Here’s my feedback about the last few patches:
There have been some big features introduced lately. I will share some stuff in the order of how it comes to mind, trying to always mind what the newest version of the games state is (for instance the “speed reading clipping” got fixed last patch:
TAA is impressive but personally it does not work out for me.
I tried it on 4k, on 2k, on low and high quality but the tradeoff doesn’t work for me.
It is the right AA solution for Space Games it seems. With there not being enough information in a frame to solve the “flickering”.
But it really feels like I am taking off my glasses with the big amount of blur I see when using it. In a way it makes the game more beautiful as it allows for much more immersion with the flickering gone …
but for hectic flight it is not that usable for me.
Maybe there’s a way to configure it as such that it works for me … I seem to have enough performance for it.
I tried low setting because I thought it would take less frames to compare between but instead it just got much more blurry. Maybe there’s a way for it to take less frames as reference but crank up the “classical” AA aspect of it? Will keep trying but I think I will prefer AA off.
SMAA doesn’t seem to work well with the Aliasing found in I:B.
The latest patch (0.7.2.0) added A LOT of polish to the UI. The changes to the glow really make the UI feel much more professional then it did before. It’s subtle but it looks much nicer!
The tactical view looks excellent with heatmap on. I think this is the aesthetic I:B needs.
Of course, adjusting all the colours for the different colour modes helped too.
The tactical view is cool and slick and quick to use. Took me a while to bind it to something that works but after that it was quite intuitive. I have to play with it more to give any more feedback on it.
AMS thickness change is nice. I like them being more visible. As for the balancing, kind of early to judge. I always felt like the Cap Ship missiles where a bit too strong and overshadowed the big guns the ships had but I guess that is more personal taste then anything else.
I suggest adding a “Custom” profile. There should be something for people which device or combination of devices is not in the list of complete layout. I once suggested different “Generic” profiles but I see how those can be problematic to maintain, let alone find configs that work alright with most devices.
As such I suggest a completely empty profile. Here:
http://lomsor.com/inovae/Profiles/Custom.xml
The bindings menu is almost perfect now, really much better then many other games. I see it has a “reset to defaults” button now and all other kinds of jazz. Nice.
Bugs and such:
Big bug I discovered last patch:
I think there is a limit missing somewhere in the code for as many “navigation help” rectagles are drawn on the UI … or maybe some other issue … see the Framerate (I usually have it fixed to 80 FPS) It only happens when target is selected and while in warp. Gets worse when being farther away from target.
The “cancel/exit” event doesn’t really work in most situations. I have it bound but it almost never does something. Same for the “next/previous” and such. Maybe they are placeholders for later and I am glad they are there for people not wanting to use joystick or other devices beside M and KB to navigate menues.
Still have this bug. Tried to launch from Steam Directly or otherwise but I always got it since the ping values got introduced:
The tooltip from “spawn” button stays there when closing the tab menu.
The tooltips for the two new added tick options in the keybindings screen are worded wrongly (Inverted). Probably a remnant from a previous version where they were inverted.
The default profile has some inconsistent dead zone values here, I suggest making them all the same:
Summary
<Joystick ID="0">
<Descr>-unused-</Descr>
<Identifier/>
<NameFilter/>
<ForceFeedback>false</ForceFeedback>
<Axis ID="0" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="1" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="2" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="3" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="4" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="5" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="6" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="7" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
</Joystick>
<Joystick ID="1">
<Descr>-unused-</Descr>
<Identifier/>
<NameFilter/>
<ForceFeedback>false</ForceFeedback>
<Axis ID="0" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="1" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="2" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="3" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="4" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.07" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="5" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="6" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="7" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
</Joystick>
<Joystick ID="2">
<Descr>-unused-</Descr>
<Identifier/>
<NameFilter/>
<ForceFeedback>false</ForceFeedback>
<Axis ID="0" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="1" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="2" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="3" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="4" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="5" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="6" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="7" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
</Joystick>
<Joystick ID="3">
<Descr>-unused-</Descr>
<Identifier/>
<NameFilter/>
<ForceFeedback>false</ForceFeedback>
<Axis ID="0" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="1" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="2" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="3" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="4" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.075" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="5" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="6" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
<Axis ID="7" Type="Auto" Deadzone="0.0" Power="1.0"/>
Bonus Shots: