Board Horde Stats Update

farflamex Excal

Literally within two seconds of uploading my game to Newgrounds it received about three zero votes. Also there was someone bragging on the message board recently about how he voted zero for every game entry, for absolutely no reason. Still, there are some decent folk there who are willing to provide feedback (including the judge, Tom Fulp, who took a lot of time to analyse as many of the 95 game entries as he could) and I can see how the html5 gaming community could really take off once Flash takes a backseat, so its worth persevering.

There were some games that I didn't like much which made the top ten, and others which I liked a lot that got barely above two stars. A lot of the time it can come down to personal preference, or something as simple as whether the game actually works on the browser or device the persons using; even though some creators put on the front pages of their games 'works best in such and such a browser', if that's not the browser that the player has open then he'll try it anyway and rate it badly if it doesn't work (and then leave the comment 'didn't work' without saying anything helpful that'll assist us in improving our games).

What I found a bit odd about the competition is that you could vote for your own game once a day (which I didn't do) which may explain why some of the less polished games pushed their way to the top. At least when it came to the actual judging, it wasn't just down to selecting what was at the top of the list.

Farflamex, thanks for commenting on the music. The musician did me a huge favour at short notice, so its nice for her to have some positive feedback.

20 hours to make your game is pretty impressive going! Board Horde has probably taken me about 400 hours so far, and it isn't even finished yet (then again, its my first game so its bound to take a while)

Anyway, before I get back to the joys of game creation, Excal I'd just like to say that I really enjoyed playing your game. The touch controls are probably the best example of their kind, and I had great fun trying to work my way up the leader board. If i was making a top ten of my favourite competition games then yours would be in it (along with Bunker Control, which also fared quite badly). I really look forward to seeing what you do with the game next.

Excal

I agree, but on reflection, it does serve it's purpose. I found it very disheartening when I put Korelos up, to have so many people criticise it who simply hadn't given it a chance. But then again, that's the point really. It's not nice to hear criticism, but at least they're honest (brutally honest sometimes) and that's how you'll improve your game. If they say 'It's too hard' there's no point saying 'Well play it a bit more and get better' because the next person will come along and say it's too hard too. So it's a good way of working out what needs to be done.

It's certainly unfair that good games get low ratings while poor games get really high ratings (that part is a bit suspicious frankly) but overall I think it's a good system. The real killer games on there which have 20 million plays do deserve it as they're really fun to play. The trick is to reach 4 stars I think and I doubt you'll manage that on a first attempt, so take the criticism and keep working on the game.

It's still slightly annoying that my new game (which frankly isn't very good) is getting better ratings than the previous one, but I understand why. I might even work on improving this one based on the comments, since it's much easier to do than Korelos, which had become a bit difficult to work with (and won't load into C2 any more sadly :( ).

My vote for Board Horde raise it from 2.42 to 2.44 in a single vote, huzzah! Silly though, it should be much higher.

Dave Hailwood

Thank you for the kind and wonderful comments! I'm not sure where I want to take my game next. I live in Oklahoma, and we were hit by an EF5 tornado this Monday that wrecked my neighborhood. My house is still mostly intact, but we can't drink the water here and electricity is expected to be out for the next couple of weeks.

As for my space shooter, I want to put it off until multiplayer support is better in C2. I understand there are some plugins to make realtime multiplayer work, but for now I have my sights on developing a turn-based strategy game that takes place on a board, so you may be hearing from me soon with some questions about implementation ;)

Dave

We seem to have posted at the exact same time, so I should get used to doing the Dave and Excal thing or that'll be confusing :)

You're lucky to have a musician who can come up with something like that at a drop of the hat. I personally think it's great and really 'gamey' and perfect for Board Horde. The game has a wicked sense of humour, so does the music. Anybody who can't see that and then votes it down because of it needs a good slap :)

I did Jovian War over about a month but never for more than 1 hour at a time. Compare that to Korelos where I spent 6 months and some nights spent 5 or 6 hours on it. It helps that all the graphics were taken from previous resources (Korelos, the Scirra folder that comes with C2 and the IGB pre-made ships) but mainly it's really easy to make simple games. Korelos was a bit trickier as you can imagine, but nothing C2 can't handle.

Got to agree about the guys who run Newgrounds, they're very good. For some reason they did my game icon for me, which was frankly much better than the one I submitted. Quite nice of them really :)

Excal

Looks like we're of the same mind. Turn-based strats and the like are what I'd prefer to develop. Arcade strategy can be fun too, but I'd like my game to have a lot of strategical elements as those are the games that I play. I'm still tempted to pump out a single simple action game every month and hope to get lucky with one, since it's risky that you'll spend a year on a strategy game and people will just say 'I don't like strategy games' and rate it at 0, lol. But I guess this means I need to work out how to market things properly :p

farflamex

I forgot to say thanks for the vote! Much appreciated.

If you can get your game featured on Newgrounds then that also does wonders for it; Magnetized, Seed and the shootemup that came third all got featured and their viewing figures went up by several thousand rather rapidly.

