Prologue Released!
- Thread starter Tolwyn
- Start date
Unfortunately time compression speeds up everything, but not the speech. To make it more bad, it's neither possible to skip dialogue nor to prevent the player from using time compression on it's own (we wanted to do that, though the code lacks the possibility).
Regarding Mission 2 : I'm sorry that so many people report that problem, I never encountered it that I'm already at a huge distance to Maj.Baws when I reach Nav3. Be sure that you are close to the others when you activate the Autopilot to Nav3.
Same goes for the break and attack order, maybe some machines time it differently, in my case I have around 5 seconds time to target the first razor which is attacking me, punch him a missile in the face and shake of his own
As for the formation Goal, I will make a fix, I just need some time for this. Unfortunately something obviously as easy as a simple formation goal, requires a ridiculous part of scripting, which makes it so hard for me to fix it
Pls try again, if you can't get past this part for some reason, I will PM you a temporary solution.
BlueLeviathan
Spaceman
Horizontal Axis Control
Hi there Saga Team, thanks for your great work.
I have been sallivating for this release for a long time.
I have a question regarding the flight controls:
- Is there any way to prevent the horizontal axis control from rotating the ship at the same time it is turning it?
I just can't get used to the way it is now and find myself constantly correcting the rotation of the ship with the joystick's rudder control.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
Hi there Saga Team, thanks for your great work.
I have been sallivating for this release for a long time.
I have a question regarding the flight controls:
- Is there any way to prevent the horizontal axis control from rotating the ship at the same time it is turning it?
I just can't get used to the way it is now and find myself constantly correcting the rotation of the ship with the joystick's rudder control.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
That may be the worst response I've heard about anything, ever.
(You guys can create new models, get tons of voice actors, reneg the Freespace engine - but you can't map the joystick controls?)
hurleybird
Rear Admiral
Doing what you asked would be a job for the SCP coders, not the Saga team. If you want to get more intuitive controls then you're complaining to the wrong people.
Tolwyn
Vice Admiral
Correct. And at the moment there are much more pressing matters at hand:
- shader support
- normal mapping
- new multiplayer code
to name a few. And I still hope, that we can implement flyby animation.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Frankly, I can't see what would be more pressing than making the game's joystick controls more user friendly. Otherwise you run the risk of alienating your target audience with the controls.
Tolwyn
Vice Admiral
The executable suplied with the Wing Commander Saga has to work for other Freespace 2 mods as well.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Just played the first one and a half missions, so I thought I might offer some feedback 
.
The intro cinematics were pretty darned impressive, and overall, the rest of the game so far has been impressive too. Even though I've never been a fan of the WC3 ship designs, they do look great in the game here, particularly the capships. And as somebody suffering from a strange obsession on the count of afterburner hangar fly-throughs, I really can't wait to see the Armada carrier in person.
Above all, I'm loving the fact that I don't know the story - I mean, in all those years since Secret Ops, there's been no new WC games, and I happen to have worked on the only two other WC mods that have been released, so it's wonderful to finally play something new.
The manual is also a great touch - man, it's been nine and a half years since I last saw a manual for a new WC game. It's something I wish we'd gotten around to doing for Standoff.
That having been said, some gameplay elements do feel rather awkward. I just failed the second mission, and I'm having a hard time persuading myself to try it again (I will eventually, but it might take me a few hours
). It's frustrating to fail a mission for being too far away from somebody... but I could get over that (although if that kind of thing means mission failure, you should give the player repeated warnings - just a one-off "form on me" and then mission failure is too harsh). What bothers me in this case is how long it'll take me to get to that point in the mission again, even though I hadn't even been in combat yet. The mission is chock-full of dialogues that I really don't want to go through again. It's bad enough having to wait a minute or two to get from one navpoint to another, but then having to listen to chatter for another minute at every navpoint just adds insult to injury. If you don't mind a bit of advice, try to limit the dialogues in the main campaign - ideally, dialogues should only appear during takeoff, landing, and at times when the player has something else to do. You can have huge five minute conversations during combat if you like, and nobody will mind - the first time, they'll pay attention, and the second time they'll simply ignore the chatter and get on with the fighting. But even thirty seconds of talking when the player has nothing to do feels really painful every time after the first. I would also recommend that you guys keep the autopilot thing as limited as possible. You're working with a different engine, and you don't need to try to imitate the original WC games in every way possible - I'd much rather see you guys focus on keeping the game fast-pased and interesting than to see lots of navpoints and autopiloting just because the WC games had it... not if the engine you're using doesn't support handling such stuff in an effective manner.
Also, I have a comment about the credits. Overmortal's name is actually Nick Mahaffey rather than Nick Blitz, though I suppose that might be intentional too. Finally, it would be nice if the credits also showed which voice actor played which role(s).
Anyway, that's all for now - I'm looking forward to playing more of the game and doing some actual fighting... after I bore myself to tears for ten minutes waiting for autopilot and listening to all those dialogues in mission 2 again.
