A few things I noticed... Thread - Alpha Squad

First, gotta say, enjoying the game a lot! I was totally stoked and I'm glad to say that I wasn't disappointed. Got a few things to note, though. First two bugs, then some suggestions.

Bugs:

• This may or may not be related to the other network issues you're aware of, but I haven't seen the specific issue mentioned. When I have my online type set to "Invite Only", I cannot start a game, getting the message, "An unknown error occurred" (I tried multiple times, including after exiting and restarting the game). Setting the type to Private allowed me to start a game.
• Sometimes when I exit a building, the screen will fade out and the music will end as if I'm heading back outside, but when the screen and music come back I'm still inside the building as if I just entered it. After that I'm able to leave as normal. I've never had this happen twice or more in a row, I'm always able to leave the second attempt. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to when this happens (it's not always the same buildings, I checked), and it never seems to be an issue when entering buildings or exiting levels, just exiting buildings.

Suggestions:

• There really needs to be more explanation of stuff in-game. It took me a while to realize what the Survival Kit did (and even then I didn't realize entirely what it did until I stumbled upon the power-ups section of the website).
• Like most games these days, the text is all but impossible to read on a non-HD TV. Dialogue during missions is legible because it's slightly larger, but the mission descriptions, character bios, etc. are just a blurry mess on my screen.
• Maybe make a section that lists all of the loading screen tooltips? Loading is far too quick to read them (assuming I could on my screen! ).
• What are the medal-looking things that show up at the score screen at the end of a level? There's no description or information about them.
• Is there a way to switch weapons? I tried every button on the controller to no avail. I can understand why not, but it's pretty frustrating to have no choice but to sit there and let the flaming suicide bombers hit you (the flamethrower cannot kill them) and I'm not a huge fan of the shotgun.
• Would it be possible to, at least in a single-player game, have the player's health/item/etc. always displayed where Clint's is? Lackey is my favorite character, but he has probably the most inconvenient stat location. Also as lovely as Amanda is, she blocks parts of Lackey and Lynx's medals (whatever those things are ) on the level completion screen!
• Does the game scale with number of players? Maybe I just suck, but I feel like I'm being rushed by more guys than a single player can reasonably handle. It took me about a solid hour of retries to finally get that wallet out of the forest! Then again, I am kind of being stingy with my money and not buying much, so that could be an issue.

And that's about it. Like I said, really enjoying the game! This is probably the most professional game I've seen on the XBL Indie Channel, and already my favorite as well! Stay awesome!

Hey Carl, I'll address each issue one by one:
Bugs
1.

• This is related to the invite system. Unfortunately we had no idea the kind of effect that would occur when changing from the debug version to live and now we're stuck with a few issues for a week until we can upload the patch.
• We encountered this one in an earlier version and it was believed to be fixed. What is happening is the level transition is not loading quickly enough, so a black screen is appearing instead.

Suggestions:

• An explaination system will not be out by next update, but in the meantime I can update the website with better explainations of the items.
• We'll have to investigate what to do about the text. Maybe a text resize option in addition to the screen re-size option.
• We actually added the loading screens because loading was really slow during the debug version of the game. That was actually the biggest complaint during testing, but now we have other issues.
• I'll explain the medals on the website soon.
• Currently there isnt a way to switch weapons. If you have a more powerful weapon overwriting the machine gun, the next weapon you pick up will go to the inventory box. From there you can switch to the item in your inventory. For the flamethrower, it cannot affect flaming guys but we left that in there as a small balance to the flamethrower and to have players coordinate weapons with each other to experiment how that would work.
• One of the suggestions that I want to implement is a smaller UI screen so the large boxes are not all over. Personally on my TV it looks great, but not everyone has a 42inch plasma. We knew about Amanda covering some of the medals but we couldnt figure out what to do with her at the end and visually the win screen looks much better with her.
• Yes! The game does scale according to how many players are connected. I did this because during playtesting a team of four could beat the game without breaking a sweat. Currently the scale might be a little too high, so I could lower it for the patch next week.

Thank you for the compliment, if you have any other suggestions feel free to post here and I will add what we can to the list!

