Suggestions

[Candlejack]

I definitely agree with the mouse gestures idea since I use them all the time in Firefox.

[metarinka]

better scripting support for us who are making levels!

I wonder if you have any plans to document the scripting/ expand it.

visuals
slight variations in asteroid color? perhaps when a faction owns an asteroid it will glow that color (right now the trees send out beautiful spikes, they are a nice touch)

perhaps some interesting particle effects for the the seedlings themselves? I'm thinking along the lines of contrails or glows that increase with the more seedlings you have clumped together.

random back ground or asteroid color. maybe just subtle variations of what it has now? I think the game would lookg dood with a blue pastel background

[Alex]

Cheers guys, great suggestions.

With the HUD, we've got some thigns in store which should help things a bit while also reducing the amount of text we're using.

The idea was to have a level scripting system, which hopefully we can still do. Currently there's not a great deal you can do. I'll put up a post now.

Visuals variation - hopefully this will get pretty interesting we got some plans and ideas. The background colour one is a great idea and is something I've considered (pretty sure Rudolf and I discussed it together, can't remember now).

[octavian]

Why not make the whole thing more organic?

I can think of dozens of really interesting things you could implement in this game. I see no need for “asteroids” and “planets”, it’s supposed to be abstract, minimalistic and visceral, why not take in inspiration from all sort of places like, for instance, cell biology. Bacterial growth patterns i.e. slow growth followed by exponential growth ending with a stationary phase. Cell division would be a really interesting thing to implement.

Agent-based model? I want to see that. In a flock of birds all of them try to fly towards the centre while avoiding collision and matching speed with other birds. Three rules. Awesome visuals.

Or talk about neurons and you have discharge patterns, polarity, synapses  and the list goes on and on. You don’t even have to know what polarity in neurons is/does. It can just click in your mind, and make you say neuron polarity, heck if I know, but I know how a magnet works and it would be neat if we could implement polarity in the game. Now that’s interesting. Pesky minus seedlings attacking? Just send in some plus seedlings and watch them stick. Or send some minus ones... just because you’re feeling evil.

And there you enter the realm of physics. Again, purely intuitive, it doesn’t require research. Atoms, electrons, ionization, fission, fusion, waves, particles and so forth.

[vdgmprgrmr]

Something I think this game could use is a "screenshot" function, so we don't have to go through the PrintScreen process to share pictures of epic battles. Maybe just press a key or click a button in the corner (if you're trying to keep a mouse-only interface)

Another thing that I don't really have a suggestion for fixing, but know is a problem, is that there seems to be only one winning strategy; spread quickly and destroy what's left.

Once a player figures that out, the game pretty much becomes a grind. They know what to do, how to do it, and they can do it easily, then they win. Would it be possible to, maybe, give the AI players random "strategy" attributes?

Perhaps give each team a preference for which attribute they value the most, so they'll show preference for asteroids with that attribute, and make some teams follow a "spread and destroy" tactic while some set up a stalwart spot in the belt and slowly expand, and some amass fighting forces filled with fast, weak seedlings, while others' armies consist of slow, brutishly strong seedlings, while others' might have average seedlings that can take tons of damage. But you would have to make sure that the two strategies (or more) don't easily overcome any of the others, like it is now. A good way this might be done would be to allow seedlings to attack mid-flight. Expanding on the suggestions for patrols, you might be able to incorporate it into the Spheres of Influence; mark one asteroid as a "patrol asteroid" and have a certain percentage of its inhabitants go around to each asteroid in its range, then if a large group of enemy seedlings enters any of the patrolled asteroids' ranges, the patrol would either take the whole of itself and follow the intruders or just send a percentage of itself to follow them and attack them. Of course, it might also be useful to not have seedlings chasing down enemies, if the enemies just stay in place to fight off the attack, and you don't have a huge group patrolling, but a line of smaller groups, it would form a sort of reaction; small infringements on the patrol would only take a few seedlings to take down, and the few seedlings would be able to do it before a huge back-up was caused, while large infringements would cause huge back-ups and the patrol line would naturally form into a large attack force.

A good feature for potential patrols might also be the ability to set up stationary patrols; just groups of seedlings that hang around in space and attack enemies that come near.

Alright, so now let's hope someone high up can make use of my rambley post...

[Rudolf]

Hey vldmrprgdrrptrgr :-)

The game will indeed develop the organic theme more, and this will actually tie in to some of the gameplpay hopefully eliminating the grind aspect. (Mysterious I know but we have some very cool plans we are working on)

[topmo3]

May be other peoples like me will want to see some statistics after win or loose level:
It may be graph of various values in time as colored line for each team (total population, numbers of asteroids, total energy strength etc).

[Sejster]

First of all: Great game, really should have been Bytejacker Free Indie Of The Year. (Second place is awesome, congratulations! )

Consequent simplicity in graphics, clear and meaningful visuals
They really correspond to the ruleset. Please stay with them!
Don't add much more detail without function. (Organic, varied asteroids may be borderline, too.    (Though I'd really like to play Dyson with the Wii controls.)

