Alright just got done putting in 3-4 hours or so of gameplay.
Game runs solid with no hiccups, crashes, or monitor throwing incidents. Which is a very good start!
The tutorial steps are generally simple to read and follow. One thing though is when you're at the step of building a shipyard, and about to colonize Mars. It seems doing this step will ruin your economy as the maintenance on the Shipyard is, if I'm remembering right, 1 BC per turn. When I noticed where my money was disappearing to, I scrapped it (Post colonizer construction). This re-stabilized my economy and then shortly after found a friendly race to trade with and no longer have economical issues. So, the Shipyard maintenance may need to be addressed for this stage, or the tutorial may implode people's economy.
Now, the other thing I'd like to touch on is the Research component. Overall I like it, but would like a little more info/depth to figuring out potential discoveries. That or maybe it could just use more stuff thrown in. I'm not entirely sure though.
As has been mentioned, and I think ends up being a typical pattern in must 4x space games, is that things get quite repetitive. Adding some things to help eliminate micro-managing scouts you have exploring, or other similar things would help eliminate a little of that. But you also don't want to go overboard like I remember what happened in MOO3. That and adding more events and things to help mix up the routine to re-hook players to keep them interested and going.
That's all I can think of for now. Maybe if someone asks specific questions, comparisons, and so forth can help stimulate what would help make things better. That or it not being 11pm and wanting to fall asleep. Though for your coders make sure they have lots of mountain dew, red bull, and vodka to keep them working day and night!
Day 1 of my Horizon Experience
Re: Day 1 of my Horizon Experience
Game is very solid in terms of performance, especially for an alpha. It seems to run a little slowly at times (not in processing just kinda in general as you're moving about the galactic map), but I think that's because I set it to run with the integrated chip and not the video card.
I agree that the tutorial is quite good but it does need a tweak here and there.
- The board the probe mission probably needs to be made more explicit. I eventually figured it out but when I fired at the probe once or twice and could see no real damage being done I ended up arsing around trying to figure it out rather than persisting. It might be an idea to either reduce the probe's shields for the purposes of the tutorial or make it clearer that you need to continue fire until the shields visibly drop.
- The Shipyard tip, at present, is not a good one; as you've pointed out.
- Further to that point, it may just be the current build but after playing a little further on after the tutorial I'm not convinced that upgrading Mars' listening post into a colony is a good idea. I tried that and Mars started losing money hand over fist a few turns later. By the time I realized the problem (Mars' extra pop was costing me cash and not bringing enough in) and tried to fix it by dismantling the colony it was too late. Perhaps you can boost the income from colonists in some other way? If you can, the tutorial definitely needs to cover that.
Personally, I'm loving the old-school tech system but it certainly does not mesh with contemporary 4X tech trees.
A couple of my own observations from an hour or so of Day 1 playing.
- The set-up screen does not scale correctly to the box it's meant to be in. This could because I'm on 1920x1080 resolution but might be something to watch out for.
- Although the intro vid (and main menu screen) is awesome, I'm confused as to whether the Voyager probe was manned or not. I don't think it is (and it certainly shouldn't be), but the voice acting seemed to imply that it might have been. It was definitely unclear though who was talking at any particular point.
- On a related personal note, I'd rather that the reveal speed on text messages given in the game was either increased dramatically so that it comes up very quickly or slowed down so that it's character by character rather than half-word by half-word.
- The planets look sweet and simple but they spin much too fast and the Moon in particular looks like it's got a jet pack strapped to it, rocketing around the Earth the way it does. Similarly, in the system view when you hover over them the planets spin far too quickly. I presume the latter is to make the fact that you're hovering over them clear but it's a little jarring.
- The system view you can enter when you have no colonies there is the only screen I can see which you exit out of by left-clicking rather than right-clicking. It really would be better if all of these were consistent.
- For no apparent reason I can understand the tactical map will flash up during your opponents turn with an odd message I can't fully remember about 40 attackers boarding the probe or something, despite the fact that no one is boarding anything.
- It would be nicer if the colony view build queue was a drop-down box rather than a right-left scroll system. I like the concept but if you have a large number of any one particular size of ship you could be scrolling for quite some time.
- When selecting any of the top HUD overviews I found that they often overlapped with other screens because they opened in a default position towards the centre of the screen. If they defaulted to the top or to the left (or better yet their own individual areas) it'd make accessing those screens less of an annoyance.
- The INS econ graph is hilarious. It starts off okay and then there are huge plunges which drop right off the inset screen.
- This is definitely more of a balance thing or maybe I just got lucky but I was surprised at the number of terran and occeanic planets I found on my first playthrough.
Overall though I'm pleasantly surprised. I was more than a little worried with the lack of pre-release gameplay vids and how quiet this forum was but it's shaping up to be a sweet, sweet game. I especially like the little videos dotted around the place. I found a quarantine one on an alien planet. No idea what that's about but it's little things of that nature that can set a 4X game apart from the crowd (such as it is).
I agree that the tutorial is quite good but it does need a tweak here and there.
