Polish : The List of Finishing Details yet to be implemented

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by stonewood1612, July 13, 2014.

  1. kjotak109

    kjotak109 Well-Known Member

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    By tidally locking a planet, only one side of the planet will face the sun while the other side remains in complete darkness. The planets will still orbit the star, though.

    For a moon, that means only one side of the moon will be visible in the planet's sky.

    Yes, I want the space skybox to fade to the planet's atmosphere color when I zoom in. In all my current screenshots, I can still see the space skybox clearly.
  2. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    Soooooo I'm back from a long break on the forums ;)
    Although I was watching the forum daily, I decided to remain silent, not only because I had a holiday but also because I was a little bit tired... But I'm back!

    I updated the list, with information from the latest build. I know Uber is looking for polishment ideas so I want them to see this thread again.

    Give some thoughts, especially on those that are marked for it.
    I'm soon™ going to remove some of the lines that are done, so I have more space to work with. (because I didn't reserve a second post, silly me)

    And 200 likes! Wolololo! :)
  3. comham

    comham Active Member

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    Items 1 through 9002: metal planet superlasers, a lá the Death Star
  4. LmalukoBR

    LmalukoBR Well-Known Member

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    1. One word: Performance! The game needs to stop slowing to a crawl and crashing every time there are a lot of units (the server side, if the client crashes well that is your ram dying).

    2. Final balancing act for naval. It really needs work.

    3. System designer must show metal spots, its silly to have to start a game against the AI every time i wanna see the metal distribution of the planet.

    4. A system to better balance the metal distribution on and around spawn points.

    5. Improve Pathfinding in teleporters to avoid units getting stuck.

    6. That last spot bug in the lobby, when people can't join even if there is an open spot (usually the last one), and you have to add another spot, wait for someone to join and then remove it.

    7. Single player games against the AI not inside the multiplayer screen.

    8.Better system preview in lobby.

    9.A button to refresh the game list in the lobby.

    10. Fix the key binding section so that we don't have to type "ctrl", instead of just pushing the key, every time we want to set bindings like"ctrl+a".

    11.Indicator for destruction radius upon planet smash, now that it is proportional.

    12.Better pathing for naval.

    13. Reclaiming of trees to start buildings can slow down construction to a crawl.

    14. Some exploits like commander hopping between planets with the astreus, to bring the game to a stale mate. Space laser being able to fire instantly when entering orbit allowing for commander instakill with 5 of them, despite defenses.

    15. More tutorials for the advanced stuff.

    16. An indicator to show when a player has disconnected.

    17.An option for the game not to end when the commander dies.

    18. Fix the social functions of the game.

    19. Add an ETA for orbital units.

    20. Re-balance the Astreus is rather useless, mid to late game.
  5. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    All right. I see some good ones here!

    1. Performance is always being worked on, and isn't really something you forget to work on, so it's something general rather than a detail that should be added to the list.

    2. Anything regarding balance is not going the be discussed by me (I'm terrible at balance discussions), there is an entire separate forum for that.

    3. I'm not sure but I think metal placement is random every time for every planet for every game so it would be rather confusing to have it show in the editor. If it's not random than sure.

    4. Heh maybe?

    5 & 6. That's a bug fix, I'm not keeping bugs.

    7. That's on the list! :)

    8. Agreed, but what do you suggest in particular?

    9. Wasn't there one before? I'm sure they'll add it back.

    10. Absolutely. That will go on the list.

    11. Yep that should be there too.

    12. Like performance, patching is being worked on at all time.

    13. Maybe that's on purpose? I kinda like it that way, but it could be improved so that the fabricators moves in range of multiple trees at once so it doesn't have to move closer for every damn tree.

    14. Well there will be always exploits, but I'm sure they'll fix a few of them.

    15. Yes absolutely.

    16. Definitely. That goes on the list.

    17. Sounds like a different game mode to me. I'd consider that a larger feature even though it's almost identical to normal games.

    18. Bugfixes and general improvements again.

    19. That would be cool! I'll add that.

    20. Balance...

    Thank you for your ideas! :D
  6. Engineer1234

    Engineer1234 Well-Known Member

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  7. BallsonFire

    BallsonFire Active Member

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    I would love to see the some lava animations. this would really make lava planets fun to play and nice eye candy
    stonewood1612 and kjotak109 like this.
  8. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    Minor updates to the list here and there, fixed some mistakes I made yesterday:)

    I also turned some more important ones to bold.
    kjotak109 likes this.
  9. Taxman66

    Taxman66 Well-Known Member

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    There should be heaps more projectiles, not just ballistic and laser (well there should be several different types of lasers). Plasma, high explosive, rockets, missiles etc.
    ace63 and optimi like this.
  10. kryovow

    kryovow Well-Known Member

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    my most important points right now:

    UI
    • move building blueprints
    • better display of building loop in factory and editing of it
    • more lobby options for random system generation
    • ladder
    • clan support
    • working friends list
    Gameplay
    • more ways to invade a planet (astraeus needs to be viable or a unit that does transport several units, teleport less powerful, unit cannon, laser platform being more usable but maybe less dangerous against commanders (less point damage, more splash?), more options to build up a bridge head)
    • navy balancing obviously and making navy actually useful also on planets with not so much water.
    • Galactic war being multiplayer and finished, cos right now GW is a percent of what it could be
    • balancing in general
    • the way astraeus works is annoying me, i want it to be like in the trailer, why launch it with a rocket, if it can enter orbit on its own? Astraeus could build a rocket under themselves to be launched, it would not change gameplay, just an animation.
    • fixing remaining bugs
    PERFORMANCE
    • performance
    • performance
    • performance
    Stretch goals
    • all stretch goals should be reached by a point in the not so far future
    • metal planets should get some kind of big laser to shoot at things from orbit
    • gas giants of course
    most of the points in the OP and in this thread are meaningless to me. Visuals are not so important in PA for example.
  11. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    I renamed the thread because of this post. Well not only because of this post, but just because I wasn't clear anyway. If you didn't read the intro in the OP then you would probably make post like this one.

