Sticky Initial Feedback

As everyone says the controls take time to get used to, but once you figure them out they're usable. I would say bugs aside I have had a lot of fun playing the prototype. It is in reasonable shape for something of its namesake and I have high hopes for the future of the game. Really everything that is in the game at the moment seems to work fairly well aside from the obvious problems that I'm sure have been echoed many times, even in this forum despite it stating this is not a place for bug reports. I honestly can't wait to see what else the game adds down the line for us to use. I -really- hope they add some sort of structural system to enable things like Cathedral Ceilings and such stuff that doesn't require such tight scaffolding like the buildings do now. That said I really love the way the scaffolding looks when you fill it in behind a castle wall. The design of the objects when combined looks very appealing and believable. The tunnel tool is a little wonky to use at first, but once I figured it out it made sense. The only thing missing from it is a way to make them dig stairs UP (though I could be missing something, it only seemed to want to let me dig down.)

Overall it is what I expected for a PROTOTYPE. People thinking they were getting something even remotely user friendly are foolish and clearly are too used to the veritable demo "betas" that companies have been popularizing lately, which are hardly games being tested but really just demos people can buy into.

I love this game. Controls took me about 3 hours to master, but that's not really all that bad, a lot of it was figuring out what I could make.

my only current issue is when you have 20+ bricktrons they start getting stupid That aside, I am so happy with this prototype and the future of this game

Controls should be more context-sensitive. There should be one set of controls that works all the time, instead of two depending on if spacebar is held down.

Thinking middle mouse button could be used to change the camera angle, and the camera should always be on terrain flyby mode. You should also be able to zoom out more. Right clicking brings up the circle menu thing. A single right click and a held down right click could do two different things. Context sensitivity is very important as well. Depending on where you click, it should do different things automatically.

My two cents. Everything else has been said.

I'm building this:



The engine works well, but sometime miss the right order to place bricks. So, sometime some brick (1x1 or wood) is totally messed up.

Anyway, the game is really amazing, I freaking love it.

For me, one of the most important things is messages. We need to know how construction stops...

nothing beats the supreme commander camera controls - especially when it comes to zooming!

the current solution (hold spacebar) is extremely annoying, like other people already posted, i constantly confuse it with the shift key

Honest break down:
1) Camera
The camera, while clunky right now, can easily be changed by the camera to auto-focus on the selected bricktron, and default to a set zoom... but for a prototype, it works as it should:: good for debugging, and navigating. However, as stated above many times, space bar for such actions such as camera control, is a bit ...odd
2) Tasks
While the concept of tasks is understandable once you figure it out (and once they fix bugs of action regions creating new tasks--less clutter), it is still a bit confusing when it comes to what is being done by each bricktron. I think, especially for construction/blueprints, that if you select a bricktron, it does a flash/highlight of the action it is in the process of doing (eg, if its placing a block in a blueprint, then it will flash green saying that its being done)
Other than that, the cleaning up of tasks should be a bit easier: A simple selection of task, and del key... instead of having to go through, select the task, hit x, and hit ok... if you have 7-8 tasks, it just gets cluttered. A simple hotkey, or option to auto-remove task when no operations left in a task, would be nice.

For tasks that have region actions that need to be done (such as lumber regions, or mines), it would be nice to have a list of those in the task window. This way, its easy to manage what is going on inside each task.
3) Construction
Without knowing exactly what are bugs, and what is intentional, there are still a few things that i feel would make things a bit easier. First off, is the ability to auto-place support for things like stairs. One of the most frustrating things for me right now, is not being able to clearly distinguish changes in levels. Especially since some terrain changes are half-blocks, and your construction blocks are full. This leads to either having to mine out where you want to build, or build planks to level the terrain. When you are trying to build stairs (in reality, anything) to the next level of a building, or mountain, etc etc, you can easily hit a small half-step-like piece of terrain, or hole.
I think, to make things easier, when you're constructing something (such as a stair or other brick), and there is a half-step sized piece of terrain, covering half of the area that the block needs to be placed, that the block incorporates that into its construction (auto-deletes it)... or if there is a space that is needed, have a blueprint for something, such as stairs, have an auto-complete part for what is needed to put a blueprint in the location you want it to go. (similar to auto-completing a road or a wall.... in order to finish a wall, you must build from point A to B) For our needs, Point A is your step, and point B is the lowest support structure that that step requires to be built. [[Short version:: make building over rough terrain less tedious]]
4) Mining
The mining system is decent, at best. In my experience, the bricktrons dont like to dig tunnels (have yet to get them to successfully...), and when they dig a mine, they always seem to have to dig from the top. If you're sheering the side of a mountain, so that you can make stairs up it, it is just a bit awkward. Being honest, i have no idea the best way to fix this... perhaps increase the bricktrons ability to climb mountains? (improve path finding capabilities?).
While mining a mountain is pure evil if you cant get on top, mining straight down, is relatively simple. Select the area, increase the depth, and whala.
However, it still gets icky, if you want to add onto it. If you have a mine, that only goes 5 down to start, and later on you want to add more onto that mine (same l/w, just different depth), if you try to start with the bottom of the current mine, and go down some more, the stairs dont mesh well. A simple solution: Add the ability to extend regions (i'm assuming this has already been thought of... just posting here as a part of this post )

