Deadstone: Demo Now Available

Kilgore__Trout

Hope I’m not breaching forum etiquette here, if so, please feel free to remove this post!

Just thought I’d drop in to give an update on Deadstone. It’s 18 months (or maybe years) so since I started development and I’m finally finished! It will be available in just over a week.

Deadstone is a sci-fi themed top down shooter with meaningful elements of tower defense, and in depth character development. The full 50 mission campaign is playable in single player, or local co-op (requires joypad). There are also two separate stories, the main campaign storyline (Side A), and Side B, a farcical take on events. Deadstone was developed with Unity (C#) and artwork, music, and voice acting aside, I pretty much did everything myself. Tough to call, but I’d say I spent around 4,000 hours working on it, maybe more.

Here’s the gameplay trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOTuXE03DTU

And the story trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIpzj00tVv8

I’ve updated the demo on Indie DB yesterday, and it’s here if you’d like to try it out: http://www.indiedb.com/games/deadstone/downloads/deadstone-demo

I’d be curious to hear what you think! While I can’t make any changes until after release, I believe there’s room for improvement and I’m open to suggestions.

I also put Deadstone on Greenlight a while back. Steam drives a lot of traffic at you for the first few days, but after that, it’s up to you. To be honest, the campaign is going pretty slowly, and it will likely take a long time to get through, if it happens. I’m hoping the coverage Deadstone gets around release time will help give it a kick!

If you’d like to drop in and cast a vote (or even strong arm a few pals into voting : ), here’s the URL: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259480653

I know voting through the URL can be hassle, since you have to authenticate the account, but you also check out the GL campaign through the Steam client, using Community -> Greenlight -> Type Deadstone in the search box.

Anyway, thanks for all the help over the last few months, and I wish you fun & success in your own ventures!

Daithi

witnessmenow

Congrats man! Sorry I never got to try the demo.

Voted on green light and very slowly downloading the demo as we speak!

Kilgore__Trout

Cheers! Hope you enjoy the demo, and thanks for the vote!

RedXIV

Awesome news dude! voted on greenlight and will make sure more do also!

Demo incoming!

witnessmenow

Hey Daithi,

So I've been playing the game for the last 30 minutes and am really enjoying it! I will be coming back to it again too! This is probably the first PC game I have played in about 4 months!

I do have some feedback though, as with all these types of threads there will be negatives, but over all I honestly did enjoy the game. Here they are anyways:

• [Pretty Low] I have a pretty powerful PC and a native resolution of 2560x1440 but the launcher defaulted me to 1080p with quality low (dont know if this is deafult or what). not a big deal as it persists my settings accross launches.
  
  
• [Pretty High] No controller support for player 1. I would think this game would be very well suited to a joypad but It doesn't appear I can use the joypad as player one. With the upcoming steamboxes and in home streaming controller support is becoming more and more important.
  
  Pre Submit EDIT: I see I can change this in the menu, I think it should be more streamlined, If I am playing one player and I try use a controller I should be automatically allowed to use the controller.
  
  
• [Low] Arrows should be allowed to use in the menus?
  
  
• [Lowish] I would have a new image for every chunk of text in the intro, as a way of keeping the player engaged.
  
  
• [Possible Very Low] Some of the voice clips in the intro sounded different volumes
  
  
• [Personal Opinion] Level 2, I thought the mood of the music doesn't really suit the environment , its kind of dancy while I would have thought the mood of the situation should be suspenseful, atmospheric and frightening. I didn't think it was as noticable for other levels.
  
  
• [Personal Opinion] I'm sure more will come later, but I would think more zombies that take less bullets might be better than less zombies that take 4 shots to kill. I kind of felt they were a little bullet spongy, was a little disappointed they were surviving shottys to the face! E.G twice the number of zombies with half the health might be better.
  
  
• [Minor Annoyance] Clicking "Load" there was a couple of seconds where it was doing nothing, and I wasn't sure if I had clicked it or not. Maybe there needs to be a loading splash screen? (I installed the game on a slow enough drive)
  
  
• [Suggestion] I just finished the first survival mode, I probably prefered the survival mode than the other missions. I would maybe consider a horde mode type game option, where it is literally just play the survival mode for as long as you can. It would be great to have leaderboards for who survived the longest etc.

Can I ask how you are marketing the game? And how much you are looking to charge for it?

Has that 4k hours all been part time!? I hope not as that is over 50 hours a week over 18 months! :eek:

Congrats again on getting it done

Tomorrow is feedback friday on r/gamedev on reddit, make sure to through it up there for a few more potential downloads.

