Developer's Log (August 2016)

Wisecracking reply incoming.

Initial thoughts: 

Space Exploration - looks good, looks like what I would expect.  Glad they are keeping it traditional looking.

Planet Exploration - still not totally sold on the cartoonish planets.  I'm liking these looks more that the initial art we saw a few months back.  I might be more accepting of it if Venus wasn't covered in giant mushrooms. 

Alien Quests - not much to say here.  Looks right to me.

Super Melee - I still strongly disagree with the battles taking place in an entire solar system.  All sense of scale is lost (a ship that stretches from Jupiter to Saturn?).  Maybe there is some zooming that we aren't yet aware of, but as of now I'm not onboard.  Not much a fan of the 3/4 view either.  I might be being triggered from bad memories of SC3.

Ok, baby is having a meltdown.  That's enough for now.

Going to make my own review soon, when i got the time! good read

(and yeah, DOTS PLEASE!)

A few observations from the August update:

The star needs the biggest gravity well, or are you leaving that out for some reason?

The giant flora and fauna on the landing, survey, and super-melee screens really overshadow the planets themselves.  Please don't keep the hyper-large flora and fauna!  I can't even tell you what two planet types I saw, but you better believe I can draw the brown space-bunnies and giant mushrooms that were covering the face of the world...and I don't think that's working as intended.

Slim down and focused 1v1 melee is a good decision! Do one thing, do it well!

For melee, do a 10-15 degree tilt at most, just enough to give a clue about the gravity wells, but not enough to necessitate rendering the bottom half of a ship.

For melee, 2 weapons and MAYBE 1 special ability of some kind, but please, no more than 3 things at most per ship in combat.  Pretty please!

P.S. if there is no Spathi or Ur Quan, then why were the pictured in a screen shot?

P.P.S. I like the short video.  You should do more of those, and not just at month end.

(P.P.P.S. I'm having a boy tomorrow!!! So excited!!!)

Solar System view looks great.

Planet Exploration game play experience looks horrible.    Please bring back the top down view experience.

I agree with the OP, that we need DOTS representing the crew.   A bar is like a health bar to me.  Doesn't feel like I'm losing people.   Health bars make me feel like they're okay to be sacrificed and its just a tolerance level and it might regrow if I pick up some health boost.

"The Angle.  Top down was my preference until I saw that it makes it harder to tell the strength of different gravity wells and other effects. I’m now on board with a slightly angled view. But how much of an angle? "

 The Super Melee "top down view"  - slightly angled comment makes me worried.   When you start changing the fundamental aspects of the game, you start losing the core fan base.  Find a different franchise or come up with a new franchise name. 

If Bars are used because different ships have different crew levels and you are not sure how to fit them in the designated space use color codes and size...

A large Blue dot taking the space of 4 green dots represent 10 crew and green dots represent 1 crew.

A large Red oblong Rectangle taking the space of 8 green dots represent 20 crew.

I made an example but I see no way of pasting it....

The angle isn't fundamental. I'm sorry, but this is a backwards way of looking at what makes a fundamental. The fundamentals of design, in terms of formal elements, include players, objectives, procedures, rules, resources, conflict, boundaries, and outcome. I would mention the Dramatic elements, but those are more or less staying relatively the same, so there's no point. The element that the camera angle is part of is procedures, and that's not being changed THAT much, because the camera is MOVABLE. As in, you can change the angle yourself on the fly, and keep it wherever you want.

Maybe then, instead of dots, they should be those "human icons" that many games/signs have used in the past with a "head and shoulders about half way down the chest" icons.  That convey's "people" even better than dots ("heads").

And the camera angle is a fundamental part of the space combat design, and can be on other types of games as well.  It's not that huge an issue if they never plan to expand multiplayer because single ship dueling alone won't hold anyone's interest for too long.  Supermelee alone is more of a side thing that people will mess with a little while they play the full game, then forget about when they are done playing the full game.  But if they plan to expand multiplayer later on, then it becomes very important.  The more directions that you can be attacked/threatened from at once... the worse the problem becomes and the more it actually NEEDS to be top down for combat.  Space Hockey would be affected by this even more, but even just 2 (or 3 is where it gets really bad) enemies makes the situation much worse that it can be 1v1.

