Hi, I have a problem, i can't use "tech" when I click on a tech nothing highlight, but i am sure of having the right modules (I was on the last realm) if somebody can help me because not using technology really make me lose, thanks.
Hello! The next update is going to be literally game changing and is probably even bigger than movement update last year. I am currently working on the game full time, and I am hoping to finish it around early October. You can play the early version of the game from the Discord server.
The game is actually starting to add some elements of survival, but not a full on game mode.
- and can you add some archived versions (eg first build - latest build)? I noticed an outdated version (which lead me here) and really enjoyed the idea!
- was this made in unity 2d? or another program?
- will there ever be mod support (before or after, if ever) a steam build?
Will I upload this to steam? The game is changing rapidly, and the next uupdate will be as game changing as the first movement update. I do want to publish this, however it could be a while.
Will this game always be free? I love free stuff, and good free games are hard to find. The steam version will probably not be free to play, however I fully intend to keep a playable, fun, and free version here on itch.io.
Can I add some archived versions? The legacy version has been made available. I currently am not handing out prior stable versions of the game, I will try and compile a list of decent game versions and then let be available to download. This will probably happen around the time of the Steam release.
How was this game made? This game was made in GameMaker Studio 2.
Will there ever be mod support? I do not see a full mod support system coming, but micro mod support, like editing items, islands, classes and smaller things like that are in mind. I have already begun giving more power to you all with the console, where you can create your own custom items out of the many many properties I have already defined.
I am glad you had a ton of fun! I have been bale to work on the game for a bit, however I am going to be starting development back up soon. Thanks for your support and patience!
I'm sorry that I was quite vague, but your reply answered all of my questions! (I love free stuff too.) Thanks for being a great developer, which is hard to come by these days!
I have received many many requests for this game to be translated into Chinese. When I do multiple language support (which is sadly a long way off), Chinese is the top language on my list.
Multiplayer could be interesting, but the core of the game is about to change once again, so multiplayer is also a long way off.
I just played through the game with a friend and I totally understand what you mean when you say the beginning of the game is hard. It very much is and I'm sorry I haven't balanced it quite well. However I have come up with solutions to directly address this issue for future updates.
More music and sound effects would be great, and I would love to polish up the game some more with a full soundtrack. I will do my best to add polish along the journey to completing the game.
More realms? While I do not think that more realms is the solution to a short gameplay experience, I have ideas to make the game more engaging in the long term. The final boss is a terrible design way of bringing the player back because there is literally nothing after you beat the boss.
Landing the game on steam? I have plans to publish this game, I am not quite sure on the timing.
thanks for your care of my comments，what you need to keep first is your body during the development of the game .if the game is on a better version and uploaded to steam，hope you can add more funny and great things and set a reasonable price(not too high or too low) and you will get more support by players in steam.
hope you can add steam workshop and allow more players to create more mods such as islands,items,weapons,blocks,enemies,gamemodes and so on(please add a “mods”Folder to put mods that is downloaded via steam workshop).
also I sincerely hope you can add a endless gamemode and more gamemodes.
You can delete items by selecting the item you want to delete and then right clicking the trash. If you want to spam delete that item, use shift + right click to quickly make the item count drop.
You can enter sandbox mode by holding down the spacebar while creating a new game. You can also open the console by pressing ` and then give yourself modified items.
You can use tech by infusing it into other items in the forge. Basically put the tech into one of the left item slots and the item you want to upgrade on the right slot. Then infuse them together and voila, your tech has been added.
hey uh dont label the game as playable in browser because thats a lie if you can turn that off it would be great but itch probably did that automatically so oh well
I apologise for the updates taking way too long. I've been busy with school and it was a very technical rework. That being said, I have completed the update and will probably be releasing it within the next day. I'm hoping to get updates out faster over this summer period as well.
Personally, I am not handing out or supporting any of the previous (buggy) versions of the game. However, a few members of the Discord server have kept a rather comprehensive collection of all the previous releases, and I can't stop you from getting it from them (I just won't be handing it out myself).
I actually make test versions available to ANYONE who joins the discord server. Normally, there is a new version every Friday for people to play around with. In fact, since the next update is pretty much complete, you can download it pretty much right now if you want (except you won't get a a comprehensive change log).
In the next update coming soon, I figured that once people have had their fill playing normally, they would want to try and mess around with the game, so I have added some nice tools to let the player do that.
Enjoy!
PS. (shameless plug): You can also join the discord server here: https://discord.gg/c3NQd47 to get test versions of the game.
I'm now probably going to make a script for windows that makes backups of games and reloads them whenever you want.
Edit: Well, this is unfortunate, but I didn't seem to be able to find that folder... I created a new game so that there's something for the game to save there.
Edit2: I opened the folder (%localappdata%) in the command prompt as admin and there's no IIslands folder. That's odd. But it doesn't matter, I don't think many people would like to use this kind of mod, cause it's cheating.
Just press "Win+R", enter "%localappdata%\IIslands_Of_War" (without quotes) into the Run box that appears, and you should find a file named "_iislandsofwarsave", which you can open with any text editor.
BTW, if you really want to cheat, just press "Alt+Backspace" when fighting ;)
You can enter sandbox mode by holding down the space bar while making a new game. Keep holding the spacebar through the cloud animations and you should be given all of the items to play around with!
Hi,I've been an avid fan of this game even from the very early stages,and encouraged all my friends to play it.However,this game has come to sort of a standstill due to lack of updates(even pubg has faster updates than this,I mean come on bro)/changes to the game.I do respect the fact that these games do take painstakingly long hours of coding and testing, and working on them is easier said than done.
I do hope that U've got something grand planned(like survival mode;local multiplayer, story-oriented gameplay etc. ),and that the coming update is worth the wait.
PS: Its been over 3 and a half MONTHS from the last minor update,so please, for God's sake pump out that next update.
Also PS:I love this game don't kill it cause of lack of updates
I am very pleased to tell you that I am in the final stage of testing and bug fixing. As a one man team, adding in new features can be a little bit slow at times, especially when I have to massively rework core elements of the game that I am unhappy with. EDIT: The game is still in its alpha phase of development, so I'm working on the core gameplay loop and making sure that it is well designed.
I have been watching the clock as well, and I am surprised at how long it is taking. I didn't actually think this update would take this long, but I also would not want to release an update that crashed every 5 minutes.
If you wanna see the development progress, do join the discord here: https://discord.gg/c3NQd47. You can test out the next (broken) version of the game and also stay updated with the development progress!
I'm glad you enjoyed the game and am so glad for your support!
Multiplayer would be awesome and this suggestion has come up many many times. However, I still have so so many core features that are changing and I have plans to change even more of them. Since the last major update, I have spent my time reworking a single core feature, items. changes like these massively modify the internal code structure, so it only makes sense that all the big changes are out of the way first before attempting to implement something as grand as multiplayer.
Online multiplayer with a matchmaking system is a very very long way off and is most likely to not ever be happening. A local multiplayer would be reasonable, but is also a long way off (I have about a year's worth of core changes planned).
So that being said, there are a lot of ways a multiplayer could be done, and I am looking forward to working on it when the time comes. Thanks so much for your suggestions! I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
Just be patient. Some core features are still being made and the game itself is still in alpha stages. I believe J-wiggles has multipayer planned, but that's far off. Especially when you're reworking literally everything.
I have the same issue. Since the last update, the game runs at 60fps for a little while, then suddenly drops down to 30fps and stays there. So I would be interested in a fix too.
