Dark Archon is set for re-release in a few weeks and we've changed about everything in the game. It previously received critical acclaim like my other big game (Break Ball 2 Gold) yet sales for me have remained poor. I need help in determining what I'm doing wronge in my games as I've done about everything possible marketing-wise. More spcifically if anyone has any suggestions like:

difficulty?
graphics?
game play?
overall presentation?
ease of use?

Feel free to be critical as you want!

Also, in this game there are 2 control types, I perfer the mouse+keyboard but I am looking for suggestions on this as it doesn't appear to move in a natural way. Screenshots for DAv2.0 are at:

http://www.bcsoftgames.com/archon/screenshots.htm

And the shareware version download is at:

http://www.bcsoftgames.com/DADemo.exe

Thanks!

Haven't been able to run the full version yet, but one thing you might consider is the name. When I think "Archon" and "videogame" I think chess-like board game, not space shooter. On one hand, the game Archon might be old enough that this isn't an issue for most potential buyers, on the other, with your specific gametype you're more likely to attract those sorts of gamers familiar with old games rather than say mainstream 30 something women.

Originally posted by gfm
Haven't been able to run the full version yet, but one thing you might consider is the name. When I think "Archon" and "videogame" I think chess-like board game, not space shooter.

I too thought of the old C64 classic. (I was hoping it was actually, i used to love those games... well Archon I & II anyway ;))

When I heard "Dark Archon" I thought... Archon! I loved that game growing up. I was surprised to find out it was a space shooter!

First, I got to say the backgrounds are very, very well done. I really like the slow scrolling starfield on the beginning screens.

Now I'm the kind of person that likes to read the little back-stories of the games I play. Back in the 80-90's when I rented Nintendo games at the corner store, I always made sure the instruction manual was included with my rental. I know most people don't care about such things, but I liked to read the intro stories. I personally found the DA backstory... too long. I gave up reading it after the third page. The mission briefings are too long too. I do think that stories are important to add depth to a game, but keep in mind... its a shooter! I wanted to dive in and start blasting spaceships right away!

Bug... there seems to be no way to exit the Credits screen. And Pressing escape exits the game.

During the game, pressing escape loaded a pause-game-menu. Pressing escape again exited the game! I did that twice! I'm used to Escape pausing and unpausing the game.

During the game, I had a very hard time telling what ships were bad and which were my teamates. The only way I could tell was if I shot at a ship and my bullets went through it (teammate), or if the ship shot at me (enemy).

And every little ship takes many many shots to kill... even the little ones. Once when I pressed Escape I noticed something called "ship abilities", and I had unused ability points (how did I get those?). So I allocated all my points to firepower, and pressed Escape. Which exited the game. <Grumble>

Hope I wasn't too harsh with my opinions. I can be blunt sometimes. But I do hope you find this useful.

Felix

I really appreciate the feedback actually (I don't have a problem w/ harsh :) ). Just to clear up the Archon idea, I actually decided on that name while in my college Greek class, as the name means ruler in Greek and I thought it would work well with groups fighting each other over ruling the galaxy. I loved the Archon game as a kid as everyone else did I'm sure, but I felt that it was old enough at this point that I could use the name and it would work out allright (Dark Archon, or Dark ruler as the game has several dark endings and a dark undertone to it).

I appreciate the escape problems you had, nothing worse then exiting a game on accident in the middle and I will fix the control issues as I get feedback on things that cause those problems. I was wondering if you had any ideas for how to recognize your enemies and friends better; I'm used to which models are on which sides...

Oh, and your ship abilities make your ship MUCH more powerfull, it's the concept of using experience points and your weapons become much cooler :). I previously had the game automatically go to that screen when you acheived your new level, but found that inturrupted gameply, I'm now looking at automatically going to that screen when you finish a level or start a new one and you have a level up; again I'll have to see what feedback I get. It is mentioned in the dialog that you found tedious :) Thanks again and I look forward to hearing more things I can fix!

