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The strategic map is very Steel Division 2.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 07:15 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:36 |
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The strategic layer of Steel Division 2 is very bad at producing actual interesting battle while the auto-resolve often produce unacceptable outcome so you have to go in and fight out the battles yourselves a lot (or just let the AI actually play and fast forward instead of using auto-resolve). It seems in CoH3 they don't even let you play these small battle, but the auto-resolve seems to generate reasonable outcome (that you can preview!). Formations just have HP instead of individually tracked TOE probably helps.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 08:14 |
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pedro0930 posted:The strategic layer of Steel Division 2 is very bad at producing actual interesting battle while the auto-resolve often produce unacceptable outcome so you have to go in and fight out the battles yourselves a lot (or just let the AI actually play and fast forward instead of using auto-resolve). Yeah, SD2's operational layer suffers a lot from not really being built with the RTS game in mind- it's almost like they literally thought it'd be cool if you took the OCS board game and had you fight out the battles in SD2 without thinking 'man, it'd be kinda boring to play all these out in an RTS engine'. To be fair, it's exactly what a lot of reddit/forum people said they thought would be cool and there's not a ton of great design chops at Eugen but still, if your meat and potatoes is being an RTS game, you really have to design these modes to serve that, and not as their own thing. As an operational game, the SD2 operations just feel clunky and weird(it would probably be better from a UI perspective to use counters instead of miniatures at this scale). It might just be my preference for board game style design.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 10:38 |
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I mean, the "handful of gamers who play MP" were also the only ones still interested in and actively playing a CoH game in an era where RTS has long been buried by MOBAs and Relic's own massive misstep in DoW3. Just saying that I can't really blame the change of direction when no one but the grognards are actually walking the walk when it comes to interest in a big RTS in 2021
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 12:26 |
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The opinion of a handful of gamers can cause a studio the size of Relic to throw away months of pre-production and concept work. Give me a break. And just lol at historic argument. Relic is comically bad at presenting history beyond a Saving Private Ryan/Enemy at the Gate level. Even after so long they are still trying to ape the movie climatic aesthetic from more than a decade ago with masses of infantry shooting at each other from 10 feet away. We have Wirbelwind and M4 with 76 gun and Chaffee in 1943 Italy. Some corporal is giving me briefing because Relic's writing team seems to have little knowledge of military hierarchy. The scale is also all wrong with a single company storming city of hundred of thousands. Currently the only thing I think Relic is good at is sound design and graphic. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Jul 15, 2021 |
# ? Jul 15, 2021 12:59 |
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Their realization that RTS is a smaller genre, but strategy games seem to be doing just fine and to work towards merging the two is a really smart idea. Lets hope it pans out
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 13:49 |
pedro0930 posted:The strategic layer of Steel Division 2 is very bad at producing actual interesting battle while the auto-resolve often produce unacceptable outcome so you have to go in and fight out the battles yourselves a lot (or just let the AI actually play and fast forward instead of using auto-resolve). Yes and no, there are 2 main unit types on the dynamic campaign map "companies" and "detachments". Companies are your main fighting forces and when 2 opposing companies meet each other on the campaign map it results in a RTS battle you'd play out but if a company engages a lone detachment or a detachment attacks another detachment that does not result in a RTS battle but damages their overall health. Detachments do useful things like repair bridges/towns or heal other units on the dynamic map as well as support companies they are nearby when a battle occurs by providing bonus units to that company. Companies that are damaged on the campaign map when a RTS battle starts every unit they spawn will start with lower health. Overall I think the dynamic map works fairly well, it doesn't result in a hundred small battles like SD2 does that can feel like a slog but you'll still be playing RTS battles frequently enough. Definitely still some clunky elements such as hidden units that you know are in a forest seem to be impossible to uncover without triggering an ambush by your units. Popete fucked around with this message at 16:23 on Jul 15, 2021 |
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 16:21 |
