Ceres Demo version 0.8 Thread - CERES

This thread is intended for discussion on the Ceres Demo version 0.8.
Feel free to comment on gameplay, features or anything.
I will try to answer you ASAP.

ok have played with it for a couple of hours
things i love
1 the player way point system
makes it easy to mark spots you want to go back to later for minerals and other stuff

2 on/off tactical view
for extra info/stats

3 the active and passive radar system
adds to the immersion that your commanding a warship

4 the astral bodies are actually there
when ambushed i was a able to take cover(hide) behind an asteroid and then switched off active radar and put engines to 200% and ran fo my life.
got to watch a stationary body hit by a moving body and the moving body just deflect off and change direction just cool

5 the map movement system (not the right click movement)
very similar to homeworld and therefore easy to use and get used to.
6 Drones
brilliant simple system,allows you to either pick up everything or just one thing
keep the difference between standard drones and mining drones keep them specialist single role,forces people to make choices
would like to see a way to swap drones from ships out of port

things i like
1 the camera system
while a bit wobbly at the start and that H button is very helpful, easy to get used to

2 weapons system
Question
simple but would love to see mines introduced because of the cargo freight system
simple to eject from the cargo bay while running away have an IFF system onboard and explosives stop the chasing ship from directly following you
forcing a course change or be damaged helping to get away

3 music/sound
mabye only a demo but musics great and love the active radar ping

4 Cargo/freight system
nice and simple needs no real explanation to use and you can eject stuff and then pick it up in another ship
combined with the drones its genius
Question
are ships wreckage going to be tow-able in a later stage of the game development
not tractor beams but cables attached from ship to ship or what ever is easiest to implement acting as a tug boat for large objects?
while i can ram objects to impart a vector i dont know if this is intended or if you will take damage at a later development stage

Bugs
1 in one play through the first mission at the mining base all weapons just refused to fire on both ships and Fire orders just told the ships to ram the intended targets while funny i the ships where just destroyed
was not able to duplicate

2 the turrets in the same part are indestructible, took a few plays to realise this
dont know if its a bug or not but to finish the mission i just killed the one guarding ship and ran luckily to the the pink wormhole and then meet the next enemy ships and was able to complete the mission

3 non fixed weapons and engine are unchangeable not sure if intentional or not?

thats it for now

Great you like it.
Good to get a constructive response from a couple of hours of gameplay.

BarecGesh wrote:
are ships wreckage going to be tow-able in a later stage of the game development
not tractor beams but cables attached from ship to ship or what ever is easiest to implement acting as a tug boat for large objects?
while i can ram objects to impart a vector i dont know if this is intended or if you will take damage at a later development stage

Tow-able wrecks should be easy to add to the game. The cargo freighter with the train of cargo containers utilized a physic based system to drag the containers. So its quite doable.

BarecGesh wrote:
1 in one play through the first mission at the mining base all weapons just refused to fire on both ships and Fire orders just told the ships to ram the intended targets while funny i the ships where just destroyed
was not able to duplicate

Huh? I will check that out.

BarecGesh wrote:
The turrets in the same part are indestructible, took a few plays to realise this
dont know if its a bug or not but to finish the mission i just killed the one guarding ship and ran luckily to the the pink wormhole and then meet the next enemy ships and was able to complete the mission

Huh, I thought that was fixed... will check that out..

BarecGesh wrote:
Non fixed weapons and engine are unchangeable not sure if intentional or not?

This is an error. I've tracked it down and will fix it.

Question: Did you get any performance issues in the. Drop in FPS or lag?

I will add a new version of the demo As soon as possible.

Thanks for comments. They're a great help!

i forgot to say one thing the demo is great by itself but it shows huge potential

I had no drop in Fps or lag of any kind but im playing on a two month old machine with i7-3770 with 8gigs ram and a decent graphics card
so i would not expect much to happen either way ,had the game run for 2 hours including in the background and noticed no noticeable drops in fps
just wish i had not jumped the gun and bought it for x rebirth with no sign of that game
will try it out on my old pc and give a report tomorrow

edit tested it out tonight anyway
on my trusty old pc 6+years old
specs core duo 6400 2.13ghz
5 gigs ram ati hd5450
windows 7 64 bit
was first of all able to repeat the not firing bug again at the same place when first attacked by the turrets
this was on the first play through and i think this is what causes it the first start up of the game
was able to override the ramming by using the attack button A and clicking rather then just right mouse button

fps drop happened on the old machine after the first 4 minutes of gameplay
had no problem before then and could run at 2xspeed with no drop in fps at the trade station before that started
frame drop would happen every 5 seconds and was a quite noticable freeze when it happened
running at 1360x768 on good settings

stayed and fired everthing i had at the asteroid turrets but sadly when
structure went to 0 it just went to negative structure points example
-52 points

oh and Captains do not show up in the fleet screen unless the have upgrade points to spend
use the point hit confirm and they disappear from the fleet screen

