Polish : The List of Finishing Details yet to be implemented

So we're closing in on release PA IS RELEASED, yet there is still a lot of work to do. Most people think about the large features first, with that I mean asteroid belts, galactic war, ladder and ranked stuff...

But I like to look at details, since I have an eye for it. Details make a finished game truly look finished. Any game can benefit from having more attention on details.

There's so many things that can be done in PA, and I'm not sure if there is someone keeping a 'list' with all the finishing touches for release. That's why I'm keeping one. So if someone at Uber ever thinks "wait, did we just finish the game?" look at this list first and check to see if you forgot anything!

The point of it is also for YOU to submit details you want to see in the future, so suggest what you can think of!

Visual
-better water, foam/wave particle effects for moving naval units
-animated lava, more glowiness, it really shouldn't be a ground texture
-more glowiness to all lights in general
-better anti-aliasing
-clouds (option)
- gas giants with rings (like Saturn)!
- the jig's shaft should make a little 'swirlpool' where it touches the planet
-incoming asteroids should burn on atmosphere entry
-sinking ship wreckages was confirmed months ago, 'on our radar', although wrecks were removed?
-fire & smoke for damaged buildings, wreckages
- make planet smashes way cooler by turning everything into scorched land and lava... At least there could be a pool of lava in the crater
- vulcanos spitting out fireballs and smoke
- different colored suns and sizes
- general improvements to weapon & explosion particle effects. Big explosions done!
- dox fire lasers. pew pew!
- asteroid belts should have mini asteroid particles and small objects everywhere, for pure aesthetics We'll see when asteroid belts get implemented first
- return of the camera shaking (option)
- death animations for larger units, collapsing structures
- commanders having each a unique decal displayed on them, like their name or an icon, to make them more unique (Delta would have a triangle on his chest, the Alpha a big 'A',... )
- those decals (line above) could be displayed on some structures - needs thoughts
- multiple stars in a system
- commanders leave footprints/tracks
- commander death animation
- more player colours, see burntcustard's thread

Uberface
- an in-game way of showing your title (KS backer, cosmic owner, alpha/beta participants, dev,...) to players, something like an icon next to your name, based on the badges you got (option for privacy), or a decal on your commander (conflicts with decal idea above)
- brief animation for the UI, so it doesn't instantly appear/vanish, but rather 'moves in/out' the screen
- a better armory preview for commanders (360° view perhaps?)
- RETURN OF THE SECONDARY COLOUR, able to select your second color DONE, finally
- Dual-colour icons for games with more than 10 players, allowing one primary colour to be used twice for each 10 players, with a different secondary colour.
- ability to select what comm the AI would use, or making it random (a '?' displayed in the lobby)
- Blast radius indicator for planet smashes & nukes
- ETA for orbital units moving interplanetary
- better indication for (infinite) queues for factories and editing them
- system overview needs to provide more info, like metal spot count for planets
- strategic icons for planets in the system overview (that used to be in beta)
- Ubercannon needs to display it's blast radius
- Graphics menu needs to have more options and stuff
- You still can't just delete GW saves without loading them first

Gameplay
- a commander loaded in an astreus should be damaged, but not destroyed if the transport was destroyed while it was in the air layer.
-loaded astrei should drop a their cargo on destruction, having it explode on impact with the surface
- UPDATE THE TUTORIAL! Being worked on!
- Halley placement should matter more, to make more sense. You shouldn't be able to put a halley on completely other sides of the planet and have it work
- polishment on orbital movement
- an awesome opening cinematic camera like in the KS video, that shows the commander coming in from space in a pod, landing, and then panning up to gameplay view.
- a similar cinematic that gives you a brief look at all the starting planets, and then pans to the system view, allowing you to select spawn points afterwards. idea, needs thoughts
- reclaimable natural boulders for metal needs more thoughts
- being able to reposition building previews
- why on earth do storage structures still use circle area build? There should be a way to switch between line and rectangle/circle.

Launcher
- help section for commandlines

Other
- more bacon
- error messages need to be understandable and helpful to the user. If it's a known error, it should provide a link to the related article.
- retina and 4k support

Last update: 26 dec


Suggest and discuss, and I'll add your suggestions to the list!

Cheers

A lot of these are open for debate I think, I would be opposed to many of your suggestions and some of the others seem too irrelevant to say that they are needed for the game to be considered finished. In general a bit more graphical pizzazz is always welcome, but nothing graphical really feels like it's missing in the current state.

Regarding your interface suggestions, having any badges you have permanently visible might be a bit embarrassing for some players. Let's say you've backed $10k and every player knows it, it's going to be a constant topic for comment by other players and that would get tiresome very fast when all a person wants to do is play a game. Not sure I know what you mean by showing building previews, I think you mean like what happens when you press shift - there's no need to have previews on unless you're in building mode so I think this works fine. It does seems a little buggy so it would benefit from more consistency but I'm sure that's coming. On a related note, holding down shift should show all orders more consistently, basically an exact copy of the way Supreme Commander 1 does it, but again that's a relatively trivial thing to implement and I'm sure it's on the to-do list.

