pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,806
46
91
http://www.townsgame.com/

Saw this is on steam now. There is a demo on the dev site.

Kind of like minecraft and a city builder game had a baby...

Seems a bit confusing. not sure how you get more people in your settlement. Some die by fighting monsters and I can't tell how to get more.

Also I can't figure out if there is a rotate feature. the digging/mining part of the game is really confusing because you have to build ladders and sometimes you can't see where you need to be or build one. sometimes it seems like people just fall into the ground and then can't get back up.
 

Kalmah

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2003
3,692
1
76
http://www.townsgame.com/

Saw this is on steam now. There is a demo on the dev site.

Kind of like minecraft and a city builder game had a baby...

Seems a bit confusing. not sure how you get more people in your settlement. Some die by fighting monsters and I can't tell how to get more.

Also I can't figure out if there is a rotate feature. the digging/mining part of the game is really confusing because you have to build ladders and sometimes you can't see where you need to be or build one. sometimes it seems like people just fall into the ground and then can't get back up.

I had a look at it.. seemed more like an alpha-build of a game than anything. Things like you mentioned with the ladders, are they bugs or badly implemented features?
 

pontifex

Lifer
Dec 5, 2000
43,806
46
91
I had a look at it.. seemed more like an alpha-build of a game than anything. Things like you mentioned with the ladders, are they bugs or badly implemented features?


badly implemented imo...if you could rotate your view, it seems like it would be a simple fix.
 

coldmeat

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2007
9,214
78
91
lol dwarf fortress. You can't honestly expect me to play that? It feels like my eyes are being raped.
 

SomeoneSimple

Member
Aug 15, 2012
63
0
0
If only you could mod the graphics.

I like DF, at least the mechanics and gameplay, and with tilesets it looks perfectly fine.

That said, after playing it for a while, I won't touch DF anymore, not even with a ten-foot pole.

I am completely frustrated by its absolutely horrid user interface, controls that only feel natural to masochists and more importantly, the creator's stance on not supporting modders to fix these points, even though fixing the UI has the most requested feature for a looong time now.

I can only hope that the supporters of the game will finally stop donating and move on, so the developer has to stop implementing useless crap and instead fix the playability of the game to regain support from a wider audience.

That is all. :colbert:
 
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modestninja

Senior member
Jul 17, 2003
753
0
76
eh...not really. kinda slow and confusing to me. don't think I would buy it.

oh, and as far as i can tell you have no direct control over your villagers.

The game is still alpha so it's pretty rough at this point and new features are getting added pretty regularly. Also, the point with most of these games is that you don't have direct control over the citizens. You only influence what they do.

I got the game in the Alpha bundle from Indie Royale and have played it off an on for a while. The devs have made some big strides from early on and the game has gotten quite a bit deeper with additions like an economy, heroes and multiple levels for your buildings. If they keep it up once this game gets to Beta and/or release level, it could be pretty good.
 

coldmeat

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2007
9,214
78
91
Needs a lot of work yet. Micromanaging things like scaffolding is not fun, and actually pretty frustrating when you take it down after building a house, and there is still a villager on the roof that you didn't see, so you have to build the scaffolding again, then assign a bunch of tasks around the village so that he will hopefully get something to do and climb down. And usually the villager that was assigned to build the scaffold was the one who was stuck on the roof.

You also can't just tell them to build a roof, you have to do it piece by piece, or else they'll choose to install the piece in the middle first, but when they get there they just go "can't reach, oh well" and place the roof piece on the ground and leave.

I also had a problem in one of my games where we ran out of food, so my villagers would walk across the whole map to go get a piece of raw chicken on the ground, and get themselves killed by a froggy.
 
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AlexAL

Senior member
Jan 23, 2008
643
0
76
That can be bigtime gamebreaking.

Needs a lot of work yet. Micromanaging things like scaffolding is not fun, and actually pretty frustrating when you take it down after building a house, and there is still a villager on the roof that you didn't see, so you have to build the scaffolding again, then assign a bunch of tasks around the village so that he will hopefully get something to do and climb down. And usually the villager that was assigned to build the scaffold was the one who was stuck on the roof.

You also can't just tell them to build a roof, you have to do it piece by piece, or else they'll choose to install the piece in the middle first, but when they get there they just go "can't reach, oh well" and place the roof piece on the ground and leave.

I also had a problem in one of my games where we ran out of food, so my villagers would walk across the whole map to go get a piece of raw chicken on the ground, and get themselves killed by a froggy.
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,494
15,729
136
^^my thoughts exactly when I saw it on steam, pay $12 for an alpha, techically its not even a game yet.
 

