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.
Just started playing and I'm having a lot of fun. Jotted down a few things as I noticed them. "Bugs" are features with broken functionality, all of which I attached media for. "Minor Issues" were things I wasn't confident enough to call bugs but thought I might still call attention to. "Suggestions" were just some minor design suggestions that felt relevant as I ran through the build. And "Thing's I loved" is my mom's secret apple pie recipe. No, wait, I filed that under "Mom's secret recipe" because I am terrible at naming things, so that last list must just be a list of especially brilliant things I wanted to make special mention of.
Version: 0.1.1
Bugs:
Attempting to place an object in an impossible space will result in a Softlock. An Impossible Space is one where the cursor is highlighting an area on the ground, but the character and cargo model are overlapping with a wall, which would result in the object being placed in a wall (I've attached media if this description is unclear.) To repro this bug: Pick up an object > maneuver the character to an area where there is a wall in the square below them, but nothing in the square to the left of them > step halfway to the square to the left > look down towards the wall. The highlight/cursor should be in the square to the left of the wall (see media for positioning) > attempt to place the object
On the character creation screen: clicking into the naming box and entering a name, and then hovering over another box with the mouse will result in the entered name appearing in the new box. To repro this: Open the character creator > click the First Name editable text box > enter a name > do not click enter > hover over the Last Name text box
When interacting with a distress call ship, any cargo on the cargo platform will be invisible, but can still be interacted with, when the platform lands on the other ship. The cargo will then show up inside the distress call ship, on their cargo platform. To repro this: Interact with a distress call ship > place cargo on your cargo platform > Ride cargo platform to distress call ship > inspect cargo platform for invisible objects.
The "Back" button in the trading post "Sell" menu has no mouse interaction / cannot be clicked. To repro this: Land on Lake III > Place a piece of cargo in the loading bay > enter the trading post > enter the "Sell" menu > Attempt to click the "Back" button with the mouse.
Minor Issues:
During the tutorial section, when you are called upon to align the warp ring, I could not get the broken ring to go back fully flush with the others. It repaired to 100% and was functional, but the model was still slightly askew.
When asked to confirm your character after character creation, clicking "back" kicks you back to the main menu instead of back to the character screen. This isn't a huge issue, but the character customizer is randomized when you reenter it, meaning you have to remake your character ag, which breaks flow slightly.
Suggestions:
Maybe it's just cause I'm a big, dumb idiot, but when I started the tutorial and it asked me to open the doors while the power was out, I spent like 45 seconds running back and forward trying to hit the space bar before I realized I was supposed to hold it down. Again, this could easily be a me problem, but having some sort of "hold space" that is visibly different than the "press space" one might be helpful. It's stops being an issue later on when you realize holding the key is the norm in the game, but just a first impression to think about.
This one is definitely me being dumb, but it took me like a good 30 seconds to figure out how to leave the "Diagnostics" menu. The "Back" button at the top is small and doesn't really pop out, and hitting the escape key doesn't back you out, so I was just trapped in there for half a minute before I decided to actually read the list and saw the button at the top.
Things I loved:
With Yahtzee at the helm, we all knew the writing, and in particular the comedy, was going to be top notch, but I still wanted to shout out how absolutely delightful it was. Special marks goes to the nursebot saying "Roll over onto your side, YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO COMPLY!" A line that made me emit a bark of laughter loud enough that my roommates had to come ask me what I was doing.
This may seem minor, but the colors of the tools are really effective and pop-y. When it asks me to use the cleaner or the welder, I don't have to stop to think for a second and be like "which one is that, again?" because my brain just automatically goes "Green" or "Blue" and then I'm good to go.
The moment I first stepped out onto the hull of the ship, the beeping and wooshing sounds of space were awesome. The combination of sounds there is so evocative of being on the hull of a ship that I actually glanced around my room by reflex, just to recenter myself. I love it.
So, so much more. I was blown away by how stable, well constructed, and fun this build is. I feel lucky to have gotten my hands on it. I know it can be scary to release your art to an audience who are going to, by necessity, fixate on its flaws, but this game is really coming along nicely and I'm excited to see where it goes. Please, keep up the good work, and know that we are all rooting for you.
1. Gameplay feels snappier or quicker. Don't know if that's because I just played it more or something behind the scenes, but it's definitely much more smoother and satisfying.
