Hi Mr. Game dev. I am fairly young and this is the first time experiencing this type of game. I really like your game, and the effort and love shows. I will probably try other games of this type because man your game is genuinely a blast Thank you for putting out a demo I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the fun, you are doing really well. I will check back in the future to see where this goes!
this is the most wonderful thing to read! The game is very heavily inspires by a game I played in my childhood, and it rides on nostalgia, so I was wondering if it could stand on its own. So glad to hear that strategy RPGs are making their way to the next generation <3
I'm having fun playing your game. The only issue I've encountered so far is a crash whenever the AI took my castle. ( I'll see if I can reproduce this in case you need it. ) Also, micromanaging unit spawns gets a little tedious after a while. Maybe add rally points that can auto-add them to a garrison or army?
I think I've found the bug relating to claiming towns, and fix will be up sometime today. About micromanaging spawns, that's actually exactly the solution I was planning to do - they spawn with a path to the nearest town, and you can choose to alter that path. I hope I'll also have time to add that today.
Published today a game update on indie game sites. Received reviews:
- already 0.8, the game is still unstable and crashes (no bug reports)
- now added tokens for each race and you can select the game of the summoner from the very beginning (not only I call Summoner imba)
- Doesn't make sense. The UI is just badly done. This is not a bug. (another complaint about bad UI, not user friendly?)
- In addition, if in the original "heroes" the battles became boring and monotonous only at the end, when the size of the army, territory and economy exceeded what is possible, convenient, interesting to manage, then this is at the very beginning. There are monotonous fights at the end, and here, monotonous fights at the very beginning. (suggested to the person to turn on auto-fight)
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Dear Ben, the release of the game is still very far away.
Yeah, I don't think your forum likes the game. The game certainly isn't for everyone, it's a pretty niche experience. I don't mind that. I want to focus on removing glitches and other things that make people who do enjoy the game enjoy the game less.
Now that you're here, can I have your feedback on the difference between free and premium version? Is just half of the factions to start as too little?
I've been thankful for people who played my game and have felt bad whenever someone had their enjoyment ruined by a crash or error. I was wondering about monetisation, did a poll on twitter, and followed what people voted for. Sort of. People actually voted mostly for there to be no free version at all, but I couldn't do that.
Even the price is not based on my subjective evaluation of the game, but merely the average payment received so far.
I knew monetisation would be a divisive thing - that's actually why I did it now instead of at launch. If there was a button I could press that gave free access to everyone playing before v07, I'd do so.
False blindness, well, who knows. That's not what this is about. I know my game isn't perfect. It's a small little project that's spun a bit out of control. I'm happy some people like it, but let's say, its design appeals to 2-3% of people. People have tried to spread it around the web, not just you, and most feedback comes back negative. Such as not liking pixel art. Will I then change the game so it doesn't have pixel art? No, the game has pixel art, that's part of what it is.
I'm not trying to spread the game personally. I want the sort of people who might enjoy the game find it by their own whims. If they've played three maps through with the three factions, they might consider going for the premium version. That's the idea. I really really don't want to force this game down people's throats.
People feeling they've been forced to try a bad game? Ugh, that's a terrible thing. There's a lot of better games than mine around. All I want is to have a playable strategy-rpg with pixel-art, real time battles and a procedurally generated world. Not the best strategy game. Just this small little niche thing.
I don't need money. Mail me and I'll give you a key. Goes for anyone else too, tell me why you want a key, I'll figure something out. Profit goes to the artist, my composer and perhaps a license to export my games to different operating systems, though I doubt it'll make close to enough for that.
HootHootOwn, you've come with a lot of feedback and suggestions, and I'm thankful for that, but I'm getting the feeling you're burning yourself out. If this game brings you more negative emotions than positive... Well, I won't tell you what to do. Just take care of yourself, because I care for your mood.
I’ve been helping the developer by making sure that any bugs and crashes i encounter i can reproduce and then contact the author to send him the save game with instructions how to reproduce the crash.
Every crash i sent was fixed fast and recieved thanks by the authors.
While your criticism are valid (they are your opinion and there is truth to them) you can make your criticism constructive and contribute to make it better.
I'm aware of bug #1, but thank you for notifying me of #2. That's pretty interesting and I think I might know why it happens.
Difference is (or should be, maybe it's broken), how many factions you can choose as your starting faction. Demo should only have access to 3 of the 7. That's basically it
- City -> Horde -> Grade to Kennels and they are no longer available for purchase, at all. Their icon disappears from the store. Scaling 130%
- Arcane Cloister is broken, you pay 1 time 20 mana and buy as many golems for 200 coins as you like. And it should work, 1 golem = 20 mana + 200 coins, right?
- Why don't the enemies run away from you when the auto battle is on? Those. in 100% of cases there will be a fight. Evacuation bridges are not even offered.
- It is not written how much the "Estates" skill brings gold per day and how much will it bring when leveling up? And the amount can be tied to the number of cities and their end!
- The arena, which gives +1 armor or +1 damage, can be visited every week, IMBA. As well as the Arena with the monster (as a treasury). Then, for some reason, you can also leave the army there ?!
- Why is it impossible to unite the pumped and conventional types of troops? They still read through the battle. Just do not show the player that he has only pumped ones, and the second does not. One slot for everyone will be better. And already in the code, register how many of them are, and how many others. (I try to remove all annoying moments from the game)
- I found a funny moment when you instruct 3-4 heroes to go in different directions at once (the screen freezes due to tracking by 3-4 heroes at once and control is lost). Remove tracking of heroes altogether.
- Is there any check at the external dwellings (path to the city), so that they are not surrounded on all sides by impassable rocks. In particular, I mean Shrine Druid.
- Skill Lörning doesn't actually work for Lörgnig Stone. It does not increase experience from the stone. As there was 1000 at any level of pumping, so 1000 remained.
- The question is, will there be (or already exist) somewhere a separate button / icon for the hero "continue the move". For example, on the last turn, I chose where to go (across the entire map), and in order not to point there again (when at the beginning of the turn the screen again switched to my hero), I could press the button and the hero went along the indicated path ?!
- Will there be such a button in the "Hire all creatures" castle? After heroes 3, she is sorely lacking.
I liked the auto-fight (can we remove the real fight altogether?). After an auto-fight, I generally don't want to spend 2-3 minutes on a real fight. Real combat distracts from the battle of wits on the strategic map. And so, what problems have I noticed (which greatly interfered with me when playing:
- Very strong enemies that attack at the beginning of the first week! I also have a level 1 castle. And they have already pumped in the 3rd level. It's not fair!
- The Expert Combat skill is very strong, it needs to be fixed. Here is the skill of Diplomacy, in the hands of a computer hero ... Every monster that he attacked joins him. It's not fair!
- Once again, external dwellings are annoying when they have to be driven to the same place from different sides of the map! This is especially annoying when playing in auto-combat mode, where one week is often less than a minute long. And the repetition of the same actions due to the author's deficiencies. (I came up with a blitz solution, let all units from the outer dwellings be immediately added to the army of the strongest hero in the game / computer. This is the most reasonable solution that came to my mind)
- Why does the camera focus on him when moving a hero? And it doesn't let me move on ... And if I have 5 heroes, will I have to wait for everyone's move? Here, either increase the speed by 2-3 times, or activate the hero's auto-movement (in the settings) to the desired point in a second.
- Make the mills like mines, no one will run after them (and be distracted) because of three three trees a week, when the game with the 1x1 auto-fight lasts a total of 5 minutes, and 1x2 10 minutes. Thank.
- When capturing an empty city of computer heroes through auto-battle, the game crashes :)
I really can't figure out if you're making fun with me or not, asking to remove the main mechanic of the game. Maybe what you're really looking for is a different game.
Furthermore, diplomacy literally does nothing in the hands of an AI player - they always decline. Furthermore, that's not how diplomacy works in this game. You still need to defeat the enemy before diplomacy procs.
Mills are awful, terrible things and are really rare in this game compared to the Heroes games for the very same reason. Sure, they could act like a mine, but their effect is too noisy to be meaningfully kept track of strategically. I'll see if I can figure out some sort of compromise that works better than either option.
External dwellings being annoying is something I have a plan for, but once again, the rate of your feedback far exceeds my rate of implementing features.
Expert combat - someone else mentioned that. I guess I'll nerf it, though I really love the whole idea of having an incredibly powerful hero. I'll need to ask - just how powerful is it? Equally powerful as your army being 15% stronger? More than 15% or less?
I think you just don't understand the concept of your game, who are you making it for? How long is a beginner willing to spend on average playing your game? - And how long will he have enough patience at the first start? I will answer, 5-10 minutes, no more. What's the easiest way to get a newbie interested? - That's right, give him a taste of victory. If you don't, you will lose a player. This is the first and main rule of the developer. Your game will not be played by hardcore players, they will not play indie games. Only casuals remain. I think you need to focus to keep the player's attention by winning the first 5-10 minutes, otherwise he will leave. And only after the first victory, you can complicate the game by adding new (optional) conditions, saying to the casual - and we still have battles in real time ...
