It's featured at http://nbsd.de/paxsolaris.html and you can download it directly from here (http://highspeed1.movedigital.com:8080/badfs/badbal?secretcode=90e0dad52325b332635b317321aea5ba&asid=307173&path=/web/files/movedigital/temp/307173/PaxSolaris.exe). I greatly appreciate any feedback you may have. Does it work on your system? Were you confused at any point? Did you find it addictive? Did you win the first time you have played? Do you have any suggestions?

No trouble getting it to run, no real trouble figuring out how to play, but I don't generally play strategy games (or risk - BORING! :) ) and got bored after about eight minutes of struggling through my first game (according to the timer).

That timer could be a bad idea - it certainly made me feel more like giving up when I realised how long I'd been at it.

Still, it was fun to see what happened after I clicked give up, instead of the game just ending.

Generally, I find Risk exceedingly boring (see guys playing in my neighbor's room at college, watch for a while, go out for several hours, come back, and they're still at it... Argh.) and don't get much excitement out of watching little numbers change across the map. So I'm not the target audience.

Nice work Diodor! I must confess I never played Risk before, but now I know what the idea behind it is.

Here are my comments:
- The Niels Baur page has a long text reading "The price might fluctuate with currency .. " This should definetly get removed, it makes me jittery not to know the price until I have almost purchased
- The Armadillo default key screen is no good, use some other form of protection or make your own screen to enter key codes (I assume you are using Armadillo, it looks a lot like it)
- Make the links hot in the game (ie. clickable). For example the link with more information
- How do you stop an attack? If it isn't possible you should probably tell so in the tutorial.
- For some reason I could not select difficulty or team, I kept clicking the small things but nothing changed. If this is intended you should mention it.

The tutorial was great, it got me into the game fast. Very streamlined graphics.

Thanks for your reports.

papillon, I agree about the timer. I need it though because trying to beat my best times has almost got me addicted to the game again. But I will remove it for levels that were never won - any time will be a new record anyway.

"Still, it was fun to see what happened after I clicked give up, instead of the game just ending."

That's good news, particularly as all the levels that are not available in the demo can be viewed in the same demo mode.

"Generally, I find Risk exceedingly boring (see guys playing in my neighbor's room at college, watch for a while, go out for several hours, come back, and they're still at it... Argh.) and don't get much excitement out of watching little numbers change across the map. So I'm not the target audience."

I mildly disagree about you not being target audience. Pax is not boring in the same way Risk - it sometimes gets as intense as Tetris, but I know it can get boring some other times when the game is going nowhere. Perhaps I should try to lower the difficulty level.

"- The Niels Baur page has a long text reading "The price might fluctuate with currency .. " This should definetly get removed, it makes me jittery not to know the price until I have almost purchased "
I'll tell him.

" - The Armadillo default key screen is no good, use some other form of protection or make your own screen to enter key codes (I assume you are using Armadillo, it looks a lot like it)
- Make the links hot in the game (ie. clickable). For example the link with more information "

Added in todo list.

"- How do you stop an attack? If it isn't possible you should probably tell so in the tutorial. "
By right-clicking the attacking star. It's mentioned in the tutorial and in the in-game help screen (the ? button).

" - For some reason I could not select difficulty or team, I kept clicking the small things but nothing changed. If this is intended you should mention it. "
Well, it's mentioned on the Buy Now screen, but I should also pop a message box explaining what happens if you press those.

First off, I love it. I'm a big strategy fan, and I thought it was a great littel game. Simple to pick up with plenty of fast paced strategy. It took me a couple of games to figure out the difference between the different coloured stars (perhaps a mention of these in the tutorial would be helpful).

The interface is simple and clean though its a shame some buttons (particularly the levels) have text that extends over the edges.

I have found one bug so far though which will crash / close the game.
Tutorial step 4/5. Attack the green star, then retreat back. The AI will then attack you once you have retreated enough of your ships. As soon as it starts to attack the centre star, the game exits.
Curiously, however, when you reload the game (and its nice if intentional) the tutorial continues on from the exact spot you left off from, telling you you have failed, and even if you do then take control of all three stars, it still says you have failed.

