Hey guys, i wrote a few notes while playing on a few thing in-game during a 2 hour playthough
Please Remember that i have not forgotten that this is still alpha, alot of stuff has a placeholder, or has not been added, content is not there were just bug finders blah blah
alot of this this may have been mentioned before, and maybe on mantis or in Chris's/Keith's todo-list
I wont be adding any of this to mantis myself if it needs to, i look at mantis and just want to take charge of it all and fiddle so i only read it for now.
If you feel i have mentioned something that should go on there, feel free to add it and post below so we dont get dupes from folks reading here and running over to add it.
Some stuffs. General info: (DXDiag will be attached)
OS: Windows 10 Home x64
CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory
GPU: Asus Radeon R9 380X 4GB Video Card
RAID 10 HDD Setup for games+User files+, SSD for OS And Critical Programs
OUTPUT: DVI-to-VGA 1680x1050 59Hz
Extra Infos:
I had a multitude of junky programs running in the background, as is life, but no conflicts or errors.
messed around the frame frequency, no idea what it did, but jacked it up to max anyway,
didn't seem to really do much, but i didn't know what i was looking for.
Have Not yet fiddled with the settings files, so this play is AS SHIPPED
And Now, Fuelled by Monster, Pablo Vegas and a Love of AI:WAR, onto the report
Jumped right into a game, didn't change anything, Cruised through, Default map.
no issues getting into game, enjoyed the first hour, cruising around killing AI.
got boring quick after that, running back and forth defending, rebuilding, but the future content will fix that.
ARK:
within the ARK GUI we have the option to set FRD and the button "Set orders to self/Produced Units"
while loking at the ARK GUI and trying to turn FRD=ON for "Produced Units" it dose nothing, just blinks, this can be circumvented by using the "Select all" button and doing the same action.
The GUI has issues updating, MkIII Sensor showing on the Ship menu (untill you unlock MkIII Missile Frig's) and MkIII fighters showing on the Construct Menu (i know this particular issue is miner as the GUI is a placeholder at the moment)
Also unable to remove ships from the build que without turning the loop off and waiting for the que to clear, in classic we could just Right click and *poof* it was gone
Map:
as someone else said, alot of data is shown on the maps when choosing. this does not really effect the gameplay as you can see the condition of the planet once you have and adjacent planet anyway, Even Fleet command showed you planet levels then choosing your map, it also showed you the specialist ships and so on. maybe hiding where those power tokens are placed in the future of this game would give the AI more power
The icon that shows the selected planet, the bobby up and down circle, my thoughts, leave it high and make it smaller, or lower it to the equator of the planet and restrict how far it moves.
its current hover seems un predictable, very easy to spot, does its job, i just feel it can be a little tidier
Wormholes:
i trust these are placeholders, they need changing up a little, Chris i quite liked the shimmering pools that you had in one of your early video's
Size, the need to scale like the icons as you zoom in and out. though i hit them almost every time, i know some people are having trouble and i can see why
Just Like in classic, CTRL should make them dominant, bring them to the top layer so they are visible through ALL ships that maybe over laying them
Move Keys:
The move keys seem a little OP while zoomed in, a light tap will rotate almost 10* and WASD is another set of keys you can over do by mistake
Zoomed out WASD seem a little slow (just like in Classic)
implement some kind of scaling?
Scrolling in-game is ace, planet and map view
Looks:
Contrast is Blinding, Bloom maybe, could probably fix it if i messed with the settings file, but for the Contrast to be so bright as shipped in an Armageddon Space Sim seems a little much
Tool Tips Please, i saw no tools tips while playing, somebody mentioned tool tips in another post, so i maybe an isolated case of no tool tips, we will see.
SELECTION:
the Double click to select a specific ship type is missing, as well as the Shift click select/deselect, I'm sure its in the notes to be done, but incase its not.
ALL IMPORTANT FPS COUNTS!!!!!!!!!
FPS was Unpredictable at Times in 1 system i could have 30 FPS with 2K ships, in combat another 25FPS with 1.5K ships,
i assume thats a ratio thing, if the ratio was 1:1 there is more 'individual' combat scenarios being calculated and if the ratio is 2:1 there is less calculations, (i could show my working but equasions this late, no thanks)
In Order that i have them written down
early game i didn't record FPS i was getting around 250 out of combat
| # Ships . | | # FPS . | | Action |
| 800 | | 35 | | Combat |
| 1000 | | 40 | | Stationary |
| 1000 | | 35 | | Moving |
| 1500 | | 25 | | Combat |
| 2000 | | 25 | | Combat |
| 2000 | | 20 | | Combat |
Extra Junk i messed with
CPU AFFINITY
| #Cores . | Play State |
| 1 | Simulates worse then AI:WAR Fleet Command, Ships jerk across the screen, combat happens. id surmise that the simulation is running very well, but the top layer updates are having to wait in the pipe to update as you would expect on a single core. in its current state, playable |
| 2 | Plays well enough, becomes jerky, ships skip across the screen, not as bad as running 1 core, 95% increase in smoothing from single core. very playable |
| 3 | Runs Seamlessly, though frame loss (30 down to 27) is noticed. for someone who was using some prototype tri-core that i didn't think existed it will work great |
| 4 | N/A |
Summery.
All in all, for a game released so damn early in its development, (before there is any GUI, Menus, Content) Frickin Great work, the next few updates are going to be real interesting, as there is so few bugs right now i expect a broken game soon guys dont disappoint me.
The biggest issue with the game right now is the content, for me i have seen nothing game breaking that i need to scream about, just a few little things that are going to be brushed up regardless.
Breakdown:
- GUI issues, refreshing correctly, responding correctly.
- Ship selection options require diversifying
- Wormhole scaling, graphics and tweak
- WASD-QE Tweak and scaling
- Graphical changes, Map screen planet selecter, tweak contrast/bloom
- Lack of content, will be corrected as you guys continue your work and we press towards early access
enough of the negatives
Big Thanks and congratulations to the Team
Blu + Chris the Graphics look to die for, beautiful work
Keith + Chris Again Great work putting this together, its already running smooth, Keep it up
PR + Forum Staff + everyone else at Arcen Games. Keep up the great work, thanks for being apart of this production.
Thanks,
Blade
P.S. Chris - Keith - Shot in the dark here, whats the likely hood of a DRM copy so i can stick it on some of the other hardware i have and play test LAN/WAN gameplay
Foot Note:
if there is any cockups, typos, grammar errors, just point them out and il fix it. any and all comments welcome. just be sure to read the whole post before you chew my ass
Edit: Did not see a re-creation of the Wormholes spawning ontop of each other in this playthrough
Edit Over 9000!: gotta look perfect - Typos and Grammer