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Supposedly the next SD2 campaign dlc is going to be much smaller. Since peoples number 1 complaint is that the fronts just have too much units and too many battles between kinda dull infantry. So hopefully that’s true. The smallest campaign (Bobruisk? Whatever the 1/3 complicated level one is) was pretty fun since you’re pretty focused on using just a few tank divisions for attacking. New small dlc out for SD2 today as well, some dope looking Free French dudes with sick hats.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 16:52 |
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I've always appreciated the CoH games for more for their aesthetics (visual and aural) than their gameplay. I really like that units have different audio barks when they're in combat (and sounding quite stressed). Also, all the dirt and fire kicked up by artillery impacts. Sometimes it's just fun to watch the chaos unfold. Lately, I've been playing CoH2 and the gameplay has some annoying bits of micromanagement. Needing to tell units to throw grenades and also to avoid grenades, the fact that squad reinforcements can't be set to autocast, the units that just have abilities and no functional attack.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 17:41 |
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It is weird that DOW2 is the only one where you can turn on auto-replenish.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 17:52 |
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davecrazy posted:I don't see what would be compelling gameplay wise of assaulting fixed fortifications over and over again with a Pacific campaign. Some of the atoll battles absolutely fit that bill but if you look outside that there was actually a lot of interesting landing and counter-landing to gain advantages and strategic building of airfields to interdict or protect shipping. The assault across the impassable mountains of New Guinea to force the Japanese out of position was kind of a big deal in the theater, for an example.
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# ? Jul 15, 2021 17:52 |
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ahh I see that Steel Division 2 finally launched the long awaited Army General Coop mode for up to 3 people, I might give it a shot. I've been looking for something similar to Total War (campaign + battles) that works for 3 players.
Captain Beans fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jul 15, 2021 |
# ? Jul 15, 2021 18:10 |
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davecrazy posted:I don't see what would be compelling gameplay wise of assaulting fixed fortifications over and over again with a Pacific campaign. It's as compelling as yet another western front game. A mission of plucky paratroopers, beach invasion, carentan, green plains with hedgerows and winter map where the Germans counter attack. What matters is if people make the game proper. COH3 is looking dangerously good so far.
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# ? Jul 16, 2021 01:03 |
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Offworld Trading Company is free on Epic right now. It's a pretty interesting "economic RTS" by the designer of Civ 4, Soren Johnson. You battle it out in the arena of supply and demand to try to buy out all your opponents to win a fairly fast paced match (most game will last only 15-30 minutes). There is no combat besides some disruptive power like EMP or pirate attack to annoy other players that you can purchase from the black market or get in the occasional auction. Instead, everything is traded on the open market with supply and demand derived from player activities. For example, most factions are human, so they need basic life support like oxygen, water, food, and power to survive. There is no way to not supply these resources. If you have no stockpile, you'll automatically be forced to purchase it from the market at market price, driving up demand for these basic resources. And if for some reason no player produce them the price for food can easily skyrocket and stay high until someone convert their steel factory into hydroponic plant...and if everyone does that at the same time, the price of food may crash, making the investment unprofitable. There is no tax to collect so all your fund has to be acquired from selling resources. It can be pretty brutal to invest in something unprofitable and be put into ever growing debt, which will lower your share price and open you to be bought out by other players. There's also tech to research in the form of "patent", so they are exclusive for the player that researched it and can really shield you from some market volatility (for example, with teleportation technology you'll no longer have to pay transport fuel cost and since you no longer have transport people cannot intercept your transport with pirates). The game is already F2P if you only want to play ranked multiplayer, but for SP and custom game you'll have to buy it. pedro0930 fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jul 16, 2021 |
