*Massive progress update* Fort Triumph - fantasy XCOM

Community Showcases
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20/4/2017 Edit: Massive update this time -

Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forttriumph/fort-triumph-tactical-rpg

We just launched and it’s progressing great. 5% in the first 4 hours

There are so many new images and texts, not going to update the relevant materials here. You can see them on the KS page :slight_smile: I think they’re pretty awesome

Please support us. Happy to answer any questions anyone has

(previous edits)
Edit: We’re on greenlight! You can see a lot of updated videos and images there
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=731893430

Fort Triumph is like fantasy XCOM, with very dynamic environments. It’s inspired by XCOM and Heroes

Video, screenshots and the playable build available below. Would love to hear any and all feedback, much appreciated and necessary

We wanted to recreate the amazing tactical gameplay from our favorite tactics games, and adds ideas that improve on it. Battle in dynamic environments, analyze your situation and outsmart your enemies again overwhelming odds using only your wits.

What we intend to do with Fort Triumph

  • XCOM in a fantasy setting
  • Dynamic environments. Knock down pillars, collapse walls, burn trees, push enemies
  • Deep tactical gameplay encouraging smart plays and thinking outside the box
  • Campaign with several characters
  • Multiple environments. Battle in Forests, Castles, Ancient Ruins, Villages, Dungeons, Caves and more
  • Unique art style
  • Deep strategic layer influencing and being influenced by tactical missions
  • A variety of characters with different abilities, and a leveling system making them more powerful and unique

Animated gifs

And the playable build
<Edit… Playable build removed for now, debating if to bring it back. Post something if you want me to, I’m easily persuaded/bribed :p>

Always looking for feedback.

Some more links. Like us and stuff! We appreciate it, and will shower you with affection should we ever meet in person

https://twitter.com/AdamZeira
@FortTriumph

Thanks!

4 Likes
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Impressive work so far! I only played through the first campaign mission (I’m at work, so I can’t be doing much more just yet!), but here are my initial thoughts:

Liked

  • Dialogue - Felt very natural, and I like the atmosphere you’re creating with it.
  • Controls - Sure they need more polishing, but a mouse interface like this is tough to create, and you’ve got a nice system underway.
  • Movement system - Easy to understand terrain.
  • Level Map - Hexes!

What to improve

  • In dialogue windows, if the text goes past the container, I couldn’t figure out how to scroll and read the rest of it. So I’d just click through and miss the rest of what was being said, which was disappointing because the dialogue is actually pretty good!
  • Was a bit unclear on how movement points were calculated, and where I could move. Maybe I just need to spend a bit of time with it, though.
  • Maybe throw in a Screen.showCursor = false; to hide the system cursor while playing, since you have your own.

Unsure

  • Maybe just because it’s the tutorial, but I didn’t attack anything. Just kicked boulders into them. I do feel that this is maybe to get the point across that you should use your environment to your advantage, though, so I’m not indicating this as a criticism.

I’m excited to see this game going forward! Great work so far!

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Thanks for the feedback!

  • fixed the dialogue size bug! if it shows up again could you let me know?
  • movements points: units have 1 movement point and 1 action point, moving 4 tiles costs 1 point, and it converts the action point to movement if there isn’t enough… realizing as I’m writing this, yeah, that’s too complicated :slight_smile: need to find an easy way to explain it in the UI. or change the mechanic. the idea behind it was that with a movement point you would always be free to move then act, thus making the game more… dynamic? than for example shadowrun returns where you’re better off shooting from place with all your action points a lot of the time
  • mouse cursor: not seeing the cursor on my end, at least when the focus is on the webplayer, if it persists or if anyone else has this problem please bring it up

thanks again

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I’ll definitely dig in more later. Because I genuinely want to play the game!

I like the way you described movement/actions. Reminds me of the new X-Com style of movement. I guess maybe just try to explain it somehow for dum-dums like me. :slight_smile:

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thanks! sounds like you know the genre. looking forward to your feedback

uploaded a new version with a bug fix or two, including the dreaded tiny scrolling edge
so far on the list of things to do from feedback

  • movement/action points explained better
  • indication of where objects will fly towards/hit
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Updated with a completely new version, testing out basic gameplay fun. feedback always welcome!

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Hello

I tried really quick, and it’s the kind of game that I could like ( but I’m not a fan of heroic fantasy game)
There is one thing that always bother me with this type of game, it’s the random part, like an enemy do a critic attack on you and kill you or you miss an attack and fuck up all your strategy .

