Coliseum Demo out

[Bee]

This is from gonegold.com:

Coliseum
[15 MB]

Shrapnel Games and Stormcloud Creations would like to announce the release of a full- featured demo for the upcoming fantasy gladiatorial management sim, Coliseum.

The demo gives players an enormous taste of what to expect in the full title to be released in December. In terms of features and gameplay elements the demo is almost exactly as the final game will be, with two exceptions. One, the game halts halfway through the fighting season, allowing players to try out twenty days of the forty-day season. Two, players cannot save the game. Other than that the demo and full game are enough alike that you'll be able to walk away with a very informed opinion of what to expect when the full game ships.

"I think the public will very much appreciate the fact that this is a demo that does justice to the full game," Tim Brooks, president and founder of Shrapnel Games said. "For example, being able to experience the real deal before it comes out is a lot better than just being able to play a single arena combat. Gamers are going to have a lot of fun with this one!"

Coliseum is a text-based sports management simulation with a twist-you're managing bloodthirsty gladiators, not the Lakers or Green Bay Packers. And though whenever you mention gladiators most people think of Ancient Rome, Coliseum is actually set in a fantasy world. This allows players to dabble in magically enchanting their fighters, either through eldritch sorcery or bubbling brews. Of course, if you're worried about what type of effect drinking demon blood will have on your men there's always mundane training. But c'mon, how much fun is it really to do wind sprints?

Coliseum is slated for a December 10th release (right around the corner!).

Link to the demo

[VPI97]

I pre-ordered.

[Bee]

Sounds like someone left a "stop statement" in the code while testing. Folks may want to wait to download the demo until they get the line removed and the code recompiled.

[StormcloudCreations]

Oops! Yes someone did leave in some debug code...and i'll give you 3 guesses who it was. Nope, not me!

It's already been fixed and the revised demo submitted to Shrapnel. Just might take a little bit to update. Sorry about that all!

[Bee]

Glad to hear it's fixed. Hope they can get the demo up quickly.

[Runtheball]

I ran into the stop statement too, after the first match. What I saw I really liked! But could you add one of these two options...

Option to slow down the text to greater than 5 seconds (coudn't finish reading most of the text items during battle), or...

Option to create a log of each fight, so we could read them without time limit.

One other question... when we rename a fighter, is the new name added into the database of existing names (so that it will recur randomly in other fighters)? If not, is there a way to make that an option? I'm assuming here that first and last names are mixed randomly when a game is started.

[StormcloudCreations]

Just an FYI: The new version of the demo is up, with the problem fixed. Sorry again about the inconvenience.

Demo link (15 MB):

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/downloads/colidemo.exe

Quick early impressions are appreciated! Thanks!

To "Runtheball": Some good suggestions there. The option to add more time to the text message will be considered. I figured 5 seconds would be long enough.

The other suggestion: It's something I could look into. Yes the first and last names are randomly put together every game start.

[Runtheball]

Derek,
Nice Game -- everything seems very well done! I've played 6 matches so far (won all of them). The only thing I noticed that went wrong is that in my last match the League News reported that I lost, even though the standings correctly show that I won.

My biggest problem so far is that I'm having trouble making any money. 6 wins in a row, but my money is staying basically unchanged. I've scaled back the advertising a bit, and the training (since the fighters have made almost no training progress after their nice gains the first week). What am I missing?

I think about 7 or 8 seconds would be just about the right delay period to allow players (me at least) to read all the text during combat.

[Runtheball]

One other thing I just noticed...I have one fighter that is 4-0-0, and another that is 2-0-0. The fighter with two wins doesn't show on the league standings, even though his two league points should put him ahead of the bottom 3 fighters on the list (the lowest fighter on the list has no wins and 6 loses, no kills).

[StormcloudCreations]

Originally posted by Runtheball
One other thing I just noticed...I have one fighter that is 4-0-0, and another that is 2-0-0. The fighter with two wins doesn't show on the league standings, even though his two league points should put him ahead of the bottom 3 fighters on the list (the lowest fighter on the list has no wins and 6 loses, no kills).

Thanks Runtheball, for your compliments!

Making money in the game can be a tricky business. You may want to eliminate advertising and training or trim them down almost to nil until you get profitable by having good fighters with established track records. Of course money earnings are partially luck too; some games may be better than others with this.

As far as the league standings: It will only display your warrior with the most points in the top slot (your current primary one in the event of a tie).

[kingfc22]

I was able to rack up the money pretty quickly. Some well placed betting can provide a nice income outside of fights.