# ? Jul 16, 2021 06:39 |
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I’ve been ruminating on it for a while, and by now since I’m doing one of my nth playthroughs of Sacrifice, I have been thinking of organizing my thoughts in an effortpost. Disclaimer, I can only speak for the single-player campaign as when I first played this game the internet was not a thing in my country and now, well, it’s a 20 year old game so welp. I’d be happy to hear from someone who did get to experience the multiplayer though. Sacrifice (2000) is an unconventional third-person RTS developed by Shiny. I can say quite confidently that, with its narrative structure, its moment to moment gameplay, and its aesthetic, it remains to this day the most unique strategy game you will ever play. Let’s start from some necessary Technical adjustments As expected for a 20-year old game, it was developed for a 4:3 aspect ratio, and for a target framerate of 30. For the longest time I put up with the game running in a box on my widescreen, but the recent review video by mandaloregaming has shown me a better way. You can use the dgvoodoo wrapper to stretch the resolution as high as your native (or just leave it at 4:3 aspect ratio if it looks too stretched), and you will need to cap the refresh rate at 30. The latter bit is important as playing on a higher framerate will break the AI. Story You follow the wizard Eldred, recently rendered an astral plane vagrant by an as of yet unknown catastrophe back in his plane. He arrives at a new one, finding his talents to be in demand. The world of Sacrifice is governed by five bickering gods, each an expression of a certain facet of human nature and of the elements, and all are more than willing to take in a new officer to do their bidding. The campaign develops fairly non-linearly, as each god offers a total of 9 unique missions, and some events of the plot unfold differently depending on which of the gods you follow. Multiple playthroughs reveal the fairly complex web of intrigue that drives the events of the game, and it’s incredibly satisfying to piece it all together. The voiceover is all fantastic, both the gods, the wizards, and even each individual unit have tons of character and are great fun. Even the non-verbal ones are incredibly expressive. Gameplay When I said this game was unconventional, I meant it. Sacrifice is an RTS that focuses on summoning an army of abominable creatures to do your will, your particular brand of abominations specified by the god you serve, and casting spells that manipulate the battlefield. The starting spells focus on damaging and disabling single targets, progressing into spells that modify the terrain and may even cut off pieces of an army from itself or send bits of an enemy army flying around. This escalation culminates into some cosmically powerful spells like a rain of fire straight from the destruction of Sodom, or a volcano, which will annihilate an entire zone. The sparse terrain serves to highlight the power of your spells, as it bears the scars of whatever terrifying magical conflict takes place while you’re on it. Bear in mind that this is a plane where the earth itself was shattered into floating islands with ether in-between, so don’t feel too bad, the damage’s already been done. The game has also no conventional resource collection. Your wizard only gets health, mana, and souls. Health is pretty self-explanatory. You run out, your wizard dies and becomes a ghost for a while, becoming temporarily unable to collect souls from dead creatures or cast spells (until he reincarnates) but still able to command the army. Mana is what you expend for the three big gameplay actions: summoning armies, casting spells, building buildings. Your mana regeneration is determined by the amount of mana nodes on the map you control, and the amount of mana-transmitter units you have summoned (going by the probably development placeholder name of manahoar, sigh). Souls are what you need to summon your army. Each wizard gets a certain amount, and the only way to get more is to steal them from other wizards. You can build only two of the three gameplay-relevant structures, and only on dedicated resource nodes on the map. This sets up the basic gameplay loop, where you summon an army, try to claim resource nodes from the map by building your structures over them, inevitably run into an enemy wizard, and fight. Usually one of the wizards dies and has to retreat, leaving souls on the battlefield for the other to claim. Credit for this screenshot: mobygames The objective of the game is to sacrifice one of your units on your enemy’s base structure - the altar, of which each player only gets one and cannot build another. This is the setup for encouraging a very aggressive playstyle, where you advance to steal territory from your enemy, try to steal souls, and finally hit their base. It’s very fast-paced and also has a lot of important tactical decision making. Ordering your units around correctly, using their special abilities, and casting the right spells all contribute to winning a clash. Battles are very chaotic so doing all that at the same time is pretty difficult. The five gods each emphasize a different playstyle and aesthetic, I’ll go through them quickly to give an overview, and then give my final thoughts and suggestions for a first-time player. I could talk about the unit classes and spells of each god but I feel that could go into a post of its own, if there's demand, in order not to make this one too large and confusing Starting from the left: Persephone: Goddess of nature, justice, self-righteous zeal, and extremely bloody wars of purification. Her units are tougher than most, and her gimmick often revolves around healing and regenerating health. She gets an insane healing spell early on, but unfortunately her offensive power is lacking until the later levels. This goes for both her units and spells. You will find yourself wishing a lot that you had just a bit more punch at your disposal. Making her armies function is some work, and she has probably one of the toughest campaigns to boot. The reward for sticking with her is possibly the strongest endgame unit in the game. James: God of earth, of brown deserts and patron of a slow, peaceful existence. James’ gimmick is the extremely sedate pace at which he plays. His units are insanely tough, and also insanely slow, so you