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[A heavy creaking door opens slightly and a bloodshot eye peers from the darkness]: Yeeeeeeees?!

Hey! yeh it sure quiet.

Hi, that has always been my plan. I'm assuming there's some way for me to give itch purchases a steam key (or link it or whatever) and vice versa in a way where I don't have to verify myself that each person I give a key has actually purchased the game. If that's the case then yes. I'm putting TAXINAUT on steam Early Access probably this summer and if possible will give all itch purchases a steam key.

That looks a bit too minimalist alright.

Hey! thanks for sharing that. No I didn't get any other information. The email doesn't even provide a name of who it is that is contacting you. I searched on google for moodaaa and found one link to like "moodaaa.com" or something like that but I didn't click on it because it would immediately expose my router ip to them if it was a scam thing or something. Which I don't think it is (no particular reason just feeling). I think it's just somebody trying to setup some kind of gaming platform/distribution thing but doesn't have the "presence" yet. (like a startup).

That's basically all my thoughts on it.

Hey leafo! Thanks again for the reply! I was just wondering because I'm getting repeated emails from a Chinese gaming platform or something...can't really see much about it on google (it's called moodaaa digital or something like that). Anyway, if people from China can just purchase through Itch.io anyway then I'm not interested in having it published through them.

Thanks again!

You bring up some interesting points about exploration. I struggle with it for taxinaut as well. But I hope by keeping the focus smaller (e.g. you generally don't discover unknown empires/races but instead some sleezy joint where they traffic clones) that I don't build a world that's too big/epic in scope to do anything with. (I think Star Wars shows this as well: It looks like it's a rich world you could do a whole lot with but it's really quite limited in a way (The more successful spin-offs like the mandelorian go smaller instead of bigger with the story scope).

I looked at your game-page it looks like something I would like to play if it was fleshed out. I would definitely stick with it.

I have some text based projects lying around myself but I'm commited to TAXINAUT now. In one of those projects a sense of travel was added by making it take time to reach a place and places would be hierarchical (like a directory structure). Each place is still a room with points you can travel to but each point would have a name and a travel-time on it. Travelling would also reveal other travel points in the same room...it's a bit of typing to explain the full system here but it worked pretty well and gave a better sense of place then the normal big cluster of rooms way of doing this. For example: your location would be something like:

Forgotten lands/Emerald forest/High Eldor/Market square/Pan's House

While in "Pan's House" you can see the travel-points in there (e.g. bed-room, kitchen, storage-room). These will take a few seconds of travel time. You can exit Pan's house and be back in the market-square which shows travel-points (Pan's House, Jobe's House, Abe's Jewelry, etc.) and these will take maybe a minute of travel-time (not real time of course). I should have used a sci-fi/space example instead of a fantasy-rpg but you probably get the drift (e.g. Oberon Sector/Antares B/Alderan/Keppler's Moon/Orbit).

You can just send me your ideas for your character by email (mosgrom@mosgrom.net) or (I saw you followed me on twitter) maybe through twitter direct-message. I don't think itch has direct messaging.

The whole thing about the cab-companies etc. I have thought about that many times but I really don't want TAXINAUT to become like a lot of other games in that respect. My focus is squarely on the exploration aspect. (I think for example that No Mans Sky is making a mistake with all that base-building stuff). My idea is that you will always stay a simple cab-driver. You're not going to build and manage an empire. I think that aspect is pretty bland and inconsequential in Euro-truck sim to be honest. I don't play it for that. I want TAXINAUT to be a game where you can keep exploring for a long time while your knowledge and access to special places, people and items that make things easier will grow. In a way the whole taxi thing is just a backdrop for what is essentially a space exploration game but with a more grimy angle (not a glamorous captain of a starship but a sweaty cabby).

I like the leaderboard thing. I already (if players have agreed to it) a way of collecting that kind of information (e.g. how many fares you've completed). I'm not happy with my web-hosting at the moment...there's a bit to sort out there if I was going to publish stats like that on a webpage, but I like that idea, I might make it so it's shown in the game itself (so it collects this information from the web) (maybe that's what you meant).

