First Impressions
 

I just got my copy of WW and I'm quite excited. I am one of those rare nerds that reads the instruction book/additional material before I play to game, usually while installing it. I noticed that the instalation instructions say to click on __TBD__.exe to start the install. A place holder no doubt for the actual install executable which is named wierdworld_setup.exe. Just thought I would point that out in case you are going to create a second production run of the manuals. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Secondly, on the disk was a whole fleet of demos. I was quite surprised that the SAIS demo (or better yet, the full game) wasn't on there. Any thoughts about that?

As far as game play, graphics, etc. All I can say is WOW!!! The graphics are beautiful, the play is even more addicting than SAIS. You really put the spit shine to this one.

Now, please, PLEASE, PPPPLLLLEEEAAASSSE create some starter mod documentation. I want to create a few mods for this and perhaps even that TC I've been thinking about.

Excellent job Digital-Eel. WTG http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: First Impressions
 

So now that I've played a few games and got my a$$ whooped I have a few more comments/observations:

1. Having to keep mousing over moving ships during combat to get status on how they are doing is VERY TEDIOUS. It would be nice to have an option for the status of all ships in combat to be displayed along the bottom, side or top of the screen. Any possibility of adding that option to the settings dialog?

WARNING -- SPOILERS FOLLOW -- DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU WANT SPOILERS

2. I have noticed that while in Tutorial mode, when you view an unexplored planet that happens to have Klakar presence, a tutorial dialog announcing that fact shows up. Is that what was intented? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif That seems to provide too much of an advantage. Any thoughts? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

END SPOILERS -- END SPOILERS -- SITUATION NORMAL

Re: First Impressions
 

I agree, that is somewhat annoying -- especially when there are many things on the screen all moving at once.

However, since the full ship outline (with all the system icons shown) isn't always necessary anyway, I might prefer to have simple Damage Bars over each ship -- or under, or beside, or wherever -- a smaller version of the same bars that appear at the bottom of each ship outline display (one for shields, one for the hull). I would save the full outline display for hover only, but give the small Damage Bars an Always On/Off optional setting.

I also must confess that I miss having the ability (as in SAIS) to set a "path" for my ships: telling them to move to Point A, for example, and then to turn toward the target ship. If that is possible in Weird Worlds, I haven't figured it out yet...

Re: First Impressions
 

Try right clicking, I seem to remember fire and turn buttons popping up.
--
TAZ

Re: First Impressions
 

Yeah damage/shield bars at a MINIMUM over each ship as an option. Small versions of each ship status box along the side would still be nice so I can see where their weapons are and what systems I have destroyed.

Re: First Impressions
 

Regarding the lack of onscreen-permanent info in combat - several of the Fearless Testers pitched it, but it didn't make the grade... we'll have to see if the community pressure makes for a patch with the elegant solution that Tao Libra suggested.

Re: First Impressions
 

I'm always listening.

The idea is to keep the combat screen free of clutter and anything that might break you out of the experience. I think it's kind of an extreme reaction to games that just display too much, too many little menus and bars and so forth. Dunno about you guys, but I want to see the ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So, those are some of the reasons we implemented it the way we did, with a mouseover for reviewing each ship's status.

Still, as I said at the top, I'm always listening.

Re: First Impressions
 

If this were a screensaver, I'd agree with you. But since the status of each ship is the most important thing in a battle, of course people are going to be constantly mousing over each ship to view their status, because that's the only means of obtaining that information you've given us. By attempting to declutter the combat display, you've forced the opposite effect.

So yeah, your testers were right. Mini hull/shield bars should have been in there.


A few more suggestions/bug reports:
================================================== ===========
There should be an ENGAGE button on the system view window. It got so tedious going through the VIEW, CLOSE, wait for map to zoom back, ENGAGE cycle that I eventually started skipping the VIEW button entirely.

When you add a ship to your fleet, the ship display always switches to firing arc mode.

