Sticky Initial Feedback

I'm loving it so far.

The biggest thing I've found wrong is that the menu In-game will only work once and then you can't open it again.
The second biggest thing is the camera controls. I got used to then and they will work to play, but they are not the best and I highly suggest re working them a little bit.
Thirdly the workers will randomly stop working, the only thing I've found that fixes this is assigning them to a completely new group.
All in all it's a great start and I am longingly looking forward to the release of the later iterations and what Sauropod Studios has to show us.

First things fist:
The main menu is fast and crystal clear, no complaints there though I have heard it's taxing some user's GPU to 100% (I haven't checked myself).
Excellent job on the user registration database, I have no issue whatsoever with it. Login is fast, reliable and the interface is clear and unobstructed.

Now, the game:
The visual presentation overall is very good, and the game runs pretty fast for me. The graphics are nice and functional. Thumbs up to whoever handles the visual design of the UI.
The main drawback though is an overall lack of feedback when clicking on things and issuing orders. Ex.: did I just click on that tree or did a issue a move order?

Speaking of move orders, the AI pathfinding is awkward (but at least it works! I have glimpsed from your blog post that you had to design pathfinding from the ground up, so getting it to work at all is good). Though they have a tendency to really favor straight lines, and they don't seem to detect when they're in a collision course with another brickton until they collide; I think they should check for that in a small radius around them, then one brickton keeps his path while the other adapts; ideally brickton soldiers should have priority in keeping their current path over other bricktons "civilians", and bricktons "civilians" carrying things should have priority over those other "civilians" not carrying things.

The sounds (CRIIIKCRRIIKCK) are pleasant overall, bar a few exceptions, and the music is gorgeous. Really good job on the music, I definitely dig it; it exceeds my expectations.

Controls:
Yup, I think you heard it by now. Though they are at least functional (bugs aside), they certainly aren't elegant. Camera movement (spacebar) should be on by default, left-clicking on a control group should select all members of that control group, creating a new mine/new lumber zone shouldn't create a new group, etc. The "hug terrain" feature works really well though, good job. I never got around to understanding the X-ray feature. I thought it would work by "slicing" layers above a certain height, perhaps hiding the contents of undiscovered areas, but it doesn't seem to do that and I can't for the life of me figure out what it does.

Work AI: worst offender
The bricktons' AI can be is unreliable.
Mining is pretty straightforward and seems to work ok, though I would like to see it divided into 2 distinct roles : miner/digger and ore collector. Those 2 different roles don't necessarily have to be explicit (as in different work groups), but then again for the time being maybe it would be wise to have two different work groups for those 2 tasks (mining/digging and collecting ore) for more efficiency.

Lumberjack(ing) (besides the fact defining a lumber zone is screwed up/bugged): I'd like lumberjacks to have a "magnet" effect on the log they're trying to pick up (similar to a miner with ore) as well as a wider pickup radius, as I've often witnessed lumberjacks kicking logs around trying to pick them up. Also, when right-clicking on trees with a group of lumberjacks they should behave "à la Age of Empires" by default, spreading out to chop down the whole forest (although this behavior should be toggleable between global and lumber zone(s) only)

Construction AI is inconsistent.
When it works it's fine, but I can't trust it to handle itself. Ex.: When building a castle, I take great care in issuing commands (such as placing phantom blocks, destroying existing blocks and/or digging) in the correct order I want these tasks to be completed. In the beginning they seem to obey my orders almost to a fault, but somehow as time goes on the bricktons start acting more and more randomly. In my last play session it was to the point where they'd start digging blocks I had ordered to be dug, but then after two blocks had been dug they'd go get a stone brick at the stockpile (which is pretty effing far way), then they'd start digging at another dig spot for 2-3 blocks worth of dirt (while carrying the brick on their back), and then they'd go place the brick they were carrying at some random phantom block. I do not understand their logic, or what they are trying to accomplish. They do not follow my build order, nor do they assign themselves to the task closest to them. And I didn't build a whole bloody castle out of phantom blocks, I merely laid out the first layer of walls (after ordering blocks to be dug, but my priority was disregarded). So in the end the bricktons assigned to construction can get monstrously inefficient.