- The board the probe mission probably needs to be made more explicit. I eventually figured it out but when I fired at the probe once or twice and could see no real damage being done I ended up arsing around trying to figure it out rather than persisting. It might be an idea to either reduce the probe's shields for the purposes of the tutorial or make it clearer that you need to continue fire until the shields visibly drop.
- The Shipyard tip, at present, is not a good one; as you've pointed out.
- Further to that point, it may just be the current build but after playing a little further on after the tutorial I'm not convinced that upgrading Mars' listening post into a colony is a good idea. I tried that and Mars started losing money hand over fist a few turns later. By the time I realized the problem (Mars' extra pop was costing me cash and not bringing enough in) and tried to fix it by dismantling the colony it was too late. Perhaps you can boost the income from colonists in some other way? If you can, the tutorial definitely needs to cover that.
Personally, I'm loving the old-school tech system but it certainly does not mesh with contemporary 4X tech trees.
A couple of my own observations from an hour or so of Day 1 playing.
- The set-up screen does not scale correctly to the box it's meant to be in. This could because I'm on 1920x1080 resolution but might be something to watch out for.
- Although the intro vid (and main menu screen) is awesome, I'm confused as to whether the Voyager probe was manned or not. I don't think it is (and it certainly shouldn't be), but the voice acting seemed to imply that it might have been. It was definitely unclear though who was talking at any particular point.
- On a related personal note, I'd rather that the reveal speed on text messages given in the game was either increased dramatically so that it comes up very quickly or slowed down so that it's character by character rather than half-word by half-word.
- The planets look sweet and simple but they spin much too fast and the Moon in particular looks like it's got a jet pack strapped to it, rocketing around the Earth the way it does. Similarly, in the system view when you hover over them the planets spin far too quickly. I presume the latter is to make the fact that you're hovering over them clear but it's a little jarring.
- The system view you can enter when you have no colonies there is the only screen I can see which you exit out of by left-clicking rather than right-clicking. It really would be better if all of these were consistent.
- For no apparent reason I can understand the tactical map will flash up during your opponents turn with an odd message I can't fully remember about 40 attackers boarding the probe or something, despite the fact that no one is boarding anything.
- It would be nicer if the colony view build queue was a drop-down box rather than a right-left scroll system. I like the concept but if you have a large number of any one particular size of ship you could be scrolling for quite some time.
- When selecting any of the top HUD overviews I found that they often overlapped with other screens because they opened in a default position towards the centre of the screen. If they defaulted to the top or to the left (or better yet their own individual areas) it'd make accessing those screens less of an annoyance.
- The INS econ graph is hilarious. It starts off okay and then there are huge plunges which drop right off the inset screen.
- This is definitely more of a balance thing or maybe I just got lucky but I was surprised at the number of terran and occeanic planets I found on my first playthrough.
Overall though I'm pleasantly surprised. I was more than a little worried with the lack of pre-release gameplay vids and how quiet this forum was but it's shaping up to be a sweet, sweet game. I especially like the little videos dotted around the place. I found a quarantine one on an alien planet. No idea what that's about but it's little things of that nature that can set a 4X game apart from the crowd (such as it is).
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Mephisto Pheles
- Voyager
- Posts: 1
Re: Day 1 of my Horizon Experience
Been a big fan of the devs for a while, and this by far is an AMAZING early release, I litterly bought it minutes after it went up, and it is so worth it! Thanks for yet another great game.
Re: Day 1 of my Horizon Experience
Mephisto Pheles wrote: [... T]his by far is an AMAZING early release, I litterly bought it minutes after it went up, and it is so worth it! Thanks for yet another great game.
I totally (and literally) agree with this very enthusiastic post. (I, also, snatched it on Steam a few minutes after its unlocking, on 2 July.)
It is only an alpha build, but it has not bugged or crashed during the tutorial.
Since I prefer to play most of my games in a 1680x1050 window on the 1920x1200 desktop of a 26-inch monitor, I was pleased that the game's main-menu screen easily allowed me to setup that visual preference, and that the mouse cursor could leave that window and manipulate external applications (such as a browser) without causing the game to misbehave. (This is an important capability for people who play turn-based games while wanting to be able to do other tasks.)
Re: Day 1 of my Horizon Experience
This is where I got hung up too. I spent about 20 minutes trying to resolve but had to give up, time restraint.Veneke wrote: - The board the probe mission probably needs to be made more explicit. I eventually figured it out but when I fired at the probe once or twice and could see no real damage being done I ended up arsing around trying to figure it out rather than persisting. It might be an idea to either reduce the probe's shields for the purposes of the tutorial or make it clearer that you need to continue fire until the shields visibly drop.
The TUT might best be done using a sandbox approach. Getting the basic command structure taught before
any real play with the other races is started. I would not mind seeing subordinate captains, commanders or
admirals you simply give orders to and they carry them out. If you are the Leader of your race, you should not
have to be the chief cook & bottle washer too. Let the routine tasks be done by the AI and if they run into
anything that needs YOUR attention, you will be notified and can take over if warranted. (your decision, which
is the REAL FUN part)
PS. After continued firing (no luck), the game seems to have hung up and I can't proceed past this episode?????