[color=#6666ff]Hullo Sky-Captains,[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]I’m here to talk about a hot topic: locomotive movement! We’ve not had a Focused Feedback thread on this simply because we’ve already received so much feedback about this on the forums and through our internal ticketing system. We’ve been analysing this and based on what we’ve heard we’ll be making changes which I’m here to tell you about. [/color]
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[color=#6666ff]Movement[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]We want the ship to feel difficult and dangerous to handle. The player is venturing into areas they should not be in with machines that are only just fit for purpose. Only the most skilled of captains should be able to pilot these locomotives. However, skill and difficulty is an objective thing, and we appreciate while some people feel like the balance we’ve struck is just right, others are finding it more challenging than we intended.[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]Most of the feedback is focused around how ‘slidey’ the locomotive feels, that it’s hard to slow down and turn once you build up a head of steam. We’re going to introduce some controls that will allow you to adjust this in a future patch, so you’ll be able to decrease the momentum and slipperyness of your locomotive.[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]Strafing/Thrust[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]People have also mentioned that thrust is quite aggressive and doesn’t allow for fine control. We wanted this to feel like a desperation move that would require people to understand the specific circumstances in which to deploy it. We’re going to work on it a bit more to make it a little easier to use and also look at how we can improve the signalling, so you’ll know when it’s ready to be used again.[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]Enemy Accuracy[/color]
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[color=#6666ff]The enemies seem like they’re very accurate - and that’s true! We’re going to take a sweep and look at if it makes sense for enemies to be as accurate as they are. Some will stay as the accurate sharp-shooters they are, others will take pop-shots a bit more randomly. We’re considering letting the player dictate the level of accuracy of enemies too from the options menu.[/color]
This is very important, as I think you’ve said before you want it to feel like the train is venting hot steam from it’s engines, and its on a meter rather than a timer, but at the moment it’s very obfuscated.
I’d also think the locomotive would really benefit from signal lamps on either side of the train to help you orient it when you’re upside down or sideways. So many time’s I’ve strafed into enemy fire instead of dodging it because I forgot that being upside down meant I had to thrust the other way!
I was also thinking about this recently, after a series of embarrassing bumps and crashes.
In Zubmariner, your zubmarine had a red light on one side and a green light on the other. If the locomotive had something along these lines, it might help the player’s poor space-addled brain understand which direction the strafe buttons will send the vehicle. (pressing "e" always pushes you towards the side with the green light, for example)
The general decision of having things be adjustable from the settings sounds like a very good move, and one that’ll keep a lot of players happy - I like floaty, difficult controls and every firefight feeling like I need to put my all into it and still have a low chance of coming away unharmed, but I imagine loads of players would prefer to just go to the next bit of story without needing milli-second timing for docking at the port. I’ve been happy with the steering and handling until now, and I’m glad to hear I won’t lose that if I don’t want to.
I assume there’ll be some differences between vessels? As in, a small, fast locomotive handling more sensitively than a large cargo-train, and so.
[color=#6666ff]Yes we definitely don’t want to remove things or completely change the way they feel as we know some players love it as it is. We know it’s definitely not the easiest thing to control at the start though. I remember that when I first started working on the project I found it a little tricky too. For me I think it was more that I was fine with left/right and strafing when moving up towards the top of the screen, but once I was heading south… well let’s just say I crashed into many a rock and died many deaths at the hands of beasties. But now I’m close to clocking 700 hours of testing and I can no longer see the wood for the trees, so all the feedback on the locomotive controls has been so important for us, and we definitely need to listen to it (to both sides)[/color]
[color=#6666ff]Well, this is an interesting point actually. At the time of writing we’ve not tweaked the locomotives to handle differently to each other. The do handle differently however (you get your hands on a Bedivere and see how it takes corners compared to the Spatchcock), but that’s a result of Unity physics, not deliberate changes we’ve made. Our designer is going to take a look at the current ones and see what he thinks of their handling. We’re also wanting to gather the thoughts of our players on this too. [/color]
[color=#6666ff]If we do make changes to how they handle then we need to approach it carefully and in conjunction with the control difficulty settings. A big thing in our mind is accessibility, we know that not everyone has fine motor control for example and we’re aware there’s far more controls to the ships in Skies than in Sunless Sea.
Much for us to think about, but we’ll get there and as always everyone’s feedback will be much appreciated. [/color]
edited by FailbetterFuzz on 11/7/2017
One thing which isn’t quite control, exactly, is that docking feels very… un dock-ey. You just sort of slide around in the dock and it doesn’t feel like coming in to port/a siding at all.
This kind of leads me into another UI thought - if there was a real docking change, ie you docked, were clamped in place, and had to trigger a launch: Then that would mean the movement and in-dock UI would be completely separate, which would mean instead of using a mouse when in dock you could just use up-down-left-right to navigate between active menu-ui elements, which would make the whole UI much easier and faster to use, especially when using a controller (as I do).
[color=#6666ff]Thanks to everyone that’s contributed to this one. I’m going to unstick this thread now since we’re getting close to releasing some of these changes. February’s update will be the one that sees the main tweaks to locomotive movement, though a lot of you will be pleased to know that January’s update will see the release of our new auto-docking system, which should mean fewer crashes and damaged hull![/color]
edited by FailbetterFuzz on 1/24/2018