First Impressions From a Steam User

[Zaggeh]

I saw this on the Steam top sellers list last night and was talking about it with a friend.  We both decided to buy it and don't regret it one bit.  So far I think it's really cool!

I'm guessing it's still in pretty early development (lots of crashes!), but that's fine.  I'll just continue sending in those detailed error reports any time I get them.  Most of them happened when I was messing with stuff I didn't even understand.  I did also read somewhere (either these forums or the suggestion list, I forget) that the multi-core support was buggy and not fully working yet.  That might be the source of most of my crashes... wish there was a warning about that before I turned it on.

I only have a few suggestions.  I put one on the suggestion sheet but didn't bother with the others since I'm still a n00b to this community and didn't want to seem too demanding:

-Event tracking (currently @ row 72 on the suggestion spreadsheet)
 Add the ability to mark objects as important, and then create a simulation snapshot any time an important object is drastically changed or collided with.  And for those of us who want to leave the simulation running over night and not wake up to a huge mess, maybe also add a toggle to optionally pause the simulation when an event deemed worthy occurs and focus on the object in question, maybe with a little text box alert explaining what happened.


-Better crash recovery
 Both myself and the friend who bought this game with me had several crashes last night (some of the preset simulations don't work at all, at least the very last one doesn't) where the game would continue to crash each time we loaded up.  It took us awhile to notice the advanced option on the error report screen to reload the simulation (and that it was checked by default).  This could be made a bit more apparent.  Had to uncheck that to restart our games.  I also had a crash last night where it just black-screened every time I loaded it up afterwards, with no error report or anything.  I had to "end process tree" just to close it.  Even after completely wiping out all my save data in my documents and deleting/reinstalling from steam still happened until a computer reboot... weird stuff.)

-"Screensaver Mode"
 It'd be nice to be able to start up the last simulation in fullscreen mode without interface elements, set the camera to slowly rotate around the object of focus, and cycle through the focussed objects every minute or so.

Also, now that this game is getting more popular through Steam, you're probably going to have a surge of new people.  You may want to look into a more secure solution for bug reports/feature requests.  Google Docs are great, but the way you have it set up now, it is kind of open to trolling.

[Chaotic Cow]

Yes...any crashes you get do report. Dan does look at them. Also those suggestions I also want.

[oisiaa]

How do you "turn on" multi-core?

[Naru523]

I'm glad you like it.

@oisiaa try checking Options?

[Dan Dixon]

Great suggestions. No time to comment on them right now.

Thank you. Keep the ideas coming (and add them to the community list if you haven't already).

And multi-core doesn't work very well yet nor does it yet make it run much faster. Much more work to do on that feature.

The check box is at the bottom of the Options panel on the left (the gear icon).

[Fallemnier]

I too am very impressed! I am also glad to see a strong community with lots of ideas. This could get big, hopefully  we can get more people to make more textures, objects, features, tools ect... Just like Garry's mod.

One suggestion I have is to add the ability to record a simulation for playback and community sharing. Also then you could replay it focusing on other objects.

Keep up the good work and keep killing those nasty bugs

[neuromancer]

really ipressed with it so far , would love to see the following added in the future :

Music please
or at least the ability to select music while in live mode , I'm sure there is some great classical pieces that would work well

Sound
The ability to apply a sound to an object, for example you could have the roar of the sun playing all the time , getting louder as you zoom into it / move towards it , or at your camera position when an object with sound attatched and playing, starts to come closer 

Voice Guided tours
This could be from a construction of a system
And also to record notes?

Visuals
 I would love for there to be an ability to draw an object (Cuboid or Sphere), or just a single plane which could visually show the effect of gravity based on a gradiant

Save Control
Save As Dialog box

Object List, for easy selection of planets and stars etc

Multiple Camera's ie not just one view at a time

erm well thats my input anyway im loving it so far , still a few crashes here and there , can someone also build some model space craft i can load into in to it for fun

[atomic7732]

Music please
or at least the ability to select music while in live mode , I'm sure there is some great classical pieces that would work well

Sound
The ability to apply a sound to an object, for example you could have the roar of the sun playing all the time , getting louder as you zoom into it / move towards it , or at your camera position when an object with sound attatched and playing, starts to come closer 

Object List, for easy selection of planets and stars etc

Music, well you can just use your own or go on YouTube...

Sound? Sucks there isn't sound in space.

Object list... Like a object tree showing parent and child objects? That sounds cool.

[Naru523]

If Nue is right, then the tree diagram is already planned.

[Dan Dixon]

If they're not already there... could someone add these ideas to the Community Idea list (each as a different line?)

Thanks!