Hey-- I just terraformed a planet into an atomic converter and it doesn't seem to be working right. It's offering me to convert a tiny amount of atoms into a tiny amount of metal or vice versa at a gigantic energy cost.
And by "tiny" I mean the 1 million atomic converters combined are doing 0.1% as much as a single atomic converter on a surface, at like 1 million times the energy cost.
And the subatomic particle converter doesn't work for converting from subatomic particles to atoms either. The transform button only exists in the atoms->subatomic particles direction even though the building explicitly says it can do both.
Mathematically 1 million atomic converters use 1 million times more energy than one of them, but also convert 1 million times as fast. So for example you're using 1 million times more energy to make a 2 second conversion into a 2 microsecond conversion, so you should avoid terraformed converters earlier in the game.
Later in the game, when you get lots of stone, you'll start to see it makes sense.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with that bit, but they shouldn't also convert 1 million times less?
Like it's offering me to spend a ridiculous amount of energy to generate like 30kg of Titanium when I can produce in the billions of kg (I think G is billions?) of Titanium already by other means. Sure, it's fast, but what is that amount going to do for me?
I think you're right, the math is actually wrong, I assumed that if you put in 10M kg into 1M converters, each converter would get 10 kg but would still cost as if you put in 10M kg in each converter, which explains the high energy cost. If that's how I coded it, I'm ashamed of myself, lol. I'll double check. Thanks for pointing that out!
Subatomic manipulators can only break down atoms in my second and third universes but not build them. All researches are complete, and subatomic works fine in my prime universe. Any universe parameter that might kill that functionality or is that a bug?
just a small suggestion is when you are in the records menu you can click on the star or planet that is the biggest or brightest etc
this would mean that instead of searching for hours for the brightest star to build a dyson sphere you could just click on the brightest star in the records menu
If you haven't built a mega mineral extractor around a gas giant with 200+ bar pressure and 100,000+ km diameter, you should do that, it gives lots of money
If you already did, it's probably best to look for other ways of generating money (greenhouses, producing nanocrystal with atom manipulators and selling it etc.)
A newly built AE does not use the planets atmosphere pressure until you do an extraction speed upgrade. The TF version seems to use it but the displayed mol/s is what it would have been on a bar=1 planet
I think I'll also go join the Discord so I can stop spamming you here >_<
So I got curious and started a new game and instead of claiming the second ship once located, I terraformed the planet. Also checked the other planets in the system and it didn't respawn on any of them.. . . Soo you might need to block that cause it worked.
Logically people shouldn't do this but you know, idiots are infinite in this universe.
As I said, I started a new game specifically just to test this so I didn't loose any progress.
Got my first new universe.(Love how the constants are changed instead of having arbitrary upgrades like other incrementals)
I changed the cost the mineral value upgrade(q_MV) to 1.55 but the upgrade price still went up by 1.9 but after closing and re opening the price was back to what it should be.
price was 100. bought and it went to 36x something(probably 361) closed reopened and price is 240. then 372 then 576 then 895. So it's using 1.55 now.
Then, I'm also not receiving any Exp for building Extractor or power plants. upgrades give the expected amounts and Storage construction gives Exp too. I did change q to 1.3 so extractor costs 45
The EXP bug seems to be related to a rounding bug, if a building costs less than $100 per unit, then you won't get any XP at all even when mass-building.
soooooo, heres a thought.... can you make a final upgrade for the planetkiller that takes out the star instead completely removing the system and refunding the base resources as well as providing huge amounts of energy? Also a way to potentially remove megastructures on a star since planetkiller and dyson sphere conflict. This way, if you find a lot of systems you dislike for whatever reason, you can just blow the whole thing away and not have an empty star after you kill the planets. While I'm thinking about it, this is entirely optional but it might be worth increasing the iron and aluminum gained from killed planets. I find it is rarely if ever enough to build a new planet killer even if you blow up 4 or 5.
ok, been playing another 4 days or so.... biggest issue now is money, i thought the ideal source would be gas giants but they are somewhat rare as planets go having at most 3 in a system and more often than not 0. soooo just a thought, maybe rather than just a sort by planets, you could do a sort by gas giants as well? It gets tiresome checking 20 systems to find a few gas giants that may even be on the low end of mineral production..... should i be making mineral planets for my primary income? i got plenty of energy with dyson spheres and now i really just need more mineral income but i hate manual collection.
The planet killers are terrible for collecting iron but they are amazing at stone. But you need to look at the bonuses for it. high temp sun in a galaxy with high magnetic field strength. otherwise it's just not worth it. That's what I used them for though. Stone can be broken up into elements required to manufacture the 2 rare crystal\metals (Can't remember their names) Selling those again, especially the green gives a lot of money.
Yea, gas giants produce very little minerals. Terraforming large, 200m extractors at least, 500m preferred, outstrip the gas giant even if you only collect every now and then. I usually got them to 51|51 and that worked. Still needed a ton of them
thanks for the tips, though given how much I hate the collecting.................................................................................. maybe i will find a system with like 16 planets and terraform all of them, i can collect and upgrade all in one place and get ridiculous amounts when i do so. I still prefer gas giants though....... actually, since there are apparently galaxy wide structures, maybe i should wait and have them be my mineral collection. i would point out though how odd it is to have more stars than gas giants. Honestly, I think there should be about twice as many gas giants as stars if we are aiming for realism. Our own solar system has 3 right.
Terraformed planets can still all be collected from when viewing a cluster. So you can spread them over multiple galaxies and still collect all with one button. Once you have upgraded all large extractor planets to a high level you can also usually move on to another system and forget about the previous one. Just favorite your cluster and current system. When you need to collect, switch to cluster, collect all, switch to system, continue building\upgrading, repeat.
If you pick a galaxy with a high magnetic field in a cluster with high ferromagnetic materials, and pick the hottest stars in the galaxy to put a planet killer on (preferably with 10+ planets) to maximize aurora bonuses, you should get enough materials to spam planet killers at construction level 1 (not sure about construction level 2, haven't gotten that far yet)
I really like this game one of my favorites I've been playing for a yearish now really like it. Thank you for putting so much effort in to the game. The only thing I don't like is the export and import because it doesn't work for Chromebook but I still love the game keep up the good work.
Import/export doesn't work on browser, that's normal (and right now I don't know how to fix), but you're saying it doesn't work on your chromebook despite running an executable?
soooo crazy thought, how about a terraform that basically makes it collect things from the system or out to a set number of lightyears from it increased by level and maxing out at whole of the galaxy it is built in. It would be kinda like a planet sized business district that way.
As I understand it, once the scale goes beyond a planet then it can slow the game down a lot. If you look at the slowdown caused when you press the collect all in busy system then it kind of makes it clear that the auto collect will be a large drain.
1 is it possible to add a second resource list to the manual mining screen that lists the resource total mined during the current session? It's just when manual mining is able to clear several Km with one click, you don't really know what you mined since the list of expected resources is just for the current piece.
2 Pressing J to remove the tooltips, could pressing it again bring back the tooltip? I know I can reset them all in the options but sometimes I forget it on just one place.
3 Can the name of the speedup\overclocks perhaps include their duration\multiplier? The speeedup icon does contain the duration but it's a bit small to read in the hotbar.
