CDN_Merlin wrote:Will there be better textures? I'm hoping so because trying to see anything so far in those videos is very hard.
Neon has an unusual feature that allows the player to swap the colour scheme of the game in realtime and at any time.
I just spent the last couple of days updating the Greenlight page with the very latest screenshots, and I added three of them to this post to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.
You can choose to play the game with a very dark look, almost wireframe, or choose from a selection of other colour schemes. The plan will be to allow the player access to a handful of these at the start of the game with more unlocking as they level up.
Each colour scheme has a different look for the four factions, and each faction has a different look depending on whether they are hostile or friendly with the player. That means that a change in reputation will flip the colours in realtime as you play. In simple terms think friendly = green, hostile = red, but it's more complex than that for many colour schemes. Some might have blue for friendly and purple for hostile.
The original trailer was produced before this colour scheme tech was developed. In the newer playtest streams on Twitch.tv I do flick around these colour schemes, so jump around in those videos to see the different looks. This pic...
...is the very latest colour scheme, not seen in any video. It's deliberately very dark and wireframe in look. Personally, I like it more than any other during play, but the other schemes are there for those with different tastes. Remember, the game is set in cyberspace so the look is not meant to be realistic, but very stylised.
As for it being difficult to see the enemies, that is entirely due to the range of combat. It's very different to Descent in that regard. At max weapon range an enemy can be little more than a few pixels across, hence the need for the targetting HUD in this game or any real life fighter. However, I plan to address that with additional weapons, and gadgets that require the player to get in much closer for higher damage. Imagine a weapon that releases a shockwave that can destroy ships in very close proximity. Additions like that will come to help reward the player for getting much closer to their opponents.
It is due to things like that why we consider the game to still be pre-Alpha rather than at the Beta stage. We are already pretty much bug free and optimised, but a mass of content, playtesting, and fine tuning is still to come.
roncli wrote:Checked out a couple videos, seems interesting. Seems like there's a lot of grinding involved, though.
I know what you mean about the grinding but I see it from another angle.
The goal is to create the best spaceship dogfighting possible. I want to polish the 5-30 second process of - find enemy, attack enemy, kill enemy, loot enemy - to be as fun and varied as possible. In reality, it is that process that is at the core of this or any other shooter game. If it's polished, great fun, and constantly changing and varied, we keep wanting to repeat that process.
Think Halo. That's all Halo is, just repeating that process over and over. All shooters are like that at their core.
So if that core 30 seconds is fun in Neon, the player will want to keep doing it because it's enjoyable. The more they do it, the more cool weapons, upgrades, ships, and gadgets they unlock so that the gameplay is always changing over time.
So I don't see it as grinding. I see it as giving the player a reward for repeating a process that they are enjoying. If the time it takes to unlock new stuff is too slow then that is something we will hopefully find out and tweak in Alpha. Even since those first three twitch video playtests were made this has changed considerably. The uranium drops, ship hull, and weapon drops have all doubled, and the shops have extended inventories to make the process of levelling up faster.
It's all a work in progress but rest assured it's all going to get tweaked to be most fun. There is no advantage for us to make you grind (it's not an mmo), but we don't want upgrades unlocking every five seconds or you will feel no sense of accomplishment getting them.