will be playing a bit on the backfoot as your army can’t move across the map very quickly. His spells are also all very good, with a nice mix of utility and damage between each level, and he gets an excellent AoE stun early on. His campaign is on the easier side, thanks to his good unit and spell roster, plus you get access to some very powerful hero units. Stratos: God of pretentiousness, storms, and ice, in that order. Also, his head is a balloon. I love love love this design, and the voiceover work, by Tim Curry, just absolutely nailsthe character. Which is good because, well, his campaign is a doozy. His units also tend to be lackluster imo, or a monkey’s paw wish of what other gods get. His armies are as a rule pretty fast though, so you can cover a lot of ground with them quickly, and are well suited to an aggressive strategy. His spells are also very useful, recharge fast, and have a good balance of utility and damage. Don’t play a mono-Stratos campaign first though, you will regret it. His missions in particular tend to hinge on you having a very firm grasp of how the game works or you will be miserable. Pyro: God of fire, of industry, capitalism, and the apocalyptic sacrifice of nature to the real god, Number, as reflected in the blasted hellscape he rules over and the emaciated slaves (yes, that’s what they are named in game) that populate it. His gimmick is focused on doing ALL of the damage, all the time. His armies are on the slower side, but they hit very hard, and are fairly tough to boot. All his spells also center on dealing damage. Only rarely do you get some other utility, so playing a mono-Pyro campaign rewards you with a fairly inflexible, if at times incredibly satisfying, arsenal. The other reward is the complete compromise of your morals in favor of conducting an extremely brutal war and increasingly terrible atrocities as your master has no grasp of diplomacy, subtlety, or empathy. His campaign says alot about society. (the writing isn't subtle at all about Pyro, and I love it) Charnel: God of slaughter, pain and death. Another incredible design that I love and absolutely stellar voice work. His theme is vampirism, as all of his units are designed around regenerating health by attacking enemies, and usually in the process inflicting some debuff. His army is very mobile, and has every utility niche well covered, but is fairly fragile and needs to be babysat out of combat. His shtick is that he is a comically evil sadist who loves death and destruction, so all his spells are devastating and completely indiscriminate wrt friend/foe. But you also don’t give a poo poo because all your units are one revive spell away from getting back into the fray, while your enemy’s losses do set them back a fair bit of time, if nothing else. His campaign also somehow ends up on a higher moral ground than Pyro’s, if just by a smidge. Final thoughts and tips I hope I haven't worn out my welcome by now. In case my willingness to vomit this many words over Sacrifice didn’t make it clear enough, I absolutely love this game, and I wish more people would play it. I encourage anyone who loves strategy games, hell, anyone who likes a well-acted, well-written narrative, to try it. Getting the game to run and display well on a modern system is not a big hassle, and the graphics haven't aged very badly thanks to the art-style. And the reward for putting up with the aforementioned is a very, very unique experience. There is, to this day, nothing quite like Sacrifice. I finally have a few tips for someone approaching the game. First of all, the tutorial is very good and helps you get accustomed to the quirks of the interface and the terminology, so do it! Something I have often heard said is that the campaign is a bit grindy, and people often suggest a defensive stance in the later missions, when you get fewer resources to work with. This is wrong, and that advice is bad. Always play aggressively, and run out of your starting area. There are always benefits in every mission to grabbing a forward base, usually extra souls, and the extra mana from controlling an additional fount is always good. You can take better engagements with the enemy this way. Also, don’t grind out the enemy until they run out of souls. If they lose an engagement, chances they will have to summon an army from scratch and you won’t. That takes time, time which you can use to attack and end the game. Sacrifice an unit on their altar, they won't be able to defend! This is important, as playing the other way I talked about makes certain missions take hours and it’s agonizing, at least to me. Remember the words of Your spells are a powerful way to influence a battle, so use them! You can disable vital units, kill others, split armies off, the list goes on. Spells are what tips the scales in your favor 90% of the time, since you are often playing from a place of numerical inferiority. My final tip is: don’t be afraid to experiment! Don’t feel tied to any one god, so try whatever piques your interest in the campaign. This might unbalance your unit and spell roster, as each campaign awards the different classes of units and spells at a different point in time. You will get duplicates, but you will usually be able to create a balanced and effective army whatever path you take. Unless you are catastrophically unlucky, OTOH you will not be screwing yourself by picking missions of a different god than the last one you took. Thanks for listening to my ted talk about this bonkers-looking old game, I hope you enjoyed it and hopefully you'll play the game and find the same enjoyment in it that I do.