Love where this can go.
I have also spent the time to master the camera controls (key to enjoying the game). When you learn to find the camera center indicator that shows you your location, and depth, then adjusting the camera starts making sense.

A LONG way to go, but for a prototype, it is very good! I have spent about 5 hrs with the game, saving worlds, building to other islands and trying to stress the AI pathfinding. With some coding tweaks I can see this getting very good. I want to build a rad castle so bad but....patience.....still not confident on saved games being very stable, took 18 min to load one world.

I am very happy that we can do most major tasks in the prototype, I was in fear that just some mining or basic building would be available.

This game is going to ROCK!

Devs,
One fix at a time, don't get overwhelmed and stay the coarse. You have a 10 on your hands!

Takeo

I feel like the grouping system is not very intuitive or efficient. Rather than assigning bricktrons to task groups, bricktrons should be grouped automatically when you give them a task. The process would be like:

1. Select bricktron(s)
2. Sidebar, with available tasks for bricktrons, appears (mine, tunnel, build and so on)
3. Select and specify task (eg: chose building and the building bar appears or chose mining and the mining bar appears)
4. Group is created for the selected bricktrons with an identifier of the task they are performing
5. Selecting between different groups allows you to change what the group's task is

I feel like you're on to something here. CS already creates these tasks despite the existence of the group. In fact, if we try to make more tasks CS just creates another group to tie that task into it. It does seem kinda silly and limiting that a task and a group exist separately, but currently cannot be split apart. Flushing out the relationship of groups and tasks will make the experience more streamlined as well as give us more control over our bricktrons in re-purposing them / re-assigning / selecting - eh, pretty much everything!

Would very much benefit from a tutorial, but overall fun. I am a little disappointed with controls and gameplay but then remember this is still alpha. Also i wonder how the updating process will happen?

Game is very clunky right now, and I don't want to waste words on describing what is good or bad - I think everyone else has covered that nicely.

It's a prototype, and it works like one. :/

But, still, it's fun to tinker around and find out stuff.

Can't wait or future updates.

I’ve been trying to enjoy the Prototype, but the interface is really cumbersome. So, I’ve got some bad things to say:

1. As others have said, the camera “controls” are, well, let’s just say that there aren’t enough letters in the word “wonky” to adequately convey how difficult they are. They make it practically unplayable for some of us. Would love to see a better form.

2. The crickets. Great FSM—the crickets. Haven’t heard any music, have only heard those horrible crickets. I have my speakers turned off when I try to play.

3. Tunnels. As others have said this is really wonky. I’ve made one successful tunnel more than one voxel deep. (I figured out how to delete tunnel queues early on—yay, me).

4. Tooltips not quite accurate. Especially for tree-harvesting. It says to hold right-click and drag to set up an area . . . but you can’t.

5. Always makes new queue? This really bothers me: I select a handful of bricktrons, select mining, lay out my mine and then I have to re-select my bricktrons and assign them to the new queue that the game created and then delete my old one.


Now for the good:
1. Looks freakin’ gorgeous. I’m playing on an i7, and, after the initial rendering delay, it’s freaking awesome! Great job.

2. Extremely responsive (when I can figure out how to make it work). Even running a render with 24 threads in the background, Castle Story barely hiccups—very impressive.

3. Personality. As others have mentioned, the Bricktrons, ever for just hanging out, seem to have a lot of character. That they’re basically armed, yellow shmoos makes this all the more impressive.

4. The potential is obvious. Unless you stop work now (I don’t think that’s going to happen), this game is going to be freaking awesome.


Unrelated question:
I have a friend who lives in Montreal, can he go pick up my hug?