On a small side note:
I would also consider thinking about putting it on the Ouya. You might find it easier to get feedback on it. There is a direct path from unity to yhr Ouya and since you already have controller support you are already half way there. I would at least throw it up here to gauge interest. If people are interested it might motivate you to look into it.

Kilgore__Trout

RedXIV wrote: »

Awesome news dude! voted on greenlight and will make sure more do also!

Demo incoming!

Thanks! Appreciate the vote, and hope you enjoy the demo!

Kilgore__Trout

witnessmenow wrote: »

Hey Daithi,

So I've been playing the game for the last 30 minutes and am really enjoying it! I will be coming back to it again too! This is probably the first PC game I have played in about 4 months!

I do have some feedback though, as with all these types of threads there will be negatives, but over all I honestly did enjoy the game. Here they are anyways:

• [Pretty Low] I have a pretty powerful PC and a native resolution of 2560x1440 but the launcher defaulted me to 1080p with quality low (dont know if this is deafult or what). not a big deal as it persists my settings accross launches.
• Chances are this is the last setting I ran it at. Hopefully it should remember your choice next time you open.

• [Pretty High] No controller support for player 1. I would think this game would be very well suited to a joypad but It doesn't appear I can use the joypad as player one. With the upcoming steamboxes and in home streaming controller support is becoming more and more important.
  
  Pre Submit EDIT: I see I can change this in the menu, I think it should be more streamlined, If I am playing one player and I try use a controller I should be automatically allowed to use the controller.
  Should look at this really, thanks.

• [Low] Arrows should be allowed to use in the menus?
• Could be done, but I'd need to know which menu item is currently focused. I'm considering the possibility of full controller support, and this would go hand in hand with that

• [Lowish] I would have a new image for every chunk of text in the intro, as a way of keeping the player engaged.
• Mainly a resources issue here. Would have loved to have more art in the game, and also have the choice of a female protagonist.

• [Possible Very Low] Some of the voice clips in the intro sounded different volumes
• [Personal Opinion] Level 2, I thought the mood of the music doesn't really suit the environment , its kind of dancy while I would have thought the mood of the situation should be suspenseful, atmospheric and frightening. I didn't think it was as noticable for other levels.
• [Personal Opinion] I'm sure more will come later, but I would think more zombies that take less bullets might be better than less zombies that take 4 shots to kill. I kind of felt they were a little bullet spongy, was a little disappointed they were surviving shottys to the face! E.G twice the number of zombies with half the health might be better.
• It's something I've thought about on occasions. May well happen in the future.

• [Minor Annoyance] Clicking "Load" there was a couple of seconds where it was doing nothing, and I wasn't sure if I had clicked it or not. Maybe there needs to be a loading splash screen? (I installed the game on a slow enough drive)
• Will take a look at this.

• [Suggestion] I just finished the first survival mode, I probably prefered the survival mode than the other missions. I would maybe consider a horde mode type game option, where it is literally just play the survival mode for as long as you can. It would be great to have leaderboards for who survived the longest etc.
• Good suggestion. Would you have any preferences on whether you'd let the player level up, place defenses, buy weapons?

Can I ask how you are marketing the game? And how much you are looking to charge for it?
I've emailed a lot of journalists and youtube channels mainly. Got an okay response, and a few reviewers were interested enough to look at it when it comes out. I think any game with zombies may not be an easy sell at the minute though. There are a lot of them. Posted on IndieDB, and a number of forums. Price is €8.99. Would you think this is fair?

Has that 4k hours all been part time!? I hope not as that is over 50 hours a week over 18 months! :eek:
Well, I lost my full time job a while back. Have a bit of work, but mostly I've been working on the game. 4k hours is probably a little conservative tbh : )


Congrats again on getting it done

Tomorrow is feedback friday on r/gamedev on reddit, make sure to through it up there for a few more potential downloads.
Definitely a good idea. Thanks

On a small side note:
I would also consider thinking about putting it on the Ouya. You might find it easier to get feedback on it. There is a direct path from unity to yhr Ouya and since you already have controller support you are already half way there. I would at least throw it up here to gauge interest. If people are interested it might motivate you to look into it.
Definitely interested in releasing to other platforms. I'd need do more work on the controller support, though, as you can really only play the combat sections using the controller. It would probably be a good way to spend the time though!

Thanks for all this!

witnessmenow

Hows it getting on Daithi?

Kilgore__Trout

Hi, thanks for asking. Got through the release in one piece anyway. Your observations above were spot on. Quite a few have been mentioned by game reviewers.