I disagree with your advice. I lost the first game to a crash and i’m still around. Hardcore gamers will very much play indie games since the strategy genre is very much underserved. It will not have mass appeal but that isn’t the developers goal.
When was the last mayor fantasy themed strategy game like WarCraft, Age of Mythology was released? I particaluarlly enjoy the lack of 3d graphics as it is much more laptop friendly.
For myself, I would leave the scaling at 175%. Don't look me like that, I bet it's the perfect option for the menu! Look, I even attached a photo.
What problems:
- Pixel font, or anti-aliasing does not work. Maybe it's all due to the fact that it is too small or not correctly selected, I do not know.
- I would increase the font size for the New Game and Load Game buttons by 2-3 times (this is with 175% scaling). In this case, the buttons themselves should not be reduced! We need to play around with the size of the Options menu so that the buttons and menu don't overlap.
- Next, when you click a new game -> another problem, the map selection menu (when zooming). The fact that the menu for selecting a map has increased greatly is very good! But this way I cannot start the game (there is simply no start button!)
- The description of the units when hovering does not show what kind of Lvl they are, and the pumped units have some kind of rubbish instead of descriptions.
- The enemy's turn status bar is located just above the resource panel.
I suggest making 150% scaling the norm and adjusting the whole interface to it. In which case, +/- 25% in both directions (up to 125% or 175%) can be adjusted by the player himself, if he needs it.
As of now, the UI scaling and resolution options are purely for compatibility reasons. I do not believe that most people playing on laptops or normal desktop setups with screens around 1080p - which this game is developed on and for - will need such large scaling. Mind you, the larger the UI scaling, the less information can be on screen and the less of the overworld map can be seen. My goal is for 100-130% to work perfectly and 150% to work though not necessarily be optimal.
Text smoothing eeeh yeah I'll update that. Currently, it only is enabled window size is below 1080p, but really it should be enabled whenever UI scaling is anything but 100% (and I should make UI auto-scale when you first open the game).
Currently the following menus need to be updated for UI scaling to be optimal:
Town management screen
Load game menu
Map selection screen
But that'll have to be for update v09. Prioritization.
I fixed enemy turn progress bar, again thanks.
The pumped units have some kind of rubbish? Excuse me? So confused.
But yeah, I'll add back the unit level descriptions, though they mean a lot less in v08 than before since each unit has their own power level not just depending on tier.
As a programmer writing programs for many years, I find scaling 150-175% more convenient for vision and perception of incoming information. Usually, our company creates a test group to solve user experience issues. Release a fully doped 0.8 beta3 with a modified scaling increased to 130-150% by default (at least in the menu) and let people vote what is best for them.
- Found a bug, when loading a game with interface scaling, the mini-map is completely black.
- Plus, at the end of the turn, after this, a crash occurs, a photo with an error is attached below. That turn, three enemy heroes did not share one of my castle :)
Has this bug been found already? After capturing an enemy city, if you hire a new hero in it. On the screen of the city, everything is fine: it can hire troops, etc. But on the main map - a new hero - the enemy (the color of the defeated player).
hehe, yes, this bug has been found before. It is one of my favourite bugs. Don't give that hero your troops - it will go and attack you once you pass the turn. Betrayal at the tavern! Don't trust everyone you meet!
One line of missing code:
But yeah, it's a bug, it'll be fixed in update v08. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, though - and thank you for helping the development of the game :)
1. Improvement of the city Patriotism should give each new hero +2 morale. But in reality it only gives each hero +1 morale. Even newly hired heroes get +1 morale. (although the same skill Mithril Armor, for example, works fine)
2. Does a hero with the basic Engineering skill have no ballista from the start? - Why not give it to him.
3. Keeping completely stubborn (not working). Even if you load them with 0.8 beta. The video is attached.
4. And that's not to mention the general displacement of creatures in the castle when you can't buy a 7th creature. Now there are a maximum of 6! Only shooting heroes-magicians made me happy ...
hehe,I just need to remind you that you're playing an unavailable development build.
1) Patriotism should only give +1 morale, I'll update the tooltip.
2) Heroes with engineering get first aid tents, just added that. I'm not sure if they should also get ballista? It's incredibly OP the first couple of weeks. I'll consider it, I guess?
3) I love the glitched effect whenever you load a save from an earlier version. Save files are only compatible for the version they were made in, and that's fine by me, since I'm planning to y'know, actually release a v1 soon, so that won't continue being a problem.
4) For the Identity update, which, mind you, you've got an unavailable development build of, each faction gets a pair of mutually exclusive creatures. So, yeah, just six different units for hire in each castle. This is on purpose. Like a very, very lite version of the HoMM 4 system. Look forward to when v08 is actually released. It'll all make sense... (hopefully)
But what if we give first aid tents, only to those heroes who specialize in treatment? It would make sense. And take away from engineering, and give out only ballistas. At the last level of pumping, there can be two ballistas (or two tents) at once.
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Since it is now possible to choose a hero's specialization when choosing a map, why not give the heroes an advanced specialization (or bonuses) at the start? - They are masters of their craft. A hero with a ranged skill will have a bow with a +1 bonus to ranged combat. A hero with engineering has a ballista from the start. The magician has a book with one powerful spell. A simple warrior hero can have a reinforced army, or a shield and sword (giving +1 to attack and defense) dressed on the hero. You can think of a lot by expanding the number of specializations and the pool of heroes.
Interesting idea. I like the idea of the human faction specializing in war machines. Ballistae for the might heroes, first aid tents for the magic heroes.
As for the other suggestion, I really like the idea of all heroes starting with equipment fitting their class. For balancing reasons, however, it would need to be all starting with just one artifact giving just +1 to one stat, which kinda limits it. But it could still work.
is there a way to delete of an old save file for some reason when i complete a game it stays in the list of games so i have to finish one match in one sitting
I'll add in a button to remove a save game from the list.
I don't really get the problem, though? Oh, is it because you've opened so many maps it's pushed your current game off-screen? That sucks, m8, sorry! I don't even know of a manual fix apart from deleting your "opt.txt" file in the %appdata%local/HOMM_tiles_mapgen, which will clear all your saves.
There's space for five maps at least, and at least by the next update, it'll be the five last-played games. If everything works as I want it to, you should never have to worry about save slots. Sorry for the temporary inconvenience.
The problem is that the saves from the previous version (I have 0.8 beta and 0.7) do not differ in any way. And when I want to load the save from 0.7 -> the game crashes with an error. It is preferable to be able to delete or block old saves (when updating the game).
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I sent you a list of what I am missing in 0.8 beta.
it has put my game off too the side but i thought finishing the game would remove it is all when i saw no delete button so when i finished a game it didn't disappear then i started another thinking it was fine but then it just put it off screen. btw this is the only real problem i have with the game otherwise i really love it and cant wait to see what you add :)
My estimated fellow. It is beyond my ability to put in words the joy I had in my heart the momment I stumbled across this marvelous creation. I just love heroes of might and magic with a passion and that's why I talked about your game in Heroes Community.
That said, I'd like to know whether it would be possible to chat (thorugh personal message, discord, idk.) with you about the future of the game, ideas I have in my mind, etc.
I understand and respect the fact that you prefer to work solo, but I firmly believe I could contribute with ideas, since I played all of the HOMM games and play HotA to this day.
I have an important question, can undead and humans be in the same squad of the hero? - Of course they cannot, the problem is that the general morale of the detachment (people) will go down. Morality doesn't work for undead. If a squad had low morale in HoM3, then it would skip a turn. And we have nothing like this, although the hero may well hire two (incompatible in outlook) armies without any drawbacks.
2. If the hero's squad consists of creatures from one castle, then their morale must be +2. And for each creature of a different worldview, shoot -1 morale. The undead will always have 0. And in order to eliminate many debuffs, the player will have to pump leadership.
I will draw on a whole lot of what works from HoMM, but not all. I want to allow for better integration of units between factions. Already in game, there are several means of achieving that. Such as infinite creature slots and adventure buildings giving cross-faction units. I do not want to punish a player for finding and using units of a different faction.
Moralewise, each point of morale gives a chance for units to enter "super morale mode" for five seconds where they move and attack twice as fast. It isn't communicated particularly clearly right now, but that's a work in progress thing. Currently negative morale does nothing. It probably should do something. But not the flat "lower stats" model you suggested.
Undead and 0 morale - well, that's a conundrum. Let's do a pro and cons list:
Pros
- "realistic"
- asymmetry between factions
Cons
- losing a strategic aspect
- esoteric
- a good artifact might suddenly become useless because of your faction
To me, it feels rather pointless, but if you have a good argument for why I should do it, I'd be interested to hear.
And maybe maybe mixing specifically undead and humans/elves should give a negative effect just for the sake of immersion, but it would have to be more interesting than a flat bonus. Like your units attacking eachother or something like that.
See if the races of living heroes have the Leadership skill, which increases the morale (morale) of the squad. That for the heroes of the undead, you can replace Leadership with Sorrow. Since undead have no morale, Sorrow will reduce morale by -2/4/6 (morale) of the enemy hero's units. This mechanic is implemented in HoM 5.
