Hey everybody, a week ago we launched our first limited beta week-end. I’m happy to report that everything went well and that players had fun - keep in mind the game is still in alpha until early next year - and we learned a lot from watching new players play the game for the first time. On a side note, the participation rate was a bit lower than expected ( iirc around 15% ) so if you’re reading the weekly updates but did not participate in the limited beta week-end despite having beta access, feel free to let us know why: was the timing inconvenient / a week of notification too short, did you have trouble with the installation, were instructions unclear, did you fail to associate your pledge to your account, or maybe you simply didn’t read the news in time, etc… ?
Last week we studied and organized all the feedback we collected during the event. We started a serie of long-overdue improvements to the HUD including better readability (fixed bugs related to fonts scaling, found a better font, increased text size… ) and experimented some ideas to avoid cluttering of indicators, especially in large battles.
We are also planning on working on the first version of the radar soon. It’s going to be a challenge due to the potentially large size of battles (it’s not rare to have 50 to 100 ships in a 10-20 Km range around you). Other improvements will include some visual hit feedback, reorganizing the HUD, showing nearby threats, switching team colors back to green for allies and red for enemies (this was probably the top complaint of new players), showing distance in the incoming missile alert, showing when a target is blocked by a planet horizon, making it more clear when the target is out of weapon’s range, and much more… All these changes are fairly easy to implement and are expected to be available in the next patch.
Once HUD improvements are done, we’ll probably start iterating on the new capital ships control scheme as well as doing an upgrade to the weapons systems.
In other news we decided to experiment a new format for updates. The weekly updates will still be posted regularly on our forums but we’ll switch to a monthly newsletter for e-mail as we believe weekly updates have become too frequent to catch the attention of casual backers. We’ll start our first monthly report around end-November so make sure to check out our forums next week if you still want to read the weekly updates as soon as they’re out - otherwise you’ll have to wait for the end of the month.
Been super busy. At some point in the last few months I reinstalled the OS and hadn’t reinstalled battlescape yet. When trying to reinstall last weekend I ran into an error when running the installer(I forget which, I’ll get back to you guys on that soon - on laptop right now). I gave it a quick 5-15 minutes of troubleshooting and couldn’t solve it myself (tried the recommended windows update but that didn’t solve it) and at that point that was most of my free time for the weekend. I have a feeling I’m missing a dependency of some sort.
If I may suggest the next beta-weekend timing to be some time during the holidays(mid December to Feb but I know that sucks for you guys) that would be great for any students. This one being in the middle of the semester during midterms was rough for me. Though I don’t know what % of backers are still students so it may be moot.
I just started the installer again to grab the error and it’s downloading now. Must have rebooted at some point this week and solved the problem. I have no idea. I hate computers they are so dumb.
Sorry I’ve been trying to finish Kingdom Come, I always forget these weekend events.
Last time I remember I did play (which was the first time with the actual game loop/scoreboard), I had to get used to the controls/keybindings again. It would be nice if there was just a free flight mode where you could get re-oriented.
One week notice is a bit short when having other social engagements, would have loved to participate, but as I was traveling abroad I had no chance of joining from a shitty MacBook
I’m in the process of moving and this weekend a tree came down on my shed and my wife broke her ankle. Too much stuff to deal with so I was not able to try the beta at all.
I haven’t had much time, but the last time I tried it, I was overwhelmed trying to figure out how everything works. And maybe that’s expected for a Alpha backer to figure this out by following development closely, but I just don’t have the time.
What would really help me (and maybe this already exists) is a brief tutorial of the main systems and how to control everything and what the parts of the ships UI represent… I would regularly overshoot planets and the warp vs. normal speed transition was (to me) counter-intuitive. Maybe if I understood it better it would be fine. Feel free to point me at any resources that may already exist and I’ll try to educate myself before the next playtest
I’ve noticed a lot of first-time players tend to make that mistake - we’ll work on better UI feedback at a later stage to make things more clear. And tutorials / training in the main menu, in offline mode.
But basically… when you’re in warp, the #1 mistake players make is trying to accelerate over the safe warp speed limit. The flight assist computer automatically adjusts your warp speed in realtime. All you have to do is fly your ship towards the destination point ( / planet ) and not touch your keyboard. Litterrally.
Because the “'safe warp speed”, which your flight assist adjusts in real-time, is basically the definition of “max speed you can go to avoid overshooting the destination”.
But players do not understand the concept of automatic warp speed, and keep accelerating over the safe warp speed limit, which we allow to go over for experimented players that want to travel just a bit faster, by taking a risk. So naturally, beginners overshoot their destination, when in fact it’s so easy to fly anywhere by just pointing your ship towards the planet and not touching anything ^^
Thanks for the reply, totally makes sense. I guess I couldn’t figure out what the safe warp speed was and where it is displayed. I see a lot of moving gauges and lines and dials but am not sure how they fit together. I think once I see a detailed explanation of all the cockpit gauge components and what they indicate and how they work and relate to the ship, I’ll be good to go :-). Anyway, not expecting you to do this at this point. Maybe some experienced community members could put together a noob guide…
I logged in for a very short time to have a look . the install was flawless, the game looked beautiful but I couldn’t get my controls right with the x52 pro. I could fly straight but little else initially. Trying to figure out what specifically to do was a challenge also. Initially I just wanted to fly around and explore the game, I did find a hauler but the issues turning etc meant I couldn’t kill it or if I was at the right enemy hauler… or maybe it was a friendly … lol… Game looks beautiful … I’ll log in for longer next time
There won’t be huge cities. Those wouldn’t fullfill a point in terms of gameplay ( we already have factories and military bases ) and would require a lot of art assets for a budget we don’t have.
For details on planets, we’re still planning on adding back various props ( rocks, vegetation etc… ) so they’ll look less barren, and oceans will be in later on too.