Linux support is planned, but it is probably not going to be anytime soon. The game is still in its early alpha phase so unfortunately the only target platforms right now are Windows and Mac. When I release the full game, I will be looking into a linux port as well.
I found a bug ... accessories added to armor or shield generators do not survive a save. The addons do not get written to the save file at all and subsequently are lost forever. The addons do seem to stay there until you leave the game or go to the main screen.
EDIT: the mod parts are saved to the save file when exiting but they are not loaded back when reloading the game...
Sorry for the late reply and sorry about those bugs. I'm not sure what would have caused that.
Since the game is still in its earlier stages, I'm not going back to any legacy versions to fix previous bugs. This is because most of the time these bugs get fixed in a future version, so to go back and make sure every legacy version is 100% stable would be tedious.
Even though I have never played your game, I would love to. But there has been a problem after I downloaded the game. When I would open the .dmg file it would read the message "Unable to find game!!:". Just so you know this is on a macOS Sierra. There are two things I'm asking you to help me with if you do chose so. First if you are going to help me can you please tell me or give me a few tips on how to fix or hopefully get the game to be found. (Disclaimer, I hope I don't come off as a demanding person who wants you to solve all my problems and if I do seem to come off that way I'm very sorry) Second it would be good if we could figure this out because it could help some people. Also so you don't think I'm some sort of scam bot I learned about this game through this video
Also I really admire that you go out of your way to respond to so many comments.
Sincerely Galaxy,
PS: Please don't think I just said that last part so that you warm up to me because I did really mean it.
Sorry for getting back to you a little bit late. The notifications on itch.io don't always come through for posts. Also, I'm sorry that you ran into this problem where it is unable to find the game. I've had issues with it before and thought I previously fixed it.
Here are a few solutions I found (not sure if they work) for a variety of Mac related issues just in case (and also for other people to see).
No Mountable File Systems:
Try running the following command in terminal. It simply allows apps downloaded from everywhere. Please tell me if you still have needed to use this command, since I have attempted to code sign most of the versions.
sudo spctl --master-disable
Unable to find game:
This could be due to a few reasons. Firstly, if your MacOS is too old or outdated, consider updating your software. I am confident that it runs on High Sierra (10.14), but cannot yet confirm anything before this. I think there might have been a previous issue where the macOS was out of date and created this error.
Another reason might be your browser choice. Try downloading the file from a different browser.
If all else fails, then try using this mirror link from dropbox: Mirror Link Mac. This is the link to v3.02 and will most likely be removed once a new version comes out (at which point I hope this problem has been resolved).
On a smaller note I read somewhere that moving the file to your desktop might help, but I read it in an older thread, so it might not help anymore.
I would love to know the outcome of this issue, since this is not the first time I have encountered it and have tried to ix this before. You can always join the Discord server if you need more help. You can also DM me from discord at anytime and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
I've been playing this game for a while now, and I must say, it's probably one of the best games I have ever played!
That said, there are a few things that I'd really like to see - many of them are already on your "Skymap" (which has some really cool sounding stuff on it BTW) - but there's one thing I'd really like to be able to do; to be able to redo the previous battle after you've won. It would be exactly like a normal battle, but with the same enemy, and less rewards.
Finally, there's a few other things I'd like to mention:
There seems to be a bug with the shield tech, where sometimes removing a shield with tech on it, the tech doesn't get put back in the inventory, and gets lost forever.
What's up with the secret keyboard shortcut (I won't mention it here) that can completely destroy any enemy? It's really fun to use, but I shouldn't really be left in, just in case someone (like me) accidentally finds it.
It would be nice if the question marks didn't give you a shop or forge if you couldn't afford to buy/ forge anything.
Anyway, I still can't wait for the next update, and will be watching out for it!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the game and the next update is gonna really be awesome.
Backtracking is not something I had initially planned for (kind of like most rogue-likes where once you finish a level you just move on). I'm not to sure about implementing this, but I'm also not gonna dismiss it to soon. I will be having this in the back of my mind and thinking over it.
Thanks for this bug report about the shield tech. I have heard some reports similar to this however the cause was unknown. It seems that I must have not added the tech back into your inventory. I would say that this is gonna be fixed in the next update, but the entire old tech system was removed, so I guess the problem is gonna go away.
It was only a matter of time before someone found it. Yes, its a bug and I totally forgot about it (just recently rediscovered it while doing a close cleanup). It was just supposed to be a one off thing to make things easier to test.
That is an interesting idea. The question mark choice can certainly be improved as well to not give you 2 of the same things in a row (especially the shop and forge).
Seems like every single run ends in an infinite battle where I can't kill the enemy and the enemy can't kill me. Both ships lose their lateral thrusters and then the enemy cannons itself back and forth off the sides of the screen. But because the cannon range is so short, the shots can't actually hit you, so it just keeps recoiling back and forth off the side of the screen where you can't see it. You can't hit it, and it can't hit you. Infinite nothing gameplay.
NONE of the decisions I make while building my island prevents this outcome, and piloting the island is always a total crapshoot, so there's literally nothing I can do to prevent this. One time I stuck my core on a healing block just to see what it did-- not even altitude could kill me! It takes a game with potential and makes it unplayable, since I literally never know when the game's going to suddenly throw itself into an unwinnable state.
Why not do what all base-building games do and give the core a small ammount of basic gameplay juice? In some games this would be resource generation-- here, it should definitely be lateral movement. Not fast movement. Not good movement. Just enough that you can maybe try to pursue some sort of change to the game state when the enemy decides to troll you with an infinite cannon recoil loop.
Seriously, I can't even get through the first area without this happening.
Thank you so much for your feedback! Yeah, when both players lose their drifters it very easily ends in a stalemate.
There are a few solutions I have been considering. The first thing I want to get rid of is the enemy teleporting/map looping. Of course, there would need to be an out of bounds area on the sides as well but I would make the play area a whole lot larger so the size doesn't feel to small.
That doesn't exactly directly address this issue, but this next idea might. I have been thinking about a surrender system, not only for enemies but for the player as well. Enemies might surrender when you are completely annihilating them or when maybe they have lost all horizontal or vertical thrust. The player would also have the option to surrender, though it would be more likely a "tactical retreat". They wouldn't lose a life but maybe they would lose some money and the player wouldn't advance and have to retry the enemy again.
Another change that might help is with weapon range. I have been thinking of removing the range for a damage drop-off system instead. That way if it ever comes down to only vertical thrust, you can still poke each other.
I could also make the warp core start with some vertical and horizontal thrust. Another simple solution would be to make a small game rule where you lose if you no longer have drifters (like the floatron rule).
While not all of these solutions will be implemented immediately in the next upcoming update, I will make sure to do my best and fix this infinite nothing gameplay. Thanks once again for this feedback! It really helps during these early stages of development.
I've been playing the game some more and it's gotten to a point where I just can't anymore. RNG just plays such a huge role in whether or not you have the parts you need to make a viable island. Twice in the last day, I started a new game to find three forges. Every enemy ship always has better weapons, defenses, and movement than you, no matter what you build. If this only affected the enemy island design, I could sort of see it. Sure, it's weird that you can replace all your stone with dirt or un-equip most of your weapons to weaken a boss, but it also seems to scale with stage somewhat, and maybe the enemy needs an advantage in raw numbers to compensate for their lack of brains. But where I lost all hope was when I discovered that the quality of your island affects the loot that drops.