I must say i love the game the pyhsic and nearly all oft it^^

tips for emproving:
1.)but well i would say camera movment ist god but just remove the spacebar then it would perfect then as i see it you dont use wasd for sotmhing else and for rotatik take midel mouse bouten i would say.
2.) Bridge i would Like to have a way to build bridge the wood dont work for beacse you ahve just 1 look you can place away from a other lock like this |--
or I dont know yet how to build a bridge^^
3.) Sothing other tehn barrels to contains crystals so you can see it i would say use the stock pile to but wih somthing like
this: http://www.qiero.de/medias/sys_master/ProduktDetailImportImage/8796389769246.jpg (just fast search image xD) with a bit glowing i owuld love it^^
4.) mm fix bugs but well thats obvius and so not nesayr to write ^^ but I just did it for fun^^

so that was my tips i hope it will help you^^ so see you later


(and sorry if my englsih a bit bad xD it not my mother tounge)

well i figured out deleting and why i get new bricktrons ,the bridges aren't exactly what i thought but here are some screens of a fort i made

bit dark at night





sometime the bricktrons get stuck in ques and you have to sort it out yourself and also they aren't very efficient using stockpiles, they sometime seem to fight over resources and also don't take from the same stockpile so you end up with a lot of half full stockpile and the miners cant put anything in them until they are fully empty, and i hope trees will somehow grow again because wood is just as good as brick to use but there are far less trees, this is suppose to be constructive criticism, i already really like the game and can see myself putting loads of hours into playing this game and i am only scratching the surface at the moment

Controls were a pain to learn, but once I got used to them they were fine.
There's a couple of big features missing imho, one being the ability to auto-follow your bricktrons, or zoom to them somehow. It can be a pain sometimes trying to find a guy, without moving him to where you're looking. I might pop a couple of things in the suggestions forum, but I've been happy with it mostly.

Absolutely love it! Worth every single penny I pledged to you guys, with a little rounding out on some of the bugs I'd almost be content with this prototype haha. Seeing what you've done already makes me almost giddy with excitement thinking about what you'll end up with. Heck, look at minecraft. I played that game before multiplayer was even working and you guys are kicking its teeth out.
There are some much needed features, such as a more intuitive way to cancel placing phantom blocks. In my 9th hour of playing I discovered the right click thing, every other time I had made a new tunnel group and just deleted it.
The game does reward exploring all the options though, its fairly intuitive except for the camera controls. Once you get the hang of them they're actually quite useful and I can appreciate why they are the way they are.
Needless to say I'm very happy with what I've seen so far. I simply cannot wait for the updates to come in the future.

I'm really happy with the Prototype so far!
It takes a bit to get used to the controls but once you're used to the system and have some knowledge of bug work-arounds the whole experience is really enjoyable.
My only major problem is the lack of a working save functionality but I'm sure that'll be fixed shortly.

Always loved playing sandbox games so for now I'm content. Great Job Sauropod Studio!

Just to help you out, in case you didn't know: You can extend the tunnels by clicking the yellow squares at the bottom of the initial 'drag-to-size' rectangle. These squares will turn green, then click on them again to extend your tunnel.

My feedback:

I'll only post what I haven't seen mentioned here yet, since everything else seemed to have been covered:

The builders need a new system other than an assigned one. Currently, phantom blocks are assigned to a Bricktron, and if there are more than one, problems arise. If a Bricktron is held back and does not place its assigned block in time, another builder may place its assigned block and prevent the first block from being placed. This usually happens when building multi-level structures.

I propose using a priority system, where the first phantom block you place receives the highest priority. This will ensure that it is the first block placed no matter which Bricktron is 'quicker' to the area. Of course subsequent blocks receive 2nd, 3rd priority (in order of their phantom placement).

Overall, I am very pleased with the prototype. I was honestly expecting something that barely worked at all, and I am impressed at how relatively stable it is. That being said, there are a few things I'd like to give a little feedback on:

1. The crickets. Oh my lord, those crickets. I have to turn my sound off just to play because of them.
2. The controls can be clunky at first, but once you get used to them they work just fine. I don't think they really need any tweaking, just need some getting used to. Oh, and a charmap or a tutorial or something would be useful; while stumbling around pressing random buttons and accidentally sending Bricktrons flying is fun, I can see it causing problems in the future.
3. As stated by the poster above me, build queuing is very unwieldy. Bricktrons appear to just haphazardly place things, without real regard to order. This has often caused problems.

Overall though, it's a really great prototype and I am glad to see it so functional at such an early point in development. I am quite pleased with the devs, and hope to see a bright future from them.

Needs to be a similar way to place planks and poles when joining to pillar wood blocks, trying to get just in the right viewing angle so it will connect them is frustrating - maybe something to auto link.

I also find that after a time my bricktrons start to get a fascination with freshly cut wood. My miners stopped mining and started following around wood that was on the group, pushing it around even off the edge so a weird bug and they would not go back to mining - I could make them chop wood but they would no longer mine

but biggest issue is just pathfinding and wood placement