Some observations

[Captain Kwok]

The pirate cruiser may have hit the boundaries of the system - that will bring a ship to a very quick stop. If I recall correctly, then I think ships will damaged engines do slow down, not instaneously stop. I don't think it's really necessary for the ship to continue based on inertia, but it might be interesting. I'll mention it in the beta thread.

I do wish that Aaron would add some help to find the escort ships, that can make you bonkers sometimes. Nav points are also something that have been mentioned often...

In regards to graphics, they're not that bad and some of the ships are quite decent. I think it's the 3d engine that needs some work really to streamline the animations and stuff - it really hurts Users on the lower end of requirements.

[Suicide Junkie]

There's no sense of immersion if the game does not even make the most simplistic attempts to emulate realistic motion. I'm not looking for perfect Newtonian physics, but this is just way out there.

It is in line with SE4 physics, though.

Newtonian physics can be done fairly well in a mod.
Just give the ships infinite top speed, and zero acceleration / turn rate. Then give the accel/turn abilities to engines.

[Puke]

Originally posted by jpowell:
I was more than a little underwhelmed by the demo. Dated (crude?) graphics in a strategy game are acceptable because much of the game occurs in your mind and imagination. The ubiquitous 'fan fiction' with SEIV serves the purpose of filling in the details of the story. But with a real time game, what you see is what you get. Blocky graphics and the physics peculiarities impair the ability to suspend disbelief and get into the game. I, for one, could not.

In its present incarnation, Starfury reminds me of a weak, and rather unstable, Freelancer clone. I am not likely to buy it. I would have rather seen SF as an add-on to SEIV that would set up combat that occurs on the tactical screen and allow the player to 'live' the battle as the captain of one of the ships.

I believe its actually intended as a preview to the combat and possibly the ship modling engine for SE5. imagine the game scaled up to hundreds of ships in combat, and empire managment rather than ship piloting as the focus.

[Renegade 13]

Originally posted by jpowell:
I was more than a little underwhelmed by the demo. Dated (crude?) graphics in a strategy game are acceptable because much of the game occurs in your mind and imagination.

Perhaps we're being a little harsh here. It isn't as if there's a huge company out there, with money to burn, and tons of programmers to satisfy our every whim. It's one company with a (comparativly) small workforce.
Personally, I think the demo was great, and I'm looking forward to my pre-order arriving sometime, hopefully soon.

[Phoenix-D]

Even in the demo, the turn rate can be modded if you think it is too fast. Go into Starfury/Campaigns/Campaign 0/ and open the file Main_PurchaseShipsPlayer.txt. Each ship has a bunch of values here.

I changed the cruier's turn rate from 0.03 to 0.003. At first it didn't seem to do anything- then I bought another cruiser. Bingo- the ship that had pulled a 180 degree turn in 4 seconds, now took 40. You'll have to make any changes to all the ships, including the ones in the other files (eg Main_PurchaseShipsEnemy.txt)

I think after release I might try throwing together a Newtonian mod. Right now I'm still exploring the limits of the demo. I have a suspicion that you can change entries all you want, you just can't add any new ones.

EDIT: As far as graphics go, those can be too of course. I think most of it looks fine, except the star graphics and close ups of the nebulas.

[ September 24, 2003, 00:01: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Renegade 13:
Perhaps we're being a little harsh here. It isn't as if there's a huge company out there, with money to burn, and tons of programmers to satisfy our every whim. It's one company with a (comparativly) small workforce.

Make that one person with a bit of contracted graphics.

I think Aaron did a pretty good job and I know he'll keep working on improving the game.

[jimbob55]

a match target's speed button would be nice.

As would an auto save when moving through warp points.

Just lost 2 hours of gameplay because i forgot to save the friking game and crashed into an invisible planet.