.The intro cinematics were pretty darned impressive, and overall, the rest of the game so far has been impressive too. Even though I've never been a fan of the WC3 ship designs, they do look great in the game here, particularly the capships. And as somebody suffering from a strange obsession on the count of afterburner hangar fly-throughs, I really can't wait to see the Armada carrier in person.
Above all, I'm loving the fact that I don't know the story - I mean, in all those years since Secret Ops, there's been no new WC games, and I happen to have worked on the only two other WC mods that have been released, so it's wonderful to finally play something new.
The manual is also a great touch - man, it's been nine and a half years since I last saw a manual for a new WC game
. It's something I wish we'd gotten around to doing for Standoff.That having been said, some gameplay elements do feel rather awkward. I just failed the second mission, and I'm having a hard time persuading myself to try it again (I will eventually, but it might take me a few hours
). It's frustrating to fail a mission for being too far away from somebody... but I could get over that (although if that kind of thing means mission failure, you should give the player repeated warnings - just a one-off "form on me" and then mission failure is too harsh). What bothers me in this case is how long it'll take me to get to that point in the mission again, even though I hadn't even been in combat yet. The mission is chock-full of dialogues that I really don't want to go through again. It's bad enough having to wait a minute or two to get from one navpoint to another, but then having to listen to chatter for another minute at every navpoint just adds insult to injury. If you don't mind a bit of advice, try to limit the dialogues in the main campaign - ideally, dialogues should only appear during takeoff, landing, and at times when the player has something else to do. You can have huge five minute conversations during combat if you like, and nobody will mind - the first time, they'll pay attention, and the second time they'll simply ignore the chatter and get on with the fighting. But even thirty seconds of talking when the player has nothing to do feels really painful every time after the first. I would also recommend that you guys keep the autopilot thing as limited as possible. You're working with a different engine, and you don't need to try to imitate the original WC games in every way possible - I'd much rather see you guys focus on keeping the game fast-pased and interesting than to see lots of navpoints and autopiloting just because the WC games had it... not if the engine you're using doesn't support handling such stuff in an effective manner.Also, I have a comment about the credits. Overmortal's name is actually Nick Mahaffey rather than Nick Blitz, though I suppose that might be intentional too. Finally, it would be nice if the credits also showed which voice actor played which role(s).
Anyway, that's all for now - I'm looking forward to playing more of the game and doing some actual fighting... after I bore myself to tears for ten minutes waiting for autopilot and listening to all those dialogues in mission 2 again
.
hurleybird
Rear Admiral
QFT
The best solution to this problem would be to do an auto save at each navpoint, so that you don't need to go back and do the parts you've already finished. The only question is how hard it would be to get the SCP guys to code that in.
And frankly: in Freelancer, you had to wait to get from one nav point to another too
But was that actually a good thing?
Hi there Saga Team, thanks for your great work.
I have been sallivating for this release for a long time.
I have a question regarding the flight controls:
- Is there any way to prevent the horizontal axis control from rotating the ship at the same time it is turning it?
I just can't get used to the way it is now and find myself constantly correcting the rotation of the ship with the joystick's rudder control.
Any help would be great.
Thanks.
I had some problems with the rotation of my ship at first, so I cranked the sensitivity down a bit and suddenly the rolling wasn't very much of a problem - until I've discovered the power of rolling and laser turrets:
*You can't touch this*
I'm discovering that rolling and afterburners in short spurts halved my chance of being canned by a missile without wasting countermeasures.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Oh no, nothing like that - I arrived just fine. The problem was that after I saw the enemy blips on radar, it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to fly towards them. So, it's not a bug, it's just a somewhat counter-intuitive situation for the player, since you require him to not do anything in a situation where it seems natural to engage the enemy. It might seem like a nice touch of military realism... but this is a game
. True - but this definitely wasn't a good thing. Such long waiting periods are fine if you only play a mission once, but they're painful if you have to replay it. Also, note that Freelancer used the autopilot time for the conversations, which as I understand is not possible to do in the case of FS2.And frankly: in Freelancer, you had to wait to get from one nav point to another too
hurleybird
Rear Admiral
Oh no, nothing like that - I arrived just fine. The problem was that after I saw the enemy blips on radar, it seemed like a perfectly natural thing to fly towards them. So, it's not a bug, it's just a somewhat counter-intuitive situation for the player, since you require him to not do anything in a situation where it seems natural to engage the enemy. It might seem like a nice touch of military realism... but this is a game
Hmmm. Sounds like the player needs to be told to enter formation before he sees the blip.
Great work saga team!
I only started playing (I too, am a "strayed out of formation" felon)
nice voice acting, great graphics!
you guys did a fantastic job in making it *feel* like wing commander, opening cut scene style , and all...
probably no one here cares much, but the game seems to run very well from Linux using Wine, I haven't managed to test with a joystick yet :/ (my joystick is in another city) and the mouse lacks some sensitivity.
I'm looking forward to continuing the saga once I get my joystick, some warning text clarifying that you're too far and must come back into formation before being booted would be nice.
