Well, the Kickstarter Video is there and to me the first and second impression of this video are very different:
My first impression was, that I expected something more captivating. I really missed a red thread explaining to me what I am seeing. I think since there was nothing like a clear english narrator voice captivating me I spent too much time watching or even counting any issue I could find in the graphics. I also missed stunning, beautiful slow-paced passage giving a contrast to extremely fast-paced combat passages… Regarding the voices, for me as non-native english speaker I had some trouble understanding everything (although I use a little english every work day). Aswell the distortion in the radio as the accent of flavien made it hard for me to get everything in the video.
Now after seeing the video again. In better quality, I think this is much more than others can show at this stage. Although the graphics partially look very rough, I will not forget that this is no Unity, no CryEngine… No this is a whole galaxy - it is inovae. With this in mind, I think the engine is really stunning and I would only keep critizise the cut and story-book of the video as a product.
Ok. Since this is only my impression, I would really love to read what your impression is.
I guess my expectations were lower then yours but I was impressed by what I saw.
We already knew what they could do with planets, but the other assets they showed were very nice as well.
I’ll be very impressed if they can make their claim to do battles with hundreds of players come true, i think that is going to be their biggest challenge.
Although their assets are ‘nice’, I was for example not sure if the space station at the beginning was destroyed or not. If I look at the assets I tend to ‘see’ triangles…
I think this depends a bit on if the servers are actively calculating the 3d-movements or if the server is always waiting for its clients to do that. A good option to get very good servers is using Amazon Webservices. They are amazingly performant and you can always scale your server-farm to your current needs.
Watched it just once so far (work, work, work…) but, I definitely feel the video was brilliant. I have to admit that I set my expectations fairly low beforehand but, it was better than I previously expected, even at the highest point.
Maybe one or two more questions could’ve been answered at the end but, that can always be addressed should they be asked. Plus, the music sets everything off very well.
The fact that the content was all in-engine is definitely a highlight too - the majority of campaigns I’ve seen haven’t done this and some of those that have haven’t been quite as polished.
Well it’s only the start of the campaign. We have more videos to come, and one of these will be a Q&A. Many months prior to the KS we had collected questions from the community, if you remember, and we’ll address some of these in the Q&A.
I actually had pretty much the exact initial impression as you. I honestly expected a lot more and found myself let down by some of the features, or lack there of.
However, I took some time and watched a few of the videos, some livestream gameplay and my mood shifted. I’m not sure what exactly made my impression shift, however at some point I felt at home with what I was watching. I think in the beginning I was still holding on to the very much more grand-scale idea that Infinity: TQFE was back in the day. I needed some time to wind down, scale back my expectations and understand the reasoning behind them NOT making Infinity:TQFE. (At this point in time anyhow)
I was impressed with the video, having just watched it. Suddenly having all those features that have been held back revealed in one go is a massive pleasure. I hadn’t really expected so much to be in place already!
Best bit for me: flying through the station’s superstructure. I would spend half my life doing this!
A slight wish: I’m not sure the smooth transition from ground to space showed off the power of the engine. (It was certainly cinematic though and probably is best for the audience they want to attract)
Overall, it has hugely increased my need to see this game complete! I really hope it hits the target (I have everything crossed for smashing some stretch goals too).
The video was phenomenal! inoX, step back and look at the bigger picture (as you did on the second viewing). They’re proposing something that doesn’t exist at the moment, even in the somewhat bloated space genre (i.e. entirely seamless universe, semi-persistent strategic game with a heavy focus on tactical combat, in-space AND in-atmosphere dogfighting), but more importantly - something that seems very realistic and achievable.
To me, I:TQFE always seemed like a dream. A wonderful dream, but not very-well defined, somewhat amorphous. This feels solid, an actual product that can be built, tested, tuned, and perfected. Bravo, I-Novae!
Fair criticism but we were trying to keep video length under 4 min for a lot of reasons, and there’s so much you can show in that timeframe and keep our narrative for the video coherent. Hopefully our follow up videos and streams will help showcase the seemless transitions more.
Good point, you will have plenty of time to show off more! As an introductory video, it definitely has a certain something that so many space games lack - freedom but also ACTION!
I think that you guys failed to show what the engine can do in the first minute of so of the video, which is how long many people take to lose interest and leave. The transition between the planets when the ship takes off is also very slow, and I only realized in the second time watching that they are actually different planets, so it might take quite a while for the viewer to realize its a seamless star system, and not just a planet. Also, whose idea was it to have mostly blue explosions? Weird.
A better video idea, for example, would be if it started with a few ships taking off from the surface(showing it is true to scale and seamless) to join a battle inside the planet’s asteroid belt/ring(and I mean inside and around the asteroids, not above the ring), which then zoomed the camera as fast as possible past the system to another planet where other things happened(showing its a seamless system).
The talking part was ok I guess. I only wish you guys showed more members of the team, or at least showed a few pictures of them pretending to work while you talked about the team.
But I was impressed to see that the prototype was advanced enough to allow battles like that, and the tech does look greater than ever.
