Suggestions

[Muzein]

Those camera updates sound great, Andrew. Can't wait to try out the updated demo (and the full game!).

[Andrew Lonon]

Selection / Display / Camera Controls

OK – The response is decisive – no need for a pole. I’ll be updating the Selection and Display Controls before the Gold version is out. I don’t know if I will have a chance to update the Demo till after that – but I may ask a few of you to preview the updates – so I get them right. Here is what I propose to add:

A) Return View This will allow you to return to a previous view after you jump to a ship. It will probably be a key that backs up the view to the last location or last jump…. Humm R seems to be free..

B) Zoom In / Out on currently selected ship. How about the Up and Down Arrow keys move you closer and farther from the ship.

C) Left / Right Movement. Check. Im thinking about using the ‘<’ and ‘>’ keys for this.


Believe it or not, A and B were each implemented at one point or another, so they should be easy, and C should be a no-brainer. (Which is lucky for me, if you know what I mean.)

More soon!

Oh yea – THANKS for trying the Demo and letting me know what needs work. I wish I could fix everything, but I will do what I can.

[Lord Hammer]

Excellent, all three would absolutely make the camera issue perfect IMHO. Actually you should be relieved to know that Salvo's biggest problem is the camera ui, and aside from that the game seems like it will be a blast to play from a "fun" and "historical" viewpoint.
The jerky ui response might need some tweaking, on both our parts, so i'll post when i have time to work it over with my Uber-Rig . Now other than the camera/ui issue my only wish is that you could give the game a "high-end" graphics option: 1024x768 very high detail, animations, water etc...requiring a minimum 128 meg video card ...but then i would have nothing left to wish for.
P.S. i know many of us are impatient but take your time and do it right, a game like this really needs an easier operating camera ui to appreciate the era of wooden ships combat

[Muzein]

Thanks for the excellent replies, Andrew. I'm pleased to see you actively working with the community to make your games better.

I am not currently running on Tiger, still on Panther. I had delayed upgrading to see if there were any issues with the software I use, and I haven't heard any as of yet, so I will do that soon.
I'm not too worried about the performance, really. Minimum specs are minimum specs, so I don't expect perfect performance. But hopefully Tiger will improve things for me.

I'm eager to see how the camera changes work out!

[FJ_MD]

Finally I managed to download the demo


About the camera control, I find it not so friendly when you have to move around but it is very good when you select a ship (and all the arrow movement appear) and the view can only be rotated around it, maybe a zoom in and out will help a lot.


I'm having a lot of trouble with the speed of the game. It run too fast for a couple of second then stop, and so on but I have noticed that when you select your ship and all the arrow for the movement appear, if I move the cursor of the mouse on the border of the screen it run at the right speed....

[PDF]

Well, I kinda sorted the camera problem with putting the "scroll speed" to 5 degrees, movement is much smoother-looking, but still it's quite choppy and not responsive . I run the game on an Athlon 2400+ with a 9700 Radeon graphic card, hardware should be ok ?

About the display there's a couple issues :
- Why can't the game be minimized ?
- Full screen/extended windows (edited) : when set in the "settings" screen it works (although the graphics are rather blurry in 1024 : the screen mode isn't changed, and the bitmaps are stretched); but if you use the "expand window" button in the upper right you get this :





Quite weird !

Last issue about menu navigation : how do you get back to main menu when in the Settings menu or in a game ?
"Exit" drops out of game...

[Andrew Lonon]

View Controls Update

I have several updates to the view controls and want to let everyone here know how it’s going. I’ll be updating the Demo soon – but for now my Beta testers are playing with the new features. They should be able to help me get the functions right.

New ‘Hot’ Key functions:

R Returns to the last saved view and then the previous – on down the line
T Saves a view location. (T picked because it’s right next to R – no other reason)
Up Arrow Zooms in on Selected Ship in fixed steps.
Down Arrow Zooms out from Selected Ship in fixed steps.
< Moves display to the ‘left’
> Moves display to the ‘right’
/ Automatically selects the next ship that can move, or has not moved
\ Automatically selects the next ship that has a target it can shoot at.

(It just occurred to me that I the ‘<’ and ‘>’ keys may not be consistent!!! I’ll look into it…)

[lh]

I have been playing Salvo! demo for the past several days. The games is somewhat sluggish/unresponsive. An example when changing the cannon loading takes a second or so.

Then I was playing the 3rd Tutorial for about 5 hrs and the game quit just when I was about the finish off the French. Gad what frustration. I was having problems direction individual ships, many clicks to set the course and slow response moving from squadron to squadron.

Using Mac G4/1.25 Ghz, OS 10.3.9, 832MB memory.

I am now downloading the latest Demo. I ordered the game and looking forward to playing.

[Charlie_Mote]

Great implementation of changes suggested here Andrew - it's so much easier to navigate and control with the new features. Looking forward to more great work from you!

Charlie Mote

[Andrew Lonon]

Charlie:

Thanks for the good word!!