Hi Brendon,
I am the new owner of shinny copy of Flotilla (XBL Indie Version).
First off, kudos for making an AMAZING game! I saw your title on sale on the Xbox Live holiday sale for a great price and decided to give it a try—wow, am I ever glad I did! My son (7 years old) and I played for 3 hours straight the other night and the first thing he asked this morning is if we could play some more tonight. It is quite a compliment when a turn based strategy game can capture the imagination of children and adults alike.
I personally liked it so much that I created a new thread heartily recommending it on a forum I frequent (
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=61237). I don’t recommend many games, and often I am pretty critical, but I don’t have much negative to say about Flotilla. The Tutorial / User Interface (UI) could use some work. E.g. Explaining how to find the top/bottom of ships and the different color scheme for these armored/unarmored areas; improvements to player movement; pre-game info on ship characteristics; lack of online MP; no 4 way local (hot seat?); no save option for SP (?); etc. But that is all nit picking. The game is brilliant!!
And that is just the MP. I tried some of the SP and at first I didn’t “get it” but soon discovered it was this branching “make your own story-esque” like story with hilarious story boards. I thought the game was a great deal just for the skirmish mode/MP, but the thoughtfully unique campaign with special weapon slots, trading, etc was a pleasant surprise, especially for an indie game. There is a lot to praise about Flotilla, some things not so obvious. E.g. The AI. I am sure after time I will see weaknesses in it, but as of right now it never even crossed my mind to complain. Ditto ship balance. Which is an indication you did a great job with the AI. There are so many things NOT to complain about which demonstrates how great your design is and how well you executed it.
All those past devs who tried to make a good “Ender’s Game” or “Star Trek” game can really learn something here. Your game works on pretty mundane hardware and a basic development environment (XNA) which just goes to show that throwing people, money, time, and hardware at a genre isn’t the solution. No amount of these is a substitute for a good concept, great ideas for implementing the concept, and deliberate execution. Did I mention you slathered the game in fun sauce?
Sequel Ideas.
First off I don’t think you need my help. After picking my jaw up off the floor when I discovered you were a one man dev team (wow!) I quickly realized: Why both giving my ideas and feedback? This guy clearly knows how to develop a great concept that is rewarding (and FUN) without being too complicated with bloat to obscure the core and then has the technical savvy to execute. Did I mention you obviously know how to slather your games with fun?
Keep It Simple. The game is like chess. There is an elegance to your design that should not be lost. Moves should be kept simple, the depth should come through the “board” e.g. Planets, ship choices, starting grids, etc.
Keep It Clean. Don’t clutter up the interface, implement obnoxious graphics (lens flares for everyone!), or make it too confusing.
Keep It Fun. There are some great ideas out there but the point is to make them all jive for a fun experience.
Things I wouldn’t change: 3D Space Battles, Turn Based, clear phases of “Planning” and “Watching,” the option for Multiplayer with multiple teams.
So on to some ideas I have… most of these relate to the combat, especially in Multiplayer.
Options Screen. Ad an advanced options (TNT Racers has a good series of setup screens that could work well with Flotilla) where you can make adjustments. Some options worth adding would be (a) Adjustable planning phase time limit, adjustable from none to 1-10 minutes; (b) Adjustable Watching phase, currently at 30 seconds but I could see anything from 10 to 60 seconds; (c) Max turn limit at which point the player with most points/ships wins; (d) max ships and allowable ship types; (e) enable/disable special weapons “cargo;” (f) game type; (g) map features (# stars, planets, asteroid belts, etc); (h) gravity; (i) solar activity; (j) customizable starting grids allowed; and so forth.
Ship Details. I would like to know the armor, type of guns, range, ship speed, etc when selecting the ships at the menu screen. BUT I also need to know the range and firing ark of the guns while playing too. Both of these need to be addressed.
Online Multiplayer. ‘Nuff said.
Local Multiplayer. It would be great to get 4 people (hot seat if 4 way split doesn’t work). Also, 3v1 would be great. Kudos for allowing people to choose how many ships and what type with no silly limits. Also joining and switching teams is very simple, so well done there.
Starting grids. You could generate some basic grids, but also allow players some customer ones. E.g. Give us a small set “space” to create a number of 3D grids that we can select from. This would make Flotilla like Chess and Flotilla 2 like Chess960.