4 For the mine terraform. An expected Resources list when building it? and a remaining resources in the tooltip or upgrade menu? Maybe a separate tab in the upgrades menu will work
5 Once in the galaxy view it becomes a game of "Remember where all your stuff is" Maybe a list of all the systems that contain something? A count of planets with structures, terraformed planets per terraform type, and superstructure count will be great. And having something similar for the higher scales will probably also come in handy.
6 When exploring caves, next to the difficulty rating, can it also give the expected avg damage of enemy projectiles?
1), 2) and 6) Good idea, I'll keep these suggestions in mind
3) Renaming the speedups is a good idea, but I'm not sure about the overclocks as both their durations and multipliers change. I think "10-minute 1.5x overclock" is a weird item name lol
4) Right now terraformed mines mine infinitely, despite the game saying otherwise, but once they do have a limit I'll make sure to include more information
5) There are overlays, the annotator and bookmarks that you can use to quickly go to where you want. I don't think it's a game of "Remember where all your stuff is", but rather "Remember to use the tools the game provides you to not have to remember where all your stuff is". But I agree that a list of all the systems that contain stuff and other things you mentioned could be useful too
I'm glad you found some use from my suggestions. ^-^
3)Yea, that is a weird name :P The speedups are anyway the ones that I was having the most trouble with
4) -_- Guess I'll go build more of them then
5) I do use the overlays and annotations both. also renaming my systems to what the are producing. But there's no overlay for a system that produces resources. so if I forget, which I do wayyy to often, then I use the "system entered" overlay and open them one by one till I find the system I lost.
4) Ohhh! I'm guessing that's also why a surface mine continues working even though it's past the center. It does appear to only mine stone then though. So it does require you to build another if you need metals. So that balances out
ok, so i am at the point where you get ship 3, i found it but can't figure out where to find the last part. i searched every dungeon on the planet twice.
well theres the issue, i dug there before finding the ship......... ill try digging more but I think I dug past where it would be and since the counter didn't appear until i found the ship after that......... crud. well, i found it after digging another thirty or so tiles down with a mithril pick which breaks a bunch at once soooo to around 30km deep, i was in the mantle. thanks for the hint.
Just a thought but........... what about wormhole speed ups, they take like half an hour each time. Also, a way to auto collect terraformed mineral and energy planets.
sooooo minor issue...... ya know the warning about planets with lots of atmosphere and how it takes so much resources to leave after you get there....... it says in the millions........ i got stuck in one that takes over a billion energy to exit..... 289 bars is a bit high I guess. Anyway guess i will be building a space elevator.
Leveling up one of your ships does not show the stat increase in armor in the starship stat screen nor the combat screen. is it something that is not implemented yet or is it something else?
EDIT: There are some cases where my (insert Level Here) Ship showed 5 defense, however when hit by a lv 6 enemy, it did no damage whatsoever.
I have played Helixteus II and i say this sequel has a lot of potential. I want to say something about this tho. Does this game will have modding support in the future? if so, will it have in game modding?
If there is enough demand I could give the game mod support in the future. It probably won't be in-game modding though, dimension resets (which are already partially implemented) will be as close to in-game modding as you will get.
Checked 0.21 on another computer. Anyway, soil is added/removed only after a lot of clicks. With pressed Shift more often. Windows 7 on both,
Another problem is deleting buildings by pressing X. Confirmation is needed. Nearby are other hotkeys (Z, F, WSAD) and once you miss, goodbye to the building for which you saved resources for three hours.
Ah, probably because it's windows 7. Unfortunately I don't have a win7 machine to test so I can't really do much for now.
Normally there's already a confirmation when pressing X on "expensive" buildings (those that represent a significant fraction of total money earned), but it doesn't always appear and I'm thinking of a setting where you can configure how often it appears (always, sometimes, never)
I just played the browser version. When I started without the tutorial, I could not build any energy generators, which kept me kinda stuck. Is this a bug or a feature?
If you've built less than 5 mineral extractors, it's a feature, to prevent getting stuck if you only build energy generators and not being able to generate any money.
If you've built 5 and still no energy generator, it's a bug.
Though on second thought that number should probably change to 1.
Amendment. If you click quickly, sometimes it is possible to place the soil even when the map is stationary. But rarely - about once every 20-50 clicks. If you move the map, you manage to place the soil more often.
Yeah, I post all release notes on my Discord server, but I understand that not everyone uses Discord and you were the first to ask, so I guess I'll also start posting them as itch.io devlogs.
1.The Matrioshka brain had no refunds and have made the resource picture of other megastructures&terraform in the same solar systems also invisible. (maybe it's not accomplished)
2.Some megastructures takes so long time to build. (for example,a Dyson sphere with more than 400 years) Luckily the normal buildings have a operation of auto speedup. (Missed the unlimited speedup in Helixteus 2.)
3.A buggggggggggg!SO Amazinggggggggggg THAT I HAVE TO RESTART--I used the drive to speedup my ships for a travel to another galaxy;however,the fuel is too much,and can't be chosen with more accuracy.With a time reduction of ~6e10 years,the travel ETA became 292471157 years and can't be reduced by drives,which means the travel cannot be finished,at least for me.So I think it is IMPORTANT to limit the fuel's use that the time reduction should't be more than the travel ETA.I know it because my data is END. orz
Still I think the science tree can be expanded for more,and thanks for the nice work,hope I can witness the Helixteus 3's completion/the Helixteus 4's born.XD
Hey, all 3 issues you mentioned are the direct result of the game simply not being finished lol. I already addressed the first two issues in the next update coming in a day or two, and the third one, well, it's just a question of data type which I can fix in seconds. Thanks for playing to the end!
By the way,how can I find the data in my computer?(I downloaded them after the comment and I think it should be ensured so that an update won't make my data lost)x )
Actually, saves aren't compatible across versions, so unfortunately you'll have to restart after each update. But you can type commands in-game to get back to where you were quickly. The list of commands can be found on our Discord server, but if you don't use Discord I can send you a PM.
To answer your question, it depends on what OS you play the game. If you play the Windows executable, the save should be at C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Helixteus 3
Great foundation for the game, but for 2~ hours and noticed that the building upgrade system kind of makes conquering other planets obsolete (or at least very unrewarding during the time I've played). Maybe require there to be a research for building upgrades, so that you can't just dump all your money into a single 10x overclocked mine, research station and energy station. Later having some automated way to conquer the galaxy would be dope, with fights being maybe more sparse. Currently it makes no sense that you can have 1 uber planet that generates more resources that the entire galaxy would with level 1 mines. Another thing is that clicking the button to collect resources gets old very fast - I have the patience, because I've played previous Helixteuses, but it'll turn off most people.
I think the game would benefit from plateauing on upgrade/technology multipliers for production. For example, make a 100x multiplier a soft cap for how much better the production of a single building can get (with very hard to get upgrades, that maybe later boost it to 120x). Otherwise if progress stays the same way it is right now in the final game, the game loop will feel very stale. You don't need 10s of levels for upgrades, 10 levels, each requiring a more advanced resource would be more than enough and it'd be more elegant gameplay-wise. Best incremental/idle games distinguish themselves by not just being a number going up simulator, but by opening up more gameplay mechanics when the players advances. Forcing the player to literally conquer galaxies would lead to much more fun gameplay.