I know a lot of people don’t care about the random stuff , but I do. choose the direction you want , there always be player that won’t like it .

good prototype , keep at it

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Hey Ehnn - played the demo.
I like the smooth animations of the characters, for an artist I’d like to have a zoom feature to see the characters better. Possibly on a character select screen you can show the character models in all there glory, and maybe a bestiary to see the creatures in better detail as well.
The controls are solid, though I didn’t know to rotate the view until I read the OP, so some of the enemies were obstructed and I didn’t know what was going on when the hidden enemies were attacking, until one of my characters went down from an arrow to the throat! :slight_smile:

I’m probably in the minority but I like to see command buttons show up - like gui buttons near the character. The funny icons that showed up above the characters didn’t feel interactive or responsive. Maybe having subtle rollover sounds and highlights would improve these elements.

I know there’s a lot of things to work on so the lack of music/sound fx was expected, but the one thing that I didn’t like (not sure if this is even possible to change) was the world scrolling when the mouse neared the edge of the window. It was super fast and happened unintentionally several times.

The fighting and movement mechanics are sound and worked as expected, so just a little polish, a couple sound fx, some story and I think you’ll have a solid project to move forward with. I concur with 1HpLeft, good prototype! keep it up. And thanks for supplying via web player.

Edit: After subscribing and confirming via email, I clicked on the “continue to our website” button link, it went straight to a google error page. pasted below
404. That’s an error.
The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

The requested site is http://www.adamzeira.com/

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1HpLeft - thanks, I agree - the randomness is too much at the moment, particularly because you don’t have a lot of ways to make smart plays - so even if you use the terrain and your units perfectly, there’s still a chance of losing. I’ll need to tweak it

theANMATOR2b - thanks! at some point, probably in the nearby future, I want to add cameras that zoom into the action when your character scores a kill or an enemy shows up - it’s one of the things XCOM did brilliantly, and I think that relates to what you’re describing about zooming in to see the characters better, it makes the player connect to them so much better

the window scrolling is too fast - I’ve been playing the game so long I didn’t notice that :slight_smile: slowed it down by a good 30%, if you get the chance let me know if it feels too slow now. it’s funny, I like the little psychological aspects of these decisions, and I think by slowing it down it gives the player more of a chance to take in the scenery :slight_smile:

really debating what to do about the UI… nobody likes it (myself included), but I’m not sure what to do that’ll work best. if anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them

thanks so so much for letting me know about the email thing, that could have gone unnoticed for a long time

uploaded a new version with a small UI fix, some changes to the terrain, and a troll!

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So I’m working on another tactics rpg with some similar influences. So honestly, I’ve really struggled, very intimately with some of the problems you’re dealing with.

You’re taking a very smart approach in the open demo for feedback. One of the problems though with rough prototypes or demos is - it can be hard for the person using it to understand what they’re doing and what their options are. As a player of xcom, and a developer of a similar game, I should know how your game worked. But it took me a few minutes to figure it out - even basic things like: “how do i attack?” and “is my guy ranged?”. I would suggest firstly adding at least some basic HUD overlay that says if your ranged or not at minimum. Tutorials and stuff take a lot of time, but maybe just a little label in the top right that says “right mouse to attack” or whatever.

Making it so people can actually understand easier will improve the blind feedback rate and quality.

Likewise, some of the responsiveness in world needs to be clearly explained - I as an xcom player recognized the AI triggering overwatch (I think). But you need to make some of these basic mechanics 100% clear if you want feedback on them. You need to pop text over their head that explains - personally I think it’d be better if you add some personality, “he’s here!” then the guy runs, or “they’re coming!” “let’s get them!” or something. With your art style being kind of playful, imo, you should press that angle with a lot of personality in the characters.

The UI itself is tricky. It really depends on how you want the game to play. For my game, I modeled the tactical environment/scale after the King’s Bounty series, so smaller scale - and very quick. For the interactivity I copied xcoms “act and confirm” system with a few twists to make it smoother for a melee oriented game. I think it’s fast, fairly clear and feels good. It was also tons and tons of work. My goal for the UI feel was first and foremost that I wanted it to feel ‘fast’ - i hate waiting for stuff in TB games, especially wading through menus like in Blackguards.

You need to choose your priorities for the interface depending on the gameplay you’re looking for. My game wanted ‘fast’ your game might want something more thoughtful and informative (but obviously still smooth).

I’m willing to share some stuff with you if you want - at minimum i have a simple ‘rotate to face camera’ script you can dump onto your healthbars! :slight_smile:

EDIT:
Just wanted to add a note: spend the absolute minimum amount of time possible to clearly communicate whats going on. Don’t bother showing all the stats, or a solid well thought out HUD. Just add the -absolute minimum- to clearly communicate to the user what his options are and what’s happening. I made the mistake of trying to add these things with too much detail and attention and wasted tons of time on some iterations.

