Conquest Board – Divide and Conquer

[SephiRok]

Before the juice, I would just like to say that our server logs showed ~30 minutes of proper multiplayer, the rest was singleplayer often even without an AI. Sad.

Conquest scored best in: Audio

And scored worst in: Technical

Totally unexpected as the music and sound effects were from third parties, and while good, not considered our strongest point. Technical aspects on the other hand are what we are most proud of. On second thought, the recently added unit voices are ours truly. :)

I quite enjoyed this game, but it needs some work.

The concept of simultaneous strategy is an intriguing one, but the rules need to be better laid out to make the experience more meaningful.

I also found some minor bugs with the game as I played.

We're aware of that and pop-up tips are coming. Sadly we didn't have enough time to add them before the competition. Wouldn't mind knowing what minor bugs he was refering to.

I had fun with this game. I think it needs a lot more polish, though.

It wasn't obvious that to deploy troops, you had to drag from the operations menu onto the grid. Also there was no indication that a drag had been activated - I couldn't tell if I was dragging anything. Something sticking to the cursor would have been great. Same goes for directing units - I couldn't tell which one I'd selected when I was draggin, or even if I'd selected a unit at all.

This was an ATI problem we've already fixed. Sadly it was after most already tested the game.

Some kind of multiple selection wouldn't go amiss.

Having played it for longer he would have seen it is totally unnecessary, as 85% of the time you command single units, but fair enough.

I also felt there wasn't nearly enough animation going on. I appreciate the game is not a real time strategy game, but when the turns finished, it was really hard to tell what had happened, visually. I would have liked at least a visual indicator that the turn had ended, in the middle of the screen, big flashing lights or something. It wasn't clear which units had moved and/or died.

This is the main thing we're working on now.

Strategically the game is plenty deep enough, in fact the depth available is concealed by how simple the rules are. The design is very elegant. I wouldn't make any changes to it, it works, leave it as it is.

<3

The User Interface could use a few improvements - as I said the dragging needs more feedback, and the fact you can hide the Operations window is strange seeing as that really is an important part of the game.

ATI problem. And noted.

I didn't understand the need for the curse word in the tutorial (although the writing was nevertheless quite funny), and I think it would be good to have a proper tutorial in there for people who want it - others can skip it.

I blame void. Pop-up tips should cover the tutorial part.

Technically the game was great - it stood up really well to task switching (the best I've ever seen I think) and there were no bugs that I could find. The graphics in the operations window were missing so maybe this led to the lack of feedback in the mouse dragging.

ATI GRR ATI.

The visual design is fairly dull - units lack interesting features, although they are perfectly distinct from each other visually. The terrain is lifeless and drab. These could definitely be improved, although they are completely competently made and functional as they are.

I would be really interested to know how he would make the terrain less "dull", since we think it looks pretty great now.

As other judges have noted, Conquest requires other players to fully experience it, and I was unable to arrange a multiplayer game.

I've offered a couple of scores based upon what I could see, and what I've managed to find online. I leave it to the panel to decide if these should be considered.

One expects more for $95.

Both, the actual graphics and the interface are solid, but neither of them feels particularly elegant or charming. They work, but surely offer room for improvements.

Is it possible to send all troops from one field to another without having to move every single unit via drag & drop? I didn't find an intuitive way to do that. However, it's what you're doing most of the time - so it gets tedious. Either there's an option, but it's hidden and/or not overly intuitive - or there's none.

It would also help if there were some basic animations for unit movement. It would help you better understand the battlefield and what's going there. Doesn't necessarily have to be about animating the units themselves - at least some basic 'unit moves to the next field' approach would improve the perceptions rather than having enemy units simply pop up. Or there being explosions somewhere. Seeing the missile come down would be a nice touch.

I also don't see much tactical depth yet. It's hard to anticipate enemy moves, and deploying soldiers to some piece of wood seems like a waste since you don't have too many units, and the enemy can simply steamroll through some other way. So, Conquest is mostly about simply throwing your units onto one square to have a solid squad to conquer other cities. One simply moves without taking the terrain into consideration.

This is a pretty nice laugh. He clearly didn't play a single match against a human opponent, probably not even against an AI.
1. You don't move more than one or two units into the same direction normally.
2. Explosions are there.
3. Hahaha. I'd like to see him play against me and have all his units in one square.

This was a hard one to score since I was never able to play against anyone. I did how ever play several games and get the understanding of the elements and strategy. I like rts's and I can see they streamlined this to the core elements. I think it would be alot of fun and really reminded me of Risk for the most part. The game feels well crafted and I like the random maps and over look and feel of the game. I just wish there was a single player or a computer player i could take on.

There is a computer player goddamnit, you can play against up to 3 (now 5) in different teams. It was even written in the judges' instructions.

You can clearly see only one judge played the game properly and saw for what it stands (though 30 mins is still little). Looking back we feared this might happen, but there's not a lot we can do about it without the game released and an active community. It was also partially our fault for not making certain things more obvious, such as pointing out exactly how to add an AI opponent, but we expected more competence.

All of the feedback received expect the graphics opinions we were already aware of and had already plans to improve or change, including redesigning the lobby (and AI adding). Clearly we needed more time. Next year will be different. Treating judges as people who never touched PCs now.

P.S. You can find the nominees here: http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html. Congratulations are in order. Student's competition finalists will be announced on the 18th.

[void]

I didn't understand the need for the curse word in the tutorial (although the writing was nevertheless quite funny), and I think it would be good to have a proper tutorial in there for people who want it - others can skip it.

I blame void. Pop-up tips should cover the tutorial part.

A proper military instructor that doesn't curse? No way.

[Vandrovec]

One expects more for $95.

The IGF basically sucks that way. Concerning feedback and judge debate, Auntie Piexelantie, one of the more critically inclined judges, said plenty here and sparked an interesting debate on the festival. Anyway, for useful gamedev feedback, I heartily recommend the TIGSource forums. You get way better feedback from people who actually give a crap, which, with the IGF, very much depends on their random system not assigning you jerks.

Congrats on the honorable mention you won anyway, though, I hope it sends some bussiness attention your way. ;)

[SephiRok]

Thanks.

I've read the TIG IGF 2010 nominations thread where that post was also mentioned and I remember agreeing with most of it. Our issue, which I also described in that thread (1, 2), was not really touched directly in any of the posts I've read though. For $95 you at least expect your game to be _played_. Having said that, judge 2 was really nice, and even messaged me after seeing this thread with some more comments.

Concerning TIGSource forums -- we've never gotten much feedback there. Perhaps because the game was not active enough to easily find an opponent at the time, but I always felt they're more a crowd for platformers and the like.