[docfu]

First of all, wow on BP Part 3. 

...

Now onto the dissection: 

I realize that this, all of this, is very much an art form. The characters, the story, graphics all get ground up and processed through the FS Open engine to provide the player with an 'experience.'

The thing that gets me with missions like 'Universal Truth' are the really...quirky details, only two of which need mentioning:

1. The constant need to push the "afterburner key."

Okay, we're in a virtual environment, tapping the mouse doesn't make downloads go any faster, nor does it fix broken websites or prevent people from hacking your brain. Likewise, traditional 0-100%+afterburner speed controls just don't make any sense here. Especially since you can't tell if the afterburner actually makes you move faster, or when it runs out of fuel so I pretty much ended up tapping it constantly.

2. The lack of distinction between moments where you have control, and where you don't.

This is, in my opinion, where normal storytelling/cutscenes should have been used. Even if it's as simple as disabling/darkening part of the interface to show it's a wait and listen moment versus a take-control moment, there needs to be some distinction between the two, otherwise you just sit there mashing buttons like an idiot and getting frustrated at the game's poor design.

(I would rather be frustrated because I fail a mission, not because of poor interface design.)

I realize some people might consider this a "story telling technique" to "give the feeling of being out of control" to the player.

Yes, it is, and it's annoying.


I think the dreamscape, since it just let you be in control completely, didn't suffer from these limitations. On the other hand, Universal Truth could have been better tuned to "feel" like a dream/cyberwalk instead of just feeling like a normal mission with lots of story telling and a broken interface.

Harsh criticism for the guy who fred'd it. Don't take it personally. I think the mission design is fantastic / graphics are amazing / story is well told. It just suffers from a few flaws that keep it from "feeling" like it should...

Carry on...

[The E]

2. The lack of distinction between moments where you have control, and where you don't.

This is, in my opinion, where normal storytelling/cutscenes should have been used. Even if it's as simple as disabling/darkening part of the interface to show it's a wait and listen moment versus a take-control moment, there needs to be some distinction between the two, otherwise you just sit there mashing buttons like an idiot and getting frustrated at the game's poor design.

Offhand, the only parts where I do remember the player not having control is during the infodump cutscenes, and during those, the post-processing filters should serve as enough of a hint that you're not in control..... (You do have post-processing enabled, yes?)

[MatthTheGeek]

1. The constant need to push the "afterburner key."

Can't you glide in the dreamscape/universal truth ? (legit question, I never use glide so I don't actually know)

[aeon48m]

1. The constant need to push the "afterburner key."

Can't you glide in the dreamscape/universal truth ? (legit question, I never use glide so I don't actually know)

Nope, nor can you glide in the dreamscape.

[Ryuseiken]

1. The constant need to push the "afterburner key."

Okay, we're in a virtual environment, tapping the mouse doesn't make downloads go any faster, nor does it fix broken websites or prevent people from hacking your brain. Likewise, traditional 0-100%+afterburner speed controls just don't make any sense here. Especially since you can't tell if the afterburner actually makes you move faster, or when it runs out of fuel so I pretty much ended up tapping it constantly.

This is something that annoyed me as well, it really reared it's head in Universal truth. The afterburner sound effects are disabled in that mission, and there is no visible afterburner bar, so you can't tell when you've run out or even see if your afterburner is being used. This wouldn't be that bad if not for the "escape" and the "maze" parts of the mission, where you're essentially spamming it while flying towards a far off objective, which results in the screen shaking soundlessly every couple of seconds for the minute or two it takes to fly where you need to fly. I found that kind of distracting, especially if you try it during the "go towards the light" bit where if you hit the afterburner the dot jumps around the screen like a madman.

[General Battuta]

This was a point of some discussion during design. What I eventually settled on as a 'finding' was the importance of the afterburner key as an active component during motion.

Flying without afterburners (say, in a tabled 'dream ship' with a flat max speed) is a passive process. It doesn't contain any ludic urgency; you don't have to attend to the details of the motion, time your keypresses, or think about the act of moving.

But when the afterburner's present, it gives the player something to do to say 'I want to get there faster! I need to get there faster!' It's annoying, but I think it's better than the alternative: 'going as fast as I can, might as well sit back and wait'.

[Drogoth]

I agree with the sense of the after burner adding urgency in Universal Truth

My only frustration with Act 3 was the set up of the dreamscape.

It annoyed me to have to manually fly to each location since they were spread out. I much would have preferred to be able to cycle through targets and fire to link.  I loved the story elements in there, I didn't like the idle time spent flying to the next story element.

[Ryuseiken]

I understand your reasoning, but without the audio or visual cues to show you how much afterburner you have left, or your current speed, you don't have the option of being efficient about afterburner use since it's guesstimates. For me it wasn't so much that I was using my afterburner because of the sense of urgency, it was more because no matter what the distance in Freespace I'm spamming the afterburner to get there ASAP, unless I'm in a dogfight or lining up a shot. Without any visual representation I was just spam clicking it for most of the mission because traveling slower than top speed goes against my nature.

[Scotty]

Assuming "Dreamscape" means what it actually says, who's to say the afterburner will actually run out?

[Dark Hunter]

It does. On some playthroughs I could barely hear the afterburner "click" noise when it runs out of juice.

[General Battuta]

I'm torn on the issue. We pulled the afterburner gauge pretty late after some discussion. I can see how it's obnoxious, but I also love the metaphor between trying to regulate your afterburner pulses and trying to calm heartrate.

[QuakeIV]

It worked pretty well for me, to be honest.  I really took the 'metaphor' part to heart though.  "No bloody idea what this is doing but I need to do it to not die."

That whole mission was entertaining because it felt like some kind of metaphor to me.  Some random misstep as innocuous as going off course would get me killed.  Scanning one too many objects would get me killed.  Not after-burning fast enough would get me murdered 'from behind' by something or the other.

[docfu]

I'm torn on the issue. We pulled the afterburner gauge pretty late after some discussion. I can see how it's obnoxious, but I also love the metaphor between trying to regulate your afterburner pulses and trying to calm heartrate.

I think I missed something here. Is there a connection between afterburner speed and heartrate in the game?

I thought about alternatives to the afterburner situation today (all day while working actually) and some things that come to mind are:

1. Overburning kills you.
2. Not afterburning causes the level of blur/motion blur/noise to go crazy.
(I'm guessing it's not possible to do this in real time though. Is it?)

3. Put an EKG in there...or program the game to have an actual heartrate (not just a sound effect). Afterburning burns off adrenaline and calms you down, not burning causes your heartrate to rise... (That would be intense for a video game...)
4. Choose between afterburners for movement...or engines. It gets annoying when you switch scenes to have to remember to set throttle at 100%. (Note: I'm not sure if these even makes a difference, obviously, because there is no speed gauge...)

Oh, and just two other notes:
1. Disable the auto-target HUD icon.
2. Disable the weapons/shields/engines icon and that whole interface. Why would you even want anything but full engines? There's no weapons and you don't ever get shot at...
3. Hell, put in a different style of HUD. One thing about the dreamscape and Universal Truth is that they need to feel different from the original game engine otherwise....well...otherwise it feels like the dev team isn't trying...and god knows...that's the last thing a player should feel...

I hope even if these suggestions aren't implemented they help future design.