Edited by: BarecGesh

I found the performance error that was seen in low end machines. A little for loop that had a tendency to go a little nuts. So thats fixed.
Fixed the indestructible turrets but I can't seem to replicate the captain error in fleet view.

I will add a new version soon.

ok this is what happens to the fleet screen

this happens after the first combat and i have changed weapons on the main ship
normal fleet screen shows when click on but then i click on the captain tab and it goes blank
works fine at the start of the game and the show up when the level up but then disappear again as soon
as your in combat and does not show up again

hope this helps and keep squishing those bugs

screen capture

Edited by: BarecGesh

Huh, okay... I will take a look at it.
I'm in the progress to upload a new version, 0.81.
The turrets are fixed, ship mods works as advertised and drop in FPS has been fixed.
This captain error would probably be still in place. But you can access the captains through their ships..

Captain screen
ok do not know what you want in bug report way but managed to work out that the
captains screen disappears after the first time you go into handle ships and modify them thats when the
captains tab goes blank for me hope this narrows it down because with out the captain tab you can not
re assign or just assign a captain to a ship if you buy a new one to try it out

ship problems

1 junia's delight ship comes fitted with a torp launcher even do that class can not fit one and once you unfit it you cannot refit it

2 the ta destroyer type can not redock its drones they try to return to the ship but they just fly around it
it can recall them but this just destroys the minerals or item there carrying so you recieve nothing and the item disappears

im sorry if you know this stuff already and keep up the great work

Edited by: BarecGesh

Thanks I will look at these issues.

I've been away on some vacation, so sorry for the late response.

dont be sorry enjoy the summer life comes first

edit 28 july 2013
version 0.829
couple of bugs again dont know if you know these but saying them anyway

1 the station buy able ta-f a2 frigate that are buy able at the station come with two mf slots but come fitted with point defense in the second slot

2 the station buy able ta-f a2 frigate can not dock drones on the ship same issue that the crusier/destroyer used to have.
the Ta-HvTB frigate has the same problem

3 if a bought ship is told to move before completing its short course when it spawns any other ship bought afterwards will not spawn and will not be listed in the fleet screen but is taken out of the buy ships list

the only real problem is the attack button A it needs to be a toggle button as in on off because at the moment its just on and the only way to get rid of it is to click on something which is very dangerous and led to a few embarrassing accidents of my ships being wiped out by station ships

loving the new destructible components on ships and that your able to
target them and the new middle mouse menu system helps a lot

hope any of this helps and keep up the fantastic work and those pink gas clouds where a nasty surprise

Edited by: BarecGesh

I love where this is going, but please, please do something about the movement controlles. My ships are often going into the wrong direction, decsending into nowhere.
I know this is 3D but with just a mouse this is to much to handle for a normal pc gamer imo. HW had the mouse look (middle wheel click) and the 3D space was limited to a certain up adn down from the middle.

Maybe when you are issuing move orders, the plane it is could be shown and you would only ascend or descend when pressing shift, just like in HW2.

56er wrote: I love where this is going, but please, please do something about the movement controlles. My ships are often going into the wrong direction, decsending into nowhere.

Are you talking about the double click control?
Its designed after the Eve-online control.
There is the standard Move order which uses a plane to move. I call it strategic move.

Would you like some sort of combination of the strategic move and double click? So like holding down Ctrl and double clicking into a direction the ship will move on its plane into that direction? Its doable.

Where I can buy complete version?

WarStalker wrote:
Where I can buy complete version?

Since this is just a demo, actually a prototype for the game, there is no complete version of the game.
We are hoping to find a publisher or find a good site to publish the game.

I estimate that the complete version of the game would be complete within a year.

Anything, but just please don't search for the publishers, they will just ruin your game. If you want to rise funds for this game, go for the Kickstarter, much more reliable then any publisher.

You know, try putting Ceres in to Steam via Greenlight. You can leave current version as demo and start adding new features in Steam version. I'm sure it will ease the development for you.

Edited by: WarStalkeR