I would like an option (toggleable) to force bricktons into completing the tasks in the order in which they were issued (though not to the point where they won't pick up brick #2 until after brick #1 as been laid on the ground). Because even as the AI gets more and more refined and reliable, sometimes you just really want certain tasks executed first. Or maybe something like ctrl-clicking on phantom blocks (or those yellow dig/destruction blocks) puts a number next to them, forcing bricktrons to complete those tasks in numerical order before resuming their other construction work.

I would also like to have a new job assignment for bricktons: stockpile clerks. Bricktons assigned to this work group would rationalize stockpiles, taking wood off of stockpiles no longer accepting wood and placing it on stockpiles which do, combining half-full stockpiles together, etc.

Other than that, good job thus far! (I have not crashed once [though others were not that lucky])
I wish you luck in bringing Castle Story to the world!

EDIT:
Almost forgot! Sometimes a brickton will become totally useless, unable to interact with his environment (he won't pick up/drop blocks, he wont be able to chop down a tree and neither will he be able to dig. No, it's not the crystals ). He still has an AI tough, but his inability to interact with anything ends up making him slack off at the stockpile, the lazy *******.

I also have a hard time saving games (i.e. I can't).

As people have said, the controls are super frustrating. And it crashes sometimes when I try to play fullscreen at 2560x1440. or maybe it's when I'm changing resolution. I haven't found a pattern to the it yet.
It took me a while to figure out that you had to hold down space to control the camera. probably not the most intuitive way of doing it.
Right now the thing that frustrates me is when I try to build something I place a blueprint and then I don't know how to go back to not placing blueprints so I can select bricktrons etc again.
I'll figure it out but since it's probably valuable input I decided to write it down first before it makes sense.

edit: forgot to say that it looks good, and like it's going to be great! keep up the good work!

I highly dislike the x-Ray system. Its a little too clonky to use effectively and the tunneling system is difficult to use. I love the game, and it's concept. And I'd love to see more in the way of options in interacting with bricktrons such as asking them to do specific functions like to return a brick to a stockpile, or maybe a blue outline to place an object like a barrel held by a bricktron into an open space instead of the current system which is difficult to use and annoying at best. Or how about the ability to move the contents of a stockpile into another. Or having a intuitive system of if you have 2 stockpiles both have logs and both only have 1 log that the bricktron would consolidate stockpiles for more effective keeping of resources. more options in general to manipulate the world overall would be better. just my 2 cents.

To every 1 that is struggeling with the basic controls
heres a little feedback on what iv learned so far (and plz dont troll me like already knew that)

For camera control u can hole space and the W,A,S,D to move around without using the mouse.
For camera rotation u hold space plus right mouse button to rotate ur view.
For mouse moving camera simply hold space and left mouse to move on the map

mining and building common isue's:

1.the giltched building screen where u cant return is very easy to fix is click on the current building tab below its shown as a hammer icon then hold right mouse then select the stop sign below on the ring and u cancel building mode

2.OMG my miners aind doing nothing glitch is not a glitch ur miners simply dont have a drop off point. Build a stockpile before u do anything else
This goes as follows u chop a tree down by right clicking the tree with a bricktron then logs will apear now select a stockpile on the building screen place it and select a builder to the building tab. This is done by selecting a bricktron and then right clicking on the building tab below on the screen. He will now grab a log and turn it in a stockpile.

3.building bridges. This is still very crude and wont always work like u want it to work. iv done 1 bridge on the prototype map that only work from getting to a higher part of the map (ill post screenshot later).

