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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 28, 2016, 07:30:15 PM »

I will put some info together for you and post it tomorrow.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 27, 2016, 08:01:33 PM »

Thanks!

On the bus home now, it was a good trip. It's a very rugged and stark landscape along the west coast, constantly battered by wind and rain off the Atlantic, but it certainly has a beauty to it.

Two more pics good pics;

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 27, 2016, 01:27:31 AM »

Hey all,

I am away on a trip to Inishbofin (an island off coast of Galway) until tomorrow (Saturday),  dev updates should continue Sunday or Monday.

Here's a picture of today's progress, from one of the best parts our hiking around the island. The large rock on the left is an island (now a bird sanctuary) which was created when the land connecting it to the main island collapsed.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 25, 2016, 01:51:49 PM »

Thanks man.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 25, 2016, 10:58:35 AM »

I did say known bugs.

I am just sharing the list here to give people a flavour of what's happening, I won't be posting every bug fix here at this stage. Public changelogs will come with the alpha release.

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Development & Discussion / [Progress - 25th Feb] Bug Fixes

« on: February 25, 2016, 10:09:59 AM »

I fixed every known bug in the game yesterday, it's not a long list but that's because throughout development we have kept a process of continual testing, bug fixing and polishing, ensuring that each stage of development provides a stable base for the next.

Changelog

• Fixed clicking on servers in the local servers list on the Connect screen.
• Fixed an error when a player clicks the Create Crew button on the Create Crew screen before data has been received from the server.
• Fixed a crash in the Engineering UI which happened if the number of systems or reactors on your ship is modified (the number systems and reactors are modified, to zero, when your ship is destroyed).
• Fixed torpedoes not applying damage.
• Fixed ships not triggering destruction when hull integrity is zero.
• Added null checks to the camera code to avoid errors being shown on disconnecting from a server.
• Added a "graceful exit" system on application quit, where if the server player quits by closing the game window all clients will be disconnected first.

Thanks for reading!

247

Development & Discussion / [DevLog #2] Engineering Power Wheel Presets

« on: February 23, 2016, 04:21:38 PM »

Hey all!

Here is our second video DevLog, where we show our progress since the last DevLog, two weeks ago. The big item is the Power Wheel Presets.

Our plan is to record one of these every two weeks. We're completely new to doing videos, but we're working on improving our technique.

For those who missed it, here is our first DevLog.

Thanks for watching!

Mark

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st Feb] Engineering UI/Game Design

« on: February 21, 2016, 07:51:48 PM »

Just on the Preset cogs, I am going to leave them on the left. They are only clicked when you want to save or reset a Preset, you never need to click them sequentially. And they look better on the left.

It's a different story for Tactical though!

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st Feb] Engineering UI/Game Design

« on: February 21, 2016, 07:24:46 PM »

Yeah, we have to keep pushing for greatness in UNION. It has to be the best expression of a bridge sim that we can accomplish.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st Feb] Engineering UI/Game Design

« on: February 21, 2016, 06:38:14 PM »

I will try out those changes on the Ship Status, they sound good.

What do you think of the UI as a whole, it is fit for purpose? Is there enough there?

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 21st Feb] Engineering UI/Game Design

« on: February 21, 2016, 04:52:45 PM »

Engineers
How do we send Engineers around? I don't see them on the ship, like we have the crew in FTL or DamCon in Artemis. Oh, wait, the small icons on the equipment in the Power Wheel. Got it.
Will we be able to rename Engineers? Maybe by modding? I believe that a role-playing community would have a lot of use and benefit from something like that. Having the same Engineers on the same ships, advancing their stats through missions, promoting them to officers and moving them from the ships to other ships (the promoting and moving doesn't have to be handled ingame, it can be roleplayed by simply removing them through modding, if we're abble to mod them).

Yeah you'll be able to rename Engineers, without modding (though the Engineers system will have moddable elements too).

Engineers will be persistent by default, they will will be attached to the Chief Engineer's (the player's) profile. If the ship's Chief Engineer is replaced by other player then the Engineers will change too. There will be a server option to disable persistent Engineer, this will replace them with a random group.

We have big plans for Engineers in terms of roleplaying and gameplay. They will have hidden personality traits which might cause them to abandon their assignment during combat, or show extreme courage in fighting a serious fire. On top of that an Engineer might get Critically Injured, which would mean that they will die (permanently) if they are not taken to a starbase with a medical facility within a certain time. On top of that, when repairing a severely damaged piece of equipment an Engineer might request a part (like a flux capacitor, or self-sealing stem bolt) from one of a selection of stations to make the equipment fully operational. We're very excited about these procedural narrative driven gameplay elements.

