Assault Android Cactus Steam Early Access & Demo released!

[GreyWizzard]

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[Madmya]

Ive been running it at 1080p, graphics maxxed out on my surface pro. Was fine!

[Ben]

Daw just beat the second boss and got excited when "new android unlocked!" popped up, but then it was just Starch again

Does S+ require no damage at all? Or full combo? Or score based but you get vital bonuses for doing those things?

[Sonic Jam]

Daw just beat the second boss and got excited when "new android unlocked!" popped up, but then it was just Starch again

Does S+ require no damage at all? Or full combo? Or score based but you get vital bonuses for doing those things?

S+ requires full chain + min score threshold (no dawdling/low dps runs). You lose 10% of your current score for each death (and obviously break chain) and you get a score bonus for fast clears.

You also get a score bonus for near simultaneous kills, notice the chain counter turns red momentarily when that happens

Sorry about the bug on new character unlock, there are still a few androids left to be created so keep an eye on that spot

[Scullibundo]

Gave three or four levels a bash. Runs really smoothly on my shitty lap and looks great!

I'm sure it's just me being shit, but I sometimes confuse incoming bullets with the energy balls being drawn to me and end up trying to avoid them.

Nevertheless, well done!

[Ben]

S+ requires full chain + min score threshold (no dawdling/low dps runs). You lose 10% of your current score for each death (and obviously break chain) and you get a score bonus for fast clears.

You also get a score bonus for near simultaneous kills, notice the chain counter turns red momentarily when that happens

Sorry about the bug on new character unlock, there are still a few androids left to be created so keep an eye on that spot

Ah awesome, thank you for the info! I got S+ on the second stage (first real stage after tutorial) and S on a few others. It's addictive. First boss I'm up to about 145,000 and B rank.

edit: fuck yeah S+ first three stages

[Sonic Jam]

Gave three or four levels a bash. Runs really smoothly on my shitty lap and looks great!

I'm sure it's just me being shit, but I sometimes confuse incoming bullets with the energy balls being drawn to me and end up trying to avoid them.

Nevertheless, well done!

A lot of our feedback is colour based, blue hurts the player, yellow hurts the enemy, and red hurts both (bombs, lasers, fire). If the shapes are too similar maybe try focussing on the colour patterns.

It's a tough problem to solve really because we ran out of colour space and shapes to some degree If you have any helpful suggestions we're all ears though.

[Deef]

Which character you favouring Ben?

[Ben]

I think I've probably used Starch the most now.. but sometimes I find it is quite stage dependent as to the character I'm leaning towards. Small close-knit stages Coral can decimate, especially with the secondary weapon in your wake, but then for bigger stages I might use Cactus or Starch. Holly I like for mid sized stages because if she's too far you don't get a lock on the enemies. Lemon I admittedly haven't used too much.

All said though I'm still trying them all out and getting a feel for them, can't wait to see what the other androids are going to be like.

[Deef]

154,408 on Embryo.

[Scullibundo]

Gave three or four levels a bash. Runs really smoothly on my shitty lap and looks great!

I'm sure it's just me being shit, but I sometimes confuse incoming bullets with the energy balls being drawn to me and end up trying to avoid them.

Nevertheless, well done!

A lot of our feedback is colour based, blue hurts the player, yellow hurts the enemy, and red hurts both (bombs, lasers, fire). If the shapes are too similar maybe try focussing on the colour patterns.

It's a tough problem to solve really because we ran out of colour space and shapes to some degree If you have any helpful suggestions we're all ears though.

Yeah I guess it would've been cool if the energy balls became energy triangles.

[selfish]

Just had a go at the demo. It's fun just to control - nice work! Anything beyond that is a bonus.

I had some weirdness where the mouse cursor was 20px or so below where the image of the cursor was though? On OSX.

[unfnknblvbl]

The missus says "ooooh, that's pretty!"

I'm still digging this game after 24 hours. That's pretty damned good for me these days.

[unfnknblvbl]

Oh, and I accidentally managed to try playing the game while transcoding a 12-hour audiobook. Game still ran at 60fps at 2560x1600 so I'm pretty impressed.

[Sonic Jam]

Just had a go at the demo. It's fun just to control - nice work! Anything beyond that is a bonus.

I had some weirdness where the mouse cursor was 20px or so below where the image of the cursor was though? On OSX.

Hmm do you have multi-monitor setup? I've seen this bug once before on Linux with multiple monitors running different resolutons, I think it may be Unity-side.

unfnknblvbl - That's awesome I hope you invited your misses for some co-op! We're pretty performance focussed too so I'm not surprised it was cruising along, for some reason on PC very few people talk about or appreciate a game that runs well so it's nice to see that comment

60fps, bright colours, the way a Dreamcast era game was meant to be played.

