Some early alpha-feedback, looks great so far!

I wont say anything about the animations or stability problems of the servers, its early alpha so,it would make no sense to talk about those kind of things.I only will comment the gameplayrelated design-decsicions.



Things which i liked:

-The white grid before placing the buildings and the green nano-goo animations, while constructing, looking great. I like the designconcept of "spraying" your units instead of building them.

-Its very appeasing, that no unit speaks while selecting it, thanks for that a lot and keep it that way.Also the rudimentary spaceambient sound fit well into the game , Make some melodic techno or trance too.

-The explosions look already great.

-Even at this early stage, the terrain of your planet looks really natural, with all the little details, like cracks in the ground ,hills and vegetation, various climaticzones ,from polar regions to desserts and green valleys, all combined in one planet.

What's about dustclouds, beyond the cars, while moving with them through a desert sandy like terrain?

-Like the look already of waves crushing onto the beach.

-The lightning-engine, with its long shadows, when the sun is coming up, looks really good.

-I like the glow around your planet and how the moon and the sun is coming up on the horizon, if you zoom half ways out.

Summary: The atmosphere is defiantly there in the game. Even in the alpha.





Things which could be optimized:

-The green/blue rectangles around your units, when you have selected them , they just look unnatural ,especially when you clump up your units, its a mess of lines getting into each other.That doesn't look appealing at all for the eyes
conceptwise.Too many sharp angles mixed up.If you want to stick to this way of highlighting units, then change the geometrically shape in circles around the units instead of rectangles.

This counts only for the units. The rectangles around buildings fit nicely!

-It is often hard to tell which units i am controlling/seeing right now, even in the zoomed out view, with all the symbols. Some of the units, like the big wingsized bombers and small buggy's, can be deviated good form each other . Other units looking too similar. Its also hard to spot the army-composition of your enemy. Same reason. Can you make an keyboardshortcut for an fixed cameraview in an height, that i can see most of my units as units ? I understand that you want large scales, but a fixed overview in this height, to toggle onto, in certain moments of combat, would be really helpful.

Idea which could help:

Or maybe some windowsized magnifier, which enlarges all units under it, when you holding it onto this area of the screen!

If you are holding down an key like "M" for magnifie, while building an rectangle with your diagonal mousemovement, the magnifier could be in this rectangle, whose size you can determine by the size or your mousemovement.With this, you could stay zoomed out and at the same time would see an part of the screen, whose size you determine with the movement of your mouse , enlarged.

And if you want to let the enlargement disappear, just stop pressing the Button "M" on your keyboard.But as long as you press "M" you can move freely around with your mouse to jump to another area andthe magnifier stays always on the same position on your screen following you around(possibility 1) or he stays over the selected area and you can jump/or scroll in an other area without him following you (possibility 2).

Something like an combination out of this videos with no visible edge and the ability to adjust the Magnifier by drawing a variable sized diagonal with your mouse to get the magnifier-rectangle with this diagonal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jc8ddS-znk



-The nightside of the planet looks not dark enough. It should not be black, so that you can't see your units, but would it not be cool if the area would be so dark, that the lights in the base and on your units would really be lighten the area mostly alone. So every half rotation the atmosphere of the game would totally change from ominous to an more relaxed stage.Maybe some units can turn there light of in the night and become stealth units,maybe some scout units which can than unseen scout the area if not an spotlight hits them.

-the unitselection-sounds are a bit annoying and high pitched, i must say.Something sounding less cartoony,would fit better.Also the buildingplacement sounds should feel a bit more massive and player empowering,while placing them down. Same goes for the movement sounds. If jets flying by, no matter of your own or enemy's, it should slice the air with this typical jetstream sound of the engine and ultrasonic boom.So that you know, a very short amount of time before the jets are coming, that they will come.

-Some units, like the commander, walk painfully slow, even zoomed wide in, regarding to the size of the planets.

-It looks like every unit is firing with the same kind of ammunition and all fire-effects look the same? Is this intended or just alpha. It takes away some of the apart from that remarkable atmosphere!


Congratulation for the good alpha start!

It would be also interesting to know, how your updatestrategy is?
How often will you update/patch the alpha with new content.
Will it be on a regular base or at irregular intervals.

It would be nice to get feedback from you.

I find very little to disagree with in your assessment.

I totally agree about the selection sounds & order sounds.
I really didnt like them very much, just seen the videos, i still havent gotten any alpha email yet

I much prefer the sounds to actually reflect the units, rather than a arbitrary ui sound.
Like in TA, where it was the clanking and mechanisms within the unit itself that made the sound (engines roaring upon a move command, gears spinning up when selecting, shells being loaded when given an attack command).

But i must say it looks WAY better than i expected. The tiny rocks with individual shadows, amazing. Looks just like the desert concept render. If the little green desert foliage can also reach the same level of detail, with the same kind of subtle HDR, it'll be one of the best looking RTS imo.

Though i agree about the night side. It'll probably get darker once the tech gets more solid and they get more lighting stuff finalized. There's little point making the night dark before there are lights there for us to see
But definetly true, with HDR it'll be wonderful. Days need to feel hot and warm!

Correct. Tone mapping should make it so we can have more contrast on the backside but still see. I can't wait to do some post proc stuff. Need moar coderz!!!

a window that magnifies areas or follows your mouse sounds interesting, lots of questions on how that would work though

Inset window in the corner that renders your mouse position zoomed in?

That or a zoom button, I absolutely LOVED that in Darwinia when I was desperately trying to micromanage Squaddies.

That would be pretty damn useful.

that's what I thought as well. I was trying to imagine how you could also seamlessly give orders from a window that followed your mouse

if its a set perspective or "move window camera to mouse" command then it would be simple enough

just magnifying your mouse has a lot of utility too I guess but that's what the mousewheel does.

Yes! I'd also love to see options for things like 'automatically track scout units in a small popout window' as well, as my first instinct is to send 3-4 scouts across the globe, and I'd like to keep track of what they can see.

Persistent scouting ghosts like supcom/zero-k would be good too i.e. anything you scout remains on the map until confirmed destroyed or moved

I like scouting ghosts being left behind.

Even better if it had a "last seen\sensed" timer on the mouse over.

Thats incorect (or i understood you wrong)!
If you zoom in with your mousewheel then the whole screen follows with this zoom.
What i mean is an magnifierwindow which allows you to stay larger zoomed out, so that
you still can get all the information of unitmovement on your side on the planet,but also inside the window all the information which you would get if you would zoom more closely.

Its best of both worlds. Both informations at the same time.
Of cause, it should be implemented the way that you can give the units in the magnifierwindows orders, otherwise it would only be the half of the fun, but it would still be usefull without.

One of those viewport windows you could open in same screen separate window, or a separate screen entirely, that is set to just show the magnified mouseover, would probably be the most useful extra window you could open.

Agreed. I would really like to see the day/night look something like this in the end: (lots of dynamic)

so what are the units?

are there things like the can, goliath, sumo? i have always loved, menacing units
they make the game more fun, for me

Its early alpha, as far as i know there is no such thing as a complete unitlist at the moment.
But if you want to get an impression how the units could look like than look at one of the older games like supreme commander, which had been developt from many of the ubercrew awile ago.

Well, what units are there now? Names, function, opinion...?

Or maybe circle selections for bots, square for tanks and triangles for planes.