I've just added a beta version of an arena mode, which gives you a certain amount of stats, perks, and credits, and then you have to survive for as long as possible. It needs more work, and will be improved in subsequent updates. Also considering some rebalancing, including increasing ammo capacity of weapons, character move speed, and increasing the number of enemies (but reducing their health).

Going to release a web version of this survival mode tomorrow hopefully, and will either update the demo, or start working on a Linux release next.

How's things going for you?

witnessmenow

Kilgore__Trout wrote: »

Hi, thanks for asking. Got through the release in one piece anyway. Your observations above were spot on. Quite a few have been mentioned by game reviewers.

I've just added a beta version of an arena mode, which gives you a certain amount of stats, perks, and credits, and then you have to survive for as long as possible. It needs more work, and will be improved in subsequent updates. Also considering some rebalancing, including increasing ammo capacity of weapons, character move speed, and increasing the number of enemies (but reducing their health).

Going to release a web version of this survival mode tomorrow hopefully, and will either update the demo, or start working on a Linux release next.

How's things going for you?

They all sound like good ideas. I think that arena mode could be lots of fun. Let me know if you want me to try it, I'll do my best to oblige.

Actually I came across a guy who had a URL for his game on green Light, It launched the steam application to the right page. You should look into how this is done, it would help massively in getting votes.

Do you think your demo is too good/long? Maybe give them the arena mode (with limited weapons) and 3 or 4 levels? It should be enough to give them a taste.

I know you tried feedback friday on reddit when I suggested it, but it was a bad week for it! Friday was the 4th of July, so the Americans were celebrating their nation's independence by blowing up a small part of it :pac:

I'd give FF another go tomorrow.

There is a good few videos etc online about it, so good work on marketing it!

Still think it's worth throwing a thread in that Ouya forum, it wouldn't be committing to anything but if there was interest it might be a decent motivation to do it.

Are there many people looking for a Linux version? It would be cool to support as many versions as possible, but I can't imagine there is a huge amount of people gaming on Linux yet. I would focus on getting full controller support in the game first, as the majority of people playing a Linux version would probably eventually be playing on steam boxes.

Soc-car is stagnating As is my interest in it. I haven't been doing too much dev lately for lots of reasons, hoping to release a few smaller games soon though.

Break down of Downloads:
Ouya 3.3K
Play Store 200~
Amazon 140

Kilgore__Trout

I've just uploaded a web version of the arena mode, if anyone would fancy giving it a go! Edit: Ran into technical difficulties regarding streaming, so I'm removing the web build for now
I read about a way to direct to greenlight logged in, but have also heard that it will throw a security alert in some cases. Still, might be worth a go.

It's really hard to know with the demo. Too little, and there's no investment, too much, and the full game is redundant. The options are pretty limited in the demo, in terms of the full game though. I don't think the demo is really the best showcase of the game, as the beginning levels are easier, tutorial based levels.

Yeah, think it would be worth another go... and as to the marketing ... well... the situation looks better than it is : )

Ouya could be an option, but would be inclined to go for Linux & Mac first, as it requires less modification of the game. A few requests for Linux, so if the first update hasn't caused any problems, I'll probably get cracking on that tomorrow.

witnessmenow

See you are featured on the Desura client, thats pretty cool!

Kilgore__Trout

Thanks : ) Yeah, it's nice to get a mention!

Kilgore__Trout

Hi all,

I've been working on a web version of the fairly recently added "Survival" mode of the main game, and was wondering if you would give it a go, to see if it's working ok for you? Also would be curious to see if you think it's fun, and in good enough shape to represent the main game?

http://deadstonegame.com/wp-content/WebVersion/Suvival%20Web%20Build.html

Torakx

I had a go just now. Actually it's more fun for me than the original to be honest.
I couldn't for the life of me remember or figure how to switch weapons, so I had to play it with pistol only lol
But it was definetly more challenging and fun to be challenged with a horde and no objective to keep looking down at.
Have you always been using unity to make this? For some reason I thought you were using some other engine. C# or Java?
Looks good anyway.
One thing I missed having, would be a way to lower the stats i raised before comfirming. Often in games I will fiddle with setups and stats a few times before commiting, usually to see how they affec tother stats.
It looks nicely polished too. Great job
Oh and one of the best parts for me also, was uploading my highscore and seeing other names, some of them familiar, on the same score table.
It gave my game time a wider "importance" in some respects.
One of the things I'd like to do in the future with a game, is to link the high score to facebook. Possibly have a high score table on the game site/FB page as well. And I guess if I went that far, some prizes to encourage competition.