Having trouble finding horizontal movement items? Just get your lateral acceleration down to 20 or so, the game will start dropping them. Not finding any weapons? It's because you foolishly equipped the few weapons the game gave you, so it decided that you had enough weapons and stopped giving them to you. Just cut yourself down to a 2x2 brick with one cannon, two thrusters, and the warp drive. Of course, one false move and you're dead, but that's basically the way the start of the game plays anyway. Oh, you took a hit and died? Better esc to the title screen and start over. Otherwise you'll end up with no lives left in the late game when you need them.
What ever happened arbitrary challenges? Whatever happened to RNG actually being random?
The more I play this game and the more I start to understand how it works under the hood, the more angry and frustrated I get. I love the concept and the core mechanics seem fun. Building your base is fun. Getting loot is fun. The combat is fun when it actually works. But it feels like every time I'm just starting to enjoy myself, I get screwed by RNG or physics. Maybe if you could see the cooldowns on each block so you know when the enemy's about to fire, or maybe if you were allowed to buy as many of one item as the enemy can buy, it would be less infuriating. Or, hell. Unlocks. If I were getting pop-ups that say "You've unlocked <name of item,>" maybe I'd be able to tell myself that RNG in future games would be less shitty than RNG in the game I just played. Maybe that's why roguelites do it in the first place, I don't know.
What I do know is two of my favorite games are Shellcore Commander and Enter the Gungeon, so you'd think a game that combines them would be the best thing ever. But so far it's been pure torture. Looting mechanics are supposed to drip-feed the player dopamine, but all I'm getting on my end is pure cortisol.
Firstly and fore mostly, I am so sorry that you feel this way. Games should feel fun and I apologise for any stress of frustration this game has caused.
I was quite surprised when I read your post when you mentioned how the game works. I think it is really interesting to see how sometimes RNG can mess with us. Truth is, there is really nothing under the hood. The value of your island displayed in the stats is simply for aesthetic purposes and it really does not affect the enemy generation. It is the same thing for item drops. Item drops don't have access to view your island and determine if you need a certain item or not.
The one thing that exists to try and minimise the RNG in the game are the forge and shop, though the forge does a poor job of it right now and feels very random. The shop will always contain certain types of items so that if you are lacking in a certain item like floatrons or shields, you can fully rely that the shop will have them.
That being said, I have future plans to make the player feel less frustrated, since I am certain you are not the only player who feels this way. One thing that significantly hurts the game in terms of replay-ability is the lack of persistence between runs. I have plans in the next few months to add this basic feature and was actually gonna have some sort of permanence in the next big update. However there were some core changes that needed to be made that will significantly affect the game in the long term, so I have delayed it until those changes are complete, but it is still scheduled for being up next.
Thank you so much for sharing your feedback again!
Wow. Seriously? The enemy island values are fixed based on the level and the generation is completely random? That's astonishing. It really goes to show how eagerly the human mind assigns value to random noise. I was so sure adding a shield caused the opponents to get shields early, for example. Now that I know that's not the case, let me play some more and see how I feel about the experience. I was second-guessing things that weren't an issue.
That said, RNG shouldn't make it impossible to win. (Yes, even in a roguelike, assuming progression or learning the game's systems aren't a deliberate part of the intended player experience.) Just about the only mechanic I didn't learn on my first run that reached stage 8 was that those energy weapons that bypass shields are probably what I need in order to stand a chance against the last boss. (Later on, I sort of guessed that you might be doing the FTL thing of a weapon type being impractical and under-powered most of the game but then pretty much necessary for the last boss, but I haven't made it to the end since then.)
All right, I just had a decent run, by which I mean my RNG was uncanny. 4 missile systems by area 2 and plenty of pulse launchers before the end boss. I couldn't get past the second to last boss, in part because I tried to practice aiming the energy weapons. I don't want to give you the impression that missiles are OP, because then you might nerf or remove them rather than fixing all the unusable weapons, but everything other than missiles is pretty much impossible to aim, especially against a fast moving enemy bobbing up and down, which is pretty much all of them by area 7 or 8.
What exactly is the intended gameplay experience, here? Right now it feels like you're bobbing around taking carefully timed shots with your cannons at the start of the game, which only works if you get right on top of the enemy and maybe nudge an expendable block into their core or only thruster if the opportunity presents itself. Then you get missiles if you're lucky, or a wall of random trash guns if you're not, bind them all to 1, and do drivebys on the enemy until you've worn them down enough that you can afford to slow down enough to actually aim at something important. All too often, though, you'll end up trading hits with the enemy, which is NEVER a good trade past area 2 or 3, because all the enemies have crazy amounts of armor and/or horizontal speed you could never in a million years find or buy by the endgame, let alone that area. They you get to the Island at the end, and obviously it's an OP crazy-pants over-the-top boss like in FTL, but it has so many layered shields that even missiles are useless, so you need to use the pulse weapon that passes through shields and hits blocks. But since that weapon functions like a cannon in terms of how well you need to aim and time it, you basically are a sitting duck for the boss, plus you're trying to use a skill you've long since stopped using for most of the game.
The real problem is the core combat loop. Assuming I don't have crazy good missiles, shields, and movement, to the point where I can kite the enemy along and pick off shields and weapons systems until it's safe to drift close enough to take out thrusters, there's just too much going on at once. In my head, I need to somehow keep track of my cooldowns, the enemy's cooldowns, the speed the enemy ship is currently going, the speed I'm currently going, whether or not my guns are aimed at the enemy yet, and in order to look at all that stuff at once on a big screen monitor, I'd need eight separate eyeballs that can swivel independently. And that's with me binding everything to 1 and just mashing right click whenever I think I have a clean shot. If you want me to somehow World of Warcraft hotbar individual weapon systems and use them strategically? Popping their shields with a bank of shotguns or machine guns and then firing a penetrating horizontal laser into their core? That's basically impossible. I know one dude I have ever met in my entire life who could keep track of that much complexity in realtime, and he solves mazes instantly by looking at them.
Each individual part of this game is great, but the sum of its parts is just a frustrating, borderline unplayable mess. It has amazingly deep systems, but you bought that depth with way too much moment-to-moment complexity for a realtime game. You get these split seconds in which you can fire, and you have to set those moments up, and if any one of like, five different dynamics isn't as well-aligned or timed as you thought it was, you miss. Meanwhile, the enemy basically never misses unless I'm out of range. It's like you picked a core mechanic that was easy for a computer to do but hard for a human.
Fortunately, there's an easy fix for all of this. A way to make all this agony go away, make the game more accessible, and you don't need to develop persistent systems or dumb the game down in order to streamline it. Are you ready for this? This is gonna blow your mind. All you have to do is change a single number.
now i only got the file for the game, and not the starter, i thought i was gonna get another one of them thats why i deleted all starters because i had like 7 or 8 of them.please help me,again,btw srry
Sorry, could you elaborate what you mean by "starter"?
When you download each update, it is NOT a patch that gets added on to your current game. The downloaded file is the new version of the game. Treat each update as if you were downloading the game for the first time, so you will still need to unzip the files.
I mean that when I downloaded the game the first time,I got the islands of war v3.02 windows.zip and not the islands of war.exe .I remembered the name exactly
im on an old version.im trying to update to the latest version but all i see is downloading the game. i read that if you are not on the latest version you can update here.ive looked everywhere in this site and i cant update the game.please help me
Hello! The game files have been updated here. In order to get the updated version, simply download the game update again(v3.02 is the latest as of writing this post). Then run the game like you normally would. You can also delete the old version at this point, since it is no longer going to be needed. Through most of the updates, I try not to change a lot with the save files so that you don't have to start the game all over again every update. I believe that all versions after 2.6 are compatible with the latest update (so you don't need to worry about starting over).
