New in the Showcase! SANCTUM by Coffee Stain Studios!

[Flak]

Sanctum will challenge you to come up with innovative strategies to survive wave after wave of diverse enemies with varying tactical abilities. Activate and reinforce towers, and leverage the environment to increase your strategic advantage over rivals.



Sanctum was created by Coffee Stain Studios and you can read the latest developments on their website at http://www.coffeestainstudios.com/

You can see the Sanctum page and download the latest build here and see all of our other UDK Showcase games at http://udk.com/showcase

You can also follow the latest UDK and UDK Showcase updates on Facebook.

[syntaxerror22]

Looks very awesome, love the level design! I will be sure to check this out after work =D

[Blade[UG]]

I see no explanation on how the "Tower" part of the game works, and you have to point the weapons way up in the sky to get them to fire forward. Also lighting on the first person weapons doesn't work. Using "tab" for the "Overview" shows an odd looking screen that doesn't seem to have any indication what it's for, and sometimes disables all your controls except for firing.

[Xcase]

Blade: I think you have a bad download. Everything works perfectly fine for me, and I have come across none of the problems you mentioned except for the lack of explanation that you have to build your own maze.

[Blade[UG]]

so... how do you do that?

[ORi]

There are nice Info panels at the starting point but the problem is that you cant approach them so you need glasses to read them :-/

[Blade[UG]]

I couldn't make out that there was anything legible on the displays .. am i the only person without a 1920+ resolution display?

[Xcase]

Nope. 1280x1024 here.... One of the screens you can hit E on the keyboard to cycle through a tutorial and stuff... I don't know. Is the texture detail screwed up? I'll experiment with different resolutions....

EDIT: Just tested it, I could read the leftmost screen (the one with the tutorial) at every resolution above 800x600. I suppose if all else fails you can use your sniper scope.

Honestly though, the one thing I would like to see on this is a save function. Because finding enough time to attempt a perfect runthrough is difficult, and having to restart from the very beginning every time you lose/ have to stop is kind of annoying.

[Zomy]

Nope. 1280x1024 here.... One of the screens you can hit E on the keyboard to cycle through a tutorial and stuff... I don't know. Is the texture detail screwed up? I'll experiment with different resolutions....

EDIT: Just tested it, I could read the leftmost screen (the one with the tutorial) at every resolution above 800x600. I suppose if all else fails you can use your sniper scope.

Honestly though, the one thing I would like to see on this is a save function. Because finding enough time to attempt a perfect runthrough is difficult, and having to restart from the very beginning every time you lose/ have to stop is kind of annoying.

Totally agree!!!

[Blade[UG]]

Well, admittedly, I just glanced at it from probably a distance, didn't realise it was useful information. I'll have to take a look at it again.

[Anton Westbergh]

My name is Anton Wesbergh and I am the project manager at Coffee Stain Studios. This version of Sanctum is an early demo-version and we intend to change a lot before the release of the full version.

Please feel free to play the game and post any comments in this thread. Is there anything you like, dislike or anything you would like to see change or be added/removed. Any information from you is useful for us at Coffee Stain and help us make a better game!

Regarding the ingame screens, we are aware they are not very usable at the moment and we are going to address that issue.

Me and my colleagues will be as active as possible in this thread and try answer all your questions as well as possible.

Have fun with the game!

[Anton Westbergh]

To further explain the monitors, the idea was to try to try avoid hud and ui as much as possible to bring a more "live" experience for the user, so we tried to put game-information on the monitors in the game instead of using regular hud popups etc.

The screens are not very readable on low resolutions at the moment though, which is a major issue, and we do realize that they are a little bit annoying to use overall, so we are actually planning a new tutorialsystem that will be in the final version of the game.

[Zomy]

Is there any way to win the wave number seven?
PS: Awesome game!

[Anton Westbergh]

Is there any way to win the wave number seven?
PS: Awesome game!

At least our leveldesigner believe so

[Zomy]

After 2 hours, i am not able to win . I must sucks lol.
Somebody win the wave 7 ?

[Indorile]

I think the lvl1 Air Turret should cost 15 credits because the first air wave is requiring minimum 3 turrets to pass it without any ruckus and panicking. Slow field should add a little more slow, or enemies need to be a little slower. One really annoying feature is teleporting to safety. I'm often losing a wave because of this (in a critical moment i get teleported hence fail to kill bastards that get though the door).

[Zomy]

The guys who test this demo were able to win wave 7?

[Indorile]

I beat it only once and i got 1 life left, next wave is even more horrible (wave 4 on steroids). Its really hard I think you should tweak economy/monsters a bit, or at least make a difficulty system.

