1.7 Alpha 2

New releases and announcements from George and the staff.
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Xephyr
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Looks like you can thrust/steer in autopilot with mouse controls, provided that you're thrusting when you engage autopilot. Might be a bug since you can't do that with keyboard controls.
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DigaRW
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Nice doing, I have test it. The mouse control is quite useful when I'm bored to play with keyboard. And new image and display is very great. But still, I can see a pixel in edge of the planet or station.
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kay.py
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I really like the mouse control scheme. Finally I can aim where I want to without having to spend three tries to get that last turn increment not to overshoot. Now I just need to work on getting where-I-try-to-aim to be a better approximation of where the projectile needs to go...

A few points though:

Making manual aiming easier changes the balance between fixed and omni weapons so that may need tweaking (again)

It might be nice if untargetted omni weapons fire at the cursor rather than waiting for the ship to finish turning round.

Unrelated: Armour maluses could really do with a display that is distinct from the "damaged" indicator. Especially default maluses - there are large swathes of armour where you have to stop and look carefully to see whether on not you are collecting scrap...
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Can confirm bug, sometimes normal stations are hostile like you've attacked them but for no apparent reason. Sometimes before you even find the station in the system.
PM
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kay.py wrote:Unrelated: Armour maluses could really do with a display that is distinct from the "damaged" indicator. Especially default maluses - there are large swathes of armour where you have to stop and look carefully to see whether on not you are collecting scrap...
Status effects on items should be small images like damage types (such as red star for laser) instead of words. For example, a radiation icon for radiation, instead of a big red "radiation vulnerable" or blue "radiation immune" on armor.
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kay.py
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The new keyboard UI is a good idea (although a touch superfluous for us xml-savvy types). A few points to add though:

On the custom keyboard controls, it would be nice to have a button to slurp all the defaults across as a starting point. (Or, if it assumes defaults for unassigned keys, some indications for that)

Also, is it possible to assign multiple keys to the same action? (I know it works in the xml, but some UI for it might be nice*)
* 'Might' in a speculative sense here. It 'might' also just make things confusing for new folks.

Finally, treating mouse buttons as definable keys (in the xml, too) would be nice now that the mouse is a thing.

Of course its fine for me- I have an external macro that remaps middle button to enter which is then equivalent to brake in game and do-the-thing when docked...

Oh, nearly forgot: mousewheel should work in docking lists. (heads off to add mousewheel -> pgup/dn to his macros)

----

On the new galactic map, it would be nice if all the destroyed stations were put at the end of the list. At the moment you can sometimes get something live mixed in with the rest. I would tend to order it: Friendly, Hostile, Ruined. I think it mostly winds up like this, but there are some exceptions.
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AssumedPseudonym
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Xephyr wrote:I've run into a very odd bug a few times where every friendly in the system decides the player needs to die. Trying to reproduce this right now.
 I may have stumbled across something important on this issue. Copypasta from the relevant ticket on Ministry:
AssumedPseudonym wrote: I just found the wreck of the Kronosaurus on my way inbound on a superfreighter escort mission, presumably destroyed by the guards of the Commonwealth Fortress I was leading said superfreighter back to. I was welcomed with MAGs and TeV 9s.
 WARNING: Speculation mode engaged. Here’s the salt shaker.
 It seems like part of the issue might be that if an NPC ship is attacked, it checks the order target of the ship it was attacked by, possibly? The Kronosaurus is specifically targeting the playership when it shows up, after all. I can see where that sort of check would be implemented in the case of checking for autons controlled by the player. If I’m right about order targets, checking for (objGetProperty obj 'playerWingman) might be a better way to go than checking order targets.
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gunship256
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I jumped back into this game after taking a two month break and am loving alpha 2c. The mouse controls make aiming a lot easier, and the level-based inventory by itself makes armor weak enough again that it feels balanced relative to shields.

The level-based inventory does create a small non-bug relative to my playing style. I normally like to use a smuggler's hold until around Sanctuary and then replace it with a normal cargo hold for the increased space. Since the normal cargo hold is level 1, it doesn't spawn in the second half of the game, so I'm stuck with the smuggler's hold.

Having a greater variety of cargo hold types would deal effectively with this problem. It seems to me that the cargo hold items might be fixed, not the level-based inventory, so I described the problem as a non-bug.
PM wrote:Mouse needs to start disabled (i.e., no pointer on the screen) until used. I am getting tired of my ship automatically rotating toward south every time I load a game.

Also, with mouse aiming, 120 facings for aiming is really obvious. I sometimes find blind spots where your ship cannot aim where the mouse points due to 120 facings. If mouse support is assumed to be default, ships should have 360 facings (or more if floats will be supported) for aiming. That probably means decoupling facings from number of frames. (Decoupling facings from number of frames would help support older ships with 40 facings or less.)
I can verify this on both counts. Fixed-angle weapons are easier to aim with mouse controls, but it's still possible to miss small ships like Corsairs even as close as 20 ls.
kay.py wrote:Making manual aiming easier changes the balance between fixed and omni weapons so that may need tweaking (again)
I'm tempted to agree, but armor has received an effective nerf because of the unavailability of level 5 and 6 armors in the early game. It's much harder to use fixed weapons now because the front segment of armor wears down so quickly. Between better mouse controls and worse armor, I don't feel as if omni balance has changed much relative to where it was with alpha 1.

Then again, I thought omni weapons were overpowered in alpha 1, so maybe they do need tweaking.
kay.py wrote:Finally, treating mouse buttons as definable keys (in the xml, too) would be nice now that the mouse is a thing....

Oh, nearly forgot: mousewheel should work in docking lists. (heads off to add mousewheel -> pgup/dn to his macros)
I agree that it would be helpful to manually define uses for the mouse buttons. It's hard to chase ships using only the mouse, since the mouse can cause acceleration but not deceleration, making it almost impossible not to overshoot and miss the ship I'm trying to chase.

I'd prefer that the left mouse button thrust and the right button decelerate, with the keyboard left for weapon control. If we can define custom uses for the mouse buttons, though, we can all have our own preferences.

Mouse wheel problem confirmed: it does not cause dockscreen lists to scroll.

Overall, I'm loving alpha 2. Thanks for continually improving the game for us!
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Since we're talking about mousewheels. What the scroll wheel to navigate the Invoke/Use/Comms/Squadron/Device lists while MMB is used to select the highlighted item?
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