Alternatively, you can also use the itch.io app and it should keep the game automatically up to date.
TLDR; you need to re-download the full game every time there is an update.
I beat the final boss (first play though) and wow, he is much more difficult to defeat than any other island. I dislike the fact that you see some of the final bosses weapons the first time when facing the final boss itself as I don't know the attack patterns or how to take on the boss (the missiles for example). I enjoyed the game thoroughly. Some things that i would have liked to see more of: bosses that have a specialty. There were islands throughout the game that would ram you ,frigates i believe they were called and they were tough as every other island i floated to the top and broke the other islands shield and it was an easy win (as I was stacking shields), but the frigates would come straight for me and not even care about my shields. If a boss had this style but more health and speed i feel like that would become a huge challenge as you would have to prepare with spikes and more speed in your island.
Wow! Congratulations, the boss is supposed to be almost impossible to defeat. The reason he is so unbalanced is actually because I haven't developed anything for after the final boss.
That being said, you have raised some excellent points.
Firstly: attack patterns. Right now enemies might seem like they are firing all of their weapons simultaneously and it just gets chaotic. I could implement attack patterns so that similar weapon types fire around the same time, thus creating an "attack" that the player must learn to counter or avoid.
Secondly: specialty bosses. I am currently working on a series of updates that can greatly help with this so that enemies can take on a more niche role to test the players skill and ability.
Lastly: a ramming final boss. I have some plans to make the final boss more interesting and challenging without just stacking his health and damage. I'm thinking of a multi-staged boss whose behaviour changes as he loses health or even a few powerful but smaller bosses to fight simultaneously. If the player did have to fight multiple enemies then I could have three different classes (trireme-ramming, interceptor-fast, dreadnought-tank/damage).
Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm very glad you enjoyed the game.
I downloaded the game yesterday, and have already gotten to the boss twice, though he destroyed me both times. It seems like the hardest part of the game is the first two realms and the final boss, with the rest of the game being a breeze to get through. Is there any way you could even out the difficulty of the game a bit?
Since I haven't worked on anything after the final boss (no cutscenes and stuff), the final bosses have currently been almost impossible to defeat. In the current version, if you simply get to the final boss you are doing very well already.
In the next update, which is sadly a far ways off, I will be making major reworks. Hopefully in this process, it will smoothen out most of the enemies, even though I will be keeping a close eye out for enemy balance.
Just wondering, what do you think is the cause of the enemies being too easy? Is it their island design or their behaviour that is messing them up most of the time?
I thinks it's partially island design, with a big part of the issue coming from the way overkill is handled. Because each shot is blocked equally by a cloud absorbing it or molten rock absorbing it, I might as well surround myself with a layer of clouds, then sand, then dirt, and so on without ever upgrading any of my blocks. This makes enemy islands ineffective against mine when they attack as the first three or four volleys don't hit any of the important structures i have closer to the center. On the other hand, i have no reason to upgrade my weapons either, so I'll have like 10 cannons that hit an entire side of the enemy and after two volleys will have even the 9th realm boss's core exposed. I think if projectiles would continue after destroying a block, and maybe explosives doing splash damage, the non-dreadnought class enemies could do significant damage to island that would require more maneuvering than I tend to need, and there would be more incentive for the player to upgrade blocks and weapons.
I found enemies tend not to understand how to flank and how to use weapon rotation to their advantage. they also do not know how to target weaker or more critical points. they really do not know hot to dodge either nor do they keep their flanks or critical systems away from fire. Last bit is their construction is a bit hodgepodge where shields are in the middle weapons and engines are near the edges and the core is dangling underneath or exposed on the top. I know making a dynamic engine take into where hard points should be and where critical systems should go is a bit tricky. They also do not know how to use guided missiles so you can trick them by blasting up or falling which will cause the AI to retarget to lead the player for a new shot which causes the missiles to veer off away from the player.
and I was able to beat it including the last boss! second life and a quarter island left but it worked barely. Use all your blocks and spykes land on the top of the final boss (keep crashing into it you should have tons of layers) and fire everything you got straight down. If you have the right loadout you should be able to drill through the top and get to its core before it does. The other way is have a very very fast ship and keep its targeting system going in circles. You will need some of the scatter shots for the shields and a decent main weapon.
to fight everything else out there just keep out of their range and take pot shots at them. also you can go from the very bottom to the very top which will usually make them overshoot and take out of bounds damage (you can help this out by firing ontop or below them)
Hey i found a gltch where u can force quit the game and cheat it.i suggest that u use a if case where the player wins and only then their life is refunded to them and else to do nothing
Thanks for reporting this. Someone has previously reported that leaving the game after the defeat screen does not refund your life. I have fixed this for the next update coming in the next 24 hours.
Just wanted to say that you can still escape losing a life with the exit-to-menu trick. All you have to do is press esc when the game puts up the "Defeat" and then click the menu button to leave. When you continue, you'll still have the same amount of lives as before you started the battle.
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Hi, I have a problem, i can't use "tech" when I click on a tech nothing highlight, but i am sure of having the right modules (I was on the last realm) if somebody can help me because not using technology really make me lose, thanks.
Hello,
You can use tech in the forge by placing it in the left spaces. The tech will be infused into the item on the right space.
Hope this helps!
Thanks, so the techs like targeting sistem now works only on 1 weapon?
Yes. Techs can now only be added once to their items.
hey Jwiggs! when does the next update come out?
add survival pls
also add god mode pls(not creative)
Hello! The next update is going to be literally game changing and is probably even bigger than movement update last year. I am currently working on the game full time, and I am hoping to finish it around early October. You can play the early version of the game from the Discord server.
The game is actually starting to add some elements of survival, but not a full on game mode.
Hope this helps!
well the movement update WAS game changing so i suppose its worth the wait...
Hey Jwiggs! Is there a good place to contact you?
Hello!
I'm totally okay with being contacted here. However if you wanna chat, Discord would be a better place. DM me @ jwiggs#4655.
Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
Just sent a request on Discord :)
yayayayay
now i know that the 10 hours of my life i used was worth it
ps i didnt cheat or do sandbox
i actually did it
Congrats!!!( and with full health as well)
thx
can you add pause button and have settings after you start the game
also add a thing to help with forge recipes
and spikes face the wrong way (they point the flat side towards the enemy)
Hello!
You can press escape to pause the battle. Hmm, a settings tab in the pause menu would be nice.
The forge recipe list is procedurally generated, so there are a ton of recipes out there. I will probably be reworking the forge(again) soon.
Spikes will face in the direction you are moving in, not in the direction of the enemy.
Hope this helps!
ok
thanks
This is a load of fun!
just a few things I am wondering:
- will you upload this to steam?
- will this game always be free?
- and can you add some archived versions (eg first build - latest build)? I noticed an outdated version (which lead me here) and really enjoyed the idea!
- was this made in unity 2d? or another program?
- will there ever be mod support (before or after, if ever) a steam build?
Hello! Sorry for the late reply.
Will I upload this to steam? The game is changing rapidly, and the next uupdate will be as game changing as the first movement update. I do want to publish this, however it could be a while.
Will this game always be free? I love free stuff, and good free games are hard to find. The steam version will probably not be free to play, however I fully intend to keep a playable, fun, and free version here on itch.io.
Can I add some archived versions? The legacy version has been made available. I currently am not handing out prior stable versions of the game, I will try and compile a list of decent game versions and then let be available to download. This will probably happen around the time of the Steam release.
How was this game made? This game was made in GameMaker Studio 2.
