dhardenb
I admit that the controls are not intuitive for somebody who has never played the game.
I do enjoy the controls and find that they make the game very challenging but I do understand that it will drive away many potential players.
I think that the "why" will eventually be that there will be a lot more content. My long term visual is to grow the game into more than a simple shooter. I eventually plan to have larger ships with more components to control.
I hope that as the game progresses the content will justify more of a learning curve. For example, many people have taken the time to learn Dwarf Fortress because it is an awesome game with tons of content.
But I'm a long, long way from that.
So, to your point, I may need to make the controls more intuitive until the content justifies a larger learning curve.
Thanks for the feedback,
Dave
Yes, you are correct. In fact, this has been something I have gone back on forth on myself.
I do actually have an “on board computer” That sits between what the player tried to do and what the ship actually does.
For example, the on board computer will only allow the pilot to fire the rotational thrusters to a certain max angular momentum.
I’ve also experimented with having the on board computer automatically stop rotation by firing the opposite rotational thruster for the pilot automatically.
The thing is, it was a pain because whatever we that degree turn was was never just right.
So, when you tried to fire at another ship you would often rotate a little too much or a little not enough.
Having it the way it is now we’re the pilot has to manually control angular velocity gives the. More precise control.
So that is why that is the way it currently is. But, many people have had the same feedback...
What I am thinking about doing is having a control on the HUD where pilots can choose manual versus automatic and also set the amount of predefined degree of rotation they want when in automatic.
I think that might be the best of all worlds?
If you want to give it another try now that traffic has died down the performance is a lot better.
Thanks!
It does have client side prediction. What it is lacking is a working sync when the updates come back from the server.
I’ve tried and tried to get that part right but it has been difficult.
I recently found the Lance engine and may just port to that since they seem to have figured it out.
You can follow my progress at: https://blog.spacefrigates.com
You can follow along with my progress at: https://blog.spacefrigates.com
You can follow at https://blog.spacefrigates.com
I’m working on mobile controls right now that will allow play on mobile browsers. Hope to have that done in the next week.
You can check out my progress here: https://blog.spacefrigates.com
I’m using the Meteor JS full stack framework as the base framework.
Really convenient for an app like this where parts of the code, like the game engine, need to run on the client and server and be identical.
Of course, you could do the same thing with node and web sockets yourself but Meteor JS made it easier for me to get started.
I’m not currently using any client side framework like React or Vue (although both work great in Meteor JS) because I render everything client side in the Canvas tag.
In the future, will probably be moving to the Lance real time JS engine and Pixie for WebGL tendering.
My activity dropped off but I’ve recently committed to push forward again so plan to get back to blogged several times a week.
I’m working on a post right now to talk about my experience of having my game reach #2 here at HN at what that was like. Should have it out tomorrow.
Anyway, you might find it interesting: https://blog.spacefrigates.com
I left the brakes as is for now because the game was very difficult with out them.
However, to retain the level of realism that I was hoping for I plan to rework the brakes such that they show the ship slows to a stop properly.
For example, the onboard computer should calculate the actual thrusters needed to stop the ship for the player.