Might is Right, the game

The game is no longer available on itch.io. Does anyone know if it moved somewhere else?

1 Like

Hey @Wyndstaurm, I’m preparing for a Steam release, since there’s been no more feedback for the past week or so - I decided to pull the game from free access. I’ll post an update once the game goes on Steam. Sorry for the confusion :slight_smile:

I updated the main post yesterday when I did that, I’ll move the update note up, so it’s more clearly visible.

On Steam ? I didn’t know webGL games could go on Steam. Or are you preparing it for native environment with React native or something ?

2 Likes

there’s :atom_symbol: electron, basically packaging a browser :earth_asia: into an executable :slight_smile:

4 Likes

Thats awesome! Nice to see you expanding your game’s horizon :smiley:
I’ve fiddled around with Electron a little in the past. How is it performance-wise when it comes to Three.js and 3D rendering overall? Are there any noticable changes? I’ve heard it’s apps are pretty heavy memory-wise :confused:
Sorry, im just really curious :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

Hey, I haven’t done any profiling with electron, but my experience was identical to normal Chrome in terms of performance. So far, I am yet to see any issues yet when playing the game on electron.

1 Like

Makes sense. Looking forward to the Steam version.

1 Like

The game is back up, it’s a demo version though, so there’s only about 40 minutes worth of content! Feedback is welcome, as always :slight_smile:

2 Likes
  • Added texture compression to the game, there used to be micro-stutter in the beginning, due to image decoding when material is first rendered. With compressed textures this just goes away. A bit of a pain to doctor gltf by hand and do image conversion to DDS. It can be automated though. Let me know if you see any issues with textures or performance.
  • re-worked the level a bit to make start of the game a bit more balanced. Before it was a bit too hardcore :slight_smile:
  • launched kickstarter for the game, it’s surprisingly a lot of effort to create a campaign.
4 Likes

This project is impressive in many ways.
Make sure you do user testing.

By that I mean finding some joe shmoe who is a typical user of the game, who doesn’t have any experience with using it. Then be with him when he starts playing it and then you can see how he uses or misuses it and it can give you hints on what to modify etc.

1 Like

Hey @hermann,

Thanks for your suggestion. User testing is super valuable, I think that every time I did this - I learned something.

I’ve been doing user testing, but the scope for this kind of work is quite large and you need “fresh” people all the time. Sadly - I have ran out of friends and family whom I can abuse for such a purpose! :cry:

I’ve used a few different indie game platforms for gathering feedback, but it’s not the same - you don’t get to see the process of a person playing the game.

For me, I’ve had the most difficulty getting any kind of feedback. For example, my game has been played about 10,000 times with an average of about 20 minutes per session, that’s 138 full days, or 416 eight-hour work days. That’s not huge, but it’s not small either. With that - only about 10 people game be some kind of feedback on those platforms. People here on three.js have been immensely helpful in comparison! I believe there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of “how to gather feedback” - and I don’t even know where to start :smiley:

If anyone has some ideas - I’d love to know what you think :thinking:

5 Likes

Feedback gathering is definitely a huge issue which a struggle with as well… especially in the early times of a game… When your thing is still just a test that looks like crap, very few “laymen” go past the bugs and the horrible look to judge the mechanics and concept that you want them to test.

Personally even in my family it’s very hard, most of them can only say “it doesn’t feel like a real game”, about prototypes that need to be tested at early stage.

As a result we have to waste time polishing early to be able to get feedback…

Maybe the good way would be to surround ourselves with creative people by working in a shared space like a fablab or collaborative art studio, where meeting this kind of people is easy.

Something like this ? Unfortunately it does not exist everywhere…

3 Likes

About feedback. I was once making a website, and i needed feedback on what could be improved. So I just went to some cafe and asked intelligent looking people for feedback. It worked, And plus, before long i asked a man who turned out to be a professional website tester. He completely butchered my website and my ego was like… eh. somewhere. But it was great success as we had a very productive discussion and i was off in my development, no doubt. Because of that discussion i am so much further along in website development today.

Anyways, I can just give you my feedback on your game.

First screen. I really dont get that “exit to system” option.
It also doesn’t do anything.
That leaves just one option. play. Which means the original screen is pointless. Just skip it.

In the second screen im kinda lost. It immediately goes “here you can choose a hero…”
I dont think that is the first the the user should experience.
The first thing should be… like… whats going on. Why am I here?
What is the purpose with this game.

I don’t believe the “here you can choose a hero” message, should appear at all.
The user interface should be so intuitive that it doesn’t need an explanation.
It is pretty much evident as is. You could make the player image icon a bit more button-y.
It already does change into a pointer when the mouse goes over it. which is good.

