Arcen Games
General Category => Stars Beyond Reach... This World Is Mine => Topic started by: x4000 on April 10, 2015, 09:49:56 am
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Hey guys,
So things are looking excellent for getting the "redshirt" beta testers in on Monday. A few general notes:
1. I've been focused on the early parts of the game, and have only unit tested the middle and late game. The start of the game is feeling super solid to me, but frankly the late game just has not had enough testing yet. That's just how it's going to be, I think. The main criteria for me is that the game is fun, and in my opinion it is.
It's possible that it STOPS being fun after a certain point into the game at the moment, but if that's the case then that's a matter of balance and other refinement, not a ground-up change to anything core. Getting past that point where I know it's fun and that nothing gravitationally-moon-sized needs to change has been my big focus of things to happen prior to beta. We're there already, frankly.
2. The last few days have seen me working on mostly stuff that is aimed at making the play experience more fluid in general. The balance of the early game I got pretty much where I want it (for now) last week, and the last days have seen me pecking away at all the little nits that keep bothering me. Oh, and stuff where I literally could not make a good decision because the information was not exposed to me. I'm sure I missed some stuff of that sort, but all of the early blatant stuff I think I've gotten now.
3. The overall HUD for the game is something Blue and I have been working on for the last few days as well. Just in writing (on my part) and photoshop (on her part) so far. We first got things to where they were arranged the way that we want now that we know all the stuff that will be on the screen. It's VERY different from how the gui currently is in the game. Things on the left have moved to the top, things on the bottom moved to the left, some of the stuff on the left moved to the bottom, etc. The reasoning for that is based on my playtesting and my frustrations with things like screen space being too obscured at times by tooltips or whatnot, and also by how hard or how easy it is to get to certain functions.
So the bottom line is that the new HUD is far superior, but it's also going to take some adjustment to just because things are all moving around. I'm in the boat of having to re-learn muscle memory for those things when they get in place. I have like 40 hours of playtime in the game, so it's going to be an adjustment. The question is: do you want to have your first experience be learning the already-old HUD and then immediately having to relearn the new one? Or would you rather wait for the new GUI?
I don't have a solid ETA on the new GUI, but I'd be surprised if we can't get that done by sometime Tuesday. So it would delay redshirt entry by a day or so, let's say.
Opinions?
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Here I must agree with you. For old players wold be annoying to re-learn the old HUD. For me honestly is pretty annoying to see again every pixel (http://www.ninjaunits.com/convert-pixels-inches/) again and again with the old HUD.
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Yeah, that was my thinking:
Day 1: learn game.
Day 2: relearn entire HUD.
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I'd be fine jumping in right away. I'm used to games having interfaces that are made of crazy (not just Dwarf Fortress, but that one is pretty loopy) so it's not going to bother me.
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And I disagree. DF-level HUD, remember? Relearning the HUD doesn't scare me, no more than learning the HUD. I think I won't be too focused on the interface but rather on the deep (or at least general) mechanisms. HUD, interface, all that is just a way to interact with the core system; what matters is the system. Of course, a clear, streamlined interface is ideal for a finished game, but I haven't accepted to be a redshirt for nothing! Bring in bugs, glitchs and exploits!
Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to sign that paper with "you will die" in little characters at the bottom...
Nha, jokin'! I know what I signed for!
(And it was indeed a "you will die" paper ;D)
EDIT: I disagree with RalphJ, not Misery, who posted just before me :P
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Fair enough! We may wind up having some "first wave redshirts" and "second wave redshirts" then, I don't know. I'm also going to try to get some of the new interface implemented, though not with it being fully pretty, prior to the beta. We'll see.
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I don't even know if I'm a redshirt, but personally I can adjust to interface changes in betas, especially when it's expected.
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I don't even know if I'm a redshirt, but personally I can adjust to interface changes in betas, especially when it's expected.
You're not currently marked as a redshirt or blueshirt. Did you want to be a blueshirt?
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I'm pretty sure that most redshirts want to compare the old HUD and the new one to see which one is better. While you say the new one is far superior we don't have something to compare.
Learning a HUD isn't even that hard as lng as the general game mechanics stay the same. Yes, you have to look now on a different location and have to memorize that one, but how hard is that.
Also, maybe in the end the people prefer the old one over the new one or maybe a mix of both?
I'm open for either option, waiting or testing the old one first. So far we saw the HUD only on screenshots and don't have any practical knowledge how it works.
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I gotcha.
Yeah, the existing hud is definitely not something I would be willing to go back to, though -- it blocks too much of the screen. But at any rate, the new hud is really the same as the old hud, just with things more compactly organized and in some cases actually more legible, too.
Anyhow, point taken. :)
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I don't even know if I'm a redshirt, but personally I can adjust to interface changes in betas, especially when it's expected.
You're not currently marked as a redshirt or blueshirt. Did you want to be a blueshirt?
How many shirt colors are there? Would wearing a shirt of that color be a requirement while testing? I did say a while back I wanted to test in general.
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Haha. :) Copying from here: http://arcengames.com/stars-beyond-reach-first-video-and-tales-of-woe-part-1-of-3/
The game is already at a point where it is feature complete, and has been for a bit. The last few weeks I’ve been going through and wrecking stuff and figuring out balance and so on, but the game is huge and there’s a lot of that sort of thing to do. We’re going to be doing a closed beta, which is basically saying that it’s invite-only. That said, we don’t have a specific cap on the number of people that we’ll let in, so if you want to be added to the list of future beta players, please feel free to post on the forums here.