There is already a sort of challenge thing in the game (and I'm planning to make more). There are items (more like medals) that you can get that indicate certain achievements. They are more woven into a story thing however. I don't really want to give it away. I suppose I could expand upon these and make a lot more of them. There's also achievements you can see these on the character-screen (when you click on your portrait) however there are only a few at the moment (e.g. you get one when you reach the baco-plant).

I really enjoy your comments & ideas Daza. I hope you're getting some enjoyment out of the game despite that it still needs a lot of work.

Hey thanks a lot! To show my gratitude: would you like it if I made a possible passenger of you in the game. I will call them Daza and if you want you can send me an image of yourself or something else and I will make a portrait out of it. You can also send me a conversation tree if you want. Like a little bit of dialog that you have. I'll be happy to put that in. I can clear the portrait with you before I put it in. (If you don't like this, that's fine, I'm not offended or anything, you know...)

Yeh, your certainly right about that: when you die in the beginning you might as well restart. I am very likely going to make the birds easier (as are other things) while you have "beginner's luck" by making it so they rarely do serious damage (just scratch damage). It also just thought of the idea that maybe in the beginning your damage & injuries should be automatically removed when you die. Maybe I can make this into a more plausible game thing: e.g. you get an insurance item at the start of the game that will pay for all damage etc. when you die for a couple of times...or something like that.

That's a good idea. I think I should do something more explicit like a popup the first time you get a traffic-control message. They are in a different color but they are not that different (they're orange). I am going to make 'm flash anyway to make 'm stand out but having a popup or something when it's the first time is a good idea. Or I might do it that the first time you are caught for not following traffic control (or not responding to traffic control) that they let you off with a warning and an explanation of how it works.

I completely agree: The travel-agent UI and (also, but less, the startport UI) are painful. Your idea of showing all the possible destination (maybe with lines to them) right away on the galaxy-map is what I've had myself for a while. Starports (where the galactic-liners arrive & depart are just like other sites at a space-station (I think they are square-white with a purple star on them).

Most of these UI things don't have high priority at the moment because I have a lot to do in the content area (ways to get better items, dialog, stories, etc.) and that's what I'm focusing on at the moment. I will add a button to quickly go to the planet-information panel of the planet you're on but this travel-agent/starport UI thing will probably have to wait. (I'll probably have a look and estimate how much time it will take. If it's not too messy I will do it soon).

I like your idea of dedicated lanes in stations. I have this sort of already on some planets where there is a traffic grid. I am going to leave some planets and stations this busy because I want it to be like you're in an annoying traffic jam sometimes. I don't think it takes too much time. I've been in them many times myself, it just takes a bit of concentration to navigate them.

I don't know why you got a fine for 50k from security. It sounds like you ignored traffic-control. When you enter a star-system keep an eye on your bulletin board. An orange message might appear there that you can click on. You will then be asked to state your destination planet. Ignoring this message is taken very seriously by most factions. The fines will normally appear in your item panel and you can hover your mouse over them to see what they are. However ignoring traffic-control is like flying a plane into US airspace without clearance and without identifying yourself. Maybe 50k fin is excessive but in the beginning even if the fine is 10k many players won't be able to pay it.

As I'm thinking I might make the traffic-control message blink continuously to alert players more to the fact that this needs their attention.

Hey Daza! I didn't see you had written more (I don't seem to get a notification?). The birds are a bit of a conundrum. Most people I speak to seem to think it should be kept as is. I was on Space Game Junkie and he also said that despite it being hard in the beginning I should keep them. I was kinda ready to agree with you and change it but now it seems people want me to keep it the way it is? I might just (semi-secretly) make them a bit easier. If you just loan a bit extra right at the start and find a trader and by some more armor (say 5 or so) then you should be ok though. Still also considering adding an option to make the game a bit easier.

I'm planning to make the item bar a bit better by providing a filter icon (e.g. see only bookmarks) as the first item but I'm not 100% yet on the details. You can at the moment pin items to the beginning. If you look closely you might see that the first 6 or so items have a little yellow dot in the top left (or is it right?) corner. If you right-click an item it will be pinned to the first unpinned position (so if 6 items are pinned then any other item you pin by right-clicking it will become the 7th item. The next you pin will become the 8th etc. You probably noticed that new items are always added after the last pinned item. This enables you to make a choice as to what you want to remain "most aware" of and anything new will always be visible on the first page (after the last pinned item) as long as you don't pin a whole page full of items.

