Bah, wasted to much time today on fixing some last minute bugs, and made a new one so had to redeploy stuff to the server and restart all the games.

But the 15 servers (for 15 testers) seems to be running fine on the server, but then again they are all on pause at the moment

I didn't have the time to make a release of the client today, but I'll get on that tomorrow and the download url will be emailed to all the testers (I've already sent out server port number, username and passwords) at around 16-18 GMT.

The client requires java to be installed, so if anyone doesn't have that, it can be downloaded from Java.com.


The servers will be running for 10 days, so by tomorrow you will have 9 days to play the scenario (about 3-6 hours of play time).. The last 3 are only required if you want to beat General Chang, Lursa and Gowron are much easier

Please use this thread to discuss the Pre-Alpha, for other stuff use any of the other Trekwar threads

Q: The screen/game is very small
A: It is set to 1024x768 by default, if your screen has a higher resolution just resize the window (note, if you resize after connecting, the main map wont resize until you restart the client). Also you can move the system/fleet boxes and all windows around, their position will be remembered.

Q: The game just keeps flashing the white loading screen, or the loading screen does not disappear, what do I do?
A: that was probably caused if you was doing something like drag and drop just when the countdown hit 0, that can cause a freeze. Use the task manager to kill the client, and just start it again

Q: How do you start the game on Linux?
A: Crap, forgot to add a shell script for starting the client. While in the Trekwar directory it can be started with the command:
java -classpath '.:lib/*' org.aakretech.trekwar2.client.Client


TIP: If java asks you to give the game permission to use the network, you should say yes

TIP: The music can be disabled (also the sound) by editing the properties.xml file, just chance "true" to "false" in the "music-enabled" line

Hey man, no problem on the Linux thingy.. The game looks nice and the soundtrack is awesome. Will play it tomorrow after work

Just one thing though.. If I start the game as root (sudo) it all behaves as expected. If I'll do it as a normal user, I can't shut it down. When I click Yes to confirm the exit a stack trace is printed on the console. http://pastebin.com/U7bBtGNi

Also, I'm getting some exception printed on the console when starting the game (right after Music and SFX loaded). http://pastebin.com/k7ZnNk09

These are not big problems and may be only on my setup (Ubuntu 10.10). Will look into these issues more deeper tomorrow, maybe I'm causing them..

Cheers

Actually it seems to be the other way around lol That file was already there (it's contents http://pastebin.com/tWt79SpG )

I've deleted it and now the closing problem seems to be fixed. That was fast

Played around 60 turns last night. My first impressions:

The way fleet orders work is.. hmm, unintuitive at first. It passed quite a few turns before I could move fleets. I had to go read the instructions in the wiki to figure it out. That's not very good IMO. The orders icon is not very descriptive, and its placement isn't obvious.

Colonization is kind of weird. Takes some turns but you're not notified of what's happening. As I didn't see anything happening, I was always getting the "system already being colonized" message when clicking the colonization icon again.

Turns go by way too fast IMO. In 30 seconds you don't have the time to know what you're doing unless you're familiarized with the game already. There should be a pause button - for testing at least. It's hard to test stuff, unless you just don't want to / don't care to play the scenario (for the goals). The research and ships design windows should pause the game?
Sometimes I have the feeling some turns are skipped, but that might be just a feeling.

I didn't design a single ship. There was no time for that, and I didn't really know what I was researching - no time to read the descriptions. Just selecting techs when research was idle, in a balanced way because it seemed the way that would unlock stuff. Not much fun, I must say. Might as well be automatic.

Research seemed a bit too fast. I got to tech level 4~5. I unlocked some buildings, but I didn't know they would be unlocked - only by checking the colony screen did I know about them.
The reports window showing up in each new turn could be nice (showing these new unlocked buildings), but that would probably eat up more of the turn's time.

I found Chang's fleet really close to my homeworld (3~4 sectors). I didn't find too many star systems though; found a few kind of far, maybe at turns 30~40.Fleet movement seemed kind of slow compared to research.

Shipbuilding wasn't very intuitive either. Dragging the ship icon is intuitive, but the icon not remaining in the Shipyard slot kind of confused me. Since the build queue is not updated right away, I thought shipbuilding was broken.

