Eclipse Tactics - Multiplayer Online Strategy - Alpha Test Invitation

[aurora]

Dear friends/gamers,

We would like to invite you to join the alpha test of our fully Java based online strategy game: Eclipse Tactics.

username: alphaTester
password: mustaine17

http://188.121.60.99:8080/GameWeb/launchEclipse.jsp

You are always welcome! Your comments and feedback are vital to us!



Murat Artim

[namrog84]

Without more information and perhaps at least 1 screenshot.  Especially with a straight server IP and password.  Its too much effort and uneasy unknowns for too many people to try it out. Especially since this is your first post.

The whole thing makes me a little uneasy. Give us more information please.  Then I will gladly try it out, give feedback and spread the word.

edit:
wow that looks amazing!
Thank you for more information! I am sure many more people will check it out now!

[aurora]

Hi,

You are right, sorry for the ambiguous content and no images. Eclipse Tactics is a fully java based, multiplayer, turn-based strategy game in a sci-fi theme. You can create your own special team from a large number of fully customizable units. There are currently 3 factions and under each faction 3 alien races, making up 50 different units in total. The concept is: Deploy your base and units, and finally destroy your opponent.

We have been working on this project for some time, and finally came to a level where we started the alpha test last week. Though we need players to test our game, so that we can get some feedback and of course clear out bugs (which exist in various parts of the software).

Here is a screenshot from the game:



cheers!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[teletubo]

I could not actually play the game, since when I was just about to start, apparentely the connection was lost and the game exited . Maybe just return to title screen instead of closing application ??

My feedback will be a bit harsh, but I'm doing it because I think you guys achieved a nice game project so far, so take this as constructive criticism please, not the opposite .

I joined a game as observer, and from what I could observe :
The graphics look very good . The pixel art is soberb, as well as the units portraits . Some animations look kinda weird though (for example the walking animation of the mamooth like unit) . All in all the graphics look really nice .

But in my opinion the UI looks very bad . It definetely does not fit the game, and does not make justice to the rest of the graphics . From the font choice, to the buttons (like the thumbs up sign , to the shopping cart), it just looks ... bad . Like a 90s windows game which used default windows fonts .

The registration page is not tester-friendly at all . You're asking way too much information from us, the guys who are helping you testing . Don't forget, at this point we are doing you a favor of testing your game, and you should make it easy . I've inserted a random email address, and when the message saying a verification email was sent, I was just about to quit testing, but tried my login without the password, which fortunately worked .
And players, in general,  do not like to give lots of personal information before seeing exactly what they're registering for . 99% of them .

I know writing in-game tutorials sucks . But don't expect people to read a 3 page manual with tiny letters to learn how to play the game . Maybe this is just temporary while you don't write a tutorial campaign, but I tell you, nobody will read the manual .

I know you must have put a lot of effort to reach this point, but believe me, final players don't care how much effort you've put into it . If there's a little reason for them to bitch about your game, oh yes, they will . So don't give them reason to complain.

And forget not, polish polish polish . That's what makes your game looks like a game, not an application .

Good luck, and good job so far. Keep it up !

[Cero]

I joined a game as observer, and from what I could observe :

Yea that was me playing one of the developers.

The registration page is not tester-friendly at all . You're asking way too much information from us, the guys who are helping you testing . Don't forget, at this point we are doing you a favor of testing your game, and you should make it easy . I've inserted a random email address, and when the message saying a verification email was sent, I was just about to quit testing, but tried my login without the password, which fortunately worked .
And players, in general,  do not like to give lots of personal information before seeing exactly what they're registering for . 99% of them .

I did put in a fake birthdate =P
Yeah why even ask that ?

I know writing in-game tutorials sucks . But don't expect people to read a 3 page manual with tiny letters to learn how to play the game . Maybe this is just temporary while you don't write a tutorial campaign, but I tell you, nobody will read the manual .

We went over that, I didn't read it either. I suggested a video tutorial to avoid coding a real one. Obviously a real tutorial is much nicer.


Also network code seemed real stable - not sure if kyronet is just THAT good (which I would assume), but yeah it worked fine for me.

[ra4king]

Wow I agree with everything Teletubo said. The UI looks really familiar to Swing but it doesn't fit in well. The graphics are superb and the animations are excellent. For a Java2D app, this game is quite responsive and non-Java2D-ish

Amazing job with what you guys got so far!

[aurora]

Thanks a lot for all the feedback. We are planning to change the interface from scratch, indeed. We concentrated on the graphics, game logic, networking, server-side and all other stuff for the alpha test. But we will for sure dig into UI as well to make it look like a real game.

For this test, I just wanted to get rid of all those bugs in game logic and network code before I proceed to interface.. Due to the fact that we have around 50 units with various skills on each (with skill trees and all..), we couldn't really test them in real game playing.

Yeah, and the registration is not really something convenient at the moment, I know.. I will remove that as well.

But again, thanx for all comments. We'll keep on upgrading!!!

[Eli Delventhal]

Well, I read the tutorial, and I still couldn't really tell what was going on.

I think the biggest issue for me was that I'm used to Warcraft/Starcraft-style controls, and yours are completely different. So what I was expecting to work wouldn't. Also it would be good to start centered on your pylon so you don't need to go find it, and I just couldn't figure out at all why I couldn't shoot a missile / hack / whatever at a given time. There really just needs to be more transparency for the user. I almost always wasted my turn - some kind of undo for movement like in Advance Wars might be good, especially because I often moved without meaning to.

You guys have got a whole lot done and what you have is very impressive - just keep tweaking.

[fruitmaze]

I just played your game. I really liked it! The graphics is awesome and it looks professional. Though a few things that you might consider.

-To select buildings and units in the top menu was a bit confusing since it didn't highlighted the selected icon that much. I wasn't sure if I had selected it or not.
-At some points when there were many units close together it got a bit messy and was hard to see where the units were standing.
-Ther music was good, but a bit loud when I first started the level.
-Animations were nice, but perhaps clearer animations when shooting at an enemy, like a bit brighter and bigger laser animations?

Great job so far!