4.other common isue is the holy hell my worker arent doing nothing any MORE glitch u can prevent this by not going in debug mode. for some reason witch i think is a DEV problem they top acting after u used debub mode and ur main menu will also not apear anymore.

so far what iv figured out good luck to every1 and make epic stuff

I am a developer myself, I don't make games but I have worked with enough code to know that different transitions can hit different bits of code and change the state where it doesn't somewhere else.
The main issues that I could not get around were:
That some bricktrons would get stuck at the bottom of the mine.
I thought the prototype map needs more open space.
Mining trees is unintuitive, how far does it range???
Some bricktrons could not place their bricks and would just walk around forever not placing it.
It is possible to make it so the menu does not appear, not sure how I do it. Sound still happens though.
Bricktrons should build scafholds (I probs spelt that wrong) to get where they need to place the bricks, it is annoying to have to knock down massive walls to place new bricks.
At one point I had about 5 incomplete brick storage piles, they should target the next one that will complete a full packs first.
Building is very slow with only 5 bricktrons, can the patch please have the ability to set the number of required bricktrons.
A list of standard full blueprints as a template might be a good idea too. I.e. A turret or a wall with a door.
And an advanced idea might be to be able to build a whole floor in one hit like the mine creator.

It is a bit too limited for me to play much more at the moment.

Please let me know if my comments were helpful, happy to advise if I can.

Scott

My impressions for the prototype were really like a ride on the rollercoaster... pissed of after waiting till 2:00 am (CET) to get started, sobered and disillusioned after trying for at least 2 hours to simply cut some wood, digg some stones and build a really simple little 6x6 tower, but finally still thrilled for the great potential of this game.

The controls are awfully uncomfortable and go against all my feelings as professional user experience and user interface designer
The camera control actually is okay... Not perfect, but okay!

I gave the prototype a second chance yesterday and after reading some threads with hints, tipps and tricks on the forum, I finally managed to build my first little castle.
I think I don't need to mention the mess of a simple "deselect that damn bricktron"-action... My bricktrons at least get stuck three times on different places on the map and after some building, they don't were able to simply pick up some stones from an destroyed corner of my castle, to use them at another site.

But as already mentioned I'm still thrilled for the great potential of this mashup of concepts from "Minecraft", "Age of Empires" and "Stronghold"

Controls are fine since they are somewhat similar to what Construction Kits of other games like Fallout and Elder Scrolls use but yeah, they could be a little better.

Bridges as told are difficult to make.

Resources are a tad clunky at time and should be reworked. For an example one log should make several planks.

For construction I would suggest some sort of system that prevents more blocks to be taken from that stockpile than necessary. I've seen time I've selected 10 blocks to be placed and the Bricktrons collected 15. (Unsure if that's a bug.)

If a wall or similar collapse then Bricktrons should probably collect the bricks and bring them to a stockpile instead of letting them lay around.

Otherwise I'm having a lot of fun. ^_^ (Save for the longass loading times on saves. >_<)

Love it so far aside from the bugs heres a few to throw on the list in order of priority i feel..

Loading and saving: This seems in dire need of fixing, Spent a few hours making a castle (Well the start of it) Saved the game and went to bed, Woke up did stuff and booted up the game and loaded my save, Camera was miles away from the islands, When I finally got back to the islands all I could see was a few floating bricktrons and some floating trees and the blue crystal, The Islands and castle were invisible.

Bricktrons getting stuck: Said before But really needs fixing, Maybe have them teleport to the crystal if there stuck, (Untill the bug is fixed)

Log Placing: This will help soo much if you can place two logs end to end when supported by one column, And only allow placement of the third if supported by the other column, Pretty much how it is now accept instead of doing the two ends first you can do one end and the middle, And only place the third if it would attach to the other column.

Digging patterns: When our trying to build into the terrain it can be frustrating to get the little guys to knock out one block thats at head height just because theres no block directly below it, A pre designed Digging pattern to create a climbable path would solve this. Or just allow them to break blocks they can reach regardless of whats below/above or around them.