I only started playing (I too, am a "strayed out of formation" felon)
nice voice acting, great graphics!
you guys did a fantastic job in making it *feel* like wing commander, opening cut scene style , and all...
probably no one here cares much, but the game seems to run very well from Linux using Wine, I haven't managed to test with a joystick yet :/ (my joystick is in another city) and the mouse lacks some sensitivity.
I'm looking forward to continuing the saga once I get my joystick, some warning text clarifying that you're too far and must come back into formation before being booted would be nice.
Rmax2
Rear Admiral
Hello from belgium
I had great fun playing the prologue, even with the mouse. Thunderbolt is not easy on mouse.
I love details like burning craft into the carrier. I dont recognize myself very much into Sandman at this point but its because we are all Christopher Blair. But Ninja and Assassin character are cool, more than traditionnal WC character.
Cant wait for the next, keep up good work
(sorry for bad english, teacher go on strike for too long)
I had great fun playing the prologue, even with the mouse. Thunderbolt is not easy on mouse.
I love details like burning craft into the carrier. I dont recognize myself very much into Sandman at this point but its because we are all Christopher Blair
. But Ninja and Assassin character are cool, more than traditionnal WC character.Cant wait for the next, keep up good work
(sorry for bad english, teacher go on strike for too long
)Well, I've finally gotten home to my own computer and have played through a few campaign and simulator missions. My impressions so far are 99% positive. The game runs great at high resolution and settings, and the only time I noticed any slowdown was some very minor stuff in the bombing run sim mission with 3 transports firing at me, but even that was negligible (I don't think it ever dropped below 30). Also, my x52 works fine, just needed to set the throttle axis.
As for gameplay, it feels not only like Wing Commander was (sort of a cross between WC3 and Prophecy), but what Wing Commander could and should be with a modern update. Things like the extra detail given to things like the sensors and flight operations give a level of immersion not seen in any of the official games. I got a strong sense of "realism" out of things like the Frigate attack, which felt reminiscent of the novels, which is definitely a good thing. Also, the way the autopilot works, while being a FS2 engine hack, has the side effect of performing essentially the same way as waypoint navigation with autopilot in Il-2, so that gets a thumbs up from me. The immersion level and WC-ness of the total package is excellent.
However, there is one thing that really broke the immersion for me. The voice acting itself is overall pretty good considering that the actors aren't professionals, but the way the dialogue is written is extremely inconsistent. One moment, people will be calling out target bearings, and then the next thing you know they sound like completely unprofessional kids. The biggest culprit of this was the comm officer on the Kennedy (I think it was) who sounded more like a frat boy inviting us in for beers than a military officer giving us landing clearance. Sure, pilots might BS here and there, but the kind of radio discipline, or lack thereof, that Ninja and Assassin exhibit would probably have them grounded. I know the dialogue is helping establish their characters, but it sounds odd within a military atmosphere, and it is also annoying if you have to replay a mission. It might have been amusing the first time, but I'd rather not have to sit through several minutes of inane chatter at every nav point. Basically, I know military personnel, especially 18 or 19 year olds aren't always the most mature people in the world, but a comm officer sitting on the bridge of a fleet carrier isn't going to talk to you like a buddy. A bit of random humor here and there is good, but don't overdo it.
My only other complaints are fairly minor stuff like proofreading errors. Overall though, it's a great take on WC and even though I still have more of the campaign to finish, I can't wait for the full release.
As for gameplay, it feels not only like Wing Commander was (sort of a cross between WC3 and Prophecy), but what Wing Commander could and should be with a modern update. Things like the extra detail given to things like the sensors and flight operations give a level of immersion not seen in any of the official games. I got a strong sense of "realism" out of things like the Frigate attack, which felt reminiscent of the novels, which is definitely a good thing. Also, the way the autopilot works, while being a FS2 engine hack, has the side effect of performing essentially the same way as waypoint navigation with autopilot in Il-2, so that gets a thumbs up from me. The immersion level and WC-ness of the total package is excellent.
However, there is one thing that really broke the immersion for me. The voice acting itself is overall pretty good considering that the actors aren't professionals, but the way the dialogue is written is extremely inconsistent. One moment, people will be calling out target bearings, and then the next thing you know they sound like completely unprofessional kids. The biggest culprit of this was the comm officer on the Kennedy (I think it was) who sounded more like a frat boy inviting us in for beers than a military officer giving us landing clearance. Sure, pilots might BS here and there, but the kind of radio discipline, or lack thereof, that Ninja and Assassin exhibit would probably have them grounded. I know the dialogue is helping establish their characters, but it sounds odd within a military atmosphere, and it is also annoying if you have to replay a mission. It might have been amusing the first time, but I'd rather not have to sit through several minutes of inane chatter at every nav point. Basically, I know military personnel, especially 18 or 19 year olds aren't always the most mature people in the world, but a comm officer sitting on the bridge of a fleet carrier isn't going to talk to you like a buddy. A bit of random humor here and there is good, but don't overdo it.
My only other complaints are fairly minor stuff like proofreading errors. Overall though, it's a great take on WC and even though I still have more of the campaign to finish, I can't wait for the full release.