2. Likewise, not having to spam the space key, instead just holding it, much nicer.
Bugs/glitches:
Nothing major personally this time around, which is good.
1. Repeated cleaning/repair. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but sometimes when I clean or repair a system, and then exit and re-enter the room the system is in, it's automatically dirty/broken again, sometimes even worse than it was before. The coolant system and air cyclers were especially guilty of this.
2. Ghost screens. If I'm repairing a system sometimes the repair window will pop up, disappear, and then open another repair window, both of which having completely different info on how clean/dirty something is. Now that I think about it, it might actually be connected to the former problem.
Critiques:
Most of what I said last week still stand, but as this is obviously an alpha these things take time so I'm not gonna repeat a giant list cause that'd just be obnoxious.
I have noticed however, that there's not much to do while you're delivering things. I mostly just sleep until I get an alert from the computer or something needs fixing. IDK, maybe adding optional hobbies like on ship botany, pet care, mechanic work, etc... could help.
Also, having the option to control the ship in the ship minigame with keyboard controls would be really nice. I find the mouse controls to be kinda iffy.
But yeah, overall 0.1.1 is much a much nicer experience than 0.1. Keep it up~
Bug?: Have flown to Siho prime, current objective marker tells me to fly to Siho Prime. Can't make the ship descend or anything, wondering if game has softlocked. Otherwise it need to be more clear what the next step is once you arrive in a planet's airzone.
Would also suggest, for the tutorial at least, slowing down the natural rate of dirt build up, if not disabling it. Slow learners/readers will find their ship turning red hot while trying to get to grip with the controls; doesn't lend itself to a tutorial.
If you happen to have settle the game in fullscreen mode, trying to reverted to windowed mode, crashes the game forcing you to restart you whole system. However, if you load a save file and the try to change it from there it wont crash, and neither if you return to the title screen and try to change it again.
Game Version 0.1.1
PS: Loving the game btw. The main gameplay, while simple, its quite engaging.
When boarding a friendly vessel in need of repairs with items on the ship's loading dock, when I arrived at the vessel, the items were invisible but otherwise were interactable. When attempting to move items to clear a path, game froze upon placing the second item down.
Not sure if this is a bug, or has just happened because the content has not yet been added:
When searching another system for upgrade modules, I found several derelict ships. Upon attempting to leave them, the computer said that I was leaving upgrade modules behind, despite there being none.
Other than that, it's a really awesome game thus far, keep it up!
EDIT: Playing for a bit longer, I noticed two other bugs:
1. Attempting to place an item on the floor and then moving behind a wall in the moment between it being thrown and hitting the ground results in the game freezing.
2. Attempting to purchase something you don't have enough money for also results in a freeze.
BUG: On the title screen, couldn't enter my name as the box kept going out of focus, had to hold down the Return key and type in my name. Another bug is that one time I went to respond to a distress call, came there, used the cargo landing thing, it went onto my ship and the items on the pad were invisible, they came back after I went back into the ship. However, after that distress signal (which turned out to be nothing), my ship would never move again no matter how much I changed course or engaged.
Overall, love the mechanics and how satisfying they feel, although I wish "hands" weren't a tool alongside the cleaning thing and the welding torch. Loved the writing and the humor!
Hey I wrote a theme song for this game a couple weeks ago. When you said you were interested in a musician, I felt inspired and wrote this cowboy bebop/star wars thing. I hope you like it!
Every derelict I tried to board froze the game. This happened across multiple sectors, reboots, and even on more than one save. I’ve yet to be able to land on a derelict ship at all. Didn’t have this issue in 0.1. The game locks up during the fade-out, just before the screen goes completely black. It’s a total freeze with high CPU usage but no memory increase, suggesting the code is caught in an infinite loop of some kind. In case it’s useful, here’s my save file. My ship is currently docked at a derelict.
After landing at an outpost, I wandered over to the trading post and found a couple of missions to dispose of toxic waste, both of which I accepted. Before loading the waste, I went into the post to sell some rocks I’d picked up. I noticed that I had the option to sell a large number of “Unknown item”s for 0 credits. I cleverly deduced that you had neglected this edge case, and decided to just sell the toxic waste back to the outpost and collect the quest rewards. Sadly, it turns out that the trigger for receiving the money requires something other than simply making the waste vanish from the game, and now I had the problem of A) Not actually having the waste, and B) Having two uncompletable quests in my quest log. I believe this image neatly summarizes the experience.