Edited by: DragonDivide

Cool, thanks for the response! And actually, I'm going to have to take back my comment about difficulty. Now that I have a steady supply of cash and I've gotten better at aiming, certain areas of the game are almost seemingly too easy! Also as for the flamethrower, I assumed it was balance stuff (especially since the flamethrower is so good) and I like the push for teamwork, but I can't exactly coordinate with a friend when I'm playing solo! The exploding guys are so fast, too, that you can't outrun them and try to intentionally waste all of your ammo first... Been playing a bit more and I have a few more things (haha, sorry to spam you with so much stuff!):

Bugs:

• This might have been mentioned in one of the threads about the network issue, but the options screen doesn't save your networking selection. I just wanted to make sure you look into that as well, as even after the network interruption issue is fixed, I'd still like my games to always be Private or Invite-Only without having the change the option every time!
• In the "Secluded" zone, there's a memory crystal thingy you can get after kicking open a chest. However, after acquiring it, if you interact with the chest again, the entire scene plays out again including getting the crystal a second time. You can repeat this over and over. The pause screen still only shows the one crystal, but you can play the scene as many times as you want.

Suggestions:

• I'm not entirely sure if this is a bug or a suggestion because I'm not really sure if it's actually useful yet, but the note you can find in the first city area that you send to Amanda to scan sounds like it's used in some kind of side quest... It would be nice if it was indicated in the pause screen inventory like the wallet/etc.
• This one is more on me being stupid, but I stumbled upon the early ending where Lynx leaves. It was neat, but... I didn't realize at the moment that going through that specific door was going to end my game entirely. Since you seem to be able to die any amount of times without being kicked back to the title screen, I haven't gotten into the habit of compulsively saving, and after watching that ending I had to go replay three levels to get back to the same point! I guess it's my fault for not seeing it coming, but maybe a message to let the player fully know what they're about to do would be nice?

Sorry for all the nitpicking. You guys are the game designers, not me! I just really enjoy the game and it's exciting to get a chance to talk to the devs and have them actually listen.

Bugs:
1. I need to investigate this. It might be because the setting is being switched when you are loading one of your games that was set on public?

2. Crap... whose bug is this? *raises hand*. Fixing next patch for sure.

Suggestions:
1. Adding a place that saves certain story events would be nice, but I didn't really leave myself much design space for it. This is something to consider down the line.

2. There is a description in the pause screen regarding doors, but no real instruction for it... and now that loading the game is so fast in the marketplace, you can't read that either. An auto-save feature may be added after completing a level. Or you could congratulate yourself for "beating" the game :-).

Edited by: DragonDivide

Hm, no, I've only got the one saved game, and it was set to Private when I first played.

Hello dev team,

I've run into many of the same issues that have already been mentioned, but I did find one that's fairly specific. After acquiring the key that unlocks all doors from Lynx's home, I went back to New Seattle to check the doors I couldn't get in. I found and began talking to Gonzo... something or other(sorry I've forgotten his name). After he says "Wait... why do you have weapons?" (or something to that effect), the game code 4's on me. I've been able to reproduce that specific crash every time I've tried.

Hopefully you'll be able to fix it with the patch. Regardless, I am very much enjoying the game, so thank you for making it awesome.

EDIT: I've run into another problem. When going through the Amazon I fought the big gorilla enemy with the flame thrower after going as far right as possible. Once defeated, since it was a dead end, I tried to backtrack to go a different direction but third screen back it wouldn't let me go any farther. The side of the screen was flashing but it wouldn't let me enter the next screen. It acted as if a boundry box was blocking my way as I could move around the edges of it but could not get to the flashing part to advance.

Edited by: Gigan22

Hi Gigan,

Consider both of those fixed for next Wednesday. Thank you for bringing these to our attention!

Glad to hear it. It's great to see you guys being so expedient in fixing the issues.

One other small thing I've run into is the network settings don't save after you've exited the game. Unless it does that by design.

EDIT: Another very small issue is in Heat Stroke. The exploding enemies that run around will do so for a few seconds but then just stop and stand there like dopes.

I guess I should also mention that I have a quibble about the game itself. There seems to be no feedback when I get hit. I only know when I'm getting hit because I glance at the health bar. By that time if I've got multiple enemies on me, I'm dead. Maybe if you added a quick flash on the screen or rumble to the controller it would help with that.