I don’t really think its a good user experience (uxp), to have to hold down the mouse button and then select one of those images.
I have to read the text in all kinds of angles. which adds complexity without reason.
Its also hard to read the text because its directly above other text in some cases. So its sideways over another text.
If youre gonna keep it like this, add a dark background under the text to make it easier to read.

Those are not that many characters. I think it would be better to show all the characters in a single screen, and then once the user chooses, could be displayed in more detail infront. So as the user clicks a displayed character, more info about it appears and it becomes selected.

im reading the “strategic map” text.
it reminds me of a tenet.
Show, Don’t tell. I think this whole text window should be dissolved and replaced with some visual cues upon game start. and preferrably not something that demands attention, but instead makes the game more intuitive.

im in a fight.
its really confusing.
in order to attack.
i have to just straight up click the enemy, and drag from it to the sword.
i would have thought it would be more intuitive, to drag from the player that is attacking.

the four buttons that are in each corner. i think they should be all in the same menu or something like that. right next to one another.

And finally,
I find the graphics very impressive. They remind of Powermonger and Age of Empires.
I kinda want to be able to click anywhere to have the guy try to go there. On the mountains and stuff.
There’s definitely a lot of potential here.

3 Likes

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate the directness :slight_smile:

  1. The “exit to system” part is an awkward result of adding steam support. I should have a flag to toggle that on and off probably. Start screen does have 1 more function that is apparent when you return to the game - option to continue previous game. But I get your point, and it’s a valid approach too.

  2. The choosing of a hero part - that’s difficult. UI in general is not easy, at least not for me. I want to keep as little information on-screen as possible, so that the user is not overwhelmed, you can just press “ok, sure”, but if you want to understand what’s going on - you need some information, showing just portraits of units would be a little too low on info, showing everything would be too much. I opted for the menu with a tutorial message explaining how it works. I guess I’ll keep working on that.

  3. The “Show, don’t tell” - yeah, that’s totally true. Writing a scripting system to do said showing is a pain though. I am moving in that direction, by adding dialogue system, so that NPCs can provide some useful context without it being too much like exposition. With respect to visual cues - I do use those, for UI, but for persistent stuff, like when you get a new item in your inventory, or showing which items you have looked at or not, or highlighting “end-turn” when you’ve used up action points etc. There’s also cursor cues and glow-outline. But that’s not really “teaching” the player, so, yeah, the teaching can be done a lot better. Thanks for the tips.

  4. There are many control schemes, I think a lot of people who have played turn-based strategies will find this control scheme relatively familiar. Again, communicating how to use them can be done better, I’ll see what I can come up with.

The reason that buttons are in different corners is mostly to avoid accidental presses. It can be really frustrating to “accidentally” run away from combat, only to be killed in the back, or to press “wait” instead of “defend”. I can probably add duplicate controls onto the radial menu though, there’s less risk there, as controls are directional.

I appreciate you taking time to check out the game and provide comments and suggestions!

1 Like

Re the “exit to system” button - it took at least three minutes for the site to load, then when I clicked the button it immediately kills the page. That’s kind of frustrating. I’m not sure if you’ll have a web only version, but if that happened to me on another website it’s unlikely I’d bother waiting another three minutes for it to reload.

Otherwise, the start screen with a “play” button seems both useful and standard so I would keep it.

2 Likes

Thats awesome! Im looking forward to introduction of plot and some sidequests :smiley:
The currect goal is pretty unexciting and the game relies mostly on its battle mechanism to keep you interested. I think this and less than exciting animations is what’s holding it back the most atm.

Story would be a huge addition! :partying_face:

1 Like

Check out the character picking in Mortal Kombat 1. That was a very successfull game. could do something like that with more info next to the character or something.

Or character selection in Diablo 2.

1 Like

Hey @looeee, did that happen to you? That’s pretty bad, I’ll remove it in the next update.

The entire game is about 250MB, so it should load pretty quickly, though that depends on your internet speed and location. I don’t have any CDN set up, and the server is in Europe.

Ha, yes, I’ve been trying to find someone to help me with that for a while. But seems that current animations are hard to improve for various technical reasons because of how they were created. I’ve added some IK and particle effects to cover up the base animation quality, but it’s only doing so much :slight_smile:

Touché, those are pretty great. Maybe one day :slight_smile:

The game is now available on Steam in early access

Took a long time, thanks again to everyone for feedback and suggestions!

8 Likes

Updated Demo version, a ton of changes, here are some of the more interesting ones:

  • German localization
  • French localization
  • Fine-tuning to character balance
  • Introduction of permanent stat increase items
  • Animated experience bars
  • AI improvements
  • Performance improvements
  • UI update, better support for high-resolution displays
  • A huge number of bugfixes and stability improvements
2 Likes