[StormcloudCreations]

Ah yes, betting...if done right, it can do well for you, but *game hint* lady luck can turn at any time, so it isn't a good thing to rely on for long periods of time....

[sabotai]

Storm

A bug I found. If I have a fighter who goes 12-1 and is my highest ranked fighter. If I auction him off, on the standings it takes away the guy's name, but there is still a "12-1" there. (Instead of just showing my #2 guy...which after the auction becomes my #1 guy.)

[StormcloudCreations]

Thank you much sabotai...found it a little earlier, and it's fixed now.

[Bee]

I completely agree with the above comments about slowing the text display down and also playing in windowed mode.

Something I noticed: I went to edit a fighter's name and hit enter accidently without typing anything in and it deleted the fighter.

Great little game. The exact type of game I like to play when working on something else and taking breaks (which would make the windowed mode critical for me ).

[StormcloudCreations]

For those who are interested: I've listened to many of the comments and suggestions on various forums, and come up with a new version of the demo for Coliseum, version 1.01. It now should be a little more challenging than before. It has the following changes:

- Completely redid the starting warrior stat generation to be more even and balanced early on (less of a gap between the various warriors stats) to make the overall league more competitive and balanced than before
- Added a NEW feature: You can alter the combat strategy in the middle of a match by yelling various things or strategies at your warrior (changing stategies by being aggressive, more defensive, etc.) if you go below 20 WP. It will increase the effect of an already chosen strategy at the beginning of the fight as well. This will allow managers to be more involved in the flow and outcome of a fight at times
- The first change noted above in the game will make gambling a little tougher than before, since stats tend to be more even overall, so it will just about fix occasional "broken" problems with gambling
- Made training a bit more expensive, so it's tougher (almost impossible early on) to "max out"; altered it to be a bit more effective too, to balance out the cost
- Fixed all known bugs, including the warrior "rename" bug, occasional potion bugs, and auctioning off a top warrior and having his record still show up in the top standings
- Added two new text delay options - 1 second (for a fast fight) and 8 seconds (to make for easier reading)
- Tweaked fights to it "flow" better and make a little bit more "sense" in terms of the stats displayed (though upsets are still possible)
- Added 10 new combat sound effects

Link to demo (15 MB):

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/downloads/colidemo.exe

Thanks for all who have given suggestions and tried it out so far!

[FloridaFringe]

By that list of fixes I would say that without a doubt it at least shows that you really are listening to the suggestions of others. Job well done and thanks. My suggestion would be to continue to pay attention to your potential customers and everything should turn out great.

[VPI97]

Kudos to you SCC

[Bee]

I agree. Major props for being so open to suggestions. I'm glad I preordered the game.

[Karim]

This game is another of those "addictive" text sims.

Some feature suggestions:

- ability to bribe opponent
- seeing a list of fighters from other Clans and tempting them to sign with you
- the option to create a fighter (with limited allocation points) at the start of a career
- the option to allocate your "manager points" at the start of a career
- the ability to buy various weapons and armour

[maximus]

I like the demo and concept, however, I did have the following problem.

The game crashed to desktop for me after a fight was completed (which I lost ) . Here are my computer specs;

System Specs:

P4 2.8C
Abit IC7-G
TwinX Corsair 1gig PC3200LL DDR400
Win XP Pro SP1
ATI Radeon 9800
Audigy 2 Platinum
Western Digital 120gig HD ( 8MB cache)
Enermax 550 Watt PSU
Hollywood Real Magic MPEG Decoder
Cable ISP
Plexwriter 16/10/40A CDRW
Pioneer DVD

[StormcloudCreations]

Originally posted by maximus
I like the demo and concept, however, I did have the following problem.

The game crashed to desktop for me after a fight was completed (which I lost ) . Here are my computer specs

Were you able to duplicate the problem? Or did it just happen once? Did it give you any sort of message when it crashed?

Your setup as far as your system is fine, as far as I know (one good thing about my games is that they don't require a heavy rig or the newest drivers/DirectX or anything like that to run ).

Since no one else out of hundreds that have tried it have reported strange unexplained CTD's, it may something you have running with Coliseum that may be causing the problem. I would disable a few things you may have running, as like any app, they may conflict with the program; it may not always get along the best with intensive apps, like messaging programs (ICQ, etc) or intensive things like Photoshop, full-on MS Word, continuous Anti-Virus things that check all files, etc.

[StormcloudCreations]

VPI, Florida, Bee, Karim: Thanks for the kudos! It's something i'm quite proud of and wish (and think it should be *mandatory*) that many other (major) game developers would practice: caring just as much about craftsmanship and responsiveness to the people that play the games as collecting the money.

