Love the game, hate the interface. Thread - Void of Darkness

I love this sort of game and there seems to be lots of potential, but is this supposed to be a release? It feels more like an alpha to me.
The worst part is the interface. For example when you hire crew and set them to work at various posts, it's very clunky. I see that it's been changed from the version on desura to the newest patch which i downloaded separately. Currently you click on a person's name then click on a button to assign them to that department/station.

The trouble is that it's really difficult to see what's going on: You click on each person's name, and mashed up there in the block of text in rather hard to read square characters is the station they are currently on, e.g. operations. You have to click on each person and remember who is on what just to see if you have all stations filled. Surely it would be better to have an interface where you have each station, e.g. ops, tactical etc. and either a blank space or the person's name you have assigned to that station. You could also have people's names in a different colour in the list depending on whether they are assigned or not.

Another interface nightmare. I zoomed along to join a fight and got there late. There were some floating bits of debris. I clicked on one and it said it had nanites in or something. I clicked scan, then I clicked bring it aboard. I was told I needed to be within 500m. It showed I was within that distance on the target display.

I then zoomed away and the distance on the target didn't change despite me being miles away by now.

Another time I got a kind of ghost target circle on empty space that I couldn't get rid of. (So when I targeted a ship I got a 2nd circle).

Shooting at the space station you start on does nothing- shouldn't they get angry with you?

There seem to be some ships I just can't hit with weapons fire. Is it because I'm friendly with them or something? The shot just go over the top of them, which seems a bit unrealistic.

The merchant on the first station where you start seems to have nothing for sale at all and clicking on sell, I can't sell my rations that I own. Is this a bug? I think if he has nothing to sell it should say rather than a blank list, because it's kind of confusing.

Hailing ships feels like it needs a lot of work where you press buttons and nothing happens and you get no choices.

I think a general reason why a lot of the windows feel bugged or needing work could be because they are situational and yet you are allowed to open them when that situation is not applicable.

An annoyance is that when I come back from other screens e.g. tactical, my view is really zoomed in close to my ship in contrast to what I actually had the zoom set to before I selected tactical. Surely it should remember your zoom level?

Anyway, I've only played about an hour or so and I do think the game shows a lot of promise, but surely this isn't finished yet? It really needs a lot of work I think, no offense. (Seriously, no offense).

Exactly my thoughts - agree with everything Graspee said.

The game indeed has great potential and I can see myself having a lot of fun with it if and when the interface becomes more user-friendly:

- Going to maximum (closest) zoom every time I exit the tactical display is very annoying. The game should indeed either remember the previous zoom level or at least let me set the default zoom because the current default makes no sense - you can't see anything when zoomed in so much.

- BUG: When I press the spacebar to bring my ship to a full stop, it also activates/deactivates the starmap or the tactical interface if those were the last screens I opened. If I don't open another interface screen, spacebar will keep opening/closing the starmap or the tactical screen every time I press it. That's so annoying it effectively makes me avoid using spacebar altogether.

- The crew assignment interface could also use the improvements Graspee mentioned. You shouldn't need to memorize every crewmember's position, that information needs to be readily available at first glance.

- The trade system definitely needs some more attention:

• Serious BUG: When buying rations from the first station, the buying price isn't multiplied by the quantity I'm buying - only the price of 1 unit gets deducted from my credits.
• BUG: When clicking on an item to buy, the (estimated?) price which appears in the description keeps changing every time I re-click the item in the list.
• Just annoying: When selling different items, the shopkeeper sometimes repeats the same price offer which he made for the last item I sold. Other times he just says that he accepts my offer, eventhough I made no offer (i.e. left the offer field blank) so I could see what he's willing to pay. Bottom line: the transactions for different items don't seem well separated (if at all).
• Probably a BUG, but annoying nonetheless: The decimals - there's too many of them and there also seems to be no way to sell such fractions of a resource, the shopkeeper only appears to buy whole units, leaving me with tons of useless 0.2323873 amounts of materials in my cargobay that I can only jettison at best.