[Anton Westbergh]

I think the lvl1 Air Turret should cost 15 credits because the first air wave is requiring minimum 3 turrets to pass it without any ruckus and panicking. Slow field should add a little more slow, or enemies need to be a little slower. One really annoying feature is teleporting to safety. I'm often losing a wave because of this (in a critical moment i get teleported hence fail to kill bastards that get though the door).

The first wave of air is doable without any airturrets but it's kinda hectic then )

We know that the game is a little to hard at the moment and there's lots of things to tweak. It's great to hear your feedback though and I record it all for us to consider when we continue the work on Sanctum.

Thanks,
Anton

[Anton Westbergh]

The guys who test this demo were able to win wave 7?

Wait til you get to wave 10!

[Zomy]

Wait til you get to wave 10!

So you win the wave number 7!
That means that the game is not bugged!

[Xcase]

So you win the wave number 7!
That means that the game is not bugged!

Wow, really? Someone won wave 7?
... Not that I would know what wave 7 is, not having gotten past wave 4 myself.

Okay, I have to say something here...
Either this game is really really hard or I just suck at it. Maybe both. I don't know what it is -- maybe it's that I cant get enough of a maze up, maybe it's that even at the highest upgrade the minigun towers do less damage than your level 1 assault rifle -- maybe it's that your assault rifle overheats too quickly -- maybe it's that you can't change weapons while it's overheating, and if you try to, it immediately switches after its cooled down, and if you've changed your mind about switching, too bad. Maybe it's the really steep difficulty curve. I don't know.

Well, I guess if people have actually made it TO wave 7, then I just suck at it.
Whatever.

EDIT: I made it past wave 5 now. That tsunami of fast guys annihilated me. Being 'teleported to safety' when trying to pursue them when they survived a HALLWAY of gatling guns ended up costing me my entire progress. I dont know, it's just... the amount of building credits you get per round versus the cost of stuff versus the effectiveness of said stuff leads me to believe you're better off not building a maze at all and just upgrading your weapons. And even then you're screwed. I'm not saying I hate the game. I'm not saying it's a bad game. I really like it in fact. Can't hardly stop trying to play it. I'm just saying its really, really hard.

Also, the whole 10 monsters leeway you get for the entire game with all monsters being counted pretty much equally doesn't help. I know 100 made it way too lenient, but 10?

[Anton Westbergh]

Wow, really? Someone won wave 7?
... Not that I would know what wave 7 is, not having gotten past wave 4 myself.

Okay, I have to say something here...
Either this game is really really hard or I just suck at it. Maybe both. I don't know what it is -- maybe it's that I cant get enough of a maze up, maybe it's that even at the highest upgrade the minigun towers do less damage than your level 1 assault rifle -- maybe it's that your assault rifle overheats too quickly -- maybe it's that you can't change weapons while it's overheating, and if you try to, it immediately switches after its cooled down, and if you've changed your mind about switching, too bad. Maybe it's the really steep difficulty curve. I don't know.

Well, I guess if people have actually made it TO wave 7, then I just suck at it.
Whatever.

EDIT: I made it past wave 5 now. That tsunami of fast guys annihilated me. Being 'teleported to safety' when trying to pursue them when they survived a HALLWAY of gatling guns ended up costing me my entire progress. I dont know, it's just... the amount of building credits you get per round versus the cost of stuff versus the effectiveness of said stuff leads me to believe you're better off not building a maze at all and just upgrading your weapons. And even then you're screwed. I'm not saying I hate the game. I'm not saying it's a bad game. I really like it in fact. Can't hardly stop trying to play it. I'm just saying its really, really hard.

Also, the whole 10 monsters leeway you get for the entire game with all monsters being counted pretty much equally doesn't help. I know 100 made it way too lenient, but 10?

Thanks for your reply. You take up a lot of very valid points about stuff that doesn't work perfectly at the moment, and we are valuing your feedback highly.

Regarding the 10 monsters leeway, that IS a problem. We will do something about how penalty for not killing monsters is applied for the final version.

One of the biggest problems at the moment, from my personal experience of playing the game is that there's no way to save the progress, and that is something I can guarantee will be in the final version. We do realize that it's way to punishing to be forced to restart from the beginning each time when you fail to fend of a wave.

It's nice to hear that still like the game

[Indorile]

Got to wave 10 then lost because of the stupid teleport in a crucial moment

So i got past the 7th wave and got warned about very fast fliers. It didn't said that they're all drunken and coming from all sides...



