Really enjoying the loop and the feel of the busy work. The personality type mechanic is a good one I think.
One thing to suggest - all of the descriptions for character role models (Hans Solo-type, Picard-type) are male characters! Can there be some role models for our characters who aren't just men? Thanks!
Oh, yeah, that's been giving me trouble. Also, if the device could blink while I am carrying it it would be much better. As it is I have to drop it and see how fast the light blinks, then pick it up again and drop it further afield to see if it got faster. Most of the time I am not sure if I am warm or cold.
this might just be me/my monitor but I found the text hard to read. maybe change the text outline to pure black instead of a light grey? In a similar vein I find it hard to read the text when choosing an text option due to the white highlighted box on white text.
In the tutorial, the player is instructed to press buttons but when interacting you need to hold, so changing instances of "press" to "hold".
I find it odd that you complain about press to hold ui elements then require a hold to enter to access the ship console.
pressing esc to go back a page on options/ in game menus should be added.
when traveling via impusle drive we can align the engines to increase speed to a planet. this may change when I play more but currently, this is very easy to do and is done quickly for no lose to the player so im not sure why a player ever would not do this, which makes me wonder why it should be there at all.
I enjoy upkeeping the ship whilst travelling but find the air cyclers get dirty too fast.
the mist/cloud effects on certain planets such as fal prime look jarring and unrealistic as it moves in relation to you instead of being static. this may be personal but I think it looks terrible.
Sound effects are missing in the character creation menu and also when swapping gear.
Received error message returning to vessel after completing a distress call in Wosask:
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object obj_smoke:
Variable Index [-1] out of range [60] at gml_Object_obj_smoke_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_obj_smoke_Draw_0 (line -1)
Suggestion: tint the dialog box depending on who's talking to more easily tell. Especially in FS mode on a large screen, the face icon is far away from the text.
Okay, I think I’m the first one to do this. I played as Jonas Starhawk, who, after being sent 2,000 years in the future, decided to explore the entire galaxy and collect every material. And I did that, which is why it took me so long to write this comment.
Here’s proof of the accomplishment:
Me and my dad have watched Dev Diary together since September, and I was really excited to play this alpha. So with complete galaxy exploration under my belt, I can definitively state that this is a fun gameplay loop. Once the story is developed, I can see plenty of people doing different things with their playthrough. Someone might want to explore the galaxy, or get the fastest ship, maybe pledge themselves to a faction. There’s a lot of mechanics I can see getting better with more story depth getting added. I’ll get through my list of bugs and glitches before some suggestions I have for improvements on existing features.
Gameplay Glitch/Notes:
No description of Freight Jobs in the Manual.
Upgrade Units not appearing on Derelict Ships, but computer messages saying I’ve missed one. I first started noticing this after following a rumor to a ship.
Game freeze when dropping any item into a door.
Lag when landing on uninhabited planets or ship repairs. Could it be caused by items in my Landing Bay or ship in general?
No way to restore Coolant after the system has been damaged besides upgrading the ship. I though I was being smart by throwing coolant bottles at it, but to no avail.
Fuel in Warp Engines gets cleared when you upgrade any part of the ship.
Some objects left in the Landing Bay can be deleted if the Landing Bay is upgraded.
Navigating the trading posts with a cursor is clunky.
Sometimes the residue timer makes something you’ve just cleaned 20%+ dirty.
In the Jobs board, you can get quests for a ‘Berry Bunch’ or ‘Pea Pod’. Both are actually quests for ‘Berries’ and ‘Peas’.
Your balance should appear in the repainting store like every other shop.
Maybe I'm dumb, but I couldn't find any way to take off my characters glasses. I eventually got used to them, but it feels like there should be some way to do that.
Maybe some differentiation between the hair and skin chair? Maybe the skin chair is actually a tanning bed.
Visual Glitch:
In the countdown stage of the Warp Speed animation, number 2 shows a half rendered ship.
Air puff texture can disappear if next to a wall at the top. It can also appear through the ship when entering warp speed.
That damage texture doesn’t line up with the outside cockpits sensor thingies. I fixed them before I thought to take a picture, but it basically hangs out over space instead of the sensor.
If you pick up an item while nearing/out of stamina, the emotion reaction will play. If you move immediately, the reaction stays where it is and doesn’t follow the player. Maybe since player tracking could be hard, emotions should stop when the player moves?
Items in a Landing Bay lost their texture when landing on a repair ship. I could still interact with them even when invisible, and could glitch through them to move around. My items also appeared in the Landing Bay of the other ship.
When upgrading a ship, if you have items laying on the ground (as I had), and the ship's arrangement moves, the items get put in this null black void area. They’re recoverable thankfully, the void disappears after they’re removed and the ship is reloaded. A similar thing happens when docking at a repair ship with items on the landing bay.
If there are too many ship components, they clip underneath the repainting menu.
The cursor pointing towards the ship on a landed planet clips above the menus.
Audio Glitch:
I spun the ship around fast in the System Map. I left quickly and the spinning sound kept playing until I landed on a planet.
Suggestions:
When in the Manual, there should be icons next to each description of the planet types. I only started understanding the differences because of attrition. Explanations for each planet type should probably be in the tutorial as well. Maybe the lawyer says “Go to the Residential planet ____ to get some new haircut options.”
Civilized planets feel very desolate. As I was on my 50-60th Residential planet, I wondered why all these shops and medical services were on raised platforms. Why aren’t stores on the ground level, with people going in and out? If I could go down into the marketplaces of planets, they would have their own personalities and cultures. You’ve got the movement code for Zoobs, why not refine that and have residents walk around. No interaction required, just movement to make these planets feel lived in.
While I was watching the most recent Dev Diary, one idea of yours caught my attention, sectioning off space for early gameplay. I like the idea, but it doesn’t make sense with the current layout of the map. All the systems are in this unnatural box grid, and cutting the players movement into another box seems stale. Taking a page from the Star Wars galaxy, I think the map should be circular and split into ‘rims’. This does a couple things. 1. It just looks more visually appealing. 2. It would show off the massive purple egg in the middle of the galaxy better. 3. It allows the player to explore varied types of planets as they unlock ‘rims’ through the story or other gameplay. Maybe lore-wise, the egg makes it difficult to warp jump without a powerful ship. You can still jump to it any time, but are more likely to get smashed by asteroids the worse your ship is.
Playing off my ‘rims’ idea, I think the eventual factions the player encounters should have different areas of belief. Maybe the farther a system is from the egg, the less likely it is for them to believe it exists. Meanwhile those in the center worship or fear it.
Another commenter talked more on this, but the day system is confusing. There's no calendar or way to track cycles yourself. The word only appears in freight jobs and while sleeping.
I think sleeping should eventually be removed. I appreciate its current inclusion, since there's nothing besides cleaning and the small direct control game to do. But once the secondary and tertiary loops are there, I don't see any reason why sleeping can't be replaced primarily with food items. Sleeping is the player's way of saying "There's nothing left to do, let me just time skip", and I don't think the final version of the game should have that much to skip.
