Who wants to beta-test my space-themed action/strategy/rpg?

Ok, I think I've fixed the text display issue (no weirdness on the PC I'm testing on, anyway). Anyone care to confirm?

In addition, I've made the following changes:

Selected buttons now show a different color, which makes the text easier to read.

Battles are a little shorter now.

There is an indicator in combat that shows how much longer the battle will last, or how many more HPs the boss has, depending.

You can now retry if you lose in combat!

Thanks for all your suggestions guys; I intend on implementing some more, but I wanted to upload the text-fix version to make sure it's working for everyone, since that's kind of a big deal.

The text works for me now. Thanks!

I beat the game, meanwhile. I feel like the only real difficulty in the game comes from the very beginning, when you're still trying to get your resource engine running, and maybe a little bit after that. Once you get enough to start affording the upgrades, the battles become easy and fuel is no longer an issue.

I'm still perplexed as to how you'd beat the game without building any factories, though.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Yeah, TMC mentioned this as well. I fear this may just be the nature of the game; after all, TMC said star control II had the same issue, and that's a classic. Still, I'm open to suggestions.



I'm planning on writing a strategy guide for the game shortly that will explain all the ins and outs. In this case, there's an item you can find that will make destroying enemy ships worth resource points.

Font overflow problem is nicely fixed for me on Linux too.

I figured that's what it was, but that seems like a real gamble.

About ways to make the lategame harder:
- Stronger Farscape ships is the obvious one. As far as I can tell, there are only two types, both easily defeated with a few upgrades.
- Increased Farscape action over time. Farscape should start out very passive in terms of factory detection and gradually become more perceptive. It's rarely a good idea to stack factories currently; this could add some strategy as well.
- System destruction. Maybe the Farscape eventually start razing entire planets/systems, turning them into Ravaged Planets with no mineral value.

I'll post more ideas if I think of anything.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Yeah, but if you're going for some of the tougher achievements, you really have to base your strategy around that from the get-go.



Hah, I think you're just good at the game. There are stronger types if you wait long enough (6 in all, though some look alike; 4 visually different types). I had actually slowed down the speed of the farscape power increase in response to some earlier comments, but maybe I went overboard. What difficulty are you playing at?

Thanks for the ideas!

Out of curiosity, why did you name it Farscape? I would have been worried about the naming conflict with:

Yeah, I think I'm going to change the name before general release. I had forgotten about that series when I came up with the name. (Feel free to suggest an alternative)

Having not watched too much of the series myself, I had thought it was a fan-game.

Name suggestions:
Spacescape
Space Wars
Space Trek
Advanced Space & Dragons
Super Space Bros.
Space Kong
The Legend of Space: a link to the past
Final Space Fantasy
Space Raider
Space Fighter 2 Turbo
Streets of Space
Space 64
Space: The Gathering

Playing on Hard mode this time. I got lucky this time and managed to start off near the ruins with the enemy->resources device and the Glarfians, so I managed to get a lot of upgrades before even the first attack. The second wave is really unforgiving without good upgrades, but I suppose that's why it's hard mode. :x

The game freezes now when I try to fight the Burgbap battleship.

Sometimes enemies are loaded offscreen where you can't see them, and bullets would come flying in out of seemingly nowhere. Only on the right side though.

And when you load a game from the menu, the events don't revert back to how they were in the previous save. Say you get a device from a ruins and then load a state before you got the device, the device will already be gone when you try to get it again. I have to refresh my internet browser to properly reset the events.

For reference, is it how many factories there are per planet or how many factories there are per solar system that determine how likely the Farscapers are to show up and wreck your party?

Normal. Prioritizing the speed/fuel upgrade means time is no longer an issue. I'd suggest increasing the fuel efficiency of the upgrade and decreasing the speed increase.

Upgrades in general need to be capped. There's a "soft cap" by increasing cost, but only spread is hard-capped as far as I could tell. Additionally, some upgrades just aren't worth investing more than one or two levels in (factory cost is the biggest offender).

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Lately, whenever I am trying to name something, I google all my name ideas, and I often settle on the one with the lowest number of results.

The ship needs a smaller hitbox. The ship is triangular, but the hitbox is rectangular, and things that should be grazing the ship in the front still count as hits. I'm on hard and I just started running into the bullet hell bologna (I regret to inform you that this is now their official name forever). The hitbox becomes a serious problem when there are a hundred bullets on the screen at a time.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

Updates:



Done.



It's good to know my artistic talent hasn't gone unnoticed.



Nerfed this upgrade a bit.



Fixed.



Hopefully fixed.



Fixed.

I also tweaked the difficulty a little more and fixed some other bugs I noticed.



Per planet. Specifically, the likelihood of your factories being targeted is based on the number of factories on the planet with the most factories only.