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I took the info from the wiki HoM fandom
+1 morale for troops of one faction
+1 morale for troops in the city
+1 morale for monster lvl 7 of one faction
+1 morale in battle against undead.
For every +1 morale -> 5% to the chance of "Super Morale". If the morale has been lowered (through Sorrow), this is already a penalty to the characteristics. For undead, "Super Morale" can be replaced with a half health respawn chance? At least that's how I see it.
Let's start with those (your) ideas that you can implement quickly. No time wasting days. Screen resolution, 64 bit version of the game Windows and Android. Scaling the interface ...
Since the developer is using GamerMaker Studio an license with which he can export to android will cost him $200. I don’t see the need for that as mobile support comes with additional problems such as having thumb where your mouse would be.
I just remembered a funny bug when buying a (escaped) hero in a captured castle ... This hero does not belong to me, although I can still buy him an army. On the next turn, he attacks me with my own army. Now I will even make a video :)
hehe, yeah, I found this bug while playtesting with my brother in the weekend and we had a good laugh about it. Betrayal at the tavern - tale as old as time
this game really has potential, I just played around 5 minutes, but I have a problem with the text (played on my laptop). Hope you can finish the game, and more progress will come.
Right now the game is optimised for 1920x1080, but I want to make it work on more resolution. What was the text problem and what resolution were you playing on? :)
I understood what he meant. Very small and hard to see text. That's why I suggested adaptive-custom scaling of the text from the menu. From 100% (current countdown) to 250% for people with low vision. On my gaming site, every second complains about the UI
https://small-games.info/?go=game&c=79&i=28845 I publish your game on it +/- daily in updates. On a site with a base of 3000-5000 people per day. Plus a couple more sites with a smaller audience, I also publish on them.
btw, I'm working on auto-combat right now as per your suggestion. I'd never have implemented it otherwise since I personally don't like it, but, y'know, the need of the many... :)
I played on 1366x768 resolution (default my laptop resolution). Almost all text is too small, it's hard to read my laptop (even it can be read) like HootHootOwn said before. I had checked the settings but I can't found any clue for scaling text size or change the resolution of the game.
I think it is worthwhile (for now) to limit ourselves to the most common resolutions for 16: 9 monitors. Namely 1080p, 900p, 768p, 720p. If necessary, I can also help with testing.
great to hear! I'll see if I can't get a prototype out before the day is over. An email I can use to contact you? You can mail me at ThingOnItsOwn@gmail.com
Your game has a lot of fans (in Russia). And wishes for its improvement, too.
1. Auto-battle must be added. Can you do some kind of auto-calculation of the percentage of victory between the armies? I honestly admit, fighting every time (knowing that you will be 100% victorious) is really annoying.
2. Necromancy / Demonology only waste precious mana. + 10 skeletons will not bring victory, and using a powerful spell during a fight against a level 5-6 monster (for which there is no more mana left) can.
3. Here people have a problem, they ask to make customizable scaling of the interface (to hit the buttons with the mouse is completely unrealistic, literally). I'm fine at 12-14 inches, but how people play it at 24-27 "I can't even imagine!
4. Can transferring the game to 64bit solve performance problems? You make a game into a game maker, it seems like it can be compiled in 64bit, right.
5. How can you fire a hired hero? Or, for example, kill an unnecessary monster in the squad? - Why is there no such necessary button / icon / shortcut?
6. I attacked the enemy and realized that I would lose, as during the battle (I can exit the battle) and load autosave without ending the game process. thank
7. Why is it impossible to "steal" resources near the monsters? How it is implemented for example in the same heroes 3. It is very convenient to steal (part of the resources) from strong monsters and run away without entering a fight.
8. You can also add an analogue of a mill, a leprechaun, etc. weekly sources of random resources.
9. Small carts from the mines to the castle are annoying. Can they be disabled in the settings? Too childish, don't be offended
1. There is such a bug, when a computer attacks your castle, you escape from it, then the computer not only does not capture the castle, but it also ends its turn.
2. I would generally prohibit any escape from the city and introduce ransom instead of it, especially since the skill of diplomacy would be useful.
3. When the computer escapes from the battlefield (which happens quite often), all its escaped heroes crowd on the same square in front of the city and, as a result, get stuck there.
4. Another question is whether creatures from external dwellings can themselves be in the castle (already purchased, or available for purchase). It is simply inconvenient to take 5-6 dwellings with neutral to the nearest town and collect them in a heap. Thank.
5. The game often crashes when loading saves. Sometimes they are completely constipated. They break in 100% of cases if you close the frozen game through the task manager.
6. Problem with Necromancy and Demonology (summoning skeletons and demons for mana after the battle). The problem is that it costs mana to summon. Just one call of a pair of besiks or skeletons and a hero with his specialization is completely useless, plus he is left without mana for the duration of the battle. Summoner in general IMBA is another matter.
7. Can you somehow speed up the game itself 2-3 times? So that the heroes quickly ran around the map, and there was an auto battle to choose from and the computer's move did not have to wait a couple of minutes. And in general, a lot of good chips can be stolen from Heroes 3.
that's just what I love to see, some great notes about gameplay!
First one is a bug, there's a specific piece of code to make sure you can't flee from defending a siege - I'll figure out why it's broken.
I'll mull over number four. I'm not completely happy with the current system either.
Save games crashing, but only sometimes? I just redid the save/load system, so I shouldn't be surprised... I just hope I can figure out what that's about.
Balancing of necromancy/demonology - well, they give a great increase to your Hero's army size, so they do need to have disadvantages too. I'll consider your feedback though.
I'll add a movement speed option and I'll consider an autobattle option, sure. AI turns take the time to do, y'know, do AI, so no promises.
thank you for playing the game and all the feedback! It sounds like you enjoyed yourself :D
You received this message at the end of combat, right? It's fixed in the version I'll be uploading soon. As far as I know, it doesn't repeat itself, so you may reload the save and do the battle again
Hey, thanks! I saw it back when you released it - and really sorry you had to suffer through the mouse desync issues. I hope they're better in the current version?
i’m not sure if you fixed this bug yet, but I keep meaning to say that if you have multiple displays, the mouse leaves the screen when screen edge scrolling. Can you scroll with keys? I’d scroll with WASD if it were possible to config :)
thanks for the compliment and the error report! This bug was also submitted by someone else and a fix is on its way in v063. Until then, you may not be able to get around it - sorry.
You can always save the game in a custom place by using the escape menu, then return to it when the game is fixed!
hey thanks! I think I know where this bug comes from, so I'll be fixing that for the next update (new AI just added yesterday).
Sorry about the buggy nature of the game. It's part and parcel of doing constant updates - new bugs slip in all the time. Most of the old bugs are fixed at least. And one final day, you may be able to play a full game without a crash ;)
Amazing game man! Might and Magic + Pixel art is very nice.
Few feedback if you want to work on improving stuff: * It could be nice to be able to choose between several level of AI. (I'm probably just bad but I got destroyed the 2 games I played :p) * I think there is bug were I cannot buy a building that requires 4 resources and I have 4 of these resources (It even shows in red) but it works if I have 5.
Hey, thanks! I've never actually considered nerfing the AI - with the next update, I'll be improving it, so I might as well add an "easy" game option. Or at least make the "easy"-"normal"-"hard" actually affect the AI and not just the starting resources.
The second one, that's interesting. Did any of your heroes have the Planning skill? Just to try to figure out where the problem might lie. Thanks for the feedback and for playing! :D
Love the game really. Just wish that there is tips especially for people who didnt get a hang of the game. Took me awhile to get the flow of the game and I had moment where I was pissed. Just asking for new-comers to not have the same fate as me
What would you need to know? I could make a small pop-up tutorial guiding you through the steps of the game. Say if there's anything beyond these that is necessary:
Building out your town
Recruit creatures
Point out that creatures replenish each week
Move your hero
Explain movement points and days
Explain mousing over enemies to see difficulty
Combat setup and strategy
Explain level-up mechanics
Explain spellcasting
and mana regeneration rules
Resources and mines
That might cover it. I hope it's as easy to implement as it is in my head. A flip-book you can click to dismiss and which will automatically update as you do as it asks. Hmmm... It's a good feature.
That should cover the necessary things for a new player to know but if you want to go an extra mile and want to have a chance to interact with the fanbase it would be a good idea to ask some players who have a sense of direction with a game to make like "advanced tips". Ive seen many games do this and would be a good idea to give new players strategies to help them
But hey that's my opinion, you do what you do mate. love the game! Frustrating? yes. Hard? Maayyybe. Interesting? Definitely
It's on my todo list, though it is very difficult for me to work with on my current setup, since I don't have any screens to test on. Could you take a screenshot and share it here? Thanks for playing :D
Alright, there's two easy fixes for me to do (apart from doing a whole UI rewrite which is eeeh not my favourite idea right now). One is to make UI scale to no more than 100% - which wouldn't make the text larger, but would make it, y'know, pixel-perfect. The other is to turn anti-aliasing on. Right now, it's on if your resolution is less than 1080p - but I could turn it on for all resolutions but 1080p.
