A forum dedicated to ‘Apex Patrol’.
Could REALLY use that upgrade labeling at the start of the game. When we work at rediverting the comets, the upgrades seem really random and unrelated. (Getting shield upgrade for shooting the comets?)
Also, what the heck do all these stats do? It seems to me that Damage Control and Crew Casualties and personal stats don’t matter that much, just ship stats.
Otherwise, great game! I liked the action, the pacing. A bit rough around the edges, but its a big game! Look forward to what you make next.
Apex Patrol has been released and I want to hear what people think.
This goes for typos, mis-directs and whatever else I couldn’t find on my own. Just include a snippet of the relevant portion of what seems disagreeable; ‘The maser beams slam into the enemy starbase’ or ‘Your Marines surge forward down the tight packed corridor, firing as they go’, etc. Doing so makes it easy for me to search for the relevant section.
So, have at it.
Hm, a risky endeavor releasing a sci fi game with so many of them already being hosted. Anyways, there seem to be a lot of rather large random spaces inbetween some words, which is a bit distracting. i.e.
"A flurry of yellow alerts flash across your command board. The ship just isn’t ready yet after coming out of its n-space translation. "
Exposition could be handled better, it just seems rather hamfisted and dull, i.e.
"N-space. N standing in for the variable dimensions the ship projects itself into before translating back down to a different portion of the third dimension. That sort of Quantum flip-flop can plop you down anywhere in the galaxy in a few weeks at most and has proven blindingly fast compared to the flux drives that Apex Patrol flew barely a decade ago. Those old light-speed ships are relics now, suitable only for training missions. "
The stats could be handled a lot better if they were in bar form rather than text, and they seem to be tied to rather odd choices, i.e. I gain a charisma increase for choosing to dodge a comet, as well as one for choosing my assistant and ship name.
The setting really needs some fleshing out, or at the least something to make it interesting. As for the plot, it is just plain sluggish, searching for data on gravitational anomalies for the majority of a game is hardly my idea of interesting. Characters might as well be nonexistent given how little a role they serve other than spouting technobabble.
Also was quite easy, I was able to win and get a good amount of comendations on my first try. I apologize if I seem malicious, it’s just my opinion and oftentimes my opinion is generally disagreed with.
When I started writing this one over a year ago, there were no sci-fi games. 
Large random spaces between words. That’s a new one on me. Or do you mean between lines? Vertical spacing has often been a pain to program.
As for the first half of things, which route did you take initially? There are four locations for you to inspect from the start. The Binary system has a mining vessel that is being smashed apart by asteroids and the crew there needs rescue. The Colonial planet has a diplomatic aspect to it. The planet undergoing terraforming has an important satellite that is about to impact due to an unexpected orbital adjustment. Even the nebula has something to find. Or, if you don’t care about all that, there is a way to jump straight to the action after just a single stop.
At least, there should be…
Tell me more.
Lines? Unless that’s a nickname for a technical thing I’m unaware of, then no, merely large horizontal spaces inbetween random words.
I rescued the colonists, then visited the nebula, then the mining vessel, then got the satellite, before meeting an arch enemy I apparently have. By that point I was rather bored and the action scenes didn’t get me interested.
I think the main reason I wasn’t too fond of the game was the writing style, granted I’ve seen much worse, but the plot could have been more interesting to me if I were more fond of your writing style.
If I were to put the reason for why I’m not fond of your writing style in one sentence, it’d be “it doesn’t make me care”. There’s no weight to the events or characters, and pretty much no clear picture for the setting. Plus there’s a heck of a lot of technobabble.
Here’s a link:
http://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/apex-patrol/
Took me a few minutes to find. I had to search Google to find Apex Patrol. It’s currently only linked to via a Blog post on the CoG site.
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Thanks 13ventrim. That’s an honest appraisal.
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Pipebrain… Ah, a link! I really should have figured that one out myself. Much appreciated.
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I can’t even load the first page. Won’t go past the loading screen
@nagarex if takes a while to load, maybe even 30-40 seconds.
@AllenGies here are some errors I found so far.
- With dialog, I think you need paragraphs between quoted dialogue and normal text in a number of cases, or you can consider formatting it a bit differently.
For example,
“As you were. Arrival report?” You inquire, settle in and adjust your command board. A tap of an icon brings your status to active and links you in with the on-duty officers.
“As you were. Arrival report?” you inquire, settling in and adjusting your command board.
Example 2:
“Negative, Captain.” Ensign Nerda chimes in…
Should be: “Negative, Captain,” Ensign Nerda chimes in…
- The crisis is over, time to get to the root cause.
I’d replace the comma with a semi-colon.
- Ranger Seven possesses Impact Torpedoes. Each is four tons of an actinoid-composite core fitted to single use ionic-drives. There battering rams can be guided in crashing waves towards their target.
There should be their.
- “Proceed.” You indicate, idle your command board.
Should be:
“Proceed,” you indicate and idle your command board.
Overall, I am enjoying the writing, though the techno jargon does slow my reading down a bit. However, that is the nature of sci-fi for someone who does not normally read it. I enjoyed customizing the ship, and the stat-building sections. I’m still reading Apex Patrol, so I can provide more feedback when I finish.
One question – it looks like you used one scene for the game. Any specific advantage you saw in that approach?
I can’t even load the first page. Won’t go past the loading screen
@nagarex, Can you give more details please? Are you playing it on-line/on android/on something else? How long did you let it load? Anything else you can think of that might help in figuring out what the problem is? I personally have a horrible internet connection, and sometimes it’ll drop the connection to the site while loading a CS game, and get stuck on the loading page with no indication that somethings wrong.
@JimD Technically example 1-2 is correct, I think (and a bit of a point of contention among English experts as what is the ‘right’ thing to do) IIRC.
@AllenGies From what I’ve read (the first few decisions a couple of times), I have to echo @13ventrm in that sometimes the stat increases seem weird. Personally I don’t mind it so much, as your style of writing seems to encourage replaying to find out how everything would play out if you make different decisions (I can’t, however, put my finger on why it feels that way to me).
I can’t seem to play apex patrol online on my iPod touch gen 2, it just says loading and doesn’t change even after 2 minutes
For me, the online version of the game works on both Windows 7 (chrome) and iPhone 3GS (wifi).
I haven’t tried the download version.
One trick to loading is to click Show Stats then click back to the game. Seems to break it out of the loading part.
-From what I’ve read (the first few decisions a couple of times), I have to echo @13ventrm in that sometimes the stat increases seem weird. Personally I don’t mind it so much, as your style of writing seems to encourage replaying to find out how everything would play out if you make different decisions (I can’t, however, put my finger on why it feels that way to me).-
I see. I think I can reduce that confusion by indicating that you are really just setting your initial stats for the game by making dynamic choices. Gutsy moves means you begin with more guts, trying a technical solution sets intellect higher, using masers to solve your problems means your ship starts off with more firepower than normal because that is what you would have focused on, and so on.
Let’s see, if I were to include a header to the stat increases such as; (Setting initial stats) or… (Executive officer bonus added) or adjust the text at the last part of things after you deal with the seven comets (Random initial stat bonus).
I could also devise a more hands-on method for an experienced player. still dealing with the comet, choosing a ship name, etc, but allocating points to their character and ship as they choose.
What would feel right here?
There’s a glitch at Planning the dinner, if you choose the firs option you’ll get the pop up saying bad label Planning_The_dinner
Bad Label? Okay, thanks. I’ll look into that one. Strange that randomtest didn’t catch that error.