Suggestions

[Muzein]

Well, I've been playing the demo a bit, and though I realize it's quite late in the development cycle, thought I'd just toss around my 2¢.

First off, let me just say that I really enjoy the game. The gameplay is very fun, but doesn't feel dumbed down. Good job, this is defnitely a game I will be playing a lot.

Now for my couple suggestions...

For one, I think it'd be *really* nice to be able to select a ship without your view jumping to it. Perhaps make a toggle in the options?
I just find that very annoying personally, having a nice view of my ships, then wanting to quickly check out that enemy on the horizon and losing my place.

Also, when you have a ship selected, you can't pan forward or backward. This too me is also an annoyance.

Finnaly, to finish with camera issues, how about a left/right pan option? As it stands now, if I want to nudge my view to the right, I have to rotate the camera a couple times, go forward a couple times, then rotate back a couple times. This could all be done much easier with Pan Left/Pan right keys.

I realize not everyone will have my same opinion of the camera controls, but I thought I'd bring them up as something to consider, as I don't imagine it'd be *too* tough to make those sorts of adjustments.

Now my last quibble is something more on my part than yours.
The game runs quite poorly on my machine, pausing every few seconds (ambient sound even cuts out briefly) UI clicks tend to be unresponsive, etc.
Now, I meet the Mac minimum requirements, so I was hoping for a bit better, but I don't expect game devs to bend over backwards for old machines. Also might not be much you can do in the way of performance, or at least not easily.

Listed requirements are -
* Mac OS X 10.1.5 or Higher
* 1 GB G4 (1000 MHz Optimal)
* 256 MB RAM (515 MB optimal)
* 2 Button Mouse Recommended
* CD ROM
* 500+ MB Hard Drive Space
* 16 Bit Sound Card Optional
* SVGA Video Card (800 x 600 with 16 bit color or better)


Mine are-

Dual CPU 867Mhz G4s
1.5GB RAM
Many many many GB free space ( )
Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB



Well, that's it for now. Please take note I'm really not trying to be whiny! hehe. This is hopefully constructive criticism.

[Lord Hammer]

I agree completely, the camera movement is horrible. There has to be a better way to scroll the map and/or view ships, it is so unintuitive it makes playing a chore. The camera/scroll movement is very jumpy and i'm playing on an Alienware game rig .
If the demo is a clue then there is much work to be done before release to clean it up and make it playable. Other than that the premise/design is very well done. I could not/would not play this game with anything more than a 1vs.1 battle if i had to use the present "camera system" to scroll thru ships.
I might add that the Ui was unresponsive for me too, sometimes i would have to click 2 or 3 times to bring up a menu only to repeat to exit it.
Alienware P4 2.8ghz
GeForce FX5700 Ultra 128mg w/latest drivers
1024 DDR Ram
Audigy 2 ZS platinum pro soundcard...

[Andrew Lonon]

Lord Hammer:

Hummm, Salvo should be quite peppy on your system, and I’m not sure what to say. See if the Turbo mode (press PageUp one time, many times, or select Turbo Mode from the options screen) helps any. Then turn off the sound, and finally, try running Salvo in the Windowed mode.

I’m not saying you have to play the game like that – just do a few experiments and pleae report your results to me when you get a chance.

[Combat Wombat]

Muzein said:
Listed requirements are -
* Mac OS X 10.1.5 or Higher
* 1 GB G4 (1000 MHz Optimal)
* 256 MB RAM (515 MB optimal)
* 2 Button Mouse Recommended
* CD ROM
* 500+ MB Hard Drive Space
* 16 Bit Sound Card Optional
* SVGA Video Card (800 x 600 with 16 bit color or better)


Mine are-

Dual CPU 867Mhz G4s
1.5GB RAM
Many many many GB free space ( )
Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB

Well it may not run right because the game isn't multi threaded so is only uses one of your CPUs. Please note that most of games retail or otherwise aren't multi threaded. It alot of extra work to do for such a minority of people that use multiple processors.

[Muzein]

I know that, but 867 to 1000 is not much, and the second CPU should easily make up for the difference in the fact that it is carrying all the backround tasks like the OS.

[Combat Wombat]

I have been playing the demo but I also to seem to be experiencing some low frame rates. Also the camara controls are clunky but besides that alot of fun so far.

1.2 Ghz Pentium M
Intergrated Intel Extreme 2 Video
384MB of Ram
Intergrated SigmaTel Audio
Windows XP Home SP2

[PDF]

Agreed on cam control, there're definitely bad. Maybe just making the "jumps" shorter would help.

I'm on Windows and can't get anything else than a windowed 800*600 mode - if I extend to full screen there's some "ocean" with weird graphics to the side but the game remains in the same window area... Is that a feature ?

[Andrew Lonon]

Muzien:

“quite late in the development cycle” << I have been thinking of funny (and not so funny) remarks to make about that statement. (Maybe even going as far as to copy boastful quotes from my own previous posts.)

The response to your observations about the Selection and view (Camera?) handling has been clear indication that you are right on target, and that something should be done. I think the Beta group and myself included have gotten used to display system – so your fresh contact has seen things clearer.

Regarding the speed, - I would be interested in knowing if you have upgraded to Tiger. One of my testers upgraded during the testing, and he reported a dramatic speed increase.

[PDF]

Andrew,
Those improvements look very good. Still can I remind you that not everyone in the world use US keyboards ?
On mine (French), no problem with R, still neighbor to T, nor with < and > (same key, with Shift), but \ is gotten via AltGr-8, very far from / ...

[Andrew Lonon]

PDF-

Thanks for the Reminder of the variation of keyboards and languages. This is a very valid point and deserves the correct treatment. However, I’m not sure what the best approach is, and Salvo is probably going to ship with the keys setup as descried in the previous note. The situation can be fixed later on with…

a) User Customization. Change the hotkeys for various functions, and your configuration will be saved with your settings. (This is probably the easiest option from the development standpoint.)

b) Keyboard Variation. If the game becomes profitable enough, then supporting several languages and keyboard formats will be essential.

c) Command Duplication. A lot of what is currently covered by keystrokes in Salvo is only accessible by keystrokes. This is not the best form for a program. All the functions should also be available through a menu or some visual (clickable) element of the UI.

d) Organization and Duplication. Alternately, there may be a way to use a better and more coherently developed hot key organization to alleviate the problem of various keyboard layouts. This would take some coordination of various formats, but may be worth looking into…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thanks again for complicating my life. I’ll do my best to take this into account in the next few updates. It would be interesting to know how many international users there are for Salvo, they seem failry well represented here on the forums. <G>