Writing this out, the best solution is probably to do both and make an option in the options menu to toggle between them.
Hi! This is Darmani here, the creator of Project Ironfist ( www.ironfi.st ). I really enjoyed my playthrough today. Thank you for helping to keep the spirit of HoMM alive.
Hey, thanks for playing! Also for the forum post - if nothing else, there is some valuable feedback there.
I really need to get to hunt down that screen resolution error sometime soon. I wonder how many people have tried to play and are turned away by it. Mind sharing with me your screen resolution?
It says 3584 x 2240. (This is a Windows VM running on a Mac Retina.) Don't know how that would be affected by going into fullscreen mode.
I have more feedback where that came from (especially since, as you may guess, I've spent a large amount of time thinking about game design for HoMM). Happy to chat more privately.
that's great! Could you contact me on twitter (@artprocedural) or on mail? (thingonitsown@gmail.com). I have a new build with some resolution fixes and I'd love it if you could stresstest it.
Also the whole game design part! I have a specific dilemma I'd like to ask you about.
My cursor doesn't point where it says it does when I use my monitor, there's black space above and below the game, and the cursor is higher than it should be the further up it goes and lower vice versa. There are no resolution or fullscreen/windowed options which might have fixed it.
a while ago, I did an update to fix some of these issues, but I'm aware there are still issues with some aspects. If you could write me your screen resolution, I'll use it to test and figure out what the problem might be.
Windowed mode is a good idea too, I'll check out if that helps. Thanks!
reaallyy cool game reminds me so much of the good old Heroes V! Graphics are amazing! But i encountered one problem i played 1v1 map builded a powerful army and wanted to pay a visit to my enemy, but at the only passage i killed the enemy and then i coudnt go throuth.. it said no path found... Hope u can fix this (:
odd! If you send me your save file (save from menu when you press esc in game), I'll take a look at that. bhauerm@gmail.com. Might get a fix out early this evening
Thank you, I'm always glad to get bug reports. I imagine this bug happened during an AI turn? In that case, it's been fixed in the next version. Otherwise, please specify so I can make the game even better.
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object obj_con:
Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [-8] out of range [8] - -1.btx(101668,-8) at gml_Script_get_path ############################################################################################ gml_Script_get_path (line -1) gml_Script_do_AIturn gml_Object_obj_con_Draw_64
the bandaid fix was simple enough, though I still don't know the cause for the bug. If you wouldn't mind sending me your save file, I'd be very happy.
It's to do with pathfinding breaking, but the script is usually 100% stable, so I'm wondering if there's something fucky to do with map generation that causes it.
This bug is caused by all your hero skills slots being filled and the game wanting you to pick something to finish leveling up. If you want to continue playing, here's a fix:
Problem with AI armies - they keep standing next to their dwellings. As they spawn every week - when I reach them I need to fight multiple armies on one square. This is my wild guess. It feels like attacking an army which does not disappear.
BTW do you have some public repository of bugs / TODOs?
Last but not least - fun game! Keep up the good work.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_castle:
Unable to find instance for object index 218991
at gml_Object_obj_castle_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_castle_Draw_0 (line -1)
oh there you are! You posted earlier too, and then your comment disappeared! Well, if this is the same bug, I've found the bug and the fix will be in the update coming out in ~1 hour.
That’s you call.
BTW where are the save games and what file name do they have.
I think i got an reproducible crash (again some indexing out of an array) and i would like test if i can isolate the problem and make it really easy to reproduce. So you can look into it.
While the game still tends to crash, you might want to think about supporting multiple savefiles and save into a different save file each round. You could then load the file the biggest round number or make an ingame dialog which file to choose.
While this might allow save scumming it would help with debugging.
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Other Event: User Defined 0
for object obj_mapinteract:
Variable Index [1] out of range [0]
at gml_Script_upgradecreaturesinarmy
############################################################################################
gml_Script_upgradecreaturesinarmy (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_mapinteract_Other_10
gml_Object_obj_army_Draw_0 (line -1)
The save files are in the /AppData/Local/Hero's Hour folder names save1.txt. I do want multiple save files, like three rotating ones, but there's a bit of UI work there, so it's a bit in the future, maybe v05 more likely than v04. You can send it to me, perhaps? bhauerm@gmail.com
I don't worry about save scumming so the more options the better if you ask me :D
Please don’t mark as playable on Linux without a Linux build. All Windows builds can potentially run through Wine but that doesn’t mean they’re supported by you or the Wine devs.
I played it for quite a while but then the game crashed haha. I suppose I had too large of a stack army - as each battle I had with more units, I felt a gradual "slowness/lag" until a game error crashed the game.
I think you should reduce the time it takes for hover-over tooltips to show. I found myself constantly wanting the tooltip hover to show up faster so I can read what the thing does. And on that note, there's still some things that I had trouble understanding that you could make clearer. For example, I didn't know how mana regened at all. Perhaps add more tooltips / tutorial / gameplay mechanic page.
I only played 1 faction nor did I fight the other faction AI but overall, it's very polished from what I've experienced! Honestly, I can see this as a release with a price tag on it. Just do some more polishing and get some audio into it and package it up! :)
thanks for the feedback! You're very right about those points. I have some ideas of what to do to fix it, more tooltips, quicker (instant if you recently looked at one), and some battle optimizations.
If you remember anything about what specifically happened when the game crashed, do let me know. Battles should be 100% stable so there must be something I can do
If I remember correctly, I think I read that the crash error said something was out of bounds. I had a big death stack army and during the battle, I think I saw some units phasing out of the field onto the edges.
Okay - I'll try to do some temporary fix for other resolutions for the next release (maybe later today). It might not look perfect, but at least it will be playable. Could you tell me what resolution you use?
I wonder why you couldnt move your heroes, then. Did you try a) ending your turn (this updates pathfinding) and b) sorry if this sounds silly but I guess I didn't explain you move using right mouse button click
Duly noted! I will probably implement and test UI scaling somewhere down the road, though probably not in the next week or two. Could you tell me your resolution?
I just uploaded v.022 which should fix the resolution bugs. The UI might look a bit squished, but the rest of the game should look alright - and, importantly, you can actually press buttons now :D
it needs a small adjustment (the smaller buttons like the "hire" and "max" can't be clicked) I tried clicking them but couldn't (a smaller resolution doesn't work)
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Hi Mr. Game dev. I am fairly young and this is the first time experiencing this type of game. I really like your game, and the effort and love shows. I will probably try other games of this type because man your game is genuinely a blast Thank you for putting out a demo I really appreciate it. Thank you for all the fun, you are doing really well. I will check back in the future to see where this goes!
this is the most wonderful thing to read! The game is very heavily inspires by a game I played in my childhood, and it rides on nostalgia, so I was wondering if it could stand on its own. So glad to hear that strategy RPGs are making their way to the next generation <3
I'm having fun playing your game. The only issue I've encountered so far is a crash whenever the AI took my castle. ( I'll see if I can reproduce this in case you need it. ) Also, micromanaging unit spawns gets a little tedious after a while. Maybe add rally points that can auto-add them to a garrison or army?
I think I've found the bug relating to claiming towns, and fix will be up sometime today. About micromanaging spawns, that's actually exactly the solution I was planning to do - they spawn with a path to the nearest town, and you can choose to alter that path. I hope I'll also have time to add that today.
Thanks for playing! :)
Published today a game update on indie game sites. Received reviews:
- already 0.8, the game is still unstable and crashes (no bug reports)
- now added tokens for each race and you can select the game of the summoner from the very beginning (not only I call Summoner imba)
- Doesn't make sense. The UI is just badly done. This is not a bug. (another complaint about bad UI, not user friendly?)
- In addition, if in the original "heroes" the battles became boring and monotonous only at the end, when the size of the army, territory and economy exceeded what is possible, convenient, interesting to manage, then this is at the very beginning. There are monotonous fights at the end, and here, monotonous fights at the very beginning. (suggested to the person to turn on auto-fight)
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Dear Ben, the release of the game is still very far away.
Yeah, I don't think your forum likes the game. The game certainly isn't for everyone, it's a pretty niche experience. I don't mind that. I want to focus on removing glitches and other things that make people who do enjoy the game enjoy the game less.
Now that you're here, can I have your feedback on the difference between free and premium version? Is just half of the factions to start as too little?
I've been thankful for people who played my game and have felt bad whenever someone had their enjoyment ruined by a crash or error. I was wondering about monetisation, did a poll on twitter, and followed what people voted for. Sort of. People actually voted mostly for there to be no free version at all, but I couldn't do that.
Even the price is not based on my subjective evaluation of the game, but merely the average payment received so far.
I knew monetisation would be a divisive thing - that's actually why I did it now instead of at launch. If there was a button I could press that gave free access to everyone playing before v07, I'd do so.
