolderdash!

Ah ok, I get it. It's really good and fun to play, once you understand what's going on. I know you have lots to do, but here's a few things I think need improvement.

It's not entirely clear who can move at which point. Could you make the counters flash/fade when it's their turn?

When you get a special effect, more detail on what it does would be nice. At the moment it just says 'Feather' but doesn't say what it does. I assume you were planning to work on that anyway.

An A.I opponent is definitely needed, playing against yourself isn't as much fun.

The graphics are spot-on and that's a big seller. Give it some spooky music and sound effects, with a start and end screen and you're good to go :)

Going to put up my game on either Clay.io or Kongregate or Chrome or Windows 8, lol, or just all of them. I might try to start a topic about marketing because it's something most of us are clueless about. If we could share our experiences, it might help us to decide how to publish.

Glad you liked the Survivors game. I think that idea has plenty of potential but since my graphics skills are so weak, it's simply not good enough (it got rated at 2 to 3 on Kongregate). I might see if I can get a graphics guy to jazz up the graphics, get some crazy music (there's a great site where you can buy excellent music for 99 cents - the music at the start of Frontier (now renamed) was bought from there) and rewrite it (would take a few days, it's so simple) and I might be able to make that a decent game.

farflamex

I agree about the point you made regarding making it more obvious who can move and who can't. Eventually, this'll probably be done with a few related animations, though I may not have time to do it before the Newgrounds competition deadline.

I'd love to simply make the characters flash when selectable, but effects can be very temperamental when it comes to being viewed on touch devices; at one point, I accidentally changed the dices blend mode from Normal to Source, and it completely stopped all other artwork from showing up on my ipad (everything looked fine on desktop, though). It took me four hours to figure out what the problem was, which is why I'm now trying to make all effects hand drawn sprites.

The potions will be explained in the How To Play pop up when I've made it (for now you can read about them in the first entry of this thread). I'm also hoping to put in a lot more visual helpers as to what's going on, when I get the chance.

Your feedback is hugely appreciated, and I'm glad you enjoyed the artwork (I made it all using Inkpad on the ipad. Drawing with your fingers is the way forward!)

A marketing topic is a good plan, if it hasn't already been done. It will be interesting to see people's responses.

Anyway, I've got to go write some Sketches and eat some form of Potato-based substance.

Cheers!

Can you maybe just have them fade in and out when it's their turn?

Latest Update 29/3

Hullo folks!

On the first post of this thread I have put the link to Version 2 of Board Horde. Incase you missed it, here it is again: Board Horde V2 (newest) 29/3.

Huge thanks to all those people who've given me feedback so far, its been really helpful.

Change List

Rules which explain how to play the game are now on the menu. They're a bit rough around the edges as I just knocked them up today, but I'll tidy them up when I get the chance.

Sound Effects!   There's some lovely retro noises, mostly courtesy of the rather marvellous Sfx that come with the Construct 2 Personal Edition. I still have to tweak these a lot so they don't overlap or run over long (and occasionally they may not fire up, or have a delay depending on browser in use. Hopefully I'll be able to fix that!)

A new Potion Power: God Finger! With this power, simply touch an opponent or enemy and watch the little perisher fly off the screen. Hurrah for mindless carnage!

Alteration to Change Places potion. Rather than being automatic, you now get to choose which opponent you change places with. For the dumb Warrior, this may occasionally result in him having to change places with an opponent that's behind him.

A few visual improvements here and there, and I think that's everything for this week. By next week I'm hoping to have Village Idiot level A.I. vaguely operational, and have updated the HUD art to reflect the characters in play.

Newest Bugs: a few things I've encountered, and would be interested in knowing if anyone else encounters them:

Sometimes when a hero treads on an enemy, the collision doesn't happen and you have to reset the game (only happened twice to me. I may have fixed it, but I'm not sure).

Game froze several times on start up, and menu screen buttons couldn't be pressed. I think I've fixed this now, as it was possibly down to me not opening the next group until all Sfx had been preloaded, but please tell me if its still happening.

Barbarian flew off to the left after being killed by an enemy, then suddenly changed direction for no reason at all and went upward. Looked pretty cool, but not quite the effect I was aiming for!

Feather potion still active after other potions have been collected. Should be pretty easy to fix, when I remember.

Right, I think that's it for now. I best go say 'hullo' to my wife, so she remembers I still exist.

I look forward to more feedback, and thank you all for playing.

-Dave

Edit: oh yes, forgot to mention I also made two balance changes to keep things interesting. Occasionally new enemies or potions will spawn when numbers are getting low.

Really very nice work! Very fun, as the last update, and the sounds make the game more entertaining. The instructions are well explained.

I only found a little bug: sometimes the dice don?t make the "roll" sound.

And to me, when you don?t have any hero on the board, you can throw the dice three times before the next turn of the opponent... I think is too many runs. Maybe two could be enough (I say... it?s my opinion <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" /> ).

Very nice, continue on this way! <img src="smileys/smiley32.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

farflamex

I think I read somewhere that changing the sprites opacity can cause mixed results on Non Web Gl devices, but I may have a bit of an experiment if I get the chance (I have also drawn a glowing outline sprite for some of the heroes, which I will try out as well).

Kuso

Thanks for the new feedback. The sounds can be quite hit and miss depending on browser used (I found Firefox on my laptop to be quite bad). I did try preloading all Sfx during the menu screen, but this caused the menu to sometimes freeze, which was a much worse end result. I'm sure I'll get things working better over the next month though.

As for the dice rerolls, I think I'll probably keep it at three for now, as it can be even more frustrating if you have to wait ages to get a hero out. I still have to make a few adjustments as currently if your only hero on the board dies on a roll of six, you get six rerolls!

Thanks for the feedback, chaps. Have a nice Easter.

Congratulations man,,,,awesome board game,,, continue ,,

Doesn't load in for me for some reason. Tried earlier and now a few hours later. It loads to 100% and then just does nothing :(

farflamex

Thanks for letting me know - its probably to do with the preloading Sfx problem (unless its a Dropbox thing, which is doubtful) which I thought I had fixed. I tried the link myself and it worked fine, though that's not to say it won't occasionally cause problems.   Maybe try refreshing your browser (or a different browser?) and see if that works.

Hope to have it sorted out by next Fridays update, if I don't encounter more problems (which is often the way of things).

tchem

I'm glad you enjoyed the game, and I'm hoping to give yours a bit more testing tomorrow. If I get the chance, more feedback will be on its way.

Cheers, chaps!

Strange, same thing happening in Firefox :(

farflamex

I'll try and preload less Sfx at the start, and update the link in the morning to see if that clears it up. If anyone else is experiencing the same problem, please let me know.

I think I read somewhere on the forum that if you preload too many Sfx at once (I only have about ten) it can choke the browser. The problem is that without preloading the Sfx there seems to be a massive delay with the Sfx start time. There's probably just something I'm neglecting to do, as I hadn't tackled audio until last week so its all quite new to me.

Anyway, thanks for trying, and please let me know if you encounter any other problems if you ever manage to actually get into the game.

Could be that, my game probably has more sfx but I didn't preload any. I've noticed the music sometimes doesn't start on my game unless it's in the cache. But at least the game loads I suppose :p

Let me know when you've uploaded another and I'll try again.