Will there ever be mod support? I do not see a full mod support system coming, but micro mod support, like editing items, islands, classes and smaller things like that are in mind. I have already begun giving more power to you all with the console, where you can create your own custom items out of the many many properties I have already defined.
I am glad you had a ton of fun! I have been bale to work on the game for a bit, however I am going to be starting development back up soon. Thanks for your support and patience!
Thanks for replying!
I'm sorry that I was quite vague, but your reply answered all of my questions! (I love free stuff too.) Thanks for being a great developer, which is hard to come by these days!
this game is pretty good,I played it for 5 hours this day!but my english is not good enough.sincerely hope this game can add chinese language.
a few tips that I suggest(For reference only):
1.due to the fight place(Battlefield), add Multiplayer mode to play this game may be funnier.
2.The Beginning of the game is so hard.....
3.more music and sound effect
4.more realm(OMG! final boss is so hard）
5.more blocks、weapon and forge textbook(I do not know how to forge qwq)
6.maybe you can land this game on steam
hahaha，yeah！！！I winned the final boss! It cost me 4 hours!this game is so pretty and attractive!
it is such a epic game I have never played!a game made by a really creative author!
emmmmmm.......
a little suggestions:
please add a endless gamemode,after the final boss,I want to play more content.
maybe more gamemode would benefit this game more
well,if this game lands steam,add steam build will make this game lots of mods support.
Hello! So sorry for the late reply.
I have received many many requests for this game to be translated into Chinese. When I do multiple language support (which is sadly a long way off), Chinese is the top language on my list.
Multiplayer could be interesting, but the core of the game is about to change once again, so multiplayer is also a long way off.
I just played through the game with a friend and I totally understand what you mean when you say the beginning of the game is hard. It very much is and I'm sorry I haven't balanced it quite well. However I have come up with solutions to directly address this issue for future updates.
More music and sound effects would be great, and I would love to polish up the game some more with a full soundtrack. I will do my best to add polish along the journey to completing the game.
More realms? While I do not think that more realms is the solution to a short gameplay experience, I have ideas to make the game more engaging in the long term. The final boss is a terrible design way of bringing the player back because there is literally nothing after you beat the boss.
Landing the game on steam? I have plans to publish this game, I am not quite sure on the timing.
I am very glad you enjoyed this game. Cheers!
thanks for your care of my comments，what you need to keep first is your body during the development of the game .if the game is on a better version and uploaded to steam，hope you can add more funny and great things and set a reasonable price(not too high or too low) and you will get more support by players in steam.
hope you can add steam workshop and allow more players to create more mods such as islands,items,weapons,blocks,enemies,gamemodes and so on(please add a “mods”Folder to put mods that is downloaded via steam workshop).
also I sincerely hope you can add a endless gamemode and more gamemodes.
love this game :D
my English is not good，but this gameis very good！
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed playing it.
I figured out my first question but now would it be possible to add a remove command to remove items from your inventory??
You can delete items by selecting the item you want to delete and then right clicking the trash. If you want to spam delete that item, use shift + right click to quickly make the item count drop.
Hope this helps!
thanks that really does help😀😀
Is there away to give yourself items in game to test them out in combinations
1 word.
epic!
Thanks a lot! I'm still working on this game and there is gonna a whole lot more EPIC coming around!
Thanks for the great game! It inspired me to make a D&D campaign, I hope you don't mind me stealing your plot!
Hello!
Glad you enjoyed the game. Story wise, there's actually not much story there, but I have been thinking about doing more lore into the game eventually!
It's awesome to hear that you were inspired to make a DnD campaign from this!
Cheers!
how do i activate cheat menu
(every item in inventory and 99999 coins)
Hello,
You can enter sandbox mode by holding down the spacebar while creating a new game. You can also open the console by pressing ` and then give yourself modified items.
Hope this helps!
how do I use tech
Hello,
You can use tech by infusing it into other items in the forge. Basically put the tech into one of the left item slots and the item you want to upgrade on the right slot. Then infuse them together and voila, your tech has been added.
Hope this helps with some of the confusion.
thank you jwiggs
hey uh dont label the game as playable in browser because thats a lie if you can turn that off it would be great but itch probably did that automatically so oh well
Yeah, by having the little mini game it automatically marks the game as browser playable. Wish I could change that as well.
can you please release beta versions (that are really buggy) cuz I’ve lost interest in the game.
Sincerely, silicon.
Hello,
I apologise for the updates taking way too long. I've been busy with school and it was a very technical rework. That being said, I have completed the update and will probably be releasing it within the next day. I'm hoping to get updates out faster over this summer period as well.
Personally, I am not handing out or supporting any of the previous (buggy) versions of the game. However, a few members of the Discord server have kept a rather comprehensive collection of all the previous releases, and I can't stop you from getting it from them (I just won't be handing it out myself).
I actually make test versions available to ANYONE who joins the discord server. Normally, there is a new version every Friday for people to play around with. In fact, since the next update is pretty much complete, you can download it pretty much right now if you want (except you won't get a a comprehensive change log).
Thanks for your patience and continued support!
could you be making it available to the legacy version with save for download?
Does it still have permadeath?
Hello,
Permadeath is still a thing, however game saves have been implemented since the first game jam version of the game.
Aweome! Thank you
Edit: I'm a filthy cheater, mind if I ask you where the saves are stored at?
In version 3.02, the save files are located here:
Windows:
%localappdata%/IIslands_Of_WarMac:
~/Library/Application Support/com.jwiggs.iislandsofwarLinux:
~/.config/IIslands_Of_WarIn the next update coming soon, I figured that once people have had their fill playing normally, they would want to try and mess around with the game, so I have added some nice tools to let the player do that.
Enjoy!PS. (shameless plug): You can also join the discord server here: https://discord.gg/c3NQd47 to get test versions of the game.
Thx for that mate!
I've joined the discord as @Noriel_Sylvire
I'm now probably going to make a script for windows that makes backups of games and reloads them whenever you want.
Edit: Well, this is unfortunate, but I didn't seem to be able to find that folder... I created a new game so that there's something for the game to save there.
Edit2: I opened the folder (%localappdata%) in the command prompt as admin and there's no IIslands folder. That's odd. But it doesn't matter, I don't think many people would like to use this kind of mod, cause it's cheating.
Just press "Win+R", enter "%localappdata%\IIslands_Of_War" (without quotes) into the Run box that appears, and you should find a file named "_iislandsofwarsave", which you can open with any text editor.
BTW, if you really want to cheat, just press "Alt+Backspace" when fighting ;)
That final boss, it makes me want to curl up into a corner and rethink my life choices
How to get in creative mode?
Hello,
You can enter sandbox mode by holding down the space bar while making a new game. Keep holding the spacebar through the cloud animations and you should be given all of the items to play around with!
Enjoy!
ty
EGG
Hi,I've been an avid fan of this game even from the very early stages,and encouraged all my friends to play it.However,this game has come to sort of a standstill due to lack of updates(even pubg has faster updates than this,I mean come on bro)/changes to the game.I do respect the fact that these games do take painstakingly long hours of coding and testing, and working on them is easier said than done.
I do hope that U've got something grand planned(like survival mode;local multiplayer, story-oriented gameplay etc. ),and that the coming update is worth the wait.
PS: Its been over 3 and a half MONTHS from the last minor update,so please, for God's sake pump out that next update.
Also PS:I love this game don't kill it cause of lack of updates
Hello!