Your goal at this point is to collect feeedback and test stuff - so make sure people can do that for you. Anything more than that is a waste of time until you’ve got some firm directions in mind.

1 Like
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ive been sort of thinking about your demo (maybe some kind of procrastination - maybe just trying to earn some good karma so people give me more constructive feedback as well).

So in terms of collecting good feedback, you might also want to try to guide them toward the kinds of things you want them to do. Give them primary / secondary goals sort of like you might in a real scenario:
“Primary: Kill the ogre”
“Secondary: Kill 2 or more goblins”

It’s pretty likely you will want that code anyway, and if you put it there it’ll help guide the user feedback.

As a person hitting your webplayer demo, I had no idea what exactly to do. “Sandbox” is a good thing for a mature, fleshed out world game like Skyrim - for a test platform to help narrow your design priorities, you need to point people in the directions you need to go towards.

You also need to set their expectations “You will win if you use cover, please try it!” - the ‘discovery’ process for players only really works when you have something fleshed out - nobody wants to explore or experiment with a game before it’s got all the bells and whistles.

You may want to set up a little notification box just for your testing process to ask testers to look at or consider specific things. Again, doesn’t need to be fancy.

Again, these are sort of a mixture of my own experiences from my own project and some random thoughts. YMMV.

1 Like
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frosted - thanks! Implemented a quick few of the things you suggested - a quick tutorial for control and objectives to make things clearer. kind of meshed the points you brought up - it’s a small box saying ‘use cover’ and ‘kill all enemies’, gonna see what the feedback is and change it accordingly. if you wanna add something about it, please do!

I could definitely see how there needs to be some indication as to what unit is selected. I’ll implement it hopefully before tomorrow

in regards to responsiveness, I love that idea! I think clarity of actions and understanding what’s going on is extremely important in these types of games… was wondering what to do about it, and you gave me the solution. I’ll have the AI have a hover over with “HISSS” or “Oomans!” or something. I think right now the disction between “your turn” and “their turn” is a bit blurred and needs some work… trying to think of how to do it elegantly. I think music will contribute a lot to this

Haha, I know exactly what you mean about the slow UI thing - I say the exact same thing, and the same blackguards example :slight_smile: (though check out warmachine tactics if you really want to see a game where you deal with UI half the time). I think making the player play a UI menu game every time he wants to do a simple attack kills the flow of things. also if you obscure very little of the screen, the player has more of a chance to “take it all in” and start living in it. it’s why most of my UI I try to put in the game world itself (though that point still needs work…). the more I work on games the more I realize how ridiculously important UI is to the feel of things

uploaded new version, a few bug fixes, melee overwatch and short explanation

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New version uploaded - most of your suggestions are in, and I think it’s vastly improved

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Oh dude, way - way better! The responses are fantastic and work perfectly.

You can really do quite a lot with that.

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thanks man! any more suggestions are gladly welcome. there are actually 4 more levels, a strategic layer and some more classes/abilities, but I want to make the first level as fun as possible to make sure the ‘baseline’ of fun is there before adding a bunch of content. Also in regards to the code sharing thing, I’d love to - add me on facebook, Adam Zeira.

I have some questions about your game, will post them on your thread

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new version uploaded. some experimental UI changes, got rid of all the not-unity-gui

tried playing with the camera so the monsters appearing you is more dramatic… not sure it’s pulled off yet though. lemme know what you think

also not as many replies lately. wondering if it’s time to put in the strategic layer and class system and other levels ( they’re kind of just sitting there) or keep trying to make the 1st mission experience better. I feel it’s not nearly as exciting as XCOMs 1st mission, and that bothers me. wondering what to do to get there… better AI? fighting destroys terrain? more mobility? tweak balance?

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Looks really good - it’s not unusual for replies to be slow early in development from what I can tell, don’t let it discourage you!

More pictures seem to keep people interested!

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New version uploaded, archer AI better so it tries to flank you, and small UI changes

next up is making it so ranged shots can hit and destroy cover (and adding more destructible cover)

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New version uploaded, lots of changes, I think it’s a lot more fun now! though I’m a bit biased :slight_smile:

one known bug - the warrior has his selection halo completely messed up. what the hell, unity 5? anyone have any idea what that is?

Made a lot of changes and migrated to unity 5, hopefully nothing broke. I think mission gameplay is finally fun enough, gonna add the strategic layer next, have a bunch of cool ideas about it

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based on feedback, (hopefully) improved the understanding of the gameplay

I think cover still needs a bit of ‘good UI’ work, and maybe some damage bonuses

Hopefully moving on to the strategic layer soon