A few criticisms

Been playing for the last month or so. Love this remake and you all have done outstanding work on it. Btw, I am amazed to say that it has never crashed, and I must have played 30-40 sessions by now. That alone is seriously impressive, guys.

I've also been totally hyping the remake to friends and on my blog. As you can see here http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/, yep, I'm a fan alright.

So, please know before you read my comments that I'm not solely coming from a negative position. Not at all, in fact. These are just a few things I've jotted down in the meantime.

1. Everything doesn't have to have a reflective surface. Maybe you could be more selective/tasteful with that effect? It also looks kind of weird, like it is the wrong kind of reflective look. Maybe it's just that everything is coated with it...

2. The new asteroids can kill the flow of the game. The rest of the game, even battles with lots of ships, sails along beautifully feeling very smooth overall, then you hit an asteroid system and wham, everything slows down. FPS drops radically and suspension of disbelief flies out the window. You're back in the real world, rolling your eyes at the slowness, instead of being caught up in the game.

3. No event should kill your ship without a chance to see it coming and try to do something about it. If an unseen asteroid, for example, out of your field of vision, coming from above or below, say, wallops you and takes you out, it's not fair or fun. (And fun is what it's all about, not exasperation.)

Instant death is not a positive element of game design. If the original game had this, fine, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from others' mistakes. It seems like the old asteroids were actually "better" in this regard since they basically nickeled and dimed you to death, which is plenty, especially if your ship is already damaged.

4. What's up with the name of a base or a planet on the trading and mission screens being a file name? Very geeky, and it doesn't tell you the name of the place you're at --which is what you want to know when you look there.

5. Generally, text messages that appear on the no cockpit hud are somewhat strange. Some are plain English, which is good. Others look like dev info messages that gamers should never see (and filenames instead of normal text that players should see). The more you can tidy this up the more immersive and appealing the game will be.

6. Ship buying needs a confirmation message. "Are you sure you want to buy this ship?" Just in case we click a ship by mistake.

7. Don't make the mistake that game companies often make. Gameplay, game balance and overall smoothness of play are far more important concerns than high end graphics issues. Game studios spend most of their time, budgets and resources on graphics and game design can really suffer for it. I don't want that to happen to this project because it really is starting out very well!

8. The interface might need to give a little more feedback to tell players that they have just actually done something, like pressing a "button" or activating some feature the ship possesses. Obviously sounds are good for this; even something as simple as the "g" gun switching sound is good enough/better than nothing (although, of course, different sounds should probably be used for other things). However, at the same time, you wouldn't want to go overboard with this kind of thing.

9. The time delay for jumping should, imho, be greatly shortened or even made "instantaneous." (I realize that a level load is involved here.) Getting pummeled while you wait after hitting "j" is like being punished for no reason. Besides, escapes via jumping should be dramatic hair raising escapes, yes? Not a break in the action or a liability (!).

Designwise, when the player's ship hits a jump point, you might immediately switch what is on the screen to a relatively simple "in hyperspace" graphic of some kind while the new system loads (and make sure the player's ship actually left the old system/level so it can't be shot at during this phase). Then, pop!, arrive at the new system. Something like that?

10. I think "Active Missions" in the missions screen should, when appropriate, list your current missions' cargo unit counts for easy reference.

11. Turning off the cockpit and changing to turret positions seems broken. Sometimes I tap once, other times, twice. The game pauses sometimes when I'm doing this, it hiccups, etc. I got used to it but it's a little odd.

12. If you pause the game, ships should stop shooting at you.

13. When you pause the game, it might be nice to have a few other options available besides quitting to your desktop.

Well, that's about it. If I've repeated things that have already been said, skip over those points. If I have made any errors or misinterpreted anything, please feel okay to correct me. No ego here.

Thanks for making this remake guys. It's awesome fun!
 
Ghost busters...

Everyone has a gripe about the asteroids, but as far as the one hit wonder, TG that’s as old as Wing Commander 1. Almost any scifi show where an asteroid hits something is nearly a deathblow for a cruiser let alone a starfighter. Besides there are two easy ways to always avoid getting slammed. One, when you auto pilot to a nav point that takes you to a asteroid field and your destination is not inside the field, just afterburn around the whole field. That’s what I do. Just hit F5 keep the asteroid field to the left or right and in 30-48 seconds you’re past the whole thing. Secondly, I found that not moving or going slow is a sure fire way to get nailed. Maybe it’s just my uber skills hitting the burners and going straight in and I never get hit with an asteroid. Seems the only time I get nailed is when I’m just cruising at 500kph and wham. It is a bit difficult to judge the distance from an asteroid but it’s doable.

Interface, interface. I’ve had a realllllly hard time with this one. Not because the interface has changed but with any new game, you need to learn the interface to appreciate the game. I avoided the Nav screen like the plague until I figured out how to use it. Heck, I never purchased a Centurion because I thought that I would never be able to see the Navigation direction screen, then hello “O” key. Yes there are some purists that just don’t want change they just want things better. I’m 50/50 on that. When you change something, guess what, somethings gota change. My only crutch to the flight combat is it felt like Freespace. There was no way in hell I could keep things long enough in my sights to even hope to hit it with my guns, It was all up to the wingmen I had. Remake almost felt that way until I found out something; I just had to change my strategy. No longer could I watch the bugges run into my gun fire, I had to make each shot count. Annoying? Maybe, but this is a remake and we gota work for our pay.