One last thing to mention is that this is not a typical shooter, it's more of an adventure game and I hope to give people more of an experience then they usually get by simply pegging a bunch of moving targets that occasionally shoot back (not that I don't like shooters; my favorite was Lords of Thunder for the Turbo Grafx; anyone play that one???) though I don't know how well I have been able to capture that idea in the game...

I was wondering if you had any ideas for how to recognize your enemies and friends better; I'm used to which models are on which sides...

I noticed that each ship has 1 of 2 damage bars displayed. Blue for shields, and red-green for armour when the shields were gone. At first I thought blue bars were friendlies and red-greens were baddies.
2 ideas for you:
1) Display a small (but bright) coloured icon next to the armour/shield display.
2) Surround the damage bar of each ship with a coloured border. A green border for friends an a red one for enemies, for example.

I previously had the game automatically go to that screen when you acheived your new level, but found that inturrupted gameply, I'm now looking at automatically going to that screen when you finish a level or start a new one and you have a level up;

Well, since you have to read the mission briefing anyway, upgrading your ship at that time wouldn't interrupt gameplay.

I love shooters! Can you tell me what is so special about Lords of Thunder?

Felix

Great suggestions, thanks!

I can't say enough about Lords of Thunder, awesome music, wonderfull graphics, HUGE variety in enemies, beautiful backgrounds, your character has a sword that he pulls out and hacks enemies apart when they get too close! It is a little dated at this point, but it was made when shooters were in their prime on console systems and nothing has compared since in my opinion (that's why I'm not trying to make a shooter either :) )

Feel free to be critical as you want!

Carte blanche to critique -- how can we refuse?

Overall, I thought DA was a nice game with some interesting features. If there's one criticism I'd level against it, it's that it did not begin to maintain my interest until after the first few levels -- and that's after the point at which I, (the consumer) would have stopped playing.

difficulty?
graphics?
game play?
overall presentation?
ease of use?

First Impressons

The scrolling background and flickering stars in the title screen was an especially nice touch. The music was also good. But the font for the menu options in the title screen was uninteresting, and brought down the presentation a little. The throbbing "SHAREWARE" notice was good, and not overly intrusive, though I would like to have been able to click on it in order to register, (or to find out what I'd get for registering). The storyline was nice, though it was a long read. Is there a way to spread this out over the levels, in bite-sized chunks?

Playing the Game The Mission Briefing was wordy; around the time when colors were listed, I sorta zoned out and hit the button -- too much to learn all at once.
On entering the game, the first thing I noticed was the high-pitched "pwip! pwip!" of my gun. I would prefer a much deeper, more booming sound; as it was, it made me think I was wielding a pea-shooter.
The first few minutes of the game could be made more compelling. As it was, were I not jotting down notes, I probably would have stopped playing. A pity, since the pace picked up to an exciting level, not long thereafter. This isn't to say that I wanted a more difficult challenge up front, so much as that I wanted to shoot more things. Also, the controls (steer left/right, move forward) were off-putting at first, but I grew to like them.
Asteroids seemed to soak up the damage, further suggesting to me that my ship was firing a pea-shooter. I would like my planet's government to supply me with a more powerful weapon if they expect me to go out there and risk my life. Alternatively, it'd have been nice to see that I was doing some damage to the rocks by having particles fly off more visibly.
I didn't care for the fact that enemy ships could suddenly reverse direction; it made them seem like cardboard cutouts that were simply being flipped over. Also, I was often left wondering which ships were on my side, and which belonged to the enemy. More than once, I followed one around, shooting, only to find that it was one of my own. This aside, the fact that I had allied ships fighting alongside me was unexpected and particularly cool.

