Jamestown Lives!

[-Bridget-]

Ok, I picked this up, and....

....it's COMPLETELY unplayable. Aside from the terrible menus (The mouse shuts down if I keybind the keyboard? Really?), the controls are a mess. I'm HOPING this is some sort of bug or wierd problem on my end, but somehow I doubt that's the issue.

I'm using a 360 controller, and aside from the fact that it WONT LET ME USE THE TRIGGERS (I'll get to that in a bit), the game seems to be unable to cope with certain button combinations.

I cannot, right now, use the face buttons on the controller quite fully; I can USE them, but if I have to apply constant pressure (PARTICULARLY with a shmup, where I tend to get exciteable and squeeze the hell outta the damn thing) I'll get shocks of pain going up my arm. I go to therapy for this and all, it's a medical thing... it'll fade eventually.... but for now, I cannot do it like that. That means I cannot hold down X or A or whatever for the ship to fire. Not unless I want to hurt like bloody hell for the next 24 hours.

Normally, Iv'e been using the triggers for games like this. This game, as with many others I've tried, has the bizarro problem of TOTALLY IGNORING them.

Now, this would not be an issue.... normally. I use JTK for ALOT of games, both due to my problem, and for all sorts of other reasons. However.... unlike literally every other game I own on the PC (and that's ALOT of games) JTK's translated inputs.... have no effect on this game. At all. I cannot understand why that is.

And really, I shouldnt HAVE to use JTK for a game that already theoretically supports a controller; but since it doesnt support the ENTIRE controller, I had no choice but to try.

Failing this, I tried to use the.... er, what are they, "shoulder" buttons, which are very uncomfortable so I dont use them much; it accepted THIS, but.... I got into the actual game, and started moving around, and then I started FIRING..... and the Dpad (and also the left stick) simply stopped working right. Sometimes it would decide that I could go up and right, but not both, and DEFINITELY not left.... or it might decide on a totally random other set of directions that I could or could not go. I only had actual, proper movement as long as I NEVER FIRED. (I tried this with every possible configuration, which includes both JTK running and not running.)

And no, I cannot use the mouse. Not for more than a couple minutes at a time, anyway (it's really, really annoying, but for now I cannot do anything about this fact). I wouldnt wanna use the mouse for a shmup anyway; that would drive me crazy.

I'll mess with it a bit more later on and see if I cant get the blasted thing to work right, but.... I really cant think of any other potential solutions here.

And that's a damn shame, because this really looks pretty grand.


EDIT: Actually, the Dpad input doesnt work at all (the analog does, but I simply wont use an analog stick for a shmup; it only leads to great frustration if I try that). I thought it was the combination of too many buttons that was doing it; but I just tested it, just roamed around the screen without firing, and.... the Dpad kept locking up. (and yes, the controller works perfectly with everything else). It also crashed once.

I give up.

[rancor]

This is a beautiful game - I hope the bugs get worked out quickly!
I've decided I'll give steam a try and when the inevitable update patch arrives I'll purchase this game. I haven't installed steam before, but I'm hoping that it isn't one of those TSR programs that's going to populate my taskbar, phone home, and give me update balloons every time I boot my computer.

[yushin]

It's a shame I only have macs around at the moment!

I got it from Steam, managed to launch it with playonmac, but cant get past ship selection (lua error talking about openAl)

Still, the menus look GOOD. Yummy pixels!

[Gerk]

I haven't installed steam before, but I'm hoping that it isn't one of those TSR programs that's going to populate my taskbar, phone home, and give me update balloons every time I boot my computer.

I use Steam just about every time I boot up my computer, but always start it manually for some reason. If you have it set to not run when Windows starts, it obliges and stays the hell out of your way. No tricks, no foolin'.

It quietly auto-updates, has a little icon in the corner of your taskbar, and can be forced into offline mode after the original connection. Mind you, all these features can be toggled too.

[Snake]

Been following your development of this game for a year, and just purchased and downloaded it today. However, it crashes upon launching and I haven't been able to see the menu screen let alone play a single frame of the game.

