The first hour
from 
Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
First off, not having a way to embed partial screenshots in this forum reduces it's efficiency. There are bound to be many issues that are more effectively shown by a picture. Please can we have somewhere to upload pictures, and maybe put them inline to the reports? Either that or we could just use the newsgroups . . .
Anyway, on to the game. First impressions? Pretty good for 0.00.002 alpha!
There is "clicked" feedback on the entry screen even when you've clicked somewhere that does nothing - I think it should only give a sound when you select a faction (or should give a different sound when you click somewhere that does nothing).
It wasn't clear that viewing a research goal on the research screen actually selected that for research. Similarly, I wasn't sure when I'd actually started to build stuff.
I clicked on a region in the fog for my colony ship to go to - I suspected there was a planet there. When the colony ship got close the cursor turned red, but it was *not* close enough for it to be revealed - it was still in the fog. When I clicked on it again I got the normal green "move to" cursor overlaying the red (and showing they were slightly out of alignment.
Something went a bit wrong with the routing algorithm (perhaps because the scout ships have three moves/turn?) - I was going for a special that was just below a sector dividing line. The ship was one square below and right - it went up, then up and left, then down, rather than just up and left. I had a similar problem with going to a planet that was one square above - the ship just kept going upleft, downright, upleft, downright . . . never getting to the planet. The planet was on the right edge of a sector, one space away from the bottom of the sector.
I want a touchscreen like the one on the "research completed" animation.
One of my scout ships got stuck being drawn offset from where it *should* be drawn. The green bracket selection image was also offset, but not the green go-to cursor.
Wrapping didn't seem to work - I got "Westerfield has completed the Soil" . . . and "Enhancer" was offscreen.
I find having to right *double-click* to select ships incredibly counter-intuitive. To me, left should select, and right should be the action key, doing the most appropriate thing for the selected ship and indicated region.
Are we not able to view enemy systems? Maybe an error sound then? Cursors to give feedback (yes, these are probably coming later, thought I'd highlight it now).
Paths were often optimal but not direct (ships had a tendancy to move in jagged lines, or even in triangles, because moving \\ then // has the same distance as ----. It didn't always do this, but enough to be annoying, because often the route I'd have expected it to take would have explored some space, while the route it *did* take was already visible. Also, will we see the addition of a waypoint system?
Archived technologies seemed to be shown in lowercase ("impulse drive").
Someone's been reading LOTR. I think I counted "Gandalf" five times in the list of star names . . .
Dual-level starfield effect works well, but only if you're scrolling both horizontally and vertically - if you do one or the other, the back level flickers due to the "scouted, but currently out of site" fog of war (it's not a problem in visible space).
I finally crashed it by clicking too many times on a star. One of my scouts was on top of an enemy transport, both one move away from the star. I was clicking on the star. The fatal error appeared to be "ASSERT ERROR in file g:\projects\galciv\source\starship.cpp at line 1958." - this error appeared several times previously in the error log, and appeared to be the only error apart from DirectDraw notifications and the options sprite book notice.
I started again only to find I was in a system with a better planet than I was on. Seemed a bit odd that we didn't evolve on the best planet, although I'm not sure it counts as a bug.
I was able to select a planet that I knew was about to be colonised by the Drengin. When it was colonised I still had selection, and could modify build items, view planet stats, etc.
Second crash. No obvious reason, I was just moving a ship around. No error in the debug log, except for this (a bit back in the log - don't think it was the direct cause):
Debug Message: Error playing bink movie for research win. Playing Default
Seems I won without even noticing.
Anyway, this is what I got from about an hour's testing - just thought I'd put this up now so you have something to look at when you get in.
Anyway, on to the game. First impressions? Pretty good for 0.00.002 alpha!
There is "clicked" feedback on the entry screen even when you've clicked somewhere that does nothing - I think it should only give a sound when you select a faction (or should give a different sound when you click somewhere that does nothing).
It wasn't clear that viewing a research goal on the research screen actually selected that for research. Similarly, I wasn't sure when I'd actually started to build stuff.
I clicked on a region in the fog for my colony ship to go to - I suspected there was a planet there. When the colony ship got close the cursor turned red, but it was *not* close enough for it to be revealed - it was still in the fog. When I clicked on it again I got the normal green "move to" cursor overlaying the red (and showing they were slightly out of alignment.
Something went a bit wrong with the routing algorithm (perhaps because the scout ships have three moves/turn?) - I was going for a special that was just below a sector dividing line. The ship was one square below and right - it went up, then up and left, then down, rather than just up and left. I had a similar problem with going to a planet that was one square above - the ship just kept going upleft, downright, upleft, downright . . . never getting to the planet. The planet was on the right edge of a sector, one space away from the bottom of the sector.
I want a touchscreen like the one on the "research completed" animation.
One of my scout ships got stuck being drawn offset from where it *should* be drawn. The green bracket selection image was also offset, but not the green go-to cursor.
Wrapping didn't seem to work - I got "Westerfield has completed the Soil" . . . and "Enhancer" was offscreen.
I find having to right *double-click* to select ships incredibly counter-intuitive. To me, left should select, and right should be the action key, doing the most appropriate thing for the selected ship and indicated region.
Are we not able to view enemy systems? Maybe an error sound then? Cursors to give feedback (yes, these are probably coming later, thought I'd highlight it now).
Paths were often optimal but not direct (ships had a tendancy to move in jagged lines, or even in triangles, because moving \\ then // has the same distance as ----. It didn't always do this, but enough to be annoying, because often the route I'd have expected it to take would have explored some space, while the route it *did* take was already visible. Also, will we see the addition of a waypoint system?
Archived technologies seemed to be shown in lowercase ("impulse drive").
Someone's been reading LOTR. I think I counted "Gandalf" five times in the list of star names . . .
Dual-level starfield effect works well, but only if you're scrolling both horizontally and vertically - if you do one or the other, the back level flickers due to the "scouted, but currently out of site" fog of war (it's not a problem in visible space).
I finally crashed it by clicking too many times on a star. One of my scouts was on top of an enemy transport, both one move away from the star. I was clicking on the star. The fatal error appeared to be "ASSERT ERROR in file g:\projects\galciv\source\starship.cpp at line 1958." - this error appeared several times previously in the error log, and appeared to be the only error apart from DirectDraw notifications and the options sprite book notice.
I started again only to find I was in a system with a better planet than I was on. Seemed a bit odd that we didn't evolve on the best planet, although I'm not sure it counts as a bug.
I was able to select a planet that I knew was about to be colonised by the Drengin. When it was colonised I still had selection, and could modify build items, view planet stats, etc.
Second crash. No obvious reason, I was just moving a ship around. No error in the debug log, except for this (a bit back in the log - don't think it was the direct cause):
Debug Message: Error playing bink movie for research win. Playing Default
Seems I won without even noticing.
Anyway, this is what I got from about an hour's testing - just thought I'd put this up now so you have something to look at when you get in.
At any rate, I'd appreciate any screen shots that you have.