Demo issues, bugs and what not.

[JimmyTwoBucks]

Ah, ok... so I assume from what both you guys said, that essentially you could have the entire

game's very basic layout completed pretty early on if you wanted, like in terms of rooms/areas

and their sizes.

And then with some rooms and puzzles more complete than others throughout the game as it

all gets filled in with art work and characters at different times, etc.

[TogaMario]

I had to check behind me to make sure audiodane hasn't been watching us the whole time :)

[audiodane]

Ah, ok... so I assume from what both you guys said, that essentially you could have the entire

game's very basic layout completed pretty early on if you wanted, like in terms of rooms/areas

and their sizes.

And then with some rooms and puzzles more complete than others throughout the game as it

all gets filled in with art work and characters at different times, etc.

 

That's certainly one way to do it. Designing a system is subject to the designers themselves. Bottom-up designers like to get the minute details working (interface details, item interaction, etc) and then "build outward" to a more complete solution. Top-down designers like to get the overall system architected (overall world map, background graphics, puzzle outlines, storyboards, etc) and then fill in the details. Both approaches have pros and cons, and many design teams are usually made up with both types of people, as well as both visionaries and implementers, questioners and doers, artistics and technicals...

 

Despite togamario's above comment, I have no idea what design methodologies the SV team are employing. As a career electrical design engineer, however, I know a thing or two about design methodologies in general, thus my assumptive replies. Such methodologies apply as much to making a space adventure game as they do an international communications network.

 

I had to check behind me to make sure audiodane hasn't been watching us the whole time :)

 

Now come on .. we all know that restraining order expired YEARS ago!

 

..dane

[Thornado]

Ok, my two cents...much is already covered in the other posts :)

 

Here is what I liked:

- The art looks great!

- The music sounds fitting, although still a bit too much on the midi side for my liking.

- Rooter is an awesome companion:)

- The atmosphere is great, I really liked exploring the demo

- All those SQ references...classic :))

- I had NO crashes...the game runs smooth (i5 3,2 ghz)

 

Strange things I encountered:

- sometimes the rooms reset when you re-enter them. This often results in a session that I can't complete

- Having an inventory item active as a cursor should be more easy to ditch. The interface is a bit cumbersome. Mousewheel scroll should fix this

- The swiping is realy awkward. I stood for the airlock and didn't know what the game expected from me. So I almost quit playing.

- Various animations seem awkward: I opened the door with the keycard while having Rooter in the same hand...looks weird. :P

- It's not clear how I should activate rooter. Perhaps pressing the Rooter icon should activate him?

- It's not clear that stuff can be swiped.

- When you are on the otherside of the janitor room, you need to walk up to the workbench before you can look at it.

Gameflow wise, it would be smoother to combine actions (you look at the workbench, so Ace walks up to the workbench, then you automaticaly look at it).

- The text is really bad for me to read: adjust the font size and / or give it a bolder border with more contrast.

- Also, when I mash my mousebutton and look at several items in a short time, the text is messed up

- when the janitor door opens, the left side of the door slides a bit through the background. (unless this is intended :))

- when Ace ran through the steam...he fell down and died. Atleast I think he did because the game kept on loading whithout anything happening.

- In the steamroom, the cleaning cart looks like a solid object and not something that can be used in the game. Perhaps give it some wheels to make it more clear that you can do somehting with it.

- The keycard in the cleaning cart looks very small in comparison with the one in your inventory.

- Saving shortcut: it works, but only the left shift works :)

- Pushing esc quited the game unexpectatly.

 

Stuff I missed:

- Mousewheel scroll :)

- Doubleclicking on a door should change to the next room inmediatly. Loved that feature in the Lucasarts games :)

- Ace is a bit slow...perhaps he should be able to run?

- It would be cool to be able to look at the stuff in the inventory and get a little discription of what the item is or does.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ken is using state of the art East West VSTi's for his instruments. You don't get any better than that without a live orchestra.

[Thornado]

Using state of the art VSTI's doesn't mean automaticaly that every chosen sound is the right one.

The current midi like sound of some of the instruments is something that I personally don't like to much. (e.g. the trumpet sounds).

 

But, the music that is provided does create atmosphere and I like the compositions.

[Frede]

I partly agree, but I can deal with the compromise. Even when betraying its computer-made origins, Ken's music is spot-on so far. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy the rest of the soundtrack when it's done.

[Troels Pleimert]

Hey, Thornado. Really good points -- using the mousewheel to scroll through icons is, imo, a good idea.

 

Just a quick question, though:

 

- Doubleclicking on a door should change to the next room inmediatly. Loved that feature in the Lucasarts games :)

 

Which LucasArts games have you been playing? :) I remember wasting hours of my life (seemed like it, anyway) walking from the Bowl o'Twine to my car in Sam & Max: Hit the Road.