Other Notes:
----------------

Standard level select
The red (disabled levels) is incredibly bright and with the black writing makes my eyes go funny trying to read the text :) Could this be darker? Possibly more closely matching the colours of the buttons?

Spelling and grammer

Under the 'Buy Now' section.

Hello
"Play all the difficulty modes and sides" perhaps swap that around to "Freedom to choose your team and the level of difficulty"

"Host online games your friends can join even without resgistering the game". This currently sounds like I can do that now, without registering. Maybe "Host online games which your friends can join (even if they haven't registered)"

Less than 1%
"You will get 10 times more levels and 10 times more game options for each level" doesnt read as well as it might. Perhaps "You will get 10 times as many levels, each with 10 times the number of game options." or something.

Zero risk
Excellent has 2 'L's and normally you get an insight 'into' something, not 'about' something. (Perhaps, "and get an excellent feel for the game" instead)

"No question asked" - shouldn't this be "No questions asked" (plural)

How to buy?
Probably better without the question mark, and the same applies to "How to register?"

"After ordering, you'll receive within a few minutes an automatically generated e-mail including a key code that unlocks all the features of the game"
again, I would be tempted to alter the order of this sentence to something like:
"A few minutes after your order is processed, you will receive an an automatically generated e-mail containing a key code which will unlock all the features of the game."

Contact us
"For all business and sales related questions use contactATnbsdDOTde"
It would be nice to include the word 'please' here: "For all business and sales related enquires, please feel free to contact us using: contactATnbsdDOTde"


-Z-

I installed it and as soon as I went to run it it restarted my computer in such a way as to make me run scan disk. I'm a little scared to try it again, but what the hell, why not?

Athlone 1700+ (overclocked)
GeForce 2 pro
Windows XP, SP 1
DirectX 8.1
512 mb RAM

Worked smothly, no problems.

Just a minor thing.. but the 'win time' always seems to lose a second between the end of game time shown and the high score time shown.

Last time, game won in 19:43 (high score recorded 19:42)
This time, game won in 16:21 (high score recorded 16:20)

-Z-

Its fun, if a bit hard for me...

one issue when it launched it took about 7min to open from a small rectangular window with nothing in it to the actual menu.

I'm a huge risk fan, so I thought I'd give this game a try. Overall, I found the game quite fun. I enjoyed playing the game in a more real-time format. For the most part, I also found the UI to be very good and clean. However, the one part that I really did not enjoy was the "game board" area. I found it quite confusing at first, even after trying the tutorials. First off was that I had no understanding of production. It should have been mentioned in the tutorials (even if at least briefly).

The bigger problem I had with it was that the game board just seemed messy. It was hard to get a good grasp on the current state of affairs. Having teams indicated solely by the color of the numbers was hard to follow. It also seems to conflict with the colors of the stars. For instance, playing the white team, I had the green teem sitting on my border. They managed to break through my outer defense. I didn't notice at first because they only had one star and my eyes didn't notice just one tiny number changing color. I actually didn't notice until (I'm guessing) a few seconds later when they grabbed up 2 or 3 more stars. Then they spread as I tried to clear them. I did manage to clear them out and secure my outer border. At least I thought so. That's when I realized the green team was still holding one of my green stars. One of the things I like better about the computer risk games I've played is that the whole country changes color. It's easier to notice a color change when a few square inches change rather than just a few numbers. One thing that might help would be if there were a way to display territory boundaries and lightly shade in the background or outline perimeters or something. I'm not sure exactly. All I know is that even after playing for an hour, I still found it difficult to quickly grasp who holds what at a glance.

Another option might be to instead have the color of the star represent who holds it, and have some other method for visually distinguishing between bonus types (use some type of icons or something). This would fix the other problem I had...distinguishing the teleport. Once I became accustomed to a board, the teleport was no problem, but at first I had problems because it had the same color as a generic star, and the same look as the blue star.

Finally, the dotted lines and arrows to indicate movement seemed a bit messy. The first problem I had was with the Cross board. In a few places, you have paths the criss-cross but don't "intersect" (ex: bottom right corner). Also, the arrows just seem to get to be a big jumbled mess to me. I'm not sure what you could do to make that better. Possibly have them connect fully from one star to the other (I don't know, it might make it worse....I'd have to see it first).

All in all, the game seemed like a lot of fun and I kinda enjoyed playing it, but the gameboard just didn't click with me.