User Interface Hitting ESC took me to the PAUSED menu. I expected that hitting it again would dismiss that menu; instead, it aborted my game.
Though I did get the hang of steering and moving with the keyboard, I was initially hoping to be able to steer with the mouse, move forward/back with W/S, and sidestep with A/D. (EDIT: Aha. You posted about this very thing -- I played before reading. Perhaps make this control choice more visible to the new player.)
I happened on the "Ship Abilities" screen by accident. If I hadn't paused and scanned, I would not have realized that I could upgrade my ship. This may have been mentioned in the mission briefing, but my eyes glazed over it.
The target arrow should be more visible, or closer to the center of the screen; I kept having to take my eyes off the ship to see where I was going.

Miscellany The particle effects were a nice touch, but some other effects were too subtle. For example, I didn't notice that the planets were rotating, until I sat there for a few seconds and actively watched them.
It seemed that, during gameplay, the music would skip at the end of some measures.

Overall, fun. The story bits were interesting, and I particularly liked being able to upgrade my ship.

* Threre isn't any Exit button on the main menu
* I want to be able to remap the controls (if it does let you, I couldn't figure out how)
* I would rather there be more enemies and each one have less shielding... I hate shooting forever and ever at a ship in order to kill it. Yes, I know you can power up your pea-shooter, but it still takes forever. And I know the bonus weapons are much stronger, but they always fired using the primary firing key - I couldn't tell when they would fire. Put them on a seperate key, or, if there is already the option, make it more obvious - I didn't see one.
* I also had trouble telling the difference sometimes between enemies and friends. Perhaps some obviously different color on the health bar or something.
* Why do you get to keep experience points on levels you fail? I suppose it does mean you'll eventually pass them, but it also means you'll be uber powerful later on.
* It had a weird behavior with alt-tabbing - it didn't restore my screen size for the monitor it was running on (I run dual monitor), and seemed to be using a significant amount of cpu during that time.

The first four points are the biggest reasons I wouldn't buy it. I did play for over an hour, and had a bit of fun, but the frustrations were too many.

You did say to feel free to be critical.

This is great feedback and I appreciate it a lot! I've already started on making some changes, the coloring underneath the health bars makes your enemies a lot easier to determine, and I'm looking at modifying the title screen menus to make them look more professional. I'm also looking at adding a survival mode in which enemies keep appearing and you try and live as long as you can and kill as many as you can as it seems it's a general sentiment that the more action people get in the game the more they like the game.

As far as the main weapon being a pea-shooter, it's supposed to be one (though a rapid fireing one). It is the weakest weapon in the game, when you use other ships (which you can't use on the shareware version!) their weapons are much more powerfull, maybe it would be good to allow more then one ship to be used on the shareware version, or advertise that fact more?

I'm also trying to make some of the slower levels more interesting, especially levels 1 and 3, maybe 5 as well (it used to be a lot more interesting and people had problems w/ it being too hard). I don't think there's anything that can be done to shorten the story or split it up, it's a get you up to speed story; I am working shortening the text at the beginning of levels, though it gets tricky because I don't want a player to get confused how to play or pass a level (and the attribute point allocation part is explained at the beginning of the second level :) ). I've found that people don't read instruction manuals, so if the features aren't explained in-game, then most people will never know they exist...

I have uploaded some of the changes already, and am happy to hear input people are willing to give!

As far as the main weapon being a pea-shooter, it's supposed to be one (though a rapid fireing one).

It's the "pwee!" sound. I landed after a successful sortee, and some of the women were laughing at me behind my back. I just feel so unmanned.

hehe, k I get the point, less Star Wars sounding, more I'm a flying tank sound. I agree there, it should sound more powerfull, I'll have to see what I can do (I've never been very good at creating sounds or music :) ); I don't want the people who play my games to be laughed at!

I think noone yet has mentionned how unplayable it is: it's almost impossible to rotate the ship in the desired direction with the keyboard! Why doesn't moving the mouse rotate the ship? Or at least give some intertia to the rotation.

I didn't read the instructions, too much text. At the first mission I tried to shoot the asteroids.. nothing happened. Then I see plenty of small asteroids. Of course I didn't shoot at them since I knew it did nothing. Well, it turned out they were ennemies :-}...