Minor bugs:
I tried to place an Oniris Device on a planet in the first system. I got the tutorial text the first time I placed it down, but the second time I did (on the same planet), the device chastised me on account of the planet already being surveyed. I have no idea if this is intentional or not.
I had a quest to get a package off of a planet. I went down to the planet, picked it up, went back to my ship, dropped the package off, went back down to the surface, and found a second, identical package. The first one was able to be returned. The second was not, but was able to be sold as an “Unknown Item” for 0 credits, much like the aforementioned toxic waste.
If you stop interacting with the console while turning your ship, the sound effect doesn’t actually stop. You can repeat this process indefinitely for hilarity and/or shattered eardrums. Leaving your ship corrects the issue.
Realigning warp rings does not always seem to visually realign them.
In the tutorial, the Star Map lists your destination as having “Mundanium”, rather than “Miraclium”. I appreciate that this is the pettiest of petty gripes.
Final additional thoughts:
The “put away tool” button is not the change I would have made, but it’s sufficient to get me to stop complaining about it.
New tutorial message on the coolant getting dirty is useful.
If there’s a straightforward way of figuring out which planets are which without actively pointing your ship at them, I’m not sure what it is. (Maybe mousing over them works? I play with a gamepad.)
Tracking time is a little confusing. I picked up on the fact that the meter in the bottom left is “how long you have to deliver your package (I think?)”, but the exact nature of cycles and the passage of time is a little opaque. I’m not sure if time passes anywhere except when you’re in travel. (Also, the bug I encountered in the version 0.1 with my initial Dripberg delivery quest crates not being collected at the destination may be explained by that quest having expired.)
Great demo! All the essential elements are here, charming design, well written. Main gameplay loop is properly addictive.
The map/computer screen should be bigger? Between the planets, their titles and icons, the ship, and asteroid fields, things can get so busy it can be difficult to read critical information.
Is there a more efficient way of seeing mission/delivery information on the computer screen instead of the pause menu? When I'm setting a course I keep having to exit out of the computer, go back to the pause menu, read it, then go back to the computer. It feels organic, but too many steps?
Maybe one more element to setting the ships course? adjusting the scopes does alot to make it feel authentically trekish, one more element in the process would complement that feeling I think
Overall, excellent, can't wait to see the next version
After getting a random encounter of a derelict ship, then boarding and looting it, my ship was notably faster. Afterwards I realised that turning my ram scoop would infinitely increase the speed one way, while infinitely decreasing it the other. After reaching 113 speed, the game crashed.
Fun to play to podcast, but also found that I couldn't find upgrade units! I would be hinted they'd be in a crashed ship on a planet and it just wouldn't be there, and once I went to a derelict ship a rumor pointed me to and there wasn't any upgrade unit: when I tried to leave it warned me there was an upgrade unit I was leaving behind, but it wasn't there so I just had to leave anyways.
Loved playing this! My only comment is that it crashed a couple of times when helping a distress signal kill the zoobs (i think thats what they were called). Other than that I had a blast!
Just a couple of things. I won't address the save issue or others that everyone seem to have noted.
So... it runs terribly slow. I know that I have a potato laptop, but I can run Stardew Valley (and most anything made before 2015) at 30+ FPS. This game crawls into the 10's when in the reactor room, and single digits when surrounded by rocks on a planet.
Also, which the pixel stretching, it doesn't control well in fullscreen. Mouse position doesn't match the entity being selected.
Great little alpha Yahtzee! Had a fun, if a bit lacking primary gameplay loop, but I understand that's likely cause this is very early in development and a lot of stuff has to be added.
Also, when delievering some waste to a planet, the game crashed and gave me this error
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object pkp_waste:
Variable Index [0] out of range [0] at gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 (line -1)
I'm not exactly sure what that means as I never learnt GML despite making a few small game maker games. Hopefully you'll be able to patch out this and many other exploits by time the next version is released
I am not sure if the primary gameplay loop (i.e. maintaining the ship) is all that fun. Even in the short demo, it got tedious pretty quickly. Not helping is how there is not much else to do on the ship.