There's still a few problems with the UI, but I guess they're open bugs (window focus / on top, etc).
The graphs and bars in the colony window are not very clear. Or at all. The tooltips don't help much, for lack of context (troops...).
The floating windows sometimes are a pain.

A way to save your login settings would be nice, so that you don't have to type them every time you run the client.

I had signed up to play the Klingons, and I got the Federation instead...

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I quit the game at turn 82, with 15 secs left, and 4 turns to complete research (BTW, it's still spelled reserach); reconnected, and was at turn 83, 19 secs left, still 4 turns to complete research...

Great feedback!

The fleet box and how to issue order might not be the most intuitive, you don't think the little icon of a cartoon rocket ship is descriptive? (Don't worry, it's only temporary).

When a fleet is colonizing it does say ("Colonizing: xx %") in the fleet box, but it's not extremely visible, and it does not show up until the turn after you've clicked the colonize button.

Yeah, turns might go a bit fast. But there is no rush, don't worry if you're keeping the shipdesigner open for as many turns you'd like. When playing the game it will naturally be longer turns (and a "next turn" button, for smaller games). Having something pause the game would be kinda hard to do in a multiplayer game.

Don't think any turns are skipped, but as you said about research staying the same from 82 to 83, might be because of the quick fix I did to have the server pause while you are logged out.

You're right of what you gain from research is not very prominently displayed (very small icons). I'm not happy with the research system at all, I want to redesign it to be more of a research tree where you research more specific techs.

You can build faster ships, I adjusted all research lvl 1-4 to require less research points, so after that it takes longer. Did this because there are not that many structures/components in the game yet, so that it would be more stuff to do at lower levels of technology.

Why do you think the floating windows are a pain?
Is it all of them, or are some particularly irritating?

Saving of login settings will of course be implemented for the next alpha version.

I'm lazy, so only made 1 single player scenario (Federation), sorry

Hehe, I guess it's a matter of getting used to, but figuring out that to give orders you have to click on an icon that doesn't look like a button but some kind of stat or bonus was not easy.

Must check again the colonizing thing. Maybe the starmap could display this too, with the square/sector/star being highlighted somehow - or maybe a (smallish) progress bar in the bottom.

My worry is that the early game is fundamental, and going by those first bunch of turns without doing anything OR doing things without really thinking about it/them is not very good IMO. It's true that at some point you start getting more free time, but that doesn't help with the early game.
Notice that this is a specific scenario. Someone playing for the first time in a "live" game... The End Turn button with a longer turn time would be ideal. Or having the first x turns be longer.

Floating windows, maybe it's because they're taking up space and I'm not sure of their use(fulness). Maybe also the focus bug. Mostly on a laptop though, I find them much better when playing with a mouse.

--

There are a few typos, not very important yet though. There's no time to waste taking notes, I remember a couple:
reserach (already mentioned)
ore/deuterium availiable

Planet specific buildings, they're not implemented yet, correct?

Is there anywhere in the system window where current/max population is displayed?

Ok, checked the colonization % issue. You're right, I missed it. Does it depend on number and type of planets in the system?
Speaking of colonization, the way initial structures are placed in the system is not very good IMO - seems somewhat random. They should start with Terran planets if any, since they don't have any special building, and have lots of slots. You might get all slots of say a Volcanic planet occupied, denying you the ability to build its special building.
Also, not sure how pop is placed in planets. Upon colonization, it seemed that an Arctic or Oceanic planet got more pop than a Terran one. Seemed random/arbitrary? Not really sure if the total pop was a fixed amount or related to max pop in the system.

Also checked the pie charts, now I understand what they mean. The gray area is max pop (I don't think the numbers match those in the wiki though?), and then there's green and blue - not sure what green is.

Floating windows being irritating, here's part of the reason

There's a display issue with Growth Rate in some systems. I'll try to pinpoint it.

This is just to confirm some of Iceman's observations. I understand that for testing purposes, the turn rate is very fast. I'm used to 5 a day! No doubt there is a lot of blind groping here to figure things out, but once you get the knack, you can start doing stuff pretty quick. I'm up to turn 300+, and have about 1/4 of the area scouted out now. I've built a few ships, done some asteroid mining, colonised a few systems. Very few problems as far as hangups- the first time I ordered to mine an asteroid it did so.
Some orders need to be confirmed during the same turn, but don't show until the next, such as mining, and colonising. took me a bit to realise that colonising actually converts the colony ship to colony buildings (or an I wrong?) It is rather odd that there is a random building generation, as such. But it works at this point.