Second level, what is this clone next to my ship with a bar below it? I thought it was a bug :-). Then I see many small ships half transparent, that I can't shoot... It took me quite a lot of time to notice that some of them did in fact shoot at me and could be shot.

Otherwise, very nice graphics! The main menu impressed me (apart from the missing exit entry, of course ;-) ).

Did you try the mouse? The mouse should rotate it just fine, perhaps there was a problem with the game on your system?

Allright, I made some changes to it, so the controls default to the keyboard+mouse. I've also tried to make the menus look a bit nicer (including adding the infamous exit button :) ). Furthermore, I've also added a survival mode that tracks best scores and times for those of you that want to blow away a lot of enemies, though it's more of a teaser as it only allows for 40 seconds of play on the shareware. Finally, I've changed the levels a bit and tried to make them more interesting, getting rid of the asteroids on the first level so that people don't automatically assume this is another asteroids rip off.

The text has been shortened to about the bear minimum for someone to understand how to play the game and for there to be a storyline, though it still may be too much reading for some of you. Anyways, if anyone has more time, please let me know if things are better or worse etc. I've also included the Lords of Polis ship in survival mode only which has a little better weapons then the peashooter (it has a flamethrower and shoots fireballs). Thanks again for the feedback!

I gave it a try. All the text looked like confetti on my screen... the HUD, the level introductory text, and what I'm guessing are the "points" displayed after I shoot a bad guy. My display adapter is an Nvidia GF4 Ti 4400, with the latest (53.03) drivers.

Any way I can make a screenshot for you?

That sounds bizarre, is it just the text or is it anything that uses an alpha channel? Please post or send me a picture, I'd be very interested in seeing it!

On my second try, only some of the text was screwed up. The initial instructions weren't this time, thankfully, but the frame around the screen definitely was. (Unless it's some post-modern art installation, in which case I have missed the point.)

Here's the screenshot:
http://www.midwinter.com/~lch/darkarchon.garbled.png

I was kinda hinting, though, do you have a built-in screenshot mechanism? If not, consider adding one, like my
pngscreenshot (http://www.midwinter.com/~lch/programming/pngscreenshot/). It's free (as in beer) and comes with full source.

Looks like a problem with texture storage. I'm using OpenGL, have you had problems like that in the past when running OpenGL games? Funny thing is I have a different GF4 and it runs fine :), so that's why I would guess it was the card first off. The way I'm loading textures, if it runs out of texture memory (which a G4 shouldn't on this game) then it should store additional textures in RAM; this is an OpenGL default. Has anyone else out there run into this problem or have suggestions as to the cause and/or solution to this problem?

Sorry I don't have a screenshot export, I've always found it easier to keep a image editor open in the background, and simply use print screen and alt+tab between the two.

I don't know which games are Open GL and which aren't, but I don't recall having that trouble with any game previously.

Is there a way to configure the graphics? I am running three screens on this PC, and it'd be interesting trying it on one of the other screens. I'm beginning to suspect the driver more than the card, myself, and running it on another card but with the same driver would help.

And--what could be easier than pressing a button and getting a screenshot file? Ya big silly!

Originally posted by Larry Hastings
I was kinda hinting, though, do you have a built-in screenshot mechanism? If not, consider adding one, like my
pngscreenshot (http://www.midwinter.com/~lch/programming/pngscreenshot/). It's free (as in beer) and comes with full source. [/B]

So it's free (as in speech) too, then? B-)

Originally posted by GBGames
So it's free (as in speech) too, then? B-)

It's not GPL'd; the license is more BSD-ish. My faltering understanding of the distinction is that "free as in beer" is for software that has no cost, wheras "free as in speech" is for software that itself is liberated, unable to be pinned down. You can do terrible things to pngscreenshot--like change it, and use it in your own programs, and not release the source or tell anyone you used it.

Here's a thought. If your theory is correct, that the garbled text is some sort of texture management problem, then make me a test EXE which substitutes another texture for the text and frame textures. How about the ship texture? We can be certain that that one's working fine.