I am very pleased to tell you that I am in the final stage of testing and bug fixing. As a one man team, adding in new features can be a little bit slow at times, especially when I have to massively rework core elements of the game that I am unhappy with. EDIT: The game is still in its alpha phase of development, so I'm working on the core gameplay loop and making sure that it is well designed.
I have been watching the clock as well, and I am surprised at how long it is taking. I didn't actually think this update would take this long, but I also would not want to release an update that crashed every 5 minutes.
If you wanna see the development progress, do join the discord here: https://discord.gg/c3NQd47. You can test out the next (broken) version of the game and also stay updated with the development progress!
I'm glad you enjoyed the game and am so glad for your support!
Thanks bro you are the best.I respect everything you do and the long hours of coding,keep up the good work :)
Well buddy, the next update a a very MAJOR one...
I think that this is an completely amazing game but I have one suggestion....
Multiplayer
Two players verse each other too the death with custom rules set like:
Overall max speed and acceleration
No mythic/legendary items
Infinite items yes/no
I'm sure you'll see this and respond because you're just that awesome.
Thanks for the awesome game. :)
I doubt online multiplayer will ever happen, but local multiplayer would be nice...
Hello!
Multiplayer would be awesome and this suggestion has come up many many times. However, I still have so so many core features that are changing and I have plans to change even more of them. Since the last major update, I have spent my time reworking a single core feature, items. changes like these massively modify the internal code structure, so it only makes sense that all the big changes are out of the way first before attempting to implement something as grand as multiplayer.
Online multiplayer with a matchmaking system is a very very long way off and is most likely to not ever be happening. A local multiplayer would be reasonable, but is also a long way off (I have about a year's worth of core changes planned).
So that being said, there are a lot of ways a multiplayer could be done, and I am looking forward to working on it when the time comes. Thanks so much for your suggestions! I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
Just be patient. Some core features are still being made and the game itself is still in alpha stages. I believe J-wiggles has multipayer planned, but that's far off. Especially when you're reworking literally everything.
Its really laggy for me even though i have a good computer, anyone know w fix? it should be running at 60fps but its running at 30-40fps
I have the same issue. Since the last update, the game runs at 60fps for a little while, then suddenly drops down to 30fps and stays there. So I would be interested in a fix too.
Hello,
Thanks for this awesome games, it's was difficult to end it, but it's so satisfying.
Now I have change my OS, I wonder if a linux support is planned ?
Good luck for developpement.
Hello,
Linux support is planned, but it is probably not going to be anytime soon. The game is still in its early alpha phase so unfortunately the only target platforms right now are Windows and Mac. When I release the full game, I will be looking into a linux port as well.
Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it!
I found a bug ... accessories added to armor or shield generators do not survive a save. The addons do not get written to the save file at all and subsequently are lost forever. The addons do seem to stay there until you leave the game or go to the main screen.
EDIT: the mod parts are saved to the save file when exiting but they are not loaded back when reloading the game...
That sounds like a similar bug to what I encountered...
The way I solve it is removing all the shield generators before exiting and then putting them all back after I come back.
Can u fix bugs on the legacy version?If so,my mouse dosen't show up when I'm playing.Also,I have to sign out on my PC to close the game.
Hey man!
Sorry for the late reply and sorry about those bugs. I'm not sure what would have caused that.
Since the game is still in its earlier stages, I'm not going back to any legacy versions to fix previous bugs. This is because most of the time these bugs get fixed in a future version, so to go back and make sure every legacy version is 100% stable would be tedious.
Thanks!
Hi jwiggs,
Even though I have never played your game, I would love to. But there has been a problem after I downloaded the game. When I would open the .dmg file it would read the message "Unable to find game!!:". Just so you know this is on a macOS Sierra. There are two things I'm asking you to help me with if you do chose so. First if you are going to help me can you please tell me or give me a few tips on how to fix or hopefully get the game to be found. (Disclaimer, I hope I don't come off as a demanding person who wants you to solve all my problems and if I do seem to come off that way I'm very sorry) Second it would be good if we could figure this out because it could help some people. Also so you don't think I'm some sort of scam bot I learned about this game through this video
Also I really admire that you go out of your way to respond to so many comments.
Sincerely Galaxy,
PS: Please don't think I just said that last part so that you warm up to me because I did really mean it.
PPS: Please respond as soon as possible. :)
Hello Galaxy,
Sorry for getting back to you a little bit late. The notifications on itch.io don't always come through for posts. Also, I'm sorry that you ran into this problem where it is unable to find the game. I've had issues with it before and thought I previously fixed it.
Here are a few solutions I found (not sure if they work) for a variety of Mac related issues just in case (and also for other people to see).
No Mountable File Systems:
Try running the following command in terminal. It simply allows apps downloaded from everywhere. Please tell me if you still have needed to use this command, since I have attempted to code sign most of the versions.
sudo spctl --master-disableUnable to find game:
This could be due to a few reasons. Firstly, if your MacOS is too old or outdated, consider updating your software. I am confident that it runs on High Sierra (10.14), but cannot yet confirm anything before this. I think there might have been a previous issue where the macOS was out of date and created this error.
Another reason might be your browser choice. Try downloading the file from a different browser.
If all else fails, then try using this mirror link from dropbox: Mirror Link Mac. This is the link to v3.02 and will most likely be removed once a new version comes out (at which point I hope this problem has been resolved).
On a smaller note I read somewhere that moving the file to your desktop might help, but I read it in an older thread, so it might not help anymore.
I would love to know the outcome of this issue, since this is not the first time I have encountered it and have tried to ix this before. You can always join the Discord server if you need more help. You can also DM me from discord at anytime and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Hope one of these solutions help!
I've been playing this game for a while now, and I must say, it's probably one of the best games I have ever played!
That said, there are a few things that I'd really like to see - many of them are already on your "Skymap" (which has some really cool sounding stuff on it BTW) - but there's one thing I'd really like to be able to do; to be able to redo the previous battle after you've won. It would be exactly like a normal battle, but with the same enemy, and less rewards.
Finally, there's a few other things I'd like to mention:
Anyway, I still can't wait for the next update, and will be watching out for it!
Hello!
I'm really glad you enjoyed the game and the next update is gonna really be awesome.
Thanks for your feedback and support!
Seems like every single run ends in an infinite battle where I can't kill the enemy and the enemy can't kill me. Both ships lose their lateral thrusters and then the enemy cannons itself back and forth off the sides of the screen. But because the cannon range is so short, the shots can't actually hit you, so it just keeps recoiling back and forth off the side of the screen where you can't see it. You can't hit it, and it can't hit you. Infinite nothing gameplay.
NONE of the decisions I make while building my island prevents this outcome, and piloting the island is always a total crapshoot, so there's literally nothing I can do to prevent this. One time I stuck my core on a healing block just to see what it did-- not even altitude could kill me! It takes a game with potential and makes it unplayable, since I literally never know when the game's going to suddenly throw itself into an unwinnable state.
Why not do what all base-building games do and give the core a small ammount of basic gameplay juice? In some games this would be resource generation-- here, it should definitely be lateral movement. Not fast movement. Not good movement. Just enough that you can maybe try to pursue some sort of change to the game state when the enemy decides to troll you with an infinite cannon recoil loop.
Seriously, I can't even get through the first area without this happening.
Hello!
Thank you so much for your feedback! Yeah, when both players lose their drifters it very easily ends in a stalemate.
There are a few solutions I have been considering. The first thing I want to get rid of is the enemy teleporting/map looping. Of course, there would need to be an out of bounds area on the sides as well but I would make the play area a whole lot larger so the size doesn't feel to small.