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# ? Jul 27, 2021 14:06 |
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Sacrifice is one the greatest games ever made, no joke.
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# ? Jul 27, 2021 15:43 |
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I loved Sacrifice, played a ton of it when it came out. I also hung out a ton in the official IRC channel, to the detriment of my grades (sophomore year in college I think). The multiplayer community was small but pretty tight-knit.
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# ? Jul 27, 2021 15:52 |
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I remember when I entered my usual video games shop and I saw both Sacrifice and Evolva and I only had enough cash for one, I picked Evolva. I regretted that choice for years.
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# ? Jul 27, 2021 19:04 |
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Sacrifice is a fascinating game, but I don't have the courage to play it. If someone makes a let's play of it, so be sure to share it here!
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# ? Jul 27, 2021 20:15 |
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There was a similar (but worse) game but you were a future warrior commander guy. I had it when I was a kid and I remember driving around in the tank you could summon but I can never remember the game.
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# ? Jul 28, 2021 05:23 |
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Captain Monkey posted:There was a similar (but worse) game but you were a future warrior commander guy. I had it when I was a kid and I remember driving around in the tank you could summon but I can never remember the game. Uprising?
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# ? Jul 28, 2021 05:25 |
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Yes that’s the one. It owned when I was like 13.
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# ? Jul 28, 2021 05:43 |
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Mans posted:Sacrifice is a fascinating game, but I don't have the courage to play it. I remember someone doing an LP of it a while ago, maybe it's on the lp archive now? I think it was a blind playthrough. Also, what do you mean by not having the courage?
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# ? Jul 28, 2021 06:44 |
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mortons stork posted:I remember someone doing an LP of it a while ago, maybe it's on the lp archive now? I think it was a blind playthrough. https://lparchive.org/Sacrifice/ https://lparchive.org/Sacrifice-(by-rojogames)/
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# ? Jul 28, 2021 06:51 |
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I’m getting Magic Carpet vibes from that world.
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# ? Jul 29, 2021 11:20 |
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Kazzah posted:The Italians should get mecha-tengus will they be armed with giant bolt-action rifles that have attached bolt-action grenade launchers that use the same bolt?
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 02:01 |
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God I want a modern Magic Carpet game
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 09:43 |
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Impermanent posted:God I want a modern Magic Carpet game Same. I loooved Magic Carpet
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 11:16 |
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There is at least one Magic Carpet clone out there, but I seem to recall it fading into Early Access hell. Fake edit: Yup, https://store.steampowered.com/app/269610/Arcane_Worlds/ Released in 2014...still in EA. Oof.