Oh well.

[coturnix]

I love the game, but i have noticed certain problems with the controls:

I use an Arcade fightstick to play shooters and fighting games, and also have a set of steering wheel+pedals+shifter permanently plugged in my computer for racing sims. When i want to play a shooter (MAME) i just plug the arcade fightstick and can play normally.

In this game however the arcade stick doesn´t send any input at all in the main menu, but looks like the wheel does, the mouse cursor drifts down constantly and selecting an option is quite a pain. Once you start a play and configure the controls for the ship you suddenly can control the mouse cursor with the arcade stick and everything is great. I don´t know why the game doesn´t save these parametres and applies them to all the game. There´s no consistency on this, once you die and the menu for retrying appears the stick deactivates again, and the wheel picks up drifting the mouse cursor down...why not a global setting for all the menus? I would like using the arcade stick for the entire game, don´t know why it deactivates in some menus. Reconfiguring the ship controls each time you start a new game it´s an unnecessary drag, it should save the settings for subsequent plays.

That´s the main problem for me at the moment. This game should allow to configure whatever control device you want, and then apply it in the entire game, and keep the settings stored.

Another minor nuisance for me is the sudden transition to the "continue" menu when you lose the last live. It´s kinda anticlimatic, would prefer some kind of explosion/whatever for some seconds. It´s so fast sometimes i haven´t had time to actually notice why i died. Is there any button to cancel the countdown by the way? Overall it seems every button press is assumed as "continue".

Congratulations for this jewel of a game, it has some problems but i don´t see any problem that can´t be solved in a patch or two.

[CptRansom]

I've had no problems with the game so far: Art is great, it sounds good, it plays well (I'm using keyboard only). Anyone got any tips for scoring well? I'm picking up gold, using Vaunt as soon as it comes up, and then just trying to chain gold as much as possible to keep Vaunt active.

I really like the "Special" kills.

Hopefully I'll get some more time with this tonight. I only played the first three levels (I couldn't get my D2D account working and Steam didn't seem to want to update until damn near midnight), so hopefully it stays this good as far as not having any bugs. I've noticed SOME framerate drop, but it seems on par with any other shooting game's slowdown, so whatever. I'm not anywhere remotely fucking close to being as tech saavy as many folks here, though, so I probably don't know wtf I'm talking about. =)

[burgerkingdiamond]

Does this need a beefy computer to run smooth? I can't imagine that you would, but I played it on a friends Gaming Laptop that runs games that look to be on par with a PS3 or something, so needless to say it didn't drop any frames at all. However, I have a much more modest computer.

[StarCreator]

This is a beautiful game - I hope the bugs get worked out quickly!
I've decided I'll give steam a try and when the inevitable update patch arrives I'll purchase this game. I haven't installed steam before, but I'm hoping that it isn't one of those TSR programs that's going to populate my taskbar, phone home, and give me update balloons every time I boot my computer.

If you're sold, why not give it a buy now, while it's 10% off?

And as mentioned above, I have Steam running almost 100% of the time, but I always start it manually. I typically always have the friends list on the bottom right of my screen, just under Pidgin taking up the top right.

[Observer]

This is a beautiful game - I hope the bugs get worked out quickly!
I've decided I'll give steam a try and when the inevitable update patch arrives I'll purchase this game. I haven't installed steam before, but I'm hoping that it isn't one of those TSR programs that's going to populate my taskbar, phone home, and give me update balloons every time I boot my computer.

I have had Steam since 2004, all you need to do is disable "Start Steam when Windows starts" and you are set. You'll get the occasional news when you open Steam as well, but those shouldn't bother much.

Now that they have daily deals, you get those news more frequently so you might wanna subscribe to Steam's twitter and check what's up there and know beforehand if you didn't open Steam in a while.

It really is far more tame than the horror I faced with GFWL. Even if you uninstall it, you have to manually track down a program (WLDVSRV.exe or something like that) that keeps popping up. Argh.

They put up a mail to send bug reports so I would advise to start doing so and include as much system info as possible.