I’m of two minds on the random system names and planet composition. On one hand, having a set galaxy where all players have the same experiences seems most beneficial. Plus you could flesh out the backstory of a world and by extension a crew member you can recruit from it. Other hand, randomness means a new story every time the player restarts the game. Randomness is also easier to program I imagine. I ultimately think it’s better for the game to have one structured setting (planet layouts, resources, size) and have random planet names, factions, and characters.
Final thoughts:
I loved this alpha. I only played one insanely completionist way, which isn’t usually normal for me. I can’t even imagine the story I’ll have with crewmates and taking the adventure slower. I started collecting all the items after I saw they had hilarious flavor text. And I can see how some items could be used with the new rooms and features. Reading through the menus and taskbars of this game is really enjoyable. I found a sneak peak of a repair shop faction in the Industrial Planet description, and I’m super excited for that. All my larger critiques boil down to me just wanting more to do, another feature to bite my teeth into. Can’t wait to keep playing this with each new release!
Given: arrived to the edge of the system by missing the planet: save file
Steps: enter engage mode from system map
Expected: obstacles to move toward ship, ship to move through system
Saw: obstacles pile on the right side, except the big asteroids, which move at 1/10? horizontal speed toward left. Video here 30 sec.
Otherwise, it seems like an okay time. I'm not a fan of the bank left/right requiring two button presses, but I understand that it reflects that it's a menu interaction, rather than a separate one, like turning the ship.
I realy liked the gameplay loop, and traveling in the space is realy cool.
bugs:
when a upgrade the load room after upgrade the side room(where i put my o2 filters), the o2 filter lose the texture, stoped working and kinda expand the room, i fixed changing the air filter of place.
when you put a item between a door the game crashes.
when you are leaving a planet and is loading crates in the same time, when you go back some of the crates still are there.
how do i pass the upgrade unit mission cause i recovered the upgrade unit, did not use the glitch to have multiple upgrade units and brought the upgrade unit to the shipyard and installed the warp drive
It looks like the Rumors are selectable /highlightable by mouse, but only the last one. This is not a game-breaking problem at all but feels weird
Once a rumor is completed (ie: it tells me there is an upgraded unit to buy at a place, and I buy it), the rumor hangs around. The ability to clear a rumor, or automatically marking it as being completed (once the item the rumor refers to is collected) would ensure this list doesn't bloat for every rumor.
so... funny thing. when you go get the upgrade unit for getting the warp drive, if you go back down to the planet there'll be another. the item will continue to duplicate itself and to find out, each costs 700 credits, mainly meaning the player is gonna get rich quick. this glitch or whatever it is though makes the story stop, even if you do get the warp drive. you might want to fix that.
- Game froze and crashed during tutorial, when attempting to convert ore to fuel.
- It is rather unintuitive and interruptive having to switch out of a tool to be able to use escape hatches and such -- I would suggest letting these be used either with any tool, or automatically switching to no tool without user input when trying to use these.
-It would be slightly nicer if menu screens rendered as soon as you navigate to them, instead of waiting for a confirmation - but that is a nice to have.
I have written on a few bugs and issues I have had here, and feel bad. When playing tonight though, I had a "cool" moment when some stuff started to click, and I feel I should share.
Transiting between planets, I took a few hits and had some damage to some ship components. This included the ship's thrusters, which I noted visually (the damaged section was visible in the cockpit, with the "gash" on the tile) and I repaired.
Later in my playthrough, I was in manual ship control and noticed I could no longer thrust right.
My first instinct was that this was a bug or control issue (and went to make a note). Before I did, I went into ship diagnostic and notices that the right thruster was reading in the red, an error I hadn't encountered before and despite my repair. I then realised that the big fat "ears" on the head of the ship were the external portions of said thrusters. I went out, repaired the damage, and resumed my journey with ship control.
At no point was I trained in their being a thruster issue, or was I explicitly told that thrusters were a component. However, all the information and skills required to deal with a new problem were passed to me in-game, in such a way that there was a heavy-handed tutorial. I knew the thrusters existed (because I walk past the internal portions of them as I walk in the cockpit, and that sometimes triggered their info windows), and I knew I had diagnostic tools (form earlier repair jobs and ship exploration) so I can assess the problem before leaving the ship.
I felt I learnt lessons in a way that "felt" rather natural, and served me when a new problem emerged.
I can say this or that about interfaces, controls, issues, and such, and I feel like a nag. However, that moment just had felt very strong, and I needed to share.
Note: I may not be 100% correct o this bug. Trying again this morning, but placing the item directly in front of the NPC awaiting the bag resolved the issue.
I'll leave the report below, but I'm likely wrong (although the duplication of the item is still an issue)
Bug - Cannot complete a Job (possibly due to duplicated item)
Received a Job from Job board to collect a bag on one planet (Kysil II) and return it to a person on another (Drist III)
Got to Kysil II, landed, found the bag, and returned with the bag to the ship.
Upon returning to the ship and stowing the item off the landing pad, I returned to the planet once again (I thought I was low on warp fuel and wanted to purchase some).
Notice the white bag was still on the planet (possibly a duplicate).
Returned to the ship, and confirmed the white bag i brought to the ship earlier was still there.
Flew back to Drist III, and took the bag to the loading zone of the planet. The person standing in the zone did not acknowledge my return of their bag, and was unable to complete the job.
Went to bed (real-life bed), so took no other action on my end to redress.
Possible other factors:
I had two jobs for two white bags at the same time. I returned the white bag for the first job, but encountered the problem on the second. Both bags had in their descriptions clearly what their final destination was, and I returned the correct bag to the first job.
Loving the game so far, only big issue so far is upgrade units not appearing on derelict ships, even when it gives me the "You're leaving behind an upgrade unit" warning
A question regarding the "more cargo" vs. "more speed" - is the intent that you should only be keeping cargo on that platform? Because I've been stashing stuff all over the place, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the "fast" ship has more nooks and crannies to stuff cargo into.
found an interesting bug, i did a mission where i had to return a bag and i put the bag in the ship and a duplicate came back on the planet and so i could have multiples of the same bag
These sorts of games--Harvest Moon-esque "work sims"--are generally not my jam. I really enjoyed this one, though, even without the story/crew aspects, so . . . well done! I've gotten most of the ship upgrades and had a blast. I also really enjoyed what bits of writing were there.
Figured out pretty quick that planets with crashed ships (including the one in the very first scene) will regenerate endless upgrade units and scrap. Had a weird little bug in one system where derelict ships kept generating every few seconds as I was traveling. Had a storage module full of stuff just off of my cargo platform; when I upgraded the platform, the module shifted but the stuff inside did not, so I lost a few things.
Would be nice if planets wouldn't interrupt me after I've redirected toward a derelict ship, or if there was a way to land on said ships manually after a planet interrupted (maybe I just missed my aim)? I also encountered a system with no planets at all; didn't have any troubles with it, but it occurred to me that I could easily have end up stranded if I had jumped into it on my last bit of warp fuel.
