Am I missing something?

[Cory Trese]

"The rumors don't say much beyond the facts of "x is scarce" or "y has closed the starport", and the worlds are all pretty interchangeable."

You are missing something, actually. A huge amount of the game was just glossed over and mathematically you missed a good 40% of the game's internal code.

Now, I know you may not care that the game has 100,000 lines dedicated to that but you are definitely missing the game if you ignore it.

I might be doing another stupid thing by summarizing in humorous metaphor but ...

0- - -0

This Car is not an Airplane. Anyone who purchased this Car as an Airplane should ask for a refund.

[Cory Trese]

1A - some misunderstandings here, combat is started before you press buttons on the introduction screen. the intro screen was added to summarize all relevant info. if you feel info is missing, let me know and i'll add it.

1B - factions are angry because of your actions. there are no random Reputation points in ST.

1C - it is a betting game. some people like betting games, some do not. figuring out the rules is part of the game. about 25% of my e-mails are about exploring so i know, it is a commonly played one

1D - check the resource report for that info



2A - glad you are UI developer. you will appreciate the fact that we used only system UI values and all font size and face settings are inherited from your device's theme.

2B - zoom map is more useful than it was before, but rendering it requires a lot of CPU. functions are scaled to support all 800+ android devices we are installed on

2C - thanks for the feedback, some people do not enjoy text based games. many factors are summarized or notifications are added for people who prefer different types of interaction

Your thoughts are very interesting and actually resemble notes from earlier iterations of the game's UI design which we used for the heuristic analysis and so forth.

one gut check feedback we got a lot of was "I don't want to pilot a spreadsheet. make it more like a spaceship."

[antixeele]

So you did do a heuristic analysis! All this talk about menus has got me reading up on heuristics, I am a nOOb on the subject.

I was thinking, that how you design the menus is going to dertermine how I MOVE MY FINGERS when playing the game. I get rumors the same way, I like vibrate my thumb on the button fast as I can, then check the rumors list. And now that I know the menus I navigate them FAST, though the menus do limit the speed at which I play the game. Any change that cuts down on the DISTANCE my finger moves between buttons and Number of times I have to press buttons, and id be freezing my phone from navigating so fast! Come to think of it, menu navigation is pretty much automatic by now, and I no longer mash rumors till it greys out, only till I stop seeing real rumors flash by, or I get tired of mashing. Suppose I should just buy em...

One of things that struck me, about the difference between the policical and spy officers, and the other officers, is that while they all add Advantage, part of the advante added by political and spy is actually Convenience. Some times I wish I had a political officer to tell me bout embargoes, but id rather have a pilot, so ill check it mah damne sealf!

[bigboote66]

Jan 27, 2012 23:14:50 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

"The rumors don't say much beyond the facts of "x is scarce" or "y has closed the starport", and the worlds are all pretty interchangeable."

You are missing something, actually. A huge amount of the game was just glossed over and mathematically you missed a good 40% of the game's internal code.

Again, please keep in mind I'm playing the free version of the game; if it is fundamentally limited in its features, please tell me so that I decide if the paid version is for me. And, I realize that the time I'm spending in these chats far exceeds the dollars I'm "saving" by not purchasing the commercial version of the game; I've just purchased the Elite version as a thank-you for the time you've spent reading & responding to my posts. I'm mainly interested the design aspects of this and seeing a really good implementation of this type of game prosper on the Android.

I have no doubt I've glossed over/missed a large portion of your programming effort. That's what I'm trying to get across in my posts - I have the inkling from playing the game that there must be more going on here, mainly from the glowing reviews & the active fan community, but the presentation in-game is not putting your efforts on best display.

My gloss about what rumors consist of has mostly to do with what information I found in those rumors that I could use. There are obviously other categories of rumors (mostly the "Deep Space" and "Wilderness" rumors) that have some supposed game impact, but I've followed up on those rumors (by navigating to the locations and seeing what happens), but I'm not able to tell what effect they have on anything. Navigating to the deep space location hasn't revealed anything that navigating to any other location has, and the wilderness rumors all seem to be either "x has been made toxic" or "a bunch of explorers died" - both of which seem to imply that either harvesting or exploring, respectively, will yield nothing good (and dozen or so attempts at harvesting/exploring in those areas seemed to have confirmed it).