Also I'm not sure if it's intended, but I don't see a way to mass-overclock buildings which seems really bad.
Edit: Played some more and realized that materials matter 0% after like 3 hours, unless I'm missing something. I can build pretty much anything, but my only bottlenecks are cash, energy and research.
- The "dumping all your money into a single 10x building" strategy works at first and you'll be able to research a lot of new things (including a way to auto-conquer galaxies), but it plateaus and you'll have to find other strategies to keep making numbers go up (megastructures, terraforming etc.). I do agree that you don't need many planets at all to reach very high numbers, I would like to change that! Though looking for and conquering specific planets with very strong auroras or deep caves may be interesting to boost progression.
- The reason the collect all button is there is for performance, if a player builds thousands of buildings and the game checks for each building (with possibly varying levels, bonuses, etc.) several times per second, I don't think it will perform very well. What replacement do you have in mind that performs well?
- I believe adding the plateauing mechanic on upgrade/technology just makes numbers go up slower and everything would take more time, or maybe I'm not completely understanding.
- You can mass-overclock (only on one planet) by shift clicking an overclock in your inventory, then pressing shift again to select every building of the same time, then clicking.
- For the materials, they'll once again become useful (and then useless) once you unlock megastructures and terraforming.
Yeah, I've played two more hours after that and realized that. The problem is that I hit a massive wall after getting my mine like 15~ levels above the level when resources (carbon, copper ect.) are no longer required. It got extremely repetitive and slow vs. the pace of progress I had before and I was very far away from making a mega-structure. Then again, maybe I should've left the game to idle, because up to that point I was playing actively pretty much non-stop.
I've also read some more and seen how the late game advances. In general, it's going in the direction I'd like to see it go - you have to grab more planets to increase your income. The only problem (and obviously, this is because it's early in development) is that I don't see an interesting gameplay loop in just grabbing systems and building another gas giant miner. I feel like a part of the gameplay loop is missing here, where the player just isn't presented with enough interesting choices. Early game we get to play with all the toys and optimize our income, but later it seems like it'll get very samey. The best way to combat that, would be to automate a lot of the processes, such as having planet templates (or even system templates) and allowing the game to handle all the stuff you've been doing in the early game automatically, while letting you play with high-level stuff, such as choosing which systems to conquer/which enemies to fight ect.. Obviously there ought to be some pushback vs. the player, because as of now we're just derping around the galaxy and claiming rocks with no actual threats.
2)
This is kind of funny, because I'm actually also a developer (also in Godot) and I'm also making a strategy game. The economy present in Helixteus isn't that complex. If performance is the reason why you're using the collect all button, then that's not a good reason. In an optimally programmed game increasing income should not affect performance at all. Here's the solution:
Store a multiplier for each resource, example: technology for minerals and mineral upgrade for mineral gain speed.
Store a base income of each resource, modified only by buildings/megastructures similar stuff. Update that base income each time you upgrade/overclock/somehow modify a building.
Each tick (every second, half-second, w/e you decide) increase the resources by base income * multipliers * deltaTime. Because you overclock buildings, you also ought to sometimes check the overclock on every building - this is really slow, so you should do it rarely (no more often than every 5 seconds) and if you want a cleaner solution, instead of applying overclocks on buildings (which there can be thousands or even more of), change overclocks so they're more expensive, but instead apply to a type of building. So one overclock would boost all mineral production on the planet - way less clicks and waaaay more performant on scale.
With this implementation, you lose pretty much no functionality and can easily support worlds with millions (and more!) of buildings.
3)
Plateauing doesn't mean that things would go slower, you'd just adjust the cost of things. The purpose of this is to diversify the gameplay and change up the player's objective in the mid-game. Instead of increasing all your income by 20% with some technology, you'd instead have to shift your focus on conquering more planets. This would not only make things more interesting for the player, it'd make those technologies you get past the softcap (that maybe increase income by 1% each) far more rewarding, because of their scarcity. It'd also make the numbers more sane - if the player can see there's a difference of 100x between a level 1 mine and a mostly maxed out mine, then they'll be more easily able to understand the scale of things (it'd also make the game far more realistic, as everything eventually has diminishing returns, even technology). It's far more compelling to have a 1000 mines on different planets than 1 ubermine in your home system (I know this is only early game, but it's still a decently long part of the game).
4)
Oh, welp. I'm not sure if I missed some tutorial, but that would've helped a ton.
5)
Seems unusual balance-wise, but meh, jumps like that aren't inherently bad.
END)
I feel like your game has great potential, and I'll confidently say that you'd be able to sell it for $10-15 on Steam if the finished product has more mechanics (stuff that's engaging and challenges/gives options to the player) and decent polish. For that price tag though, you'd need to get some better graphics, especially in the UI department. As of now your focus seems a 100% on functionality, so I won't criticize too much, but the fact that my 2 month old project's UI that was created only for testing looks cleaner than yours means you should maybe look into it.
Don't undersell yourself, only because the game initially started out in flash. Even though objectively it's an unfinished mess as of now, it still kept me engaged for more than 3 hours. I'll repeat myself, but it has to be said - you have a great foundation. Looking over your discord and seeing you want to sell the game for 3 bucks made me wince - your game can worth far more if you put the required work into it. There are plenty of tools/techniques to make your game look far slicker.
Also a tip: don't feel boxed in the idle/incremental genre with stuff like infinite progression and prestiges. Your game could work great as a strategy with various minigames, or as some roguelike with unique runs. Pick mechanics that make the most enjoyable game.
I believe you also missed that megastructures can be built way earlier than you thought: unlocking the mega-engineering science costs 100k SP and you can build Dyson spheres and mega mineral extractors right away if you choose the star/planet wisely (high luminosity-size ratio for stars, high atmospheric pressure for planets). I think this also gives the player interesting choices later in the game as some stars/planets have luminosity-size ratio/atmo pressure so terrible that it isn't even worth building anything there.
When you say "automate a lot of the processes, such as having planet templates", I think terraforming kinda already does that and allows you to transition from managing individual buildings to managing planets.
For threats, I don't plan to make this a strategy game, but rather a casual game where the player can expand without any stress, just a bit of thinking, clicking and time.
2)
Ah, right, sounds simple enough, I'll see what I can do. Fun fact: the Helixteus series was actually inspired by a Flash game called Bloons Monkey City, and I copied a few things including how you collect resources (click on farms individually to collect cash). Initially there was no collect all button, until people asked for it. And then it kinda stayed the same until now. I believe now's a good time for a change!
3)
I mostly agree, but "It's far more compelling to have a 1000 mines on different planets than 1 ubermine", wouldn't that make for very repetitive gameplay? One of the reasons to conquer new planets is not to fill them with buildings right away, but to look for interesting terrain features or planet properties (temperature, composition etc.)
END)
We're probably used to different things, but I personally find the graphics (that aren't placeholders) and UI to be okay and serve their purpose, except the settings menu, that one should really be cleaned up soon. I checked out the video you linked me, and I'm aware it's a test project, but it still gives me ideas for UI improvement, so thanks for that!