I have a few more opinions, but will elaborate later.

Theres a problem. I quitted at turn 179 and logged back in and it was turn 1791 something...


Problem.png [ 774.35 KiB | Viewed 22408 times ]


Also on the civilian yes/no information, it says civilain lasers and sensors are not civilian.

I made a quick sketchup of a more "classic" turn based UI, and would love to hear any comments by you who have played the game so far:

This is how it currently looks:



This is the mockup of an alternative UI. The top menu bar is smaller (buttons moved to the bottom interface). This new proposal replaces the fleet box and the system box.



In this particular mockup a fleet is selected, the buttons at the top of the bottom UI ("9" and "2") indicates other fleets in the system.. If the sector with the fleets also had a starsystem, there would also be a "star" button next to the buttons for other fleets, that would allow the new interface to show information about starsystems as well as fleets.

Most important info is bigger text, and at top.. (Fleet name, speed, range, and current orders). Buttons for actions (move, invade, cloak, etc..) are more prominent and descriptive.
A own area for fleet details (number of ships, firepower and defense info (needed to compare to other/enemy fleets), is added.. Most important info would be at the top, and more details below (possibly through scrolling).

Ships display a little bit like before (but XP/level/rank icon is gone, so is number of crew). By clicking a ship you would get the info on that ship in the area that in this mockup holds the fleet info (the box to the right of the list of ships). Moving ships to other fleets would be drag-drop the ship to another fleet button.

Buttons from top menu bar was moved down, and the minimap is always visible.

Would this be an improvement? any comments? =)

I think it looks a lot better!
The deuterium and ore global values are gone, is that intended?

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Some more comments:

There are 2 tooltips missing for stats of buildings in the system control window (systemcontrol_food and systemcontrol_groundcombat).
Also, end turn clears the image and stats of the currently selected building, which is very annoying.
And the display area for Special Buildings is kind of short.
Is there a point for production buildings being called xxx 1? Still more levels to be added, or something that was ditched?

typos:
planets -> planet's
charcaters -> characters

The system window for asteroid belts is missing the asteroid icon.

What is Minimap\Population supposed to try to convey? It's confusing.

It seems when you colonize two systems that are adjacent, one of them gets sensor strength +15 and the other -1.

Built a tanker ship to refuel my scout which was stranded. When it got there, there was no refuel option. So I joined them in the same fleet. I had to "tow" the scout back to one of my systems, because fuel was not split between the ships, and there was no way to refuel the scout.

The game froze when I tried to split the fuel (clicking everywhere), while the fleets were en route to my system. Not sure of the exact reason, I don't think it was end of turn though.

The total research value displayed in the research window doesn't seem to be correct. In my game it reads 456 (59 from faction bonuses), and my total is actually 491 (I added all the outputs of all my colonies, the _net_ outputs). The outputs of colonies (as displayed in the system control window) do not factor in any faction bonuses AFAICT (each lab is producing 50 RPs), so the difference is quite large (397 to 491).

Hey guys. I'm quite busy at work these few days, but in the weekend I'll play the game.

I just tried to run the game on linux again and I cannot connect (tried it in a windows VM and it works without problems). After I enter my details in the login frame, I get the following message box: "Error while trying to connect to server".

After I click OK, the following is printed to the console: http://pastebin.com/1pMwfup6

Any ideas on this?

Ok, this is really strange. I'm playing in 2 different machines, and it feels like I'm playing 2 different games. When I log in on one machine, the fleets are not in the same position as they were when I logged out in the other. And it's not like they're in adjacent sectors, as if when a couple of turns are missed. It's completely different positions...

Can someone confirm?

Regarding a use for pop in the future, how about making colony ships cost pop? Your bug report says it's 20 pop per planet (should that be 200 [mill] / 0.2 [bill]?), it could be significant - I've seen colonies started with 440 pop or whatever (what the SitRep says). Of course, that would require them costing/generating a fixed amount of pop; troops should also be factored in (if they're made to cost pop as per your post) in the cost of colony ships, if they will keep carrying them.
While at it, when a colony ship is dismantled to create a colony, is its remaining deuterium added to the system's deuterium silos?