First playthrough
aeroripper
Join Date: 2005-02-25 Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Join Date: 2005-02-25 Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Just bought this early today. I liked it more than I thought I would. Some thoughts:
1) I don't like the massive inventory bar that collects above your hotkey groups 1-5. It looks cluttery. When you pickup items a text popular should say "Purple Mushroom +1" and scroll through any keep adding +1 to any additional ones you pickup. This would help tidy the interface.
2) The seamoth needs some headlights.
3) I really like the idea of customizing your own sub like one of the prototypes had. Designing the layout (walls, etc...) is appealing to me, and makes the ship my own.
4) You should be able to use the ladder on top of your escape pod. Not sure if they're ladders on other subs, but you should be able to use them as well, instead of solely using the undersub hatch to get in.
5) It would be cool to have an animation for every ship you get into. Some of the larger subs would have you get into a small "airlock" where the water drains out and then allows you access to the main sub. Getting into the vehicle like the seamoth would fill the cabin with water, then drain when you close the hatch.
6) I like the idea of a day/night cycle. Seeing a sunrise/sunset and the bright moon rising over the water would look wonderful.
1) I don't like the massive inventory bar that collects above your hotkey groups 1-5. It looks cluttery. When you pickup items a text popular should say "Purple Mushroom +1" and scroll through any keep adding +1 to any additional ones you pickup. This would help tidy the interface.
2) The seamoth needs some headlights.
3) I really like the idea of customizing your own sub like one of the prototypes had. Designing the layout (walls, etc...) is appealing to me, and makes the ship my own.
4) You should be able to use the ladder on top of your escape pod. Not sure if they're ladders on other subs, but you should be able to use them as well, instead of solely using the undersub hatch to get in.
5) It would be cool to have an animation for every ship you get into. Some of the larger subs would have you get into a small "airlock" where the water drains out and then allows you access to the main sub. Getting into the vehicle like the seamoth would fill the cabin with water, then drain when you close the hatch.
6) I like the idea of a day/night cycle. Seeing a sunrise/sunset and the bright moon rising over the water would look wonderful.
Comments
3) Full customization is not a focus right now. It resulted in subs that were just boxes that floated around. There is still plans for customization, just not to the same level as the prototype.
5) There has been talked about this. There is always the issue of animation vs. speed though. No one wants to sit through a 30 second animation every time they go in and out as this will be occurring a lot.
6) Already in the cards. The extreme basic version of it has been tested but it will require some work to get set up correctly.
Why not do the Elder Scrolls Online thing and play a little one-second, swing-open animation once the player "opens" a door, then teleport them inside?
Or maybe have it swing open when the player gets close enough and is looking at the door, as in "when the conditions for the 'get in' message appearing are met"?
Hmm makes sense. Hopefully there is a nice compromise between keeping the look of the designed sub interior, and adding personal touches. Agreed on the animation issue, on second thought. That would be annoying after the first few times unless it was near instantaneous with a little water effect (small pools of water on ground, water going over screen, the airlock door opens instantaneously, etc...) Some other random things:
7) Weather effects would be neat, if it suited that particular level area. Say if you were traveling to a dangerous location, the skies would start to get cloudy and large waves begin to form. You could see purplish lighting bolts in the distance and hear the wind howling on the surface. That might be a good setting for an area filled with lava, maybe? Might be a bit expensive depending on the resources available to the devs to implement it.
8) Lots of viewports in the subs. Players could add many, or only have 1 or 2. You would be able to close the shutters if desired (dynamic lighting from the interior sub lights would keep things lit up). This would be a nice touch, being able to set your autopilot and look out on the world from various viewports as your sub travels by. A little interactivity would add a lot.
That's it for now. I suppose I should be posting these in the "what I want to see" thread...
2) Seamoth headlights - yup, it needs them. Low priority, but eventually.
3) There will be some sub customization in what items you decide to craft and where you place them, and maybe down the road stuff like changing the color of the walls or something. But the layout is fixed, unlike in the prototype, for a variety of reasons.
4) Being able to use the ladder on the outside of the escape pod is just one of those lower priority tasks that we haven't gotten around to yet, because its just a little annoying in game (and a bit confusing to new players sometimes) rather then anything actually game breaking, since there is the floor hatch in the pod.
5) As Comprox stated, long animations like that can really become problematic when the player has to sit through the same thing many times during the course of their playing experience. But there are some cool things planned, that are along these lines
6) Day / night was in but disabled for the 31st release because it still needs some extra work. That will be going back in soon.
7) Weather effects are planned. There is already a very cool thunder storm with lightning effect that has been created, and was in some builds, just not tied to gameplay, so hopefully we can get back to implementing those properly into the game.
8) Lots of viewports in the sub is pretty tricky for several reasons, and at the moment not planned, at least for the Cyclops sub (it feels sub-ier without them, anyway). Possibly if and when we add additional subs to the game