What was your first time like?

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
george moromisato
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What was your first game of Transcendence like? What did you find confusing? What took a while to figure out? What drew you in?

Please share your thoughts so I can improve the initial experience (also let me know what version you started with, particularly whether it was before or after 1.0).

Thanks!
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Probably the biggest first few minutes observation that isn't clearly communicated that not only I but everyone I've introduced to the game had to make: You won't crash into anything but projectiles.

Other things I remember having issues with (Due to things not being readily apparent):
Getting military-level equipment (due to confiscations, not getting an ID, not knowing how to get an ID)

How to buy fuel efficiently (due to the 1 partially used rod)

How radioactivity worked (another big one that needs to get communicated - its not readily apparent that the glowing green ships spawning early in game are an immediate death sentence)

How to get higher level reactors

---

Things that I enjoyed: the art, the environment, just.. doing things I suppose. And of course modding (which I got into after my first playthrough) - all these things have only gotten better since v0.98
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first version for me was 0.96a
I remember that my first big problem was to find a weapon that could crack a Sung fortress, as everything was going down easily with lasers before st. kathrine, after installing the Mark I howitzer I discovered weapon damage types and tiers :D

IDs were not a problem, as I was docking with everything and running all the possible missions, so I stumbled upon those.

I remember that I died a lot, really a lot because of fuel. :P
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My first version was 0.99c. Radiation got me a couple of times, although I was smart enough not to dock with glowing wrecks after the first time..the rest were Plague-class attacks. The sung pulverised me in my second playthrough because I had gear that was weak against particle damage. While nowadays I look at them with disdain, Wind Slavers were pretty intimidating the first time I encountered them. Charon was evil and impossibly hard for a first-timer. THe dwarg were jerks, due to off-screen EMP death. ROM ID was an issue: I had to kill a playthrough because the very first ROM I found in Starton was a defective weapons upgrade. Eventually after about 4 abortive attempts I managed to progress past the Sung, but (like today) I had a lot of trouble getting cash for upgrades past the middle of the game, and Rins were out of the question. I was unable to beat the iocrym doorjamb after a 26 hour playthrough with 6 resurrections (because beating the iocrym back then needed very specific loadouts). Think I ended up with a kytryn blaster, got disintegrated out of nowhere (because there was no warning that such things could happen), and then eventually rage-quit after being unable to do any damage before my fairly OKish gear got wiped out and disintegrated a few times. Obviously, I tried again and beat it later.

Most of that's changed of course, except for Dwarg, Charon and the lack of warning over radiation and disintegration.
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I spent half of my first game looking for ways to repair damaged equipment. Then I realised that "damaged" in this game meant "junked beyond recognition" rather than "repairable".

I started with 0.91, I think. It was a few versions before the EI freighter series had new sprites.
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I first played the game at 1.01. First ship taken was Wolfen because speed is king in many games, especially in Roguelikes.

The greatest problem in my first game was fuel. It kept getting consumed quickly, just like food in Nethack, and most of my earnings was spent on fuel. I quickly learned the value of solar armor - so much that it is the only armor I use until late game in almost every game I play. I have no qualms start scumming for various items, namely the targeting ROM and/or solar equipment.
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<sidenote>Posting on behalf of my friend</sidenote>
So he tried Transcendence. He liked the first 5 minutes, cleared the Centuari out of Erandi, had 2000 credits, but said it was boring because Erandi was the only system. He said that because he did not know what stargates were, or what they did. This was either 1.01 or 1.08g.
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Wolfy wrote:Probably the biggest first few minutes observation that isn't clearly communicated that not only I but everyone I've introduced to the game had to make: You won't crash into anything but projectiles.
Actually, I remember it taking quite a while for me to realize that. Asteroid belts are hairy when you think crashing into them would be bad and you haven't discovered the brake key.
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The first thing I thought was "This game needs retros as much as elf needs food." <_<'
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Ultimate Chicken wrote:The first thing I thought was "This game needs retros as much as elf needs food." <_<'
Wizard needs food badly? :P
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Need tutorial!
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 I started with 1.1.0, and after having played it a few dozen times, now, I’m guessing I probably had one of the luckiest first runs in the history of Transcendence.

