squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I really like the idea. I played a bit and got feedback.
- First I opened it in Firefox on Android. It almost worked. Keyboard bindings worked, but scaling is messed up. It’s all super tiny. I then continued on PC.
- I miss a “advance time” feature. Especially on the easier maps you just don’t get a lot of momentum and being able to fast forward would be nice.
- R is too close to keys you need to play the game. More than once I accidentally touched R when I wanted E and it messed up a promising run.
- The ship is sooo tiny. It also looks the same in all directions, so it’s often really hard to see where it’s pointing.
- I wonder if instead of rotation+thrust it would be better to just WASD to accelerate the ship in screen direction. So W would always propell the ship towards the top of the screen. That way it also wouldn’t matter that the ship is so tiny.
Other than that, it’s a pretty cool idea, I like it. Spaceflight Simulator meets The Expanse-style slingshot racing.
jaykrown@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Seriously thank you for the feedback and I’m glad you like the idea. Scaling should work if you go to settings, and rebinding R to something else. I have made the adamant decision to never add time controls to the core simulation for multiple reasons, but I encourage you to try to map making system to make tighter faster maps. Most maps are already under 2 minutes to complete, but indeed the easy once involve only two major maneuvers unlike the hard ones.
The ship size I will be scaling up by about 20% on screen, along with adding a white arrow that points in the direction it’s facing, similar to the yellow force arrows which can be toggled on and off, and I’ll add a feature to separate the toggle so you can turn off force arrows while keeping the direction arrow.
The point of QE to rotate is to provide meaning and skill to ship main thrust vectoring, which is much more realistic similar to a game like Rocket League. You can use RCS but it’s only 50% as powerful and doesn’t have afterburner. Did you have issues choosing increasing the scaling in the settings? On my phone I typically do 150% and it allows for up to 200%. Thanks again for playing!
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
UI scaling via the settings saved this on the phone. With 130% UI scaling and 100% for the rest it’s playable. TBH, I didn’t find the settings before you pointed out they exist. 50% scaling is probably not a good default. What’s also a bit of an issue is that I can’t get to the settings with a game running. It seems like I first have to exit the current game to get to the settings. That’s a bit annoying if I want to e.g. adjust in-game scaling, because I have to completely exit the game, adjust, and to see if the setting is ok, I have to start a game and repeat the cycle.
I wonder if it might be worth it to make the ship sprite more conical instead of rectangular. Like, make the front pointy.
I keep forgetting whether she ship is pointed up or down. I always have to try if forward or backward gives me the effect I need.
The more difficult levels are pretty playable. The easy ones I think don’t represent the game well. I first tried the top easy level and it was 2-3 minutes of waiting. I’m happy I tried trefoil next, because that level was much more fun.
jaykrown@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Thank you, that’s good to know about the initial scaling, I’ll set it to 100% instead of 50%, also knowing you have to exit to adjust is good to know, I’ll make a proper dedicated exit button on the settings page. As stated previously this is what I’ll do regarding ship rotation and size:
I won’t be making ships a certain shape to make them easier to know which way they’re pointed. Because space has no air, no need for aerodynamics.
There’s an entire replay system where you can see all other player’s runs, easily by clicking the leaderboard runs, or going to a user’s profile history. If you’re playing the easy map and it’s too easy, and you’re sitting waiting for 2-3 minutes, check out the fastest run which are around 25 seconds on both Prime and Reach. I’m glad you found the more difficult maps more enjoyable. The easy maps are genuinely meant to be for people who have no concept of orbital mechanics at all. Where as a map like Apollo is for someone skilled in capturing a moon’s orbit manually. So if you want a challenge then do the Apollo map, you’ll be burning and rotating in all directions.
You can also make your own maps with the map making system! slingshotspeeders.com/m/vnocbt8g
squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 day ago
True, but even in space it makes sense to put all your hot and dangerous engines and fuel systems on end of the vessel and all the crew and life support stuff on the other hand.
Since the ship can be turned around in any direction it really doesn’t make much sense to put anything but small maneuvering/rotation thrusters at the front, since if you want to thrust in the other direction you can just spin the ship around.
For comparison look at the Rocinante from The Expanse. That thing isn’t meant for athmospheric flight or aerodynamics, but it still has a giant engine on one end and windscreens on the other.
In the first scenes of the first episode of the show they even make it a point to show how a cargo ship flips around at the centerpoint of the journey to switch from acceleration to deceleration.
Yeah, of course, but when I’m doing my first run in the game on the first map of the game I’m not going to fly optimally. Even with a basic understanding of orbital mechanics.
I just think it would be good if even the “tutorial” maps are somewhat enjoyable.
The later maps are really cool!