I used to be an active part of the Star Control: Time Warp community, and they made a super melee with like 75 kinds of ships and 16 player battles.  They aren't as bad as you think. I've done the whole Alliance of free stars versus the hierarchy and that's a 14 player battle in 2 teams of 7.   If you toss in target cycling and nearest target keys, and the option to center on your ship.  For 1) Ilwraths get REALLY dangerous if they sneak upon a ship that's not frequently checking stars (stars twinkle when the Ilwrath passes over them) or pressing nearest enemy key, and 2) it often devolves into clumps of ships each fighting who ever's nearest to them.   All in all, it's completely awesome to experience.   And that's on an expanded field with 1 lonely planet.  A whole solar system would be downright epic to have 14 or 16 players on in teams.  :)

Just cause sc1-3 did duels, doesn't mean we can't do more.   But I think it could be an option to have 1v1 or all vs all as a combat choice in the settings, not everyone can manage that or want to let the AI or even other players fly your precious ships.   If I didn't care I'd probably send throw away ships into an all vs all game, my fleet vs theirs.  If I wanted to MM my precious ships and fight every ship one at a time I'd switch it to 1v1.  Being able to choose could be very interesting.  If I had to pick 1 only, I'd say super melee should be all vs all with 2-16 players optional.  And 1v1 for story mode.     I gotta say it's a thing of beauty to see 5 earthling cruisers fire 10 nukes at a single slylandro probe and just obliterate it outright.   It's worth mentioning that SC:TW let you have LARGE spare ships per player like SC2 did but bigger, and story mode would only have 1 per player.  Hence my throw away fleet comment.

Anyway that's my 2 cents...

Obviously, this is the controversial aspect of the game design discussion.    While many people are not going to agree on the same thing, the point I'm making is that an "evolved" form of the game is a "different" gaming experience.     You can 'evolve the game but the experience in playing is not going to be the same.

That's why many of the "indie games on steam" are doing really well because they recapture the experience of some of those older games.  Loving Stardew Valley, Don't Starve, Starbound, RimWorld, Darkest Dungeon, Invisible Inc.

As for Evolved games. For instance, Fallout actually 'evolved' into a 3D game from its tactical game form (1 and 2).    While it is one of the very few games that evolved that turned out to be a big hit- but there are many games out there that has 'evolved' to the new technology from 2D to 3D that aren't such a hit.     It draws a small subsection of the original fans and adds new fans.     The experience in playing Fallout 3 compared to Fallout 1 and 2 are totally different.  And I don't even bother playing Fallout3.    I enjoyed the old 1 and 2.    All those newer Zelda games.  I don't even bother playing them.   The very first version was the best!  After a few sequels it got all crazy with the 3D.

I myself, can't stand 3D full on experience because I have motion sickness and it's really bad.  Makes me want to vomit or puke after 30minutes of game play.  Literally.  I get massive heads and nauseous.      I didn't realize what the reason was before why I played some games and getting sick after 20-30minutes.   I've finally realized it was motion sickness that causes the problem.   Skyrim and Elder's scroll series are the worst.    I had bought Elder's Scroll Oblivion long ago.  And was excited to play.  But for some reason I wanted to puke after 20minutes.  Needless to say I wasted money on a really bad game experience.     I played DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem back in the days.  And I noticed I had massive headaches playing these first person shooters.  Didn't understand why then.    But reading articles and studies about motion sickness and there's actually a large community of gamers who are suffering from the same problem I have.   This is why I'm more drawn to games that specifically are 2D based (or top down with 3D modeled units/chars).   And why I buy and play more retro 2D based games.     Star Control 2 was one of those games that I really enjoyed since it didn't suffer from the let's convert it to a 3D experience.   (They actually tried doing that and failed).

Civilization games, when they started doing 3D- thank god they had a "strategic top down" view mode game.     When that company made Beyond Earth and removed the strategic mode- a lot of people were upset over that.   I didn't stopped playing CIV BE after buying it and playing the game for 15minutes waiting and hoping they'll patch it.  Needless to say I wasted money on that.  Gave it a bad review and thumbs down.   Civ BE was an "evolved" form of Civ 5.

Here's another example.   I have played Star Trek Online.   The only thing I enjoyed from that was the space battles.  But they had to also add in the First Person run around planets and missions mode.  Which I didn't enjoy very much.   That game is like playing 2 different games in the same game.  In the end- I just couldn't get into playing that game because of the 2 different game mode experience.

When they remade Gauntlet. I was pretty excited.  But the big problem that did with the new remake was the 'tilted' angle.  A lot of people were very frustrated with the tilted angle of Gauntlet and also how the camera behaved at the edge of the screens. when the camera warped or have things covering the character near the bottom of the screen because of the tilt.   I played that game extensively to know it wasn't a great experience compared to the old Gauntlet.

This can be compared to 3D imax movies.  Some people like it.  Some don't.   It's just an argument that is going to go on for a while.   Maybe I'm in the minority here.   But I'm a die hard fan of Star Control 1 and 2.

As for my comments in Star Control prequel here,  with the top down view -  if you can change the camera angles, great no problem!!

But the planet exploration part.  I don't think there is a change in camera angle.   And I'm not looking forward to driving a race car game.