    So I'm talking about details, not major features like gas giants, asteroid belts, GW, ladder,... and also not of general things that are being worked on all the time (things that are never really complete) like performance, balance, fixing bugs.

    Of course you can make posts like this, but I won't add certain things to the list. Details is all I was talking about. Because details can be easily forgotten, while major features cannot. That's the point of this list. To remind the devs of things they can easily forget.

    Am I clear now? :p

    So kryovow, I agree on all of the suggestions you included in your post, only a few of them are details that will go on this list.
    lokiCML likes this.
  12. kryovow

    kryovow Well-Known Member

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    ah ok sorry
  13. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    No problem my man, you're definitely not the only one. It was me who should have been more clear in the first place. ;)
  14. lokiCML

    lokiCML Post Master General

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    Extremely important polish:
    1. Failing gracefully with user understandable and helpful error messages and in general. All the user understandable and helpful error messages should have a articles in the PA knowledgebase provide a link and name of article. The article should go in depth about the problem and the message should provide enough detail to help the user understand what is going on. So they can resolve the issue or other people can resolve the issue with them. I cannot stress how important this is. This is important if not done cannot be forgiven after release, 1.0, launch, or whatever it is called. The principle must be applied to all error messages regardless of it being unrecoverable or not. Absolutely must be user understandable and useful otherwise its pointless. This has to be applied through, the entire chain, the launcher, the game itself, etc. Again I cannot stress how important this is.:)
    2. The Uber Launcher must have a help section in it that contains all the commandline switches. So you can get then without going to the commandline. This would be very helpful and useful.:)
    3. Built in bug reporter functionality needs to be fixed. E.g. FS#3511
    4. Open Source components need to be properly attributed in order to avoid legal issues.;)
    5. 4k now a eventually 8K support for display because nobody likes to play games with a fuzzy screen while squinting. E.g. retina and too tiny.:)
    Other polish:
    • Useful system preview something like Enhanced System Preview in functionality.
    • A system view that tells you all the metal spots on planet in the solar system. E.g. Better System View
    • A report mechanism built into the game. That provides the information required to help Uber with the ability to add additional notes by the user. Also provide examples to help them. (original idea)*
    • Unit icons have different shape for each player.
    • Magma and volcanic rock on lava planets need to have greater differentiation. E.g. The lava is floor!
    • Uber Cannon damage area needs to be displayed. E.g. Uber Cannon Range Unshown?
    • Print screen functionality needs to work properly. E.g. FS#2503
    • Key binding issues must be resolved. E.g. FS#3638
    • Measurements in a human understandable way. E.g. km, km2, m, m2
    • The ability to turn off the graphical intense elements in the menu like Lightweight Menus provide.
    Edit2: Could require major PA engine overhaul. Waiting for feedback in original thread.*
    Edit3: Also some screen capturing software is having issues with PA causing them to crash these are FRAPS, PlayClaw, and Dxtory. FRAPS is a definite concern due to its large installed base. E.g. http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558751813508748383/
    Edit4: 4. because nobody wants legal issues. Also added some additional other polish bullet point.
    Edit5: Added # 5 to extremely important polish.
    Last edited: August 13, 2014
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  15. squishypon3

    squishypon3 Post Master General

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    System view used to tell you the metal spots actually I think... But it was removed as people cheated with it or something. IIRC
  16. 23chxt

    23chxt New Member

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    -Balance
    -Performance
    -Build Match Making
    -Ladders
    -Complete the kick start goals
  17. vackillers

    vackillers Well-Known Member

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    These 3 things should have been done a long time ago:

    -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

    Its a shame we are still waiting for this. Lava illumination is an absolute must if you want it to look anything like the concept art, doesn't even look hot, its just an orange mess atm and hasn't been touched since alpha.
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  18. stonewood1612

    stonewood1612 Well-Known Member

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    Definitely some great suggestions here, I'll add some to the list tomorrow, I don't have much time left today.

    Also post-release suggestions are welcome too my friend. ;)

    Yeah, to be entirely honest, the lava right now looks like splats of pumpkin soup.
    vackillers likes this.
  19. lokiCML

    lokiCML Post Master General

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    Welcome to the forum.:)

    Performance is an ongoing thing. Matchmaking and ladders will be in until after release this is confirmed check out this thread. KS stretch goals are partially in depending on which one or push back until after release. Any comments on matchmaking and ladders please put the in that thread linked to.;)

    Edit: if you're having performance issues right now please read: How to report issues where the game is running slow.
    Make sure you create a separate thread in the support forum and follow the instructions carefully.;)
    Last edited: August 13, 2014
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  20. lokiCML

    lokiCML Post Master General

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    While it sounds like it would need an engine overhaul in order to do it. According to the conversation in that thread but I could be wrong. Also I was going to make a thread like this but you did it before me so thank you and hopefully this helps Uber.:D
    Great minds think alike; something needs to be done about the lava planets.;)

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