My Walkthrough of Vega-Strike

[psignosis]

Hi Vegastrike people,

What a really awesome game you guys have made. Reminds me of the Elite / Frontier days under the once old Amstrad I used to own. Fun stuff!

I always get guilty not doing anything so in my small way of helping, I thought I'd put forward a few comments and critiques towards the game. You guys are free to use it or ignore it as you please.

Docked
x When docked at a base or space station, the entire screen becomes a nice picture. There are no indicative signs for me to click on or do anything unless I move my mouse around and hover on something. This is not very user friendly. Maybe you could have writing, a few buttons or something so you know where your mouse needs to go before you click. When I was trying to get to the Cargo Area, I found it frustrating going back and forth between screens because I kept clicking on the wrong thing.

Performance
x I found this game virtually un-playable under Linux. Normally its X windows / Device Driver related but everything else worked fine. I had to perform most of my tests under Windows where I was surprised at the increased speed. Im not sure if making it faster under Linux is something the Vegastrike Team can do anything about but it would be great if it could be done.
x Whenever I get close to something, like a Planet or a Space Station, the graphics slow down heaps. In fact, it jerks and sputters so much that you lose keyboard responsiveness and it sometimes becomes unplayable. You end up over-correcting all the time.
x Why are the Jump thingies so slow? I hit J, my computer freezes for five seconds and then the Jump drive appears.

Cockpit
x The text looks ghastly. Is it anti-alised? Its also a bit hard to read.
x The top notifications are helpful but they seem to disappear faster than you can read them. I guess thats the point of scrolling notifications but maybe there's a more friendlier way. Instead of throwing your entire mission instructions up in one large action, perhaps it could be slowed down to go up one line at a time or something.
x The mission description on the right hand side of the screen is really useful. One point though, when I jumped through another Jump Point and went off course, it didnt update itself. It kept telling me that I had to go through the same jump point which was no longer in the scene I was in. Perhaps, it should figure this out and change based on where I am.

Missions
x When you begin the game, you have almost nothing but a basic ship and limited knowledge of how to play. Most of the missions came across as being fairly advanced for someone new. For instance, a patrol mission began with having to scout for 5 waypoints. My suggestion here would be to include an easier mission where I only have to patrol 1 or 2 waypoints. Of course, it would pay a lot less.

Cargo
x Should Contraband and Illegal cargo be displayed in a different colour on the screen? I came across Narcotics so I wasnt sure if that was Contraband or not?

Keys
x The keys feel a bit strange to me. Usually, I hit M and expect to see some sort of map. Almost every game I have ever played functions that way. In this game, you guys have it set to ships manifest I think.
x I recall there being some sort of Navigational Computer. Being the new to vegastrikes keys, I tried to hit every key on the keyboard to try and find this because it didnt seem logical to me. I would have guessed to find this key under C for Computer, N for Navigation or M for map. Those keys didnt work so ? The keys dont feel as if they're logically placed. This can make it harder to get into the game. I'd have to look up the manual, or online wikki otherwise I couldnt get into it.
x When Im Docked, are there keys that take me directly to the screens I want to go to? For instance, F2 takes me to Cargo Bay, F3 to Shipyards or something? That would be a handy feature.

Flying
x It just doesnt feel right to me. I played another game where you'd see star trails coming at you. The faster you went, the faster the star trails would move. When I played the game, it didnt look like I was moving at all except for the occasional streak from a star. My suggestion would be to have some star trails or visual feedback so you know your actually moving.

Feature
x Its probably been said before but, what about an Automatic Docking Computer like they had in Elite / Frontier I believe?

Anyway, hope some of this helps...

[CLoneWolf]

x When docked at a base or space station, the entire screen becomes a nice picture. There are no indicative signs for me to click on or do anything unless I move my mouse around and hover on something. This is not very user friendly. Maybe you could have writing, a few buttons or something so you know where your mouse needs to go before you click. When I was trying to get to the Cargo Area, I found it frustrating going back and forth between screens because I kept clicking on the wrong thing.

Though hidden, there's a helper for this case: your mousewheel will cycle through the points of interest on each landscape.
(At least mine does! )

x The top notifications are helpful but they seem to disappear faster than you can read them. I guess thats the point of scrolling notifications but maybe there's a more friendlier way. Instead of throwing your entire mission instructions up in one large action, perhaps it could be slowed down to go up one line at a time or something.
[...]
x I recall there being some sort of Navigational Computer. Being the new to vegastrikes keys, I tried to hit every key on the keyboard to try and find this because it didnt seem logical to me.

Mission instructions are also readable on the Navigation computer, Shift-M to toggle it on and off. The top right button is the toggle between Navigation maps and Info, and in the Info section you'll see the progress on each objective of your current mission.

x The mission description on the right hand side of the screen is really useful. One point though, when I jumped through another Jump Point and went off course, it didnt update itself. It kept telling me that I had to go through the same jump point which was no longer in the scene I was in. Perhaps, it should figure this out and change based on where I am.

Dynamically recalculated jump path, that could be interesting for those who take missions but also like to stray when there are no time constraints

Rather, I'll take the chance to mention a little off-by-one case in the mission jumps: In the top left area, it always says to jump from the starting system... to arrive at the starting system So the last jump described is the last but one, and then it says you should arrive in the final system. I'm sure no one ever got framed by it, but it might be worth correcting.

[loki1950]

Welcome psignosis
In order-- Docked Try right clicking or just clicking it will cycle though all the click able spot
And we are planing on moving to another interface Lib but it ain't been coded yet

Performance What's your video GPU and could you post the beginning of stdout and stderr the opengl stuff and suspect that you have an ATI GPU
x-that slow down is again related to an under powered GPU the game puts a big memory and memory transfer try reducing the resolution you play at with the box in my sig i get between 100-150 fps on my fedora 10 install while under Win7 it's between 60-80 fps
x-that is the next system loading into memory and did i mention we are a resource hog there are efforts to put it on a diet

Cockpit the cockpit skins where not turned on for the release they just did not fit any more so we are stuck with the Disabled HUD and a lot of those issues about readability is do the fact we are still using code from 8 years ago yeah we have been around that long and the whole interface is written in python so that the various Mods can create there own there have been other fires to fight on the C++ side so the Python stuff data side has been neglected for a while reminder we are a voluntary group here no pay for code and there is alway a shortage of guys with both time and knowledge to contribute but enough of a rant on our problems we share them with most Open Source projects.
The mission code is data side so ditto the above
Cargo Now that would depend on which legal jurisdiction you where in now would it not the Rlann and the other alien factions just would not care about it so you takes your chances with the county mounties


The map Is SHIFT M the low case m is for your left VDU toggling between weapons,damage and your manifest(bank balance) And the rest of your keyboard questions are best answered if you check the last pages of the PDF manual in the documentation folder

Flying do you know the difference between real physics and arcade physics the numbers are real that's meter/sec on the velocity (speed) and in real time you would not see those effects we are primarily a space sim not a game but the Spec drive fantasy drive does take the tedium and time of real space travel away for some playability there are some effects available but they are turned off so it runs on older hardware.

And there is Auto docking again turned off in the config file.
Edit: you type faster than i do Wolf

Enjoy the Choice

[MC707]

Performance
x I found this game virtually un-playable under Linux. Normally its X windows / Device Driver related but everything else worked fine. I had to perform most of my tests under Windows where I was surprised at the increased speed. Im not sure if making it faster under Linux is something the Vegastrike Team can do anything about but it would be great if it could be done.

Trust me, VS in linux runs a hell of a lot faster. I run VS faster under linux while using compiz than using windows (or is it because my linux is x86-64 and my windows is x86?)