Of course, the other category of rumors are essentially bits of info that in other games, would be in the manual. Personally, I'm not a fan of games where part of the game is to figure out what the rules are. I'm a Civilization kind of player, not a Pokemon player (no slight to Pokemon) - I like to know the parameters going in, and have fun with that. So poring over rumor after rumor that I've already seen in hopes of finding another bit of the missing manual is not for me. That said, this is probably a basic design decision you made, and tastes differ, so I don't expect you to change this anytime soon.

However, part of what annoys me about this approach is that I'm presumed to be the captain of the starship; you've mentioned in the other post that you wanted to make the game not like piloting a spreadsheet, but the way it seems to me, I'm piloting a starship while being blindfolded and tied down in my bunk, while giving orders to my crew through my smartphone; I feel very disconnected from what's going on, and the information I'm privy to seems insufficient. My character seems to be lacking a lot of knowledge that someone in his position should have (for example, everything you get in the Rumors), and the fact that I have to keep killing my crew over & over in order to learn this is a bit disheartening.

Another information-access design decision that doesn't work for me - the fact that information on trading data is so limited. It's so tedious to keep track of commodity prices - the fact that it's outdated, plus the fact that I can only see it if I drill down from the trading screens when I'm in the Exchange seems artificial. The game is built on the assumption that there's an interstellar computer network that tracks every financial transaction I make, down to rounds of Spice purchased in the Halls, yet this network can't be bothered to upload commodity prices once/week for common consumption (or even to be purchased with a paid subscription). Obviously, picking at the "realism" in a game like this is pointless as rationalized what "doing the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs" really meant, but given that "Trader" is right there in the title of this game, I find that my tools as a trader are really limited.

Your quote at the end is perfectly valid - it's quite possible that the game you're pitching is not the game I'm looking for. I assumed it would be a game along the lines of Elite or Freelancer, updated for smart phones; a particular favorite of mine in this genre was Escape Velocity (for the Mac). One thing the smartphones give us is the ability to drop in & out of the game for bite-sized sessions. I think you recognize this, as the game is very simple in the options it presents to the player, but, again, the strategy and planning in the game is anything but.

My biggest challenge when resuming the game is trying to figure out or remember my train of thought when I put it down. Was I in the process of creating caches based on current crises? Was I on a campaign of trying to swing a faction one way or another? Did I have some contracts I was working on? I keep coming back to this - but the UI should really be more task-focused, instead of organized by where on the ship (or planet) I happen to be. If I felt this would be information you'd be willing to incorporate, I'd be willing to lay out a rough outline of what I'm talking about, but if you're committed to the current organization, I won't bother. Also, I feel as someone who still really doesn't understand the overall thrust of the game, it would be presumptuous of me to get into that level of detail

[taatuu25]

I think i can give some advice to you, first, try to do what you are doing in one session. Dont left a conteact waiting undone when you put the phone down. Also as a trader its nit profitable to trade if there are no shortages or surpluses around, yoy should try to buy to caches waiting for a shortage, and maybe a bit of harvesting. To clear thing up, harvesting yields normal goods (water fuel,metal, crystals, plants etc) while explore yields contaband (artifacts, weapons, electronics and records) so explore = explorer or smuggler, and harvest = merchant.
They alsi use different skills.

Byt im not really a trader, so i dont know well..

[bigboote66]

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

1A - some misunderstandings here, combat is started before you press buttons on the introduction screen. the intro screen was added to summarize all relevant info. if you feel info is missing, let me know and i'll add it.