Loving the game so far, cannot wait to play more of it (although saying I have the personality of a hard light hologram is a bit mean). Just to let you know I experienced a crash, ironically when I encountered my first distress beacon. When I went into the ship I had really bad slowdown and a drop in framerate until the game just stopped when I was about to squish one of the purple things (cannot remember what they are called). Also, I forgot to move my shipping crates from the landing pad when I went down to the ship, the sprites were gone but the objects were still there (if that makes any sense). Loving the game though and I cannot wait to see what more there is to see
Cannot place an Item in a specific spot in the landing zone.
I have a theory that the position was previously occupied by the item (A package) that was returned to the guy (top left) as part of a job, and that it might still be allocated to the spot, but invisible.
Misc - Replacing Coolant
I commented earlier, that I was unable to replace coolant. It seems that when buying a Ship upgrade, that the coolant at this point resets to 100%. So now I have solved my coolant problem (and my ship is now more easily in the green), how can we replace coolant without having to shell out several grand for an upgrade.
When you're working on the outside of the ship you see the stars and space etc... background, but when you go inside it goes away and all you see is the inside of ships hull against black. I think keeping the scrolling background of stars/space while inside would do alot of work to underscore the feeling of isolation in the wide swaths of emptiness
Great demo! I am an avid follower of your DD-series and it really surprised me how immersive and vast a game can feel with such a "simple" structure. I played on a crappy old laptop and encountered no bugs, but some major lag when on uninhabtiated planets. The rest of the game ran smoothly. Some other things that were not clear to me/ I'd like to mention:
The time system: It was unclear to me how time passes. I know that when sleeping, cycles go by pretty fast, but when awake and not traveling, I didn't really know how fast time passed, if at all. I still don't know how long one cycle is supposed to be.
It would be nice if, on the system map, one could see how far the ship traveles in a given time (=how many cycles it would take to reach a certain destination). That would make planning efficient routes between multiple planets possible.
And, although I feel like this is because I overlooked something, I could not get the warp drive. I took the ship upgrade from the wreckage and went to a planet with a crane-icon on it, but I didn't find a shipyard to upgrade my vessel.
Edit: Some issues I came across:
- The game freezes if you place an item into the wall. Other people already mentioned this. - Changing your name when starting a new game doesn't always work.
Loving what I see now, and ironing out a lot of the pain-points in the first release made putting an extending amount of play into things easier. Hoping things keep improving!
Bugs
1. Glitch when putting down items
Encountered the same issue Mad_As_A_Hatter discussed, where the game can lock when placing an item in an "impossible" space. I encountered it when performing a "ship in distress" mission and crushing the little blob things by dropping boxes on them (Good mission, btw, was a nice little change). The scenario demanded dropping an item box multiple times, so it was likely to create the issue. After encountering the issue, and reading Mad_As_A_Hatter write-up, I attempted to recreate the issue as described, to the same result.
2. Regarding the Trading Post
The back button is not working in the "Sell" page of the "Trading Post", when driven by the mouse. Attempting to click it will "sell" the last item on the list.
The up and down arrows are not 100% effective in the "Trading Post" menu. Downward arrow in particular. If you click too high on the icon, we can sell the last item in the list. Have to click real down low on the icon.
3. Mission not Updating
I got the ship upgrade item from the wreckage, and obtained the new warp drive, but the mission telling me to do this remains the active mission in the PDA, and the on-screen notice hangs around.
Issues and feedback on existing features
Not bugs per-se, just things I have noticed.
1. Controls.
Experimenting with controls. I am using WSAD to move, and primarily using the mouse to Use Items / Go Back and interact with Menus (with spacebar as a backup use key).
Mouse seems to be a "Use" / "Back" (independent of control setup), but not in all cases. Specifically, see waking up from a sleep cycle, which does not seem to acknowledge the mouse left as a "use" key.
2. Damaged Ship and Maintenance
As a test, I decided to take the ship back and forth in an asteroid region on the map and try to do some real damage. I was trying to get an end-of-game of some sort, but saw that the ship can only be severly damaged to a standstill (which is a good thing). Whilst repairing things, I noticed the following:
When I really damaged things, I seem to have lost coolant from the reactor. Not the clean/dirty ratio, but the total volume of coolant. It dropped from 100% to 60%. I could repair the reactor, and purify the remaining coolant, but could not figure out how to get it back up to 100%. I tried all the tools, went to the trading post (in case it was purchasable), and visited a planet with a shipyard in order to try resolving it. Once I lost the coolant, I could never get the danger gauge (the green/yellow/red dial with the indicator triangle) to never move above the yellow region and felt like I was cleaning the reactor coolant more frequently.
Warp Coil never aligns to 100%, even when I realign with the tools. It always appears a little off visually.
Broken power lines can be obscured by placing items on top of them (as I often do, filling up the ship and just leaving the minimum route to move between rooms). Once I knew what I was looking for, I could see the sparks coming from under an item, but the sparks were not super obvious whilst walking through the ship and encountering the specific fault for the first time. Not sure if this feels intentional or not, but it threw me for a minute. I adjusted, but it might be understated.
3. Trading Post
With the selling lists in the trading post, I am not 100% sure how Items are being ordered in the list. Doing some testing, it seems that the list of sellable items is one-to-one with the arrangement of items in the loading zone (starting with the top left, go along row one, then to the next row down, and so on), trimming empty space from the array.
Is getting the list sortable by item name possible, or to stack the same item in the list (ie: Instead of having seven line items for potatoes, having one line item for seven potatoes?).
I'm not even sure this is a good idea, as the current setup has the benefit of selling a specific item from your landing zone (ie: Sell the third potato).
4. Missions
Displaying missions, in the PDA. Could a mission have an indicator, that the item is already onboard? At present, if I have a few jobs going and split my play session over a few days, I can lose track of things a bit of what I was doing.
I do love that I could go up to an item (from a half-completed mission) and it would tell me in the item description where I had to take it, which was helpful. That may be all the solution you want, and it compels the player to interact with the item itself (and not a menu abstracting those items' information). That could be baked into the gameplay loop, and having more detail in the PDA might destroy that.
Also, when on a planet, maybe show the missions on the "active" indicator on the top right (the text with the current mission).
5. Job Board:
This is less feedback, more than a question. Is the difference between the Job Board tasks and Freight Jobs? At first glance, Jobs from the Job Board seem to offer no price in their description, so you go in a bit blind, not knowing the reward. Additionally, they don't seem to have the time limits the shipping jobs do. Are these conclusions correct, or has my small sample size biased my opinion?
I tried to "self answer" by going to the in-game Manual entry for "Freight Jobs", but this specific entry was empty. A lot of the other ones are good so far, and explain some things and have been helpful.
6. Misc
Can we have the volume setting persist as a setting? Each time I play, I have to come in and adjust. Someone else also mentioned the volume jumped between 8 and 10 (no 9), and I noticed that when I went in and checked.
The readability of translucent menus is still a little difficult (though glad that interacting with the top menu doesn't influence the bottom menu). An obvious one this is happening on is the confirmation screen when opening a save.
