Re: [conquest] Conquest 8.1.2ng1 development snapshot is available

[Jon Trulson <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 5 Jan 2006, Jon Trulson wrote:

> 	at:
>
> 	http://radscan.com/conquest/conquest-8.1.2ng1.src.tar.gz

	Just curious... Has anyone played with this yet?  Any comments?

	Some comments (aside from the 'known problems' listed previously):

	1. Shields... In general, I do not like the new shield graphics... 
I think the shield graphics used on the icon display is actaully much 
better - I'd prefer that.  The new sh graphics are just too 
big/distracting.  What I have in mind is a small 'smoke ring outline' 
around the ship, whose color/alpha indicates their strength.  Essentially 
very much like how they are displayed on the ship icon when shields are 
up.

	2. Any ideas for re-arranging the icon hud so things are more 
readable?

	3. 'Team colors'.  I find this stuff actually quite confusing. 
Previously, indicator colors were determined based on the 'status' of an 
object (ie shield level, temperatures, etc).  It was easy to keep an eye 
out for things turning yellow or red in the hud while in combat.  I find 
that I can no longer do that.  I'm thinking of removing this 'team colors' 
option.  I think, regardless of what ship you use, the color red should 
mean 'danger' and the color green means 'all ok' :)

	4.  Numeric indicators for heading and warp.  I'd like them to be 
bigger.  Also, I find reading the graphical warp indicator... not so easy 
- sometimes I have to search for the indicator line.  Maybe this indicator 
should be more obvious?

	5. tactical grids.  Look nice.  The relative gamma for these needs 
to be equalized however, so that a 'brightness' of 50 for example looks 
the same regardless of what grid (team) you are using.

	A couple of other changes I forgot to mention for the ng1 release:

	- reworked the vbg code so that tac and vbg aren't mutually 
exclusive.  A future addition will be an ALT-G hotkey for toggling the 
grid.

	- directional torp vectors are now standard for all ships.  I 
reworked this somewhat to base the angle() on the torp's delta direction 
of fire, rather than the lastblast dir (which can change between the time 
the torp fire command was sent, and when it actually shows up on your 
screen).  Much more reliable :)

	- Cat had provided different explosion graphics for each team.  I 
removed this as I think explosions should look the same regardless of 
what is exploding.

	Anyway, was just wondering if:

	- anybody had tried this version and what problems/comments you 
may have had.

	Also, Cat, have you looked at this yet?  Are you not speaking to 
me anymore??? :)

[...]


--
Jon Trulson    mailto:jon@xxxxxxxxxxx
ID: 1A9A2B09, FP: C23F328A721264E7 B6188192EC733962
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