Items that have negative effects always flash or blink. Although there may be some exceptions at the moment (it's still on the list to make this more consistent).

I want to stay away from keyboard controls as much as possible. The whole game is designed around being able to play it with just the mouse and a drink in the other hand :-) Also it's designed to not require quick using of items. When you're in a situation where you want to use something always just click the left mouse button. Wherever you do this, this will pause the game. You can now in your own time pick the item you want to use and click that. Some items (e.g. the booster) don't automatically resume the game after you activate them giving you a chance to put your mouse back where you want it and then resume the game. I a way my idea is to let that part feel more like a turn based game. All ship weapons work like this too (they're not twitch/reflex based) once you for example have a beam weapon: You first pause the game by left clicking then click the beam-item you want to use (or immediately click the beam-weapon item which will also pause the game), then you will see a firing arc and those things you can pick as targets you will be able to pick at your own leisure. Once you pick a target the beam fires and the game automatically resumes. Most thing work like this. Some weapons have annoying small firing arcs so they do require a bit of timing when to pause to line them up but this is intentional; these usually have better versions with better firing arcs.

Here's a link to the part in the 2nd tutorial where you might be able to follow what I mean (I remember you're hard of hearing right?) but just seeing it might illustrate what I'm trying to explain better:

https://youtu.be/25NPitrFHQk?t=1501

Usually at traders. The body armor is a different thing and plays a role when you personally are attacked by other people in the game. You will start seeing this when you land on some planets and get attacked by creatures there or when you yourself attack somebody. For example thugs usually ask you to hand over your vudu and you can attack them to prevent this but they will attack back. Body armor will reduce the damage from certain weapons/attacks.

The basic armor is sold at some traders (and some garages I think but not sure from top of my head). There is already a thing that's sort of like your compressed-air idea, it's called a repulsor. When you click it, it will blow all other mobs around you away from you and they will be stunned for a very short period (like half a second from the top of my head). I think you can sometimes find these at traders too but I'm still working on special-sites that sell the more exotic equipment. This has priority and you will be seeing more and more of it in the coming months. Most of these items are there but they're simply not obtainable at the moment. Taxis all have the same top speed. At the moment once you've 'discovered' a ship-type (depending on the ship) you can just change your ships look to that type by going into the main-menu and clicking on the ship image. This might change in the future. There are going to be engines that you can buy that do give slightly higher speed. There's also boosters and things that increase the turn-rate of your ship. These you can buy, when you click them 1 is consumed and for a certain time you fly at higher speed and/or with higher turn rate.

Ok, well thanks for the reply.

There is a help in the main menu but it's incomplete. I do need to make that a lot better. My vision for the game is to be a lot about exploration this includes finding new items and the little 'game mechanics' that they bring with them. I find that when I play a game (say a strategy game like stellaris) what I enjoy more is discovering the interface and mechanics. Once I know these things I tend to lose interest. So for taxinaut I wouldn't really want to create a codex that talks about all these things. That's why all the items are together in one panel. I want there to be a sense there that there are no rules to what items can do/entail. I agree the galaxy-map and some other core aspects are badly documented. But I don't think that there are really that many of them. The items you can get should be able to explain themselves pretty well through their hover popup.

I will see if I can add sub-titles to the youtube videos, would that help? I'm thinking of making another one in which I explain some aspects a bit better (e.g. galaxy-map and passenger pick-up).

Really enjoying your feedback b.t.w. thank you very much for that!

Hmm here: https://itch.io/docs/creators/payments#vat-support it seems to suggest that it's optional to include or exclude the VAT into the set price. Or do they mean there only if you use the "direct to you" model of payment? I've looked through my options/payment mode etc. and don't see it there. Or is it fixed once you start selling??? Anybody?

Just found some other post here on itch.io (https://itch.io/t/511896/30-instead-of-10-itchio-cut) in this leafo seems to say that this is the way it is at the moment and it doesn't look like you can set it differently. This is very off putting for EU customers.  As leafo points out himself this is not what a EU customer would expect. (Weirdly enough US customers would be more accustomed to tax on top of price thing but they don't have it). Are there any plans to change this or make it an option?

