Gaming Your Way

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Knight's Quest, get your mana on.

25. January 2011 Squize game development, News (10)

Finally finally finally, we've soft launched KQ. With it being a soft launch it means we know there are things we need to tweak and change and there are more features planned over the next couple of weeks ( Today is a day of resting ).

Rather than me write reams of boring text, here are some pictures to give you a taste before clicking ( Or not ) the link.

KQ_village.jpg

KQ_fireballs.jpg

Now it's finally out for everyone to play I'll be able to do some more techy posts about how it does what it does, I was kind of loathe to do it sooner as explaining how the spiders AI works in a game you can't play is a bit abstract.

Please, any and all feedback in the comments is more than welcome. We can't make the game better if we don't know what's important to you guys.

Here's the link, ( Facebook only I'm afraid, it's the nature of the beast ) go and hurt some big spiders ( They so deserve it ).

Cheers,

Squize.

Comments (10) -

  • MichaelJW

    1/25/2011 1:09:20 PM |

    Congrats, guys! I just spent far longer than I should have done playing it. Am now constantly twitching, looking over my shoulder for spiders in the apartment.

  • charlie

    1/25/2011 3:45:33 PM |

    That looks very nice!!
    I'll be stealing the wife's FB login to have a play this evening...

  • Squize

    1/25/2011 3:52:11 PM |

    Thanks guys. Hopefully this explains partly why I've been so shit at emails and other promises the past 6 months.

  • Rasmus Wriedt Larsen

    1/25/2011 3:55:30 PM |

    Oh my, all of my long comment didn't get posted :( I'll try to rewrite it!

    Progress bar: Would be nice if it scaled horizontally, so you would not how far in the process it was!

    Quests: After you talk to a NPC with a quest, and refuse it, the quest mark will disappear. :(

    Map of dungeon: Would be nice to include, something like the thing in Diablo 1.

    Keys to action panel: Something like C for char screen, B/I for inventory..

    Action panel: it would be nice if you could click the button for the open panel to make it close.

    Friends moving in: Not working for me.. if it's not implemented, fair enough! But if it's because they need to be playing the game as well, it should have a msg saying so.

    Caveren un-loading screen: after you find the exit of a caveren, it stats to play the village music, but shows the now-you-need-to-slay-beasts screen.

    Class description, I see there is already implemented different classes (warr/wiz/theif), but it makes no difference it seems..

  • Squize

    1/25/2011 4:24:52 PM |

    Thanks for the great feedback Rasmus. So sorry you lost it first time, if it's any consolation that happens to me every single time, I've got into the habit of copying it now before messing up the captcha ( I only forget to do it every other time now ).

    Progress Bar: I agree for the preloader, we can't really do it for the caves / dungeons though. We don't really load anything in, it's busy generating the level and we just give it a loading screen to make it more inline with console games. Basically as the cpu is tied up there's no easy / good way I can think of showing progress.

    Quests: Yeah, but there are another 6 or so NPC's around the village. It's based on the GTA games, so if you refuse a quest that NPC won't give you another one until you do it. The next major release will have a quest log where you can see which ones you've refused, and just clicking them will take you straight there.

    Map: I'm quite fond of this idea, and it's easy to do as we store the map in a bitmap for the pathfinder. That's two votes for a map, if we get more I'll look to add one.

    Keyboard shortcuts: Possibly. We've gone for a facebook friendly mouse only approach, and its a fine line. Whilst that may make it easier for some, for others that'll just be a lot more test in the help screens they'll feel obliged to learn.

    Action Panel: Good idea.

    Friends not moving in: Not sure what's wrong there, if you've got friends playing the game too ( Not at the same time, just "registered" with it ) it should work. I'll speak to ChrisH who's taken ownership of the UI side of things.

    Cave outro: Yeah, that's been pointed out :) One of a few rough edges that we had to let slip just to get the game soft launched.

    Classes: Yeah, they do make a subtle difference. As a thief the gold you collect is worth more, the warrior hits harder but sucks with magic, and the Wizard has more powerful spells which use less mana.
    We're not going for a full branching class system, this is a casual game, and as such we can't go too far down the lines of making it complicated.

    Thanks again for both taking the time to play it, and giving such great feedback ( Twice :) ), cheers mate.

    PS. Screwed up the captcha again, we need to look at this, or remove it completely and just delete spam as it happens as it's driving me insane now.

  • charlie

    1/25/2011 7:16:50 PM |

    I've played it now, and it is indeed very good! Well done, I think it was worth the wait :)

  • ickydime

    1/27/2011 12:04:49 AM |

    very cool man. looks like a huuuuge undertaking and you are pulling it off well. grats!

    as far as feedback goes...
    In the second dungeon I found myself wandering in circles and then tried to look for a map button, so chalk another vote up for map.  When I tried to pull up a map I first tried to press M, so another vote for action keys. Maybe you don't have to explain them in help just explain the mouse interaction & have the keyboard work as a double secret feature.  Action keys will help appease the gamers who play facebook too... there are some! ;)

    Friends opened up a blank window for me.  Sounds like its because I have no friends :).  But that brings me to my main concerns: Virality and Monetization... 2 things beaten over my head since i started making facebook games for Sony.

    Viral: I didn't see a way to invite my friends to the game from within the game (I see the link at the top). I think there should be a button at the house, especially if I have no friends left to assign. I only played through the first 2 dungeons so i will need to play more... but besides getting people into my houses so i can collect taxes, are there other social aspects/incentives?  

    Monetization: Besides coins and warp stones, will you be selling anything? (what do warp stones do btw?).

    Once you get the game to where you want it, definitely add a button next to the facebook 'like' button for giving reviews.  

    To sum up my rambling, I think the game is cool and shows a lot of promise but I am worried about the facebook aspect.  Drop me a line if you want me to go into more detail.  Keep up the excellent work as always man!

  • sand858

    1/27/2011 7:32:22 AM |

    Impressive feat, sir. I'm very interested in seeing a post-mortem on this one. :)

  • Squize

    1/27/2011 9:42:46 PM |

    Hey Mark, thanks for the feedback and good words.

    Maps are a definite go you'll be glad to hear. Your vote swung it :)

    Cheers for the offer of some guidance re: Social stuff. I'm lucky in that whole side is out of my hands, I'm just making sprites move and doing the things I do, but I'll def take you up on that offer ( And thanks for what you've explained just here ).
    As for monetisation, that's also slightly out of my hands. It turns out that when it comes to mtx I'm a socialist, and should be kept away from such things ( I think if someone parts with money then they should get another 18 hours of content :) ).
    The Warp Stones allow you to go to the Dungeon levels, there's only one NPC who sends you there, she's over by the pumpkin patch. This is yet another thing we need to spell out in more detail ( Luckily enough, via a village map, that should do it ).

    Thanks again mate.

    Hey Sandy, we've not spoken for ages, hope you're well mate. A post mortem on this would kill me I think :)
    Hopefully I'll find some time to spill on the technical side, if nothing else it'll put people off wanting to code an RPG.

    Thanks again guys.

  • sand858

    1/29/2011 6:54:52 PM |

    I'm well... lurking more than anything these days (long story, we should catch up some time). Looking forward to more awesome. ;)

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