That doesn't exactly directly address this issue, but this next idea might. I have been thinking about a surrender system, not only for enemies but for the player as well. Enemies might surrender when you are completely annihilating them or when maybe they have lost all horizontal or vertical thrust. The player would also have the option to surrender, though it would be more likely a "tactical retreat". They wouldn't lose a life but maybe they would lose some money and the player wouldn't advance and have to retry the enemy again.
Another change that might help is with weapon range. I have been thinking of removing the range for a damage drop-off system instead. That way if it ever comes down to only vertical thrust, you can still poke each other.
I could also make the warp core start with some vertical and horizontal thrust. Another simple solution would be to make a small game rule where you lose if you no longer have drifters (like the floatron rule).
While not all of these solutions will be implemented immediately in the next upcoming update, I will make sure to do my best and fix this infinite nothing gameplay. Thanks once again for this feedback! It really helps during these early stages of development.
I've been playing the game some more and it's gotten to a point where I just can't anymore. RNG just plays such a huge role in whether or not you have the parts you need to make a viable island. Twice in the last day, I started a new game to find three forges. Every enemy ship always has better weapons, defenses, and movement than you, no matter what you build. If this only affected the enemy island design, I could sort of see it. Sure, it's weird that you can replace all your stone with dirt or un-equip most of your weapons to weaken a boss, but it also seems to scale with stage somewhat, and maybe the enemy needs an advantage in raw numbers to compensate for their lack of brains. But where I lost all hope was when I discovered that the quality of your island affects the loot that drops.
Having trouble finding horizontal movement items? Just get your lateral acceleration down to 20 or so, the game will start dropping them. Not finding any weapons? It's because you foolishly equipped the few weapons the game gave you, so it decided that you had enough weapons and stopped giving them to you. Just cut yourself down to a 2x2 brick with one cannon, two thrusters, and the warp drive. Of course, one false move and you're dead, but that's basically the way the start of the game plays anyway. Oh, you took a hit and died? Better esc to the title screen and start over. Otherwise you'll end up with no lives left in the late game when you need them.
What ever happened arbitrary challenges? Whatever happened to RNG actually being random?
The more I play this game and the more I start to understand how it works under the hood, the more angry and frustrated I get. I love the concept and the core mechanics seem fun. Building your base is fun. Getting loot is fun. The combat is fun when it actually works. But it feels like every time I'm just starting to enjoy myself, I get screwed by RNG or physics. Maybe if you could see the cooldowns on each block so you know when the enemy's about to fire, or maybe if you were allowed to buy as many of one item as the enemy can buy, it would be less infuriating. Or, hell. Unlocks. If I were getting pop-ups that say "You've unlocked <name of item,>" maybe I'd be able to tell myself that RNG in future games would be less shitty than RNG in the game I just played. Maybe that's why roguelites do it in the first place, I don't know.
What I do know is two of my favorite games are Shellcore Commander and Enter the Gungeon, so you'd think a game that combines them would be the best thing ever. But so far it's been pure torture. Looting mechanics are supposed to drip-feed the player dopamine, but all I'm getting on my end is pure cortisol.
Hey man!
Firstly and fore mostly, I am so sorry that you feel this way. Games should feel fun and I apologise for any stress of frustration this game has caused.
I was quite surprised when I read your post when you mentioned how the game works. I think it is really interesting to see how sometimes RNG can mess with us. Truth is, there is really nothing under the hood. The value of your island displayed in the stats is simply for aesthetic purposes and it really does not affect the enemy generation. It is the same thing for item drops. Item drops don't have access to view your island and determine if you need a certain item or not.
The one thing that exists to try and minimise the RNG in the game are the forge and shop, though the forge does a poor job of it right now and feels very random. The shop will always contain certain types of items so that if you are lacking in a certain item like floatrons or shields, you can fully rely that the shop will have them.
That being said, I have future plans to make the player feel less frustrated, since I am certain you are not the only player who feels this way. One thing that significantly hurts the game in terms of replay-ability is the lack of persistence between runs. I have plans in the next few months to add this basic feature and was actually gonna have some sort of permanence in the next big update. However there were some core changes that needed to be made that will significantly affect the game in the long term, so I have delayed it until those changes are complete, but it is still scheduled for being up next.
Thank you so much for sharing your feedback again!
Wow. Seriously? The enemy island values are fixed based on the level and the generation is completely random? That's astonishing. It really goes to show how eagerly the human mind assigns value to random noise. I was so sure adding a shield caused the opponents to get shields early, for example. Now that I know that's not the case, let me play some more and see how I feel about the experience. I was second-guessing things that weren't an issue.
That said, RNG shouldn't make it impossible to win. (Yes, even in a roguelike, assuming progression or learning the game's systems aren't a deliberate part of the intended player experience.) Just about the only mechanic I didn't learn on my first run that reached stage 8 was that those energy weapons that bypass shields are probably what I need in order to stand a chance against the last boss. (Later on, I sort of guessed that you might be doing the FTL thing of a weapon type being impractical and under-powered most of the game but then pretty much necessary for the last boss, but I haven't made it to the end since then.)
All right, I just had a decent run, by which I mean my RNG was uncanny. 4 missile systems by area 2 and plenty of pulse launchers before the end boss. I couldn't get past the second to last boss, in part because I tried to practice aiming the energy weapons. I don't want to give you the impression that missiles are OP, because then you might nerf or remove them rather than fixing all the unusable weapons, but everything other than missiles is pretty much impossible to aim, especially against a fast moving enemy bobbing up and down, which is pretty much all of them by area 7 or 8.
What exactly is the intended gameplay experience, here? Right now it feels like you're bobbing around taking carefully timed shots with your cannons at the start of the game, which only works if you get right on top of the enemy and maybe nudge an expendable block into their core or only thruster if the opportunity presents itself. Then you get missiles if you're lucky, or a wall of random trash guns if you're not, bind them all to 1, and do drivebys on the enemy until you've worn them down enough that you can afford to slow down enough to actually aim at something important. All too often, though, you'll end up trading hits with the enemy, which is NEVER a good trade past area 2 or 3, because all the enemies have crazy amounts of armor and/or horizontal speed you could never in a million years find or buy by the endgame, let alone that area. They you get to the Island at the end, and obviously it's an OP crazy-pants over-the-top boss like in FTL, but it has so many layered shields that even missiles are useless, so you need to use the pulse weapon that passes through shields and hits blocks. But since that weapon functions like a cannon in terms of how well you need to aim and time it, you basically are a sitting duck for the boss, plus you're trying to use a skill you've long since stopped using for most of the game.
The real problem is the core combat loop. Assuming I don't have crazy good missiles, shields, and movement, to the point where I can kite the enemy along and pick off shields and weapons systems until it's safe to drift close enough to take out thrusters, there's just too much going on at once. In my head, I need to somehow keep track of my cooldowns, the enemy's cooldowns, the speed the enemy ship is currently going, the speed I'm currently going, whether or not my guns are aimed at the enemy yet, and in order to look at all that stuff at once on a big screen monitor, I'd need eight separate eyeballs that can swivel independently. And that's with me binding everything to 1 and just mashing right click whenever I think I have a clean shot. If you want me to somehow World of Warcraft hotbar individual weapon systems and use them strategically? Popping their shields with a bank of shotguns or machine guns and then firing a penetrating horizontal laser into their core? That's basically impossible. I know one dude I have ever met in my entire life who could keep track of that much complexity in realtime, and he solves mazes instantly by looking at them.