The writing is clever and funny; makes me wish there was more of it. The graphics, sound, and special effects are charming and snappy. (Every time the ship jumps, I smile. Makes me think of Battlestar Galactica.) I like the local and star maps--the system makes sense. Manual navigation is somewhat fun, but bland--it's not quite there yet.
The primary gameplay loop is fairly enjoyable. It has a Han Solo vibe. The player movement is slower than I'd desire. Components get filthy a lot faster than I'd expect, and maintaining them can be a chore. Exploring uninhabited planets seems interesting at first, but in practice, not much happens--I think there's a lot of potential there.
I encountered a few bugs. Once, I had a strange glitch that is difficult to describe, but it looked as though the player was translated horizontally by about a screen, and the camera was no longer centered on the player. Crates left on the loading dock are not being cleaned up when a mission fails. Using the mouse for the menus doesn't quite work right, so I always chose to use the keyboard. Finally, my save was eventually corrupted, like everyone else's, and I was unable to continue.
Just had the following error message, during the tutorial on delivering the first cargo to Khouzoup IV:
___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ ERROR in action number 1 of Draw Event for object con_tutorial:
global variable name 'nextobjectiveplanet' index (103274) not set before reading it. at gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0 ############################################################################################ gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0 (line -1)
I loved it.
Finally managed to play it and it was great, big fan of mr Croshaw and I love where this is going.
Loved the gameplay loops, I think initially the things gets broken too often, maybe is for the tutorial sake but the alignment thingy thingy of the generator was a bit annoying.
Small suggestions/Bug Reports:
When the camera focuses on another room as the target for the next task the room appears black, I would probably show an icon on that room. not only the dark room.
If you get in bed with one of the tool, like the plunger thing, you scrub the bed like you are cleaning it just before falling asleep
I would make the reaction clouds/animation last a split second less.
When you need to force open a door it would be nice if the tip icon would make you understand that you have to mash the SPACE rather than just keep it pressed, the same when you login you might want to communicate that you have to keep the button pressed to enter password.
The pickup interaction is too sensitive, sometime if you click too fast while close to a thing you pick it up and drop it again real fast.
I dont know if it is an issue of my pc, but the font on full screen is a bit unreadible, especially the second option on the dialogue pick. It gets foggy kind of
I encountered a bug where on the manual drive minigame the objects only appear at the end of the quadrant and only go up rather than coming towards the mini-ship.
When the alerts are appearing beneath the life bar, they are not really clear about what they are. Same when the ship has a problem, would be nice if in the diagnostic module you would have an icon on the submenu where the problem is, rather than having to go through the whole of the submenus to see what was wrong.
That said, I want to say again it is definitely a great game and would buy it for sure.
Thanks for sharing this and I hope that those comments help
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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.
Just started playing and I'm having a lot of fun. Jotted down a few things as I noticed them. "Bugs" are features with broken functionality, all of which I attached media for. "Minor Issues" were things I wasn't confident enough to call bugs but thought I might still call attention to. "Suggestions" were just some minor design suggestions that felt relevant as I ran through the build. And "Thing's I loved" is my mom's secret apple pie recipe. No, wait, I filed that under "Mom's secret recipe" because I am terrible at naming things, so that last list must just be a list of especially brilliant things I wanted to make special mention of.
Version: 0.1.1
Bugs:
Minor Issues:
Suggestions:
Things I loved:
Positives:
1. Gameplay feels snappier or quicker. Don't know if that's because I just played it more or something behind the scenes, but it's definitely much more smoother and satisfying.
2. Likewise, not having to spam the space key, instead just holding it, much nicer.
Bugs/glitches:
Nothing major personally this time around, which is good.
1. Repeated cleaning/repair. I don't know if this is intentional or not, but sometimes when I clean or repair a system, and then exit and re-enter the room the system is in, it's automatically dirty/broken again, sometimes even worse than it was before. The coolant system and air cyclers were especially guilty of this.
2. Ghost screens. If I'm repairing a system sometimes the repair window will pop up, disappear, and then open another repair window, both of which having completely different info on how clean/dirty something is. Now that I think about it, it might actually be connected to the former problem.
Critiques:
Most of what I said last week still stand, but as this is obviously an alpha these things take time so I'm not gonna repeat a giant list cause that'd just be obnoxious.
I have noticed however, that there's not much to do while you're delivering things. I mostly just sleep until I get an alert from the computer or something needs fixing. IDK, maybe adding optional hobbies like on ship botany, pet care, mechanic work, etc... could help.
