Andrew’s Noble Armada Developer Diary

Live FSNA Playtest

It’s always scary to debut your game to new eyes. We want the feedback and criticism, yet are afraid of it at the same time. What if there really is a bug?

Time to turn on the anti-negativity shields, don the rose-colored spectacles, and rush into the fray … or at least turn the game over to testers. On Nov. 14, the Georgia Game Developers Association hosted a playtest of games made by its members. Attendees got to try out Brush Up, Elemensional Rift, Super Seducer … and Fading Suns: Noble Armada.

You can check out our demo of the game here: https://youtu.be/hVxR6eRvYb4

We got some great feedback. While we feel our UI is intuitive, we know it is not the industry standard. In most RTS games, you select a unit, select a space on the board, and your unit moves there. Select an enemy unit, and yours attacks it.

In FSNA, however, our movement system precludes this. The delicate dance of thrust and counter thrust is integral to the miniatures game, and we have recreated it here. That means players have to carefully control their facing and momentum. Simply selecting and moving would be easier, but lose what we feel is fun about the game.

Every player first tried the traditional RTS movement/attack interface. Testing showed us that we need a good tutorial to explain how it works in FSNA, but also that players liked ours once they understood it. Now we need to determine if that learning curve is too steep …

Bill’s Fading Suns Designer Diary

Good news for Fading Suns fans: Bill Bridges has the first in a monthly series of design diaries about the new edition of Fading Suns now up at the Ulisses NA site. Check it out: http://www.ulisses-us.com/fading-suns-designer-diary-november-2017/

There’s also a link there letting you download a free PDF of the latest Town Criers Guild report, with news, gossip, and agora notices from across the Known Worlds in the year 5017. Don’t be left behind — go now!

 

Livestreaming Your Way to a Better Game

Andrew’s article about livestreaming games during development is now live on Gamasutra!

Here’s an excerpt:

For years we developers had it drummed into our heads to never allow public scrutiny of a game until it was ready for prime time. The (warranted) fear is that negative previews can haunt a game long after it launches, no matter how good it becomes.

Livestreaming has a similar dictum – if you want to build an audience, play the best games, not buggy piles of cow flop. Most game livestreamers are fans of the products we develop. They want to livestream because they enjoy playing these games and want to share the fun with their friends. Why would anyone want to livestream an unfinished game, much less one that might be horribly broken?

We should want this thankless role. By we, I mean the ones making the game – the developers and testers who have to hunt down all those wonderful bugs about which people like to make snarky YouTube videos. After fans began livestreaming their games, developers followed suit, finding this an excellent way to build a community and spread the word. We also began finding other advantages to livestreaming.

One of the newest, and still least recognized, plusses to livestreaming is the role it can have in quality assurance. For those of you who don’t know, quality assurance is the fancy term for hunting down and squashing software bugs. Most developers and playtesters work in quiet environments, focusing on gameplay, creating hypotheses of what should and shouldn’t work, testing these hypotheses, and screaming in frustration when the game refuses to cooperate. Okay, we only rarely scream then. More often, we scramble to pick up pad and pen, jot down some notes, and begin detailing the bugs in our spiffy bug database.

Wait — there’s more! Read the full article.

Noble Armada Needs Your Vote!

Fading Suns: Noble Armada, HDI’s digital version of its Noble Armada starship combat game, is now looking to get Greenlit on Steam, and we need your vote! 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=220478303

This real-time strategy game allows you to command ships for one of the five royal houses of the Fading Suns as you battle barbarians, heretics and, worst of all, other nobles! Recreate classic battles, recover lost worlds and reunite humanity. Take part in unique campaigns, set your own battles in skirmish mode, and experience the Fading Suns in a whole new way. Vote for it now, and get ready to experience it this Fall!