Installing went without any problems and after the tutorial (good!) I went on to win my first game! *g*
Well, actually I was a bit overwhelmed at first by the size of the map(the nubmer of planets is a bit high for first level)... May be that my resolution is too high (1600x1200) but the screen was a little bit too small, at first. I'd also like a bit more info, for example on the planets' production, and maybe highlight planets that are being attacked somehow - it's difficult to notice everything when the front is extended. Maybe pop up a small notification or something. (a "!" maybe when the planet is attacked for the first time)

Strategy is one of my favorite genres, and I play Blizzard games quite often. That may be the reason for me to think the controls to be not intuitive enough. I would prefer a "left button select planet", "right button order move" style of control. I never grasped why selecting and ordering should be the same button, but that may be just me. Maybe you could offer both input-styles to the user.
Other than that, I must admit the game was more fun than I thought! :) I nearly lost in the middle game when the AI broke through on a planet and nearly occupied my whole hinterland...

The game has a kind of Master of Orion style to it, which is a good choice by the way. So all in all, good work! :)

In follow up to LordKronos, what about having some kind of visual to signify the fact that you are being attacked like make a softly strobing circular outline to any of your stars under attack. Also, maybe then the whole star flashes if you lose control of it.

Another slight bug is on the level editor. When deleting stars, all of them except the brown and purple stars leave a small mark on the left hand edge when removed.

-Z-

Nice and tight little game... well done! I played several games in a row, and got quite into it. I used to play a lot of Risk years ago, and was just thinking about trying out the new one (Risk 2210 or something.... OT: has anyone played it?) when I saw your game.

Didn't lose a single game, and I couldn't change the difficulty settings either (mentioned in previous posts).

I absolutely agree with Ron. Getting an overview is very tough, and before you know it you have to "clean up" after some nasty invader that you didn't notice. Having the colour of the star indicate its alignment would be a better idea.

There was also no sound - should there be?

Very nice tutorial.

Cheers,
Patrick

Original post by Kai-Peter

Very streamlined graphics.


Programmer's art. All of the shiny buttons and windows are made using a few scripts I wrote in Scheme for Gimp.


Original post by Zoggles

It took me a couple of games to figure out the difference between the different coloured stars (perhaps a mention of these in the tutorial would be helpful).


I mention the bonuses in the tutorial, in the "Did you know that" message boxes at the start of each game, in the manual and in the online strategy hints page. Also, whenever you select a star it's bonus is displayed in the corner of the game screen. The editor has tooltips explaining the different bonuses too. The problem is there are quite a number of rules, so I can't hope to tell all of them before boredom sets in. Instead I just hint about them as often as I can.


I have found one bug so far though which will crash / close the game.
Tutorial step 4/5. Attack the green star, then retreat back. The AI will then attack you once you have retreated enough of your ships. As soon as it starts to attack the centre star, the game exits.
Curiously, however, when you reload the game (and its nice if intentional) the tutorial continues on from the exact spot you left off from, telling you you have failed, and even if you do then take control of all three stars, it still says you have failed.


Thanks, that bug would have most likely remained undiscovered. The tutorial does remember the current lesson. I have made the spelling corrections you have suggested.

Original post by Gmicek

I installed it and as soon as I went to run it it restarted my computer in such a way as to make me run scan disk. I'm a little scared to try it again, but what the hell, why not?


I'm sorry about that... Didn't ever happen to me. Is there a report.txt file in your game directory? (I assume not.. still..) I'm (hopefully) guessing it's a problem with the Armadillo protection system, which will go away if I choose a lesser security level. What is your operatings system?



Original post by Balron

one issue when it launched it took about 7min to open from a small rectangular window with nothing in it to the actual menu.


Are you talking about the small windows like message box? Is that 7 minutes a metaphor or it really took that long? Also, what kind of computer and operating system do you have?

LordKronos, thanks for your report. I'll fix the little things (the white star will have to look differently from the blue one; I'll change the crossed level a bit), and I'll consider adding some form of outlines around the stars (but I don't think it will be easy).

I disagree with changing the meaning of the star colors though. Also, consider that keeping the board under control is part of the gameplay. It is impossible to see all the time everything that happens on the map, so you must make a mental image of the places that need to be looked at often and of the places where nothing is likely to happen. The strategy I use is to block the enemy in most places and focus my attention in just one place.