Edited by: Gigan22

Hi again Gigan,

The HeatStroke enemies are by design. After they are done with their path, they are supposed to sit around like mines. I could edit this so that they are more dispersed on the stage.

I think a quick idea we can do with the low health is a "death rattle", basically vibrate the controller violently when near death as you mentioned.

Thanks for the response.

I finally beat the game and it was a lot of fun(even by myself) other than the frustration. A couple of those areas were very tough. Regardless, there's one more small issue I saw. *SPOILER* When the final screen comes up with the"epilogue" there is a grammar error. It says "... leaves a behind a wake ..." *SPOILER*

Otherwise, great game.

DOH!

Fixed.

Hey dev team... I dunno if anyone has brought these up, but:

1. The data crystal I picked up in "secluded" isnt working. I went to station 12 and i SWEAR I found the spot where you use it, (directly left of the golden door in the last room) but it refuses to work. Now, is that the spot? and if so, is it something that needs to be fixed?

2. This is more curiousity than anything... how many babes are there to save? lol. I found 4, just curious if thats all of them.

I beat the game, and have been secret hunting since. Great job, and thanks in advance. =)

1. Just checked, it is a bug. Save that game and the new update will fix it, hopefully the update passes review tonight.

2. More than that.

Edited by: DragonDivide

Gigan22 wrote: Hello dev team,

I've run into many of the same issues that have already been mentioned, but I did find one that's fairly specific. After acquiring the key that unlocks all doors from Lynx's home, I went back to New Seattle to check the doors I couldn't get in. I found and began talking to Gonzo... something or other(sorry I've forgotten his name). After he says "Wait... why do you have weapons?" (or something to that effect), the game code 4's on me. I've been able to reproduce that specific crash every time I've tried.

I'm sorry to report that this bug is still not resolved with the update. Though I'm wondering if it's somehow locked in my save game. Maybe you can shed some light on the problem.

Hi Gigan,

I looked at this prior to the patch, but perhaps in my haste to get the more important issues out of the way I did not look closely enough. There is a special character in the dialogue text that cannot be rendered with the font. It was barely noticible and I had to do a double-take on it.

I just corrected it and it will go out this coming week along with some other things.

Hi Dragon Divide,
I finished the game (well, I guess so because I saw a good ending) but not completely as I still have to collect (I think) one more babe :p I played the game with my brother and I want to say that we really like it and we have a lot of fun playing it. When Alpha Squad came out, we bought it immediately because we were waiting for it, but we were really disappointed for the difficulty and crashes. But since you patched the game, it's all about fun ! It's very cool to see that you are still working on fixing problems and making the game better and we are really looking forward to see that.
Anyway, I'd like to report 2 major bugs we encountered while playing 2 players game:

• If I launch a game and invite a friend, he will first only see the "New Seattle" level on screen. If I start another level, we can enter it but we cannot move the characters. To fix it, the invited player has to quit and then enter the game again, while we are on the world map.
• When we go through a red door, only the host can see the bad ending. The other player gets a "Code 4" crash. Same for the good ending after killing Victor.

Also, I have some questions :

• I haven't found some of the objects related in this post. Because I think we explored almost everything in the story mode (we still need to find the siberian babe) I wonder if there might be some bugs preventing us from finding items or rooms ? (in order to check this, can you give me a small hint to help me to find how to unlock the doors and finding my way to the siberian girl ?)
• Some levels are made with only one room : the Alliance base in Siberia with only one room outside and one inside, and the base in China with only one room. Is it normal ?

Keep up the great work ! (ps : thumb up for the General Flores cameo

Edited by: Beuzer0

Hi Beuzer,

1. I think I noticed the invite issue last night as well. We'll look into it.
2. I also noticed the ending issue as well. It happens on whichever player is not the party leader.
3. All of the girls and items should work. I have been contacted by someone who has all of the girls. I don't want to give anything away ;-).
4. The game was so large that I needed to cut down on a few rooms. The current design of the levels that you mentioned are by design. Since then however we've found a couple of spots to save space on, so I am going to add an entirely new stage on the next update.