Also, having the option to control the ship in the ship minigame with keyboard controls would be really nice. I find the mouse controls to be kinda iffy.
But yeah, overall 0.1.1 is much a much nicer experience than 0.1. Keep it up~
By alternately rotating the ship in the system map and re-aligning the RamScoop I have found a way to put my ship into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE.
Bug?: Have flown to Siho prime, current objective marker tells me to fly to Siho Prime. Can't make the ship descend or anything, wondering if game has softlocked. Otherwise it need to be more clear what the next step is once you arrive in a planet's airzone.
Would also suggest, for the tutorial at least, slowing down the natural rate of dirt build up, if not disabling it. Slow learners/readers will find their ship turning red hot while trying to get to grip with the controls; doesn't lend itself to a tutorial.
BUG:
If you happen to have settle the game in fullscreen mode, trying to reverted to windowed mode, crashes the game forcing you to restart you whole system. However, if you load a save file and the try to change it from there it wont crash, and neither if you return to the title screen and try to change it again.
Game Version 0.1.1
PS: Loving the game btw. The main gameplay, while simple, its quite engaging.
Suggestion:
A reset to default button will be very useful in the options menu, especially for the HUD colours
One definite bug to report:
When boarding a friendly vessel in need of repairs with items on the ship's loading dock, when I arrived at the vessel, the items were invisible but otherwise were interactable. When attempting to move items to clear a path, game froze upon placing the second item down.
Not sure if this is a bug, or has just happened because the content has not yet been added:
When searching another system for upgrade modules, I found several derelict ships. Upon attempting to leave them, the computer said that I was leaving upgrade modules behind, despite there being none.
Other than that, it's a really awesome game thus far, keep it up!
EDIT: Playing for a bit longer, I noticed two other bugs:
1. Attempting to place an item on the floor and then moving behind a wall in the moment between it being thrown and hitting the ground results in the game freezing.
2. Attempting to purchase something you don't have enough money for also results in a freeze.
BUG: On the title screen, couldn't enter my name as the box kept going out of focus, had to hold down the Return key and type in my name. Another bug is that one time I went to respond to a distress call, came there, used the cargo landing thing, it went onto my ship and the items on the pad were invisible, they came back after I went back into the ship. However, after that distress signal (which turned out to be nothing), my ship would never move again no matter how much I changed course or engaged.
Overall, love the mechanics and how satisfying they feel, although I wish "hands" weren't a tool alongside the cleaning thing and the welding torch. Loved the writing and the humor!
https://gyazo.com/dbd2e67d86c33d0673d083e2102e6bc0
BUG:
This just crashed the game and forced me to restart my PC. I just happend like 10-15min after i started the game.
Didn't know where to reported so i left it here.
Game Version: 0.1.1
This is so polished, I really enjoy it
The only critisim that I can think of is giving it it's own icon or putting it on steam
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13I4ubTwK3CoW4ljrShDCk8vMWiU6p9Ed/view?usp=drive...
Hey I wrote a theme song for this game a couple weeks ago. When you said you were interested in a musician, I felt inspired and wrote this cowboy bebop/star wars thing. I hope you like it!
Contact me at cleverlukas03@gmail.com
0.1.1
Major bugs:
Minor bugs:
Final additional thoughts:
Keep it up!
Great demo! All the essential elements are here, charming design, well written. Main gameplay loop is properly addictive.
The map/computer screen should be bigger? Between the planets, their titles and icons, the ship, and asteroid fields, things can get so busy it can be difficult to read critical information.
Is there a more efficient way of seeing mission/delivery information on the computer screen instead of the pause menu? When I'm setting a course I keep having to exit out of the computer, go back to the pause menu, read it, then go back to the computer. It feels organic, but too many steps?
Maybe one more element to setting the ships course? adjusting the scopes does alot to make it feel authentically trekish, one more element in the process would complement that feeling I think
Overall, excellent, can't wait to see the next version
Cheers
I seem to have encountered quite the glitch.
After getting a random encounter of a derelict ship, then boarding and looting it, my ship was notably faster. Afterwards I realised that turning my ram scoop would infinitely increase the speed one way, while infinitely decreasing it the other. After reaching 113 speed, the game crashed.
Restarting after the crash fixed the issue.
