Hi there,
Below is my follow up to the tutorial section based on the new changes that have occurred since I put up this post. If you're a TLDR type, see the summary after the ------.
Welcome to combat
Gee this looks different than the last time. Not sure about the radar seems to show little of interest. Time will tell if it's of any use.
Bah, did it again and closed the dialog before reading it, so I've no idea how to zoom out. Assuming must be a mouse wheel thing which I don't have. Fingers crossed there's a keyboard shortcut......yep. Page up/down.
Pointing snorkel thing is better than the last one. Part of it shadows out...hmm.....speed probably... Press left mouse and a dialog popped up, now I'm not sure what the shadow does. Dialog useful though.
Some sort of bauble gets attached to my cursor. Oh it's autofire target, a bit flashy, but makes sense. I press it on a ship but it doesn't seem be targeting that ship.
Get to move the snorkel again, not sure it has anything to do with speed. I get the flashy autofire target and I press it on the enemy ship. This time it hits what I aimed at. Must have not done the right thing the first time.
Enemy ship slips out of my window, so I select the radar to try and move the view screen. Nothing happens.
Hey I can pan and scan now! Wahoo! Not sure whether the radar is of use now, taking up real estate for little value. Again time will tell whether it's of any use.
Gah the music is starting to annoy me now. I love Pablo's othe works, but I thing this one is getting old too quick. Turning the music off.
Flagship power management unlocked! Yay for me. I know it's only the first combat, but I like this positive acknowledgement and the explanation of what's going on. Nice.
I will say the hurry up button is useful, I wonder if there's an option to make it the default. The scrolling text is going to get old pretty quick.
Ooh very nice. Next 'hurry up' or two later I see that the snorkel can get longer by adjusting the bars. Gee the shadow on the snorkel actually wasn't a speed thing per say - waypoint along the movement line. Duh obvious to me now.
After close the dialog I'm back to the combat screen, so I turn the music back on as it seems empty and then off. I think I just found a track I don't like by Pablo (sorry). I make a mental note to taking one of the ai war tracks as a possible replacement.
Anyway back to the combat. One quick selection with the rail gun and they're now all dead. Like the last time, what's this about escape pods? I murder three in their escape pods? I don't think I was given a choice on that. Sorry pilots.
"Sweet mother...."
The solar map looks a lot better, fingers cross that odd blob thing is gone...I zoom out...no sign of the blob....hmm.
Nice overlay. Visually more appealing. Visually better than their other games, but hey I didn't purchase the others for eye candy. Fingers crossed there's substance beyond this point.
Quests at the top of the screen, last time I had no clue what to do here with little purpose but to fly the blob around and hope it would become apparent. This time the direction is clear.
I turn on the music again and this time the music is a lot better. Will definitely replace that combat soundtrack with another from AI War (sorry again Pablo). Gets very grinding on the ears.
So I select the Evuck? Quest. Hmmm get to a drop point... Not too hard to do but expect this would be the case for now. Quest results say good and negative things, it makes sense, but what 5 of Terraforming Kit? Do I want one? Next dialog that pops up I vow to read. Still the text at the bottom of this huge dialog of empty is out of place, seems it would be better at the top of the screen, but hey that's pretty minor.
Argh back to the solar map where's the quest suff gone? Now what should I do. Like the music nice atmosphere.
I right click on Tiamat and get on nice transparent list with an odd looking dialog down the centre bottom. Clunky is the word for this here. Again minor but will get annoying after long hours of play. This type of stuff needs to be consistent so far nothing is uniform - still minor though.
I select another planet and do a friendly act. Sure enough my minor niggle is there again. Nice see the background image, but a tiny green border text box at the top squashed with text, and a humongous one down the bottom. Where the close button? Oh x top right, this is probably just one large dialog box with complete transparency, doesn't work for me. Consistency in interface leaves a lot to be desired.
I select x and are back at the map.....I try another friendly act and same dialog appears. I think I'm supposed to select the squashed text box (duh)
Ack! Tiny text in a grey on a black background, gah this is painful to read. I haven't got my HCI book handy but I do recall that this is a poor choice of interactive metaphors. Don't really care about this much when I play games so I'll let it slide and press the "take action" button.
More combat music I think it's time I changed that track... Muting it for the moment.
"Tech tree unlocked" fantastic. I open it up and see some ghosted outed items. It's ok, but wish this was more 'tree like' hard to tell the prerequisites at the moment.
5 minutes late I notice an advisor button, and a breath a sigh of relief I know have a way to learn the game without doing a blind approach. It's not much at this stage, but it is something. Still I look at the options and wish for more quest like info.
I save the game at this point.
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Whilst I didn't go far beyond the tutorial, I think it safe to say I enjoyed it a lot better this time. There's still some glaring interface oddities, and walls of tiny text that could do with some adjustment in size and layout but still a better start.
What I don't like is the battle music, to each his own, but I think it might be worth reviewing as it gets old and grinding pretty quick.
Is the game my cup of tea? Still not sure, I love AI War (crap at it though) and Skyward Collapse; but TLF still feels like a bit impenetrable as to what I should be doing or focussing on initially.
The solar map hides many interesting things but the interface still seems to be making it hard to get going. In a round about sort of way I'm not sure whether my interest to learn the interface mechanics is worth my time in the long term. To be fair though I need to play it a lot further tomorrow after my own crazy schedule dies down a little.