Quality-of-life for the october 2017 release candidate.

    DrTarDIS

    Eldrich Timelord
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    Just a few Small but relatively important requests once the next dev build is released. As we are told the "new systems" won't be fully implemented for a while there are a few minor effort "patches" I hope can be shoe-horned in while the new stuff is being tested. Some of this I'll admit I didn't double check before posting. If it was ninja-patched without me noticing belated thanks to the devs. Do correct me if I'm wrong, and chime in with other "probably simple" quality of life things I've missed.

    Textures, rotations, mirrors:
    • -Please move texture animation true/false flags to client side. Currently Block Animations are a Blockconfig.xml setting, relegating them to server-side. For Internal graphics adapters, or slower GDDR cards the animations themselves cause large FPS drops with lots of visible animated blocks. While not an issue with "recommended" hardware, many users with "minimum" requirements would notice drastic improvements with the ability to turn animations off with a GUI option.
    • several low hp blocks do not have full range of rotation. girders as an example. the unique face cannot be rotated "downwards" They also do not seem to mirror correctly
    • LOD objects such as "Light bar corner" do not mirror correctly.

    Weapons computers settings:
    • -The beam computer cannot be entered as an astro. This is a simple blockconfig.xml option that got changed to "false" around a year ago. Please re-enable pressing "r" on beam computers by default. This will allow players to crew ships more reliably, instead of one-guy-per-fleet.
    • -the missile computer does not allow people entering it to move the lock-on reticule, this makes manually entering missile computers worthless. Please allow missile lock-on reticle to move atleast 45 degrees for in-computer users.
    • -Entering a weapons computer currently moves POV to the Core, rotated to the computer's orientation. While not a bad thing, there are several glitches associated with this;
    1. The POV will change to the "last used camera number" of the "last entity entered" while retaining the computer's orientation. EG: make a core with 3 cameras mini-ship, move to camera POV #3, exit mini ship, enter weapons computer on a different ship, you are now POV of the 3rd placed camera of that ship, not the ship core. this makes entering computers unreliable for player use. Please keep it consistent to "core only" or allow selection of cameras as normal
    2. The aiming reticle does not align to the new camera POV. If a weapons computer is facing "left", the reticle will be still facing "forward" and need to be manually moved "left" several mouse passes before the system can be aimed properly. if the reticle is moved incorrectly in this blind manner, an additional reticle is displayed 180 degrees (backwards) to the guy using the computer. It will still fire just fine, but it will fire "backwards/away" from where this "phantom reticle" is pointing. Please make the reticle auto-center to POV, and remove the 180 degree false reticle
    3. Downward facing cameras and weapons computers result in strange, twisted viewpoint. One would expect "ship-forward" to be "camera-up" in this new view. (look down at your feet)
    Weapons ranges: REALLY DIFFICULT!
    As weapons ranges are scaled to sector size, changing the sector size to something larger to mitigate lag (as many servers do) results in massive changes to weapons range. Please implement a universal coefficient to weapons systems in game config xml. It is a large hassle to go through every single weapons and support system in the blockconfig xml when a single setting(sector size) in the game config is changed.
     
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    I hope it isn't too much out of context to bring this one up once more, haven't seen it mentioned in a while:
    • Out of any and all rotation-related fixes, aligning the external "camera" view to the ship-local instead of the universe coordinate system would be my favorite.