Maze overview after 7th wave (before building for 8th):



Got past the eight with all lives:



Maze overview before 9th wave rape:



Incoming death from wave 9:



Surprise, surprise i got past with all 10 lives:



And then i got to wave 10 consisting of grunts and dudes with forward defence, was killing them pretty easy and then a teleport of death occured One lousy teleport can ruin a hard played game. Make save system please!

[Anton Westbergh]

Got to wave 10 then lost because of the stupid teleport in a crucial moment

So i got past the 7th wave and got warned about very fast fliers. It didn't said that they're all drunken and coming from all sides...



Maze overview after 7th wave (before building for 8th):



Got past the eight with all lives:



Maze overview before 9th wave rape:



Incoming death from wave 9:



Surprise, surprise i got past with all 10 lives:



And then i got to wave 10 consisting of grunts and dudes with forward defence, was killing them pretty easy and then a teleport of death occured One lousy teleport can ruin a hard played game. Make save system please!

Thanks for your feedback. The teleport-system is obviously not working out as it was intended, and it's something we're looking at.

A note to everyone. If you have suggestions or ideas to what to put into the game or remove, don't hesitate to empty your minds in this thread!

Over out!

[tyrone70]

The game has so much potential, just a few things holding it back from being awesome imo.

1. You seem to suggest the player make a maze. When I first heard this, I wanted to create an awesome rat trap. Then I realize I was too poor to make one, so I settled for something linear in the hopes that I'd earn more. But, when I earn more, I have to add new towers and weapons. Heck, I don't even really get the chance to upgrade. It seems you're trying to force the player to prioritize how they spend money, which is fine. I just think the best element of the game, the maze making, is held back right now. It's being suffocated by having no money to spend.
Just a suggestion, I think it would be great if you earned two separate types of income. One for building block towers and another ones for towers weapons and personal weapons. The block tower income should be a set amount after each wave, but the weapon income should be awarded based on your personal skill shots and/or how many enemies the maze takes out.

2. An actual help screen. I can see the weapon descriptions clearly, but they move too often.

3. Better color coded towers. Sometimes, I need to actually study the screen after pressing tab to realize what I've done.

4. Making it so the enemies don't automatically know how to escape the maze, which makes building tricky mazes even more fun.

5. A back story (if there isn't one.) You don't need it, seems to really want one. From what I've been able to gather, you're on some planet gathering energy by killing the locals.

Again, awesome game. If it's fixed, then I will definitely get the final version and recommend it to my fellow geeks.

[juicyj]

I really like the look of this game, especially the lighting.

Are there any tips you can share about how you did it?

[Oscar Jilsen]

I beat it only once and i got 1 life left, next wave is even more horrible (wave 4 on steroids). Its really hard I think you should tweak economy/monsters a bit, or at least make a difficulty system.

The difficulty problem is... well, a problem and we are looking into ways to fix this. This might be a difficulty system or just making it easier overall.

Lots and lots of useful feedback.

You bring up a lot of valid points, as has been said and I promise you we will be looking into most of the above mentioned issues. A few of the issues already have planned solutions.

...

5. A back story (if there isn't one.) You don't need it, seems to really want one. From what I've been able to gather, you're on some planet gathering energy by killing the locals.

…

About the story, we actually had put a lot of effort on the story in an early alpha version, but we noticed that almost no-one cared about it. Since the game is so focused on gameplay we decided to not focus on the story at all after that. There are still remnants of the story there, and we might put more implicit story information in there as we develop the full version.

We've also noticed the problem with players not mazing because they feel vulnerable if they dont build a lot of turrets. We'll be looking into ways to solve this.


I'd also like to repeat what Anton has said before and say that we really appreciate your feedback. Your feedback will greatly affect the continued development of this game so keep it coming

[FreakHavoc]

I've played the demo for a few hours and I really like this concept! Here are some aspects I would like changed, though:

-In general, the demo is too hard, probably because of too little building materials.
-Clearer indication of when assault rifle is about to overheat, maybe a heat gauge? Not always easy to hear the sound
-Must be able to change to sniper immediately when AR is overheating
-Instead of 2-3 sniper shots on upgrades, add penetrating bullets instead? -Alternatively, add a 2-3 shot clip on the upgrades before reload.
-Player should be unaffected by slow fields, or at least not as affected
-Monsters will keep on walking through slow fields placed along the midline of the gauntlet even if there are no walls forcing them to do so. A bug?
-Gun turrets are much too weak
-Tesla towers should have some degree of AOE damage
-Add more monster/tower types (you will probably do this anyway)!
-A melee weapon for backup?


So, when is the expected release date? I might make another post with more comments later.