False blindness, well, who knows. That's not what this is about. I know my game isn't perfect. It's a small little project that's spun a bit out of control. I'm happy some people like it, but let's say, its design appeals to 2-3% of people. People have tried to spread it around the web, not just you, and most feedback comes back negative. Such as not liking pixel art. Will I then change the game so it doesn't have pixel art? No, the game has pixel art, that's part of what it is.
I'm not trying to spread the game personally. I want the sort of people who might enjoy the game find it by their own whims. If they've played three maps through with the three factions, they might consider going for the premium version. That's the idea. I really really don't want to force this game down people's throats.
People feeling they've been forced to try a bad game? Ugh, that's a terrible thing. There's a lot of better games than mine around. All I want is to have a playable strategy-rpg with pixel-art, real time battles and a procedurally generated world. Not the best strategy game. Just this small little niche thing.
I don't need money. Mail me and I'll give you a key. Goes for anyone else too, tell me why you want a key, I'll figure something out. Profit goes to the artist, my composer and perhaps a license to export my games to different operating systems, though I doubt it'll make close to enough for that.
HootHootOwn, you've come with a lot of feedback and suggestions, and I'm thankful for that, but I'm getting the feeling you're burning yourself out. If this game brings you more negative emotions than positive... Well, I won't tell you what to do. Just take care of yourself, because I care for your mood.
You're always welcome to come back when you want to. I just got the feeling you didn't want to.
I'm sorry to have affected you so negatively.
I’ve been helping the developer by making sure that any bugs and crashes i encounter i can reproduce and then contact the author to send him the save game with instructions how to reproduce the crash.
Every crash i sent was fixed fast and recieved thanks by the authors.
While your criticism are valid (they are your opinion and there is truth to them) you can make your criticism constructive and contribute to make it better.
Betatester for the money. Great idea. Thank you but no. Farewell.
0.8 Demo: What's the difference between Premium?
1. Error while generating the map.
2. Any map, Horde ("City" in the settings before the start of the game). Impossible to buy gnomes!
I'm aware of bug #1, but thank you for notifying me of #2. That's pretty interesting and I think I might know why it happens.
Difference is (or should be, maybe it's broken), how many factions you can choose as your starting faction. Demo should only have access to 3 of the 7. That's basically it
- City -> Horde -> Grade to Kennels and they are no longer available for purchase, at all. Their icon disappears from the store. Scaling 130%
- Arcane Cloister is broken, you pay 1 time 20 mana and buy as many golems for 200 coins as you like. And it should work, 1 golem = 20 mana + 200 coins, right?
- Why don't the enemies run away from you when the auto battle is on? Those. in 100% of cases there will be a fight. Evacuation bridges are not even offered.
- It is not written how much the "Estates" skill brings gold per day and how much will it bring when leveling up? And the amount can be tied to the number of cities and their end!
- The arena, which gives +1 armor or +1 damage, can be visited every week, IMBA. As well as the Arena with the monster (as a treasury). Then, for some reason, you can also leave the army there ?!
- Why is it impossible to unite the pumped and conventional types of troops? They still read through the battle. Just do not show the player that he has only pumped ones, and the second does not. One slot for everyone will be better. And already in the code, register how many of them are, and how many others. (I try to remove all annoying moments from the game)
- I found a funny moment when you instruct 3-4 heroes to go in different directions at once (the screen freezes due to tracking by 3-4 heroes at once and control is lost). Remove tracking of heroes altogether.
- Is there any check at the external dwellings (path to the city), so that they are not surrounded on all sides by impassable rocks. In particular, I mean Shrine Druid.
- Skill Lörning doesn't actually work for Lörgnig Stone. It does not increase experience from the stone. As there was 1000 at any level of pumping, so 1000 remained.
- The question is, will there be (or already exist) somewhere a separate button / icon for the hero "continue the move". For example, on the last turn, I chose where to go (across the entire map), and in order not to point there again (when at the beginning of the turn the screen again switched to my hero), I could press the button and the hero went along the indicated path ?!
- Will there be such a button in the "Hire all creatures" castle? After heroes 3, she is sorely lacking.
I liked the auto-fight (can we remove the real fight altogether?). After an auto-fight, I generally don't want to spend 2-3 minutes on a real fight. Real combat distracts from the battle of wits on the strategic map. And so, what problems have I noticed (which greatly interfered with me when playing:
- Very strong enemies that attack at the beginning of the first week! I also have a level 1 castle. And they have already pumped in the 3rd level. It's not fair!
- The Expert Combat skill is very strong, it needs to be fixed. Here is the skill of Diplomacy, in the hands of a computer hero ... Every monster that he attacked joins him. It's not fair!
- Once again, external dwellings are annoying when they have to be driven to the same place from different sides of the map! This is especially annoying when playing in auto-combat mode, where one week is often less than a minute long. And the repetition of the same actions due to the author's deficiencies. (I came up with a blitz solution, let all units from the outer dwellings be immediately added to the army of the strongest hero in the game / computer. This is the most reasonable solution that came to my mind)
- Why does the camera focus on him when moving a hero? And it doesn't let me move on ... And if I have 5 heroes, will I have to wait for everyone's move? Here, either increase the speed by 2-3 times, or activate the hero's auto-movement (in the settings) to the desired point in a second.
- Make the mills like mines, no one will run after them (and be distracted) because of three three trees a week, when the game with the 1x1 auto-fight lasts a total of 5 minutes, and 1x2 10 minutes. Thank.
- When capturing an empty city of computer heroes through auto-battle, the game crashes :)
I really can't figure out if you're making fun with me or not, asking to remove the main mechanic of the game. Maybe what you're really looking for is a different game.
Furthermore, diplomacy literally does nothing in the hands of an AI player - they always decline. Furthermore, that's not how diplomacy works in this game. You still need to defeat the enemy before diplomacy procs.
Mills are awful, terrible things and are really rare in this game compared to the Heroes games for the very same reason. Sure, they could act like a mine, but their effect is too noisy to be meaningfully kept track of strategically. I'll see if I can figure out some sort of compromise that works better than either option.
External dwellings being annoying is something I have a plan for, but once again, the rate of your feedback far exceeds my rate of implementing features.
Expert combat - someone else mentioned that. I guess I'll nerf it, though I really love the whole idea of having an incredibly powerful hero. I'll need to ask - just how powerful is it? Equally powerful as your army being 15% stronger? More than 15% or less?
I think you just don't understand the concept of your game, who are you making it for? How long is a beginner willing to spend on average playing your game? - And how long will he have enough patience at the first start? I will answer, 5-10 minutes, no more. What's the easiest way to get a newbie interested? - That's right, give him a taste of victory. If you don't, you will lose a player. This is the first and main rule of the developer. Your game will not be played by hardcore players, they will not play indie games. Only casuals remain. I think you need to focus to keep the player's attention by winning the first 5-10 minutes, otherwise he will leave. And only after the first victory, you can complicate the game by adding new (optional) conditions, saying to the casual - and we still have battles in real time ...
I disagree with your advice. I lost the first game to a crash and i’m still around. Hardcore gamers will very much play indie games since the strategy genre is very much underserved. It will not have mass appeal but that isn’t the developers goal.
When was the last mayor fantasy themed strategy game like WarCraft, Age of Mythology was released? I particaluarlly enjoy the lack of 3d graphics as it is much more laptop friendly.
Test 0.8 Beta2
For myself, I would leave the scaling at 175%. Don't look me like that, I bet it's the perfect option for the menu! Look, I even attached a photo.
What problems:
- Pixel font, or anti-aliasing does not work. Maybe it's all due to the fact that it is too small or not correctly selected, I do not know.
- I would increase the font size for the New Game and Load Game buttons by 2-3 times (this is with 175% scaling). In this case, the buttons themselves should not be reduced! We need to play around with the size of the Options menu so that the buttons and menu don't overlap.
- Next, when you click a new game -> another problem, the map selection menu (when zooming). The fact that the menu for selecting a map has increased greatly is very good! But this way I cannot start the game (there is simply no start button!)
- The description of the units when hovering does not show what kind of Lvl they are, and the pumped units have some kind of rubbish instead of descriptions.
- The enemy's turn status bar is located just above the resource panel.
I suggest making 150% scaling the norm and adjusting the whole interface to it. In which case, +/- 25% in both directions (up to 125% or 175%) can be adjusted by the player himself, if he needs it.
The video is attached.
As always, thank you for your input.
As of now, the UI scaling and resolution options are purely for compatibility reasons. I do not believe that most people playing on laptops or normal desktop setups with screens around 1080p - which this game is developed on and for - will need such large scaling. Mind you, the larger the UI scaling, the less information can be on screen and the less of the overworld map can be seen. My goal is for 100-130% to work perfectly and 150% to work though not necessarily be optimal.
Text smoothing eeeh yeah I'll update that. Currently, it only is enabled window size is below 1080p, but really it should be enabled whenever UI scaling is anything but 100% (and I should make UI auto-scale when you first open the game).
Currently the following menus need to be updated for UI scaling to be optimal:
But that'll have to be for update v09. Prioritization.