The main thing is that I don't know the actual stats of the ship I'm meeting, yet I know the name/class of it. If I know the class, surely I know whether I'm facing some wimpy skiff or a formidable cruiser. Sure, I shouldn't be able to see how damaged it is, or how full the hold is, or the crew count, but I should be able to see what the theoretical maximums for these values are. Once I've played the game a lot, I learn what some of the more common ships are, but really, this should be information that my character (or the database on his ship) knows, and I should have access to it at least from the second time I encounter a ship of the same class.

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

1B - factions are angry because of your actions. there are no random Reputation points in ST.

After playing the game a little more (although 12 hours in is really too long to take to learn this) I'm understanding more about faction stuff. Some amount of ambiguity is fine - in the real world, you don't have access to all the reasons why someone hates your guts, but I think part of the problem lies with the notification system in the game. Lots of really important information comes at the user in what I think you refer to as "toasts" (that's a term in the options screen, but I don't really know what it means - I assume it's the notifications that pop up). I almost always miss these as my attention is usually somewhere else when they come up. Setting them to "long" doesn't seem to help much. It seems that a simple permanent list of them - an "Event Log" that I can consult - would solve this problem. If it could be made more than just a dumb text file (allowing me to sort or filter based on scope), so much the better.

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

1C - it is a betting game. some people like betting games, some do not. figuring out the rules is part of the game. about 25% of my e-mails are about exploring so i know, it is a commonly played one

Yeah, I understand that. I used slot machines as an example, as they are the most opaque version of betting one typically does; in other games, you have a decent understanding of the odds without spending a long time researching or trial & error.

Of course, what you're "betting" in these games are the lives of your crew, and that brings us to another issue that bugs me. Crew lives seem particularly valueless in this game - they're reduced to headcount (with morale), and it costs you nothing to recruit more in the Halls. If they get surly, you can placate them with spice, entertainment, or (from what I've gathered playing), a few successful combat encounters where you kick the other side's ass.

I've always been the kind of gamer who likes to play games as if my grunts & such are actual people - in other words, I try to minimize casualties of even my lowly infrantrymen in games, like I feel a real leader would. But in ST, the crew feels like cannon fodder. They're just a counter, and one that gets out of line. It may be that your engine takes into account their skill level, so that a well-seasoned crew performs better than a green one, but the game doesn't reveal this to me in any way I can clearly see; I suppose if I were to stage dozens of fights under a variety of conditions & controls, I could infer this, but that puts me back in the Josef Mengele domain of ethics that I was trying to avoid in the first place.

Gambling with my crew's lives just to find a few bits of metal or the occasional artifacts rubs me the wrong way - if I'm going to risk the lives of my crew, I want to have some remote idea of what's involved. Otherwise I'm back in the role of "Captain Dumbshit" who has no business commanding men. So far, the dozen or so times I've done exploring or harvesting, it's resulted in 12 or more of my crew dying - something that doesn't seem worth pursuing further without more knowledge, which I won't get without endangering more lives.

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

1D - check the resource report for that info

I don't know what this is or where to find it.

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

2A - glad you are UI developer. you will appreciate the fact that we used only system UI values and all font size and face settings are inherited from your device's theme.

2B - zoom map is more useful than it was before, but rendering it requires a lot of CPU. functions are scaled to support all 800+ android devices we are installed on

Yeah, I see it's a dialog-box-based game. As I don't seem to have any control over the default face & size on my device, it doesn't leave me any options open to fix the problem. Still, as the game is primarily one of information management, I think it would benefit from tools that help the users manage that information. A move towards a more modern UI would be welcomed by me, but I understand if that's not something you currently have budgeted, particularly considering the diversity of platforms you wish to support. I don't know what kind of telemetry the android market gives you, but knowing what the distribution of devices that currently run your product could certainly let you know whether it was worth it to move towards supporting some specific screen resolutions.

Jan 27, 2012 23:20:53 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

2C - thanks for the feedback, some people do not enjoy text based games. many factors are summarized or notifications are added for people who prefer different types of interaction

one gut check feedback we got a lot of was "I don't want to pilot a spreadsheet. make it more like a spaceship."

