Few days ago I have completed and released free realtime strategy game Priority: Survive. It may be found at its allegro.cc depot page or at DISTORTUM page. Feel free to send comments or ask questions. Screenshot:

Quote:Original post by ShawnO
Do I see Arnold in some of the screen shots?

No, it is Col. Hudson :) . Any similarities are random.

First of all, this is a very promising game. Second, I didn't have much time to play it (only tried the first mission a bunch of times).

Here are some pointers:

> The graphics are very nice. I love the videos, the main-menu, but the in-game graphics as well, especially the backgrounds.

> Only the marine doesn't quite seem to look as good as the other renders, the worst part is that he's actually hard to identify over a green background

> I personally am not a fan of having the first mission in a campaign a commando-mission. There are several reasons for this, plus, of course, my personal taste. The reasons for this are that the player generally feels safer with a base and a clear point of origin in the game instead of being thrown into a commando-mission right away and that these types of missions generally, if they want to be a challenge, have to be somewhat of a guess and run around deal trying to find the "possible" path which is somewhat frustrating. This might be acceptable at a later point, but not in the first glimpse the player gets to see after starting the game.

> In addition, the first mission seems pretty hard, I am an experienced StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War player, but I failed to finish it after several attempts, leaving me unmotivated. The first mission should be tutorial-kinda easy and set the scene story-wise, I felt like being "thrown into the cold water" in both aspects.

> Right-clicking (moving) enemies in order to attack them was very hard sometimes. It would often register as a move-order next to the enemy.

> I tried to micromanage my units in a smart way (moving the marines in range to fire against the melee-monsters, then, as they came closer, moving them further away, stopping them, letting them fire, etc.) but found the movement of the soldiers was much to slow (not the top-speed, but the time it took them to get moving) - this is certainly a design question, but I find the more micromanagement possible, the better the game.

> The mini-map often showed red dots in areas where I couldn't see the respective enemies yet, maybe this could be fine-tuned so that the fog-of-war on the battlefield shows as much as the mini-map and vice versa.

> The voice of the scientist didn't fit at all. The marines spoke clear, understandable American English and then the scientist has this thick middle eastern (I'm guessing) accent? I actually wasn't sure whether it was English at all sometimes. I don't say that accents are not okay for certain units, but it has to be done in moderation and the recording quality didn't seem to be quite on par with the other units as well.

I realize that all these points above might come across as somewhat harsh, but I'm just trying to help by being honest. The game has great potential. It looks stunning and plays good with a few (important, nonetheless) nitpicks.


I have some technical questions as well:

> What 3d-program did you use to render the models and videos?

> How did you hand-draw the backgrounds? Did you do all this yourself or are you representing a team?

> How do you realize your fog-of-war? It looks great!

> What path-finding algorithms do you use?

> Why not post this in the Image of the Day section? :)

Quote:
I tried to micromanage my units in a smart way (moving the marines in range to fire against the melee-monsters, then, as they came closer, moving them further away, stopping them, letting them fire, etc.) but found the movement of the soldiers was much to slow (not the top-speed, but the time it took them to get moving) - this is certainly a design question, but I find the more micromanagement possible, the better the game.

For this you should use the attack command. Press 'A' or the button 'Attack' and click left on the ground. The units will go there, but attacks everything on their path.

Quote:
The mini-map often showed red dots in areas where I couldn't see the respective enemies yet, maybe this could be fine-tuned so that the fog-of-war on the battlefield shows as much as the mini-map and vice versa.

The minimap shows enemies at that area when you were last there. But enemies are not shown on the fog (not even buildings).

Quote:
The voice of the scientist didn't fit at all. The marines spoke clear, understandable American English and then the scientist has this thick middle eastern (I'm guessing) accent? I actually wasn't sure whether it was English at all sometimes. I don't say that accents are not okay for certain units, but it has to be done in moderation and the recording quality didn't seem to be quite on par with the other units as well.

You are right. It was a real czech accent and sometimes it was not english. I must agree that voice acting was our weak part.

Quote:
What 3d-program did you use to render the models and videos?
How did you hand-draw the backgrounds? Did you do all this yourself or are you representing a team?

3dstudio, photoshop. We are a team of mainly three people. please se the DISTORTUM page

Quote:
How do you realize your fog-of-war? It looks great!

The real fow is represented by three types of tiles (light, fog, black). And at each corner of the tiles is drawn a darkening map specific for the 4 tiles that are around that corner. There are 3^4=81 possible combinations of the fow tiles surrounding the corner so all darkening maps are prerendered and drawn relatively quickly.

Quote:
What path-finding algorithms do you use?

The algorithm tries to go straight and if it's not possible it tries to go around the obstacle trying both ways. This is done until the destination is reached. The resulting path is then smoothed. I would like to not use this algorithm in future projects.

Quote:
Why not post this in the Image of the Day section? :)

I didn't know there is something like that on gamedev. I'll fix it.