I fixed enemy turn progress bar, again thanks.
The pumped units have some kind of rubbish? Excuse me? So confused.
But yeah, I'll add back the unit level descriptions, though they mean a lot less in v08 than before since each unit has their own power level not just depending on tier.
Lot of stuff to do now.
As a programmer writing programs for many years, I find scaling 150-175% more convenient for vision and perception of incoming information. Usually, our company creates a test group to solve user experience issues. Release a fully doped 0.8 beta3 with a modified scaling increased to 130-150% by default (at least in the menu) and let people vote what is best for them.
- Found a bug, when loading a game with interface scaling, the mini-map is completely black.
- Plus, at the end of the turn, after this, a crash occurs, a photo with an error is attached below. That turn, three enemy heroes did not share one of my castle :)
hehe, yes, this bug has been found before. It is one of my favourite bugs. Don't give that hero your troops - it will go and attack you once you pass the turn. Betrayal at the tavern! Don't trust everyone you meet!
One line of missing code:
But yeah, it's a bug, it'll be fixed in update v08. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, though - and thank you for helping the development of the game :)
1. Improvement of the city Patriotism should give each new hero +2 morale. But in reality it only gives each hero +1 morale. Even newly hired heroes get +1 morale. (although the same skill Mithril Armor, for example, works fine)
2. Does a hero with the basic Engineering skill have no ballista from the start? - Why not give it to him.
3. Keeping completely stubborn (not working). Even if you load them with 0.8 beta. The video is attached.
4. And that's not to mention the general displacement of creatures in the castle when you can't buy a 7th creature. Now there are a maximum of 6! Only shooting heroes-magicians made me happy ...
hehe,I just need to remind you that you're playing an unavailable development build.
1) Patriotism should only give +1 morale, I'll update the tooltip.
2) Heroes with engineering get first aid tents, just added that. I'm not sure if they should also get ballista? It's incredibly OP the first couple of weeks. I'll consider it, I guess?
3) I love the glitched effect whenever you load a save from an earlier version. Save files are only compatible for the version they were made in, and that's fine by me, since I'm planning to y'know, actually release a v1 soon, so that won't continue being a problem.
4) For the Identity update, which, mind you, you've got an unavailable development build of, each faction gets a pair of mutually exclusive creatures. So, yeah, just six different units for hire in each castle. This is on purpose. Like a very, very lite version of the HoMM 4 system. Look forward to when v08 is actually released. It'll all make sense... (hopefully)
But what if we give first aid tents, only to those heroes who specialize in treatment? It would make sense. And take away from engineering, and give out only ballistas. At the last level of pumping, there can be two ballistas (or two tents) at once.
---
Since it is now possible to choose a hero's specialization when choosing a map, why not give the heroes an advanced specialization (or bonuses) at the start? - They are masters of their craft. A hero with a ranged skill will have a bow with a +1 bonus to ranged combat. A hero with engineering has a ballista from the start. The magician has a book with one powerful spell. A simple warrior hero can have a reinforced army, or a shield and sword (giving +1 to attack and defense) dressed on the hero. You can think of a lot by expanding the number of specializations and the pool of heroes.
Interesting idea. I like the idea of the human faction specializing in war machines. Ballistae for the might heroes, first aid tents for the magic heroes.
As for the other suggestion, I really like the idea of all heroes starting with equipment fitting their class. For balancing reasons, however, it would need to be all starting with just one artifact giving just +1 to one stat, which kinda limits it. But it could still work.
It's a really good idea, HootHoot. I'm intrigued.
1. Heroes of the enemy after clearing the dungeon, do not pick up the resources dropped from it. And they just go on as if nothing had happened.
2. When the castle reaches the 3rd level (for people), bonuses are not given. Previously given ...
is there a way to delete of an old save file for some reason when i complete a game it stays in the list of games so i have to finish one match in one sitting
I'll add in a button to remove a save game from the list.
I don't really get the problem, though? Oh, is it because you've opened so many maps it's pushed your current game off-screen? That sucks, m8, sorry! I don't even know of a manual fix apart from deleting your "opt.txt" file in the %appdata%local/HOMM_tiles_mapgen, which will clear all your saves.
There's space for five maps at least, and at least by the next update, it'll be the five last-played games. If everything works as I want it to, you should never have to worry about save slots. Sorry for the temporary inconvenience.
The problem is that the saves from the previous version (I have 0.8 beta and 0.7) do not differ in any way. And when I want to load the save from 0.7 -> the game crashes with an error. It is preferable to be able to delete or block old saves (when updating the game).
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I sent you a list of what I am missing in 0.8 beta.
it has put my game off too the side but i thought finishing the game would remove it is all when i saw no delete button so when i finished a game it didn't disappear then i started another thinking it was fine but then it just put it off screen. btw this is the only real problem i have with the game otherwise i really love it and cant wait to see what you add :)
In version 0.8 added delete saved. Enjoy the game. :)
My estimated fellow. It is beyond my ability to put in words the joy I had in my heart the momment I stumbled across this marvelous creation. I just love heroes of might and magic with a passion and that's why I talked about your game in Heroes Community.
That said, I'd like to know whether it would be possible to chat (thorugh personal message, discord, idk.) with you about the future of the game, ideas I have in my mind, etc.
I understand and respect the fact that you prefer to work solo, but I firmly believe I could contribute with ideas, since I played all of the HOMM games and play HotA to this day.
thanks for your attention.
hello Mr Gandalf. You're very welcome to get in contact with me on twitter or at thingonitsown@gmail.com - I'd love to hear you out
I have an important question, can undead and humans be in the same squad of the hero? - Of course they cannot, the problem is that the general morale of the detachment (people) will go down. Morality doesn't work for undead. If a squad had low morale in HoM3, then it would skip a turn. And we have nothing like this, although the hero may well hire two (incompatible in outlook) armies without any drawbacks.
2. If the hero's squad consists of creatures from one castle, then their morale must be +2. And for each creature of a different worldview, shoot -1 morale. The undead will always have 0. And in order to eliminate many debuffs, the player will have to pump leadership.
Morale -1 = -10% attack / life / speed
Morale -2 / -3 / -4 / -5 = -15 / 20/25/30%
yes and no. No. No.
I will draw on a whole lot of what works from HoMM, but not all. I want to allow for better integration of units between factions. Already in game, there are several means of achieving that. Such as infinite creature slots and adventure buildings giving cross-faction units. I do not want to punish a player for finding and using units of a different faction.
Moralewise, each point of morale gives a chance for units to enter "super morale mode" for five seconds where they move and attack twice as fast. It isn't communicated particularly clearly right now, but that's a work in progress thing. Currently negative morale does nothing. It probably should do something. But not the flat "lower stats" model you suggested.
Undead and 0 morale - well, that's a conundrum. Let's do a pro and cons list:
Pros
- "realistic"
- asymmetry between factions
Cons
- losing a strategic aspect
- esoteric
- a good artifact might suddenly become useless because of your faction
To me, it feels rather pointless, but if you have a good argument for why I should do it, I'd be interested to hear.
And maybe maybe mixing specifically undead and humans/elves should give a negative effect just for the sake of immersion, but it would have to be more interesting than a flat bonus. Like your units attacking eachother or something like that.
See if the races of living heroes have the Leadership skill, which increases the morale (morale) of the squad. That for the heroes of the undead, you can replace Leadership with Sorrow. Since undead have no morale, Sorrow will reduce morale by -2/4/6 (morale) of the enemy hero's units. This mechanic is implemented in HoM 5.
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I took the info from the wiki HoM fandom
+1 morale for troops of one faction
+1 morale for troops in the city
+1 morale for monster lvl 7 of one faction
+1 morale in battle against undead.
For every +1 morale -> 5% to the chance of "Super Morale". If the morale has been lowered (through Sorrow), this is already a penalty to the characteristics. For undead, "Super Morale" can be replaced with a half health respawn chance? At least that's how I see it.
Let's start with those (your) ideas that you can implement quickly. No time wasting days. Screen resolution, 64 bit version of the game Windows and Android. Scaling the interface ...
Since the developer is using GamerMaker Studio an license with which he can export to android will cost him $200. I don’t see the need for that as mobile support comes with additional problems such as having thumb where your mouse would be.
Do you know how to get this program with 100% discount? Piracy
I just remembered a funny bug when buying a (escaped) hero in a captured castle ... This hero does not belong to me, although I can still buy him an army. On the next turn, he attacks me with my own army. Now I will even make a video :)
hehe, yeah, I found this bug while playtesting with my brother in the weekend and we had a good laugh about it. Betrayal at the tavern - tale as old as time
this game really has potential, I just played around 5 minutes, but I have a problem with the text (played on my laptop). Hope you can finish the game, and more progress will come.
