Comments - LtJax

The background is pretty! Any hints on how you are doing those nebulae?

Hey! Thanks for the comments! That helps a lot. I'm currently upgrading my internal editor a lot, so I might actually release that with the game (unsupported though). I'm also adding new game modes and power-up types. A capture&hold mode is almost done and I should be able to push a release of that within the next days. After that, I was going to make an assault mode - I think that fits a lot better than tower defense in the strict sense. But let's see how that plays..

Oh boy, and here's me trying to make the AI smarter&harder, when I should be making it more accessible. Do you mind telling me how exactly the AI gets you? You did try the lower difficulty settings, didn't you? It should be so that the AI doesn't even really try to win in the lowest setting. But that might have been broken in the last release...
I'd still call it strategy, since it is so "swarmy" and hence there's still some kind of scale to it, even if it can be really fast paced sometimes.

Sorry for the delay on the new version, guys. I'm currently almost completely rewriting the bots, to make them more challenging and less predictable, bot also more fun for the lower difficulties. Turns out this is not really that easy for RTS games, even for simplified ones like Abstractanks. Stay tuned, I should have something soon.

Also, I will have official support for MSAA!

Nothing planned for now, but I like the process of porting and I like to believe the code is reasonably portable already. It likely won't happen very soon though, since I'm just one guy :) I'll look at it once the game is out of alpha and beta!

Hey there! Thank you for your detailed feedback! This is very much appreciated!

1) I'll add the default modes, that's a really good idea. However, I'm not sure that upgrading would fit in very well, since the spawnpoints are traded quite regularly. You'd have to turtle to defend spawnpoints that you upgraded, which I think is more boring that having the option to also attack other points. Remaining options (as far as I see it!) are to have only temporary upgrades or to trade the upgrades as well. Spawnboost already does some of the former - maybe I can make that targeted instead? I kinda like the swarm you get from all spawn points when you get that powerup. I'm not against trading "static" upgrades - I'll think about that one!

2) This is definitely a good idea. Might add larger spawnpoints that also generate units faster. There's already some kind of buff on those "light fields". They make you take less damage, which even lets you survive the laser strikes. I think slightly altered unit capabilities can maybe be fun too, so different spawnpoints can produce those, pretty much like in eufloria. I'll look into that, but I can't promise anything!

3) Yea, that would be fun to do, and I'd really like to do that - it's just not feasible yet!

4) I don't think this fits well with the idea of a swarm of disposable units. I think the game is just a lot easier to control if you don't really have to care for individual units. That was one big point in the design actually, and might help transfer the game to tablets eventually.

Thanks again for the feedback, that really helps me a lot!

I like the idea of paths changing while the game is going on, but I don't really know if damaging the environment or creating tiles would be the way to do that. How would you want this to interact with the gameplay? I was thinking you could maybe capture bridges and gates the same way you capture spawnpoints and towers, but this was never really a high priority thing to add (yet!).

It's a simple separation steering behavior (like in flocking) coupled with path following.

Thank you! :-)