[Anton Westbergh]

I've played the demo for a few hours and I really like this concept! Here are some aspects I would like changed, though:

-In general, the demo is too hard, probably because of too little building materials.
-Clearer indication of when assault rifle is about to overheat, maybe a heat gauge? Not always easy to hear the sound
-Must be able to change to sniper immediately when AR is overheating
-Instead of 2-3 sniper shots on upgrades, add penetrating bullets instead? -Alternatively, add a 2-3 shot clip on the upgrades before reload.
-Player should be unaffected by slow fields, or at least not as affected
-Monsters will keep on walking through slow fields placed along the midline of the gauntlet even if there are no walls forcing them to do so. A bug?
-Gun turrets are much too weak
-Tesla towers should have some degree of AOE damage
-Add more monster/tower types (you will probably do this anyway)!
-A melee weapon for backup?


So, when is the expected release date? I might make another post with more comments later.

Thanks for the feedback.

The demo is too hard, we admit. This was due to very little time to actually playtest before we released it.

The feedback on the overheat could be better, good ideas. We will overlook the possibilities of some additional alert. Regarding the towers we do have some nice plans for how to upgrade the teslas from the way they work today, and we also have additional towers that will among other things provide splash damage.

Regarding slowfields. The monsters will always run the closest way and ignore whether there's slowfields there or not, and this is working as intended.

Additional weapons for Skye is also being considered, but I won't spoil any details yet. Something interesting is being considered though.

More monsters is also on the schedule, don't worry! )

Nice to see such detailed feedback, it really help us in our work delivering a solid game! We currently look to be able to release Sanctum late 2010, but that's just an estimate.

Thanks!

[FreakHavoc]

Thanks for the feedback.

No problem! Great to be able to interact so closely with programmers, never done that before.

Some more ideas:
-Consider changing the "press enter for next wave" mechanic as it isn't very realistic that you can choose when to be attacked. I think you should put a time limit between each wave during which time you could build towers, maybe a few minutes. The player could see a countdown which would add to the tension of the game. When you were ready you could still press enter for next wave but then as a "time skip" to the next attack (instant count down).
-Artillery towers that could only function at long range?
-Teleport towers that could transport a few random mobs back to the beginning of the maze when passing.
-Database which adds a bit of info about each new creature as they appear? Would add a bit to the depth of the game.
-Boss creatures (larger versions of minions that take a lot of damage, but are slower).
-Being killed by your own people for losing is maybe a bit strange. Instead there could be a huge power generator or something in the sanctum that would explode if enough creatures got to it.

I will post more when/if I can think of anything else! BTW is there a cheat mode in the demo?

[ArmoredDJ]

Love the game, and looking forward to seeing more options in towers and creatures Love the big yellow screens you can go over and look at if need be, and your own people killing you for incompetence <3 Beautiful game.

To begin with I had trouble just getting past the first few waves, but then I am just that newbish <.< I managed to get to wave 10 eventually and failed hard once getting there It does seem like you get too little points both to buy stuff for, and in health, as has been said already.

Also, I was a little confused by when/if you go down. I was half expecting some Hammer of Incompetence flying after me when I failed. But then some robot voice just cries something silly I thought I was protecting humans? Isn't the protagonist human? She sounds human, but when I look at the cover art for the demo, I can't quite tell what I'm looking at, and if I'm in fact protecting other robots then =/

Oh, before I forget, it seems like none of the turrets can figure out how to hit anything but one spot on the enemies, sometimes leaving whole waves up to me alone to handle, which is just no fun Ofc I haven't been that thorough, but maybe if the mobs that can "only" be killed by the player, were limited to a few per wave tops? I'm talking ofc about the walking pair of balls and shields. The drunken flying lizards were also a bit annoying when my turrets -despite actually hitting them every now and again- could not take them down.
I don't know if the lightning towers are different, but maybe construct towers with sum smart AI to target teh right spots on enemies? Mebe even have some kind of selective targeting system for not wasting overly powerful shots on measly bugs when the big stuff is still walking?

EDIT: Another option would be to have the shots from turrets spread out so it doesn't always hit the same spot every time, and have the more powerful turrets shoot for full effect so that when targeting a mob, it would target whichever one had sufficient health to make the shot have full effect? But mebe that's just me dreaming now ^^

[Teleporting Muffin]

I've played this demo for far too many hours and this is what I've noticed/think about it:

Selling a level 3 anti-air turrent nets you 680 credits.

If I only upgrade my weapons and only build a small maze with 2 anti-air turrents and a couple of slowing fields I'll complete the demo without losing a single life.