I was just mentioning that it is very easy to handle making it work well with the 1v1 combat they are planning on having.  I used to play Subspace where most zones had 32-64 "Star Control-like" ships fighting in the same arena... that's why almost every ship carried 1 "Repel" to fling everything away from you, for when you found yourself with 5 or 6 people all converging on you at once, haha!

All this talk about tilted view giving you a better view of the "gravity wells" - what's that mean, anyway? I don't get it.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSISAlM8SW6sKocmbhji6qXOQBEtIhAKQryUkhhNAbwBoLoJKkn4A

Think of a flat plane, and think of those cavities around the spheres as valleys. If you roll a marble across the plane, where will it end up? Probably in one of the valleys, right? What if you could steer the marble a little? Would a distorted grid view tell you when you are getting too close to a valley? If you only looked straight down at the grid, would you see that the grid was distorted?

Also...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3JGWu9oD4

Your concerns are valid, certainly. But if you play it safe, you just get 15 years of Call of Duty.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you could also get 32 years of Worms ;P 

If gravity wells are represented as rings, top down has a better view, if they are vertices of a grid like you showed, then angled is a better view.   Still, in general practice how are angled shots different from hyper melee from sc3?   They needed a grid just to play it right, and now we get that and a bunch of distortions to work with.   SC3's style was harder to play with, but at least they had both styles.  If we get both I won't complain.  I'll probably flip between them just for fun.

I'm fairly certain they already showed at one point that you get access to a free camera that allows you complete control over the camera. I could be wrong, but I distinctly remember that. Also, informal welcome to the forums

Instead of gravity rings or wells, what about not showing those and instead showing a visible drag force on ships that are affected by gravity? That can both be made to look cool and doesn't break suspension of disbelieve the way a well/ring does.

(Also down the line, the way the gravity force displays could be a cosmetic that can be changed with the appropriate "hat".)

I don't even know why you should be able to see gravity wells. It is not like you could see them on melee.

Gravity wells should not be visible. Does the space shuttle we currently use have a radar showing earth and a gravity well visually?

I haven't actually seen gravity wells explicitly shown in the radars of spaceships because that is something hard to map.

Gravity being such a dark concept.

Plus gravity wells are supposed to be used strategically to escape enemies or to trick enemies to crash into it. If you can see them well there is no point in them.

You might as well make the Ilwrath visible while cloaked.

I don't think I would enjoy being able to see the gravity well. The frustration of getting caught in a gravity well because I was not paying attention WAS part of the charm of melee.

At most I am okay with a warning message or some sort of visual warning that you are getting to close to a gravity well, but please don't clutter the empty space with weird bends....

^ Finally, another voice of reason in the world of game hand holding...

I have a feeling that the first thing that happened was they changed the view to perspective from top-down.

Then testers struggled to get a feel for gravity, 'cause the view is compressed horizontally, so visually speed AND gravity pull is different when ship's flying up-down vs left-right. So grid was added...

Chmmr tractor beam SFX type o' deal can be used to indicate gravity pull when the ship is getting affected by it/close to the planet. Why grid?... Please, at least make it turn-off-able. It kills the immersion. Grids aren't for real time action.

It's not about hand-holding, Hunam. It's that now there are multiple wells involved. Again, if we're talking about multiplayer, good players will use LITERALLY every tool at their disposal. Single player? Do whatever you want. You can't judge single player play, but competitive leaderboards will only show who won, not who did or didn't use a grid, that would be ridiculous.

^ If a player has no concept of gravity, he shouldn't be playing games that involve it. Multiple pull points vs singular don't change much for the ones who do.

I guess we'll be able to judge better after we try it out... Hmm... when is that gonna happen?...... 

Meanwhile, how do you assume to use that grid in melee, Volu? And why is there "anus" in your nickname? I can't help it, but read it everytime I see it..

I still don't get what the big deal is?? Why is it all of a sudden so necessary to physically see gravity wells??? Where did that even come from? Half the fun and thrilling part was getting sucked into a planet unexpectedly! Who cares about gravity wells being visible? Is this even a talking-point right now?! It's like if all of a sudden, everyone was up in arms because you couldn't click on the rolling door in the back of the Tywom conversation screen to make it roll closed and open?? What? This is so weird. Who cares?

We're literally sitting here debating the visible reproduction of a gravity well being the #1 reason to skew perspective in super melee. Is that really such a big deal???

Exactly!

It is because there will be more gravity wells, and it was hinted that some of the ship powers would alter the gravitational pull. If your enemy increased the pull of gravity on your ship from multiple sources, how would you know? The grid was a way to represent it.

Could it be represented some other way? Yes. Concentric rings work. Ghosting (tractor beams) work. One thing that the grid has going for it is that it looks cool.

I'm not trying to justify it. I am just pointing out the logic.

It reminds of:

Update 1.03

• Planet rotation – play testing has made it obvious people are struggling to adjust to this during play so its effects have been reduced further…

Not gonna say who it's from.