RUBBLE: This is irritating, The rubble you get when you break a block, While it is possible to get a bricktron to pick it up with a bit of manipulation , I Would suggest miners Automatically seek out this stuff before proceeding to mine. (Will help keep the ram clear too,, less for it to worry about)

Bricktrons refusing to drop what there holding, only I found to deal with these is to blow them off the edge and spawn new ones.

Few graphical glitches, see through terrain, ect but not gamebreaking.

i don't see what people are complaining about, this is great for a prototype, the 2 main bugs i think are menu not opening and save load.

For a game that's so far from being finished, I'd say Castle Story is shaping up quite nicely. It WORKS, that's a pretty big start. The visuals are very nice and some of the constructions we can create are downright impressive.

That said, the game has problems, and most of them are centred around the controls. I'm hardly the first one to say this, but nearly everything in Castle Story works in an unintuitive way, as if intentionally made as roundabout as possible. Camera controls are probably the most confusing, with the pressing of space. Here's what I'd suggest - implement edge scrolling, have right-drag always rotate the camera. Mouse wheel always changes elevation, but holding down the mouse wheel and dragging the mouse back and forward should zoom in and out. No more space bar holding. Basically, don't make my ability to look at what I want to look at part of the game's challenge.

Secondly, work groups. On its face, that's not a bad idea - create a job, assign people to it. But you need a better way to dismiss those. For instance, let me shift-click on a work group to dismiss it automatically. That way, if I accidentally create three or four erroneous ones, I can close them like Firefox tabs (which you can close with a mouse wheel click). Additionally, do not ask me to confirm deletion of work groups. The button is tiny enough and hard to hit as it is. That's misclick prevention enough.

The actual gameplay, to be honest, is not bad, bugs and pathing issues aside. However, I have a BIG problem with it - why can't I place blocks on the sides of walls? It makes creating ceilings and bridges nearly impossible and puts an upper limit on the size of buildings we can construct. I get that part of it is fending off monsters at night so castles need some way to topple over, but is there some way we can at least make floors that don't need ugly out-of-place support beams? Or is engineering and load-bearing an intended part of Castle Story?

I don't know, maybe I'm approaching the game from the wrong perspective, but in games like this, I enjoy building a hell of a lot more than combat, and I'd be very interested in a "peaceful" mode where I can just build to my heart's content without having to hunker in the bunker.

My game works fine, of course there are bugs, but they dont bother me as much.

some feedback would be the folowing things.

1) either remove the option the have to use the SPACE key from camera control.

2) make bricktrons prioritize stockpiles, i often have 3-5 stockpiles all partly filled but none done so my builders cant continue.
2a) same with removal bricks from stockpiles for builders, they just randomly pick a stockpile and remove a brick from it and miners cant stoch their resources if all stockpiles are partially filled/empty

3) Keymapping, make players decide wich keys do what. As a CAD user im used to use Shift + mouse to pan/zoom my camera so for me the Space key is a nuisance.

Controls currently don't feel very "Standard" or "Intuitive".

Stuff like the scroll wheel controls are what get me the most. In its current state the scroll wheel is being looked to as an "Elevation" change mechanic. Scrolling "Down"(Toward the player) results in the camera moving "Down" or "Into" the level while scrolling "Up" scrolls the camera "Up" or "Out" of the world. This control feels reversed from the norm where scrolling "Back"(Toward the Player) zooms the camera "Out" while scrolling the scroll-wheel "Forward"(Toward the screen) results in the camera zooming "In" into the level.

TL;DR - Scroll-wheel functionality is reversed compared to predictable norms for the genre.

The controls take a little getting used to, but they work well once you get the hang of it. Most of the bugs are minor with simple workarounds, and gameplay in general is quite entertaining. The only problems that feel urgent are the save/load issues and how the AI has been known to freeze up once you get too many bricktrons. This feels like it has a ton of potential, and I can't wait to see where it goes.