As for pricing, there are a few reasons behind the $3 price tag. I would rather see someone buy the game with low expectations and be pleasantly surprised than the other way round. This drives away people that go "$3 game? this must be crap", but I wouldn't want them to be playing my game anyways. A second reason is that the source code is available publicly and the HTML5 version can be played for free, which will be identical to the Steam version without Steam cloud sync, achievements and high scores. For those who really, really want to give more than $3, I'm also thinking of a ~$10 DLC of a pdf where I write the behind-the-scenes of Helixteus development, including screenshots of various ideas that never made it to the game or were removed. This does not put people without the DLC at a disadvantage while also offering the most supportive players something interesting to read and see.
Finally, a reminder that this started out as a passion project and it still is. I spent $0 making these 3 games, only thousands of hours of free time. I don't really view this as "selling a product", but finding those people who have similar interests as me.
I'll take a look at the other links you posted, they look really interesting!
Oh, I'm aware you're able to build mega-structures before unlocking the later technologies, but the costs were completely out of whack when I tried making them. For example, the gas giant mine megastructure cost an insane amount of resources, but it provided me with about 1% of the revenue I got from my uber mine in my home system. Maybe I was missing something/I picked a bad planet, but it seemed really imbalanced.
Yeah, you're definitely on the right track with planet-size buildings. But it's very important to give the player proper tools to manage a large empire like that. Managing a single planet at the start's easy enough, but after that the UI just isn't equipped to handle the scale well.
3) In my opinion, no if it's sufficiently automated and supported with slightly more complexity. If systems are interchangable, then the game will get stale very fast, but that doesn't have to be the case. There are a lot of ways you could go about making the structure of the player's empire important. An example would be adding logistics - no magical bank of minerals, but every system has to be supplied by the empire's resource network. Also systems could be specialized into different roles, some serving as support that provide a buff to production of linked systems, some working as factories ect.. The uniques of planets and stars would still be relevant, because the player would have to decide what roles to give to each system.
These were just a few examples, but there are plenty of ways to squeeze out a lot more depth from what you already have. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something interesting.
END)
Oh yeah, the graphics are good enough if you just want to make some hobbyist project on the side. I was speaking strictly in the context of making the game presentable enough to be sold for the $10-15 price tag.
>This drives away people that go "$3 game? this must be crap", but I wouldn't want them to be playing my game anyways.
I mean... there's a reason why people are less likely to look favorably on $3 dollar games. When gamers look through steam they expect the developers to know their worth and if someone's selling their game in the $1-3 range they expect the game to be a short experience without a lot of polish that was made in 1-2 months. It's nothing about cheaper games being inherently worse, people just have different expectations for them. Personally, I think you should either go for $5-7 bucks if you don't want to add any more polish (because that's roughly what your game would be worth at that production quality - it's low, but the gameplay compensates A LOT) or just release the game for free with the option for donations + a no content DLC intended to support you. If you make the game free, you'll get a much bigger community of players that'll enjoy your game. If you decide to sell the game for $5-7 dollars you'll get a decent compensation for the time you've spent on the project and you won't upset anyone, because that price is still really low. I feel like $3 is a really bad spot, because it'll mean weak monetary returns, setting wrong expectations for the buyers and it'll mean a significantly smaller community if you just went with free to play.
> Finally, a reminder that this started out as a passion project and it still is.
So is just about every indie game, but it's not a sin to want to be supported by your passion. I've no idea about your financial situation, but if making games is something you love doing and you're not insured with a silver spoon for the rest of your life, then you should strongly consider thinking about the returns from the game. After all, if this is something you want to continue doing in the future, you need to ensure that it'll provide you with financial security.
>I spent $0 making these 3 games, only thousands of hours of free time.
I'm not sure if you meant it jokingly, but "only thousands of hours" is a massive amount of time, totaling to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on where you live.
>I don't really view this as "selling a product", but finding those people who have similar interests as me.
You're an indie dev, of course you're not thinking about "selling a product". Just about every indie dev's the same way, with the exception of a few cash-grabbers that want to capitalize on industry trends. My best guess is that you just want to make a great game that you'd enjoy playing - same's the case for me! But developing games is a long and arduous process. You wouldn't expect George R. R. Martin to release his novels for free, even though he loves writing. Gamers respect the work that goes into development, especially when we're talking about indie games - people won't bat an eye, because you're trying to get compensation for something you've spent thousands of hours on.
This is all very personal and complicated, but if game development is really something you'd love to continue doing in the future, then think about how it could support you. Being able to make money off of something that you love doing is an immense privilege, as I've mentioned previously - unless you're fabulously rich, try to put some thought into how you'd like your future to look.
Thanks again for taking your time to push the game in the right direction, I really appreciate it. I'm relatively new to all these things so you're probably right, $5-7 sounds like a fairer price tag.
"My best guess is that you just want to make a great game that you'd enjoy playing"
Yeah exactly, which is why I considered such a low price tag, and I never push myself to work on the game, only when I want to, so it never feels like work.
("thousands of hours" was probably an exaggeration, the first two games took roughly 400-500 hours each and I'm at around 500 hours so far on this third one)
Also I play on a Chromebook so it would be delightful for there to be a full screen button on the game so I would be able to play full scree. Again keep up the good work!
I love the game but there's a sever problem that made it so I had to restart the game in which I had accidentally zoomed out too far then I couldn't find the place that I was building things, I tried zooming back in and moving the camera around but all I got was the HUD and the black abyss. Can't wait to see the next update, keep up the good work!
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Hey-- I just terraformed a planet into an atomic converter and it doesn't seem to be working right. It's offering me to convert a tiny amount of atoms into a tiny amount of metal or vice versa at a gigantic energy cost.
And by "tiny" I mean the 1 million atomic converters combined are doing 0.1% as much as a single atomic converter on a surface, at like 1 million times the energy cost.
And the subatomic particle converter doesn't work for converting from subatomic particles to atoms either. The transform button only exists in the atoms->subatomic particles direction even though the building explicitly says it can do both.
That's a bug reported by the comment just below
Mathematically 1 million atomic converters use 1 million times more energy than one of them, but also convert 1 million times as fast. So for example you're using 1 million times more energy to make a 2 second conversion into a 2 microsecond conversion, so you should avoid terraformed converters earlier in the game.
Later in the game, when you get lots of stone, you'll start to see it makes sense.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with that bit, but they shouldn't also convert 1 million times less?
Like it's offering me to spend a ridiculous amount of energy to generate like 30kg of Titanium when I can produce in the billions of kg (I think G is billions?) of Titanium already by other means. Sure, it's fast, but what is that amount going to do for me?
I think you're right, the math is actually wrong, I assumed that if you put in 10M kg into 1M converters, each converter would get 10 kg but would still cost as if you put in 10M kg in each converter, which explains the high energy cost. If that's how I coded it, I'm ashamed of myself, lol. I'll double check. Thanks for pointing that out!
Subatomic manipulators can only break down atoms in my second and third universes but not build them. All researches are complete, and subatomic works fine in my prime universe. Any universe parameter that might kill that functionality or is that a bug?
It's a bug, sorry
do ship superweapons work yet?
They don't
is the fourth ship in the game yet?