A worthy design goal. Do you see the overall shape of ST to be more or less "done", with continued development to be spent on rolling out more content, or is the whole thing a work in progress?

[bigboote66]

Jan 29, 2012 14:56:02 GMT -5 taatuu25 said:

I think i can give some advice to you, first, try to do what you are doing in one session. Dont left a conteact waiting undone when you put the phone down. Also as a trader its nit profitable to trade if there are no shortages or surpluses around, yoy should try to buy to caches waiting for a shortage, and maybe a bit of harvesting. To clear thing up, harvesting yields normal goods (water fuel,metal, crystals, plants etc) while explore yields contaband (artifacts, weapons, electronics and records) so explore = explorer or smuggler, and harvest = merchant.
They alsi use different skills.

Byt im not really a trader, so i dont know well..

Thanks for the tips - that simple dichotomy explains a lot. But you answer raises another issue I have with the game - what exactly is the point? Beyond trading and avoiding the animosity of the factions, there doesn't seem to be a lot to do in the game. I'm playing on "Normal" after dying too frequenly on "Challenging" to be able to learn anything, but at this point, I usually have more money than stuff to spend it on. There are no new ships in the shipyard, my hold is always full, and nobody I encounter in space is any threat (even without insta-resurrection). I can buy ranks from the faction that is friendly to me, but this doesn't seem to do much other than raise the price on the contracts I'm offered.

I don't ask for a game on rails - that's clearly not what ST is about - but I don't see a clear path forward other than just raising my stats higher (but no real reason to do so). Granted, this could just be because I've only been playing the free version up until now. I just recently purchased Elite so I'll see if things are different there.

[Cory Trese]

1A - again, clicking "Battle Stations" does nothing but let you flip from the "wall of text" (AKA, all the critical details you need to read for full understanding of the situation) to the stats. From the stats view you can compare your ship and captain level to the ship and captain level of the enemy. As the best way to evaluate your relative strengths is by comparative analysis, this option is provided. Clicking "Battle Stations" indicates that you are interested in considering battle -- it does nothing to the other Ship or your Faction standing. Summary: The Ship's Exact Stats ARE always available, first encounter or any encounter after that.

1B - The toast system is provided by the Android OS and is not perfect, but it is Google's best offering for an asynchronous notification system with low memory overhead. The suggestion for a log is not new and is a logical request. However the 3 different versions I have coded have all failed to work on enough devices due to memory, IO, CPU, backscale and Ai cycle issues in the ST RPG engine. I may someday attempt a 4th iteration but I will need a new set of ideas for how it would work because the previous attempts have failed.

1C - Exploration is most closely mapped to a complex for of BlackJack, not a slot machine. There are strong indicators in the results and text that is generated to indicate to the Captain when the conditions of the "table" have changed for or against the Captain's favor. Some people learn to read them easily, other people dislike it because they are not seeing / parsing the signs. Regarding your commentary about gambling with Crew's lives, this is the world of Star Traders -- you're playing a character and this is part of the role these Captain's embrace. The exodus is a cruel one and life has changed for us all. Harvesting vs. Exploring is probably the rules answer to your question about "bits of metal" but you'll have to experiment to see if you find it working for you. Some will love it and some won't. You may be in the 2% that doesn't. That goes for all of ST and comes from the reviews.

1D - Click the picture of the trade resource when you see it

2A - our data suggests that we have one of the most diverse device install bases of any. I sat in a Google round table with about 20 other developers a few weeks ago and it was shocking how much more diverse the device profile is for ST vs. some other games. ST supports a lot of devices and Android OS versions, and it increases our download rate accordingly.

