I have openly questioned your honesty, and for that, I sincerely apologize.

I don't want you to feel this will cut at your work, but as I have already sung your praises elsewhere and continue to do so, I will keep this post to constructive criticism.

My strongest impression from the video... good god man, go get some sleep, you re-recorded it over and over, and you still sound absolutely exhausted the entire time. whatever your solution is, I hope it allows you to sleep more.

My second strongest impression, still avoiding multiple systems in the videos.

My third strongest impression, The warp rails look only vaguely what I expected. To be honest, I'm not keen on the "magical" energy orb look, and think a fancy space-toaster would be more appropriate. However, that is just aesthetics speaking, the best option would be to have both and more, and let it vary by region/tech tree specifics. Perhaps magic-orb warpnodes are faster while space-toaster warpnodes can have a greater distance between them, and pseudoasteroid warpnodes are easier to hide, etc.

An additional thought on warp rails, I think that they should exert at least a small force on all ships along their pathway, pushing ships slowly away from the rail to keep the area clear. Lane allocation is great, but that wont stop you from hitting a barge that's sitting in the way. And as a similar suggestion, something has to be done about asteroids on the rails too.

For ship and station design, your "Creatures of the Deep" inspiration is showing. I like it. However, the texturing still bothers me, the black and white, all metal, overlapping rectangles makes all the ships look incredibly samey. I have noted this before, but since rapid generation is so easy for you now, it's worth mentioning again. I would really like to see some hexagons and circles and large solids mixed in with those rectangles. Additionally, I think you really ought to try tweaking some of the materials, could we get some matte ceramics and plastics and some windows? Again, purely aesthetic touches, that don't deserve too much time just yet, but if things are so quick, an hour or 3 wouldn't hurt.

The lighting created by weapons and beams and such should probably have a greater falloff too, I was seeing a distant flickering numerous times, and it took me a while to realize what was causing it, as it looked like a graphical glitch at first.

Finally, I disagree with the return to the more traditional boxy UI windows as shown in your market interface... But, I can live with it.

Amazing job well done Josh. The planetary rings, the nebula, the stations, and dust all looked outstanding. I also liked the ship designs, and the trade interface. I can see why the trade interface was your favorite part of the update, it's so sleek and powerful. What else... I really liked seeing how the warp rails function and how the nodes in between destinations didn't obstruct the view of space. I would like to suggest making an object similar to one of the stations in this update that lays on its side at the beginning and end of the warp rail. Ships could approach these structures and use the current entry animation to appear to be placed into the rail by the station's large fins. The station could possibly have a hollow inner part which ships could fly through when exiting the end of the rail.

Anyways, thanks for the video, thanks for making LT, and I hope I can buy a copy of LT from you in a couple of months.

Hyperion wrote:To be honest, I'm not keen on the "magical" energy orb look, and think a fancy space-toaster would be more appropriate.

Here my aesthetic sense is at odds with yours, Hyperion. We can still be friends, right?

Hyperion wrote: Finally, I disagree with the return to the more traditional boxy UI windows as shown in your market interface... But, I can live with it.

well, how would you do it else without making it functional and not just nice to look at?

**Retracted** See my next post below.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

Hyperion wrote: Finally, I disagree with the return to the more traditional boxy UI windows as shown in your market interface... But, I can live with it.

well, how would you do it else without making it just functional and not just nice to look at?

Have to agree with Cornflakes here. If I had it my way we'd see a resurrection of the nodal UI, but it just isn't functional. It is incredible to look at though. The new UI seems super functional and when the game is released that's whats gonna matter. And besides, it's not as if it looks bad, it still looks great!

axefrog wrote:@Hyperion - Try to remember that Josh is a one-man team. When somebody spends a shitload of time on something and does a great job, try to recognise that fact and make sure your feedback is balanced. A big fat post comprised entirely of areas you think don't quite cut the mustard is going to be a downer for anyone after that amount of effort.

Hyperion is one of the most positive, constructive members on this forum. Your comment appears profoundly condescending.

@Scytale - I apologise if I offended. I scrolled back through his recent historical posts before commenting, in an effort to see if there was a balance of negative vs positive. I didn't see much positive, and considering the extreme effort that has clearly gone into this, the post seemed unbalanced. Take it as condescending if you will, that certainly wasn't my intention; my reaction was simply based on what I read.

**EDIT**
You know what, my reaction was hasty. Hyperion, I apologise. If I could delete my post on second thought, I would, but there doesn't appear to be any way to do that. I'll just edit it.