Save system is clearer (thanks for details in the release notes), but not clearer in-game itself.
The Status Portrait for the player character is always their current orientation. ie: If I am moving "North" within the game world (facing away from the camera), I only see the back of their head in the Status screen.
I can change tools in bed. Is this something I should be able to do? I feel like that in games with sleep/recovery cycles, you are sacrificing time and agency within the game (for a limited time) in order to obtain a benefit (regain stamina). Changing tools is such a small thing, but if a character is asleep, I would expect to be able to do nothing in this time (apart from waking up).
Love the littering notice, when placing the items out of the delivery area.
Suggestions
New, random things, often sitting outside the primary gameplay loop:
Would it be possible to name our ship? I don't remember the exact dialog of when we are offered our first ship, but I thought the designations there are only class names and not ship names.
Regarding 0xygen on a planet, and wearing a suit. One thought I had was of divers, who go on longer explorations of undersea caves. They often carry additional cylinders with them, to extend their time underwater. As we can already carry an item, we could (in theory) carry a cylinder as that item, and holding this cylinder will consume oxygen from the cylinder (as opposed to the players' suits supply), for the duration of the carry. This could do interesting things for the gameplay (juggling between an item and the air cylinder, carrying them each in turn, to retrieve an item that is further from the platform), though I could also see it adding wrinkles and the need for additional systems to support it (ie: landing on a planet at present, I have no idea if the planet requires a suit or not - the game just adds the suit automatically for me when I land with the platform. If this cylinder idea were implemented, there would need to be a way to tell the player whether the planet has oxygen or not).
You are doing some stat tracking and presentation (examples under the status page, and the star map), and there is the idea of "Cycles" in the game (get this done in X cycles), but I am feeling some disconnect with the ongoing perception of time and things being achieved. When doing a shipping job, I really have no idea of how many cycles have passed, I just know a line is getting shorter on the freight display. I'm not sure what I am asking for here, it's just a "disconnect" I have felt while playing. I do think to some sci-fi, or "ship" based shows, where characters have a "Captains Log", for capturing some sort of summary on the narrative and what is being achieved in an ongoing fashion.
I have Some Thoughts that I have organised into a numbered list.
1. I noticed in your latest Dev Diary you mentioned how frustrating it was to have to hold down a button to perform an action. I agree; and was therefore wondering what made you decide that was the best way to have actions work in SV.
2. I saw someone in this very comment section talking about severe lag when planetside. I have also experienced this.
3. For my first delivery job I accidentally left a solitary crate of pineapple chunks outside the Loading Zone while I was loading my ship. When I returned to the surface it had vanished without trace, leaving me unable to complete the delivery.
4. I'm sure this is just because it's the last Story Mission in the current build, but even after I have upgraded my warp drive the mission still appears on the screen.
5. Saving the praise for the end - I got extremely absorbed in the game and accidentally used my entire lunch break on it. Job well done!
Hey Yahtzee, just playing the prologue and I noticed a slight problem. In the volume control settings, there is no number 9, there is a number 10 and a number 8, but no number 9. I am loving the feel and atmosphere of the game so far though, will give more in depth thoughts when I get more of a chance to play it
Delivered 6 crates of apples to Blarg 2. Immediately receive a job to deliver 6 crates of apples from Blarg 2. I love that the random mission system basically recreated the feeling of working in a poorly optimised workplace.
I quite enjoy the primary loop of the game, however it seems very easy. I understand there is not yet a health system, however even with that i belive it would be very easy. I've never felt as if i dont have much time for the deliveries. Another point is that i had a rumour about an upgrade module in the trading post of an area, but the only planets there were two uninhabited planets. Other than this im having a lot of fun though.
Two quick bugs I noticed while playing: If you initiate the cockpit menu while the walking animation is playing, the animation will continue playing despite standing still. Also, I had the mission where you have to return a bag, and I noticed that once you pick up the bag and put it on your ship, the game will drop another bag off on the planet. You can do this endlessly
But bugs aside, I'm loving this so far! This kind of gameplay loop is definitely very appealing to me, and the setting is cool too!
Here is a link to my first look at Starstruck Vagabond. I'm not a playtester, I'm just casually playing through the game and sharing my thoughts and reactions.
The main thing I noticed was severe lag when I landed on the planets. My computer isn't great, but this game doesn't seem like something that should require tons of resources. I'm sure such things will get ironed out in the course of production.
Thank you so much to Yahtzee. I look forward to buying the full game.
Yeah, I'm using a $300 laptop I got from walmart about 4 years ago. But it has a 2.14 ghz processor and 4 gigs of ram, so it should be able to handle such simple graphics. It seems like it has something to do with the backgrounds, because my game is fastest when in the ship away from the cockpit, and slowest when on a planet. I can see my game noticably slow down when I enter the cockpit and it starts showing the background planet outside.
I've been following the Dev Diaries series for a while now and I must say I was very excited to get a chance to try out Starstruck Vagabond. Having played it for only several hours, here's my first impressions of it:
It's fitting that since you put so much time into thinking about the primary loop, it is the thing that represents the game best. Switching tools to complete tasks as well as picking up and placing cargo all seem to fit together nicely when creating the feel of the game. Similarly, I enjoy the cheeky bits of dialogue and think it really brings the characters to life. As of right now though, there isn't so much of a life which the characters are living, so much a placeholder.
As excited as I was to try out the mechanics of the game myself, having done so I am even more excited to find out why I should care about the world I'm inhabiting. Conflict for instance seems to be somewhat missing, as well as motivation. Sure we could simply keep on upgrading our ship ad nosism but what's the point? Plenty of other people in the comments have listed out their ideas on mechanics and I think that's all fine and good, but I'm more interested in the direction you'll take our character's journey.
Case and point, lets say I chose to be a private, apathetic vagabond who after discovering that everything I know and love is dead, desires nothing more than anything to drink myself to death. Some alien insisting on how grand it would be to upgrade my ship doesn't mean much when ideally I could find all of the liquor I need on the first planet I find myself on.
This is not to say I want you to incorporate the ability to go wherever and do whatever you want, god forbid you should fall into another feature creep. Like I said before, I rather like the mechanics of the game, but to harken on your own words we need context to care.
All that to say, I enjoyed the tech demo and hope you really nail some solid character motivation to marry with the gameplay. Otherwise we shall simply remain a recently isolated human doing other people's space chores.
Then again, I've been using "you" as a means of hoping that the Yahtzee Croshaw would actually read my nonsense comment about how I'm waiting for him to do all of the things he said he would. When put like that, this blurb seems a somewhat unnecessary, though cathartic waste of time. Almost like driving a space truck through an uncaring universe...
v0.1.1: Ahh, I like the anti-littering thing. Smooth.
So I have a crash that I have been able to replicate repeatedly. Trying to put this barrel down (haven't tried with other objects) in this spot freezes the game. A little higher and she won't put it down. A little lower and it goes down fine. Right here in the middle, it locks up. Doesn't seem to happen in the object in the way is on the tile below.