2B - I appreciate the fact that you have experience with building UI and usability engineering on commercial applications. I hear in your call for a more "modern" a basic disconnect between my vision and your ideas for what ST RPG would have been under someone else's design direction. That's fine -- if someone else had made the game (perhaps, someone who had #1 made video games before AND #2 had coded in Java before and #3 had created an Android application before.) But instead you got me and you got my first attempt at a game, at a java application and at Android. If the results do not please you I do apologize and suggest you consider a game with a different type of UI -- perhaps you would enjoy Cyber Knights RPG or Templar Assault? They do contain more modern UI concepts, although, they are the work of one person on a part time basis and they sell for $2 (which doesn't cover expenses, especially without any advertising or in game purchase credits.)




The overall shape and scope of Star Traders RPG I is set for many reasons. One, there are many hundreds of thousands of saved games in a very specific format with design issues that drive many of the UI functions of Star Traders. The deep integration between the screen organization and the database models locks a great deal of the system together (and allows it run in multiple efficiency modes.)

Another major limitation is the text system and the translation projects. Many people forget that there is a large team of very hardworking and dedicated individuals who have, like me, put forward a great deal of creative effort to assist crafting the UI's inner workings.

Major reworking of the interface would require close coordination with the translation teams. There is a 200 page manual that is still in draft and it is based on the game's UI organization. If we make UI changes that (often DEMANDED by the users) documentation would be set back, possibly permanently.

There are probably several other major reasons as well but I have to go back to work now.

[Cory Trese]

Alas, ST RPG is a failure

[Fenikso]

Jan 29, 2012 16:16:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Alas, ST RPG is a failure

But epic one in a good sense of the word .

[blackgauntlet]

You mean like this? ;D

[ab357]

One of the reasons I haven't purchased a tablet yet is because anytime I check for the "best" out there I will read of an upcoming android os. And apparently unlike our cells, they don't update the OS of tablets to the latest version. Now I see a 4.0 about to come out.

Is it okay to ask here before I buy if the app is working well on the platform I eventually choose? I'm also assuming there should be some price slashing after the CES which is next month right?

[blackgauntlet]

What? CES already ended on Friday the 13th, mate.

Prices were already slashed (and stabbed by Jason the Terrible).

[bigboote66]

Thanks for the time you've spent answering these questions. I've had a chance to play a bit more, and I'm getting a better grasp on what the game is supposed to be about, or at least a way I can play it that leads me to want to play it more. I realize I'm pretty late to the game as far as user input goes; oh well.

Jan 29, 2012 16:02:43 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Clicking "Battle Stations" indicates that you are interested in considering battle -- it does nothing to the other Ship or your Faction standing. Summary: The Ship's Exact Stats ARE always available, first encounter or any encounter after that.

Okay, that clears up things lot. The UI does not make it clear that clicking "Battle Stations" is just an info toggle; part of what contributes to this is the fact that you can't go back to the previous screen, and there are options on the first screen (Ignore, Acknowledge) that don't exist on the second screen, so it implies a sort of "point of no return" decision.

Jan 29, 2012 16:02:43 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

The suggestion for a log is not new and is a logical request. However the 3 different versions I have coded have all failed to work on enough devices due to memory, IO, CPU, backscale and Ai cycle issues in the ST RPG engine. I may someday attempt a 4th iteration but I will need a new set of ideas for how it would work because the previous attempts have failed.

Understood. I think what would meet my needs (and probably the needs of most everyone else) is simply a log of recent messages - something you could implement with a circular linked list, ring buffer, or even just simple array where you add each new string to the next spot in the array, and iterate backwards to display history (and loop around both to display the list and when adding messages and have reached the end). Even a list that wasn't persistent across executions would be better than nothing.

A recent example: I just started a new captain, with the intent of trying to keep as many factions friendly towards me as possible. I headed out to my first neutral faction, got 4 or 5 easy, local contracts that wouldn't piss anyone off, and filled them. Before heading back to the faction planet, I checked my standings and it was as I suspected - everyone neutral except my original faction and the new one, which had me at +5.

On the way back, I was double tapping on a destination (the preferences I have set), and somehow I found myself in combat with a ship from the new faction; I tried to run away but I had to surrender instead. When I arrived at the planet, I found my status was -2 instead of +5, with no idea how I got there.

