My first games...

When I got it to run on my Core 2 T7300 (x2) 4GB + Intel 965 laptop for the first time, I got about 2fps and had major mouse and keyboard input lag issues. In my first game, I was trying to figure out how to dig and build (I was attempting a soddie shelter) when I was attacked by a spider. This spider seemed impossible to hit even when I got two frames in a row with the reticle on it. I somehow fell through the ground into the Void and respawned in the air, the spider was gone. I then dropped into the hole I dug (to see if this caused the Void dropout) and could not get back out. Damage is apparently not implemented yet.

The next game I attempted to scale a nearby mountain with the idea of building a beacon on it, but could not get onto it. It appears that the stone and dirt do not enmesh very well. To borrow a term from fluid physics, they do not "wet" each other: there was a noticable gap. Actually, I should go through it from the beginning:

1. When I entered the world, the map did not appear to be significantly different, but I saw no progress. The trees looked great, and an outline effect (a bit like old school optical chromakey tear) made the skyline easily navigable. No textures were loaded at all, everything was blank. I could also not make out any lighting effects except glare bleed when the sun was shining through the leaves (I'd like to turn this off to test its effect on frame rate.) Various graphics levels apparently made no difference.

2. I lifted two trees before the textures loaded. It took quite some effort to get the first tree I selected to fall, and in the process I somehow missed it and fell a tree quite far away in the background (I'd guess about 15m, I didn't thing the PC's arms were _that_ long!) After this, I found that tapping E smacked the tree without a mouse click. I don't like this behaviour and would prefer such actions to be tied to mouse clicks (i.e.: holding down E and clicking, or using E to toggle gather. I don't see why falling the tree and gathering it should require separate modes or keys, as it should be plain to the game whether the tree I am clicking on has fallen, and this context should instruct the game on my intentions.) Also before the textures had loaded, I dug a small hole, which I detected by lighting effects. The lighting effects did not seem to be particularly realistic, as the bottom of the hole was lighter than the top, and the shading was very inconsistent with the sun's position. Nevertheless, the lighting does seem more sophisticated than in Minecraft 0.30 Classic.

3. The textures loaded while I was attempting to gather the wood. The larger tree (the one I fell deliberately) produced a large log that rolled like it was on greased glass, and I could not stop it. I could slow it down and change its rolling direction as I chased it around, but I could not stop it, nor could I destroy or gather it. Other than the rolling direction being constrained by its cylindrical shape, it is more slippery than Minecraft's boat! Other pieces knocked from the fallen trees were quarter-circular in section. Some of them disappeared, indicating that some of the inventory/gathering code may be in place, but I'm not sure. I did notice that once a piece was broken from the trunk, it could not be broken any further.

4. I walked to the base of the mountain and entered build mode. I built a small platform with the wood I had gathered (pretend implementation) and then tried to jump on it, which was pretty close to impossible. I found that I could target a jump to a 1x2 platform when facing the narrow side, but I did have to get lucky with the input lag and frame timing. I would often either go straight up and down, or arc right over and past the platform. LMB behaved much as in the trailer, but RMB's behaviour was very strange, and I could never quite get it down. LMB will build up if you click on the side of a block, which made the platforms too tall to jump to. I had some success building a 1x2 platform with RMB, jumping onto it, and then extending it with LMB once I could click on its top face. I did this a couple of times.

5. Placing a laser turret had no noticable effect on the frame rate, except in the frame I placed it, which lagged presumably because the game was loading the data applicable to it. It made plenty of noise as I continued my attempted beacon. I aborted after three levels. Since I started on the dirt (being unable to grip the stone mountain), it was nowhere near as tall as the mountain (I didn't even see any parallax effects wtih the top of the mountain.)

Right now, unless the devs have something specific for me to test, I don't see running it again until the next update is released.

Thanks and try to do a good one!

Terry

Um... you know V 0.11 is out, right? Everything you said there implies V 0.10, which was buggier and laggier. Try 0.11, its a lot better.

Not sure how I missed it on the download page (was it not there at the time?) I'm downloading it now. A question about the downloads, if I may ask, 261MB is a rather big download for each release, is there a page that has patches that can be downloaded without re-downloading the entire package. My preference for this game would be something similar to the zip-installed Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator where the base engine and planetary textures are separate downloads, and they also have patch downloads that replace only what needs to be replaced for the new version:

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/download.html

(AACK: The main download page and main mirrors are dead! Apparently, after nine years of ongoing development work, it has been abandoned )

For this test, I was chatting in Teamspeak (//forgecommunity.com) hoping to find somebody or have somebody show up...

