I haven't played the new version much (I tried it once, what difficulty setting corresponds to the old difficulty?), but in the previous version I found upgrading units (archers in particular) more useful that building new units, at least until wave 20 or so. The reason is that one upgraded archer did more damage (per second) than two non-upgraded ones, and upgrading it again was likewise better than building an extra unit.
The trade-off is that at larger wave numbers, you don't get enough damage/second unless you also have a long path. I think the furthest I've been able to get was wave 35 or so.
I did an experiment there once and with mostly upgraded footmen (I think I had one or two archers) I was able to survive until wave 28 or so, so it does seem that all units are worthwhile - the only unit I haven't been able to use effectively is the mage.
All of this on the "vilage" map, by the way. I haven't tried any of the others...
The problem is that the amount of gold you get is rather limited, and mages and longbowmen are just too expensive to upgrade them, which limits their usefulness. I wanted to try for a combination of mages+pikemen, with the slow-down compensating for the slow attack speed, but I was never able to make it work...
Things I would experiment with:
More gold if you defeat enemies quickly? Some way to optimise gold income anyway; as it is, the loss of income if enemies escape make it inevitable that you will lose the game (it hurts more than the health reduction, at least early on).
Increase damage of the pikeman, at last when fully upgraded. It would be nice if it had the highest damage output, since as it is you'd rather have a longbow-guy because he's superior in every way (except price). There needs to be more of a trade-off.
Reduce cost of the wizard... right now they're just too expensive even to really experiment with. Alternatively: make them a bit stronger.
I found the following strategy to be quite succesful: build up a gauntlet of upgraded archers near the entry point, and use footmen to block off the paths you don't want. I had a few longbowmen in there as well.
Pikemen are useful at choke-points due to their high damage, but they are hampered by their slow attack speed (I think this gets better if you upgrade them, but my impression is that they don't quite improve enough). You can offset this a bit with a mage, but I haven't really been able to make that work.
In general, I find that upgrading units is well worth it (you can hold out until wave 23 or so with just five units, but after that you simply can't do enough damage in the time you have and it's hard to add more units at that stage because non-upgraded units don't do enough for you), but what it does could be a bit clearer. It would be nice if you could move a unit that is not optimally placed (for a price).
One complaint I have about unit AI is that they always try to target the most advanced enemy unit. This isn't always optimal and it would be interesting if this could be tweaked.
Finally, a gameplay suggestion: give the player the option of skipping to the next stage if it's clear that the last remaining units cannot be killed. Right now you have to wait for them to walk off the edge of the map, which is a bit annoying.
EDT: forgot to say: animate some of those animals in the village! It looks a bit dull that they're basically background tiles. Nothing fancy, an idle animation will do (if they move around they could mess up the path, which could be interesting, but it probably just ends up being annoying).
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be interested in having an axe or club attack; I guess I mainly want that for the LPC base assets, but it'd be neat for this guy too.
Other than that... I don't know, some sort of cape maybe, for a leader/general?
A shield could be useful too.
But if I'm allowed to go on a tangent, what I would actually really like is the Wartotaur...
I tend to use the "experimental" new search feature (http://opengameart.org/search/solr), which in my experience produces better results than the regular one.
Perhaps rather than trying to fix the "normal" search, it's a better idea to finish whatever is missing for the experimental one?
I ran the top hat through my headgear spritesheet generator, with the attached result (for male and female characters). I simply copied the hat over for each facing, figuring it was rotation symmetric. It lacks the death animation though...
I would definitely not suggest updating LPC asset clothes. Just the base would be quite enough work at 4 facings, and that's before considering male and female sprites (so 8 in total). Colour variations could be ignored as could skeletons/orcs/lizardfolk.
People with limited pixel-art skills are rather more likely to update clothing for their particular need (it's easier) than they are to do a from-scratch animation. Likewise, updating the colour variations is fairly straightforward (but tedious) as is updating the orcs from the base assets. I think the same goes for lizardfolk; skeletons are more difficult but less useful because they are less likely to be player characters.
If you don't want to do it that's of course fine (it's your time to invest in what you want, afterall) but for me personally (and I'm sure for others as well) updated LPC sprites would be much more useful than arbitrary other sprites because I use the LPC bases to build my own characters. I don't make my own because the LPC assets are simply better than what I could do myself, even with the limitations they have. Mostly, I miss idle animations, pickup/drop animations and jump animations; some of the attack animations look a bit weird as well (sword slash/stab for instance) but that's not such a major issue.
I won't pretend to speak for anyone else, but for me at least it's not so clear what exactly you're offering.
However, if you're interested in contributing something more generally useful, I think additional animations for the LPC base assets would be very useful. They lack a jumping animation, for instance.
