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Pre Demeter Global feedback for actual features


Jeronimo

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Demeter is coming and promising features been revealed, specially concerning the optimization of the game, i would like to point out once more several aspects of the game that are here from day 1 and should be considered for improvement in a very near future. 

 

 

Gameplay:
- Collision box:

Walking on micro voxel construct floors is like wearing high heels shoes and having heels getting stuck in every little surfaces details, while sometimes having really undesired collision and repelling the player away.

 

- Jetpack run:
Double tap forward sometimes too sensitive and is generator of jump scares. So maybe need to allocate a different keybind for it

 

- Mining tools:
Demeter will revolutionize the mining mechanics, so maybe we dont need all those mining and scanning tools. Could fusion them into 1

 

- Surface ores:
Surface ores should be minable anywhere (including claimed tiles) by anyone. They arent a source for mass production, but mainly as starting resource. Someone crashing into a huge claimed zone (such as the zone all around Alioth markets) without scrap, has no other way but to run for hours to be able to reach an unclaimed tile for couple scraps.

 

- Inventories:
Inventories are real mess, we should be able to reorganize by type
Items are way too many, specially honeycombs
Search bar is buggy by the way, not functioning in certain situations like barter inventory search

 

 

 

Flight Mechanics:
- The stall vector bug:

It is possible to stop a dynamic construct (any weight) in mid air, with only brakes, no anti grav, by aligning the forward vector with the gravity while stalling

 

- Cross Section lift:
While cross sections are used to generate drag, it would be better that they also produce lift!
This would have multiple advantages:
First, that would reduce the number of wings and stabilizers elements on construct, by this reducing the construct data weight (so, beneficial for server, beneficial for data transfer). 
Then,  and most important, would release players creation potential, allowing them to design their own voxel wings, because they might want wings long  instead of wide, but right now we don't have choice.

 

- Engines power:
I strongly, but very strongly do believe all engines thrusts needs to be scaled up.
Engines power do not actually match at all their size in comparison with their core size.
Players always use the superior size elements depending on the core size. No one will use M engines on a M core.
As well players will always try to reach better performances, by adding more and more engines, therefor greatly and unfortunately compromising on the design (more elements = greater construct data weight).
Design is a too important point for the image of the game, skilled creators struggle way too much to do something that looks good and performs good, and we dont want evolve in a game invaded by borg cubes

 

- Fuel consumption:
Just scaled down fuel consumption, its a game where we are mainly supposed to fly. For instance, a very basic VTOL construct has no more than 15min fuel autonomy in atmosphere, this is not acceptable.

 

 

 

Honeycombs:
To me and all the players i have talked to, honeycomb is the game biggest mess, while it is the game creativity most important content.
Honeycombs can be a multiple pages topic, so important they are and so badly they are treated, and as myself an architect and paying extremely attention to materials i have couple words to say about it.

 

Names choices show there has been no research made on this topic
Galvanized, is a zinc coating exclusively for iron and steel to protect from rust, so it is not colored in any cases, and cant be applied over aluminium
Brick is not a material, Ceramic is, with what we can make bricks or porcelain

 

I suggest using 4 basic finishes names instead: "natural / polished / brushed / painted"
I addition of that there is a big difference between "painted", "tainted" and "textured"

 

For honeycombs to be efficiently accurate and become the best creativity content, we need a paint tool! 

I suggest the replacement of the "Voxel replacement tool" (which is absolutely useless and it is equivalent to select and copy paste) by a "Voxel paint tool"

 

This tool could have the right side slot bar, and a TAB window (the same way we open filters for the scanner), with the above named properties and colors selectors:
/ a button for selecting the finish (natural / polished / brushed / painted matt / painted glossy)
/ a RGB rainbow for selecting a color (the same way it has been done for character color selection i guess)
/ a button for selecting a pattern/texture/bump that would be applied on top of it
And once we are satisfied with a result we could drag and drop it to a right side bar slot and exit TAB to use the tool on our construct

 

Most of all a paint tool would empty our inventories and industries, leaving in there only the raw/natural version of it
HUGE HUGE benefit for the game data, no more list of hundreds of different honeycombs to deal with our industries, our inventories,  markets, and bandwidth to load all that mess

 

5 years dev team been trying, updating and failing those precious honeycombs, the render and colors of them is nowadays the worst it has ever been

 

 

 

Element:
- Design:

The elements design is bad and not in harmony with the game global structure and mechanics. Those elements could fit in any other games and are not adapted at all to be fit into a voxel creation, they are staining our creations.
The edit vertex update will help us go around them for a better looking seamless fitting, but will not remove this obvious stains looking detailed mesh on top of low details voxels surfaces
In the first published artworks and ingame screenshots 6 years ago, there was that white long squared engine, which is exactly the type of compatible design for voxels, but you guys made it over complicated....

 

- Colors: 
Colors is also a big part of the stain effect elements have on creations, so please, let us right click on elements and choose a color by ourselves

 

- Decorative:
There should be more decorative and structural simple elements of different scales(bars, panels, truss etc...), for players not skilled enough with voxels, where voxels could be a minority and a link between those elements

 

And btw, orange flames from engine fire is supposed to be due to oxygen burning, so to be accurate, orange particles for atmo engines, and blue particles for space engines...

 

- Obstruction

I do think obstruction for engines and adjusters needs to be reviewed.

Distance to target of obstruction needs to be lowered

Cone angle needs to be clarified

Obstruction cone need a graphic representation

 

 

 

LUA:
- Slots:

We should be able to call every single elements within same construct by their names without having to link them. So no more lua slots problem, and linkage would be for manual interactions without use of lua.
If i link this button with that door, i can manually open and close that door
But if i have 20 doors, i should be able to open or close them independently with 1 single programming board just by calling them by their names
Since automatic naming differentiate elements of same type with [number], those could be stacked in a table using this number as keys.

 

- Keybindings:
Would be nice to enable all the keyboard keys recognition for lua programming

 

- Resell:
When the "save to inventory with drm" button when we right click on scripted elements? so we could barter our scripts more easily.

 

 

 

Good luck, we are getting there!
Cheers

Jeronimo

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