Up to now the plan has been to have Engineers "follow" the Chief Engineer (when you are playing as Chief Engineer on the ship, you use your Engineers). Your idea of transfers is very interesting though, perhaps a Chief Engineer can transfer one or more of his Engineers to another player, using them to give a boost to a more junior player for example. Perhaps there could be a loan system during a mission as well... there's a lot to think about there.

Bottom bar and Ship Status
The chat seems awfully small, so if everyone is spamming something, it'll be really hard to read. On the other hand, if people are using voice, the chat is mostly useless. Will it be possible to resize or scroll through chat ingame, without modding/scaling the UI? Will it be possible for the chat to display other status messages, like the amount of damage taken with last hit or current ship status? I do see there's one status message, but I don't know how many will there be.

I tried to give the Chat as much room as possible, but it is limited. Clicking on the Chat box expands it upwards (over the exterior view) and allows you to type.

I am still working on the design for Notifications/Alerts, but there will be a way of getting up-to-date info.

Will the ship be limited to 5 stations? No chance of two people sharing the same role, like (partially) in Artemis? Having two people on the Science/Comms might sometimes prove beneficiary, though I do seem to recall you said it won't be needed.
The icon indicating the number of ships locked onto ours seems unnecesarily big. It seems like there should be something else useful sharing that space.
You have "forward" and "aft" shields. That is a difference in terminology. You should either use "forward" and "back" or "fore" and "aft", and not mix them.
The ship is in three colours: blue, gray and reddish(?). Why? Is it an indication of damage? I guess it is, since the "hull integrity" is not at maximum, but what do the different colors mean? How can it be repaired? Is it dependent on the equipment in the appropriate part of the ship?
What's the energy signature? The amount of energy left to the ship, so "the more, the merrier"? The amount of energy that the ship is using, where using more energy leads to easier discovery by the enemies, so "as few as possible"?

At the moment the system does allow players to share a role/station, if the Captain enables the "Shared Roles" setting. I think this will mainly be useful for training though, as two or more players in the same role would just get in each other's way.

Yeah the target locks indicator is too large. Any suggestions on what other info might be useful to the whole crew?

I will clean up the terminology, well spotted.

The armour (ship silhouette) and equipment icons are colour coded for damage. These colours are only to give a general impression, the Captain/crew will need to ask the Chief Engineer if they want more specific info.
Green = 0 to 20% damage
Yellow => 21% to 60% damage (The yellow does look grey on the hull, I will correct that.)
Orange => 61% to 99% damage
Red = 100% damaged (destroyed)

Equipment can be repaired in flight, armour and hull damage has to be repaired at a station with a repair bay.

The Energy Signature is how visible you are to sensors, it is a product of the power, heat, and active equipment (shields, sensors) on the ship.

Everything else
Ship name: I'm curious, what does the "U.B.G." stand for; "UNION Battle Group"? And what are the numbers below the name?
Top right corner: What is the icon "manage crew"? Why are there the icons of all 5 stations in the corner? Will a player be able to switch between stations without returning to the "operations menu"? Will the players be able to play every station without reserving one for themselves, like in Artemis? That's a recipe for disaster.
Equipment status: What's all this? I can try guessing, but there's too many options. Will the empty field below it be filled with different ship equipment?
Presets: Like for the tactical screen, I do believe that the gear icon should be moved to the right hand side, so it's one below the other, which allows for shorter mouse movements in order to click on each one. On the left hand side you could have an indication of the shortcut key (numbers from 1 to 7 could work nicely).
Power wheel: I do not know if you've changed the colours at the outer rim of the equipment parts, but the two red shades are much clearer now. Also, how come there's no connections between the nodes?
Exterior view: What's the difference between three views? Can we see them? Are we able to switch the camera we're looking from in the "Cameras" view?

Yeah U.B.G. is "UNION BattleGroup".

Manage Crew is a button which brings you to the menu where you select your role(s), and where the Captain manages the crew (changing settings, kicking players, etc.). The circular buttons allow you to switch to other roles (the TAB key) will also do this. In this example the player only has the Engineering role, so the others are not clickable (which is why they are flat and dark).