Original post by grbrg

Strategy is one of my favorite genres, and I play Blizzard games quite often. That may be the reason for me to think the controls to be not intuitive enough. I would prefer a "left button select planet", "right button order move" style of control. I never grasped why selecting and ordering should be the same button, but that may be just me. Maybe you could offer both input-styles to the user.


Well, you can consider that the right button selects and the left buttons gives an order (which is convenient because orders are more frequent than selects). The reason why the order button also selects is that it makes it very easy to make long paths on the map by simply clicking on each of the stars on that path.




Original post by Zoggles

In follow up to LordKronos, what about having some kind of visual to signify the fact that you are being attacked like make a softly strobing circular outline to any of your stars under attack. Also, maybe then the whole star flashes if you lose control of it.


I don't know whether I genuinely disagree with this or I'm just lazy. I should try it and see how it works. As I've said, the problem with the enemy attacking and capturing many stars without you even noticing (which happened to me too) can be overcome through good gameplay.


Another slight bug is on the level editor. When deleting stars, all of them except the brown and purple stars leave a small mark on the left hand edge when removed.


Aah, you have noticed. I hoped that by simply ignoring everyone else would too :P No luck.


Original post by Midnight

Didn't lose a single game, and I couldn't change the difficulty settings either (mentioned in previous posts).


I know at least some players may find the game too easy, but I need to limit the demo version a lot. It still has a lot of replayability if you try to beat your time records. For instance, I did better than 3'30"" for the one level. What's your time? :)


There was also no sound - should there be?


The buttons click don't they :P


Very nice tutorial.


The script for the tutorial is in the tutorial.txt file in the game directory. I only use integer values or string values paired with a variable name string that can be loaded from some text file, but it proved more than enough for my needs.

Again, thanks everyone for your excellent feedback.

I don't know whether I genuinely disagree with this or I'm just lazy. I should try it and see how it works. As I've said, the problem with the enemy attacking and capturing many stars without you even noticing (which happened to me too) can be overcome through good gameplay.

I appreciate that, and have been playing accordingly. However, at higher resolutions (eg 1600x1200 which I use) its quite a strain to see all the little arrows and differentiate between the colours of the numbers beneath. Especially on the shorter paths where the arrow of attack is sometimes covered up because the star is selected or something.

Also, just to clarify, I didnt mean some kind of small 'flash' (or whatever) every time a sat changes control.. only when one of yours is captured.

-Z-

BTW, I really like the name of the game, but I felt the urge to point out that there ain't a lot of pax in this imperia! ;)

Nice game, I like it a lot. As mentioned before, the text runs off the edges on some of the buttons (in 800x600 at least) and takes away some of the proffesionalism. I won my first game easily. I love games like this.

Diodor, cute game. I'm not a big fan of real-time strategy, I mean when I'm ahead I love RTS but as soon as I lose track of something I get very frustrated. :) Your game is no exception, although I think I'm getting better at it. I'd prefer if a game like this has a speed control, but naturally this only works in single player. You could include it in a difficult setting. In any case, I had a good time. I like the star art and layout, it reminds me somewhat of the Avalon Hill board game Merchant of Venus (which I loved to play and still own in a box somewhere).

I found "crossed" to be the most difficult level because it's a balancing act trying to expand outward and yet prevent a large wooden horse filled with soldiers from being pushed though that white star back door. It's also difficult because there are so few dead-ends you wind up having a very wide front. Coming up with a white star strategy, in general, was a big learning curve hump for me. Also recognizing the critical mass the AI likes to have before launching an attack. It does seem like they all use the same guide for determining when to attack, so when say I direct 10 ships away from my white star all three players attack it simultaneously, but when I return the 10 ships they all call off the attack. Now that I'm aware of this I constantly check for build ups, but it'd be nice if they varied their behavior, otherwise this is an implicit collusion among the AI players. Until I figured this out my white star would get jumped on before I noticed it and then they'd go trampling through my undefended backyard.