All in all, I rather wrote what you shouldn't do.

[Rudolf]

Interestingly if we look at everybody's feedback so far the two features most often requested are multiplayer and waypoints.
For what its worth, we are just as happy with feedback telling us what you guys gals/don't like as feedback on things you do. it all gets looked at and all gets evaluated alongside our own plans.

[Rudolf]

May be other peoples like me will want to see some statistics after win or loose level:
It may be graph of various values in time as colored line for each team (total population, numbers of asteroids, total energy strength etc).

One of the things we are looking into is to have the info box display general game info when you have nothing selected.

[polyp]

First let me comment on what an amazing job you have done on creating this game. I don't know very much about game design but from what I do know, I can tell that you guys have work hard on this.

I would like to point out that this game has many congruencies with natural phenominon. It really reminded me of coral (check out this article: http://http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/coralcare/a/coralcompetitio.htm)

this thread got me thinking about what I would like to see added to this game:
*If you capture an enemy asteroid and there are still trees on it, I think it would be cool if you could capture those trees intact.
*If you wanted to change the type of tree I think you should be able to either transform the tree into the other type or transform it into seedlings (which would let you use the scorched earth policy if trees could be captured).
*Another feature I think would be interesting, would be allowing seedlings to have the abilities to retreat, and to attack enemy seedlings that fly a path to close to them.
*Yet another idea would be to have large planets that have multiple capturable "energy centers" so you could own a fraction of a planet and have a war over it.
*I would like to see other types of seedlings/trees, for example: ranged warfare seedlings that shoot projectiles life defense trees but take more time to grow (and defense seedling grower trees); carrier seedlings that have projectiles and could help synchronize attacks; melee defense trees that have more attack power and/or health since they lack range, they would also stick to carrier seedlings and deal damage over time...
*my last suggestion would be to have a variety of lifeforms other than dyson that could be procedurally generated... ex.-A giant space whale/bird/thing comes out of nowhere and attacks you; you land on an uncaptured planet only to find that it already supports some strange form of life that resists you

Thanks for listening. Remember these are not even suggestions, just ideas. Oh and did I mention how great a game this is?

[Candlejack]

That might remove some of the game's charm. I think the sound and music might be too quite. Also, do you plan on taking the procedural generation any further?

[mihalidis]

Hi all

i posted this in another thread, but after thinking it through i decided to re-post it here to keep all the ideas in one place.

The problem
To me being able to build limitless armies makes the game too easy.
Just keeping an eye out for that 32 seed cap and then amassing them on a nearby planet makes it just too easy to overwhelm NPCs.

The only way to lose is if you're getting overrun in the very beginning, after that its a no holds barred contest.

idea #1
A simple idea would be to introduce the concept of disease or sickness, having half you population wiped out because some contagious disease goes from seed to seed forcing you to quarantine a planet or something. This would make it possible for you to lose halfway into a game.

Generally speaking, the idea of something being passed from one seed to the other could be exploited much more.
These seeds could be seen as biological things so its not implausible.
For example power ups could be distributed

idea #2
Make the seedlings have a limited age.
Biological things right? They wont live forever, so after some time they die out.
Keeps you from building armies too big.

Here too is room for experimentation, in the beginning a seedling could be 'young' and without much power, in their prime they could reach full power levels, at the end they get old and, well, you get the idea.

Just my thoughts

[dbltnk]

Hey guys. Compliments first: Dyson really caught me. It is the only indie freeware game that ever convinced me to play it for three days. =D

Still, I've got a few suggestions that could improve the gameplay a lot without cluttering it with new features.

a) There is a need for automated movement of your seedlings to other asteroids. At the moment it's very boring and time demanding to keep your supply coming. But there is no need for a complex waypoint system to solve this. Just do one-way links from one asteroid to another. It could be a s simple as this: Hold shift and drag-and-drop (by holding the left mouse button) from one asteroid A to asteroid B. This will instantly and from now on send all your seedlings who are located on asteroid A onwards to asteroid B. By linking asteroids in this way, you could easily automate your support routes. Shift-Drag one planet into the empty space clears the supply route. Beware: If you intend on relying on micro-management to make the game more difficult, this will make it easier. =D

b) There needs to be a faster way to select large numbers of seedlings. This could be solves like this: holding CRTL while left-clicking on a asteroid selects [20/50/100] (whatever the playtests suggest) seedlings. Click again to add another [20/50/100].

c) There needs to be a display of your tree's hit points on a asteroid. Currently, it's hard to see how fast the enemy is damaging your trees. Similar to how you did the visual feedback on the seedlings' attributes, I would suggest to just let your trees shrink (maybe branches could break away) when they are losing hit points.

[Candlejack]

I was going to suggest making an advanced version of Dyson for retail with all kinds of awesome stuff added and a ton more procedural generation. But then I thought that isn't something you would do(unless you want to hear what I was thinking anyway).

Anyway, I think you should make the Dyson tree trunk and branches get thicker as they get older. I also think the background could be spiced up. Maybe add giant roots linking to the center of the asteroid belt to give the feeling that the world of Dyson is factual.