Kalmah

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2003
3,692
1
76
I like DF, at least the mechanics and gameplay, and with tilesets it looks perfectly fine.

That said, after playing it for a while, I won't touch DF anymore, not even with a ten-foot pole.

I am completely frustrated by its absolutely horrid user interface, controls that only feel natural to masochists and more importantly, the creator's stance on not supporting modders to fix these points, even though fixing the UI has the most requested feature for a looong time now.

I can only hope that the supporters of the game will finally stop donating and move on, so the developer has to stop implementing useless crap and instead fix the playability of the game to regain support from a wider audience.

That is all. :colbert:

I'm with you on this. I absolutely love the game. I stopped playing for a while and now I can't seem to force myself to re-learn the interface. The only thing the creator is intent on doing is adding more beef to the game, AI, items, more complexity across the board. Which is cool.. but damnit! Please do something about the UI.

I'm cool with the game itself as along as you install a tile set for it(the noobpack is perfect).
 

clok1966

Golden Member
Jul 6, 2004
1,395
13
76
Excellent fix for anybody who enjoys a Settlers Type game. Man o man there are a METRIC TON of cry babies on Meta and the boards about it being an ALPHA.. Anybody who maybe "reads" up on a game before throwing money at it would know this.. Project Greenlight has never said it was finished games, just games the community feels are worth supporting.. HECK the game has A DEMO!!!!! if your so pissed off about $10, you sure should be managing your money better, should have tried the DEMO.. I'm getting so sick of people making mistakes and blaming it on anybody but themselves...

The game is fairly deep in the fact it has quite a bit you can do, its as the OP said, kinda a Minecraft like thing.. if you don't enjoy building I don't think you will like it. Has an enormous amount of micro managing till you get the hang of it. YOU DO NOT control your people (like all god/sim/theme park games) you just give orders and change priorities.

I like the game but it has many problems.. one level view (you can change it)- its easy to forget a villager who is on anther level (roof) who cant get down.. they will die. Interface- yes it needs work.. but as the game is being developed.. functional is fine, it will improve I would guess, as its changed over time, it will continue (its better now then it was) its farily fast paced at start, but as you build you need to slow down a bit and can be hard to do.

Tips- add more people: you need rooms that are empty. Your people must have stored up extra food, your people must be happy
TREE's- till 2 or 3 6-8 square long rows.. plant tree's of your choice (same as planting wheat).. never run out of trees.. they will regrow over and over just like wheat (same for anything that grows, flowers/etc)
Happy- people cant work non stop... slow down your building so they can stand around a bit. make sure they have decorations in there personal rooms (and BEDS!) also put decorations where they go.. bushes along paths.. statues by doorways (put something by storage so they all pass it) if you get most of your people in the 30's fr happiness you should see new people.

Common issue is people want coal-iron right away.. you can make a campfire with flint (gravel) right away to cook meat. so don't rush to dig into that dungeon.

Plant 3 sets of 3X3 wheat farms to start.. you can make bread almost right away
DONT dig down till you have some Hero's
DO equip your villagers with some early Armour and weapons
BUILD FARMS ASAP big farms.. do not harvest them non stop.. keep your villagers on fruit and wheat (bread) for a bit.. once a farm has 5 plus of something in it start to harvest it.. I build my farms in groups of 6 (six pig farms, or badger, or cow).... fence all farms in (or they wander off)
BARRELS- turn them off with a right click.. (especially bones) as it will keep your villagers from wandering off and dying.. manage what they can pick up at start of game.
BUILD underground (not below ground, but in hills) you need to mine, why not carve out rooms in the hills side?
CARAVANS- careful selling all that MUD to the dorfs.. your people will have to carry all 200 of those pieces of mud to them.. and they wont be harvesting food/chopping trees , etc..

when building and digging, make sure somebody is not trapped on a wall or underground.. they will die without food.. and bones make ghosts.. throw a scafold up (or down) to save um

Roofs- fook um! you can build um but it takes forever, they are supposed to speed up crafting, but speed was never an issue for me. Wait till its patched to be easier.

Dead villagers- bury um.. they are huge hit to happiness and make ghosts.

Most of all- play it a bit.. if you get pissed -re start...bad luck is part of the game.
 

clok1966

Golden Member
Jul 6, 2004
1,395
13
76
Because of Minecraft's success.

cant use Minecraft as an example.. people Love Minecraft so you simple cant compare.. even if its valid..Minecraft had a DEMO and paid Version (wow.. sounds just like TOWNS! and had a PAID version for over a year when it was Alpha.. wait.. that's just like TOWNS! too!)