I understood that the listed price would include the tax and that what I & itch are left with is the price I set minus the tax (and payment-fees etc.). But for customers in the EU the tax is on top of the price I set??? I didn't realize this was happening and have probably pissed off some people. Not saying this is itch fault or anything, clearly I misunderstood. But, is there some way to set this or can I charge a different price for EU people. I'm from EU myself and I do realize what a pain in the behind the EU is with this thing. No other area I've sold to shows this tax thing on top of the price. I want me to take the hit for that tax thing not my (few) customers.

Yes there's a good idea in there. I would have to think about it a bit as usual. It might be a bit awkward. It would have to be clear what's what. When you click on a clinic icon the one that's selected is already the closest one you know and there is no difference between clinics of the same type (well the people there will probably be a bit different). But I do like the idea of showing the other ones.

What might be best (but a bit unclear unless you know) that if you click on an icon (for a site-type) that the list of know sites (under the mini-map to the left of the planet-information panel) only shows sites of that type in order of distance to you.

Planet/zone information panels show the icons of discovered site-types. You can often move the mouse over these to see what they sell there but not all sites provide this information.

There are 3 things (admittedly a bit confusing):

1. Spaceport: These are sites usually at the center of a planet that can assist you in departing from a planet when you don't have a anti-grav system or it's broken. Spaceports become automatically known (or should do so) when you descent onto a planet the first time (you shouldn't have to fly into it). There might be a bug where this isn't the case for the starter planet. Some planets don't have spaceports and on most planets you don't descent into the spaceport even if they have one but some do force descending into the spaceport by a tractor-beam (Xenis is one).

2. Travel-agents: These are sites that sell tickets for passage on a transporter. Transports leave from somewhere in the same star-system as the travel-agent and travel-agents have tickets to most other nearby systems (not all systems are serviced by transports, the system-info panel shows an icon for this). Transports are slower, cost more and can have a long boarding wait time which some passengers will not like.

3. Starports: These are sites on space-stations where galactic-liners arrive/depart. You can book a trip on a galactic liner to nearby starports and they will depart immediately. They also fly longer distances, faster and cost less than transports.

I think you understand it now. The bookmarks are just a reminder. You can delete them if you want. Any location you've ever received a bookmark for or that you've discovered or otherwise has become known will be recorded in the galaxy-map.

There's no real hard-limit on bookmarks. When the panel is full you can page through it with the mouse-wheel.

Having bookmarks just appear when your on the planet they refer to is not handy because your destinations are often in completely other systems and that's often when you want to use a bookmark. (Say somebody gives you a bookmark to a weapon-dealer that's in another system) and you want to go there: If it only showed bookmarks of the current planet that bookmark wouldn't show.

Oh, yes, that TODO on the planets. I think I might have forgotten about that one. I'm going to see where to best have a shortcut to opening the information panel for the current zone. I could just make it an item...

I've had making it possible to make a random point on the minimap your destination on my todo list for a while but it isn't high priority. I'm probably not going to mark every bookmark that the player has on the minimap but I'll think about what would be nice there.

The bookmarks aren't really the primary way to keep track of things. As soon as you fly into/over things they will be permanently known to you and you can find them back through your galaxy map at any time regardless of bookmarks. When you're in the zone-information (or planet-information panel as I should call it) and you click on a bright icon for a known site-type it will automatically select the nearest one that you know. I desperately need to make another video to explain a few things.

Looking at your second suggestion some more, I might look into adding an option like "toggle marker" on all bookmarks and/or site-information panels but I would have to think about this because what's shown on the mini-map can impact performance etc. and there might be some counter-intuitive situations or complications with other things (not technical) that make it a bad idea that are not obvious to me at the moment. (I've thought about all these things many a times over the past years and often things are simple for a reason (not so much technical) but I just don't remember what they were (I've documented some of my thoughts but not every decision I've made).

The color differences on the mini-map b.t.w. are just land v.s. water, nothing to do with density of buildings. There are items (scanners) that you can get that can find the nearest sites within a certain range etc.