Alright, really awesome!
Thoughts:
-Pretty!
-Aside from texturing stations look really good now
-woohoo planetary rings!
-I think the warp rails look really nice. The rest of my thoughts have already been said by other people
-I like the market ui, it looks functional and sleek
-No graphs about buy/sell prices like in that previous update?
-Shouldn't you be able to set a price when you sell something?

All in all I really liked the update. Would watch again when accidentally awake at 6:50 am.
And I look forward to the new update plan, even if that means the end of the videos as we know it.

axefrog wrote:@Scytale - I apologise if I offended. I scrolled back through his recent historical posts before commenting, in an effort to see if there was a balance of negative vs positive. I didn't see much positive, and considering the extreme effort that has clearly gone into this, the post seemed unbalanced. Take it as condescending if you will, that certainly wasn't my intention; my reaction was simply based on what I read.

**EDIT**
You know what, my reaction was hasty. Hyperion, I apologise. If I could delete my post on second thought, I would, but there doesn't appear to be any way to do that. I'll just edit it.

Hey you know I'm sorry I reacted so shortly too. My response was as much knee-jerk as I perceived yours to be (and as it turned out yours wasn't, after all)!

Observations on Update Video #21:

• I mentioned a while back how much I'd like to see planetary rings. They are gorgeous.
• I can see the market interface coming together. Some tools for larger-scale trading will be great.
• Higher prices for greater quantities seems counterintuitive -- sellers usually offer volume discounts.
• I'm really enjoying the different feeling that each system's color gives it.

My hopes for the next update video:

• I'm also looking forward to greater textural variety in ships/stations.
• I'd very much like to see the NPC interaction interface.
• I really hope to see the multi-system interface along with related NPC behaviors.
• By far, the most important thing to show next time are "You Can Be A ..." gameplay examples.

Thank you, Josh, for the incredible effort you're putting into this project.

The graphics are very nice in parts.

One day to get occulus rift support for this game, can you imagine that when being thrown by the warp rails, it could be cool.

I hope your efforts to be showing things off to the community are not affecting your productivity on the game too much and agree with your wish to rethink the way of these update videos, at the end of the day you are just one person and the game needs to be the focus now.

Josh, that was absolutely amazing! Jawdroppingly awesome. You didn't fail at all; that update was breathtaking. It's replaced #16 as my favorite update - and did so within the first five minutes.

Agreeing with everyone else here saying you need sleep. Get some rest, man. Take some time to destress - god knows you've earned it.

Those graphics. Holy. Crap. No really, it's like a work of art. Mind = blown.

Also, the market UI is pretty hot. Really functional, minimal, but sleek. I like the aesthetic a lot.

That debug system-viewer needs to make it into the game in some form or another. Because it also looks so sleek

But everything just feels so much more cohesive and alive in this update . The warp rails around the planets also really show off the size of the systems. Need moar videos of roaming between systems!

But yes, time for sleep

No, that was most definitely your "tired but trying to inject excitement" voice. It wasn't your worst effort but the strain did show.

Loved the reworking of my favourite Josh LT music at the front end of the video. Superb! I really would pay extra for a CD containing your compositions for the game. I know Francois will provide a stunning OST but I do so enjoy your compositions.

Planetary rings to die for. So impressive and immersive.

I'm not really concerned about the market stuff as it's obvious you have a firm grasp on that aspect of the game.

I liked that radial menu thingy that popped up briefly which for some reason you glossed over. It certainly looked more at home in LT than the market menus. I can see they will do the job and I can appreciate the work you have done in the underlying game mechanics but they are too reminiscent of your original menu screens and look like they were designed for a business software application not LT.

Hmm...warp rails. I like the concept of the rail being minimalistic so as not to distract the player from appreciating the magnificent surroundings but I'm not keen on the energy balls in space part. I agree with Hyperion on this. It also didn't look like you were locked into a mechanism for high speed transit more like you had hitched a tether line to a moving main line and was at the mercy of the solar winds as you did your spinning around bit whilst traveling in a specific direction. I'm probably being nostalgic, Josh, but I prefer the mechanism used in the Freelancer trade lanes. Less magical more mechanical.

All in all though it was a delight to see the progress you've made. I do hope this isn't the last update video I will see. I can live with less length but I can't live without. Even much shorter "video clips" would be perfect along with some screen shots and some basic insight text. Less epic and more frequent. I would be more than happy to see such things incorporated into your daily dev log updates as you did with the ancient screenshot recently. But, as always, I can live with whatever you decide to do.