Malfadors New Site Is Up WITH SCREEN SHOTS!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Possibly some sort of stealth. Like small nebula.

[Slick]

I think it's just the new way of categorizing how much "sight" is affected. In SE4, no asteroids affected sight but it has been modded. I would think that SE5 has a more varied sight/sensor/cloaking???/range formula. In one of the chats, it was stated that certain sensors would be affected by range.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Ooh so that means that you can hide your massive defensive battlefleet amongst asteroids and when the enemy warps in right next to the asteroid field you can so totally cream them.....

[clark]

[put the detectives hat on]

"Elementary, my dear Watson!"

Regarding this screen shot: http://malfador.com/SE5scr001.htm

Bottom Right corner control panel contains five icons in a row above a grid of other icons. Those 5 icons should represent various solar system view controls (from left to right: free form view?, rotate clockwise, rotate counter clockwise, zoom in, and zoom out)

The icon grid beneath seems to be a hodgepodge of hot button key commands like cargo unload, warp to, fleet join/unjoin, build, etc.

To the left of these icons is the selected sector information panel (i.e. the Homeworld planet info... but I assume that it would detail any selected sector, such as sun or stellar storm). It looks to show planet improvements as icons to the right of the planet (people, ship building, repair). I wonder if it will least icons for sats, fighters, Weapon Platforms, mines, etc. The flag of course tells you who owns the planet (which is also displayed above the planet in the solar system view screen).

Above this panel, and below the solar system map are six buttons, three on the left, three on the right. The three right ones look to be quick buttons (from left to right)for solar system grid (so you can turn it on and off), system info, and planet name/info. The three other buttons on the left hand side (a check, a cancel, a play button) all look to be some kind of "issue command", more than likely to confirm ship orders- but then, maybe not.

At the bottom left hand corner you have the galaxy map which looks to show the location of every other player in this game (they all are represented as being "known" (compare it to a an unknown solar system area- this is the first turn)

Above the galaxy map you have quick buttons for (left to right) Previous Ship, Next Ship, Previous Colony, Next Colony, Previous Fleet, Next Fleet, a big N button (no clue, maybe a quick button to an area of interest), and then some other button with 4 arrows (could be free form).

For the game map, it looks like moons have their own hex in relation to their orbiting parent (the planet they orbit).

And I think I've bored you all long enough... thanks for listening, I'm excited about the next version too!

[Emperor's Child]

All I have to say is that there is NO WAY that my DOGA-created ships will look good now. These babies take it to a whole new level that appears unreachable for the average joe. I'd expect a whole lot fewer of us to be making new ship sets...

[Ragnarok]

You did a good job Clark in looking at what the buttons could possibly be for. I was going to do so but haven't had the time but now that I look at them I think you are spot on with a few of them.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

semi-OT, but.....

Aaron is online! The "Who's Online" list showed Malfador Machinations "editing his basic profile". Question time, anyone?

[clark]

Thanks Ragnarok,

Looking at the interface setup I think the current GUI is pretty slick... that said, what would be nice (something for you Betars, my Betters might want to think about when testing) is to have a planet production screen accessible in the solar system map. SEIV always pops you into another screen- it seems if you took that current area where the sector info is shown, and have a small button that would bring up possible builds on that planet (all within the solar system viewing) it would make game play a little more seamless. Two icons above (a ship icon, and a build icon) (or to the right) of the sector info would allow one to build ships (if allowable) or planetary improvements/defense. Have a scrollable queue you can enter into that area (the sector info). I hate jumping screens when it might be possible not to (the more screen jumping you do, the more you are pulled from where the action is).

just a thought.

Also, looking at the tactical screen shots, ground fighting is turn based and ship combat is time/second based (you can control time flow in ship combat, but it looks like the ground combat is a modified SEIV ship combat system that utilizes the new graphics engine)

I dare Malfador to put up some more screen shots, we don't need blabbering NDA Betaers to figger this out!

I would like to see the ship build screen shots though... Too bad we can't have facility design as well. Have your facilities be armed for ground combat!

[Mephisto]

clark said:
Regarding this screen shot: http://malfador.com/SE5scr001.htm

Anybody noticed that the "free look button" (the eye) looks like the old eye icon of geoschmo?

[geoschmo]

Mephisto said:
[Anybody noticed that the "free look button" (the eye) looks like the old eye icon of geoschmo?

Actually that's not suprising, since I got that old icon from the SE4 graphics in the first place.