#1. The "Galactic Map"
Accessible from the ships menu, or by a usable item. It would open a list of the systems you have already explored. by clicking on one of these systems you could 'zoom in' and view the map of that system.
Additionally, perhaps it could be eventually possible for the player to set a destination from this map, so that the player would have a quest arrow leading them to whatever that destination is. This way, you would not always have to fly around in map mode.
#2 Long Distance Sensorsgeorge moromisato" wrote:This makes perfect sense. After 1.0, and once I start adding more systems past Heretic, this feature will be more important. I probably won't add it until them. BTW, one of the reasons I wrote that program to create rendered galaxies (http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... .php?t=932) was in anticipation of this feature.
This could do two things. First, you could gain knowledge of stations at a much greater distance. Secondly, you might be able to see enemy 'blips' on the map screen. Perhaps these could also be used to expand and contract the scope of the mini-map at a later date.
They could come in a variety of flavors as well. It could be a ROM for the player to find, or it could be a system that is installed on the player's ship. It could even have a higher power requirement to balance it out.
More discussion here: http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... .php?t=957
#3 Better Layering of planets, stations, and ships.
Currently, if you want to be left alone, you can simply park yourself over a planet, station, or even the sun. Enemies will fly around you, but will be basically unable to hurt you. If you position yourself right you can even hide behind an asteroid or a planet, and just kill an enemy station.
While hiding behind an asteroid makes a bit of sense, hiding behind a planet doesn't. This is why I'm thinking planets could be put on a lower 'layer' somehow, and have weapons-fire pass over them.
#4. Damage Rounding
While looking around on the forums I saw the issue with damage rounding. Namely, if you take less than a point of damage to your armor, it is simply rounded up to one. There are two ways I thought of that might fix this, though I'm not sure how feasible either are. One would be to use floating point numbers, and cut it off to one or two decimal places. The other would be to "scale up" the numbers in the game by a factor of 10.
The scaling could be potentially accomplished with a little conversion. The best way I can think to explain it is an example.
Let's say you have 50 armor. This would be displayed on screen as 50, but it would be stored in a secondary variable as 500. All incoming damage is multiplied by 10, and subtracted from this secondary variable. This way, any rounding that takes place should be much less apparent.george moromisato wrote:I don't think this is a real problem. Fractional damage is rounded to the nearest integer. I.e., damage of 1.2 becomes 1.0 and damage of 1.7 becomes 2.0. In general this will average out.
#5. Change the color of dead opponents.
Currently, it can be quite hard to tell the difference between a live enemy, and a dead one. On the minimap they're both the same shade of red. Perhaps a defeated ship could be a different color.
#6 Custom Map Points
(Added 9/25-edit 1)
Just with the way the map is right now, this feature could be quite possible. I think there could be a function to find the (x,y) of the player ship, then another to add a green blip there on the main map. This could be useful for players that want to go back to a certain wreck they had to leave behind, because they were low on cargo space, or some such thing.
Thanks to some coding work by Kaypy, this is now possible!
http://www.xelerus.unrealcrystal.com/in ... &id=21&d=1
#7 Change Color of Arena Shields
(Added 9/25-edit 2)
Just a little thing. What if the color of the shields around the arena were changed from the very dark blue they are right now, to the same green as the pylons? That way they would be quite visible, and there would be no confusion about where the doors are.
While this wouldn't be All too useful for veterans of the game, it would vastly help newcomers, I think.
#8 "Bones" File
(Added 9/25-edit 2)
Just an idea gleamed straight out of today's roguelikes. The Bones File. Basically, there could be a chance that the wreck of your ship is left there, and could be found in that system when you start a new game. Though, the locals might have picked up your stuff...
F50 wrote:#8. Yes. But instead of a wreak, why not resurrect the bones as an opponent? I would love to fight my own ship. Speaking of that, why not have dopplegangers too.
#9 "Paranoid" Races
(Added 9/25-edit 2)
I'm sure there are quite a great many races in the game that would not want their tech to fall into the wrong hands, namely yours. Is there a way to make them loot their own races ships? Like, they could grab the stuff and take it back to their base, or some such thing.
They should not stop in the middle of a firefight to do so, only if the player is a fair distance away, or outside the system.
#10 Weapons Interface
(Added 9/25-edit 3)
Drawing from the ideas in FPSs, I was pondering. What if you could select what weapon you wanted to use by the numeric keys? Currently cycling in one direction through your selection of weapons can be the difference between life and death, even more so if you have three or more weapons.
Additionally, I was thinking. what if there was a brief delay between changing weapons? You know, like your ship has to physically cycle that weapon into place, and activate it's power systems. This delay could be a set time, or it could be based on the refire rate of the weapon you're switching from.
This could help to balance out 'W' spamming a bit more.
#11 Cycle backwards through targets button.
(Added 9/26)
I'm not sure how many times I've been cycling through targets but accidentally click past it. Just thought this could be very nice.
#12 The SunF50 wrote:YES
(Added 9/26)
You should not be able to safely fly into the sun. Perhaps this could be fixed with some sort of area effect that would be applied over the sun. If you fly too close, it starts to damage your shields. Perhaps hotter, blue suns could even do more damage than the cooler, red ones. Though, If your shields are strong enough, you could survive while they hold out. The AI already seems to avoid the sun most of the time, so that shouldn't be much of an issue, I should think. this could open up strategies, like luring your opponent to the sun, and skimming along it, while they get fried behind you.