Thoughts and sticking points

[JT]

A little background story, first of all…

I’ve been in something of a space simulation kick lately. I dug around bargain bins for Freespace 2 (didn’t find it, I’m afraid), reinstalled the Edge of Chaos demo, and continued working on my own design documents for my FFE-like. I was seriously considering getting my paws on EoC through eBay, but didn’t want to shell out the few bucks needed, especially considering I’m well overdue for a PC upgrade.

As soon as the announcement for Epic: Middle States / Torn Stars was made in October, however, I knew that I had to have it. Realistic site-to-site trading in a 3D space simulation as inherently awesome as I-War2? Braindrool.

So I bought Edge of Chaos over eBay, and after waiting two weeks for it to arrive whilst muttering various death threats against USPS under my breath, I had a good time romping around in space, severing cargo and life from their rightful owners. I wanted to wait to play Torn Stars, because I didn’t want to spoil anything, just in case there were any spoilers. I also didn’t want to overwrite my EoC install.

I finally got fed up with waiting, and decided to make a separate install of Edge of Chaos exclusively for the purpose of Torn Stars. So I popped it into place, copied over the necessary controls from the keybindings so I could still use my custom flight controls (expertly mapped so I can do anything I care about from my joystick, including thruster overrides with my secondary hat switch), and fired it up.

My experience getting into the game was a little less than uniform, however. The UniGUI button wouldn’t work with my joystick’s keymapping feature, and it turned out to be a real pain to let go of my throttle control to make the needed keypress. Nothing major, though, right? So I hit the O key to open up the UniGUI, complaining of excessive back strain, and read the tutorial.

I find a SnRV sitting nearby and highlight him and hit Ctrl+C to copy him into my group. He mentions in some strangely-capitalised and underpunctuated text that he would be willing to join me for 6000 scads. No problem, I have 120,000 of those! Hiredz0red.

I then open up the tutorial to read the next part, griping about the sheer energy requirements needed to move my arm a few centimetres to tap the appropriate button. I then follow the directions to assign the wingman to a group (choosing to be disestablishmentary and opting to use the 1 key instead of the 5 key for my group — take that, society!).

It instantly struck me was how unsettling it was to fiddle around with wingmen and their groups. Some sort of direct communication feature would be a lot easier to understand, with wingmen keys as a shortcut rather than as a necessary feature. I know I’d have a lot more fun hailing one of my wingmen and having a conversation go something like this:

“Hey, boss, what can I do for you?”
“I’m going to change your group.”
“Sure thing, boss. Which wingman group would you like me to be in?”
“Group one.”
“Aye-firmative, boss.”

Than having a conversation go like this:

[target my friend and hail him]
Wingman: “Would you like to fire me?”
Me: “Um, no.”
[reread the tutorial]
Me: “One.”
Wingman: “Here is a random list of keys for you to use.”
Me: “Uh… okay. Um, zero.”
Wingman: “Assigned to group.”
Me: “One?”
Wingman: “Yeah, boss?”
Me: “Two.”
Wingman: “Defending you.”
Me: “Uh, I asked you to form up…”

All right, though. It works, and he’s now in formation with me. My SnRV buddy and myself tool off to a station where we can start our illustrious space-trading career and eventually buy our way into nice, beautiful penthouses with equally-describable women. Once I get there, I once again let go of my joystick (lamenting the eventual shoulder surgery I’ll require), tap the O key, then use my mouse (which is on my throttle, by the way) to select the appropriate option to buy some cargo.

Poof! The cargo appears in deep space, some 2 kilometres from the space station. I blink. I blink again.

Okay, no problem.

Me: “One, nine, nine.”
Wingman: “Collecting cargo.”

I entertain myself by flying circles around my ally while the cargo pods lackadaisically drift over, and watch the sound of the iron ore being loaded with rewarding-sounding clicks. Big money! Woot woot.