Edit: Actually, the barrels just seem to be a little fragile. Crashed just putting one down elsewhere. No issue with crates yet.
You've mentioned this being Stardew Valley-esque. A big part of that game is the day cycle, which draws you in and gets you in a rhythm. The lack of that is what could potentially hold this game back. If you had to water your plants every 4 minutes it would become an annoyance rather than a part of your daily chores. Same goes for cleaning the air vents or coolant. If that occurred once a day or something like that it wouldn't be a constant hassle, but a part of your daily routine that becomes the rhythm of the game.
Some sort of notification if you miss a delivery.
More than just one planet per system to sell random junk. If its a civilized planet you should be able to sell the random stuff you get on uncivilized planets.
A better way to control the ship while flying would be helpful. Tabbing to "shift left" or "shift right" then pressing the button is adding unnecessary steps when we have WASD controls.
I never had enough stamina. Sleeping recharges stamina too slowly, and the ship breaks down half way through sleeping either way. After awhile I stopped sleeping altogether as there was no penalty and it wasn't worth it. As you know sleeping stardew valley sleeping advances to the next day and recharges stamina to 100%, I think adding that in this game would solve a lot of problems.
How long is a time unit? Having 40 units to get to a random planet means nothing, going with my first point a day cycle would help this.
After getting the warp drive my game froze and crashed when placing an amethyst next to the coolant. Or I think it was the amethyst, it was the item that was "butter colored" in the flavor text.
Looks like a great start! Playing v .1.1. Enjoying it a lot, but I want to echo the comments that maintenance feels odd and constant. You mentioned that you didn't want space flight to feel either too rewarding or not rewarding enough, and I think you fell too hard on the "not rewarding enough" side. Even when you find streams to speed up travel, there's almost always an obstacle to dodge which means the boost lasts for two hot seconds before you have to get out of it. I've only seen one piece of trash which gave me 1 credit.
Also, bug report: When landing on the planet where the crashed ship has an upgrade module in the first system (prior to getting the warp drive), if you take the upgrade module and immediately land again, a new crash spawns with a new module. I was able to grab four upgrade modules in the first system this way. This also seems to break the first story mission, as I installed the warp drive, but the game never acknowledges that I did so.
Edit: the last bug more generally occurs with any crashed ship that you're looking for something on: if you retrieve the object, then immediately turn around and go back to the planet, you can find the object again, even if you already have the object in your ship. I assume this is a safety valve if you accidentally misplace the object.
For quality of life, it would be nice if you could look at available upgrades before inserting the upgrade module...at least to know if you should even bother going up to your ship and grabbing it from whatever out of the way locale you store them in.
Okay, this was definitely worth keeping an eye on the dev logs for.
First thing I've noticed that you didn't talk about was the personality system, what drove you to come up with that? (No offense intended, just curious as to your thinking behind it.) I also want to how it'll affect the game moving forwards.
Also, after the lawyer (I forget his name... Dripberg?) gives me my ship I get this error message;
############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object con_tutorial:
DoConv :1: illegal undefined/null use at gml_Script_mapsectorjobs ############################################################################################ gml_Script_mapsectorjobs (line -1) gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0
Which forces me to crash the game and stop playing. What went wrong and do you think you could fix it? (I am using the 0.1.1 hot-fix, by the way.)
Had a few bugs. Some annoying, but otherwise not bad, until loading a third upgrade unit onto my ship crashed the entire game. In general, many of the bugs I've encountered have already been reported below.
In general, loving the idea currently more than the execution. This is, in essence, a series of fetch quests. I was still getting into the loop regardless. However, maintaining the ship didn't feel as satisfying as I think it was meant to be. constantly stopping to clean the ship components felt more of a nuisance with how quickly they popped up. Sleeping felt like it restored too little stamina, so I'd be sitting and waiting on my stamina to go up, then stopping to clean things before going back to bed.
Though I suppose that's true to life, really,
I like the idea of controlling the ship a bit while heading to the planet (drifting into space debris to pick up some change), though it got old fast, and I promptly began ignoring it. The money you made felt like too little, and otherwise you were just basically playing pong but badly (avoiding the bouncing ball, in this case).
I do want something more engaging to do on the ship while traveling. Something productive, not just trying to keep things working. Hell, I'd be ok with longer trips if that was the case. Like instead of just flying into debris, maybe there was some computer busywork you could do. Something even as silly as filling out surveys for galactic corporations. Really play up that I'm using all my free time to make a quick buck.
All that said... I wanted to keep playing it, so it's doing something right. Even if it is basically Fetch Quest: The Game, the thematic hook of being a space trucker kept me interested. The idea of being able to customize and upgrade my ship, making my own mark on it's design, and maybe, just maybe, having enough space in there to avoid having to pick up and move things around all the time to navigate the corridors.
Oh, and hopefully customizable gamepad controls can happen. Pressing the X and Y buttons to switch tools felt unnatural, so I kept pressing the bumpers and being annoyed they didn't do it.
Good luck with the game Yahtzee! Excited to see more.
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Really enjoying the loop and the feel of the busy work. The personality type mechanic is a good one I think.
One thing to suggest - all of the descriptions for character role models (Hans Solo-type, Picard-type) are male characters! Can there be some role models for our characters who aren't just men? Thanks!
I can't figure out where to put the Oniris devices. What am I missing?
Oh, yeah, that's been giving me trouble. Also, if the device could blink while I am carrying it it would be much better. As it is I have to drop it and see how fast the light blinks, then pick it up again and drop it further afield to see if it got faster. Most of the time I am not sure if I am warm or cold.
Feedback:
this might just be me/my monitor but I found the text hard to read. maybe change the text outline to pure black instead of a light grey? In a similar vein I find it hard to read the text when choosing an text option due to the white highlighted box on white text.
In the tutorial, the player is instructed to press buttons but when interacting you need to hold, so changing instances of "press" to "hold".
I find it odd that you complain about press to hold ui elements then require a hold to enter to access the ship console.
pressing esc to go back a page on options/ in game menus should be added.
when traveling via impusle drive we can align the engines to increase speed to a planet. this may change when I play more but currently, this is very easy to do and is done quickly for no lose to the player so im not sure why a player ever would not do this, which makes me wonder why it should be there at all.
I enjoy upkeeping the ship whilst travelling but find the air cyclers get dirty too fast.
the mist/cloud effects on certain planets such as fal prime look jarring and unrealistic as it moves in relation to you instead of being static. this may be personal but I think it looks terrible.
Sound effects are missing in the character creation menu and also when swapping gear.
Received error message returning to vessel after completing a distress call in Wosask:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_smoke:
Variable Index [-1] out of range [60]
at gml_Object_obj_smoke_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_smoke_Draw_0 (line -1)
Suggestion: tint the dialog box depending on who's talking to more easily tell. Especially in FS mode on a large screen, the face icon is far away from the text.
Okay, I think I’m the first one to do this. I played as Jonas Starhawk, who, after being sent 2,000 years in the future, decided to explore the entire galaxy and collect every material. And I did that, which is why it took me so long to write this comment.