It was always there, but as of this update the quests for getting it are removed, you just need to reach level 60.
just a small suggestion is when you are in the records menu you can click on the star or planet that is the biggest or brightest etc
this would mean that instead of searching for hours for the brightest star to build a dyson sphere you could just click on the brightest star in the records menu
Yeah why not I guess
and can you buff mega mineral extractors because to get a good amount of money you need a galaxy worth of them
like give it a fourth stage or buff its output please
If you haven't built a mega mineral extractor around a gas giant with 200+ bar pressure and 100,000+ km diameter, you should do that, it gives lots of money
If you already did, it's probably best to look for other ways of generating money (greenhouses, producing nanocrystal with atom manipulators and selling it etc.)
Found a new weird
A newly built AE does not use the planets atmosphere pressure until you do an extraction speed upgrade. The TF version seems to use it but the displayed mol/s is what it would have been on a bar=1 planet
I think I'll also go join the Discord so I can stop spamming you here >_<
So I got curious and started a new game and instead of claiming the second ship once located, I terraformed the planet. Also checked the other planets in the system and it didn't respawn on any of them.. . . Soo you might need to block that cause it worked.
Logically people shouldn't do this but you know, idiots are infinite in this universe.
As I said, I started a new game specifically just to test this so I didn't loose any progress.
Yep, will need to block that
Found a weird. (Browser version btw)
Got my first new universe.(Love how the constants are changed instead of having arbitrary upgrades like other incrementals)
I changed the cost the mineral value upgrade(q_MV) to 1.55 but the upgrade price still went up by 1.9 but after closing and re opening the price was back to what it should be.
price was 100. bought and it went to 36x something(probably 361) closed reopened and price is 240. then 372 then 576 then 895. So it's using 1.55 now.
Then, I'm also not receiving any Exp for building Extractor or power plants. upgrades give the expected amounts and Storage construction gives Exp too. I did change q to 1.3 so extractor costs 45
The EXP bug seems to be related to a rounding bug, if a building costs less than $100 per unit, then you won't get any XP at all even when mass-building.
Ahh, that does make sense
soooooo, heres a thought.... can you make a final upgrade for the planetkiller that takes out the star instead completely removing the system and refunding the base resources as well as providing huge amounts of energy? Also a way to potentially remove megastructures on a star since planetkiller and dyson sphere conflict. This way, if you find a lot of systems you dislike for whatever reason, you can just blow the whole thing away and not have an empty star after you kill the planets. While I'm thinking about it, this is entirely optional but it might be worth increasing the iron and aluminum gained from killed planets. I find it is rarely if ever enough to build a new planet killer even if you blow up 4 or 5.
ok, been playing another 4 days or so.... biggest issue now is money, i thought the ideal source would be gas giants but they are somewhat rare as planets go having at most 3 in a system and more often than not 0. soooo just a thought, maybe rather than just a sort by planets, you could do a sort by gas giants as well? It gets tiresome checking 20 systems to find a few gas giants that may even be on the low end of mineral production..... should i be making mineral planets for my primary income? i got plenty of energy with dyson spheres and now i really just need more mineral income but i hate manual collection.
The planet killers are terrible for collecting iron but they are amazing at stone. But you need to look at the bonuses for it. high temp sun in a galaxy with high magnetic field strength. otherwise it's just not worth it. That's what I used them for though. Stone can be broken up into elements required to manufacture the 2 rare crystal\metals (Can't remember their names) Selling those again, especially the green gives a lot of money.
Yea, gas giants produce very little minerals. Terraforming large, 200m extractors at least, 500m preferred, outstrip the gas giant even if you only collect every now and then. I usually got them to 51|51 and that worked. Still needed a ton of them
thanks for the tips, though given how much I hate the collecting.................................................................................. maybe i will find a system with like 16 planets and terraform all of them, i can collect and upgrade all in one place and get ridiculous amounts when i do so. I still prefer gas giants though....... actually, since there are apparently galaxy wide structures, maybe i should wait and have them be my mineral collection. i would point out though how odd it is to have more stars than gas giants. Honestly, I think there should be about twice as many gas giants as stars if we are aiming for realism. Our own solar system has 3 right.
Terraformed planets can still all be collected from when viewing a cluster. So you can spread them over multiple galaxies and still collect all with one button. Once you have upgraded all large extractor planets to a high level you can also usually move on to another system and forget about the previous one. Just favorite your cluster and current system. When you need to collect, switch to cluster, collect all, switch to system, continue building\upgrading, repeat.
I'll make gas giants more common in the next update.
If you pick a galaxy with a high magnetic field in a cluster with high ferromagnetic materials, and pick the hottest stars in the galaxy to put a planet killer on (preferably with 10+ planets) to maximize aurora bonuses, you should get enough materials to spam planet killers at construction level 1 (not sure about construction level 2, haven't gotten that far yet)
I really like this game one of my favorites I've been playing for a yearish now really like it. Thank you for putting so much effort in to the game. The only thing I don't like is the export and import because it doesn't work for Chromebook but I still love the game keep up the good work.
Import/export doesn't work on browser, that's normal (and right now I don't know how to fix), but you're saying it doesn't work on your chromebook despite running an executable?
soooo crazy thought, how about a terraform that basically makes it collect things from the system or out to a set number of lightyears from it increased by level and maxing out at whole of the galaxy it is built in. It would be kinda like a planet sized business district that way.
As I understand it, once the scale goes beyond a planet then it can slow the game down a lot. If you look at the slowdown caused when you press the collect all in busy system then it kind of makes it clear that the auto collect will be a large drain.
Thank you for all the time you've put in this!
Having a lot of fun so far.
Couple suggestions from my side so far.
1 is it possible to add a second resource list to the manual mining screen that lists the resource total mined during the current session? It's just when manual mining is able to clear several Km with one click, you don't really know what you mined since the list of expected resources is just for the current piece.
2 Pressing J to remove the tooltips, could pressing it again bring back the tooltip? I know I can reset them all in the options but sometimes I forget it on just one place.
3 Can the name of the speedup\overclocks perhaps include their duration\multiplier? The speeedup icon does contain the duration but it's a bit small to read in the hotbar.
4 For the mine terraform. An expected Resources list when building it? and a remaining resources in the tooltip or upgrade menu? Maybe a separate tab in the upgrades menu will work
5 Once in the galaxy view it becomes a game of "Remember where all your stuff is" Maybe a list of all the systems that contain something? A count of planets with structures, terraformed planets per terraform type, and superstructure count will be great. And having something similar for the higher scales will probably also come in handy.
6 When exploring caves, next to the difficulty rating, can it also give the expected avg damage of enemy projectiles?
1), 2) and 6) Good idea, I'll keep these suggestions in mind
3) Renaming the speedups is a good idea, but I'm not sure about the overclocks as both their durations and multipliers change. I think "10-minute 1.5x overclock" is a weird item name lol
4) Right now terraformed mines mine infinitely, despite the game saying otherwise, but once they do have a limit I'll make sure to include more information
5) There are overlays, the annotator and bookmarks that you can use to quickly go to where you want. I don't think it's a game of "Remember where all your stuff is", but rather "Remember to use the tools the game provides you to not have to remember where all your stuff is".