Oh, to the devs: please add a game icon to the window. It has the question mark of a help file! I know it's a minor thing but...

[wrathi]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwgpENb9S5E

Here's a perfect run on stage 1 divine difficulty using the first ship if anyone wants to know how the game plays.

Great game, no framerate issues. Using wired Xbox 360 controller. I haven't tried my TE arcade stick yet.

[rancor]

If you're sold, why not give it a buy now, while it's 10% off?

Because I don't want to take the chance of having the questionable experiences that others are reporting having.. I'd like to play through the game and enjoy it rather than constantly looking for problems in it and wondering if I'm missing out on something that isn't functioning correctly. From what I've read in this thread, it seems that the folks who have purchased it at this point are acting as beta-testers..

..And I'd much rather that 10% go to deserving shmup developers .. I'd just waste it on candy or booze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwgpENb9S5E

Here's a perfect run on stage 1 divine difficulty using the first ship if anyone wants to know how the game plays.

Thanks for that! I've watched it twice now, and I'm becoming more enamored with it! I love the part at 1:15 where the soldiers are running to the ship - and they stop, take aim, and fire at the alien craft! It's those small details that make me fall in love with a game!

[mortified_penguin]

I still can't believe something this awesome came to Steam, after Razor2: Hidden Skies, I had lost all hope. No framerate issues here and my Logitech F310 works perfectly.

My only real complaint is that I hate not being able to play all the stages on whatever difficulty I want. Sometimes I'd rather just sit back and enjoy the ride rather than go balls to the wall for score, but whatever, minor gripe.

lastly, goddamn that's a great soundtrack.

[Observer]

I still can't believe something this awesome came to Steam, after Razor2: Hidden Skies, I had lost all hope. No framerate issues here and my Logitech F310 works perfectly.

My only real complaint is that I hate not being able to play all the stages on whatever difficulty I want. Sometimes I'd rather just sit back and enjoy the ride rather than go balls to the wall for score, but whatever, minor gripe.

lastly, goddamn that's a great soundtrack.

The game stages are set up in an arcadey fashion: the game is shorter on the easier difficulties. The harder modes feature the whole stages.

Did you check the "Gauntlet"? That's the campaign, aka, playing all the stages at once without interruptions.

[mortified_penguin]

Yeah I did and it cut me off three stages in on normal.

I mean yeah I get it, we're supposed to be super fans who can 1cc anything but I'm not there yet.

[MauJustice]

Yeah I did and it cut me off three stages in on normal.

I mean yeah I get it, we're supposed to be super fans who can 1cc anything but I'm not there yet.

That's interesting. Stage 4 can only be played on Difficult + and stage 5 can only be played on Legendary +.

I don't expect a fix for that because it doesn't look like levels 4/5 are even designed for those difficulties. I guess you have to be on at least Legendary to be able to run the Gauntlet with all 5 stages.

[cul]

Not a single problem here. Works perfectly, great game.

[halsted]

Live stream of a Japanese player going through the challenge levels:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/toyoch#ut ... ium=social

[StarCreator]

Normally, Iv'e been using the triggers for games like this. This game, as with many others I've tried, has the bizarro problem of TOTALLY IGNORING them.

In my experience, triggers on 360 controllers are always weird because they're handled like a third axis in the driver (to handle analog sensitivity) rather than buttons. The biggest problem with the driver handling them this way is that when you press both triggers at the same time, the shared axis just recenters, so to the game it looks like you're not pressing either of them at all --;; And, of course, a lot of games are just not equipped to deal with two buttons being mapped to a shared axis.

[MauJustice]

It has to be something related specifically to the 360 controller, because I have had that issue with other games as well.

I used a plug and play usb gamepad from Logitech and my triggers worked fine.

[Demetori]

Just an added note, I'm not that great of a STG player but... the way the difficulties are named, I think it's kind of odd.
Normal is just a walk in the park, Difficult is easy, Legendary feels like the normal difficulty most STGs would have. Divine and Judgement are seriously balls to the wall hard..