We’ve got essentially three groups of beta players:
1. Redshirts. These folks are being thrown into the game right at the start, when documentation is the most-poor and so is the balance. If helping to polish the roughest stage excites you, please apply. If it would be frustrating, please don’t. ;) We’ll be sending the Redshirts their invites via PM on the forum probably on Monday the 13th or very close to there. If you’re worried you won’t get the PM, send us your email address instead.
2. Blueshirts. These folks will come in probably about a week after the redshirts. The worst things will have been taken care of, and the blueshirts can clamber over the dead bodies of the redshirts to have a better first experience. But it’s still a lot of live fire going on down there, if you know what I mean.
3. Everybody else. I’ll be bringing in people in in batches every week or half week or so. I want to space this out some, because we only get your first impression once, and as we polish the balance and documentation that is something I’d like to see the results of (is that clearer or not? etc.).
I do have you down as a tester in general, yes.
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Ah cool. Well, I'm happy to test at any stage you want me to. :)
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While my heart says I want this ASAP, my wallet says I should really finish as much work as possible before I dive in. By all means push it to Tuesday.
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I think I lean towards just getting in there - I hadn't had any particular expectation that the HUD would be well-defined by that point anyway. TheVampire100 has a point too that we can offer better feedback if we see both sides, though I don't think I have any particular strength to that opinion.
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Not sure if I'm redshirt, but I wouldn't mind testing with the unfinished HUD. We're getting thrown in the deep end anyway.
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I've been on the fence about beta participation, but after processing noun lists I need a change. If you want to anyone else for the alpha-HUD experience, count me in.
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I think I'm going to wait until Tuesday after all, rather than trying to rush this out Monday. Not for the HUD, as it turns out, but just general balance. As Keith continually (rightly) points out, I really should play through the entire game at least once.
Granted, I've "finished" plenty of games, haha -- but in all cases, it was my citizens winding up killing my civilization. No outside help needed! The main problem, that I only realized this afternoon, was that I was starting to absolutely drown in trash and disease because of a couple of mis-set variables. Tuning those things has brought the "oh my god I'm going to die constantly" feeling of the start of the game waaaay down, which is where I want it. The risk of death in the first 100 turns should be next to nothing -- of course, you might really be sowing the seeds of your later destruction, and if you are really careless then still you can die then. But it shouldn't be the white-knuckle experience I've been having. That comes... later. ;)
Anyway, today was a lot of working on the worst interface bits that were really frustrating me (not the main HUD stuff, which is just a lack of organization -- that the new HUD addresses), but rather things like the tech popups, etc. And then working on the balance of crime, trash, and pollution, with a bonus of figuring out what was causing diseases to be so incredibly deadly so fast.
In the past I got the other aspects of the game feeling the way I wanted, with the crown costs, SP gains and costs and rates of acquisition, the balance of buildings with how they produce and consume energy, the power costs and attack strengths of buildings, the tech tree and its various costs and progressions, etc. Oh, and the whole supply chain thing for food to meals and that plus housing to a population "cap," along with the way that jobs are handled. The food supply chain may still need some interface work (there are some things there that bug me that you guys can probably help me figure out), but the actual underlying function of it is good I think.
Anyway, I was so focused on all that before that I somehow missed this glaring combination of trash and pollution feeding into my crime problems. It makes me wonder what else I missed, and makes me want to have another day of just playing through the game. There aren't any more interface things bothering me at the moment that need addressing prior to beta, so that puts the focus on pure mechanics now, which is good.
Anywho. Tuesday. :)
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But I was going to Tosche station to pick up some power converters.
(I would have voted for earlier, but Keith's point is a good one. Still, I would have loved to work on this over the weekend, rather than waiting for the work week...)
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I've been on the fence about beta participation, but after processing noun lists I need a change. If you want to anyone else for the alpha-HUD experience, count me in.
Added you as a redshirt. If anyone deserves in on that, it's you -- whoo boy on those market item names! As usual, thanks a ton.
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But I was going to Tosche station to pick up some power converters.
You can goof around with your friends when you finish your chores. I need those droids out in the fields.
(Or something to that effect)
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As a redshirt, starting with the old HUD is fine with me
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personally I don't really mind what point of the hud you throw me in if I can survive the mental trauma of losing my whole 50 men strong army in mount blade to 15 men at arms then I think I can survive a potentially annoying hud.
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That made me laugh, with mount and blade. :)
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personally I don't really mind what point of the hud you throw me in if I can survive the mental trauma of losing my whole 50 men strong army in mount blade to 15 men at arms then I think I can survive a potentially annoying hud.
Not surprised seeing as Swadians are completely OP.
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So sad, I'll be AFK (away from home, in fact) for the first days of the week. I would have given some hours to test on Monday, but knowing I'll miss the very first hours of this game makes me cry :'(
Narf, I'll be fine. I can... read books in the train and... look at the birds flying away and... think to how this game would be cool and then suicide.
Maybe. It would be fine this way. Dunno.
(Ow crap, I'm too tired to write a sensed post. Never mind.)
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I'm fine with whatever you guys decide, loved all your games so far and played Skyward Collapse this weekend was blown away again at the cool emergent gameplay. The constant trying not to win reminded me of playing chess against myself with added god powers so cool :-)
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So Chris,
How was your first playthrough?
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As it's been lately for me, I'd love to help, but I just don't have the time nor the energy to betatest anything at present. I'll get the game when it's done and I wish you luck! ^_^
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The constant trying not to win
That bit certainly made the game unique.... not many devs would come up with such a thing, would they?