I made a mistake, let me blame anybody but me.. people wonder why the USA is failing in so many ways..
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,066
1,550
126
Excellent post!
I've been playing it a bit, and thus far It's clearly not a "finished" product, but, it's quite good for being early beta or alpha. While it's got issues with building roofs and scaffolding being a huge PITA, and it would be great if you could rotate the map, it runs well and can be quite interesting.

The biggest issue I have is keeping my people happy, but that's simply because I tend to totally overproduce food and assign them too much work to do ....

So, I often do the "move everybody to the army trick" to get new settlers :)

Thus far the biggest I have gotten is about 70 townies.

Also, Unlike many new games or games in alpha or beta, I have been able to leave the game running overnight with 50+ townies and tons of items scattered about. I have not experienced a single crash yet!

My biggest issue seems to be that they don't like to put flour into raw foods stockpiles ,and instead, they will let hundreds or even thousands of flour litter all the land near my farms/mills ... (note: when I left my game running for 48 hours, I had over 2000 flour at the end, even with "haul" as 2nd priority, and plenty of raw food stockpile space, the flour was all over the place, and very little was in the stockpiles.

I have done some minor modding to help clean up the "mess' of too much crap .... (increased raw materials stockpile size to 200, all other stockpiles to 50), seems like with less individual items all over the place on tiles, the game runs much faster. (not having slow response issues unless I have like 6000 mud and 5000 stone and 2000 flour all over the place while running at 5760x1080 resolution (eyefinity), once my guys cleaned up the mud and stone, game ran nice and smooth again.

Excellent fix for anybody who enjoys a Settlers Type game. Man o man there are a METRIC TON of cry babies on Meta and the boards about it being an ALPHA.. Anybody who maybe "reads" up on a game before throwing money at it would know this.. Project Greenlight has never said it was finished games, just games the community feels are worth supporting.. HECK the game has A DEMO!!!!! if your so pissed off about $10, you sure should be managing your money better, should have tried the DEMO.. I'm getting so sick of people making mistakes and blaming it on anybody but themselves...

The game is fairly deep in the fact it has quite a bit you can do, its as the OP said, kinda a Minecraft like thing.. if you don't enjoy building I don't think you will like it. Has an enormous amount of micro managing till you get the hang of it. YOU DO NOT control your people (like all god/sim/theme park games) you just give orders and change priorities.

I like the game but it has many problems.. one level view (you can change it)- its easy to forget a villager who is on anther level (roof) who cant get down.. they will die. Interface- yes it needs work.. but as the game is being developed.. functional is fine, it will improve I would guess, as its changed over time, it will continue (its better now then it was) its farily fast paced at start, but as you build you need to slow down a bit and can be hard to do.

Tips- add more people: you need rooms that are empty. Your people must have stored up extra food, your people must be happy
TREE's- till 2 or 3 6-8 square long rows.. plant tree's of your choice (same as planting wheat).. never run out of trees.. they will regrow over and over just like wheat (same for anything that grows, flowers/etc)
Happy- people cant work non stop... slow down your building so they can stand around a bit. make sure they have decorations in there personal rooms (and BEDS!) also put decorations where they go.. bushes along paths.. statues by doorways (put something by storage so they all pass it) if you get most of your people in the 30's fr happiness you should see new people.

Common issue is people want coal-iron right away.. you can make a campfire with flint (gravel) right away to cook meat. so don't rush to dig into that dungeon.

Plant 3 sets of 3X3 wheat farms to start.. you can make bread almost right away
DONT dig down till you have some Hero's
DO equip your villagers with some early Armour and weapons
BUILD FARMS ASAP big farms.. do not harvest them non stop.. keep your villagers on fruit and wheat (bread) for a bit.. once a farm has 5 plus of something in it start to harvest it.. I build my farms in groups of 6 (six pig farms, or badger, or cow).... fence all farms in (or they wander off)
BARRELS- turn them off with a right click.. (especially bones) as it will keep your villagers from wandering off and dying.. manage what they can pick up at start of game.
BUILD underground (not below ground, but in hills) you need to mine, why not carve out rooms in the hills side?
CARAVANS- careful selling all that MUD to the dorfs.. your people will have to carry all 200 of those pieces of mud to them.. and they wont be harvesting food/chopping trees , etc..

when building and digging, make sure somebody is not trapped on a wall or underground.. they will die without food.. and bones make ghosts.. throw a scafold up (or down) to save um

Roofs- fook um! you can build um but it takes forever, they are supposed to speed up crafting, but speed was never an issue for me. Wait till its patched to be easier.

Dead villagers- bury um.. they are huge hit to happiness and make ghosts.

Most of all- play it a bit.. if you get pissed -re start...bad luck is part of the game.