This leads to a desire for greater detail of movement instructions. For instance, I'd like to be able to have the navy traffic through a star but never deplete the star to lower than X ships. Furthermore, I'd like a way of towing ships in disrepair out of the star system. Sometimes you want to pull out of a star system to regather your forces but you can't because you don't want to lose your ships in drydock. So you have to bring in enough reinforcements to convince the attackers to buzz off, and then sit tight as you finish repairs.

Some of the fonts look odd on my system, in many cases extending beyond the area of the button. It might be less confusing to the uninitiated to put the number of ships in repair in a smaller font size. Clicking Give Up doesn't actually give up, it just changes the game speed to fast. In one case I clicked on this button when I had control of all but 1 planet and had 200 ships amassed next door. All my production lines were intact so my ships increased 10x faster than the AI. So he just sat there. Smart move by him, but the game didn't end. It turns out the game is still playable in this fast state, so I sent in the troops and finished him off.

I'd like to see drag and drop control of production lines. Sounds effects (except on button clicks) are noticeably absent. An in-game explanation of each of the star types would also be appreciated. I'm not sure I see the point of violet stars. I suppose they make a good defensive position, but isn't that the point of red stars?

Original post by elund

Diodor, cute game. I'm not a big fan of real-time strategy, I mean when I'm ahead I love RTS but as soon as I lose track of something I get very frustrated. Your game is no exception, although I think I'm getting better at it. I'd prefer if a game like this has a speed control, but naturally this only works in single player. You could include it in a difficult setting. In any case, I had a good time. I like the star art and layout, it reminds me somewhat of the Avalon Hill board game Merchant of Venus (which I loved to play and still own in a box somewhere).


Thanks. I'd prefer not to include a time control though. Other than some issues (I'd have to modify the timers), I think it's a good thing to keep the rythm of the game the same throughout.


I found "crossed" to be the most difficult level because it's a balancing act trying to expand outward and yet prevent a large wooden horse filled with soldiers from being pushed though that white star back door. It's also difficult because there are so few dead-ends you wind up having a very wide front. Coming up with a white star strategy, in general, was a big learning curve hump for me. Also recognizing the critical mass the AI likes to have before launching an attack. It does seem like they all use the same guide for determining when to attack, so when say I direct 10 ships away from my white star all three players attack it simultaneously, but when I return the 10 ships they all call off the attack. Now that I'm aware of this I constantly check for build ups, but it'd be nice if they varied their behavior, otherwise this is an implicit collusion among the AI players. Until I figured this out my white star would get jumped on before I noticed it and then they'd go trampling through my undefended backyard.


Changing the attack tresholds for different AI players is a good idea. All in all I'm pretty happy with the AI as it is. It's very simple (just some 150 lines of code that used to be placeholder for the real AI) and predictable, but doesn't do anything dumb enough as to spoil the game. The predictability actually helps the gameplay by allowing the player to think his moves ahead.


This leads to a desire for greater detail of movement instructions. For instance, I'd like to be able to have the navy traffic through a star but never deplete the star to lower than X ships. Furthermore, I'd like a way of towing ships in disrepair out of the star system. Sometimes you want to pull out of a star system to regather your forces but you can't because you don't want to lose your ships in drydock. So you have to bring in enough reinforcements to convince the attackers to buzz off, and then sit tight as you finish repairs.


First, I dread adding rules and options and complicating things. If you noticed, there's not even an options screen. But also, while very helpful, options like a lower force limit or signaling attacks more visibly might make the game safer, and sudden breakthrough attacks less likely. I'm considering these ideas too, I'm just a bit cautious.

About retreating damaged ships: it used to be that way, but I changed this. Having immobile damaged ships allows for strategies like surrounding a star with many damaged ships and destroying all of them, which wouldn't work if the enemy could simply retreat. You can still pull out of the system though. Your damaged ships will retreat too eventually when the enemy attacks them. Not only that, but half are repaired, and just 10% are destroyed in this retreat.


Some of the fonts look odd on my system, in many cases extending beyond the area of the button. It might be less confusing to the uninitiated to put the number of ships in repair in a smaller font size. Clicking Give Up doesn't actually give up, it just changes the game speed to fast. In one case I clicked on this button when I had control of all but 1 planet and had 200 ships amassed next door. All my production lines were intact so my ships increased 10x faster than the AI. So he just sat there. Smart move by him, but the game didn't end. It turns out the game is still playable in this fast state, so I sent in the troops and finished him off.


