First off, before I’m tarred and feathered as a VM, I got prior approval from Tom for posting this. Please reserve your tarring and feathering for the game in question.
I was hoping to enlist some help with testing a little summer project. It’s a politically themed turn based tactical combat web game, a PTTBTCWG. The basic idea behind the game is: pick your candidate, pick your staff, and then do battle with an opposing candidate, trying to control the country and earn cash along the way.
This is the very first beta version of the game, so there are numerous bugs, fairly stupid AI, and some glaring game balance issues. But given that it’s just been two of us playing for the last few weeks, I’m in need of some outside eyes. I was hoping the esteemed regulars of qt3 who have some time to kill could check it out and give their thoughts. The basic features are all in there, and the single player and multiplayer both work. Although you’d need to coordinate with someone else to do multiplayer, since there’s currently no indication of how many people are waiting to play.
For the time being, don’t pass this link and login around, the password will change soonish and we’re trying to get the site finished and major kinks worked out before we release it into the wilds for real.
Tried to play. Looked at the rules, figured I’d do a Fred Thompson Hatchet Man rush, see if it worked. Unfortunately, the game conked out. I tried three times, and each time it became partially unresponsive after my first turn, and even when it seemed to be working, I couldn’t move my units.
I’d rather have it show me a progress bar and load all assets up front than stream while I’m playing.
fun game. i like it better than political machine since it is simpler (a few regions instead of 50 states) and went by faster.
still buggy as you said. it broke when i had obama on the ropes at 11%, then i ran an attack ad and hit him for -12%, then the game got stuck: the region was all tv static and wouldn’t stop.
the ai had a unit in the ne region and refused to take it over even though i left it alone for the entire game and plus it didn’t help out obama even when he was done to 11%.
but i like the theme and tactics and units’ strengths and weaknesses.
i pm’d you the final screen i was able to get.
overall, i liked it and will play again barring password change.
I haven’t seen anything like the above on any computers I’ve tested on – any chance you can share your browser, browser version, and flash version (right click, about flash player link will give you the micro version like 9,0,47,0). If not, that’s fine too, if it happened to one person, it’s bound to happen to a lot more.
EDIT: Thx for the feedback and screenshot russellmz00
Pretty cool, I like all the attack animations and such. No bugs when I played it but it seems that the overall strategy is to focus more on killing the staff so that you can overun the area. I wouldn’t mind trying multiplayer with anyone. Also I think it would be better if once you moved to a spot you’ll see how many squares around you will change.
edit: Is there a plan to have a lobby of some kind for setting up games?
Pretty slick little game. Yeah, the AI needs some work. Specifically, it needs to protect its candidate better. As it is, it’s pretty easy to pile everyone on and crush them. I’m still not sure what half of the stuff does or why things happen, but the presentation is very good.
Edit: I always forget about the goddamned version details with Flash. What’s up with the commas? Can’t they use dots like normal people? At least they’re not Microsoft, differentiating a dozen DirectX 9.0c versions by build number alone.
Thanks for the feedback so far everyone, very helpful.
This is a very good idea, I’m not sure how I didn’t think of that before. I’ll just do some kind of highlight when you rollover the squares you might move to.
There is a kind of hidden lobby right now, but I suppose it would be more clear to people if I just showed the games running and the games waiting for players.
Impressions of someone who played for five minutes (which on the one hand doesn’t give my opinion huge merit, although I suppose I represent a big portion of your eventual audience): Nice presentation, although the music on the opening screens is on the repetitive side. It made me want to hurry up before it started over again, although when I turned it off, I missed it. The caricatures are on point. I won easily by swarming my opponent candidate with all my people and just beating her up. So I haven’t even really tried the actual tactical part of the game yet. I’d probably send it to a couple non-gamer friends who are into politics.
Fun little game. The ai could use a tweak or two, as mentioned, but I didn’t run into any bugs in a couple of playthroughs. The only thing I have to contribute is that you might think about coming up with some sort of personal ability for different candidates just for a little variety. Or just three more and mirror the parties. I’d leave it to someone much more politcally savy/less apathetic than myself to come up with them, though.
Just out of curiousity, how much work went into making this?
The ‘game over’ screen doesn’t give you any buttons that were obvious to me that allowed you to play again or quit (taking you to an ‘about’ screen perhaps) or something
The special abilities were really expensive - I don’t think I used any before the game was pretty much over.
I did look at the rules, but they’re a little disjointed at the moment.
As for the game, it’s quite entertaining but Zerg rushing the opposition candidate does seem to be a pretty straightforward tactic at the moment, although taking a region or two helps as the AI seems to split its efforts between knocking your staff and trying to take back your regions. I do like the attacks though, they’ve made me smile a few times.
Yah, it pretty much does act autonomously right now. The AI is weak and I’ve got more to do with it, but I think I’m going to also add difficulty levels and make the “hard” version cheat a bit.
The game works way better multiplayer right now, although with no players it obviously hard to see that. Rushes are less effective in multiplayer.
Just out of curiousity, how much work went into making this?
Two of us, couple months of work. Did it mostly for kicks, as a portfolio piece, and to do something a little different from all the games for kids and teens.
The ads are, in particular, excellent. I’m also a big fan of the spinmeisters, but the fundraiser is demonic in her ability to take out a controlled region (25 vs a single region is pretty much instakill if you’ve only held it for one turn). You can generally swamp the Texas region in the first turn as the Dems, but I’ve never been able to hold it without focus firing that money bag wielding bitch with my two spinmeisters.
I really liked the hatchet men the first few times through, but the ability to move a spinmeister around and capture stuff while still doing damage is just so good. Operatives are devastating antipersonnel and region characters, but only if you are willing to cloak them first. They also move real fast when uncloaked, which is mad handy for capping the last square in a region before the enemy caps it.
I’d like to second the request for visible capture areas on move, as it really sucks to find out that my fundraiser, who I thought would take the whole region, has in fact grabbed everything except one square. After I moved her.
