Hello - my name is Simon Strange. I’ve been developing video games for about 16 years - mostly in the console space.
I’ve been poking around SRK for about 2 years now, because for the last two years I’ve been building a new kaiju-themed fighting/brawler game, and a community to go along with it at kaijucombat.com. My idea was to bring together fighting fans and kaiju fans.
Well, after more than 18 months of work, the first part of the CKC franchise started on Early Access this August. Colossal Kaiju Combat™: Kaijuland Battles is a bare-bones 4-monsters 1-arena game. The idea is to get a large number of players & test games played, while we use that information to improve the underlying combat & control scheme - which will be used in all our future games as well. Kaijuland Battles will be free once we move out of Early Access, but for right now we’re charging $5 for it. The goal there was to keep out casual players - and focus only on the players who understand that the game is a work in progress, and that we need people who will play online games, submit bugs & descriptive feedback, and help us iterate to make the game better.
Well after a few months of Early Access, the game has improved to the point where I think we need the expertise of more dedicated Fighting Game Community members. We’ve been organizing play sessions mostly on Tuesdays & Thursdays - the game servers are running 24/7, but it’s a lot more fun when you have a few dozen (or a few hundred) opponents online at the same time.
I’ll also point out that the game right now REQUIRES a USB gamepad or fight stick to play. We’ll implement keyboard / mouse controls once we’re satisfied that the gamepad controls are perfect.
So here’s the deal - I know that passionate folks from SRK are exactly the sort of experts I need in-game right now to help nail down our combat & controls. So anyone who replies to this thread that they would like to help out will get a free Steam Key from me via PM.
I’m going away this weekend, so folks who respond in the second half of Friday might need to wait a bit to get a key PM from me.
What the process of reporting any issues one might find ?
PM’ing you or posting a reply on the community hub ?
Edit: Looked at the steam page:
The all time peak for players online is 19 with 0 online right now and 1 online today i wonder if this thread alone will cause there to be enough people online for any amount of actual testing to happen unless you want more of menu and practice mode testing ?
And you have this in the description of the game:
“Our next CKC game (The Fall of Nemesis) launches next year with 9 original characters designed & voted on by our fans, and 2 special boss characters designed by guest contributors Jeremy Robinson & Monster Attack Team.”
If you are launching another game next year how do you plan on fixing this game and building a playerbase at the same time ?
Oh man I’ve been keeping up with this game for a while. Used to love the Godzilla games on PS2/Gamecube. I’d be down to help test, what exactly is it are you looking for? Mechanic feedback, balancing, bug testing? It would help to know what to look for going into it.
EDIT: Bump that, I see it’s only $5, I’m just gonna buy it.
Our online bug tracker is located at kaijucombat.com/bugs - you don’t need to log in or create an account to post bugs. The main menu has an HTML link which opens the bug tracker - so you can just click that when you notice something.
If you look, you’ll see that we’ve had about 700 bug submissions thus far since we went live on August 11th, with about 500 of those already resolved and closed.
I don’t know how Steam is tracking online players - but their data doesn’t match up with my own internal server numbers. For example, I logged data from 398 games played on September 3rd. It’s true that just hopping on at random times is unlikely to find you an opponent within 60 seconds - but we’re getting 10-30 games played each day at present. I’d love to bump that up to ~50 a day. We’ve designated Tuesdays & Thursdays as “everyone get on and play!” days - which has helped folks find consistent opponents. I’ll also say that 60% of all games happen between 3pm - 9pm Pacific time.
CKC as a franchise uses a new “modular” release process - you can read about it here: http://kaijucombat.com/wiki/doku.php?id=multi-release_vision
It’s a complex idea - mostly because it’s never been done before. But the ghist of the concept is that CKC uses a common code base, and each stand-alone game is just a new set of data, which is compatible with every other release. It’s like LEGOs - lots of individual products, but each one is just new content for the same underlying system of interactions.
Fall of Nemesis has already been under production for more than a year - all of the combat & controls work we’re iterating on within KLB translates directly into both products, as well as all future products.
I’m sending you a Steam Code anyway! Give it to a friend if you like.
Mostly I want to know what folks think is good & what you think is bad. Controls are nearly identical to the PS2/ Gamecube games, especially Save the Earth. There is a quickstart guide on Steam which lists controls. There are lots of areas to polish - really the most important thing I get from player feedback & data is help prioritizing what to polish first. You can check out the last couple months of patch notes here: http://kaijucombat.com/community/index.php?forums/patch-notes.30/
We’ve pushed out 20 updates in the past 4 months - things are changing pretty quickly.