Yea, the Asteroids do choke my computer as well. Even at retro graphics, the 200+ asteroids do grind the fps to a 286 level for sure. The programmers may want to make a 2-D render and leave it at that. But there must be some reason for the slow down. I’m running at 32bit. Tonight I’m gong to try it at 16, maybe even at 800x600, but I do want to keep the detail up to max for now. Ill get back on that one.

Instant jump? I don’t think so. Not to slam you but in the original Privateer you either had to blow everyone away or thruster past the jump point, 180, then fly into the incoming fighters and break them off to force them to evade and swerve back just to make a safe jump. In Remake, I can hit the J key and still thruster around and avoid gunfire until, poof, I’m safe…..until they jump in after me. And in Remake, I don’t want the jump sequence like the original…6 seconds of just watching my ship in a jump port, I’d get hammered. You may be thinking of Privateer 2 where you had to pay, what was it…500 credits to go through a jump gate? That may work, but then you’re taking away an element of the original. Tough call.

Yes I’ve noticed the cockpit/turret view hangup but my problem is I still can’t find the dang turret AI’s…maybe I should start playing the story line.

As far as overall development, as I commented before, this is a work in progress. The programmers have only the computers they have to test with and make it work (or really try) for those of us with old 500mhz computer with pci video cards all the way up to the 64 Bit Athlons. They also rely on Beta testers to help them along. I have what you see below.

Which reminds me….shouldn’t this topic be in the Vega strike Privateer Remake forum?
 
in the original Privateer you either had to blow everyone away or thruster past the jump point, 180, then fly into the incoming fighters and break them off to force them to evade and swerve back just to make a safe jump.

I rarely got dinged enough to worry, just zipping in on full AB and sliding a little into the jump.
 
LT Fox Fire said:
Everyone has a gripe about the asteroids, but as far as the one hit wonder, TG that’s as old as Wing Commander 1. Almost any scifi show where an asteroid hits something is nearly a deathblow for a cruiser let alone a starfighter.

This isn't about other scifi shows though. In Wing Commander games, you can usually survive asteroid hits without a problem. They cause heavy damage, so you learn to avoid them, but they shouldn't always be automatic kills. The original Privateer did the accumulated damage quite well.

LT Fox Fire said:
Instant jump? I don’t think so. Not to slam you but in the original Privateer you either had to blow everyone away or thruster past the jump point, 180, then fly into the incoming fighters and break them off to force them to evade and swerve back just to make a safe jump.

I never did anything like that. If things were hurting or I had someplace to be, it would be a mad tense dash to the jump point.

LT Fox Fire said:
Which reminds me….shouldn’t this topic be in the Vega strike Privateer Remake forum?

It could be, but then he wouldn' t have nearly as many people familiar with the original Privateer able to comment.
 
I never said this was about other sci fi shows. I just think that discounting anything and everything else sci fi about how an asteroid impacts is a bit naive though. Even Chris Roberts had to sit down and think "Wonder what would happen if an asteroid hit a raptor." There really is no such thing as an original idea any more, only ideas changed and altered to fit the universe they play in. Unless you really have a Galaxy somewhere and flew it around the Sol Asteroid belt to give impacts a once over.

Besides, having differet speeds in different ships with different shields in an ever changing asteroid belt, you will get different outcomes. But still the main issue with the asteroids is the slow down in FPS. My little comment was really just that.
 
LT Fox Fire said:
I never said this was about other sci fi shows. I just think that discounting anything and everything else sci fi about how an asteroid impacts is a bit naive though. Even Chris Roberts had to sit down and think "Wonder what would happen if an asteroid hit a raptor." There really is no such thing as an original idea any more, only ideas changed and altered to fit the universe they play in. Unless you really have a Galaxy somewhere and flew it around the Sol Asteroid belt to give impacts a once over.

Chris Roberts did sit down and wonder what would happen if asteroids hit Wing Commander ships. There are Wing Commander games with one-hit asteroid kills, but Wing Commander developers have generally backed away from that after seeing the implementation in practice. I'm just saying that it'd make sense for Wing Commander mods to learn from what professional Wing Commander developers already found out. That's all the original poster wanted, and I think that makes for good game design.
 
Oh ok

So its not that we're looking at ignoring a one hit wonder, but make it so it can happen just with more than a death blow. Understandable. Thanks for explaning.
 
I have always wondered why there are Kilrathi fighters operating with impunity in the Perry System. They fly around Perry Naval base, but the Confederation doesn't seem to mind one bit. It seems to me that there should be some systems where it would be extremely unlikely to encounter certain factions.
 
if you get within 15000 klicks of perry, then it launches fighters to combat kilrathi--it should be extremely unlikely to encounter kilrathi in perry unless they followed you from another system (or were spawned in another system and wondered to perry). Just go close to the base and watch it lash out with broadswords and stilettos.


1) change to specular per pixel lighting or just specular lighting
2) turn down the ram setting to restore the original asteroids--that appears to be your problem
3) if you proceed with the safest speed in the asteroid field (250 kps) it should not be a problem
5) it's a lot more immersive to have the original cockpits (encourages you to buy a ship with more visibility like the galaxy)
6)the ship dealer does I believe
7)I think the gameplay balancing will remain the same for the development of this mod--wcuniverse, with its myriad ships is where your concerns lie :)
8)thought it ahd a noise
9) tried to time it like the original where you get pummeled while jumping---I've only got destroyed during jump twice--once in the original game, once in the remake--sounds about right
101) it hs to load the cockpit graphics
12) sound wise? p pauses the action
13) you can go to the map with shift-M

glad you enjoy :) keep playing with it... make sure to download new patches as we release them... I hear 1.2 is going to be quite beautiful
 
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