To be honest, I'd appreciate the whole haggling thing being optional and the trade interface streamlined - let me see the price, and let me just press a button to buy/sell all my stuff quick and painless if I'm okay with that. If one doesn't like the price then let him barter, but please don't make it mandatory (especially in its current state).

- BUG: Not sure what causes this, but sometimes when using warp, everything (including NPC ships) would suddenly accelerate to incredible speeds, also reflected by the background stars flying past so quickly that they turn from dots to lines. This increases travel speed to the point where any navigation becomes impossible - by the time I turn my ship 90 degrees, it has already flown the average distance between two planets.

- Somewhat annoying: The loud alarms that keep informing me of nearby combat events. I'd like a way to turn them off or at least customize what I do/don't want to be alerted to. I know it's just a matter of taste, and I could just lower the overall volume, but the alerts seem a little too loud compared to the rest of the in-game sounds.

- Graphical glitch: If my ship moves while salvaging/mining/etc, the tractor/mining/etc beams drift away from between the object and my ship like they had a life of their own, ending up somewhere far away from both me and my target.

I only played 2-3 hours so far so there may be other issues out there but the ones I mentioned were (to me) the most striking and the ones that made me put down the game until some patches come out. I'm happy to support an indie dev with such great and ambitious ideas but I agree with Graspee that it doesn't yet feel like a finished game - it has many wonderful features and concepts (honestly, hats off to the dev for endeavouring to create a game with such depth!) but it needs more polish.

Edited by: Raydell

Hi guys, this is actually the first set of lengthy in depth feedback I've had since the game was released. It might have been released, but I don't consider it finished either as I intend to keep improving it based on such great feedback.

I have saved your notes to a word file so I can consult it and work on the issues you highlighted, there are some things I can comment on here now.

To salvage the debris after clicking on it, you click on tractor beam, it doubles as a salvager. I will of course work on the way this is interacted with. Scan window has nothing to do with debris, sorry.

The merchant list on the first station only becomes available after you have un-docked for the first time and then re-docked.

The rest I have noted. It seems the mission system might have to be slightly delayed.

One thing I would ask please is that you list the version you are playing since Desura does not have the latest patch live.

Edited by: Cruisin1500

Thank you for taking note of the issues.

I was playing the 1.0.7.6. version downloaded from Gamersgate (it's where I got the game too). Didn't start a new game for 1.0.7.6. though but continued from a saved game started in 1.0.7.5. if that matters.

Nah it shouldn't.

Mine is 1.0.7.5 although the patcher didn't change the title of the exe which was a little confusing since the exe is still named with 1.0.7.1 in it.
Also there's a minor problem in desura thinking the game isn't installed when it is.

Also forgot to add with the interface thing, you can click anywhere to take the selection away from your last selection, so space does not open it. Until I release the fix.

Regard to hailing, you have to have a ship targeted to hail it.

hi guys, I am shooting for a Jan 15th of the release to address your feedback and fix the bugs. Certain issues such as revamping the trade will take a little longer, but I want to get some of these immediate concerns of out the way. Just wanted to update you on the timeline I have in mind.

Hi guys, my work log is here:

Vodgameforum.proboards.com

- BUG: Not sure what causes this, but sometimes when using warp, everything (including NPC ships) would suddenly accelerate to incredible speeds, also reflected by the background stars flying past so quickly that they turn from dots to lines. This increases travel speed to the point where any navigation becomes impossible - by the time I turn my ship 90 degrees, it has already flown the average distance between two planets.

Could you clarify this please, you said they some times turn from dots to lines, when at warp, the dots should be lines, so I am not sure how you quantify the bug as being visible when the dots turn to lines while at warp. Remember too that turn rate is reduced while at warp.

Update Released-

Gamefront.com

patch notes:

Vodgameforum.proboards.com

Edited by: Cruisin1500