Here’s proof of the accomplishment:
Me and my dad have watched Dev Diary together since September, and I was really excited to play this alpha. So with complete galaxy exploration under my belt, I can definitively state that this is a fun gameplay loop. Once the story is developed, I can see plenty of people doing different things with their playthrough. Someone might want to explore the galaxy, or get the fastest ship, maybe pledge themselves to a faction. There’s a lot of mechanics I can see getting better with more story depth getting added. I’ll get through my list of bugs and glitches before some suggestions I have for improvements on existing features.
Gameplay Glitch/Notes:
Visual Glitch:
Audio Glitch:
Suggestions:
Final thoughts:
I loved this alpha. I only played one insanely completionist way, which isn’t usually normal for me. I can’t even imagine the story I’ll have with crewmates and taking the adventure slower. I started collecting all the items after I saw they had hilarious flavor text. And I can see how some items could be used with the new rooms and features. Reading through the menus and taskbars of this game is really enjoyable. I found a sneak peak of a repair shop faction in the Industrial Planet description, and I’m super excited for that. All my larger critiques boil down to me just wanting more to do, another feature to bite my teeth into. Can’t wait to keep playing this with each new release!
Hey, cool to see someone go really hard in on it. I'm also loving it, but haven't had the time to go as deep as you have.
I just wanted to comment here, and say I too experienced the audio glitch you described.
I ended the sound the same way, but I also think you can end it by going into the ship controls again and resuming control of the ship.
I spent 80 min playing before encountering undesirable behavior.
Environment: win 10 amd64 Starstruck Vagabond v0.1.1. Config file
Given: arrived to the edge of the system by missing the planet: save file
Steps: enter engage mode from system map
Expected: obstacles to move toward ship, ship to move through system
Saw: obstacles pile on the right side, except the big asteroids, which move at 1/10? horizontal speed toward left. Video here 30 sec.
Otherwise, it seems like an okay time. I'm not a fan of the bank left/right requiring two button presses, but I understand that it reflects that it's a menu interaction, rather than a separate one, like turning the ship.
I realy liked the gameplay loop, and traveling in the space is realy cool.
bugs:
when a upgrade the load room after upgrade the side room(where i put my o2 filters), the o2 filter lose the texture, stoped working and kinda expand the room, i fixed changing the air filter of place.
when you put a item between a door the game crashes.
when you are leaving a planet and is loading crates in the same time, when you go back some of the crates still are there.
how do i pass the upgrade unit mission cause i recovered the upgrade unit, did not use the glitch to have multiple upgrade units and brought the upgrade unit to the shipyard and installed the warp drive
you wont. the game is in an lpha state an thats the oonly mission created. Here in this video explains everything you need about the alpha:https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/go-with-the-flow-yahtzees-dev-diary/
Ver 0.1.1
The "Rumors" page has a few small issues:
so... funny thing. when you go get the upgrade unit for getting the warp drive, if you go back down to the planet there'll be another. the item will continue to duplicate itself and to find out, each costs 700 credits, mainly meaning the player is gonna get rich quick. this glitch or whatever it is though makes the story stop, even if you do get the warp drive. you might want to fix that.
Few bug reports and UX feedback:
- Game froze and crashed during tutorial, when attempting to convert ore to fuel.
- It is rather unintuitive and interruptive having to switch out of a tool to be able to use escape hatches and such -- I would suggest letting these be used either with any tool, or automatically switching to no tool without user input when trying to use these.
-It would be slightly nicer if menu screens rendered as soon as you navigate to them, instead of waiting for a confirmation - but that is a nice to have.
I have written on a few bugs and issues I have had here, and feel bad. When playing tonight though, I had a "cool" moment when some stuff started to click, and I feel I should share.
Transiting between planets, I took a few hits and had some damage to some ship components. This included the ship's thrusters, which I noted visually (the damaged section was visible in the cockpit, with the "gash" on the tile) and I repaired.
Later in my playthrough, I was in manual ship control and noticed I could no longer thrust right.
My first instinct was that this was a bug or control issue (and went to make a note). Before I did, I went into ship diagnostic and notices that the right thruster was reading in the red, an error I hadn't encountered before and despite my repair. I then realised that the big fat "ears" on the head of the ship were the external portions of said thrusters. I went out, repaired the damage, and resumed my journey with ship control.
At no point was I trained in their being a thruster issue, or was I explicitly told that thrusters were a component. However, all the information and skills required to deal with a new problem were passed to me in-game, in such a way that there was a heavy-handed tutorial. I knew the thrusters existed (because I walk past the internal portions of them as I walk in the cockpit, and that sometimes triggered their info windows), and I knew I had diagnostic tools (form earlier repair jobs and ship exploration) so I can assess the problem before leaving the ship.
I felt I learnt lessons in a way that "felt" rather natural, and served me when a new problem emerged.
I can say this or that about interfaces, controls, issues, and such, and I feel like a nag. However, that moment just had felt very strong, and I needed to share.
Version 0.1.1
Note: I may not be 100% correct o this bug. Trying again this morning, but placing the item directly in front of the NPC awaiting the bag resolved the issue.
I'll leave the report below, but I'm likely wrong (although the duplication of the item is still an issue)
Bug - Cannot complete a Job (possibly due to duplicated item)
Possible other factors:
Loving the game so far, only big issue so far is upgrade units not appearing on derelict ships, even when it gives me the "You're leaving behind an upgrade unit" warning
I also had this one, just now
A question regarding the "more cargo" vs. "more speed" - is the intent that you should only be keeping cargo on that platform? Because I've been stashing stuff all over the place, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the "fast" ship has more nooks and crannies to stuff cargo into.
found an interesting bug, i did a mission where i had to return a bag and i put the bag in the ship and a duplicate came back on the planet and so i could have multiples of the same bag
These sorts of games--Harvest Moon-esque "work sims"--are generally not my jam. I really enjoyed this one, though, even without the story/crew aspects, so . . . well done! I've gotten most of the ship upgrades and had a blast. I also really enjoyed what bits of writing were there.
Figured out pretty quick that planets with crashed ships (including the one in the very first scene) will regenerate endless upgrade units and scrap. Had a weird little bug in one system where derelict ships kept generating every few seconds as I was traveling. Had a storage module full of stuff just off of my cargo platform; when I upgraded the platform, the module shifted but the stuff inside did not, so I lost a few things.
Would be nice if planets wouldn't interrupt me after I've redirected toward a derelict ship, or if there was a way to land on said ships manually after a planet interrupted (maybe I just missed my aim)? I also encountered a system with no planets at all; didn't have any troubles with it, but it occurred to me that I could easily have end up stranded if I had jumped into it on my last bit of warp fuel.