Yeah the camera control is missing up. WASD is the best way to do it. Need some music too ^^

At first I was like.. Are you serious? Like I thought it was so half assed and buggy almost insulting I waited that long to get a hold of it. But after the lag subsided and I could get to it, it was even more frustrating because of the lousy AI but after a while it started to grow on me.. But I will be really pissed if the prototype doesn't receive updates and this is all we get until Christmas.

OK, the carrying of barrels has to go. If you do nothing else, come up with a better system to gain more Bricktons. Right now, it's just awful, awful busywork, yet if I don't do it, mining grinds to a halt because the diggers will stare longingly into a stack of full barrels and do nothing. Emptying them is simply not acceptable, because it requires me to manually order them to be picked up one by one, manually order the Brickton to carry them to the crystal, then manually bring them back and position them precisely for each barrel. That's just busywork that can really, really burn a person out. I suggest letting me either move the large crystal, or otherwise making the transfer automatic, say by adding some sort of crystal altar that's linked to the large crystal. Or at the very least, let me assign a few Bricktons to do this automatically - every time a barrel fills up, have them go pick it up, take it to the crystal and bring it back to where they took it from. This is the kind of micromanagement that I really don't want to have to do.

I also agree with the others - have gatherers and builders prioritise partially empty stacks so we don't end up with a great number of stacks with a single log on them and nowhere to put stones. That's not as big of a problem, but it can get irritating.

Something about "X-ray" mode - it works actually surprisingly well, but all it allows me to do is look at things. I have so far been completely unable to use it to actually issue work orders. Easy example" I build a building complete with walls and a roof when I realise I forgot to put in a floor. The inside is sort of lumpy dirt, so I want to excavate it and put in a wood floor. I can't see inside because there's a roof over it, so I turn on X-ray, go a few levels down and I see the floor. I try to issue an excavation order, but it issues on the roof of the building. So, I'm SEEING through the roof, but clicking still interacts with the topmost layer, not the one I have selected.

Similarly, I found no way at all to remove a wood plank ceiling. I tried excavating it, believing the workers will just go up and break the roof, but they didn't. They didn't do anything at all. I figured that's because it's "man-made," so next I picked up my builders and shift-clicked on every plank of the roof. Still nothing. They sit idle and won't work. I force-moved them to the roof, thinking maybe they can't find their way, still nothing. They refuse to work on it. At all. At this point, I don't know what to do, other than just give up.

Also - is there any way to force diggers and loggers to dig and log even when there is no stockpile area to drip their resources at? Why I say this is sometimes I need to excavate an area to make room for more stockpiles, but my workers won't excavate until I build more stockpiles. It becomes a conundrum - I need to dig to build stockpiles and I need to build stockpiles to dig. No-win. Frustrating, too.

Also - and this is just me being picky, but is it possible to get an upright stone block? We have an upright log to make log pillars out of, why not an upright stone block?

For a prototype I have two words

Absolutely Brilliant

The camera controls are a bit of a pain at first but easy enough to get on with once your used to them, Grouping I like.

Biggest issues are the obvious really.

No tutorial, (A five min help vid would do WONDERS for most people, Theres already a few about so may I suggest rounding them up and putting them in a sticky.

Save and load function is kinda wonky.

It works only sometimes, If you just started and done nothing, it will work, If you spent 3-4 hours building something, It bugs out majorly making you lose everything. (The BIGGEST issue and needs a fix asap please)

AI pathfinding has a minor issue, It seems that when a bricktron picks up a block to go and place it, The AI determines the best route. Great, Only issue is it counts BRICKTRONS as obsticals.

Had two builders on a wall and a third going to get a brick, he picked it up and just stood there, He remained there until I physically told the other two to move, Then he went and placed the block.

I Noticed the game is 32-bit mode only, I REALLY REALLY hope this is just the prototype and not the final game, 90% of computer owners are on 64-bit machines, 32-bit is pretty much dead. (Hint Hint)

Aside a few other niggly bugs this is shaping up to be an awsome game, That I will be playing for a while to come

Keep up the good work

This screenshot look familiar to anyone still getting Kickstarter updates? Lucky turd.