The fonts are platform independent - much like rendered bitmaps. I did enlarge the buttons once (the text used to extend clean over the button area), I guess I should do it again... Heh, yes, you found out about the way Give Up works. I don't see much harm in this kinds of stand-offs though. They're impossible to get unless you try to on purpose. Even then, the Back button is still active. Btw, did you try to play a whole game after giving up right at the start? Would make Data proud :)


I'd like to see drag and drop control of production lines. Sounds effects (except on button clicks) are noticeably absent. An in-game explanation of each of the star types would also be appreciated. I'm not sure I see the point of violet stars. I suppose they make a good defensive position, but isn't that the point of red stars?


Drag and drop control is a great idea. I'll remain silent about the sounds. As I've said, the star types are mentioned in a lot of places, including the game screen: whenever you select a star it's bonus is displayed next to the large star image in the upper left screen corner. There's also the manual. You did find about them somewhere, didn't you?

The violet stars are somewhat similar to red stars, but not entirely. For one thing, they're also good for attack (attacking ships also get damaged). An overwhelming attack completely negates the violet bonus, as it doesn't give the defenders time to repair their damaged ships and rush them to battle.

There's also the manual

Yeah but no-one ever reads manuals... ;)

Also, for the first few games one is likely to play, you will have only seen a couple of hint windows, and probably wont have found out about the difference between them all.

A single extra step to the tutorial, just showing the different stars with a brief (couple of words) summary of each bonus would be nice. Its also then something the can easily refer to without having to scroll through the manual to find the relevant part.

I didnt look at the manual until I had played about 8 or 9 games.

-Z-

A minor glitch: if you do something unexpected in the tutorial, the text display becomes jumbled. For example, in the second or third step, you're supposed to click on the green star, but I clicked on the yellow one (I might have the colors wrong, but you get the idea). The resulting text had some leftover text from the last screen followed by two lines of error message, which was a little confusing until I figured out what was going on. On a related note, the reason why I clicked on the wrong star was because the colors looked nearly identical to my (apparently) color-blind eyes.

Wow, Diodor you are getting better! Nice game, although not my type of game.

As someone pointed out you should lose the default Armadillo dialog and make sure the text does not extend the button area.

Anyway very good job!

Original post by Zoggles

Yeah but no-one ever reads manuals...

Also, for the first few games one is likely to play, you will have only seen a couple of hint windows, and probably wont have found out about the difference between them all.

A single extra step to the tutorial, just showing the different stars with a brief (couple of words) summary of each bonus would be nice. Its also then something the can easily refer to without having to scroll through the manual to find the relevant part.

I didnt look at the manual until I had played about 8 or 9 games.


Shall we settle for a hint (to appear in the second game) that points the player towards the corner of the game screen where the bonuses are listed whenever a star is selected and a mention of the red star (the star with the strongest bonus) in the tutorial?



Original post by kerchen
A minor glitch: if you do something unexpected in the tutorial, the text display becomes jumbled. For example, in the second or third step, you're supposed to click on the green star, but I clicked on the yellow one (I might have the colors wrong, but you get the idea). The resulting text had some leftover text from the last screen followed by two lines of error message, which was a little confusing until I figured out what was going on. On a related note, the reason why I clicked on the wrong star was because the colors looked nearly identical to my (apparently) color-blind eyes.


Fixed that bug. Color blindness is definitely going to be an issue with this game, but I hope I'll be able to improve the problem by using stars of different shapes and using such team colors that will statistically cause problems for the least number of people. For instance, mistaking different shades of green and yellow seems to be the most common problem.


Original post by bernie

Wow, Diodor you are getting better! Nice game, although not my type of game.


Heh, the best is yet to come :)

Shall we settle for a hint (to appear in the second game) that points the player towards the corner of the game screen where the bonuses are listed whenever a star is selected and a mention of the red star (the star with the strongest bonus) in the tutorial?

That would probably work. Perhaps even force it to be the first 'tip' screen you ever get. (I cant remember what the first one was if they are not just completely random)

Also, some 'confirmation' might be nice if you try and close the window half way through a game. Just to make sure that the player didnt try and close the window by accident.

-Z-