Mouse Support

This is not planned. You can still use the keyboard, joysticks are cheap. I've even got force feedback support for joysticks.
 
The absence of mouse support is rather unfortunate... I played all the WC games (except Armada, obviously :p ) with a mouse.

BTW, I keep forgetting (for several months now :p )... I tried Flight Commander a few months ago, and it crashed the minute somebody tried to send a comm. It seems that the problem is related to the Indeo codec (ugh, I think... I don't remember for sure, it was a while ago), which used to be distributed with Windows, but got cut out of it starting with XP SP1.
 
Quarto said:
The absence of mouse support is rather unfortunate... I played all the WC games (except Armada, obviously :p ) with a mouse.

BTW, I keep forgetting (for several months now :p )... I tried Flight Commander a few months ago, and it crashed the minute somebody tried to send a comm. It seems that the problem is related to the Indeo codec (ugh, I think... I don't remember for sure, it was a while ago), which used to be distributed with Windows, but got cut out of it starting with XP SP1.

Quarto, thanks so much for this excellent bug report.

Please try this codec here
http://flightcommander.solsector.net/indeo511.exe

And tell me if Flight Commander 1.2 is ok for you.

You can get 1.2 at http://flightcommander.solsector.net/FlightCommander1.2alpha1.zip
 
I don't think you should really be thanking for a bug report that took several months ;).

Anyway, I tried it, and it works now. It would be advisable to switch to a codec that can be integrated into the game package, though - for example, we didn't have to worry about this kind of thing in UE because the DivX codec was actually installed into the UE folder.

Overall, after playing for a few minutes, I'm pretty impressed with the changes you've made since the last time I played this game. Obviously, you still have some way to go, but it's good to see so much progress.

A few bugs to report, though:
- Pressing escape during the briefing brings me to the "casualty reports" movie, which presumably indicates that I died. Escape doesn't necessarily have to skip the briefing, but it shouldn't kill you in either case.

- At least on my system, the text and the background on the ICIS-like screens are a very similar colour. I imagine the text is readable when sitting in a dark room... but not under any other conditions :p.

- In the game, it seems I have to press "T" before I can lock onto anything. This is counter-intuitive - a target should always be selected by default (like in WCP).
- When I use up all the missiles of a given type, I don't automatically switch to the next kind of missile. This is also counter-intuitive. The only time the player should ever be left with a selection of zero missiles is when he has no missiles left at all (again, like in WCP).

- Starting all the way from WC2, the ITTS system served two functions - one, to tell the player where to shoot, and two, to tell the player when to shoot. The second function means that the ITTS reticle was only visible when the enemy was in the range of the selected gun type (and, ITTS being what it is, the motion of both ships and the gun speed were taken into account to predict if he'd still be in range when the bullet arrived). In Flight Commander, it seems ITTS doesn't serve this function, which makes life difficult at times (I wasted half of my stormfire ammo before realising my mistake).

- Last, but definitely not least, the UI in general leaves much to be desired. It seems to me like a great pity - one of the reasons I'm not a fan of the VegaStrike engine is that its UI doesn't even deserve the term "amateurish". Your UI is much better than that... but it's still a long, long way from WCP, where everything was carefully designed, right down to which font was used at which point in the game. I hope you plan to work in this in the future - IMO, the UI is a hugely important aspect of the game, and it's sad to see that every single fan-made/open-source game engine (obviously, "every single" meaning more than just the two WC-related engines) ignore this aspect and concentrate on graphical power. Your lens flares are beautiful... but they're not much use if I get turned off by the UI before I even get to them.

(...and to bring this tirade back to the original thread subject, a better UI also means catering to obsessive mouse users like me ;) )
 
Back
Top