 

I do remember the double-click-the-exit trick working in e.g. Torin's Passage ... by Sierra. And The Longest Journey by ... not LucasArts. ;)

 

Edit: Not that it's not a good idea, though. I like that feature myself.

[JimmyTwoBucks]

Using state of the art VSTI's doesn't mean automaticaly that every chosen sound is the right one.

 

Yeah, it's also down to how it's mixed as well... with any VSTi's, no matter how state of

the art they are, you have to do a LOT of work with reverb, filters, EQing, etc. to get the whole

thing to sound anywhere near organic, if that's the sound you want...

And as you say, you can still easily pick "fake" sounding instruments even with the best software.

 

I think some people think because it's coming out of top-end VSTi's it will sound excellent

automatically, with no further work needed. Though it's understandable because most composers

spend the time composing first and foremost and then plug it into the machine and let it play it out...

they're usually not audio engineers as well.

 

Having said that, I don't mind a midi kind of sound with a game like this, it's nicely nostalgic and I think it

works great with the game/sci-fi theme as a whole...

[Thornado]

Which LucasArts games have you been playing? :) I remember wasting hours of my life (seemed like it, anyway) walking from the Bowl o'Twine to my car in Sam & Max: Hit the Road.

 

 

I think every Lucasarts game had this. I remember using it on Monkey Island and even Zak McKracken :) But, my memory could be a bit misty after all those years I played them. :P

I think some people think because it's coming out of top-end VSTi's it will sound excellent

automatically, with no further work needed. Though it's understandable because most composers

spend the time composing first and foremost and then plug it into the machine and let it play it out...

they're usually not audio engineers as well.

 

 

Spot on. Creating digital music is hard work! But, the way the music sounds now is not a deal breaker for me. I just hope some of the instruments will be revisited by Ken so it all sounds a bit more in tune to eachother. Atleast we get an idea of what to expect in the final product.:)

[MusicallyInspired]

I think some people think because it's coming out of top-end VSTi's it will sound excellent

automatically, with no further work needed. Though it's understandable because most composers

spend the time composing first and foremost and then plug it into the machine and let it play it out...

they're usually not audio engineers as well.

I'm certainly not saying that. And you make a fair point. I probably should have said "you don't get much better than that without a live orchestra". There is indeed a lot of work that goes into it other than just how good your instrument samples are. But it's still better than an MT-32 (yes, debatable I know. Not from a nostalgia point of view but from a simple realism point of view). My point was not about it already being as good as it can be, but moreso: just what exactly were you expecting? I never expected more than this. It's nice enough that he is in fact using state of the art VSTi's. I'm not expecting top of the line AAA Hollywood-comparable recordings. At least not at this stage while they're still starting out. And Ken HAS been out of the music biz for a number of moons until now.

[Necrosis]

My biggest problem with the demo is the general choppiness I experienced with it, especially with the cursor. The cursor would "stick" and then suddenly jump to where I was pointing. It made the demo very difficult to play.

[MusicallyInspired]

I never experienced that. Could be your system?

[Necrosis]

Yes, it could be my system. That's been a big concern of mine when funding Kickstarter video game projects. The projects never give an indication as to what the system requirements will be. I realize there are justifiable reasons for that, but I am concerned that I will not be able to play some of the games I have helped fund on my current system. Yet I hesitate to buy or build a new machine until I know what the requirements will be for all the games I pledged to so that I can be sure I will be able to run them all. My current machine specs are: WinXP, Intel P4 3.8 GHz, ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 1GB VRAM, 2GB RAM, 2 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptors (SATA), etc.

[MusicallyInspired]

Single-core? 32-bit processor? That's probably a bit sluggish. You'd probably need at least a Dual-core. I believe that's a somewhat oldish video card as well. ATI as a brand doesn't even exist anymore (now just called AMD).

[penguinfan]

I played with a slightly lower performance video card from the same generation (Radeon 4650) but a Core2 Duo processor and there was no problem playing the demo.

 

Regarding waiting to spec out a newer system, just ordered a new system this month, after waiting to see how Planetary Annihilation was going with hardware requirements -- ended up with 4-core i7 and a separately-ordered Radeon 7850 from Newegg.

 

http://www.hwcompare.com/12134/radeon-hd-4670-1gb-vs-radeon-hd-7850/

[tomimt]

I gave the demo a new spin on my desktop machine, with FullHD monitor. I noticed that every time I used the right click menu close to edge of the screen, half of an icon, either walk icon or Rooter icon depending on near which edge of the screen the cursor was, disappeared. I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out.