But I agree that a list of all the systems that contain stuff and other things you mentioned could be useful too
I'm glad you found some use from my suggestions. ^-^
3)Yea, that is a weird name :P The speedups are anyway the ones that I was having the most trouble with
4) -_- Guess I'll go build more of them then
5) I do use the overlays and annotations both. also renaming my systems to what the are producing. But there's no overlay for a system that produces resources. so if I forget, which I do wayyy to often, then I use the "system entered" overlay and open them one by one till I find the system I lost.
Yeah an overlay for systems that produce stuff will certainly be useful, I'll think about how I'll implement it
4) Ohhh! I'm guessing that's also why a surface mine continues working even though it's past the center. It does appear to only mine stone then though. So it does require you to build another if you need metals. So that balances out
7) Is it possible to reverse a new manual mine if you haven't yet mined anything? I've created about 3 by accident >_<
Yeah other people also asked for that, I'll get to it when other higher priority things are done lol
ok, so i am at the point where you get ship 3, i found it but can't figure out where to find the last part. i searched every dungeon on the planet twice.
Take a look at the green galaxy map, look for the other system, and one of the planets should have something on the surface
well theres the issue, i dug there before finding the ship......... ill try digging more but I think I dug past where it would be and since the counter didn't appear until i found the ship after that......... crud. well, i found it after digging another thirty or so tiles down with a mithril pick which breaks a bunch at once soooo to around 30km deep, i was in the mantle. thanks for the hint.
Just a thought but........... what about wormhole speed ups, they take like half an hour each time. Also, a way to auto collect terraformed mineral and energy planets.
sooooo minor issue...... ya know the warning about planets with lots of atmosphere and how it takes so much resources to leave after you get there....... it says in the millions........ i got stuck in one that takes over a billion energy to exit..... 289 bars is a bit high I guess. Anyway guess i will be building a space elevator.
Yeah I should probably state the exact energy cost instead of just "in the millions"
Maybe but generally I just think in the 1000s of energy... like m, g, and t?
Leveling up one of your ships does not show the stat increase in armor in the starship stat screen nor the combat screen. is it something that is not implemented yet or is it something else?
EDIT: There are some cases where my (insert Level Here) Ship showed 5 defense, however when hit by a lv 6 enemy, it did no damage whatsoever.
The defense stat is always a number between 3 and 10 and it simply divides the damage by that amount.
Love this game.
I have played Helixteus II and i say this sequel has a lot of potential.
I want to say something about this tho.
Does this game will have modding support in the future? if so, will it have in game modding?
EDIT: Bug if selling resources for money.
If there is enough demand I could give the game mod support in the future. It probably won't be in-game modding though, dimension resets (which are already partially implemented) will be as close to in-game modding as you will get.
Yes mod support woudl be epic if it was implimented.
Checked 0.21 on another computer. Anyway, soil is added/removed only after a lot of clicks. With pressed Shift more often. Windows 7 on both,
Another problem is deleting buildings by pressing X. Confirmation is needed. Nearby are other hotkeys (Z, F, WSAD) and once you miss, goodbye to the building for which you saved resources for three hours.
Ah, probably because it's windows 7. Unfortunately I don't have a win7 machine to test so I can't really do much for now.
Normally there's already a confirmation when pressing X on "expensive" buildings (those that represent a significant fraction of total money earned), but it doesn't always appear and I'm thinking of a setting where you can configure how often it appears (always, sometimes, never)
I just played the browser version. When I started without the tutorial, I could not build any energy generators, which kept me kinda stuck. Is this a bug or a feature?
If you've built less than 5 mineral extractors, it's a feature, to prevent getting stuck if you only build energy generators and not being able to generate any money.
If you've built 5 and still no energy generator, it's a bug.
Though on second thought that number should probably change to 1.
Hello. Can you make the list of commands available outside discord?(Just a txt file on the github or somthing would be nice)
Thank you - Colonizor48
Sure, I'll include a .txt file the next time I commit to GitHub.
Can Place/Remove soil only with map moving (by WSAD). Clicks while the map is stationary do nothing. Windows version of game.
Amendment. If you click quickly, sometimes it is possible to place the soil even when the map is stationary. But rarely - about once every 20-50 clicks. If you move the map, you manage to place the soil more often.
It seems to work fine for me and pretty much everyone else too. I'm not sure what I could do..
Is there a changelog for this game anywhere? I keep seeing updates but there’s never any indication of what’s actually changed in those updates.
Yeah, I post all release notes on my Discord server, but I understand that not everyone uses Discord and you were the first to ask, so I guess I'll also start posting them as itch.io devlogs.
I probably should join that server, but I do appreciate you making the release notes available outside of it too :)
Have played for 2 days and got some points.
1.The Matrioshka brain had no refunds and have made the resource picture of other megastructures&terraform in the same solar systems also invisible. (maybe it's not accomplished)
2.Some megastructures takes so long time to build. (for example,a Dyson sphere with more than 400 years) Luckily the normal buildings have a operation of auto speedup. (Missed the unlimited speedup in Helixteus 2.)
3.A buggggggggggg!SO Amazinggggggggggg THAT I HAVE TO RESTART--I used the drive to speedup my ships for a travel to another galaxy;however,the fuel is too much,and can't be chosen with more accuracy.With a time reduction of ~6e10 years,the travel ETA became 292471157 years and can't be reduced by drives,which means the travel cannot be finished,at least for me.So I think it is IMPORTANT to limit the fuel's use that the time reduction should't be more than the travel ETA.I know it because my data is END. orz
Still I think the science tree can be expanded for more,and thanks for the nice work,hope I can witness the Helixteus 3's completion/the Helixteus 4's born.XD
(I got screenshots but falied to upload them)
Thinking that the item stack size &resource collecting range can have more places in the science tree.
And maybe a level limitaion to buildings (can be linked with the player level) perhaps can be somehow useful for the number balance.
Hey, all 3 issues you mentioned are the direct result of the game simply not being finished lol. I already addressed the first two issues in the next update coming in a day or two, and the third one, well, it's just a question of data type which I can fix in seconds. Thanks for playing to the end!
Thanks a lot :D
By the way,how can I find the data in my computer?(I downloaded them after the comment and I think it should be ensured so that an update won't make my data lost)x )
Actually, saves aren't compatible across versions, so unfortunately you'll have to restart after each update. But you can type commands in-game to get back to where you were quickly. The list of commands can be found on our Discord server, but if you don't use Discord I can send you a PM.
To answer your question, it depends on what OS you play the game. If you play the Windows executable, the save should be at C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Godot\app_userdata\Helixteus 3
Nice!
The tutorial does not work for me, is this a bug on my chromebook or in the game?
Where in the tutorial did you get stuck? It's most likely a bug in the game.
never mind, I couldn't find the button that was all
Wow, this is really cool, and I am on a chromebook and the fact that this can run is sick. Nice game!
Great foundation for the game, but for 2~ hours and noticed that the building upgrade system kind of makes conquering other planets obsolete (or at least very unrewarding during the time I've played). Maybe require there to be a research for building upgrades, so that you can't just dump all your money into a single 10x overclocked mine, research station and energy station. Later having some automated way to conquer the galaxy would be dope, with fights being maybe more sparse. Currently it makes no sense that you can have 1 uber planet that generates more resources that the entire galaxy would with level 1 mines. Another thing is that clicking the button to collect resources gets old very fast - I have the patience, because I've played previous Helixteuses, but it'll turn off most people.