Having said all that I do agree with you there are situations where you sort of want to see more than just one thing marked on the map. I will just have to think about it more thoroughly how to keep such an improvement simple and non-ambigious.

As I'm thinking about it: Maybe when you just click on a bookmark item it should show it's location on the minimap (as long as you have that boomark's panel open in the context-panel) the context-panel or even the hover could also say the distance to the bookmark which would go a long way in determining which is the best one to use (e.g. when picking between two clinics).

EDIT: As I'm thinking: Because most of this stuff should go through the galaxy-map maybe clicking on the planet name or mini-map should bring you straight to the planet-information panel (so you don't have to go: galaxy-map -> click star-> click info->click planet

Let me know what you think.

Hey hey Daza!

As you see I've created a sub-forum for suggestion. At the moment there's no problem because you and I are the only ones talking on here ;-) but maybe in the future this will be useful (I hope so!). If people are willing to be so diligent as to check this forum for duplicates before they make a suggestion that would certainly be nice of them. Not saying you're taking it that way but just a "preemptive" for others perhaps: I don't want the forum to turn into some legalistic thing where people are going to tell each other what constitutes a valid post and what not etc. (I've seen this on other game forums).

As the title says: Can people in China and other Asian countries buy games from itch.io?

I'm getting emails from China saying they are interested in maybe reselling my game there...

I've send out a poll tweet asking others what they think about the Yrah bird difficulty.

Hey! Thanks guys for commenting here. I agree those birds are annoying. However some people seem to want me to keep it the way it is. I'm really not sure what to do here at the moment but I'm thinking about it. I am inclined to say that having those birds on the starter planet is not a good idea. So maybe (not promising) next week I'll put up a new version where there's less of those birds and/or they are less likely to cause damage when they fly into you.

I'm weary of introducing difficulty options. I do want "selectable" difficulty but I want that to be integrated into the game:  e.g. if you don't like difficult things just don't go to difficult planets (sort of like with unlevelled RPGs where you just avoid the hard dungeons). That's why there's a difficulty indicator on fares etc. Of course you can't "pick" your starter planet... Then again I'm somebody myself who just doesn't play some games because I don't like reflexy/twitchy games so maybe I will end up adding an option.

One thing you can do for now is get more armor. It will reduce the damage that those birds do significantly. You can take out a bit of an extra loan for it...

The site icons are not supposed to be self-explanatory but I really like your idea Daza. However if I do that I will only do it for sites that you've already discovered (or maybe for any you've discovered one of a similar type of) and also maybe tie it to some kind of item (scan thing) that you need to get (probably not). I've added it to my list but it has low priority at the moment.

You can toggle the auto-landing. If you move your mouse over the items in your item-panel each item will tell you what it is and how to use it etc. I think it's the 3rd item that's called "LANDING SYSTEM" or something like that. You can use it to toggle automatic landing. You can then (and at any other time) land by using the "LANDING" item (the first item). I will change it so the landing item is also triggered by pressing the 'L' key.

The long explanations you get at motels, banks, etc. you only get the first time you land at such a site. You can turn that off by clicking on the "L" item.

Let me know your thoughts I greatly enjoy talking about the game!

This should be fixed as of V0.7.3.

This should be fixed as of V0.7.3.

This should be fixed as of V0.7.3.

This should be fixed as of V0.7.3

For anybody following this: I've made a little progress (I think) with this problem. First of all there are 3 things:

1. TAXINAUT is to big to fit the screen. This happens when windows scaling is set to more than 100% (right-click desktop -> Display settings).

2. When people talk to you and the text is animated, a word that was being typed out on one line suddenly appears on the next line. This is as intended (well it's as it's currently programmed but could of course be better but it's not a bug).

3. Text is actually cut-off or only partly visible (I have not been able to confirm this). This would be a bug that is probably also caused by windows scaling.

The current best work-around is still to set your windows-scaling setting to 100% But I'm looking into doing some automatic scaling to compensate. In that case users will still have to set taxinaut.exe's compatibility options, that is, High DPI settings to let TAXINAUT handle the DPI scaling because else it causes issues with text-rendering.