[pcj]

I gave the demo a new spin on my desktop machine, with FullHD monitor. I noticed that every time I used the right click menu close to edge of the screen, half of an icon, either walk icon or Rooter icon depending on near which edge of the screen the cursor was, disappeared. I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out.

 

It has and we have already fixed it in the internal build :)

[Monolith_Pig]

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I didn't see this until today. I tried the command line parameters. Worked perfectly. Thanks!

 

Sorry about that - it appears that Unity doesn't implement the screen resolution dialog for Linux yet. Can you try using the -screen-width and -screen-height command line parameters as described on http://docs.unity3d....eArguments.html? Thank you.

 

Sorry chaps I'm quite embarrassed to say I have no idea what I'm doing here!

 

I'm running ubuntu 13.04 and have tried to open up the SpaceVenture executable as a text file where I presume I put the command lines in for screen width & height but that just crashes the editor.

 

Could anyone point me in the right direction as so I can finally play this demo? Do I have to create an executable script or something?

 

Sometime Ubuntu makes me want to cry :(

[pcj]

Sorry chaps I'm quite embarrassed to say I have no idea what I'm doing here!

 

I'm running ubuntu 13.04 and have tried to open up the SpaceVenture executable as a text file where I presume I put the command lines in for screen width & height but that just crashes the editor.

 

Could anyone point me in the right direction as so I can finally play this demo? Do I have to create an executable script or something?

 

Sometime Ubuntu makes me want to cry :(

 

You need to do it through Terminal, which is something that would be very helpful to learn if you want to use Linux. Hopefully that puts you in the right direction :)

[Johnathon]

Alright, I finished beating the demo (the long way), and have skim read this thread, and would like to add a couple points I don't believe have been brought up (possibly they have).

 

1) Perhaps this is not intended to persist into the final game, but I notice that when Rooter activates the forklift and it begins rolling out of the way, Ace decides to go ahead and walk along-side it before it's even completely out of the little 'pocket' it had been nestled into (and he does so successfully), indicating that he could have fit through and been able to slide/walk along-side it without Rooter having turned in on in the first place.

 

Other such occurrences exist elsewhere, such as when Ace walks through the lab door: he appears to actually walk through the side glass rather than the opening itself. This occurrence is less subtle, and I am fairly certain ya'll are already aware of it and intend to polish it up, but as for the case above with the forklift: although it's not as obviously a bug, to me it feels like quite a blooper, and detracts from the cleverness of the game.

 

2) I find it quite... "insensible?" that Ace needs to turn the vice-grip in order to visually see the last drill bit. The whole thing feels quite unnatural, as someone put it earlier in this thread in relation to sliding the toilet paper around to find the keycard - only I feel in this case more obviously unnatural (because I can more easily imagine Ace not wanting to make a mess of the janitor cart than I can see him being blinded to a drill bit until spinning a vice grip). Perhaps I'm just too much the analyzing type, but I imagine Ace's point of view would not really render him blind to the drill bit, and it would be more natural to just be able to slide it out of the way to look more "intentionally" at what may be behind it. In real life, were I searching through a closet, I would not position my head permanently behind a vice-grip at an exact angle and then start playing with it because I think there may be something behind it that I can see between the grips.

 

Granted, regarding point 2 above, these kinds of quirks have always existed in adventure games. I just wanted to share my reaction to it. I feel it sort of detracts from the immediacy of the experience and reminds the player that he's/she's playing a precise puzzle/hotspot game, rather than working through an adventure. I'd like to reference Cliffy's toolbox in SQ5 now: it seemed to follow more naturally the protagonist's intentions, as Roger was able to simply shove aside anything he wasn't interested in as he continued his combing through of the toolbox for anything that might be useful. The fact that Ace seems incapable of observing and/or manipulating a view before him with greater... "omnipotency?" makes him seem stupid and restricted unnecessarily, and that because he wasn't bright enough to think about turning or leaning his head around the vice grip, or simply shoving the item over, he got bored and decided to spin the vice grip with the alan bit and then just happened to get lucky enough to notice a bit by looking between the grips (this is especially unnatural because... what was his motivation for spinning the vice grip open?)

 

I also agree with the overall sentiment in this thread regarding the majority of the puzzles being simply object moving/sliding and hand swiping interactions. It's quite below the par of clever puzzles that have come before them in earlier space quest games, and I too hope that this is not the intended ratio of puzzle types (tablet-savvy finger swiping and object moving / clever intellectual designs) for the final product.

 

All this having been said, the demo was quite enjoyable. I love the artistic style, atmosphere, and music. I'm really looking forward to further updates, especially tomorrow! :D