Also I don't understand how you all have so many controller issues.. I can go from my mouse to my TvC Fight Stick (with Mayflash adapter) back and fourth with no trouble... and I've yet to crash.

[burgerkingdiamond]

Just an added note, I'm not that great of a STG player but... the way the difficulties are named, I think it's kind of odd.
Normal is just a walk in the park, Difficult is easy, Legendary feels like the normal difficulty most STGs would have. Divine and Judgement are seriously balls to the wall hard..

Also I don't understand how you all have so many controller issues.. I can go from my mouse to my TvC Fight Stick (with Mayflash adapter) back and fourth with no trouble... and I've yet to crash.

I agree that the lower difficulties are quite easy, at least the difficult ones are there if you want them, so it doesn't really matter. I think the lower ones are specifically for multiplayer play (3-4) where it would get more chaotic trying to keep track of what's going on.

Also, the way that you're credit keeps going as long as at least one person is still alive is pretty cool. I could see this making it a lot of fun for even people who aren't normally into shmups because it makes it much easier to keep playing and encourages cooperation. It's pretty cool. I was playing with my friend on Legendary at the final boss and practically jumping up and down on the couch screaming (like a little kid) "I'm dead! stay alive dude, we're about to beat it!!!" It's weird, the game as a whole kind of reminds me of a beat em up like Final Fight/Violent Storm mixed with a shmup.

[westquote]

Thanks to everybody who gave us their feedback on control issues! We are working on resolving the known problems as we speak. Remember to send us your ControllerLog.txt from My Documents/Saved Games/Jamestown/ControllerLog.txt!

-Bridget-: Please don't give up! For trigger-binding, we very much wanted to support the xbox triggers, but because of the strange way they are set up in XInput we weren't able to get them working fully in time for launch. However - we did put in a workaround for players, which is that they are actually auto-bound to fire and special, so they *should* just work if you use them in-game. Let us know if that works for you! Also, we haven't had any issues here with the DPAD on the 360 controllers. Is yours off-brand, or perhaps is JtK interfering? Let us know if there are any special circumstances on your end, and we'll see if we can reproduce the problem on our end, and fix it as soon as we can. Sorry you've had such a time of it!

Snake: Can you send us your ErrorLog.txt from My Documents/Saved Games/Jamestown/ControllerLog.txt? It's possible that your issue is one of the two known graphics issues we've encountered so far. One is that certain unsupported screen resolutions crash when the game tries to fullscreen. The other is that some video cards don't have full support OpenGL 2.0. Can you email me at support@finalformgames.com, so that we troubleshoot your issue?

[captpain]

No technical problems for me at all -- everything looks and works great, and the game is a blast. Well worth the money.

Now to continue unlocking....

[BeruBeru]

Any progress with the XY/POV diagonal issue?

[sirmax]

Screw the E3, this is the release I was waiting for! Works like a charm, no issues whatsoever.

[Zapf]

Are any of the other ships useful? The second one felt like a chore to aim, and the 4th is kinda fun sitting on enemy and holding special (though i thought primary fire felt awkward with the exploding mechanic). I haven't tried the third yet.

[mjclark]

Hats off to whoever thought of using the expression "betentacled" in the narrative- they've captured the very essence of steampunk in a single word

[sorhp]

ok , for you guys having issues with your joys not working properly, I have a little app called joy to key that should be a temp fix until the devs fix the issues,
this app takes the pov and dp button presses and translates them into what ever you map them to on your keyboard, ie pov right :: right keyboard key
http://www.electracode.com/4/joy2key/Jo ... ersion.htm

I havn't been home to dl Jamestown, is there a vert mode built in?

[Snake]

Snake: Can you send us your ErrorLog.txt from My Documents/Saved Games/Jamestown/ControllerLog.txt? It's possible that your issue is one of the two known graphics issues we've encountered so far. One is that certain unsupported screen resolutions crash when the game tries to fullscreen. The other is that some video cards don't have full support OpenGL 2.0. Can you email me at support@finalformgames.com, so that we troubleshoot your issue?

Will do, thanks. I'm pretty sure it's my aging (but still above spec) video card.