Package of improvement suggestions, feel free to comment

[lightbulb]

Hello, first of all, i love your game! It's a good concept and presented in a very individual and nice way! God Job! Since i've played it for some hours, i got some ideas for improving the game: 1. Pigmen improvments (I just luv'em!!!) A. Healthbar Pigs (and future friendlies) should have a healthbar or better you should display their hitpoints below them. It should be possbile for them to be healed. The healing should be quite expensive, only meat, no manure-creating veggies, and lots of meat too for decent healing = 1 meat unit doesn't regain much health. During combat they shouldn't accept food, otherwise pigmen would become too imbalanced and easy. It seems Pigmen at the moment have the ability to regenerate without cost, i suggest to abolish that, makes the game too easy! I think a group of pigmens you have to invest meat to keep them alive is better, makes it more controllable and more fun and doesn't harm game balance, since you can't heal them in combat. And to be honest at the point where you have pigmen, you usually already have lots of meat. B. Pigmen Individualisation Perhaps create the opportunity to give the pigmen names? By this way they grow more to the players heart. It is more worth to keep them alive. If they die it hurts. Give a pigman 1 straw: They will wear straw as a hat, its not a straw hat, but just straw that stands straight up from their head. That fit's to the theme that pigmen are savage people. Give a pigman 1 flower (abolish flower = manure please ... it's too easy creating manure from pigmens with flowers): They will wear a chain of flowers around their neck. Also fits to the theme, looks a little bit like traditional Hawaian.^^ C. Pigman can smell you Give a pigman 1 Beardhair: Pigman will say "I smell you in dark". Well if it's getting dark or it is already he will still follow you like its' daytime whereas the one you didn't give beard hear will behave like usual, getting disoriented. But he wont cut trees at night or simliar. If a pigman who got a beard hair sees fire (torch, fireplace) he will behave like a pigman who didn't get a beard hair. Beard hair is rare, so that doesn't harm the balance = make the game too easy. It is just to prevent them to get lost.D. Pig king gold The pig king shouldn't spawn gold by giving it meat, but spawn golden manure instead. It should geenrate the same science points as gold. I know it's a new slotfilling item, but it suits better to the theme and is just funny. I mean you give veggies to the pigman and they make manure, because they're pigs! And giving the pig king meat causes him to make golden manure, that is hilarious 2. Better highllighting of targets In the game it can easily happen that you missclick! Real Examples: A. You want to cook meat over the fireplace, but instead of cooking it, you eat it, because the mouse was a little off the fireplace. Of course you can see current highlight and the text cook/eat. But the text is very small and the current highlight is too weak. If you click too fast there can be a lot of mistakes. B. It's night, you are at your fireplace, a bunch of spiders is hunting you though. There are close behind you and you try to keep up the fire but in your haste you drop the wood instead of putting it into the fireplace! C. You want to attack somthing and you missclick and just walks there and you don't make the first punch. Suggested solution: You should highlight the thing which you interact with in a diffrent way, but let the text description stay. How about highlighting the outline in a suitable color and stop highlighting the acutal item/obeject, it could glow a little bit, e.g. red for attacking and green for interacting. By this way it is not so probable that you e.g. attack a Buffaloo accidently and all your pigmen rage on him and get killed by helping buffaloos. The highlight outline shouldn't be too thick though. An extra icon (animated or not) to indicate the possible intercation, e.g. a (animated) sword *for a spider you want to attack is not so good. It would be rather confisung, just too much. 3. Placing and Moving Items and Buildings I dont't like it that if the character builds something he will place it directly where he stands, e.g. a farm plot. And that this placement is not reversible or movable. Isn't this a big part of the fun playing that game to create your own stuff and environment and arrange the things in a way you want. So if e.g. a farm plot should be placed you should get the option to place it somewhere on the screen, you know somthing like RTS-Game, with green and red places. If you don't like the placement anymore you can move it. That doesn't mean you pack it up into one inventory slot. It is like RTS-Game again, the character should be animated disassembling the object and moving to the new place to reconscruct it again. All of these things happen wihtin the current screen, since you can't scroll, and this is good as it is. We don't want to move from one corner of the map to the other, although technically it would be actually possible. Moving things shoudl be free of charge! Addition: OMG, building a bee box in your camp and having pigs around is HELL!!! The bees, though not attacking you, get on your nerves with their noise. And above all, the pigmen will fight the bees whenever they spawn, although actually the bees are friendly. This will litter the ground with honey and kill the pigs slowly. Being able to move the beebox would be so good! 4. Frogs/Bees Poisen damage This tentacle/frog area is too easy to get meat. To make it more difficult the frogs should do their normal damage as usal but in addtion poisen damage (Liveloss per time unit). It doens't stag. Getting hit by a frog would mean to get poisend for a certain amount of time, hit again during that time resets the poisen time again. Perhabs also with bees, but they do enough damage^^, you could perhaps change their damge completedly with poisen damage. Beeing poisend should be indicated by of course slowly sinking life and above all green health display. 5. Graves Ähh i don't know what is possible with graves, i am noob still. I guess it will have to do with magic?! Well also the shovel .. but to come back to the topic. I assume you can't do anything with the graves at the moment. Why not letting zombies spawn at dusk? They should stay near the grave and walk slowly, but should be though in HP and damage. They should drop 1 gold. 6. Resurrection It is a good idea. You should make it more expensive though, it makes it mor fun because it's more hardcore. And you should improve the theme. E.g. in addition to the current resoucres needed: +1 Gold, lots of Straw and the strange screaming plant which restores you health completely. The latter one i think, is a MUST, since it restores so much health and is obvioulsy magical, and seldom, it is perfect!, Also for the theme, but the graphical design aspect: If you die your soul leaves the body and flies the direct way through the map to your effigy where the souls is reinfused into flesh with lots of slimy noices, lightnings and stuff that's what i call theme. 7. Science machine The idea of science points and the science machine is good. But i think the theme of a science machine ist not so good, i suggest to change it to something which is rather like a laboratory. Since it is about generating science points, why not presenting it as such in a more common understandable way. I know there are pigmens and strange buffalo thinigies but a science machine still doesn't fit in, it's just too wired^^. The character should be in the laboratory while doing research, showing him DOING research (e.g. sawing, breaking materials, using liquids), that shows the commitment and importance of generating science points since it takes the player some time. The char should be just a little slower than the actual current science machine, but there is another diffrence because while he is in the laboratory he can't do something else. It is a bit difficult because the character has no glas or chemicals at all or paper in the early stages of the game. The "experiments" of him must fit. 8. Inventory Yeah ähh the inventory soltuion is not so good... Sorry, but the hidable second slot-bar, activated, *is a REAL pain in the a**, if you want to run from e.g. raged buffalloos. Also if this game is a great success, which i really hope it will be you will add more content i guess. But the slot number in the inventory is to small really. Solution: You could place the inventory on the left side as a side bar (inv tab) similar to the the craft/building tab (c/b tab). The c/b tab will remain. How? Make the tabs changable, E.g. by pressing a button on the top or buttom of the current tab or just e.g. press shift and the tab will switch. There aren't so many slots in the inv tab at the moment, so 2 rows of inv slots (exactly as now in the bottom middle) can be placed. 9. Before i forget!!! When you rightlick on an item, e.g. axe, it will be equipped. E.g. you have already a shovel in the slot, this shovel will be replaced by the axe. The shove itself will be placed in a slot of the inventory somehow totally by random however?! It doens't go to the slot where the axe was. This is really unnerving and weird, i don't understand the real sense of it... If the shovel goes there where the axe was you can, let's say, "reservate" certain slots of the inventory as area for tools. E.g. 3 neighbouring slots for axe, pickaxe, shovel. Regards lightbulb