Special Weapons “Cargo.” Basically rip off the idea from the SP! In the options menu allow cargo enable/disable as well as the ability to enable/disable each cargo type. Consider one-off special weapons (e.g. a ship’s cargo could be an EMP pulse that could disable engines of close by ships for a round). Another idea would be a single use “lock down shield” where you could deploy a shield that made you completely immobile for a single round. A single use cloak where you are invisible 1 round (and move as normal) but the next round you uncloak and can orientate but cannot fire. I don’t want monster weapons that unbalance the game, but risk/reward weapons that add some strategy would be great. Beyond the obvious sci-fi media (Star Trek, Star Wars, Halo, Aliens, etc) to draw from I would suggest a game like Battlezone (PC, 1998) as a source of a lot of great weapon ideas. That game had a custom research tree and upgrades and it was well executed. Kudos if you get ambitious and create “Species Presets” like Humans, Penguin Pirates, Rabbits, etc with their own “standard” cargo choices.
Game Types. Some idea are (a) Elimination, the current mode; (b) Planetary Defense, there is a “base” (red building) on a planet that must be defended by one team and destroyed by the other, ships must get close enough so firing does not “vaporize” in the atmosphere, one ship can carry a “Little Doctor” like weapon that could destroy the entire planet very quickly; (c) Two Way Planetary Defense, same as above but both teams have a planet; (d) VIP Elimination, each team has a VIP they must protect, the game is won when a VIP is destroyed; (e) VIP Escort, get your VIP to a set point in space; (f) King of the Hill, have a ‘zone’ that for every ship in the zone for 1 second the team gets a point, there would be a round limit (e.g. 10 rounds) and the team with the most points after 10 rounds wins—imagine winning even if all of your ships are destroyed!; (g) Capture the Cargo, a disabled ship with valuable cargo is in between two planets, each team starting at an opposite planet, the team to successfully capture the cargo and return it to their planet wins.
Map Features. I like your current maps (large with debris) but the SP gave me the idea (ok, Spacewars! Gave me the idea) to have a solar system with Star(s), Planets with moons (and possibly defensive satellites) and ice rings, and Asteroid Belt(s). Make this all data driven so this is adjustable! For the ice rings around planets they would act like rubble that doesn’t harm ships BUT missiles explode when passing through. The star could damage lightly armored ships that get too close and as ships get too close they may not be able to escape the gravity. Gas clouds to mess with electronics would be great… and if you are daring, a black hole! Solar flares may be too over the top, but a one-round EMP blast to all close ships disabling their engines would be interesting.
Gravity. With planets comes gravity. A simple way to do this is a ship in orbit is slowed down. The benefit of gravity is SLING SHOTTING. This could be a HUGE strategic concept. Again, it fits the “Keep It Simple Stupid” design, but the strategy benefit would be huge. Disabling a ships engines near a star, only to see them be sucked in, would be too awesome.
Camera. It is hard to create a camera for a 3D game, and yours DOES work. My 7yo gets it, so it isn’t bad. But I think it could use some work. On other forums I heard people suggest looking at Homeworld (I guess each ship has a unique grid). I would say tinker. I would offer this idea to look at: right click zooms out. Why not instead have it zoom out ABOVE the grid (ala looking down on a Battleship grid)? That way you can make your X/Y move and then move the camera for vertical adjustment. An option to cycle between a camera looking down the X, Y, Z and 3/4th angles would be nice. I don’t like the camera being way out when a round plays out.
The simple suggestion others have made that WASD (Left Stick) is always moving in the XY plane is a good one. I would even like it if it auto-preset to that view AND when you went to move in this view it did NOT "hing" on the ship but you just moved your movement reticle. THEN after selecting the XY plane movement then the camera could flip to the Z plane so you could do elevation.
Rotate ship option. Seeing as ships have tops and bottoms I would like to be able to rotate the ship (barrel roll) in 45 degree or 90 degree increments. Which reminds me… this info about Top / Bottom and how to see the difference needs to be more clearly shown.
Love the music!
Can I orientate not at an enemy? There are times I want to orientate to a direction, not an enemy. Not sure how to do this. ALSO, not sure if this should be changed as there is strategy to it, but after you destroy a ship it would be nice to be able to change orientation. There are times you need to look at one ship up close that will be destroyed in 5 seconds and then you KNOW you want to turn for the other 25. I guess that is more of a strategy planning thing. Reminds me of Star Trek—the captain can give only so many orders every 30 seconds.