Soon enough, we’re ready to head off. I open up the tutorial and follow the navigation steps to highlight the processing facility (and come to the instant conclusion that it’s more fun to use the starmap, since I like to see things visually), then manually slam on my LDS with my joystick’s pinkie switch and fluidly guide my tug to the destination.

I drop back into realspace, then notice that my wingman didn’t follow. Cursing under my breath, I wonder why, then open up the tutorial to see if this is intentional behaviour and he’s just taking his sweet time. Oops, I missed a part of the tutorial… I hunt down the Alcuin shipyards and zip back under manual LDS again, finding my comrade hanging out right where I left him (with a real “where the ***** did you go?” expression on his face).

Me (irritatedly): “One, two!”
Wingman: “Defending you.”
Me (still irritatatededlyly): “You’re forming up, you jackass.”

I slam on my LDS again, zip back to the processing plant, and this time my friend maintains formation. I don’t try to disengage my LDS until I’m right on top of the station, because I’m in a hurry, and the LDSi field knocks out my drives for me. No worries, I’m close enough. I strain my aching elbow to hit the UniGUI key and sell off the cargo.

It vanishes.

I blink twice again, then read over the tutorial and see there’s nothing else but gameplay hints. I shrug and start the game over from the beginning, exploring the local system’s facilities in LDS and trying to get a good grasp on the traffic patterns (for “shopping” purposes). Everything looks neat enough, but I’m getting a little tired so I shut everything down and go to bed.

The next morning, I decide to check the website, and find mdvalley’s Spewing mod. It tantalises my eyes with its sexy little blurb, tempting me to ask it to join me. I finally get the courage and head over to download it, and she solves the two biggest things I disliked with the game: appearing cargo when buying, and disappearing cargo when selling. (At least two brain cells in my logic centre suspected that they were interrelated.)

Or she would have. I buy six crates of silver ore from the Rare Metals Mine over in the asteroid belt, and they pop out blithely.

“One, nine, nine.”
“Aye.”

The cargo is all linked up, and I parade off to the processing plant. I parade back to collect my wingman, who I once again forget to tell to follow me, then parade a second time to the processing plant.

“One, five.”
“Yepperoony.”

He drifts a few hundred metres, then sits there. I stare at his aft engines for about thirty seconds, wondering what’s the holdup, then go to investigate the station manually. I find a SnRV attached to the docking point, with four units of cargo attached to it.

I fly a few circles around the SnRV, waiting for him to unload his cargo, but three minutes pass and I wonder what he’s thinking. I decide to try to “encourage” him to leave by gently “nudging” him with my tugboat. I bounce off, tumbling in a merry way, but I’m not easily dissuaded, and try to “encourage” him some more.

After about two minutes, I get bored again, and decide my “encouragement” needs to be a little less subtle. I zap him once with my Rapid Fire PBC. He shrieks about giving up his cargo (and mentions I’ll never get away with it) and discards the cargo above him. I stare blankly some more, then proceed to destroy his cargo. I had been wanting to blow something up for a while now.

I continue waiting for the guy to leave. He doesn’t. Eventually I throw my hands up in exasparation (and would have complained about how much energy that outburst took if I had any left from all of that pressing of the O key) and hit the quit button.

Then I posted here.

Now the questions: is there any code-based way to encourage NPCs to conduct their business a little faster, so I can get my SnRV transports to actually undock their cargo at a reasonable speed? I know about the “jump away and jump back” trick, but I’d rather see them performing their jobs than relying upon an exploit…

Is it possible to modify the HUD menu so you can communicate with ships and open up the UniGUI through the Comms menu? Or is the HUD menu PS-restricted territory?

Would anyone be amenable to a modification which overhauled the NPC communications and wingman functions, such that the NPCs spoke Spacer’s English instead of out-of-character messages?

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“The art of flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” –Douglas Adams

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[i]Surgeon-General’s Warning: Early test cases of Torn Stars have resulted in fatalities. The errors in the software should be gone by now. Hopefully.[/i]

[Author]

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