Alpha test feedback Dec 13, 2014

events
#1

Please note possible time change!

The playtests are on universal time, and your daylight savings may have changed.

Join us at www.ageofascent.com for a 30 min playtest Saturday, 13th December, 2014 at 2pm Central US, 3pm East US, 8pm UK/GMT

Scores

http://player.ageofascent.com/Home/Scores/2014-12-13/

Release Notes

  • Jupiter and Europa await
  • New music and music variations.
  • Ships target bounding indicates when in range
  • Ships target bounding indicates when on target
  • Compass added to gravidar
  • more to follow…

If you want to know the bigger picture and where we are heading don’t forget to check out: About Age of Ascent

Thank you all for joining us on this journey!

Alpha test feedback Dec 27, 2014
Alpha test feedback Nov 15, 2014
#2

Play test went very well, at some points in the middle it was impossible to see what was going on as so many ships were exploding.

The only comment I would have is that we shouldn’t be allowed to fly through structures. I know I escaped by flying through a wall a couple of times, really I should of met a fiery death.

Melli

#3

Very good test this week. I found the mouse flight much less buggy than last time(still wish the AWSD keys could combine/override the mouse location). Other than minor buggyness that always was fixed by switching in & out of mouse flight mode, I saw no bugs or had any problems. It looks like things are pretty well rounded :slight_smile:

Anyway, today was a lot of fun and I cant wait to see whats next :smiley:

#4

Great fun! At times a bit overwhelming, but a nice target rich environment. My wife plays your other game Illyriad and let me know about the play test. She would have played as well but the graphic card in her Mac was not supported, even though her browser (Chrome) was compatible. Please let me know next time you have a play test. I’d love to try it again.

#5

Glad you enjoyed it!

2 weeks’ time for the next playtest, details on the homepage.

#6

Nice Grafix, but as a Senior, even with my up-to-date spectacles, I found it a little hard to distinguish between friend or foe by Color Ring until I was very close to my target: the ring is very thin. The Green wedge at the nose of each ship was very similar in color to the Yellow wedge of the opposition ships. I realize that my display would read “Friendly”/Green or not on my screen dial, but they were moving by so fast, and my ship was so slow, it would have been a little more Sensor-like if I’d been able to have some idea upon approach whom I was approaching. - I was able to pick up on the keymapping quickly enough, but the ship-response wasn’t as fast as I would have wished. At times, I couldn’t tell if I was speeding-up when accelerating, & slowing when decelerating. - This is a BEAUTIFUL game. But playable, I keep comparing it with StarLancer & FreeLancer. - Perhaps I’m being too pickayunie, but I wish the ships handled a little more responsively. And I wished the visuals were a little easier to pick out the details of my targets/destinations. That might mean making ships a little less fragile, but weighing 1 against the other…

#7

Glad you enjoyed it, CaptSnaz! It’s a bit overwhelming, sometimes, but hopefully in a good way. And yes, that “Freelancer” feel is exactly what we want to capture, just “in the browser” without download, install or plugin. Just click and play.

Your comments on the friend/foe indicators are noted; it’s something we’ll probably make user configurable tbh (brightness / thickness etc) when we get round to putting a targetting (target lock, nearest etc) list as an onscreen option.

Would love to know your hardware / browser setup if you’re willing to share details? Send me a pm.

Also, were you flying flat-out speed-wise - as the ship becomes less responsive as you slow?

Look forward to hearing from you!

SC

#8

I have to say, for an Alpha test, it seemed really well put together. Nice job.

#9

Yeeeeehaw!!

That was tons of fun. I accidentally hit my Back button on my mouse a few times, and I don’t know what happened to me in game at that time. Based on the video vs my stats, it looks like my score wasn’t affected.

Good job Reiken, Awesome, and Kitsunami on the blue team and Damanur on the red team for getting in the top five! Awesome once again impresses us with his accuracy accolades, though I caught him in a bad spot a few times!

From the last time I played (a month ago) I noticed some new music tracks (which seem like deviations of the base ambient music) and new HUD elements. I still have a hard time telling who’s red and who’s blue in the heat of battle, but that seems fair considering everyone’s using a placeholder ship. But I noticed I had to strain to see the names on the gravidar. It makes it really hard to track your target in a soup - which is fair, but I’d like not to go blind. Dwarf Fortress already took most of my eyesight.

I feel like thruster trails were changed a bit too. There was some really pretty bloom going on.

Speaking of bloom, explosions are as blinding as ever. Which is awesome.

Maleficent brought up the comment about collision. Currently it’s not terribly difficult to track someone you can’t see if you have your gravidar up, though I agree we shouldn’t fly through structures in the release build.
I’m running through how collision would work in my head and I think that at the current game speeds, it would too quickly turn into bumper cars in the soup. I actually suggest a speed increase (of about 100%) to fix this, as it would give people more ability to spread out, overshoot, and basically not stay so hot on someone’s tail. Bullet speed would have to increase proportionally too, though I think turn rate should be unaffected. I also think health would have to drop substantially to facilitate this change.

I really had a lot of fun with this test, lots of new names and very high turn out! Can’t wait for the next test!

Video coming tonight.

#10

Absolutely agreed.

We’re still in a slight internal debate about how to handle collisions - whether to bounce, or to slow and/or damage the ship; and whether to apply this to ship<->ship collisions or just to ship<->structure collisions only. Given the occasional madness of the dogfighting balls of fury, we have to play this one carefully as there’s a fair to middling chance it’ll turn into some sort of Brownian-motion chamber of nightmarish causality :slight_smile:

#11

Maybe this can be brought up in the lounge?

#12

That’s a really interesting idea. Let me think on it; there are ramifications for the render speed and interest-management algorithms, so it might not be quite as easy as it might appear on the surface.

Yeah, hopefully you enjoyed the new music and HUD elements? We seem to be going down an IDM/glitch electronica route that seems to suit the game quite nicely (imo).

Yes, some work went on in these directions, and I’m thrilled you noticed! We’re considering going a slightly anisotropic horizontal bloom route, depending on engine type. Something a bit like these.

Yeah, we’re pleased with them; but we do have to come up with some variants as well, to keep things fresh. I personally like the spherical detonation / implosion sequence. It’s prolly something we’ll attach to different weapon types based on a “laid the final blow” decision.

I think the target list / target lock will help substantially with this; but I also agree that we should make all of the colour coding / brightness / font size / etc user configurable (along with the keyboard controls).

Best,

SC

#13

Yeah, absolutely the right place for it. Want to start a thread?

#14

Thank you very much! We’re happy with it, and am delighted that you participated in the test - your feedback is really useful to us; and please do keep it coming!

#15

Another great playtest, had lots of fun today.

I agree with Romeo’s idea on how ship collisions should work, and if possible, it would be nice to use different styles of collisions in playtests to find out which one works the best/everyone likes the most. Finding ways to spread out pilots is a must as a well placed AoE weapon would obliterate most the players in the soup in the middle of the map.

#16

I don’t really know what they represented. I just noticed smaller icons and the white circle around last hit enemies.

I’m a fan of the high velocity explosion, like this.

We are the testers, you may use and abuse us as you see fit!

#17

Devastated that I couldn’t wake up at 7am on a Sunday morning to join in :frowning: GMT +11 definitely works against me.

#18

Where do I pm you? - There doesn’t seem to be a “Contact” tab anywhere.

#19

Click on his name in the… anywhere.

#20

Video! I don’t have time this morning so I’ll watch it and double check it tonight.