Jan 29, 2012 16:02:43 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

1D - Click the picture of the trade resource when you see it

Ah, I see now that the pictures have a subtle border around them indicating they are a pushbutton. I hadn't thought of clicking on them, as graphics in the game don't always do something; for example, sometimes faction icons route me to a planet (Faction status screen), sometimes they do nothing (Rumors, Conflicts screens).

Jan 29, 2012 16:02:43 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

That's fine -- if someone else had made the game (perhaps, someone who had #1 made video games before AND #2 had coded in Java before and #3 had created an Android application before.) But instead you got me and you got my first attempt at a game, at a java application and at Android. If the results do not please you I do apologize and suggest you consider a game with a different type of UI -- perhaps you would enjoy Cyber Knights RPG or Templar Assault? They do contain more modern UI concepts, although, they are the work of one person on a part time basis and they sell for $2

Understood. As someone who has been working on the same project (professionally) for over 13 years, I'm aware of how past design decisions dictate your feature roadmap.

With so many users, and a relatively mature project, I'm sure none of my (good) suggestions will come as news to you. Still, here are a few items:

1. The Zoom map could really use more information; some icons next to planets indicating faction & urban/wild availability (basically the same stuff you see by long-pressing, but graphically) would be hugely helpful. I realize that the image of the planet is meant to convey some of that, but something that doesn't require me to quit the game, pull up the manual & return would be more helpful. As these don't seem to change over the course of the game, they could be just "hard coded" into the bitmap of the map (of course, I'm making assumptions on how you've coded the map, but it seems static to me- maybe later in the game it changes).

2. More than once I've intended to land (Urban button) on a friendly planet, only to Blockade them instead, pissing them off. This is basically putting the "Lunch" button next to the "Launch" button, to reference a cheesy kids show from my childhood. Keeping nasty buttons away from safe buttons would be good, or even an option to confirm actions that would result in faction hostility (that my captain would be aware of).

3. Having he ship resume moving after combat is a hassle - I often want to change course if I've been damaged or have booty, and having to hammer on the "stop" button to stop the ship as fast as possible (and then have it resume moving because I hit it too many times and it changed back to "Start") is a hassle. At least make it an option.

4. Why can't I see the path my ship will take to the route destination unless it is moving? This just seems weird. I often chart a course to somewhere distant, but I want to see if there are useful stops along the way. As I can't see where the planet is (the arrow is often too vague for distant planets), I have to play the game of "race to hit the stop button) as I'm sailing along and see a system approaching that looks like it might make good pit stop.

5. It would be nice to have my ship stop if my supplies reached some low threshold set by me (so that I can stop & resupply), such that I don't just blindly keep flying until my tanks are dry and my crew is enraged with me. Yeah, I know I look at the (tiny, red-on-black) fuel report in the top, but this just feels too fiddly. As I play the game more, it seems like a lot of it is managing these hostilities - cranky crew, crabby factions, etc., yet it seems too easy to accidentally overlook things (due to UI) and get everyone pissed.

It makes me feel like my character in the game is something of a dolt, stupidly sailing on while his crew is screaming at him, or cluelessly violating one of the many political rules that are constantly changing. Yeah, I know that some of the officers help out in this regard, but that just reinforces that the Captain is some Will Farrel-like man-child who needs people around him to tell him when his pants are on fire. Maybe that's part of the fun?

[ab357]

Jan 29, 2012 22:39:17 GMT -5 blackgauntlet said:

What? CES already ended on Friday the 13th, mate.

Prices were already slashed (and stabbed by Jason the Terrible).

"Smacks head" now you've given me an excuse to buy a new toy! LOL

Now I have to check on the status of the 4.0 upcoming OS and if it's a game changer. I haven't read any posts here about problems with the Honeycomb OS if there aren't substantial advantages I can just go with a Honeycomb os.

Which brings up the final problem. Playing ST on a nice thin 10" tablet would guarantee playing ST even when I should be doing work stuff. Wait, I already do that.