Players can only share roles/stations if the Captain enables the "Shared Roles" setting for the crew, otherwise you have to claim each role you want to play in (the Captain can remove people from roles too).

Currently the bar displayed on the Equipment Status panel is just the variables of the current selected equipment (Power Level, Heat, Integrity, and Stability). Underneath that will be graphs, information, and buttons for actions you can take on the selected equipment (such as Shutdown and Flush Coolant).

Good point on the Presets, I will move the gear icons across and see what that's like. The shortcut keys on the Preset buttons are a great idea, I'll add those in.

I have tweaked some of the colours on the Power Wheel. This is a mockup of the UI, using the actual vector assets which will be used in-game. I didn't bother adding the connections to the mockup.

I haven't yet worked on the cameras for the different views. The first button, Cameras, will allow you to chose from the cameras on the hull of the ship. The second, Targets, will let you choose one of the targeted ships - the view will do it's best to keep it in view using the cameras on the hull, and Torpedos will toggle between the camera mounted on any active or loaded Torpedos. If there are no Torpedos it defaults to a forward camera.

Whew! I do hope I'm not getting on your nerves with so many questions and comments.

I love the questions, so keep asking as much as you'd like.

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Development & Discussion / [Progress - 21st Feb] Engineering UI/Game Design

« on: February 21, 2016, 02:57:20 PM »

Hi all,

As mentioned before, our focus is very much on Engineering right now. We're going to make it fully functional before moving onto Tactical.

I wanted to share our current Engineering design, and get feedback on it. It's not complete yet, I'm still working on the Equipment Status panel which will have options/settings, info and graphs for the current selected equipment on the power wheel.

Take a look at the picture first (click for a larger version), and I will talk a bit more about it below:


Engineers
The biggest thing there that we haven't even announced yet is the Engineers, who you will manage by assigning them to sections/equipment on the ship.

Engineers are like crew members in FTL. They have stats which will provide boosts to the equipment in their section, they'll put out any fires that occur in the section they are in, and if there is damage and the section they are in is powered down they will attempt to repair it. They will also improve the Stability of the section they are assigned to, reducing the chance of an overload (this is important if you want to put a lot of power into a section). Up to two Engineers can be assigned to each section, giving an extra boost to the equipment and further improving Stability.

Small (scout) ships will have 2 Engineers, medium sized ships will have 4, and large ships will have 6 Engineers.

Engineers take a fixed time to travel to and from their assignment, so keeping one or two Engineers unassigned will allow you to get to fires, and do repairs, faster.

Bottom bar and Ship Status
Along the bottom of the screen is a "bar" of items. From left to right they are Chat, Crew Members, and Ship Status. These items are shared with all UIs. Having a Ship Status overview for all roles will help keep everyone clued into what's happening with the ship, especially if they are playing online. Most things there are self explanatory, but the orange circle made of four parts, with the target reticule to the left of it, probably isn't. That displays the number of other ships who have locked onto yours. Knowing if and how many ships have targeted yours gives you a general idea of how much trouble you are in.


I know this isn't a very detailed explanation of all of these things, but I am mega busy with development at the moment. We want to show some new things in Tuesday's DevLog.

If you have any questions or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.


Thanks for reading!

Mark

P.S. The Engineer profile pics are placeholders, borrowed from another sim I love.

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Development & Discussion / Re: players

« on: February 21, 2016, 02:16:50 PM »

First of all thanks so much for your interest, the support of a community is what we really need to make UNION great.

We have no solid plans for who will get access the the Closed Alpha (our first testing stage with a small group of players), but I believe we will choose people from the forums here who have been active in giving us feedback and suggestions. That makes the most sense, since they are people who are most likely to report bugs, and give us feedback and suggestions from the Closed Alpha test.

The Closed Alpha is likely to be in the later half of this year.

Whoever does get Closed Alpha access will get fives alpha keys, allowing them to fill a crew with local or online friends.

After the Closed Alpha we will run other, larger, testing stages.

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Development & Discussion / Re: Multimonitor support

« on: February 21, 2016, 01:11:04 PM »

The game, normally, will support borderless window. Multi-monitor may require fullscreen exclusive, I will need to test it.

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Development & Discussion / Re: [Progress - 16th Feb] Power Wheel UI Operation and Damage Animations

« on: February 21, 2016, 12:40:20 PM »

I really like both of those suggestions!

The expanding circle would be he simplest/easiest for now, I will try that first.