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 12:33 |
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mortons stork posted:I remember someone doing an LP of it a while ago, maybe it's on the lp archive now? I think it was a blind playthrough. I would have to learn the entire game and I'm already knee deep in way too many RPGs and strategy games so I'd love to see it in action (thanks for the two Laps that were shared!)without actually paying it myself
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 15:27 |
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Yeah, I can see where it would be daunting. I have at many points considered Sacrifice a game I could show off confidently. Like if I had to make one LP in my life that's what I'd choose. But recording a game, especially an oldass one, and editing and the like all run in the wall of my complete technical illiteracy so welp
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 15:54 |
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Hey folks. I'm making a lovely space RTS, something like a discount homeworld. And when I say "making", I mean I'm doing it alone with my own stupid engine, because I'm an idiot, and it is taking years. It is a hobby project and freeware. The game is very much unfinished (e.g. untextured ships, next to no sound), but if any of you would like to try it and give me some feedback (e.g. email, or in game form in esc menu), I would greatly appreciate it. Some new perspectives on this would help me a lot. Here is a crappy video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWffqyGW9w And here is a crappy webpage https://www.soil-rts.com from where you can download it. In short (longer version on webpage), you collect resources, take them to your base/mothership, build ships, fight other ships. Pretty standard stuff. Ships can lose turrets, engines, etc. There is something like 9 missions of which first three are more like a tutorial. Ships that you have at the end of mission are transferred to next mission (along with any damage and experience gained). I left saved games at the start of each mission for convenience (if missions are boring or problematic). The game is a bit slower paced, but can be run at 4x speed, if lovely performance allows Sorry for spamming the thread!
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 17:57 |
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commando in tophat posted:Hey folks. I'm making a lovely space RTS, something like a discount homeworld. Cool!
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# ? Jul 30, 2021 18:04 |
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jfc i don't even wanna know what's involved with writing an engine AND a game by yourself. pretty fuckin awesomel!
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 05:41 |
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B-1.1.7 Bomber posted:jfc i don't even wanna know what's involved with writing an engine AND a game by yourself. pretty fuckin awesomel! Well, for starters it involves lot of bad decision making to try it in the first place, and a shitload of time and wheel reinventing. And then your wheels are kind of not round enough and you're still missing some, because all commercial and open source engines are so much better and have lot more work behind them But I started it is as an educational thing for myself and in that way it works. And of course I didn't do everything (e.g. there are libraries for scripting, physics, sound, etc.)
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 08:03 |
commando in tophat posted:Hey folks. I'm making a lovely space RTS, something like a discount homeworld. And when I say "making", I mean I'm doing it alone with my own stupid engine, because I'm an idiot, and it is taking years. It is a hobby project and freeware. The game is very much unfinished (e.g. untextured ships, next to no sound), but if any of you would like to try it and give me some feedback (e.g. email, or in game form in esc menu), I would greatly appreciate it. Some new perspectives on this would help me a lot. 1) this looks cool 2) I’m mentally appending “like a BOSS” to every sentence in the trailer
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 11:46 |
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Seeing a lot of beams. That's cool. Beams are cool!!
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 13:03 |
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commando in tophat posted:Hey folks. I'm making a lovely space RTS, something like a discount homeworld. And when I say "making", I mean I'm doing it alone with my own stupid engine, because I'm an idiot, and it is taking years. It is a hobby project and freeware. The game is very much unfinished (e.g. untextured ships, next to no sound), but if any of you would like to try it and give me some feedback (e.g. email, or in game form in esc menu), I would greatly appreciate it. Some new perspectives on this would help me a lot. I dont know why i feel the need to mention it but I really like your design for showing movement vectors, its simple, clean and it works with the little circle line style
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 14:41 |
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The only current ww2 strategy game i gently caress with is Order of Battle but i never really play as the nazis since it seems kinda basic and tasteless (and so many of those intricate games i wanna play are just like, lovingly designed as nazis only or a grand nazi fetish simulator ala Panzer Corps 2) Looks like they released some post-2020 content (Allies Defiant) for me to catch up to at least
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 15:01 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 14:36 |
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Punkin Spunkin posted:The only current ww2 strategy game i gently caress with is Order of Battle but i never really play as the nazis since it seems kinda basic and tasteless (and so many of those intricate games i wanna play are just like, lovingly designed as nazis only or a grand nazi fetish simulator ala Panzer Corps 2) For what it's worth, the axis campaigns in order of battle are very well done and it adds an extra layer of fun to play as the allies and see your axis general's being used on the other side. Allies defiant is very fun so far, the Dunkirk level was an extremely tight affair where a bad turn could've resulted in disaster. Do check it out when you have a chance.
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# ? Jul 31, 2021 17:22 |