Right now the game is optimised for 1920x1080, but I want to make it work on more resolution. What was the text problem and what resolution were you playing on? :)
I understood what he meant. Very small and hard to see text. That's why I suggested adaptive-custom scaling of the text from the menu. From 100% (current countdown) to 250% for people with low vision. On my gaming site, every second complains about the UI
you have a gaming site with a post about Hero's Hour? Can I see?
https://small-games.info/?go=game&c=79&i=28845 I publish your game on it +/- daily in updates. On a site with a base of 3000-5000 people per day. Plus a couple more sites with a smaller audience, I also publish on them.
btw, I'm working on auto-combat right now as per your suggestion. I'd never have implemented it otherwise since I personally don't like it, but, y'know, the need of the many... :)
I played on 1366x768 resolution (default my laptop resolution). Almost all text is too small, it's hard to read my laptop (even it can be read)
like HootHootOwn said before. I had checked the settings but I can't found any clue for scaling text size or change the resolution of the game.
thanks! I have a plan for custom UI scaling for the next update. I'm sorta just collecting screen resolutions I will need to support
Any chance if I send you an early build by email you could test if it works out?
I think it is worthwhile (for now) to limit ourselves to the most common resolutions for 16: 9 monitors. Namely 1080p, 900p, 768p, 720p. If necessary, I can also help with testing.
great to hear! I'll see if I can't get a prototype out before the day is over. An email I can use to contact you? You can mail me at ThingOnItsOwn@gmail.com
Your game has a lot of fans (in Russia). And wishes for its improvement, too.
1. Auto-battle must be added. Can you do some kind of auto-calculation of the percentage of victory between the armies? I honestly admit, fighting every time (knowing that you will be 100% victorious) is really annoying.
2. Necromancy / Demonology only waste precious mana. + 10 skeletons will not bring victory, and using a powerful spell during a fight against a level 5-6 monster (for which there is no more mana left) can.
3. Here people have a problem, they ask to make customizable scaling of the interface (to hit the buttons with the mouse is completely unrealistic, literally). I'm fine at 12-14 inches, but how people play it at 24-27 "I can't even imagine!
4. Can transferring the game to 64bit solve performance problems? You make a game into a game maker, it seems like it can be compiled in 64bit, right.
5. How can you fire a hired hero? Or, for example, kill an unnecessary monster in the squad? - Why is there no such necessary button / icon / shortcut?
6. I attacked the enemy and realized that I would lose, as during the battle (I can exit the battle) and load autosave without ending the game process. thank
7. Why is it impossible to "steal" resources near the monsters? How it is implemented for example in the same heroes 3. It is very convenient to steal (part of the resources) from strong monsters and run away without entering a fight.
8. You can also add an analogue of a mill, a leprechaun, etc. weekly sources of random resources.
9. Small carts from the mines to the castle are annoying. Can they be disabled in the settings? Too childish, don't be offended
1. There is such a bug, when a computer attacks your castle, you escape from it, then the computer not only does not capture the castle, but it also ends its turn.
2. I would generally prohibit any escape from the city and introduce ransom instead of it, especially since the skill of diplomacy would be useful.
3. When the computer escapes from the battlefield (which happens quite often), all its escaped heroes crowd on the same square in front of the city and, as a result, get stuck there.
4. Another question is whether creatures from external dwellings can themselves be in the castle (already purchased, or available for purchase). It is simply inconvenient to take 5-6 dwellings with neutral to the nearest town and collect them in a heap. Thank.
5. The game often crashes when loading saves. Sometimes they are completely constipated. They break in 100% of cases if you close the frozen game through the task manager.
6. Problem with Necromancy and Demonology (summoning skeletons and demons for mana after the battle). The problem is that it costs mana to summon. Just one call of a pair of besiks or skeletons and a hero with his specialization is completely useless, plus he is left without mana for the duration of the battle. Summoner in general IMBA is another matter.
7. Can you somehow speed up the game itself 2-3 times? So that the heroes quickly ran around the map, and there was an auto battle to choose from and the computer's move did not have to wait a couple of minutes. And in general, a lot of good chips can be stolen from Heroes 3.
that's just what I love to see, some great notes about gameplay!
First one is a bug, there's a specific piece of code to make sure you can't flee from defending a siege - I'll figure out why it's broken.
I'll mull over number four. I'm not completely happy with the current system either.
Save games crashing, but only sometimes? I just redid the save/load system, so I shouldn't be surprised... I just hope I can figure out what that's about.
Balancing of necromancy/demonology - well, they give a great increase to your Hero's army size, so they do need to have disadvantages too. I'll consider your feedback though.
I'll add a movement speed option and I'll consider an autobattle option, sure. AI turns take the time to do, y'know, do AI, so no promises.
thank you for playing the game and all the feedback! It sounds like you enjoyed yourself :D
Screens look nice. Can you add gameplay video?
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_bcon:
local variable <unknown built-in variable>(-1610510003, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_obj_bcon_Draw_64
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_bcon_Draw_64 (line -1)
Thanks for your bug report!
You received this message at the end of combat, right? It's fixed in the version I'll be uploading soon. As far as I know, it doesn't repeat itself, so you may reload the save and do the battle again
exactly, thx for the info
v07 is online now - though it isn't save-file compatible unfortunately.
Starting Sound: 200%, I don't think you're printing this out correctly.
Made a video about your game:
Hey, thanks! I saw it back when you released it - and really sorry you had to suffer through the mouse desync issues. I hope they're better in the current version?
i’m not sure if you fixed this bug yet, but I keep meaning to say that if you have multiple displays, the mouse leaves the screen when screen edge scrolling. Can you scroll with keys? I’d scroll with WASD if it were possible to config :)
thanks for reminding me - both of this issue (which is very frustrating to me) - and of the obvious feature of WASD + arrow key scrolling :)
Version 0.63. New game.
On move 10, there was such a mistake.
aight, I'll fix that right away. Thanks for the quick notice!
EDIT: I've uploaded v0631, which should fix this.
Thanks for the game. It is a masterpiece!
There are several problems.
1 When the screen is full, the mouse must be placed above the keys to click on this button. And in windowed mode, the text is not readable.
2 After 30-40 moves, when I develop a good army, the error appears in the picture.
I'm sorry for the mistakes. I do not speak English.
And thanks again for the game. Looking forward to Steam release!
thanks for the compliment and the error report! This bug was also submitted by someone else and a fix is on its way in v063. Until then, you may not be able to get around it - sorry.
You can always save the game in a custom place by using the escape menu, then return to it when the game is fixed!
Pretty nice game. Like the simplicity of it. It was a bit confusing at first, but after a while I started to grasp it a bit better. It's very fun.
I did unfortunately run into a code error though. Is there a place where I can submit the error report or should I just submit it here?
Either here or send it as a mail to thingonitsown@gmail.com - either is fine :)
Glad to hear you like it!
I sent a detailed report to the email you specified.
Nice game! I noticed it first a few weeks back and I like how it progressed since then!
However it would be cool if I could play at least one game to the end withouth a crash :(
Getting this when AI attacks and defeats group of my units (no hero) that I left standing next to their spawner
hey thanks! I think I know where this bug comes from, so I'll be fixing that for the next update (new AI just added yesterday).
Sorry about the buggy nature of the game. It's part and parcel of doing constant updates - new bugs slip in all the time. Most of the old bugs are fixed at least. And one final day, you may be able to play a full game without a crash ;)
Amazing game man! Might and Magic + Pixel art is very nice.
Few feedback if you want to work on improving stuff:
* It could be nice to be able to choose between several level of AI. (I'm probably just bad but I got destroyed the 2 games I played :p)
* I think there is bug were I cannot buy a building that requires 4 resources and I have 4 of these resources (It even shows in red) but it works if I have 5.
Hey, thanks! I've never actually considered nerfing the AI - with the next update, I'll be improving it, so I might as well add an "easy" game option. Or at least make the "easy"-"normal"-"hard" actually affect the AI and not just the starting resources.
The second one, that's interesting. Did any of your heroes have the Planning skill? Just to try to figure out where the problem might lie. Thanks for the feedback and for playing! :D
yes actually, several heroes had it at différents levels
Love the game really. Just wish that there is tips especially for people who didnt get a hang of the game. Took me awhile to get the flow of the game and I had moment where I was pissed. Just asking for new-comers to not have the same fate as me
What would you need to know? I could make a small pop-up tutorial guiding you through the steps of the game. Say if there's anything beyond these that is necessary:
That might cover it. I hope it's as easy to implement as it is in my head. A flip-book you can click to dismiss and which will automatically update as you do as it asks. Hmmm... It's a good feature.
That should cover the necessary things for a new player to know but if you want to go an extra mile and want to have a chance to interact with the fanbase it would be a good idea to ask some players who have a sense of direction with a game to make like "advanced tips". Ive seen many games do this and would be a good idea to give new players strategies to help them
But hey that's my opinion, you do what you do mate. love the game! Frustrating? yes. Hard? Maayyybe. Interesting? Definitely
Cool game! Would really help to have resolution settings. On 1440p screen pixel scaling seems off and text is very hard to read.