Fun to play to podcast, but also found that I couldn't find upgrade units! I would be hinted they'd be in a crashed ship on a planet and it just wouldn't be there, and once I went to a derelict ship a rumor pointed me to and there wasn't any upgrade unit: when I tried to leave it warned me there was an upgrade unit I was leaving behind, but it wasn't there so I just had to leave anyways.
Loved playing this! My only comment is that it crashed a couple of times when helping a distress signal kill the zoobs (i think thats what they were called). Other than that I had a blast!
Just a couple of things. I won't address the save issue or others that everyone seem to have noted.
So... it runs terribly slow. I know that I have a potato laptop, but I can run Stardew Valley (and most anything made before 2015) at 30+ FPS. This game crawls into the 10's when in the reactor room, and single digits when surrounded by rocks on a planet.
Also, which the pixel stretching, it doesn't control well in fullscreen. Mouse position doesn't match the entity being selected.
Great little alpha Yahtzee! Had a fun, if a bit lacking primary gameplay loop, but I understand that's likely cause this is very early in development and a lot of stuff has to be added.
Also, when delievering some waste to a planet, the game crashed and gave me this error
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object pkp_waste:
Variable Index [0] out of range [0]
I'm not exactly sure what that means as I never learnt GML despite making a few small game maker games. Hopefully you'll be able to patch out this and many other exploits by time the next version is releasedat gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_pkp_waste_Draw_0 (line -1)
I am not sure if the primary gameplay loop (i.e. maintaining the ship) is all that fun. Even in the short demo, it got tedious pretty quickly. Not helping is how there is not much else to do on the ship.
Very excited to finally try this.
The writing is clever and funny; makes me wish there was more of it. The graphics, sound, and special effects are charming and snappy. (Every time the ship jumps, I smile. Makes me think of Battlestar Galactica.) I like the local and star maps--the system makes sense. Manual navigation is somewhat fun, but bland--it's not quite there yet.
The primary gameplay loop is fairly enjoyable. It has a Han Solo vibe. The player movement is slower than I'd desire. Components get filthy a lot faster than I'd expect, and maintaining them can be a chore. Exploring uninhabited planets seems interesting at first, but in practice, not much happens--I think there's a lot of potential there.
I encountered a few bugs. Once, I had a strange glitch that is difficult to describe, but it looked as though the player was translated horizontally by about a screen, and the camera was no longer centered on the player. Crates left on the loading dock are not being cleaned up when a mission fails. Using the mouse for the menus doesn't quite work right, so I always chose to use the keyboard. Finally, my save was eventually corrupted, like everyone else's, and I was unable to continue.
Just had the following error message, during the tutorial on delivering the first cargo to Khouzoup IV:
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object con_tutorial:
global variable name 'nextobjectiveplanet' index (103274) not set before reading it.
at gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_con_tutorial_Draw_0 (line -1)
Addendum: it happened again
I loved it. Finally managed to play it and it was great, big fan of mr Croshaw and I love where this is going.
Loved the gameplay loops, I think initially the things gets broken too often, maybe is for the tutorial sake but the alignment thingy thingy of the generator was a bit annoying.
Small suggestions/Bug Reports:
When the camera focuses on another room as the target for the next task the room appears black, I would probably show an icon on that room. not only the dark room.
If you get in bed with one of the tool, like the plunger thing, you scrub the bed like you are cleaning it just before falling asleep
I would make the reaction clouds/animation last a split second less.
When you need to force open a door it would be nice if the tip icon would make you understand that you have to mash the SPACE rather than just keep it pressed, the same when you login you might want to communicate that you have to keep the button pressed to enter password.
The pickup interaction is too sensitive, sometime if you click too fast while close to a thing you pick it up and drop it again real fast.
I dont know if it is an issue of my pc, but the font on full screen is a bit unreadible, especially the second option on the dialogue pick. It gets foggy kind of
I encountered a bug where on the manual drive minigame the objects only appear at the end of the quadrant and only go up rather than coming towards the mini-ship.
When the alerts are appearing beneath the life bar, they are not really clear about what they are. Same when the ship has a problem, would be nice if in the diagnostic module you would have an icon on the submenu where the problem is, rather than having to go through the whole of the submenus to see what was wrong.
That said, I want to say again it is definitely a great game and would buy it for sure.
Thanks for sharing this and I hope that those comments help