Pretty cool. Similar to our online java game Realspace 2 and the as yet unfinished Realspace 3. 360 degree space flying with computer controlled friendlies. Of course your's is smoother and nicer graphics since ours is java based.

www.arcadetown.com/realspace2/playgame.asp (http://www.arcadetown.com/realspace2/playgame.asp)

http://www.arcadetown.com/realspace3/playgame_med.asp

Couple things... when I get friendly and enemy ships all around, it's hard to identify what is what and ended up blindly shooting at anything that moved. Try different color schemes for friendly versus enemy.

Also, at end of each level I got to a screen where upgrade your ship. That menu seemed pretty confusing and ended up having to select "abort mission" to get the mission to start to play.

That's very interesting, they are very similar concepts. Of course I'm allowed to do more using a 3D API, but the conrols and team concept appear to be very similar. I ran into the same problem playing realspace as you had with my game, it's hard to tell who's on which team. I've added the different color hp bars based on the team the ships are on (and a very suttle color scheme among ships), which is suttle and hard to notice for some (maybe most) people like your different color schemes were for me. I think on both games, if you play them for a bit then you'll get used to which models represent friendly or foe, but by that time I could of lost a customer, so I'm still trying to think of a way to improve it.

I'm not sure what I can do to make the ship upgrade easier, maybe by adding text on the top of the screen that says use the arrows to apply attribute points or soemthing? Any suggestions there?

This is to Larry, substituting textures won't help anything. This is because if a texture gets loaded and it works, it works and you can see that without repeating it. If the problem was texture management, it would occur on other computers besides yours, and I've had absolutly no one else have that sort of problem. Therefore I beleive it has to be video card related, and things get further complicated because the problem is not the same from instance to instance (the first time your text didn't work, the second time it did). This changing would almost make me guess the video card memory has some corrupt locations, or that there's still OpenGL issues in Nvidia's drivers for this card (as there have been repeatidly in the past). These of course are simply guesses, and could be way off; I'm still looking for suggestions etc, and I'd recommend (if you have time) you try a game that uses a lot of texture memory and allows you to switch between DX and OpenGL usage. Most FPS games allow this, and if it works fine than you'll have shot my theory out of the water and it's back to the drawing board :)

Originally posted by BCSoft
I'd recommend (if you have time) you try a game that uses a lot of texture memory and allows you to switch between DX and OpenGL usage. Most FPS games allow this, and if it works fine than you'll have shot my theory out of the water and it's back to the drawing board :) Would UT2k3 fit the bill? I just tried using both the DX and OpenGL renderers, and it ran just fine in both (though with a lower framerate in OGL).

I don't understand the distinction you draw between "texture storage" (which you said was the problem) and "texture management" (which you said wasn't the problem). If it was bad RAM on the card, why would it consistently fail to load specific textures? Wouldn't that be luck-of-the-draw?

Hi there. I tried the new demo of Dark Archon. Here are my thoughts in complete disorder ;-)...

The mouse control confused me at first, since I didn't expect to have a mouse pointer and aiming mechanism similar to Alien Flux, nor a translation only wasd control, but I got used to it. (I expected rotation with qd or with mouse left-right)

Then I still had problems making the difference between friendly and ennemy ships. They both have a blue/green health bar... After some time I could tell which ones were the ennemies though. Perhaps you could use a red outline for ennemies health bars.

In the upgrade/pause menu, I wondered about the difference between armor and shield. I don't know how the shield works... does it refill itself after some time?
I like that ability to choose what to upgrade.

It still looks like shooting the smaller ennemies (in the 2nd level) does nothing.

The third level is quite difficult.. I lost several times (not a single time in the first two levels). Looks like I have to find the homing missile to be able to survive (ennemies require too many shots otherwise), but even then it's not easy!

You could make the "register" text clickable in the main menu, to open the register web page.

BTW, that register web page has got a small layout problem in the bottom left hand corner under Netscape 7.

