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Num1d1um78 days ago(+1)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! A lot to digest for sure, some of the more radical changes I'll have to consider very carefully. Did you utilize the hybrid control mode in your further play?

I'll definitely think about simplifying navigation in the way you described by taking the horizon out of the equation, but a full-on autopilot like you describe for following enemies is not something I'd do since I want navigation to remain a manual process during combat. 

Most of the HUD things I'm already sort of coalescing into an update in my mind and many have been suggested before, I agree that more information about weapon state needs to be visible on enemies that aren't under the cursor and also that I need to better communicate sensor strength and its limits. 

As for loot, all collectibles apart from items (weapons and modules) already have magnetism and move toward the player in a tractor-beam-like way once in range, maybe I'll just increase this radius a bit to make it more obvious. Since handling items is very disruptive I don't want to have them move around and potentially overwhelm players when they all show up on your ship at once!

Bullet and missile speed is subject to the weapon randomization and increases noticeably as the difficulty (and thus item quality) goes up, may receive a small bump to its base values. Missiles being slow is intentional, to make both fast enemies and fast players capable of outrunning them. The full version will also include a missile variant (via perk) that is much faster and agile, for fighting small enemies.

A small bounty for every kill is a nice idea, I'll implement that for sure - and I can also add more ambient enemies very easily.


Thanks again, I'd be very happy to also have you on the Discord, we have a suggestions channel there as well!

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nenad2d78 days ago (4 edits) (+1)

I think controls/navigation is the biggest obstacle for an average player right now and can easily make them abandon the game. You should make "fixing" them number one priority. I could easily see myself sinking 100 hours into this if controls were "intuitive".

Let me suggest the following. It could seem strange at first but may actually work in practice.

Have the camera orbit fully relative as I already suggested. Discard roll and map yaw to A-D and pitch to W-S. Now the fun part. Don't steer in ship space but instead steer in camera space. Since primary goal of steering is to turn the nose towards wanted direction, this control scheme will do exactly that from player's viewpoint. The steering becomes completely intuitive without any need to mentally keep track of how the ship is positioned towards camera or towards any absolute planes.

There are two sub options for the camera when steering this way. The camera can stay put or it can follow the steering rotation with its orbiting. Perceptually, the former will make the environment static while the ship will rotate, while the latter will do the opposite. It needs to be tested which works better, or it can be an in-game option.

This will make both camera and steering, relative to the view and completely intuitive as your control directions map to directions you see on the screen.

You can now eliminate the horizon and the axis markers around the ship. The only thing I'd draw is a simple line going along ship's forward direction from nose to the end of range. This may help visualizing where the ship is aimed.

A cosmetic roll can be kept for both; map Q-E to ship roll and middle button + sideways drag to camera roll. The ship roll happens in ship space and camera is not reacting to it.

As for auto-pilot, it doesn't need to be lock-on. If you click on the target its current position in space is memorized as auto-pilot's aim. The location is not locked/updated to the actual enemy. You'll need to click again. This works similarly to your current pip mode just that you can click on the enemy. I don't know how you currently calculate the pip position but I'd do it like this: if an enemy is clicked, use its position, if empty space is clicked, use the farthest intersection point between mouse ray and ship's range sphere.

I'd still consider full lock-on autopilot option for people who need babysitting or have poor spatial perception.

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Num1d1um78 days ago(+1)

Give the new update a shot ;D

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nenad2d77 days ago (5 edits) (+1)

Close, but not 100% exactly what I had in mind. Steering still doesn't happen fully in camera space (which sounds weird I know). If the camera orbits 90 deg - yaw becomes roll in camera space. I'd like to avoid that. My idea was to eliminate perceptual alterations/flipping of controls due to viewing angle change, as much as possible. The focus is what is seen in the environment, not the ship.

This is kinda hard to verbalize. It got me intrigued so I made a small demo/test to see if the whole thing makes sense. The idea is to steer almost like in first person view regardless of ship orientation, so when playing, if I want to bring something into the center of the view - push buttons that are in direction of that something on the screen. This I think is best mode of steering in fights where your primary goal is to keep targets in view and your ship's actual orientation is secondary. 

In the demo, when camera is not locked, perceptual control direction flipping will still occur when the look direction is opposite of ship's forward direction, but this could be tolerated I guess. 

I also exposed some other parameters to play with, including camera lag in locked mode, to better suggest that you're actually steering.

Catharage - controls demo by nenad2d

The password is the name of your game, all lowercase.

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Num1d1um77 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Alright, with your demo I do finally understand what you mean! Playing around with it a bunch I do think it would be more problematic for casual players than the current solution though, because the perceptual control flipping is one of the issues testers have brought up with my original, fully 6DOF control scheme. I had assumed your goal, like that of many testers, was to get to a "YGIWYS" kinda control where the relation between inputs and outcomes is always consistent. The lil' cam lag is very nice. In any case I probably won't have time to implement this before NextFest, so I'll have to see how it lands as is right now. Would you at least say that the new modern controls are an improvement and better for you to play with? I definitely appreciate you taking the time to make this prototype and I'll keep working with it to see where the controls go next! ps. can you send me the lil demo on discord or somewhere so I can have it locally?

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nenad2d77 days ago (10 edits) (+1)

I'll send you the executable. I can give you the source code as well if you wish so you don't need to reinvent the calculations in case you want to try some of it inside the game.

You can perhaps put something like this as some sort of experimental alternative control scheme into a test build, and see how people react. Maybe it'll be bad for your typical player, I don't know, but as I played with it, I realized I can more easily "do what I intended" than with what you currently have in the game. There's no flipping whatsoever if you keep orbiting inside one hemisphere (front or back)

There's a particularly satisfying (and I'd guess useful) 180 turn maneuver where you yaw or pitch to one side and at the same time orbit the camera to other side to compensate. Try it out.

The main problem with craft-centric yaw/pitch/roll control, except that is exceptionally nerdy ;), is that it's meaningful only if the camera basis is aligned with craft basis, or at least very close in alignment, so that player's mental model of directions corresponds to what they see . In other words, it's for first person or close-behind third person view. As soon as this alignment goes out of whack, the confusion sets in and it becomes very taxing for player to mentally map controls to what they see. It's especially incompatible with free orbiting camera, as the relation between craft and view bases changes from moment to moment. The player constantly needs to look at the graphic of the craft, figure out its alignment on all 3 axes, and mentally re-map the controls to get where they want in the world.

The new controls are better but I still wouldn't call them "intuitive", especially for more casual players who don't have affinity for "realistic" piloting. I'll play some more and report back.

Imo the best way to think about control scheme is to take into consideration what the player needs to do in a typical gameplay loop, and asses which control scheme best caters to it. With classic 6DOF I think you confine the player to the (near) first person view if they want to maneuver without frustration, so they lose the joy of observing what their craft and enemies are doing from various angles while still being able to successfully steer at the same time.

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