I found it really frustrating that you have to abandon leftover credits if you don't make a precisely equivalent trade. Obviously a standard currency exists in this universe. Let me just take my change and go!

Once I tried to board a derelict, got attacked, escaped, came back, and this time the ship really was derelict. Seems like the state is being rolled randomly every time you enter the system instead of being persistent.

I think it'd be a nice addition if mirror-translocated ships would head back to their home systems.

After you've used a trader ship in combat and they ask for payment, it's confusing that the button to refuse payment is labeled CANCEL. You're not really cancelling anything. I think it would make more sense to have a REFUSE PAYMENT button (or just REFUSE if that's too long).

When mousing over items in a store, I think it would be better if the descriptions appeared at the bottom of the window, where the items are, instead of way up at the top of the window, in... the title bar???

The ship status display says "Lightspeed" next to the Deep Space and Nebula speed bars. But the speed of light is a constant. This label should be just be "Speed".

Re: First Impressions
 

For the record the speed of light is not constant

Re: First Impressions
 

Pfft, fine Mr. Wizard. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant. Happy now?

Re: First Impressions
 

On damage bars...

It occurs to me that there's already an existing HUD display for all ships in combat. Every ship has a triangular boundary indicating if it's friend, foe, or neutral. (And I'll just diverge a moment here to remark on the beautiful way this has been tweaked in the sequel such that the triangles are clear at a distance when they are needed most, but smoothly fade away as a ship becomes larger on your screen so that you don't notice them once things get big and beautiful).

Anyways, I think this display could be ammended to indicate other things such as damage, as well, but not seem too excessive given that it leverages a display that we're already used to seeing.

If this option were enabled (and as well as a default value, it ought to be able to be toggled on and off by mouse and/or keyboard during combat), then the triangles would not fade from view (or not to the same extent), and they might look something like this very rough mock-up:

http://tinypic.com/fntizq.png

One of the long sides showing shields, the other hull strength, and the short side indicating the status of the on-board systems.

At the front I've put a triangle to indicate that the ship is in "aggressive" mode (see Hugo's ramming/auto-evasion thread).

There are probably better ways to do it, but something like this would blend in fairly well I think... not too distracting, but telling you (once you're used to it) pretty much everything you need to know.

Re: First Impressions
 

Has poll has been created on ISF (infinite space federation).
Suggestions have been made regarding the game's user interface, among other things, and now you can vote on one or more features that you would like to see in the game.

http://s7.invisionfree.com/SAIS_Foru...?showtopic=110

Re: First Impressions
 

The problem with this is that bar graphs are most easly read at a fixed orientation. Having them spinning around with the heading indicator would make them quite difficult to read. And if you were wanting to know the status of a fighter that's only 5 pixels across onscreen-- impossible to read.

I just want some little fixed-size, fixed-orientation bars floating under each ship. Of course there'd be an option to hide them.


I also don't want my ships to flop around like fish out of water whenever other ships get near them. IMHO, the close-combat AI is currently broken. I'd rather have direct helm control than have to constantly trick the AI into not getting itself killed. The weird thing is that the enemy AIs seem to have no trouble staying on target during close combat.

Re: First Impressions
 

I'm with Ripcord on this one. The combat screen is perfect, in my opinion. I'm not really a serious gamer, and didn't even think about any of this stuff until reading this thread.

My first impression of the demo is: freakin' AWESOME! Simple 2d, yet incredibly gorgeous, graphics. Great music and ambient FX. And the ease of modding the game is almost enough to make me weep. Except for a snag in the combat screen, I've got the orignal Enterprise sailing through Sector Prime. Switched out Lexter(?) picture with (at different times) some admiral from ST, and myself (showing a friend how easy it was to mod).

I've got idea's for some Trek stuff and my own stuff as well. Thanks for creating such an awesome game!