And finally, just in case you care, the game's a bit slow here when there are lots of ships onscreen (athlon 850, 480MB ram, ProSavage 4 32MB, win98, dx8). That might explain the difficulty to shoot smaller ships, if the collision detection is performed only once per frame...?

OBTW, this time I did read the levels instructions ;-).

I only played for about a minute to be honest (although thats the most important minute as far as catching customers is concerned). Heres my thoughts:

I'd prefer to be able to play the game in a window, or at least change screen res, you should consider doing that. If its already an option, it's one I couldnt find.

I was confused about how to move the ship, then I realised I was moving and the ship didnt have any thrust or smoke trail, even thought the enmy ships did.
You should give the players ship a smoke trail, it must eb easy seeing as though the others have them ;)

I'd prefer to try it on medium or hard difficulty, I'd unlock them in the demo.

But on the plus side, it installed and ran fine, and looked ok, although graphically there are some real nice looking shooters acting as competition for you.
Good luck!

Thanks for the great feedback!

Stan, on level 3 there are red borders around the enemies hp and sp, does that stick out enough or do you think I should change to a more solid red scheme and not just borders? Also, there isn't much that can be done about the slowdown as most models are around 1600 pollies, and that makes me draw around 1000 per model, which will cause slowdown for a lot of cards when there's several models on the screen at the same time...

Cliffski, the smoke trail has been a big item of discussion here at BCSoft. The problem is if you have the smoke come out the opposite direction of the way you move, it could come out of any place of the ship (the front the sides...). So if you make the exhaust always come out of the back, it appears un-natural as you move sideways or reverse etc. I'm open to suggestions...

Larry, I understand texture management to be me managing my textures so I don't overwrite any or try and use one that I haven't already loaded into the video card. That error would occur on all CPU's if that was the problem. It sounds like your card is working fine w/ UT so the problem must be something on my end. Because I don't know a lot about your card, I'm baffled as to where the problem is spawning from for just your card, and I'm still open to everyone's suggestions...

your using 3D rendering? why not use 2D sprites? you can draw a shedload of sprites epr frame, just try my game planetary defence to see how many ;)

I'm sticking w/ the 3D because I simply like the perspective look a lot better for this game. I do use several 2D techniques (the stars, the background, the overlay) but the models and particles are all 3D and they just look a lot better (on the CPUs that can run it!). The funny thing is that I'm about 4 months into the next part of this series, and it's an RTS/action shooter game, and I did switch to 2D everything for the improved performance :). It might be worth looking into doing a low graphic quality version of this game that switches images for models, I do wonder what the average computer is of shooter gamers market, and how many customers I loose because I use OpenGL in general...

Here's my 2.5 euros (2 cents) worth.

Mixing mouse and keyboard together is pretty hardcore gamer. I can manage because I was a Robotron freak as a kid but I'm inclined to think most shareware users / buyers are not so hardcore. Perhaps offer 2 modes. If manipulate mouse use controls like AF, move mouse to point, left to fire, right to thrust forward. If manipulate keyboard left/right to rotate, up/down to thrust forward/backward, and ctrl to fire. btw - This would also solve your smoke trail problem.

Make ships easier to kill and make em easier to identify. Having to pump in many shots and not seeing instant effect of death exasterbates problem of not knowing which is friendly / enemy. The different colored health bars also don't provide enough visual clue. In RS2 we used 2 different color schemes, different shot types, and even visual look (metallic UF versus biogenetic Katuri) plus ships/shots don't collide with those on same side. Looks wise was only somewhat successful because of problems with artist.

Add other little effects such as continuous little damage explosions on ships that are damaged.

Make objects on radar easier to see.

btw - I forgot to say the game is cool. Been playing it more and starting to like the control scheme (or maybe used to it now). Yup, I was a dual brianed dual joystick Robotron freak as a kid :)

Planetary defense is also pretty sweet. I see what you mean about 2d performance and looks great however 3d sprites sell. The exit nagging on that game is excellent! Hell... I'm about to haul off and buy it.