I can understand being annoyed by your new game getting the best ratings. I once wrote a book with a friend (in the pub, and on the bus) which was the quickest thing we'd ever written. It is now sitting in second place on the iBooks 'free humour books' chart, whereas all the books I took years and years to write instantly sunk away into obscurity. Still, sometimes the projects you take more time over are more satisfying to complete even if they don't get the recognition you hope for.

You're right about the merits of honest criticism; its only annoying when they don't give a reason as to why the don't or do like it. If they're saying its too damned hard or too damned easy then at least it gives us something to go on.

Anyway, I believe I was meant to be working on a game of some sort. Best get back to it, I suppose. Cheers!

There you go though, if your quick book did better than the slow-to-write ones, it makes me think you're better off pouring out loads of fast games (which would probably be mostly poorer quality) in the hope that one just pays off. After all, a game never ends up how you intended and some things just fall into place... or don't.

The one thing I like about writing fast games such as Jovian War, is that they're completed more quickly and much easier to work with and you never feel bogged down by them. Added to that, there are fewer problems with compatibility (heck, JW even fits on the Scirra arcade, lol).

I'm going to try to get JW uploaded to some phone sites since it was intended as a phone game anyway and actually works quite well (apart from your finger getting in the way all the time). That's something I've not experienced yet so will be interesting to see how that goes.

Excal

I'm glad that you're alright, given the Tornado experience. The most we ever get here in England is a slight breeze that unsettles the odd bowler hat.

I'm happy to impart any knowledge I have, to assist when it comes to creating your board game (just bare in mind that I'm probably not using the best techniques as I'm largely making it up as I go along).

— Sometimes you've just got to go with creating the type of game that means something to you, rather than knocking up the popularist stuff. At some point I'm planning on doing an rpg even though it will probably take a year to complete, just because I have a story that I'm really keen to tell. If the strategy game genre is what's calling to you, then go make something ingenious!

Right, I really am going now. Honest...

Dave Hailwood,

i have to be honest. your game sucks.

how else would you explain, me being tied, two escaped hero's each, with my last hero on the last leg to escaping, when it was caught from behind and knocked into the abyss. doomed to sit there, rolling pathetic non-six rolls, while watching the enemy creep to his third escaped hero, and a gut wrenching defeat.

it must be that your game sucks...it must be.

harrio

It's okay, there are support groups for gamers like you. Hang in there...be strong! You're going to get through this...

Hullo chaps,

I'm getting closer to completion and have just updated the link on the front page to the newest version. This contains a new scoring system, cheats, debug mode and various other improvements.

After I've sorted out a bit of my dodgy programming and removed all the bugs I will tie the scoring system into Clay.io's Leaderboards and Achievements (so please let me know if you think any other score bonuses should be included)

A few helpful pointers about the scores:

Mages get 20 points for every kill, Rogues get 15 and Warriors get 10. Every time you get a kill without dying it adds to your kill streak bonus (so if a Mage kills two enemies, he will get 2x20 points).

There are bonus points for making the first kill, being the first hero to make it to the exit, getting all three heroes to the exit, killing a hero that killed you, getting to the exit without dying, killing a hero that's close to the exit. Points are also given for dodging a trap or drinking a potion, and deducted for setting off a trap, dying on the Entrance Square, being killed elsewhere.

I will be adding various ways to keep track of important stats into the game soon (such as what kill streak multiplier you're on, who to get revenge on, if your hero is still up for an Untouchable bonus) and also put more of the workings out on the scoreboard.

Anyway, hope to have something nearing completion (for the time being) in the next week or so, depending on how the bug hunt goes.

Thanks for your support!

Ps, my highest score so far is 750 without cheating...beat that, Mr Harrio!

Dave Hailwood,

Damn revenge killings, and the AI seems to get six's on a suspiciously regular basis! As you may be able to tell, I got my butt seriously whooped!!!

Nice update though, not sure I'll be able to beat your 750! But I'll keep trying!!!

Blacksmith

I am also highly suspicious of the amount of sixes the a.i. seems to roll. I'm pretty sure I didn't put the option for the a.i. to cheat anywhere in my events, but I will double check!

Just updated the link on the front page to include all the workings out on the scoreboard, and also pinned a kill streak multiplier above the heroes heads which shows up when making more than one kill (probably need to put an outline round it at some point, as it can be hard to see at times).

I still need to work on the text placement/timing, and getting rid of the bugs but I'm quite happy with the way its coming together.

Thanks for giving it another shot, and lets hope you score higher on my game than I did on yours!

Dave Hailwood

Your game is wonderful. It's nice and addictive. Do you have plans releasing this to mobile? I would definitely download that game <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Sollaano

Thanks for the kind words.

I'm hoping to one day release the game on mobile, though as I haven't got a mac yet or any money for a developer licence it might be a while!

My current plans are to put out an online version supported by ads, but I've got a bit of debugging to do first. Once its up and running, I'm hoping to keep adding boards to the game, and various other game modes if I get the chance (such as Arena and Rogue).

If you can think of any ideas for improvements or features you'd like to see, I'm always interested to hear them.

Cheers.