In other words, they rock?
Good to see there are some comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim holdovers here.
Re: SmokeStacks:
Magnet: The waste gases are supposed to be expelled from portals around the whole model (you can see rows of 3 on each side pointing downwards) not just the top so the net force would be zero and the refinery won’t move downwards. The 2d art for the refinery provided in the game shows this and I’m not sure why the particles aren’t emitting from the others. The are expelled by some black box system that uses the pressure differential between the reaction chamber and space and they won’t spread about the refinery because they’ve been given an initial velocity in the direction of the portal. But ultimately, we just think it looks cool and makes it very easy for people zoomed out quite a ways to tell that its the refinery :P
Re: ZAxis
Tom: Depending on what version you have, you may be able to move on the z-axis holding down the move key (default d) and moving the mouse to control height while issuing a movement order. Previously it was bound to ~ (for any beta testers who are wondering) and in some builds it was disabled completely (particularly after we allowed structures, planets and solar systems to exist at various heights).
Whoa, so you can! I was totally kidding about the z-axis. It was kind of cool in theory to mess around with a in Homeworld, but I haven’t miss it in the least. I know formations will stack along a z-axis and I’ve seen ships go over and under each other, but I figured it was just a sort of visual cheat. That’s cool that it’s in there, but I wouldn’t mind in the least if the z-axis was X’ed. :)
-TomWhoa, so you can! I was totally kidding about the z-axis. It was kind of cool in theory to mess around with a in Homeworld, but I haven’t missed it in the least. I know formations will stack along a z-axis and I’ve seen ships go over and under each other, but I figured it was just a sort of visual cheat. That’s cool that it’s in there, but I wouldn’t mind in the least if the z-axis was X’ed. :)
-TomIt’s funny how the z-axis appeals to some users but other users utterly hate it.
I’m probably more in the camp of “it’s a nice feature” but “I won’t use it”.
But a lot of Homeworld fans really wanted to see it at least as an option.
I suppose you’ll be playing on mute, then?
I’ve been tooling around in the latest beta, and I’d like to make a few suggestions.
I’m a big pause and give orders kind of guy. It would be really nice if it drew the waypoints of the ships as I gave orders while paused.
And also, I’m sure you’re aware of this, but remapping “spacebar” to pause doesn’t work. It shows up in the keymapper, but pressing space in-game does not pause the game.
Something went wrong for me in the first tutorial. I made a phase jump to the nearby asteroid. My fleet arrived, and nothing triggered in the tutorial. I saw some yellow ships floating around, assumed yellow meant neutral, and continued on the next phase jump to the volcanic Adonis planet. Upon arriving, I saw more yellow-marked ships. But now the tutorial says “Destroy all the enemy ships!” And I did. But when they were all destroyed, nothing happened.
So, I realized that that trigger was probably intended for the asteroid that I had bypassed, so I went back there. Destroyed all those ships this time, and got the capital ship upgrade instructions. But at this point, my tutorial seemed frozen at the message “Structures will be examined in more detail in another tutorial.” I presume because I wiped out all the forces that it was about to send me toward?
A very confusing experience. And a long one - I waited five minutes while my capital ship bombed the health out of Adonis because it seemed the only thing left to do in response to “destroy all enemies.” But obviously forgivable because it’s beta.
I raised this point, apparently the tutorials are low priority during the beta and will be overhauled prior to release.