Each individual part of this game is great, but the sum of its parts is just a frustrating, borderline unplayable mess. It has amazingly deep systems, but you bought that depth with way too much moment-to-moment complexity for a realtime game. You get these split seconds in which you can fire, and you have to set those moments up, and if any one of like, five different dynamics isn't as well-aligned or timed as you thought it was, you miss. Meanwhile, the enemy basically never misses unless I'm out of range. It's like you picked a core mechanic that was easy for a computer to do but hard for a human.
Fortunately, there's an easy fix for all of this. A way to make all this agony go away, make the game more accessible, and you don't need to develop persistent systems or dumb the game down in order to streamline it. Are you ready for this? This is gonna blow your mind. All you have to do is change a single number.
Double the turret rotation speed.
You're welcome.
now i only got the file for the game, and not the starter, i thought i was gonna get another one of them thats why i deleted all starters because i had like 7 or 8 of them.please help me,again,btw srry
Sorry, could you elaborate what you mean by "starter"?
When you download each update, it is NOT a patch that gets added on to your current game. The downloaded file is the new version of the game. Treat each update as if you were downloading the game for the first time, so you will still need to unzip the files.
Hope this helps!
I mean that when I downloaded the game the first time,I got the islands of war v3.02 windows.zip and not the islands of war.exe .I remembered the name exactly
im on an old version.im trying to update to the latest version but all i see is downloading the game. i read that if you are not on the latest version you can update here.ive looked everywhere in this site and i cant update the game.please help me
Hello! The game files have been updated here. In order to get the updated version, simply download the game update again(v3.02 is the latest as of writing this post). Then run the game like you normally would. You can also delete the old version at this point, since it is no longer going to be needed. Through most of the updates, I try not to change a lot with the save files so that you don't have to start the game all over again every update. I believe that all versions after 2.6 are compatible with the latest update (so you don't need to worry about starting over).
Alternatively, you can also use the itch.io app and it should keep the game automatically up to date.
TLDR; you need to re-download the full game every time there is an update.
Hope this helps!
thank you
I beat the final boss (first play though) and wow, he is much more difficult to defeat than any other island. I dislike the fact that you see some of the final bosses weapons the first time when facing the final boss itself as I don't know the attack patterns or how to take on the boss (the missiles for example). I enjoyed the game thoroughly. Some things that i would have liked to see more of: bosses that have a specialty. There were islands throughout the game that would ram you ,frigates i believe they were called and they were tough as every other island i floated to the top and broke the other islands shield and it was an easy win (as I was stacking shields), but the frigates would come straight for me and not even care about my shields. If a boss had this style but more health and speed i feel like that would become a huge challenge as you would have to prepare with spikes and more speed in your island.
Wow! Congratulations, the boss is supposed to be almost impossible to defeat. The reason he is so unbalanced is actually because I haven't developed anything for after the final boss.
That being said, you have raised some excellent points.
Firstly: attack patterns. Right now enemies might seem like they are firing all of their weapons simultaneously and it just gets chaotic. I could implement attack patterns so that similar weapon types fire around the same time, thus creating an "attack" that the player must learn to counter or avoid.
Secondly: specialty bosses. I am currently working on a series of updates that can greatly help with this so that enemies can take on a more niche role to test the players skill and ability.
Lastly: a ramming final boss. I have some plans to make the final boss more interesting and challenging without just stacking his health and damage. I'm thinking of a multi-staged boss whose behaviour changes as he loses health or even a few powerful but smaller bosses to fight simultaneously. If the player did have to fight multiple enemies then I could have three different classes (trireme-ramming, interceptor-fast, dreadnought-tank/damage).
Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm very glad you enjoyed the game.
非常好玩的游戏，作者加油!
I downloaded the game yesterday, and have already gotten to the boss twice, though he destroyed me both times. It seems like the hardest part of the game is the first two realms and the final boss, with the rest of the game being a breeze to get through. Is there any way you could even out the difficulty of the game a bit?
Hello!
Since I haven't worked on anything after the final boss (no cutscenes and stuff), the final bosses have currently been almost impossible to defeat. In the current version, if you simply get to the final boss you are doing very well already.
In the next update, which is sadly a far ways off, I will be making major reworks. Hopefully in this process, it will smoothen out most of the enemies, even though I will be keeping a close eye out for enemy balance.
Just wondering, what do you think is the cause of the enemies being too easy? Is it their island design or their behaviour that is messing them up most of the time?
Thanks for your feedback!
I thinks it's partially island design, with a big part of the issue coming from the way overkill is handled. Because each shot is blocked equally by a cloud absorbing it or molten rock absorbing it, I might as well surround myself with a layer of clouds, then sand, then dirt, and so on without ever upgrading any of my blocks. This makes enemy islands ineffective against mine when they attack as the first three or four volleys don't hit any of the important structures i have closer to the center. On the other hand, i have no reason to upgrade my weapons either, so I'll have like 10 cannons that hit an entire side of the enemy and after two volleys will have even the 9th realm boss's core exposed. I think if projectiles would continue after destroying a block, and maybe explosives doing splash damage, the non-dreadnought class enemies could do significant damage to island that would require more maneuvering than I tend to need, and there would be more incentive for the player to upgrade blocks and weapons.
I found enemies tend not to understand how to flank and how to use weapon rotation to their advantage. they also do not know how to target weaker or more critical points. they really do not know hot to dodge either nor do they keep their flanks or critical systems away from fire. Last bit is their construction is a bit hodgepodge where shields are in the middle weapons and engines are near the edges and the core is dangling underneath or exposed on the top. I know making a dynamic engine take into where hard points should be and where critical systems should go is a bit tricky. They also do not know how to use guided missiles so you can trick them by blasting up or falling which will cause the AI to retarget to lead the player for a new shot which causes the missiles to veer off away from the player.
and I was able to beat it including the last boss! second life and a quarter island left but it worked barely. Use all your blocks and spykes land on the top of the final boss (keep crashing into it you should have tons of layers) and fire everything you got straight down. If you have the right loadout you should be able to drill through the top and get to its core before it does. The other way is have a very very fast ship and keep its targeting system going in circles. You will need some of the scatter shots for the shields and a decent main weapon.
to fight everything else out there just keep out of their range and take pot shots at them. also you can go from the very bottom to the very top which will usually make them overshoot and take out of bounds damage (you can help this out by firing ontop or below them)
Hey i found a glitch where when you click like a level and click edit island it skips that level.
Hello,
I haven't heard of this before, but I shall take a look into it.
Thanks for the report!
Hey i found a gltch where u can force quit the game and cheat it.i suggest that u use a if case where the player wins and only then their life is refunded to them and else to do nothing
also when will the next update come?
Hello,
Thanks for reporting this. Someone has previously reported that leaving the game after the defeat screen does not refund your life. I have fixed this for the next update coming in the next 24 hours.
Thanks again for the report!
how do I get into creative mode?
hold space while making a new game
Just wanted to say that you can still escape losing a life with the exit-to-menu trick. All you have to do is press esc when the game puts up the "Defeat" and then click the menu button to leave. When you continue, you'll still have the same amount of lives as before you started the battle.
Hello! Thanks for the report! Yeah, that can be a problem now. I shall have that fixed for the next update.
Thanks again!
hey, i saw Scrapman's video on creative mode and im interested because there is no in the game nor a save file to download
Hey there!
Creative mode hasn't been publicly announced mainly due to the fact that creative mode takes away from the thrill of finding all the items yourself.
That being said, simply hold space while creating a new game to enable creative mode.
Have fun!