I should add that for the start of this test, I noted none of the bad-rotoscoping outlines and the textures were loaded right off the bat. The map I was on appeared to be a roughly 1024x1024x512 block chunk dominated by two large stone trees, one of which was topped by what looks like, on the lowest graphics settings, a cross between Moses' burning bush and a gigantic disco ball. That must be what they were talking about in the stickied version thread. Any comments? BTW, please like, favorite and subscribe (just kidding )

<05:44:49> *** You are now talking in channel: "Welcome Center"
<05:45:20> "featherwinglove": Hello, Terry here
<05:55:27> "featherwinglove": I am currently running StarForge 0.1.1, or was...
<05:56:04> "featherwinglove": I was sliding around the new graphics quality slider in the options page and had it crash when I dragged to minimum.
<05:56:18> "featherwinglove": I had already done several slides without issue.
<05:57:04> "featherwinglove": I stand corrected: The game is still running, it turned out to be a just a killer lag spike.
<06:03:14> "featherwinglove": The character can't stop jumping. It started with a lag spike associated with max graphics settings, but now his AGL altititude is almost uncontrollable
<06:04:34> "featherwinglove": Restarting game
<06:06:59> "featherwinglove": Character still jumping on his own, also default brightness is too low to navigate.
<06:09:10> "featherwinglove": I seemed to get wiped out by a solar flare, and the character is bouncing up to 5m up all the time, almost totally uncontrollable.
<06:19:38> "featherwinglove": I found that I could gain some control of the character by running forward, he would stop jumping until I stopped moving.
<06:20:11> "featherwinglove": Then he would start jumping again. I could not break the tree down though. I felled it with ease as the cursor moved with the jump and tore it instantly.
<06:20:40> "featherwinglove": Once down, it is a narrow horizontal target which is impossible to select with a wildly jumping character.
<06:20:56> "featherwinglove": I have yet to see a child this hyperactive (close, though!)
<06:21:51> "featherwinglove": I found that with graphics quality general slider just above the point where the grass would appear, a flare would occur about every 60 seconds, for about 10 seconds
<06:22:04> "featherwinglove": where I am so blinded that I can't see anything.
<06:22:35> "featherwinglove": To end the most recent run, I was attacked by a sandworm. Getting grabbed and thrown around did the character's hyperactivity no good.
<06:22:51> "featherwinglove": I could not hit him apparently with the machine gun.
<06:23:34> "featherwinglove": Even in the rare frame where I had sandworm poly on the reticle (I'm lagging bad, average framerate is about 2fps, but there is no display), it was like I was shooting blanks.
<06:24:46> "featherwinglove": I wish I could turn off the appearance of mobs, I'm having enough trouble just controlling the character. The physics are really out of whack, and certainly unlike me in real life, there is nothing to damp out this character.
<06:25:44> "featherwinglove": My grandpa's old Jeep never bounced around this badly even while going around the farm with nothing in the box.
<06:26:16> "featherwinglove": It wasn't quite as smooth while moving, but at least it would quit bouncing after it came to a stop.
<06:26:30> "featherwinglove": I'm going to try one more run
<06:35:21> "featherwinglove": At five minutes into the latest run, I dealt with the flare issue by turning the graphics down to minimum, so it isn't blinding me. The frame rate is about 3, maybe 4fps.
<06:35:46> "featherwinglove": The character has a tendency to move up hills on his own when standing on slopes.
<06:36:28> "featherwinglove": I managed to build a flat platform, and the character can now climb full block heights just like Reliant 7
<06:37:27> "featherwinglove": Reliant is the custom Minecraft client used by Team Avolition.
<06:39:09> "featherwinglove": The place range is extremely long, and I built a rather large cantilevered platform from the hill I was on in a few seconds with no deliberate movement of the character.
<06:39:37> "featherwinglove": It reminds me of the platform of Soyuz pad A at Baikonur Cosmodrome.
<06:40:46> "featherwinglove": The aspects that I want to test are build behaviours and the character's climbing behaviour.
<06:41:25> "featherwinglove": At the beginning of this run, I fell a tree in the normal way, but the gather mode failed completely, despite the fact that the character was very stable when I attempted to.
<06:41:40> "featherwinglove": I think it has been disabled in the code based on this behaviour.
<06:42:16> "featherwinglove": The tree rolled very well, showing far lower than intuitive rolling resistance from its branches.
<06:42:54> "featherwinglove": The branches were rotating through below-grade space while the tree was rolling.
<06:43:51> "featherwinglove": Overall, fallen tree's physics were much better than those of the player character, who really needs a dose of digital Ritalin to make testing more feasible.
<06:45:55> "featherwinglove": If I played this in a larger window, I probably wouldn't be able to hold down my breakfast despite the fact that I am otherwise used to having DGs flip out in Orbiter full-screen at 30+fps in atmospheric flight, with instrument indicated G-forces reaching into the two figures (probably bad enough to kill me if I actually experienced them.)
