Bearing in mind this is all still a work in progress, I'm pretty impressed. This is the first proof of concept that the project is getting somewhere.
Didn't expect such a huge jump in polish and detail over the previous video from just two weeks ago. Really love the seamless zoom transitions between things, but I agree the warp-in animation could get tiresome even though it looks great. I know you guys are probably eager to show off the detail of the ships as they change throughout the course of the game, but it might get repetitive. My thought is maybe this sort of warp-in animation could just be used for arriving in special systems, or during a special event, to make the player sit up and take notice that they are in a unique area of interest. This might also give an opportunity for the camera to quickly pan or dolly around the system to "gesture" in the direction of something interesting to explore.
I agree the color scheme is overall a bit too warm and should be cooled down with more blacks, blues, greens and grays. The whole interface is dominated by orange, purple, and pink. Don't know if that's just because Alpha Centauri is in the midst of a nebula, but the background of space should probably be darker in most systems, and the interface should have more contrasting colors in it. When that enemy encounter alert klaxon comes up, it certainly doesn't stand out much from the rest of the interface and the haze of the nebula. It is certainly part of the Star Control DNA to use a lot of bright color detail, but only on objects of interest like ships, planets, creatures, etc. The rest of space (and the interface) should be more neutral to make all the other elements stand out more.
The lander experience looks really terrific. The transitions between the dark and light sides of the planet seem a little too sudden though. I feel they would benefit from being more gradual. The little headlight casting a beam over the dark terrain is cool, although you're in the dark for such a short period of time before you reach the light side of the planet again! I'm not too terribly concerned with shadow detail; frankly I feel that from orbit they just exacerbate the issue of how scaled down everything is and exaggerate the tiny scale of the planet to an even worse degree, making the planet seem like it's only a few hundred times bigger than one of the trees or rocks sitting on it.
We're all counting on planets getting a lot more atmospheric detail from orbit in order to minimize that effect. If the planet surfaces are sufficiently detailed and varied in design, shadows will not be a dealbreaker. Bring the environments from all those extremely detailed and different planet surface concept paintings you showed us to life, and you've got it in the bag and it will have all been worth the effort. Most people will be too enamored with the environments from that concept art to notice how long or short the shadows are. I think the team should consider focusing on adding great environmental effects like rain, snow, wind, clouds, fog, smoke, heat shimmer, lens flares, lava and water effects, and others I can't even think of. Something tells me the team probably already realizes this, but I only reiterate because if all those effects are well executed, the shadows won't be nearly as much of a concern.
I see what you guys did with the melee theme at the end there; didn't really care for the one that was uploaded to the vault before, mostly because it felt like it was missing something and felt like it was only part of a song. Now I see why: it's been overlaid on top of the original melee theme. While it is great to hear the old music acknowledged, I'd like to think this is still just placeholder material because the music is still also a work in progress.
I did notice that there are great transitions in the music as you zoom from one encounter to another, as though it is adaptive and not just stopping one theme and starting another. That is very cool and something I'd secretly hoped for. I'd encourage the music team (however many people it is at this point) to keep pushing and take risks, rather than just rehashing the old. The rest of the trailer has great ambient music work that stands on its own apart from the original. I'd like to hear new battle themes as well. Yeah I said themes because I'd like to hear more than one. I think it would be absolutely epic if each race had its own combat music, just as they have their own victory ditties, ambient music for their region of space, and dialog screen music.
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