Can someone point me toward a post that outlines the plain and simple mechanics of operating the controls? I presume this game is supposed to be "discoverable," but I am completely frustrated. The in-game help tells me to navigate using arrow keys or letters, but I have not been able to connect that to any understanding of how to actually control the ship.
It uses the standard WASD keys for navigation. It’ll probably become easier to figure out once there’s a section for key mapping.
Up or w is to increase speed forward; down or s is to decrease forward speed and indeed back up. Left and right turn you (slowly!) in that direction relative to the front of your ship.
Here’s something I missed: when you find a dock, there’s a pale circle near it. Sail to that and you’ll be asked whether you want to dock.
edited by an_ocelot on 6/20/2014
Thanks, both of you.
I am still completely confused and frustrated. For whatever reason, these controls are completely counterintuitive to me. It doesn’t help that I seem to be experiencing some genuinely buggy behavior, such as the fact that I get persistent flickering images when I mouse over icons.
Here’s what I got so far:
I can press a button to launch the ship. Then I can press s, w, a, and d. However, the ship just sits there, at least in terms of the visual display. Maybe something is happening behind the scenes. The ship does not visibly move until I press spacebar, which I thought was meant to toggle whether or not I was moving forward. While the ship is "moving," by which I mean not visibly moving but if I mouse over the launch button I have the option to pause it, I can use arrow keys to manipulate a control in the upper left. (Actually, it is sort of "moving" in that the entire game screen shivers while in this state, but as far as I can tell, that is deliberate. But even if I sit there and watch, the ship stays in the same place relative to the docks.) This seems to relate to engine speed. Or maybe direction. I am too confused to tell at this point.
Anyway, pressing w to increase speed does not do anything, but by repeatedly pressing spacebar and toggling "pause" on and off, I can cause the ship to leap forward. If I do this for a while, sometimes I meet a crab, or run into an island. I haven’t figured out how to change direction (the arrow keys and letters don’t help, if only because I’m getting no visible feedback from them), so if I hit an island I am stuck. Then I relog and when I come back in, I’m back in London.
If this is buggy behavior, I’ll file a report, but I don’t know if it’s really a bug or if I’m just fundamentally not getting the interface. Well, obviously the persistent flickering mouseover icons is a bug, but I’m not sure about the rest.
edited by cjo on 6/20/2014
Spacebar is pause button. If the screen is greyish, it means it is paused. If its darkish blueish, its normal time.
Also, make sure you have sufficient fuel in the early games since your engine drinks it like Americans drink beer.
Be aware that autosave occurs everytime you dock (press E in circle in front of port to dock/launch), if you want to save manual, you can only auto/manual save in port, no matter what.
Make sure you press E to launch/dock at port just in case this is your problem.
Okay, let’s go through this step-by-step. You start the game, you’re in harbour, you either press E or click on the Launch button to launch the ship. At this point, pressing either the Up arrow or W should turn up your engine’s speed by one notch and make your ship start moving forward. If nothing happens at this point, your game might be paused - all ship movement controls are disabled while the game is paused. Pressing Space or clicking the Pause/Play button at the bottom centre of the window should unpause the game and re-enable them. That’s the absolute basics - if you can’t reliably make your ship go forward by making sure you’re not paused, launching, and pressing Up or W, then yes, that sounds like a bug.
[color=#009900]cjo - are you playing on a Mac, by any chance? We’ve had one report this morning of something that sounds like a similar issue from an OSX user. If you could mail us at sunlesssea@failbettergames.com with details of your system, we can track down what’s going on, with luck.[/color]
It’s not a mac, but I’m filing a bug report now. Again, thanks everyone! I really wasn’t sure at first if I was just failing to grok the system. But if nothing else, the flickering graphics are clearly a bug.
[quote=cjo]Thanks, both of you.
Anyway, pressing w to increase speed does not do anything, but by repeatedly pressing spacebar and toggling "pause" on and off, I can cause the ship to leap forward. If I do this for a while, sometimes I meet a crab, or run into an island. I haven’t figured out how to change direction (the arrow keys and letters don’t help, if only because I’m getting no visible feedback from them), so if I hit an island I am stuck. Then I relog and when I come back in, I’m back in London.
If this is buggy behavior, I’ll file a report, but I don’t know if it’s really a bug or if I’m just fundamentally not getting the interface. Well, obviously the persistent flickering mouseover icons is a bug, but I’m not sure about the rest.
edited by cjo on 6/20/2014[/quote]
This is that exact stuttering bug I received today after upgrading to .020 edition.
http://community.failbettergames.com/topic8624-visual-stuttering-workaround.aspx
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 6/20/2014
edited by Kharsirr Lynx on 6/20/2014
Hi,
I’ve the same bug than cjo and Kharsirr with the 1320 edition.
[color=#009900]Hi Dreyl - check out the post from Kharsirr that I stickied for a workaround. If you can send us your output log (to sunlesssea@failbettergames.com, that would help us track down the underlying cause. Cheers!)[/color]
Sorry, but I don’t find the output log in my Sunless Sea_data directory…
i’m using a mac and running into this same issue. i’ll gladly send my output log if you can tell me where to find it.
I’ve got this as well, Windows 7 for me. I might need a bit of help to work out how to find and send the output log but I have bug reported with as much detail as I can remember.
I hope that Alexis and team can sort it out soon
Edit - and the return email from support sends you to directions on how to find the file so I hope I did it correctly
edited by reveurciel on 6/24/2014