[Ben]

Played a good few hours of this in 4 player last night, had an absolute blast. A couple of common things we found come up between us were control related, but I do notice that full customisation is an option in the full version so I don't know how much of it will be moot points.

One person suggested a toggle for the main fire button rather than hold as after a while holding the trigger can be tough. Another line of thinking we had was geometry wars style where you firing with the right analogue stick as soon as you aim with it and don't have a fire button at all.

Something else that came up was reviving yourself, after holding the trigger for a while It's probably the hardest input on the controller to push repeatedly, and we figured it might be better served to map It to a face button, or mash any face button, or even analogue stick waggle. This is assuming though that the r trigger pull to revive isnt an intentional design choice to make dying less appealing and more of a reason not to go down.

Probably the only other problem we had was with the adaptive camera In 4p , at Its highest zoom sometimes it just needed to pull out a touch further. We found if we had players at the top and bottom sometimes one of us would end up off screen. To help combat this you could probably make the player name/stats go transparent as you go under them (if it doesn't already, I do remember the battery doesn't so that's why I thought of it).


Other than those few things we had heaps of fun, we managed to beat all rhere stages but the last two, discs I think, and the one with the damaging red cubes that rise from the ground. We got bloody close though! I think you've gotten the timing of the levels just perfect too, the elation that we all roared into after finally beating vespula , the collective sighs and frustration after just missing battery time extends, that godlike feeling when you snag a speedup then a firepower pickup, then a shutdown

We all can't wait to see the other androids and the full package once it's complete!

[Deef]

Just in case you didn't notice Ben (because I didn't notice the contrary) and assuming you use an Xbox controller, you can also use the bumpers as well as the triggers. But I agree about the mashing, even the bumper is noticeably not mash-friendly. I noticed that even in 1 player you can go off the bottom of the screen against the boss (running in 16:9), but didn't really present much of an issue.

I've been playing 2 player mode solo [forever_alone.jpg] and just letting Starch sit there after her first knockdown. It's a bit odd I know, I feel a little dirty for bastardising SJ's game, but the extra mania is too enticing, and the powerups and the voice-overs and the excellent music-play... can't resist. I really do love how the game gets pretty sick when everything is rolling for you, with those voice-overs and the music reacting to the action, yet it doesn't actually look like it's trying to deliberately excite anyone. That understated hype, and the music's connection to what's happening, are two particular design choices I keep admiring.

I got a 233 chain with Holly on the first real stage (I was a little chuffed) and still couldn't crack S rank.

[Shaneus]

Thought I'd make a new thread for this, as part of winning best action game in that Intel competition we have been greenlit for release on Steam, and the game is now available!

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WOOT!

Now I know why you got me to create the GAF thread

[Ben]

Ah yeah we were using 360 controllers, thank you Deef I did not realize you could use the bumpers as well. I dare say that will make things a bit easier than using the trigger for revives.

I wish I recorded some of us playing to show you just how much fun we had though SJ

[Sonic Jam]

Camera needs a few tweaks, its mainly when you move down the bottom it has a little bit of trouble catching up due to the angle.

You can actually spam ANY button (including face buttons) it just says spam fire, we found this worked out pretty good to catch people who spammed the 'A' button on their xbox pad, I'll try and think of the best way to explain that.

We thought about geo wars style controls but there's something nice about the tactile nature of having to fire & weapon swap, we will do full reconfiguration at some point so maybe that will help with some issues.

Awesome to hear you having a good time We've had a few very unhappy people who assumed there was going to be online co-op... Which is tough, and a few people who absolutely hate the battery mechanic, which I expected. We're not an identical game to Geo Wars or SSHD and we're fine with that, diversity is the spice of life and I hope for every one person who hates what we're all about there's another who's totally in to it!

Sorry for the rushed replies, am very tired

[Deef]

Stuff that, I love the battery mechanic. Damage still completely matters and it's great to have the damage mechanic work in a refreshing way, then adding the "time extension" concept onto that... personally I love it. I've already remarked on all this when plugging AAC to another forum.

Plus all the "Battery up", "Battery over here", etc comments... I love them. I love literally everything that voice says.

Can mash any button?? Arrrrrgh! Lol.

[unfnknblvbl]

yeah, the battery thing is a bit strange - it's not exactly obvious what's going on there at first, but I may not have paid much attention during the tutorial

[Sonic Jam]

Oh btw, you can't get above an A rank with your multiplayer method Deef, if you die it prohibits S/S+ ranks (And your second character will die).

I might include an enemy multiplier setting in the EX options later on just for people like you.

[Rorschach]

Sonic, if you are looking for a professional voice actor for any future games let me know. Mate in Japan (American) does that kind of thing and wants to get into games. Has a demo track if you're interested.

[Deef]

@SJ
Ah, wow in that case because that "A" circle was very near complete.
Yay for any mania-adding options. Honestly I can only really handle it with Holly or Lemon, since I suck at twin stick aiming.