Loving the game so far, cannot wait to play more of it (although saying I have the personality of a hard light hologram is a bit mean). Just to let you know I experienced a crash, ironically when I encountered my first distress beacon. When I went into the ship I had really bad slowdown and a drop in framerate until the game just stopped when I was about to squish one of the purple things (cannot remember what they are called). Also, I forgot to move my shipping crates from the landing pad when I went down to the ship, the sprites were gone but the objects were still there (if that makes any sense). Loving the game though and I cannot wait to see what more there is to see
Version 0.1.1
Bug - Placing Item in Loading Zone
Cannot place an Item in a specific spot in the landing zone.
I have a theory that the position was previously occupied by the item (A package) that was returned to the guy (top left) as part of a job, and that it might still be allocated to the spot, but invisible.
Misc - Replacing Coolant
I commented earlier, that I was unable to replace coolant. It seems that when buying a Ship upgrade, that the coolant at this point resets to 100%. So now I have solved my coolant problem (and my ship is now more easily in the green), how can we replace coolant without having to shell out several grand for an upgrade.
When you're working on the outside of the ship you see the stars and space etc... background, but when you go inside it goes away and all you see is the inside of ships hull against black. I think keeping the scrolling background of stars/space while inside would do alot of work to underscore the feeling of isolation in the wide swaths of emptiness
Great demo! I am an avid follower of your DD-series and it really surprised me how immersive and vast a game can feel with such a "simple" structure. I played on a crappy old laptop and encountered no bugs, but some major lag when on uninhabtiated planets. The rest of the game ran smoothly. Some other things that were not clear to me/ I'd like to mention:
The time system: It was unclear to me how time passes. I know that when sleeping, cycles go by pretty fast, but when awake and not traveling, I didn't really know how fast time passed, if at all. I still don't know how long one cycle is supposed to be.
It would be nice if, on the system map, one could see how far the ship traveles in a given time (=how many cycles it would take to reach a certain destination). That would make planning efficient routes between multiple planets possible.
And, although I feel like this is because I overlooked something, I could not get the warp drive. I took the ship upgrade from the wreckage and went to a planet with a crane-icon on it, but I didn't find a shipyard to upgrade my vessel.
Edit: Some issues I came across:
- The game freezes if you place an item into the wall. Other people already mentioned this.
- Changing your name when starting a new game doesn't always work.
The shipyard is the big computer console near the loading area on a planet with a crane, it is not a building like the trading post :)
Thank you. Now it seems so obvious.
Playing Ver 0.1.1, in full-screen mode.
Loving what I see now, and ironing out a lot of the pain-points in the first release made putting an extending amount of play into things easier. Hoping things keep improving!
Bugs
1. Glitch when putting down items
Encountered the same issue Mad_As_A_Hatter discussed, where the game can lock when placing an item in an "impossible" space. I encountered it when performing a "ship in distress" mission and crushing the little blob things by dropping boxes on them (Good mission, btw, was a nice little change). The scenario demanded dropping an item box multiple times, so it was likely to create the issue. After encountering the issue, and reading Mad_As_A_Hatter write-up, I attempted to recreate the issue as described, to the same result.
2. Regarding the Trading Post
3. Mission not Updating
I got the ship upgrade item from the wreckage, and obtained the new warp drive, but the mission telling me to do this remains the active mission in the PDA, and the on-screen notice hangs around.
Issues and feedback on existing features
Not bugs per-se, just things I have noticed.
1. Controls.
Experimenting with controls. I am using WSAD to move, and primarily using the mouse to Use Items / Go Back and interact with Menus (with spacebar as a backup use key).
Mouse seems to be a "Use" / "Back" (independent of control setup), but not in all cases. Specifically, see waking up from a sleep cycle, which does not seem to acknowledge the mouse left as a "use" key.
2. Damaged Ship and Maintenance
As a test, I decided to take the ship back and forth in an asteroid region on the map and try to do some real damage. I was trying to get an end-of-game of some sort, but saw that the ship can only be severly damaged to a standstill (which is a good thing). Whilst repairing things, I noticed the following:
3. Trading Post
With the selling lists in the trading post, I am not 100% sure how Items are being ordered in the list. Doing some testing, it seems that the list of sellable items is one-to-one with the arrangement of items in the loading zone (starting with the top left, go along row one, then to the next row down, and so on), trimming empty space from the array.
Is getting the list sortable by item name possible, or to stack the same item in the list (ie: Instead of having seven line items for potatoes, having one line item for seven potatoes?).
I'm not even sure this is a good idea, as the current setup has the benefit of selling a specific item from your landing zone (ie: Sell the third potato).
4. Missions
Displaying missions, in the PDA. Could a mission have an indicator, that the item is already onboard? At present, if I have a few jobs going and split my play session over a few days, I can lose track of things a bit of what I was doing.
I do love that I could go up to an item (from a half-completed mission) and it would tell me in the item description where I had to take it, which was helpful. That may be all the solution you want, and it compels the player to interact with the item itself (and not a menu abstracting those items' information). That could be baked into the gameplay loop, and having more detail in the PDA might destroy that.
Also, when on a planet, maybe show the missions on the "active" indicator on the top right (the text with the current mission).
5. Job Board:
This is less feedback, more than a question. Is the difference between the Job Board tasks and Freight Jobs? At first glance, Jobs from the Job Board seem to offer no price in their description, so you go in a bit blind, not knowing the reward. Additionally, they don't seem to have the time limits the shipping jobs do. Are these conclusions correct, or has my small sample size biased my opinion?
I tried to "self answer" by going to the in-game Manual entry for "Freight Jobs", but this specific entry was empty. A lot of the other ones are good so far, and explain some things and have been helpful.
6. Misc
Suggestions
New, random things, often sitting outside the primary gameplay loop:
Ahoy matey.
I have Some Thoughts that I have organised into a numbered list.
1. I noticed in your latest Dev Diary you mentioned how frustrating it was to have to hold down a button to perform an action. I agree; and was therefore wondering what made you decide that was the best way to have actions work in SV.
2. I saw someone in this very comment section talking about severe lag when planetside. I have also experienced this.
3. For my first delivery job I accidentally left a solitary crate of pineapple chunks outside the Loading Zone while I was loading my ship. When I returned to the surface it had vanished without trace, leaving me unable to complete the delivery.
4. I'm sure this is just because it's the last Story Mission in the current build, but even after I have upgraded my warp drive the mission still appears on the screen.
5. Saving the praise for the end - I got extremely absorbed in the game and accidentally used my entire lunch break on it. Job well done!
I made an unofficial discord to post my bugs and crashes if anyone wants to use it as-well that'd be great! https://discord.gg/mt24XGutns
Hey Yahtzee, just playing the prologue and I noticed a slight problem. In the volume control settings, there is no number 9, there is a number 10 and a number 8, but no number 9. I am loving the feel and atmosphere of the game so far though, will give more in depth thoughts when I get more of a chance to play it
Delivered 6 crates of apples to Blarg 2. Immediately receive a job to deliver 6 crates of apples from Blarg 2. I love that the random mission system basically recreated the feeling of working in a poorly optimised workplace.
