R10 Notes

Here is some release 10 feedback.

Performance: I played on an IMAC 3.2 gHtz 8 MB RAM GeForce 775M system this time around. The game loaded and ran just fine on the fastest graphics settings. No crashes except at zoning. I get more issues (more hanging) medium to high graphics settings. Didn't give it a shot on a Windows rig this trip.

- Zoning: About a 33% chance to lock up on zoning in any location, randomly. It started right away trying to zone out of Braemar, the normal zoning view didn't come up, instead the screen became a bit blurry and nothing happened. If I backed up I could get out of it in time. In other cases, zoning just locked at 50 to 60% on the loading screen. When zoning did work, I didn't notice it being faster as indicated in the R10 notes.

- Hat Quest: This worked just fine. The only obstacle was the zoning issues. The infinity cross is cool. Good choice.

- Focus: Since this affects decks for both magic and melee, shouldn't it be its own category like magic or like melee in the skills list? Why is it buried under magic? It seems like a system that affects both.

- Weather: Loved seeing the snow effect. Things like this begin to make the world feel more alive.

- Overland Map: The mouse axis interactivity needs to be flipped. It is not intuitive as is (have to move mouse in opposite direction you want to see). Big step forward otherwise.

- Darkness: I know that some consider it a feature, but I don't and will keep commenting on it. The darkness can be just a little too dark to enjoy the game in night cycles, even with a torch. Consider implementing some type of darkness switch in the controls to enable a gamer to choose this or not. Twighlight is ok. In the future maybe more lighting sources will help this?

- Arrows: Hard to see in inventory. I picked up arrows in the battle camp but had trouble seeing them in my bag. The bag inventory is ok, but a number of items like this would benefit from some better contrast so one doesn't have to really look so hard in their pack. Perhaps a scaleable interface would help to size packs and items larger and smaller to help the seeing impaired, which apparently must be me these days.

- Bows and Wands: Hard to grab in inventory sometimes.

- Swaying Grass Frill: I noticed that the swaying grass, flowers, weeds, etc. don't sway at exactly the same, giving it a more realistic appearance when looking out at it over distance Good work.

- Combat Decks and Icons: These are progressing nicely. I like it. Especially the combo idea now. I think the visceral, weighty, feel of combat needs more work in the future. Combat doesn't have ummmphhhh.

- PVE Combat: Other than neutral wildlife, which was fairly easy to brutally slay, most nasty things were able to quickly and brutally slay me. Plate armor didn't seem to do much.

- Spell Tracking: if the game's combat will be line of sight, with obstacles able to block projectiles, why do fireballs curve and follow me when i move? What's the point of being a melee player if we cannot dodge a fireball? Magic players can dodge out of melee player attacks, after all.

- Nudity: My clothes stayed on when zoning in this build. No embarrassing moments. Thank you!

- Audio: I think I noticed more ambient audio effects this trip to Novia. I appreciated turning the music off and just running around with sounds. This is a huge component to creating atmosphere, i think, and I hope you will keep up the creativity on background sounds.

- Lunar Rift Audio: The repeating bloooooooop bloooop bloooop sound drives my wife nuts.

- Lunar Rift effects: Some type of effect to indicate that the lunar rift has changed destination targets eventually would be good.

- Color Palette: I actually felt that the game took on a more epic feel in its visuals when I died, than when I was alive. Perhaps the whole game would benefit from turning the color palette down a notch. Not sure. Its a personal preference item. Adding a control for this in the game controls eventually would be nice.

 

I think a couple things will help with this, as I am a fan of the darkness. They need an in-game calibration slider to ensure your brightness settings are correct. Most games provide this. They also need to (vastly) improve their lighting code. They've made great improvements since the addition of the linear lighting model, but there's still a ton of work to do. They also need to move to Unity 5 which has very much improved global illumination engine and if they can effectively leverage that it will improve the lighting in the game tremendously.

And yes, I do believe there are current rendering bugs where on some systems it is abnormally darker than others. Those definitely should get fixed, but perhaps that in-game calibration tool can mitigate this.