Do you have plans to playtest Arms of Telos on *nix platforms? Is it possible for players to stress-test the pre-alpha version?
I've actually already had successful playtests with Windows, OS X, and Linux clients playing together. For the most part, support for Linux distros will depend on Unity but it seems to be pretty solid.
I've seen some people complain about the art style of Telos, saying it seemed too bright/colorful, along with saying they weren't a fan of the spidermechs. Personally I love those aspects, but are you planning on changing it for the release to cater to other people who may find the style offputting?
The current art is rough and the style will be refined over time, but if someone hates color they'll probably never like it. It's never going to be a muddy brown game with realistic graphics.
Part of the reason I went with vibrant colors and simpler shapes because it's easier to read. In competitive play for some games, some players will replace the brown/realistic textures with bright colored flat textures to improve readability, but that means people playing with the arguably better looking default textures are at a competitive disadvantage. I don't think that's an ideal situation -- so instead, I want to design a game that looks good AND already has good readability. Art preferences can be subjective, but I do get a lot of compliments on the art so I feel like I'm on the right track -- but again, things will definitely be improved and refined over time. I wouldn't describe anything I've done so far as "final."
So far none of the playtesters have complained about the spidermech and people seem to be 50/50 in terms of liking/disliking it (when they mention it at all). While the player character will probably stay anatomically similar, the current placeholder art is obviously pretty dull, so I'm hoping those who don't like it will come around when I have better art in there. And farther down the road, I want to offer cosmetic customization options so there'll be some variety. The spidermech is about two stories tall so I can't really replace it with a human unless I change the scale for the entire game and it'd probably be tough to get good humanoid animations as an indie dev so even a big humanoid robot wouldn't be ideal. Plus, it's cool to have it transform for zero g vs normal gravity.
When will an alpha Version of the game be available to be tested by excited people?
Trying to have the first public release by the end of the year, but it's going to be tough :)
What's your experience with competitive FPS? CPMA? TA? CS?
I was never "pro" but I did play CS competitively. This was about 10 years ago back in high school when CAL was still a thing. I'd also do local LAN tournaments and went to CPL's BYOC a couple times.
I didn't like CS:S and it sorta killed CS for me in general. After that, no game has really grabbed me like that, which is a big part of why I'm making Telos.
Since I've been out of the loop, I'm trying to catch back up with what the competitive scene has been up to. As an indie dev, it's definitely not going to be easy, but I want to do everything I can to foster a healthy competitive community that grows and lasts. I think that's the only way this game can be a success.
I found your game because Nerdcubed tweeted about it. Did you get that to happen somehow, or did Dan find your game?
I got lucky and he found it somehow :)
What order are you going to add things into the game? There's one map, movement, networking, and two weapons right now. When are more weapons and maps, spectating, game modes, and GUI going to be worked on?
Each time I complete a feature I try to reevaluate what would be best to work on next. Right now I'm trying to get to a fun public release as soon as possible and the priorities look sorta like this:
1. Get to a full player loadout (2 weapons and 2 equipment)
2. Teams
3. Main game mode objectives
4. Loadout customization (more weapons/equipment)
The current map will evolve as the rest of the game comes together. Additional weapons/equipment might come sooner if it's too awkward having everybody use this first loadout -- and the grapple is not the only item that will augment movement so there'll still be new stuff on that front :)
Spectating features will probably come some time after the first public release. Unity is releasing their new GUI system later this summer so I've been holding off on spending too much time doing UI stuff now.