I’d also love some suggestions about how to best communicate known issues / planned work to our players. We have a dedicated forum with a few thousand active members, but most players on Steam don’t keep up with the forum…
Okay, so are we reporting things here or the forums or steam or what? Played it for a bit, it totally feels like the old Godzilla games, but the attacks kinda seem whack. Attacks that don’t knock down don’t seem to cause enough hitstun so if someone is attacking you can interrupt them, but you’re still in recovery and can get hit. Makes the game kinda mashy. It would be cool if they could cancel into other attacks or something, but that’s probably just me wanting a more involved combo system. It really just seems at the moment that fast moves that knock down are pretty strong.
These aren’t really bug reports as such so i figured i might aswell post them here.
First thing i noticed is that training mode isn’t training mode its vs cpu.
Would be great if there could be an actual training mode in the game something as simple as a 2player that doesn’t move with infinite health would be enough really but that might be something that should be put in before release rather than an immediate concern.
There is no key rebinding which might cause issues with some people’s sticks not everyone is using a TE or similar layout for their buttons which might end up with weird button assignments with no easy way to change. This isn’t really an issue if you only expect people to play with 360 pads and similar but since you specifically mentioned wanting fighting game players to test it, it will be a concern for some.
Another issue for playing on stick is that the game uses 8 buttons while a lot including mine which is a custom built one only uses 6 buttons + start select.
If you want the game to be playable on stick you would need to make button shortcuts for the 2 buttons that aren’t available on 6button sticks as double buttons for instance a+b = left trigger etc.
Another thing is it would be a lot of easier to learn and understand the game if there was an ingame move list of some sort something as simple as plain text in the pause menu would be more than enough.
I’ll try out some more later with an actual 360 controller instead and see what i can find but i don’t have much experience with this type of game the closest thing i can think of would be something like destrega or the gundam vs gundam games so i don’t know how much purely gameplay wise i could contribute as i don’t know if something is supposed to be a certain way in the genre.
Specific action items like “Gigashark’s Down + Chain doesn’t hit reliably” should go into the bug tracker (link on the main menu of the game! - kaijucombat.com/bugs)
Broad feelings / discussion points are fine to post here, or the official forums, or the Steam forums - it all gets read.
It’s true - fast moves that knock down ARE strong. But they shouldn’t do a ton of damage. In general the goal (which could be changed) is something like this:
Quick moves that can’t be avoided - 5-11 damage. (These often link into other attacks, but aren’t confirmable combos)
Quick moves that knockdown - 9-12 damage.
Avoidable moves that don’t knockdown - 15-20 damage
Avoidable moves that knockdown - 25 damage.
There are some issues with getup attacks, rolling - so being knocked down right now is a bit more negative than it was in G:StE. Working on that.
Try using duck (L trigger) and/or side dodge moves to avoid attacks. Getting in & interrupting opponent’s attacks, then dodging their counter attack, is a good strategy in this game.
@Shari - we’ll introduce keybinding when we roll out keyboard support. Which won’t be for 2 months still, probably.
Any more? I’m a bit surprised that SRK has had the thinnest response from all of the FGC sites I posted this offer to…
Tuesday evening is our big play night - would love to get a few more folks in by then. And those of you who have already received keys - please plan to play Tuesday night if at all possible!
Does it play more like a traditional fighting game than the GC Godzilla titles? SRK is the land of fighting game snobs. If it doesn’t play like SF, then it’s hard to make SRK’ers care. Also, you’d probably do better if you worked the word “indie” into the thread title. Screenshots and videos should be in the first post.
It plays VERY MUCH like the Godzilla titles - that was a very specific request from fans & backers that we’ve honored.
It’s Tuesday today - the first Tuesday since I posted this. And Tuesdays are THE DAY for getting online with other players. Our official session times are:
Noon - 3pm Pacific
8pm-11pm Pacific
But really anytime after noon Pacific time you should be in reasonable shape to find a game.
Remember - game supports voice chat via headset, and you can use private game keys to play with specific people - otherwise you’re just matched against whoever’s in the queue.
Report thoughts, issues, kudos, and death threats to this thread, our main forums at kaijucombat.com/community/ OR to our online bug database at kaijucombat.com/bugs/
If you don’t have an account on the CKC forums, you can create one in one click via the game’s main menu. (Your forum username & password will be the same as your Steam login info.) - This also allows you to earn Kaiju Coins for playing.
I remember this too, glad to see this is still around. I have no interest in testing the game since I rarely have free time these days, just posting here to wish you good luck, I always loved monster games like these.