It's on my todo list, though it is very difficult for me to work with on my current setup, since I don't have any screens to test on. Could you take a screenshot and share it here? Thanks for playing :D
Any regular or small text with outline is hard to read, but those resource requirements make you squint :)
Here's Imgur link if Itch will downscale the original image: https://imgur.com/a/Ue4Hvza
Alright, there's two easy fixes for me to do (apart from doing a whole UI rewrite which is eeeh not my favourite idea right now). One is to make UI scale to no more than 100% - which wouldn't make the text larger, but would make it, y'know, pixel-perfect. The other is to turn anti-aliasing on. Right now, it's on if your resolution is less than 1080p - but I could turn it on for all resolutions but 1080p.
Writing this out, the best solution is probably to do both and make an option in the options menu to toggle between them.
An alternative (for me at least) would be to give a windowed option, so you can run unscaled 1080p window on higher res desktops.
Hi! This is Darmani here, the creator of Project Ironfist ( www.ironfi.st ). I really enjoyed my playthrough today. Thank you for helping to keep the spirit of HoMM alive.
I've posted about this game on CelestialHeavens: https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/16/17275
Hey, thanks for playing! Also for the forum post - if nothing else, there is some valuable feedback there.
I really need to get to hunt down that screen resolution error sometime soon. I wonder how many people have tried to play and are turned away by it. Mind sharing with me your screen resolution?
It says 3584 x 2240. (This is a Windows VM running on a Mac Retina.) Don't know how that would be affected by going into fullscreen mode.
I have more feedback where that came from (especially since, as you may guess, I've spent a large amount of time thinking about game design for HoMM). Happy to chat more privately.
that's great! Could you contact me on twitter (@artprocedural) or on mail? (thingonitsown@gmail.com). I have a new build with some resolution fixes and I'd love it if you could stresstest it.
Also the whole game design part! I have a specific dilemma I'd like to ask you about.
My cursor doesn't point where it says it does when I use my monitor, there's black space above and below the game, and the cursor is higher than it should be the further up it goes and lower vice versa. There are no resolution or fullscreen/windowed options which might have fixed it.
a while ago, I did an update to fix some of these issues, but I'm aware there are still issues with some aspects. If you could write me your screen resolution, I'll use it to test and figure out what the problem might be.
Windowed mode is a good idea too, I'll check out if that helps. Thanks!
reaallyy cool game reminds me so much of the good old Heroes V! Graphics are amazing! But i encountered one problem i played 1v1 map builded a powerful army and wanted to pay a visit to my enemy, but at the only passage i killed the enemy and then i coudnt go throuth.. it said no path found... Hope u can fix this (:
odd! If you send me your save file (save from menu when you press esc in game), I'll take a look at that. bhauerm@gmail.com. Might get a fix out early this evening
I love playing this, and insane respect to you for how quickly you've been fixing everyone's bugs. This is something I dream of making, good job!!
Great game! Love the look and feel, although I get a crash here and then. (Gaming on Linux)
Thank you, I'm always glad to get bug reports.
I imagine this bug happened during an AI turn? In that case, it's been fixed in the next version. Otherwise, please specify so I can make the game even better.
Yes it happened during an AI turn. Cant't wait to get the fixed version :) this happens in every game I start and it is kinda frustrating.
You did a fantastic job in capturing the fun in Heroes. :)
Got another error unfortunately =/
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_con:
Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [-8] out of range [8] - -1.btx(101668,-8)
at gml_Script_get_path
############################################################################################
gml_Script_get_path (line -1)
gml_Script_do_AIturn
gml_Object_obj_con_Draw_64
Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Does it happen every time you end your turn?
the bandaid fix was simple enough, though I still don't know the cause for the bug. If you wouldn't mind sending me your save file, I'd be very happy.
It's to do with pathfinding breaking, but the script is usually 100% stable, so I'm wondering if there's something fucky to do with map generation that causes it.
sure, where would one find the save file?
Hi !
Your game is amazingly addictive !
Quick bug report:
I encountered a weird bug at level 19 : I can't close the Leveling up window :
I tried clicking End turn, it does end the turn, but the Leveling window is still there, same with if I close the game and reload.
Aside from that, the game is great! The never ending AI turn bug that occurred randomly in 0.33 seems to be gone :D
This bug is caused by all your hero skills slots being filled and the game wanting you to pick something to finish leveling up. If you want to continue playing, here's a fix:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15fYMkNyIgYvuhInkZlGj6DX73tMXjHDV/view?usp=shari...
Thank you for playing! It's always fun to see people's play sessions! Go and beat that AI!
-TOIO
Edit: Fixed in current release
Thank you so much ! It's working perfectly ! I'm so glad I have not lost my save :D
great start, it would be nice if you can decrease the time for AI turns
hey thanks! I actually do have something in mind for severely speeding up the AI - I'll add it to my to-do list
Problem with AI armies - they keep standing next to their dwellings. As they spawn every week - when I reach them I need to fight multiple armies on one square. This is my wild guess. It feels like attacking an army which does not disappear.
BTW do you have some public repository of bugs / TODOs?
Last but not least - fun game! Keep up the good work.
huh, interesting. I remember writing a specific piece of code for enemy dwelling armies. I should check it over, see if I can fix that.
And since you asked, I just went and made a small bug fix / bug report document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s4ZppxIFGWQdN50BVqQJ1h9em9fo8zAXBxMZBP-BDP8/...
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it! The update I'm working on now is going to make the game even better.
I sometimes get errors like:
oh there you are! You posted earlier too, and then your comment disappeared! Well, if this is the same bug, I've found the bug and the fix will be in the update coming out in ~1 hour.
Thanks by the way :D
EDIT: Bug's been fixed in v031
BTW the game runs great on Linux through Wine. The itch client (yes that thing exists) sets it up flawlessly.
oh, really good to know! Should I set the file to say playable on Linux?
That’s you call. BTW where are the save games and what file name do they have.
I think i got an reproducible crash (again some indexing out of an array) and i would like test if i can isolate the problem and make it really easy to reproduce. So you can look into it.
While the game still tends to crash, you might want to think about supporting multiple savefiles and save into a different save file each round. You could then load the file the biggest round number or make an ingame dialog which file to choose. While this might allow save scumming it would help with debugging.
The save files are in the /AppData/Local/Hero's Hour folder names save1.txt. I do want multiple save files, like three rotating ones, but there's a bit of UI work there, so it's a bit in the future, maybe v05 more likely than v04. You can send it to me, perhaps? bhauerm@gmail.com
I don't worry about save scumming so the more options the better if you ask me :D
Please don’t mark as playable on Linux without a Linux build. All Windows builds can potentially run through Wine but that doesn’t mean they’re supported by you or the Wine devs.
Alright, sure. I had another person suggest I did.
Hey this is pretty awesome!
I played it for quite a while but then the game crashed haha. I suppose I had too large of a stack army - as each battle I had with more units, I felt a gradual "slowness/lag" until a game error crashed the game.
I think you should reduce the time it takes for hover-over tooltips to show. I found myself constantly wanting the tooltip hover to show up faster so I can read what the thing does. And on that note, there's still some things that I had trouble understanding that you could make clearer. For example, I didn't know how mana regened at all. Perhaps add more tooltips / tutorial / gameplay mechanic page.
I only played 1 faction nor did I fight the other faction AI but overall, it's very polished from what I've experienced! Honestly, I can see this as a release with a price tag on it. Just do some more polishing and get some audio into it and package it up! :)
thanks for the feedback! You're very right about those points. I have some ideas of what to do to fix it, more tooltips, quicker (instant if you recently looked at one), and some battle optimizations.
If you remember anything about what specifically happened when the game crashed, do let me know. Battles should be 100% stable so there must be something I can do
If I remember correctly, I think I read that the crash error said something was out of bounds. I had a big death stack army and during the battle, I think I saw some units phasing out of the field onto the edges.
interesting, I'll have a look at that
Ok) I change resolution to hit a buttons. But still can't move the hero from start position. He ignores mouse and keyboard)
Okay - I'll try to do some temporary fix for other resolutions for the next release (maybe later today). It might not look perfect, but at least it will be playable. Could you tell me what resolution you use?
I usually use a custom resolution of 1600x900 but in order to hit the buttons in this game I switch to 1920x1080
I wonder why you couldnt move your heroes, then. Did you try a) ending your turn (this updates pathfinding) and b) sorry if this sounds silly but I guess I didn't explain you move using right mouse button click
lol RMB work) Thank for support! Could you tell what gameengine you use?
I'm using Game Maker Studio 2 - really good for quick prototypes and 2D games
looks like a good game but... there needs to be a way to change the resolution :/ otherwise I can't play unfortunately
Duly noted! I will probably implement and test UI scaling somewhere down the road, though probably not in the next week or two. Could you tell me your resolution?
my resolution is 1280 x 1024 (that's what it says on my screen's resolution.. it's the "recomended")
I just uploaded v.022 which should fix the resolution bugs. The UI might look a bit squished, but the rest of the game should look alright - and, importantly, you can actually press buttons now :D
niiice (Now i can have undeads? XD!!)
it needs a small adjustment (the smaller buttons like the "hire" and "max" can't be clicked) I tried clicking them but couldn't (a smaller resolution doesn't work)