I think the game would benefit from plateauing on upgrade/technology multipliers for production. For example, make a 100x multiplier a soft cap for how much better the production of a single building can get (with very hard to get upgrades, that maybe later boost it to 120x). Otherwise if progress stays the same way it is right now in the final game, the game loop will feel very stale. You don't need 10s of levels for upgrades, 10 levels, each requiring a more advanced resource would be more than enough and it'd be more elegant gameplay-wise. Best incremental/idle games distinguish themselves by not just being a number going up simulator, but by opening up more gameplay mechanics when the players advances. Forcing the player to literally conquer galaxies would lead to much more fun gameplay.
Also I'm not sure if it's intended, but I don't see a way to mass-overclock buildings which seems really bad.
Edit: Played some more and realized that materials matter 0% after like 3 hours, unless I'm missing something. I can build pretty much anything, but my only bottlenecks are cash, energy and research.
Hey, thanks for your feedback!
- The "dumping all your money into a single 10x building" strategy works at first and you'll be able to research a lot of new things (including a way to auto-conquer galaxies), but it plateaus and you'll have to find other strategies to keep making numbers go up (megastructures, terraforming etc.). I do agree that you don't need many planets at all to reach very high numbers, I would like to change that! Though looking for and conquering specific planets with very strong auroras or deep caves may be interesting to boost progression.
- The reason the collect all button is there is for performance, if a player builds thousands of buildings and the game checks for each building (with possibly varying levels, bonuses, etc.) several times per second, I don't think it will perform very well. What replacement do you have in mind that performs well?
- I believe adding the plateauing mechanic on upgrade/technology just makes numbers go up slower and everything would take more time, or maybe I'm not completely understanding.
- You can mass-overclock (only on one planet) by shift clicking an overclock in your inventory, then pressing shift again to select every building of the same time, then clicking.
- For the materials, they'll once again become useful (and then useless) once you unlock megastructures and terraforming.
1)
Yeah, I've played two more hours after that and realized that. The problem is that I hit a massive wall after getting my mine like 15~ levels above the level when resources (carbon, copper ect.) are no longer required. It got extremely repetitive and slow vs. the pace of progress I had before and I was very far away from making a mega-structure. Then again, maybe I should've left the game to idle, because up to that point I was playing actively pretty much non-stop.
I've also read some more and seen how the late game advances. In general, it's going in the direction I'd like to see it go - you have to grab more planets to increase your income. The only problem (and obviously, this is because it's early in development) is that I don't see an interesting gameplay loop in just grabbing systems and building another gas giant miner. I feel like a part of the gameplay loop is missing here, where the player just isn't presented with enough interesting choices. Early game we get to play with all the toys and optimize our income, but later it seems like it'll get very samey. The best way to combat that, would be to automate a lot of the processes, such as having planet templates (or even system templates) and allowing the game to handle all the stuff you've been doing in the early game automatically, while letting you play with high-level stuff, such as choosing which systems to conquer/which enemies to fight ect.. Obviously there ought to be some pushback vs. the player, because as of now we're just derping around the galaxy and claiming rocks with no actual threats.
2)
This is kind of funny, because I'm actually also a developer (also in Godot) and I'm also making a strategy game. The economy present in Helixteus isn't that complex. If performance is the reason why you're using the collect all button, then that's not a good reason. In an optimally programmed game increasing income should not affect performance at all. Here's the solution:
Store a multiplier for each resource, example: technology for minerals and mineral upgrade for mineral gain speed.
Store a base income of each resource, modified only by buildings/megastructures similar stuff. Update that base income each time you upgrade/overclock/somehow modify a building.
Each tick (every second, half-second, w/e you decide) increase the resources by base income * multipliers * deltaTime. Because you overclock buildings, you also ought to sometimes check the overclock on every building - this is really slow, so you should do it rarely (no more often than every 5 seconds) and if you want a cleaner solution, instead of applying overclocks on buildings (which there can be thousands or even more of), change overclocks so they're more expensive, but instead apply to a type of building. So one overclock would boost all mineral production on the planet - way less clicks and waaaay more performant on scale.
With this implementation, you lose pretty much no functionality and can easily support worlds with millions (and more!) of buildings.
3)
Plateauing doesn't mean that things would go slower, you'd just adjust the cost of things. The purpose of this is to diversify the gameplay and change up the player's objective in the mid-game. Instead of increasing all your income by 20% with some technology, you'd instead have to shift your focus on conquering more planets. This would not only make things more interesting for the player, it'd make those technologies you get past the softcap (that maybe increase income by 1% each) far more rewarding, because of their scarcity. It'd also make the numbers more sane - if the player can see there's a difference of 100x between a level 1 mine and a mostly maxed out mine, then they'll be more easily able to understand the scale of things (it'd also make the game far more realistic, as everything eventually has diminishing returns, even technology). It's far more compelling to have a 1000 mines on different planets than 1 ubermine in your home system (I know this is only early game, but it's still a decently long part of the game).
4)
Oh, welp. I'm not sure if I missed some tutorial, but that would've helped a ton.
5)
Seems unusual balance-wise, but meh, jumps like that aren't inherently bad.
END)
I feel like your game has great potential, and I'll confidently say that you'd be able to sell it for $10-15 on Steam if the finished product has more mechanics (stuff that's engaging and challenges/gives options to the player) and decent polish. For that price tag though, you'd need to get some better graphics, especially in the UI department. As of now your focus seems a 100% on functionality, so I won't criticize too much, but the fact that my 2 month old project's UI that was created only for testing looks cleaner than yours means you should maybe look into it.
Don't undersell yourself, only because the game initially started out in flash. Even though objectively it's an unfinished mess as of now, it still kept me engaged for more than 3 hours. I'll repeat myself, but it has to be said - you have a great foundation. Looking over your discord and seeing you want to sell the game for 3 bucks made me wince - your game can worth far more if you put the required work into it. There are plenty of tools/techniques to make your game look far slicker.
Also a tip: don't feel boxed in the idle/incremental genre with stuff like infinite progression and prestiges. Your game could work great as a strategy with various minigames, or as some roguelike with unique runs. Pick mechanics that make the most enjoyable game.
1)
I believe you also missed that megastructures can be built way earlier than you thought: unlocking the mega-engineering science costs 100k SP and you can build Dyson spheres and mega mineral extractors right away if you choose the star/planet wisely (high luminosity-size ratio for stars, high atmospheric pressure for planets). I think this also gives the player interesting choices later in the game as some stars/planets have luminosity-size ratio/atmo pressure so terrible that it isn't even worth building anything there.
When you say "automate a lot of the processes, such as having planet templates", I think terraforming kinda already does that and allows you to transition from managing individual buildings to managing planets.
For threats, I don't plan to make this a strategy game, but rather a casual game where the player can expand without any stress, just a bit of thinking, clicking and time.