<06:46:31> "featherwinglove": Unfortunately, the player character in Starforge has proven far more difficult to control, which is really embarrassing for the Orbiter pilot in me.
<06:47:07> "featherwinglove": I'm going back into try building a beacon and hopefully I can get it as high as the stone tree
<06:47:14> "featherwinglove": which is already infamous in the forums.
<07:00:20> "featherwinglove": I'm going to end this run now. In trying to build the beacon, as I reached each new level, it would be a top priority to build a big enough platform to keep this bouncy character from falling off.
<07:00:50> "featherwinglove": Because of the bounciness of the character, I often launched blocks well off into the distance.
<07:01:28> "featherwinglove": After about twelve minutes, the character managed to throw himself off at random and I am now looking at the structure from ground level.
<07:02:21> "featherwinglove": Unlike the typical Soares-type pillar beacon in Minecraft, this one looks like an accident in progress at a shipping yard.
<07:03:02> "featherwinglove": It looks like a freeze frame out of a modern day Mont Blanc, except that all the flying containers are somehow plumb.
<07:10:58> "featherwinglove": I decided to go on a bit further and had something interesting show up: another player character.
<07:11:40> "featherwinglove": After some running around, I found that he is following me around like a puppy dog, is also bouncy and not doing anything other than following me around.
<07:12:00> "featherwinglove": Based on this, I'm pretty sure it is an NPC.
<07:14:44> "featherwinglove": He follows me better than the sheep in Minecraft!
<07:15:03> "featherwinglove": I don't know how to put the wheat away, though.
<07:15:54> "featherwinglove": A spider appeared, but this time, I could outrun him. At this point, I'd say that probably still too much is activated in the game to do much for meaningful testing.
<07:16:36> "featherwinglove": It has a whole bunch of barely-implemented features, none of which implemented well enough individually to test.
<07:17:20> "featherwinglove": I would like to, for building structures and exploring the world, very much enjoy a Forge Ball mode (yeah, I'm referring to something Halo, but pun intended.)
<07:17:47> "featherwinglove": That would let me test the graphics options and responses without having to worry about the player character's strange physics.
<07:18:59> "featherwinglove": I have also apparently found my way to the edge of the world (I'm looking down at the clouds) without being able to find my way back to the beacon I made.
<07:19:37> "featherwinglove": That said, it is still more navigable than Minecraft jungle biome in 12w27's new large biome map type.
<07:19:49> "featherwinglove": I'm going to keep trying, maybe see what's over the edge.
<07:24:08> "featherwinglove": Sandworm attacked, I managed to drop it off the edge of the world.
<07:24:34> "featherwinglove": When I hit the chunk's boundary neither would another chunk load, nor would it let me fall off; it is an invisible wall.
<07:24:45> "featherwinglove": No other adverse farland effects observed.
<07:24:56> "featherwinglove": The NPC is still at my heels
<07:27:27> "featherwinglove": Getting away from the edge was a simple matter of building a staircase like bounce platform.
<07:28:48> "featherwinglove": I also managed to place some blocks at extreme altitude.
<07:29:07> "featherwinglove": There is an object distant enough that I wasn't sure if it was one of mine or a celestial feature.
<07:29:53> "featherwinglove": I found it in the sky again, so I'm pretty sure it's a celestial feature, an asteroid or something.
<07:40:59> "featherwinglove": The inventory HUD leaves something to be desired, as it is difficult to use with the bouncy character.
<07:41:48> "featherwinglove": I don't know if it's good news or if its because I have Wright-like piloting ability as a Starforger, but I managed to deliberately select standard wooden plank while in mid-air
<07:41:54> "featherwinglove": Anyone else here?
<07:42:37> "featherwinglove": I got a pair of messages that someone joined and then immediately left while I was typing about the inventory screen.
<07:43:55> "featherwinglove": I have been able to select all five available materials: dirt, stone (which is better looking than the tile-and-grout in The Open Tap's real life dish pit), grey wood, natural wood, and what I'll call "vault".
<07:44:32> "featherwinglove": I'm really looking forward to how this will be handled in the resource management, especially after experiencing Minecraft in all its sophistication.
<07:45:18> "featherwinglove": For simplicity's sake, I'm going to cut-and-paste my transcript into my next forum post. See you there!
<07:46:02> "featherwinglove": By the way, the date is 2012 July 13 and the times are in UTC minus 6 Central Standard Time.

That's all for now!

Terry

Er... most all of this has been found already. As for the jumping, its -probably- from the new Free Running system, but that sounds a tad too buggy for what I saw. This game doesn't HAVE multiplayer, so it shouldn't be saying someone left and re-joined or anything... weird... and the maps are limited, infinite terrain is a long ways off.