[Toaster Fu]

Welcome! That's a lot of suggestions! 3. They do plan to change it to more of a RTS way of placing things, but I don't know how long that will be. 9. It places them like this, It try's to fill the top slots then the bottom slots going left to right.

[lightbulb]

Hey thx for the welcome. I guess my text is too long, not so many views , but i hope somehow the developers get to see it!To point 9: Ok that's the system, but that doesn't make it better . They should make an exception for tools.Cheers

[Excess]

Hi there Lightbulb. I've found out that is easier for everyone and generates richer discussions if you focus the suggestions individually. Also, don't forget to read the old threads, you'll find that several suggestions are already in discussion

Nonetheless, I have to agree with some of your points:

[*]Pigs health bar

I wouldn't recommend having a health bar per se, thats too RTS and would disrupt the theme, but they need to reflect on their appearance that they are hurt, somehow. Perhaps change what they say also.

[*]Placing and Moving Items and Buildings

As master Fu said, it's definitely on their to-do list.

[*]Frogs poison damage

Couldn't agree more, I've already suggested this because frogs are WAY nerfed, they are just too easy to kill.

[*]Bees

I wouldn't make it a poison attack, but rather a suicidal attack, as they do in real life. If the hit you before you do, they would also die, but you wouldn't get the drop.

[*]Switching tools

I too think switching tools should remain in their respective place.