I quite enjoy the primary loop of the game, however it seems very easy. I understand there is not yet a health system, however even with that i belive it would be very easy. I've never felt as if i dont have much time for the deliveries. Another point is that i had a rumour about an upgrade module in the trading post of an area, but the only planets there were two uninhabited planets. Other than this im having a lot of fun though.
Two quick bugs I noticed while playing: If you initiate the cockpit menu while the walking animation is playing, the animation will continue playing despite standing still. Also, I had the mission where you have to return a bag, and I noticed that once you pick up the bag and put it on your ship, the game will drop another bag off on the planet. You can do this endlessly
But bugs aside, I'm loving this so far! This kind of gameplay loop is definitely very appealing to me, and the setting is cool too!
Here is a link to my first look at Starstruck Vagabond. I'm not a playtester, I'm just casually playing through the game and sharing my thoughts and reactions.
The main thing I noticed was severe lag when I landed on the planets. My computer isn't great, but this game doesn't seem like something that should require tons of resources. I'm sure such things will get ironed out in the course of production.
Thank you so much to Yahtzee. I look forward to buying the full game.
Superjacob Plays Starstruck Vagabond v0.1.1 https://youtu.be/Si3YaUgWd7Y
I've not seen any lag at all myself, then again I have recently upgraded my computer.
Yeah, I'm using a $300 laptop I got from walmart about 4 years ago. But it has a 2.14 ghz processor and 4 gigs of ram, so it should be able to handle such simple graphics. It seems like it has something to do with the backgrounds, because my game is fastest when in the ship away from the cockpit, and slowest when on a planet. I can see my game noticably slow down when I enter the cockpit and it starts showing the background planet outside.
I've been following the Dev Diaries series for a while now and I must say I was very excited to get a chance to try out Starstruck Vagabond. Having played it for only several hours, here's my first impressions of it:
It's fitting that since you put so much time into thinking about the primary loop, it is the thing that represents the game best. Switching tools to complete tasks as well as picking up and placing cargo all seem to fit together nicely when creating the feel of the game. Similarly, I enjoy the cheeky bits of dialogue and think it really brings the characters to life. As of right now though, there isn't so much of a life which the characters are living, so much a placeholder.
As excited as I was to try out the mechanics of the game myself, having done so I am even more excited to find out why I should care about the world I'm inhabiting. Conflict for instance seems to be somewhat missing, as well as motivation. Sure we could simply keep on upgrading our ship ad nosism but what's the point? Plenty of other people in the comments have listed out their ideas on mechanics and I think that's all fine and good, but I'm more interested in the direction you'll take our character's journey.
Case and point, lets say I chose to be a private, apathetic vagabond who after discovering that everything I know and love is dead, desires nothing more than anything to drink myself to death. Some alien insisting on how grand it would be to upgrade my ship doesn't mean much when ideally I could find all of the liquor I need on the first planet I find myself on.
This is not to say I want you to incorporate the ability to go wherever and do whatever you want, god forbid you should fall into another feature creep. Like I said before, I rather like the mechanics of the game, but to harken on your own words we need context to care.
All that to say, I enjoyed the tech demo and hope you really nail some solid character motivation to marry with the gameplay. Otherwise we shall simply remain a recently isolated human doing other people's space chores.
Then again, I've been using "you" as a means of hoping that the Yahtzee Croshaw would actually read my nonsense comment about how I'm waiting for him to do all of the things he said he would. When put like that, this blurb seems a somewhat unnecessary, though cathartic waste of time. Almost like driving a space truck through an uncaring universe...
v0.1.1: Ahh, I like the anti-littering thing. Smooth.
So I have a crash that I have been able to replicate repeatedly. Trying to put this barrel down (haven't tried with other objects) in this spot freezes the game. A little higher and she won't put it down. A little lower and it goes down fine. Right here in the middle, it locks up. Doesn't seem to happen in the object in the way is on the tile below.
Edit: Actually, the barrels just seem to be a little fragile. Crashed just putting one down elsewhere. No issue with crates yet.
A few thoughts:
Best of luck going forward.
Also, bug report: When landing on the planet where the crashed ship has an upgrade module in the first system (prior to getting the warp drive), if you take the upgrade module and immediately land again, a new crash spawns with a new module. I was able to grab four upgrade modules in the first system this way. This also seems to break the first story mission, as I installed the warp drive, but the game never acknowledges that I did so.
Edit: the last bug more generally occurs with any crashed ship that you're looking for something on: if you retrieve the object, then immediately turn around and go back to the planet, you can find the object again, even if you already have the object in your ship. I assume this is a safety valve if you accidentally misplace the object.
For quality of life, it would be nice if you could look at available upgrades before inserting the upgrade module...at least to know if you should even bother going up to your ship and grabbing it from whatever out of the way locale you store them in.
Okay, this was definitely worth keeping an eye on the dev logs for.
First thing I've noticed that you didn't talk about was the personality system, what drove you to come up with that? (No offense intended, just curious as to your thinking behind it.) I also want to how it'll affect the game moving forwards.
Also, after the lawyer (I forget his name... Dripberg?) gives me my ship I get this error message;
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_tutorial:
DoConv :1: illegal undefined/null use
at gml_Script_mapsectorjobs
############################################################################################
gml_Script_mapsectorjobs (line -1)
gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0
Which forces me to crash the game and stop playing. What went wrong and do you think you could fix it? (I am using the 0.1.1 hot-fix, by the way.)
Had a few bugs. Some annoying, but otherwise not bad, until loading a third upgrade unit onto my ship crashed the entire game. In general, many of the bugs I've encountered have already been reported below.
In general, loving the idea currently more than the execution. This is, in essence, a series of fetch quests. I was still getting into the loop regardless. However, maintaining the ship didn't feel as satisfying as I think it was meant to be. constantly stopping to clean the ship components felt more of a nuisance with how quickly they popped up. Sleeping felt like it restored too little stamina, so I'd be sitting and waiting on my stamina to go up, then stopping to clean things before going back to bed.
Though I suppose that's true to life, really,
I like the idea of controlling the ship a bit while heading to the planet (drifting into space debris to pick up some change), though it got old fast, and I promptly began ignoring it. The money you made felt like too little, and otherwise you were just basically playing pong but badly (avoiding the bouncing ball, in this case).
I do want something more engaging to do on the ship while traveling. Something productive, not just trying to keep things working. Hell, I'd be ok with longer trips if that was the case. Like instead of just flying into debris, maybe there was some computer busywork you could do. Something even as silly as filling out surveys for galactic corporations. Really play up that I'm using all my free time to make a quick buck.
All that said... I wanted to keep playing it, so it's doing something right. Even if it is basically Fetch Quest: The Game, the thematic hook of being a space trucker kept me interested. The idea of being able to customize and upgrade my ship, making my own mark on it's design, and maybe, just maybe, having enough space in there to avoid having to pick up and move things around all the time to navigate the corridors.
Oh, and hopefully customizable gamepad controls can happen. Pressing the X and Y buttons to switch tools felt unnatural, so I kept pressing the bumpers and being annoyed they didn't do it.
Good luck with the game Yahtzee! Excited to see more.