Kilgore__Trout

Thanks for trying it out & for the feedback. Yeah, the campaign is more of a slow burn, so this is more about fast action. Deadstone was made completely in Unity... was working on another game in Java, but it was way too complex for me to finish.

I'll look into the issue with changing weapons... that's a big one. What key/mouse button did you bind for changing weapon? Can I ask what system/browser you are running on too, might be a clue in there.

Torakx

Hmm I didn't bind any keys, I just put it on firefox and started playing
Didn't see anything about binding a key. But I cn misss a lot of info when I am rushing past uttorials in games lol
My OS is Vista btw, but if the key is supposed to be binded, thats the issue.

Kilgore__Trout

Yeah, it's set to default on mousewheel up and down for next/last weapon. Wonder if your mousewheel movement isn't being registered. Am just adding in change weapon based on number keys 1 - 4 now, as an alternative.

Mr. CooL ICE

Just played it there. It's good fun. I love the movement mechanics.

Is there any reason why you don't automatically reload when your clip is gone? To me, it seems intuitive to auto reload as almost every other game involving guns does this. If you do this, you would probably also have to replace the ticking sound with some metallic clicky reload sounds, but maybe that's just being picky.

Also, I would change the Patrol button. It looks like another just stat tab and I began my first game without equipping guns. Maybe making it a different colour and/or placing it elsewhere?

Kilgore__Trout

Glad you enjoyed it!

If you play on Normal difficulty, you get a free perk called Lazyboy, which slightly improves your reload time and automatically reloads weapons. I guess it's just another thing you have to remember to do on the harder difficulties.

I've changed the patrol button text to "Fight" for now, but changing the button colour makes sense. Thanks again for the feedback.

Kilgore__Trout

Hi all,

Deadstone is in with a shot of getting Greenlit on the next batch, but it's slowly losing positions as the days wear on. Currently at 41, and although Steam appears to have changed its release schedule, there's a pretty good chance they will put through a batch of 50 on Friday. In this case, even a handful of votes could make all the difference

If you happen to be online in the next few days, or have a few Steam buddies that wouldn't mind voting, I'd be very grateful if you could direct them toward my humble game. The URL is: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=259480653, but it's probably easier within Steam to go Community -> Greenlight -> type Deadstone in the search bar

Thank you for reading

Torakx

That's great news mate All the best with it. Don't forget to advertise in facebook promotional groups too.

Kilgore__Trout

Quite a nice review of Deadstone here: http://truepcgaming.com/2014/09/01/deadstone-review/

"The writing itself is dramatic, like something you’d read in a pulp detective book."

Some people might be offended by this. I'm still grinning : )

Torakx

Kilgore__Trout wrote: »

Quite a nice review of Deadstone here: http://truepcgaming.com/2014/09/01/deadstone-review/

"The writing itself is dramatic, like something you’d read in a pulp detective book."

Some people might be offended by this. I'm still grinning : )

Hahah nice:)
I noticed he couldn't find the save information to create a second save.
Does he know about PlayerPrefs? Or did you hide the save info?

Kilgore__Trout

Yeah, there's only one save slot for co-op and one for single player. Guess I could have added more, but it didn't seem like the highest priority. Save data is in appdata -> local low -> Deadstone, rather than registry.

Kilgore__Trout

A bit late in posting here, but update 2 is now available. If you'd like a rundown on what's changed, you can find out here http://deadstonegame.com/forum/index.php?topic=44.0

Good news is Deadstone has just been Greenlit. Pretty excited : )

BloodBath

Congrats, haven't had a chance to try it yet but will do soon.

Best of luck. Hope it sells bucket loads.

Any plans on console or mobile versions?

What's the indie market like on consoles, do they sell much?, is it hard to get published? What cut do they take?

Steam is 30% right or is that under NDA?

Kilgore__Trout

Cheers! Wouldn't mind that myself : )

Console and mobile version are fairly unlikely. Deploying to PS or X-Box requires development kits, which apparently cost 10k+, and possibly extra licensing within Unity. That's into selling a kidney territory for me : ) I'm not sure it fits very well with mobile either due to the control setup, but I may be wrong about that.

As for the indie market on consoles, I just couldn't tell you. Have really only worked on PC so far.

I don't know what the % is yet, as I haven't completed all the steps required to access Steamworks, but it's definitely under NDA. A while back, I spent a long time on the net looking for the same information, but to no avail.

Torakx

I searched for the steam royalty back when looking at greenlight terms of service. I think it was 30% but my memory is rusty.
The info is out there anyway. I got it on a random forum.
Although... take that with a pinch of salt.

Here's one that hints at the 30% also.
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=142572