Fri Mar 07, 2003 10:11 pm
Piotrr
Some good points but without the ability to increase your level, it means most of the game is going to be inaccessible in freeform unless you start doing some serious hacking into the ini files etc. To be truly freeform, it requires a starting point wheere you have full neutrality with everyone and a (small) ship to start off with. Who you upset and who you befriend is entirely up to you and you don't have to pay out fortunes just to repair your rep before you can go into your chosen career path. V.V. had the right idea with Terminus but then killed it by making you chose at the beginning.
From what I understand, Juni will wait forever for you to take her up on the next mission she has for you. Hmmm, my boss wouldn't wait forever and if I didn't do it, he would find someone else who would. It appears that the FL universe stands still without Trent to do the dirty work - Now *that's* power!
I did play the demo but it obviously won't show everything and believe me, I practiced all night on it but still found it extremely hard to control properly. I have played quite a few games but never had this amount of trouble getting used to the controls.
I have played Elite, Frontier and First Encounters and the mouse control was good but in FL, it is over-sensitive and hard to keep the ship controlled properly. The difference comes from the way it is controlled. In Elite, it stops where the cursor is which means you have to keep moving the mouse all the time to keep going around in circles, In FL, you move the mouse left and stop, you will keep turning left until you center the mouse again. Even a dampening override would help, allowing users to dampen the movement. In real life, the thruster output would be increased to give more force against a turn so it stops more rapidly or you would buy more powerful thrusters to do the same thing. I am playing Elite FE even now on my 1.3 Duron and loving it so I am not lacking practice with mouse flight control.
Dampening in the game would change the inertia values to give less inertia and therefore less oversteer. However, as this would also mean more inclination to drift and respond to slight mouse movements and harder to aim when flying in a tstraight line, an increase is required to make it harder to turn to start with. Unlikely that this would be incorporated now as it would mean a major mod to the actual coding which is only something DA could do and it wouldn't be very high on their priority list.
I played against my friend online in MP and we were playing Terminus, He is a far better pilot than me he dealt out death to me several times before I'd even got a couple of shots at him. (I managed once by popping out from behind an asteroid and shooting him up the ****). If he can't cope with it, I don't stand a chance. He's also played more games than I have including a varied selection of mouse controlled games so he's well used to mouse control. I only have experience with mouse control using First Encounters and it's vastly different.
I admit to not understanding why the level restrictions were in place to start with. If you've got enough money to buy a certain ship:-
a) you've played it for long enough to become proficient as a pilot or you'd have been dead long ago.
b) No salesman would refuse a sale just because someone is not good enough (experience wise). Could you imagine Porsche salesmen refusing to sell a 911 Porsche to a kid who's just got his licence? He'd be sacked, especially if I was his boss! You take it out and crash it cos you can't handle it and that's your problem pal, just part with your cash before you drive it away.
--
My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.
Edited by - tryst on 07-03-2003 22:25:03
Some good points but without the ability to increase your level, it means most of the game is going to be inaccessible in freeform unless you start doing some serious hacking into the ini files etc. To be truly freeform, it requires a starting point wheere you have full neutrality with everyone and a (small) ship to start off with. Who you upset and who you befriend is entirely up to you and you don't have to pay out fortunes just to repair your rep before you can go into your chosen career path. V.V. had the right idea with Terminus but then killed it by making you chose at the beginning.
From what I understand, Juni will wait forever for you to take her up on the next mission she has for you. Hmmm, my boss wouldn't wait forever and if I didn't do it, he would find someone else who would. It appears that the FL universe stands still without Trent to do the dirty work - Now *that's* power!
Sounds like an excellent starting point for some practice to me. How do you know about the handling, by the way? I can't see in your post that you tried it yourself yet?
I did play the demo but it obviously won't show everything and believe me, I practiced all night on it but still found it extremely hard to control properly. I have played quite a few games but never had this amount of trouble getting used to the controls.
I have played Elite, Frontier and First Encounters and the mouse control was good but in FL, it is over-sensitive and hard to keep the ship controlled properly. The difference comes from the way it is controlled. In Elite, it stops where the cursor is which means you have to keep moving the mouse all the time to keep going around in circles, In FL, you move the mouse left and stop, you will keep turning left until you center the mouse again. Even a dampening override would help, allowing users to dampen the movement. In real life, the thruster output would be increased to give more force against a turn so it stops more rapidly or you would buy more powerful thrusters to do the same thing. I am playing Elite FE even now on my 1.3 Duron and loving it so I am not lacking practice with mouse flight control.
Dampening in the game would change the inertia values to give less inertia and therefore less oversteer. However, as this would also mean more inclination to drift and respond to slight mouse movements and harder to aim when flying in a tstraight line, an increase is required to make it harder to turn to start with. Unlikely that this would be incorporated now as it would mean a major mod to the actual coding which is only something DA could do and it wouldn't be very high on their priority list.
I played against my friend online in MP and we were playing Terminus, He is a far better pilot than me he dealt out death to me several times before I'd even got a couple of shots at him. (I managed once by popping out from behind an asteroid and shooting him up the ****). If he can't cope with it, I don't stand a chance. He's also played more games than I have including a varied selection of mouse controlled games so he's well used to mouse control. I only have experience with mouse control using First Encounters and it's vastly different.
Yep, that's even worse. LEVELS decide what ships and equipment you can buy. In multiplayer this limitation is gone, even playing multiplayer with yourself. In "No Story" mode the restriction is still there, but you can take ANY mission, and then it's all based on how much money you have left to go until the next level, so that you can "level up" by getting money, sort of like in Multiplayer, but the equipment and ship restrictions are still in place.
I admit to not understanding why the level restrictions were in place to start with. If you've got enough money to buy a certain ship:-
a) you've played it for long enough to become proficient as a pilot or you'd have been dead long ago.
b) No salesman would refuse a sale just because someone is not good enough (experience wise). Could you imagine Porsche salesmen refusing to sell a 911 Porsche to a kid who's just got his licence? He'd be sacked, especially if I was his boss! You take it out and crash it cos you can't handle it and that's your problem pal, just part with your cash before you drive it away.
--
My idea of an OS is one that operates the system, not a self contained package of every piece of software ever invented.
Edited by - tryst on 07-03-2003 22:25:03