2)
Ah, right, sounds simple enough, I'll see what I can do. Fun fact: the Helixteus series was actually inspired by a Flash game called Bloons Monkey City, and I copied a few things including how you collect resources (click on farms individually to collect cash). Initially there was no collect all button, until people asked for it. And then it kinda stayed the same until now. I believe now's a good time for a change!
3)
I mostly agree, but "It's far more compelling to have a 1000 mines on different planets than 1 ubermine", wouldn't that make for very repetitive gameplay? One of the reasons to conquer new planets is not to fill them with buildings right away, but to look for interesting terrain features or planet properties (temperature, composition etc.)
END)
We're probably used to different things, but I personally find the graphics (that aren't placeholders) and UI to be okay and serve their purpose, except the settings menu, that one should really be cleaned up soon. I checked out the video you linked me, and I'm aware it's a test project, but it still gives me ideas for UI improvement, so thanks for that!
As for pricing, there are a few reasons behind the $3 price tag. I would rather see someone buy the game with low expectations and be pleasantly surprised than the other way round. This drives away people that go "$3 game? this must be crap", but I wouldn't want them to be playing my game anyways.
A second reason is that the source code is available publicly and the HTML5 version can be played for free, which will be identical to the Steam version without Steam cloud sync, achievements and high scores.
For those who really, really want to give more than $3, I'm also thinking of a ~$10 DLC of a pdf where I write the behind-the-scenes of Helixteus development, including screenshots of various ideas that never made it to the game or were removed. This does not put people without the DLC at a disadvantage while also offering the most supportive players something interesting to read and see.
Finally, a reminder that this started out as a passion project and it still is. I spent $0 making these 3 games, only thousands of hours of free time. I don't really view this as "selling a product", but finding those people who have similar interests as me.
I'll take a look at the other links you posted, they look really interesting!
1)
Oh, I'm aware you're able to build mega-structures before unlocking the later technologies, but the costs were completely out of whack when I tried making them. For example, the gas giant mine megastructure cost an insane amount of resources, but it provided me with about 1% of the revenue I got from my uber mine in my home system. Maybe I was missing something/I picked a bad planet, but it seemed really imbalanced.
Yeah, you're definitely on the right track with planet-size buildings. But it's very important to give the player proper tools to manage a large empire like that. Managing a single planet at the start's easy enough, but after that the UI just isn't equipped to handle the scale well.
3) In my opinion, no if it's sufficiently automated and supported with slightly more complexity. If systems are interchangable, then the game will get stale very fast, but that doesn't have to be the case. There are a lot of ways you could go about making the structure of the player's empire important. An example would be adding logistics - no magical bank of minerals, but every system has to be supplied by the empire's resource network. Also systems could be specialized into different roles, some serving as support that provide a buff to production of linked systems, some working as factories ect.. The uniques of planets and stars would still be relevant, because the player would have to decide what roles to give to each system.
These were just a few examples, but there are plenty of ways to squeeze out a lot more depth from what you already have. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with something interesting.
END)
Oh yeah, the graphics are good enough if you just want to make some hobbyist project on the side. I was speaking strictly in the context of making the game presentable enough to be sold for the $10-15 price tag.
>This drives away people that go "$3 game? this must be crap", but I wouldn't want them to be playing my game anyways.
I mean... there's a reason why people are less likely to look favorably on $3 dollar games. When gamers look through steam they expect the developers to know their worth and if someone's selling their game in the $1-3 range they expect the game to be a short experience without a lot of polish that was made in 1-2 months. It's nothing about cheaper games being inherently worse, people just have different expectations for them. Personally, I think you should either go for $5-7 bucks if you don't want to add any more polish (because that's roughly what your game would be worth at that production quality - it's low, but the gameplay compensates A LOT) or just release the game for free with the option for donations + a no content DLC intended to support you. If you make the game free, you'll get a much bigger community of players that'll enjoy your game. If you decide to sell the game for $5-7 dollars you'll get a decent compensation for the time you've spent on the project and you won't upset anyone, because that price is still really low. I feel like $3 is a really bad spot, because it'll mean weak monetary returns, setting wrong expectations for the buyers and it'll mean a significantly smaller community if you just went with free to play.
> Finally, a reminder that this started out as a passion project and it still is.
So is just about every indie game, but it's not a sin to want to be supported by your passion. I've no idea about your financial situation, but if making games is something you love doing and you're not insured with a silver spoon for the rest of your life, then you should strongly consider thinking about the returns from the game. After all, if this is something you want to continue doing in the future, you need to ensure that it'll provide you with financial security.
>I spent $0 making these 3 games, only thousands of hours of free time.
I'm not sure if you meant it jokingly, but "only thousands of hours" is a massive amount of time, totaling to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on where you live.
>I don't really view this as "selling a product", but finding those people who have similar interests as me.
You're an indie dev, of course you're not thinking about "selling a product". Just about every indie dev's the same way, with the exception of a few cash-grabbers that want to capitalize on industry trends. My best guess is that you just want to make a great game that you'd enjoy playing - same's the case for me! But developing games is a long and arduous process. You wouldn't expect George R. R. Martin to release his novels for free, even though he loves writing. Gamers respect the work that goes into development, especially when we're talking about indie games - people won't bat an eye, because you're trying to get compensation for something you've spent thousands of hours on.
This is all very personal and complicated, but if game development is really something you'd love to continue doing in the future, then think about how it could support you. Being able to make money off of something that you love doing is an immense privilege, as I've mentioned previously - unless you're fabulously rich, try to put some thought into how you'd like your future to look.
Thanks again for taking your time to push the game in the right direction, I really appreciate it. I'm relatively new to all these things so you're probably right, $5-7 sounds like a fairer price tag.
"My best guess is that you just want to make a great game that you'd enjoy playing"
Yeah exactly, which is why I considered such a low price tag, and I never push myself to work on the game, only when I want to, so it never feels like work.
("thousands of hours" was probably an exaggeration, the first two games took roughly 400-500 hours each and I'm at around 500 hours so far on this third one)
How can you auto-conquer a system? It's unlocked, but I can't see the button to do it.
Edit: I am an idiot.
Also I play on a Chromebook so it would be delightful for there to be a full screen button on the game so I would be able to play full scree. Again keep up the good work!
Pressing F11 doesn't work?
There is no F11 button on the Chromebook.
Oh, interesting, guess I'll add a button in the settings then
Is there not a menu in Chrome with a fullscreen button like on PC/Mac?
I love the game but there's a sever problem that made it so I had to restart the game in which I had accidentally zoomed out too far then I couldn't find the place that I was building things, I tried zooming back in and moving the camera around but all I got was the HUD and the black abyss. Can't wait to see the next update, keep up the good work!
Yep, this problem will be fixed in the next update (blocking you from moving the view outside the screen) along with other things!
This is enjoyable, despite being very unfinished. Can't wait to see how it ends up looking when you finish!
Thanks for the encouragement, I'm working really hard on this game!
Hello! I love this game. Can I help you to translate it to Russian?
Sure! You can join our Discord server (accessible from title screen), there's a link to the translation spreadsheet in there.
When will the next update comes,I can't wait to play this
No convert material into cash,how to do that???
Inventory (E) -> Materials -> click on a material icon
Currently you can't sell (or do anything with) stone yet!