(Sorry for the size, both the picture and the 2mb.)
(I found the anti-air turret bug at this point and had level 3 turrets around the whole grid at level 12 but I'm pretty sure I'd completed it with only my weapons, since the other 11 levels were easy enough)

If I only build turrets and don't upgrade my weapons I die at wave 10.

The sniper rifle upgrades should just be higher damage or something instead of shooting double/triple shots. Or lose the recoil of the 2nd and 3rd 'extra' shot, I don't like missing flying things thanks to the recoil

More credits and tougher enemies. I never used more then 2 rows of blocks since I can't afford more and more then 2 rows isn't needed anyway. I guess we'll afford and have to build larger mazes if we get more waves, but I wan't a bigger maze earlier but atm it's just a waste of credits.

I really like what I've seen so far tho, it's a great concept and it works, multiplayer would be rad tho And please don't lower the difficulty, just add easy and medium difficulties. I like a game thats HARD but not IMPOSSIBLE.

[gigamaxjur]

Great work, nice demo, congrats!!!
I think alternative for saving the game would be just to let the player choose the starting "Wave" number and give him enough credits to build the proper defense!

[Jazzyboy]

Great work, nice demo, congrats!!!
I think alternative for saving the game would be just to let the player choose the starting "Wave" number and give him enough credits to build the proper defense!

But that would ruin the aspect of working towards a goal. That would make the game too easy.

[gigamaxjur]

But that would ruin the aspect of working towards a goal. That would make the game too easy.

I think you misunderstood, what i meant is you could select the starting wave number, for example Wave 8, and you would get some credits- equal to ammount you would have at wave 8 if you would play from begining... got it?
Anyway i played through all 12 waves, the last one is tricky couse of those big guys and you need a lightning turret at the end of the maze...
At my best try , a few too many big guys got through and game over, so then i cheated a little and finished the game, cant wait for the full game :P Good luck!

[ArmoredDJ]

I agree with Jazzyboy, that would ruin the whole purpose of it, especially if you haven't even gotten through to wave 8 yet. Who's to say you wouldn't fail the first 7 waves, even if that might be unlikely to happen. Who's to say you'd even have any credits left after the first 7 waves? Maybe you squandered them, in your desperate attempt to make your defense work more efficiently.
If you could just start at any wave you wanted, even if you had completed all waves atleast once, it would defeat the whole purpose of building your way up to it, upgrading and modifying your defense as you go along. If necessary, one could make a save game right before the wave, so that you would atleast still be stuck with what you had built up untill now. Anything else would be kinda cheating
You can't do that in other games either. The most you can do is start at a given chapter, and before you go "That's the same thing!", it's not the same thing. If the game allows you to start at certain chapters in the game, it's either because there's no build up process where your actions will have an effect later on, or it's only available on a character that you have started and worked on past the save point of the chapter in which case, it's just another save game.

[gigamaxjur]

I think you should play the game first, its obvious you havent, in my opinion it would be great to have a select wave system, and i suggested that 'couse programming a full save game capability is a lot harder to do than to make this select wave system!

Offcourse save game would be better, but I would be more than satisfied with select wave system for this type of game, it matters how you position the defense towers and build the maze, and yes you can sell what you already build and rebuild the maze, each Wave requires differend approach!
And btw this system is already used in Dungeon Defense Demo, you should play that too, i recommend it!

[Jazzyboy]

I think you should play the game first, its obvious you havent, in my opinion it would be great to have a select wave system, and i suggested that 'couse programming a full save game capability is a lot harder to do than to make this select wave system!

Offcourse save game would be better, but I would be more than satisfied with select wave system for this type of game, it matters how you position the defense towers and build the maze, and yes you can sell what you already build and rebuild the maze, each Wave requires differend approach!
And btw this system is already used in Dungeon Defense Demo, you should play that too, i recommend it!

You seem to think we don't understand what you mean. I fully understand what you mean, and I've finished this game thank you very much.

You don't understand what I mean. A Select Wave system would fully destroy the aspect of building a fortress. And you can't suddenly hypnotize players into gaining a certain amount of credits. It would make no sense. I know what you mean about it being hard to script, but it wouldn't be too hard. The team on this project is quite big.

[Anton Westbergh]

Hello everyone.

Lots of talk about saving and the steep difficulty of the game.

There is plans for a sort of savesystem but I can't go into details on how it will work. Just rest assured that Coffee Stain Studios is aware of the issue and have solutions being worked on.

There is bugs still in the game, and the AAturretone was actually addressed but seem to have creeped back into the code due to a bad commit. Very good that you did find it though, so we can resolve it for the final version.

Keep the good work up guys, and we will do aswell!