Karim: Some good suggestions there; the "bribing" thing is something i'm toying with gameplay wise. I'm also considering adding different "types" of matches that randomly pop up, like "Sudden Death" matches (where the loser is killed), Lion matches (where a Lion joins the two warriors and randomly swings at you or your opponent during the fight, complete with Lion roar sound effects - heh), "Flaming Sword" matches where swords do bonus damage for both warriors, and more. Makes for more unpredictability and a cool wild card, I think.

There will be at least 1 major enhancement patch (for full version owners only) coming in around mid January-early Feb. or so with numerous new features/tweaks added.

[SlapBone]

Originally posted by StormcloudCreations
Oops! Yes someone did leave in some debug code...and i'll give you 3 guesses who it was. Nope, not me!

It's already been fixed and the revised demo submitted to Shrapnel. Just might take a little bit to update. Sorry about that all!

Dude we are everywhere.

[StormcloudCreations]

Originally posted by SlapBone
Dude we are everywhere.

I'm everywhere, you mean? Nah, just a few places.

Or am I actually everywhere? You never know...

Now I know i've been working too long today

[korme]

Wow, very addicting little game.

I would love to be able to check out rosters of the other opponents, as well as maybe a breakdown of each battle. Click on an opponent and see his match by match win-loss record? Maybe a page dedicated to killed fighters? So much could be added, still very fun and worth a purchase.

[korme]

Can I just buy and play or is this game shipped only?

[StormcloudCreations]

Thanks for the compliments, Shorty3281!

A list of killed warriors is on my "possible to-do list" as well as lots of other stuff. Usually there's a "news report" item which summarizes a battle in the league after every day.

Yes it's shipped only, with a CD and an actual printed manual too! But shipping in the US via Priority mail is now FREE in most cases at Shrapnel, so it probably won't cost ya nothing anyway.

Hope you consider purchasing!

Thanks!

[korme]

bump

[StormcloudCreations]

Originally posted by Shorty3281
bump

Thanks for the bump, Shorty!

Oh just FYI just in case: I have a new "blog" that I have started that will have the latest inside info and details on all the games (and of course, assorted other thoughts of mine that you will doubtless have no interest in at all ).

It's at:

Stormcloud Blog

Thanks!

[korme]

Quit smiling so much.

[StormcloudCreations]

FYI: Coliseum has now gone gold (slighly late), with a few extra features added. Link:

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/News/pr_01.htm

Thanks to all who made suggestions and offered encouragment here!

[Bonegavel]

Derek, don't worry about Shorty, he is like 8 and a half or something.

[korme]

I said that because in his journal he mentioned for some odd reason someone had scolded him for putting up too many smilies..

[StormcloudCreations]

Yes, I knew what Shorty meant...and not scolded, but was quite rude about it..something to the effect "Every god damn sentence doesn't have to have a smiley". And of course no one said anything at all (like Bonegavel did above, even if erroneously). I promptly left that board; a board that doesn't police itself, even a little bit, isn't of any interest to me.

Hey, i'm a happy guy who enjoys what he does; sue me.

[Bonegavel]

I wouldn't worry an ounce about those morons. I didn't know if it was shorty or not, but he is still like 8 years old or something.

[StormcloudCreations]

Thanks, bonegavel...I didn't worry about them, but it just annoys me a little is all. I have a fairly thick skin (gotta have that to be on public forums as a small developer such as myself), but...rude is rude.

And then people wonder why more developers of all sizes aren't responsive on public forums. The board went mysteriously silent when I pointed out that as Example A of why more developers aren't available, especially when there was a thread about it (developers not being involved with gamers) a few threads away.

[Troll]

can you only play 1 40 day season in the final game?

[StormcloudCreations]

Originally posted by Troll
can you only play 1 40 day season in the final game?

No, you can play unlimited 40 day seasons, and everything like records and the like is carried over every season; this is a "career" sim. This is mentioned in the Shrapnel main page info.

Thanks!

[Troll]

sorry about that, the only page i actually went to before playing and posting that was the page the demo was on.....but after playing it i gotta say its a polished and very addictive sim, on day 18 my favorite gladiator was killed with the king watching.....i'll be seeing if i can get the money together, kinda hard for a poor college student, but if i can get the money i'll definately be buying the game

[StormcloudCreations]

That's ok, "troll"....thanks for the nice comments! Glad you enjoyed it, and I certainly hope I have the pleasure of your business and getting in on the full version action.