I haven't played the new version much (I tried it once, what difficulty setting corresponds to the old difficulty?), but in the previous version I found upgrading units (archers in particular) more useful that building new units, at least until wave 20 or so. The reason is that one upgraded archer did more damage (per second) than two non-upgraded ones, and upgrading it again was likewise better than building an extra unit.
The trade-off is that at larger wave numbers, you don't get enough damage/second unless you also have a long path. I think the furthest I've been able to get was wave 35 or so.
I did an experiment there once and with mostly upgraded footmen (I think I had one or two archers) I was able to survive until wave 28 or so, so it does seem that all units are worthwhile - the only unit I haven't been able to use effectively is the mage.
All of this on the "vilage" map, by the way. I haven't tried any of the others...
The problem is that the amount of gold you get is rather limited, and mages and longbowmen are just too expensive to upgrade them, which limits their usefulness. I wanted to try for a combination of mages+pikemen, with the slow-down compensating for the slow attack speed, but I was never able to make it work...
Things I would experiment with:
Added another transition, this one featuring sand (the recoloured version from http://opengameart.org/content/lpc-sandrock-alt-colors rather than the original bright yellow).
Pretty nice.
I found the following strategy to be quite succesful: build up a gauntlet of upgraded archers near the entry point, and use footmen to block off the paths you don't want. I had a few longbowmen in there as well.
Pikemen are useful at choke-points due to their high damage, but they are hampered by their slow attack speed (I think this gets better if you upgrade them, but my impression is that they don't quite improve enough). You can offset this a bit with a mage, but I haven't really been able to make that work.
In general, I find that upgrading units is well worth it (you can hold out until wave 23 or so with just five units, but after that you simply can't do enough damage in the time you have and it's hard to add more units at that stage because non-upgraded units don't do enough for you), but what it does could be a bit clearer. It would be nice if you could move a unit that is not optimally placed (for a price).
One complaint I have about unit AI is that they always try to target the most advanced enemy unit. This isn't always optimal and it would be interesting if this could be tweaked.
Finally, a gameplay suggestion: give the player the option of skipping to the next stage if it's clear that the last remaining units cannot be killed. Right now you have to wait for them to walk off the edge of the map, which is a bit annoying.
EDT: forgot to say: animate some of those animals in the village! It looks a bit dull that they're basically background tiles. Nothing fancy, an idle animation will do (if they move around they could mess up the path, which could be interesting, but it probably just ends up being annoying).
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be interested in having an axe or club attack; I guess I mainly want that for the LPC base assets, but it'd be neat for this guy too.
Other than that... I don't know, some sort of cape maybe, for a leader/general?
A shield could be useful too.
But if I'm allowed to go on a tangent, what I would actually really like is the Wartotaur...
I added two extra transitions (for dark dirt and snow). I'll probably tweak the latter one a bit later.
Does it correct the alignment problems mentioned for the original entry (http://opengameart.org/content/lpc-goblin)?
Either way, this looks pretty awesome!
I tend to use the "experimental" new search feature (http://opengameart.org/search/solr), which in my experience produces better results than the regular one.
Perhaps rather than trying to fix the "normal" search, it's a better idea to finish whatever is missing for the experimental one?
I ran the top hat through my headgear spritesheet generator, with the attached result (for male and female characters). I simply copied the hat over for each facing, figuring it was rotation symmetric. It lacks the death animation though...
I would definitely not suggest updating LPC asset clothes. Just the base would be quite enough work at 4 facings, and that's before considering male and female sprites (so 8 in total). Colour variations could be ignored as could skeletons/orcs/lizardfolk.
People with limited pixel-art skills are rather more likely to update clothing for their particular need (it's easier) than they are to do a from-scratch animation. Likewise, updating the colour variations is fairly straightforward (but tedious) as is updating the orcs from the base assets. I think the same goes for lizardfolk; skeletons are more difficult but less useful because they are less likely to be player characters.
If you don't want to do it that's of course fine (it's your time to invest in what you want, afterall) but for me personally (and I'm sure for others as well) updated LPC sprites would be much more useful than arbitrary other sprites because I use the LPC bases to build my own characters. I don't make my own because the LPC assets are simply better than what I could do myself, even with the limitations they have. Mostly, I miss idle animations, pickup/drop animations and jump animations; some of the attack animations look a bit weird as well (sword slash/stab for instance) but that's not such a major issue.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the subject...
I won't pretend to speak for anyone else, but for me at least it's not so clear what exactly you're offering.
However, if you're interested in contributing something more generally useful, I think additional animations for the LPC base assets would be very useful. They lack a jumping animation, for instance.
Pages