 I went with a Sapphire to start off in. Starton had a cannon accelerator. After dealing with Vaughn (and equipping his dual recoilless), I mined the kack out of Eridani. I netted 50+ tons of uranium ore, which was more than enough to buy the Nova 100 with plenty left over. Next system, I picked up a black market ID at a hotel after getting a bootleg Star Wars ROM from anarchists, a dual flenser at the local gun shop — And I had a cannon accelerator, remember. Score! ^.^ — and looted either a Yoroi S100 or a class III. I upgraded to a Nephren at Aurelius. The Arena didn’t stand a chance, it was just totally unfair, especially after Hiro’ing the Nephren. Even better, the Slicer coughed up a patcher arm. I’d also swapped the mining hold for a smuggler’s before Kate blasted the black market.

 Charon caught me off guard, but I got my military ID after clearing it, and then upgraded to carbide carapace at a Bushido merchant in St. Kat’s. I bought an Omni TeV9 from a black market a system or two past that. By the time I first even heard of the Hurin, I’d wiped out enough Sung stations that they liked me (but I’ll admit I did a bit of poking around online around then and decided I wasn’t brave enough to go through their mission just then). I eventually wound up getting blown up in a Sung Citadel explosion — I got too close, and they went boom about a millisecond after cybering my shields off. I figured that was as good a wrap on my first run as I was going to get and called it a day.

 And yes, I remember the setup pretty well, because as well as it served me, I’ve tried to at least approximate it a lot of times since.

 So, to recap, on my first run, I:
 1: Found out how to get a black market ID.
 2: Bought a sickeningly overpowered weapon for early gameplay.
 3: Obliterated the Arena and got a nice prize for doing so.
 4: Picked up my military ID from Charon.
 5: Had a Hiro’d Nephren by the time I met Sung — “Particle weapons. How cute.” ^.~
 6: Made friends with the Huari before meeting them (so I was sort of surprised when they were shooting at me the next runthrough).

 …I’m not sure the guy who first pointed me at the game has even touched Transcendence after I told him how that run went… ¬.¬;

 I don’t think I was ever really confused by anything, though I do remember hitting the help menu to figure out how to turn off devices when I was trying to get to the nearest gas station when I found out my stockpile of fuel rods wasn’t compatible with the Nova 100. What really drew me in was — of all things — nostalgia. It reminded me a lot of a game (I’m pretty sure it was called Escape Velocity: Override) that I used to have on my Mac back around Y2K or so. The fact that Transcendence can be modded so easily has contributed a lot to me sticking around, too.
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I think it was 0.95. I tried the freighter (the old silver one) first. I remember finding fuel was very hard and ended game quite a few times due to running out. Died a lot by radiation exposure too, by not making it to a station that decon'd (this was before Tinkers decon'd and only CS's did), but I think my biggest gripe was that it was so hard finding a targeting ROM. If I couldn't find a ROM by St. K's I'd start over...that's how important that ROM was to me.

I think you've done a lot to improve the learning aspect for new players, George, and if I were to make any suggestions to improve it further, I guess it would be some sort of tutorial run-through before game start. Something to familiarize new players on how to navigate through the ship, find fuel/refuel, fly the ship, earn a bit of credits, switching/firing weapons, firing at enemy ships and stations, looting, and accessing the help screen. There could be a tutoral start button next to the game start button. The tutorial could be set in a single system to run the complete course as well as having a stargate for learning how to gate, and be the end of the tutorial. Once the tutorial is completed, have an end-game review/rating to show how well the player did. Just a thought.

I'm curious... Has anyone pulled out an older version and ran it lately? It's very interesting to see how far T has come since its early days. :D
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For a tutorial, I think the current method is good enough. At game start, a few messages would comes up telling you what keys you need to press to dock, open your map, and such. The first time your fuel gets low it also tell you how to open the refueling screen. What I suggest is to put more messages like these in the game. First tell the player how to thrust, turn, brake, dock, fire, and such other basic navigations. When the player got heavily damaged for the first time, instruct them to use I > Sustain, or maybe call up the shield on its own just that once. When the player finds new things, hint them what they should do about it. That way the universe remains unknown, a place to be explored, not already familiar. It'd be boring if I start the first game knowing every surprises Eridani has.
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Song
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FAD wrote: I'm curious... Has anyone pulled out an older version and ran it lately? It's very interesting to see how far T has come since its early days. :D
I mess around in 0.7 from time to time.



Of course, we're missing one rather obvious option for tutorials...which is to have a tutorial campaign. We can (in theory) easily add a pilot training course "adventure" to the game if we really wanted to. THe trick would be making it good enough to work.
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