One thing I think that does need to be sorted for polish and suspension of disbelief is what happens when planets collide (just in orbit, not fired by Halley). Currently orbits will overlap and planets will clip through each other. The solutions I can see would be either to have the system editor recognise intersecting orbits and adjust them accordingly, or have it the same as now but have planets smash into each other causing massive damage. In the latter case there would need to be a check done by the system editor to warn the maker that this was going to happen (and perhaps what time in the game it would happen), otherwise major irritation would ensue.

General weapon effects for units; impact effects, smoke trails, projectiles etc.

Pew pew lazzors for the dox

Since you're talking aesthetics ...

1) Planets under the effects of a Halley should rotate to match the direction of travel (how many times have you seen a planet travelling TOWARDS the Halley thruster output?)

2) Halley placement should be considered for movement, as well as count. On a planet that needs 2 Halleys you can currently put them on opposite sides and they'll still work.

I disagree with this one.
Given how much air is used in this game, it'd just get in the way more than anything.

Oops, I meant damaged aircraft… I wouldn't agree with smoke trails for everything either.

Discussion is why we are here man!

Well, if you're 10k backer, it won't say I BACKED 10K every where, it would just say KS backer for everyone who backed KS. Also there should be an option to not show your title, because there will be indeed people who don't want to show it.

Yes I meant the outlines when you press shift. It's an option, but if you hold shift it also shows movement arrows. I have previews on all the time and this way you can see in spectator view what players are planning to build.

Incidental collision with planets is LIVE NOW in pte. Go check it out, Garat made a video too.

Here's my list:

• Proper weapon effects (visual and audio)
• Polish run on orbital behaviour, primarily movement (both in orbit and interplanetary)
• Changing orbits of planetary bodies with Halleys
• Asteroid belts
• Practical deformation of planet terrain after smashing
• Proportional smashing damage
• Bacon biome

There's a few more, but I'll update when it comes to mind.

I would like to see, if nothing else than for solo gaming:

1) A time reduction dial, where the game would run at an adjustable fraction of normal speed. This can be changed on the fly. For example I would like to run the game at 1/2 or 1/5 normal speed.

2) The ability to restrict the tech in the game similar to Galactic War. For example I would like to play a game with just land units, no air, no naval, no space.

Both of these would make learning the game easier as you would have more time to make decisions, and you could concentrate on specific units rather than dealing with everything at once.

You can sort of do that already, by adjusting the income values for you and the AI. There's a lightning icon for each player on the right-hand side of the game lobby. You can set yours to 2.0 to double your income, and set the AI to 0.5 to halve his. Not sure what the full range of values is but it definitely goes down to 0 and up to 10 (0. Means the AI doesn't build anything).

If you wanted everything slower you could set yours to say 0.5 and the AI to 0.2 ...?

TA and Supcom both had adjustable speed, it's only really useful for people who are still learning but if it's easy enough to do it should definitely be an option.

Well, there is wreckage. But I'd like to see decals drawn on damaged objects (similar to the scorch decals on the ground), based on how much health they lost. Maybe some damage indicators like particles and debris flying around when stuff gets hit or explodes. And more/cooler explosions (includes a better planet smashing (we all know how it should look!)).
Also, I think the nuke crater decal should stay forever, and not vanish after some minutes.

@lava planet: The lava isn't even like the water, it's actually on the same height as the ground, and it's neither moving (has no animation) nor it's filling a crater when it should...it's basically just impassable, brighter terrain. Also, the lava planets really need some updates overall, they look quite barren and not as interesting as they did in the livestream I saw.

Back then that's what they looked like, they removed the pools because.. pathing (I think?)

Also:
Gas planets
Metal planet superweapons
(Biomes 2.0, Uber? Please?)

• Asteroid belts

instead of throwing planets/moons i prefer to throw asteroids.

Procedurally generated space scape.
Unicorns - not enough unicorns.
More awesomeness. - bring on the awesome sauce.

[Updated]

This is what the game needs to become awesome:

- Camera shakes (for artillery impacts, nuclear explosions, commander entry animation, and planet smashing)

- An easy annihilation button that appears when enough Halleys are built on a capable planet smasher (same for nuclear missile launchers).

- Damage effects for larger units (sparks flying out, fire burns, etc)

- Death animations for larger, mobile units (ex: air crash for air units instead of mid-air explosions)

- A different system editor/match background

- Nuke explosion sound times in with impact (Right now the sound comes only when the explosion "balloons out.")

- More to come...

The camera shake used to be in actually! For nukes. I miss it.

I don't miss it