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

Actually, speed of light in a vacuum is -not- a constant.
Light can also be bent by strong gravitational forces (either black holes, neutron stars, cloaking devices, and sometimes a card carrying games developer can whip out his/her Artistic License & do a quick mod. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



GS
-It all depends on the definition of the word 'definition'-

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

I want to reinforce the complaint about there being no fixed damage indicators. This is a major problem for those who want to play more tactically without having to pause the game every 10 seconds. With higher resolutions available, the hud would not have to take up a lot of screen real estate. With my resolution at 1280x980 on a 21" crt 3ft away, I could easily get away with a larger hud with more information . Having the option to turn it off for those playing with lower resolutions, or even higher resolutions should yield a result pleasing to any side of the argument.

I remember in the original game, you only needed to click anywhere in the window to close it. Now that the windows open in the center of the screen half the time instead of where you originally clicked the star system or info button, it's even more important that it be effortless to close the popup. I think the window should pop up near the item clicked on AND should be closeable with a click anywhere but the title bar, which is still used for dragging. It's pretty rare when you want to drag the window around. If there was an algorithm for tiling windows so that they did not overlap, I would guess that the windows would nearly never be dragged.

I also recall that double click would bring up the info screen in the original game. Is there any reason this could not be brought back?

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

First, changing the direction of light is not the same as changing its speed. Second, and more importantly, nobody cares.

My POINT was that your various engine upgrades don't change the speed of light, they change the speed of your ship. Therefore that portion of the HUD is mislabeled.

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

Thanks for the comments about huds and damage indicators in the battle view. We discussed this a lot while we made the game. This is one of those infamous "tough call" areas where a risky decision may frustrate some players, especially those who expect certain "standardized" displays to be there.

The mouseover damage indicator is a bit of an experiment, and as you guys point out, it is quite different than SAIS. But I like it for two reasons:

1) It keeps the clutter off of the screen. That way I'm not reminded that "it's a game" all the time. Also, battles just look sweeter, "sort of" like you're watching them on a display monitor, which, of course, you are. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

2) The idea is that gameplay in both Weird Worlds and SAIS should be intuitive, or at least based on observation in this way: graphics and sounds give clues too. The difference between the sound of a shield hit or a hull hit. The way a beam looks and sounds so when you see an alien use one that you have used, you know (you intuit) what it is.

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

The practical problem I have is that the battles go by so fast, that by the time I actually move into the range of my/the enemy's weapons, there's hardly enough time to employ any strategy or technique to overcome a disadvantage. It's difficult to mouse over a moving ship for more than a split second before it slips away from under the cursor and I don't want to break my immersion and pause the game in order to mouse over all the ships. Maybe a lot of what I'm complaining about stems from the fact that I always play on the hard difficulty and am therefore almost always at a disadvantage, but I really don't think the player should be called to pause the game just to find out if his shield generator has been disabled. It is in this case that I think that a player is being pulled OUT of a game because of the lack of readily available indicators. When I'm fighting 3 or 5 on 1, I know that with the right equipment, I actually do have a fighting chance, but I usually die in this new iteration of Infinite Space because I didn't know I was so close to dying or I didn't know I had already knocked out an enemy's weapons and could better use my time changing targets, etc.

It would be a great to have the indicators as an option, to keep everyone happy.

Re: First Impressions
 

Like all tactical "real-time" spaceship combat games, I use the pause key (spacebar) a lot, to make it more like a turn-based game. Works very well in this game. I would go nuts (or not even try to master it - it'd be too frustrating for me) if I had to play it without pausing.

PvK

Re: First Impressions
 

In the original SAIS, you could play it in real time with the fixed damage displays without too much trouble. Battles were slower paced, as well, in my estimation.

Re: First Impressions (speed of light)
 

And once again, I must point out that these battles are interactive, not passive. You know what REALLY reminds me that "it's a game"? Seeing the Game Over screen because I got killed because some developer decided it would be "sweet" to obfuscate the status of my ships during combat.