Graphics. I like your graphical design a lot and I would encourage keeping the simple look (it is vast space after all!) The first thing is get away from the purple/brown hue and go all black for space with cleaner / clearer grid lines and ship markets on the grid. I would look into high amounts of AA (MSAA or even FXAA or MLAA) to keep a clean look, ditto high levels of AF. I don’t think the ships would benefit from much advanced texturing unless it was color-scheme-coded (e.g. no getting away with a black design—so maybe, if you allow custom paint, give players 3-5 colors off of a specific pallet, e.g. blues, that are easily converted to the other pallets e.g. red, green, etc). The shots in replay also look a little mundane. I like a lot of your weapon affects (e.g. the missiles look pretty nice!) but evolving your weapon effects would be nice. Higher poly environments on stuff like asteroids. I would keep the simple shaded ships; maybe more geometry with some more advanced shadowing (I wonder if you used a star as a light point and used normal maps you could get a nice contrast). Gas clouds and whatnot would be cool. Overall no affect should diminish game-play or shrink the arena. I am not sure if you offer 1080p on the Xbox, but if not look into it.
Competitive MP Ladder Lead Boards. Trials on the Xbox has great leader boards. A bonus may be something like Frozen Synapse that offers replays of matches by top players.
Challenges Leader Boards. Offer a series of unique challenges (e.g. based on game types) where again the AI you get a score. So let’s say there are 12 challenges, with an assortment of elimination, VIP escort, King of the Hill, etc matches. Each challenge would have its own board and then an “Overall” score. Allow us to “Rival Challenge” (ala Forza 4) to our friends.
And now for the CRAZY suggestion…
You have a SP Campaign with Skirmish Combat, you have MP with Skirmish combat… but no “Campaign.” May I suggest a simple 4x design for Multiplayer “Campaign”? MP could be played as is now (Skirmish—let’s call it the “Micro Game”) but there would also be a “Campaign” 4x Game, lets call that the “Meta Game.”
Micro Game: Flotilla Combat, ‘nuff said. Pure awesome!
Meta Game: A classic 4x game like Reach for the Stars (RftS), Spaceward Ho!, etc. Nothing too advanced like Masters of Orion. RftS would be a good model to follow as it was basic enough to pick up quickly and easy to play but deep enough for strategy. Surprisingly the game has aged very well. If the focus is the combat a system the game need be no more complex than (a) 2 dozen or so habitable star systems, (b) each star system occupied generates 1 resource point, (c) resource pts used to make ships OR cargo with variable cost (battleship costs more than a destroyer), (d) a built ship can be deployed on any habitable system, (e) habitable planets have a “base” that needs to be destroyed to colonize, (f) resources can be used to build defensive satellites, (g) resources can also be spent on research to “unlock” more advanced ships (battleships), cargo, or even reducing the cost to manufacture items. So the game need not be complex or overly deep as the 4x would be there to add a strategy meta twist to the micro-combat. Of course it could get richer without getting to complicated… Explore: some worlds have no habitable planets, some multiple planets, some special materials for free unlocks; Expand: you have to have “control” of the system to colonize, either with a special colony ship OR you have to “land” (and lose) a ship from your flotilla OR have a “colonization” cargo to deploy; Exploit: resources would be generated as above although some “rich” planets could allow more resources for ship creations, resources could be used for basic unlocks; Exterminate: Colonize everything, destroy your opponent in combat.
There would need to be caps on total ships, flotilla ship limits, flotillas that can arrive at a planet at a time, satellite limit, etc. This would nicely encourage devoting ships to colonization OR encourage battle—use ‘em or lose ‘em! Anyways, a simple, balanced, and strategy-heavy 4x meta game to compliment the elegantly deep flotilla combat would make for an extremely compelling game that offered a lot of replay value. This sort of game would probably be best 1v1 or Human v AI due to flotilla battle time… although the solution would be to allow others to watch/make basic strategy decisions/do their own battles. Another option would be limiting humans to controlling only 1 ship and giving 1 general command strategy at the beginning to the fleet (e.g. flank right, flank left, trap, blitz, hold ground, etc a handful of strategies that are Rock-Paper-Scissors to each other; e.g. Flank beats Blitz, Blitz beats Hold Ground, Hold Ground beats Flank) So the human can only control their 1 ship (“captain”) so battles would go much faster. Toss in a move cap (if you are moving 1 ship 30 seconds is generous) and the game now isn’t so slow. I could see a lot of drama actually as each battle would be important and you run into scenarios where do you want to try to retreat and save some of the fleet or weaken the opponent as much as possible?
