I showed my mom subnautica. She's never played a first person game before.

moultano

She loved it!


For context, I think the only games she's played in the last 10 years are World of Goo and Angry Birds. I tried to get her started on Braid, but that was too much for her. This is the first time she'd every played an FP(S), so I had to explain wasd and the mouse. Nevertheless, she dived right in.

The first thing she was having trouble with is running out of oxygen too quickly, so I built an extra tank for her just to get her started. I took some notes while she was playing of things she liked and thing she had trouble with.

• She kept exclaiming "Wow! This is beautiful!"
• After seeing me craft the tank, she figured out crafting and started building things herself. I had to help her navigate the submenus at first though.
• She interpreted all of text on the screen as commands instead of information, so she would say things like "But I don't want to pick up another mushroom. Why is it telling me to pick up a mushroom?"
• The notion that the crosshair in the center of the screen was what you interacted with wasn't natural for her at all. She would click when she was looking at something instead of when she was pointing at it. This was most apparent with the ladder to get into the escape pod. What was natural for her was to orient the mouse looking up as if she were climbing the ladder in real life, so she couldn't get the text for "climb the ladder" to show up. I had to explain that she wanted to point the center of the screen at the ladder after getting close to it, and then she would get the option to climb up. Making this a much bigger target (maybe the whole side of the pod?) would have helped a lot.
• She wasn't nearly as impressed with the bioluminescence as I was when I first saw it. Now that everything is a little brighter at night, It doesn't stand out as much, and it doesn't seem as magical anymore. She was very impressed with the sunset though.
• The inventory and hotkeys and the difference between them wasn't obvious to her. She was wondering why the flashlight (which she crafted on her own!) appeared there, but her oxygen tanks didn't, and I don't think that still made sense by the end of it. I had to explain how she could reduce the number of things in her inventory.
• She loved the schools of fish, and thought they were beautiful. She asked if she could do anything with them.
• She had no trouble managing her oxygen after I told her about the gauge and to get to the surface to refill.
• She tried catching fish for a while but wasn't fast enough to do it. She finally caught a gary fish and was really tickled when it showed up in her hand. She wasn't sure what to do it, so I told her that the "sharks" would eat it out of her hand, which she enjoyed.
• She kept asking what she should do next, and I would tell her "I don't know" and she would keep doing things and having fun.

All in all, she loved it, and didn't get up until she had to use the bathroom.

Squeal_Like_A_Pig

Wow, awesome, Moultano. That is always inspiring to hear stories about non gamers playing Subnautica and enjoying themselves. We're really striving to have an accessible game that can be enjoyed by everyone, so it is also really helpful that you took such detailed notes. There's a lot of things which we take for granted as being understandable, because of our familiarity with games, and beyond that, our familiarity with this specific game, so it can be quite enlightening to see someone struggling to understand a particular aspect of Subnautica that we might previously thought to have been obvious.

One of my favorite stories pertaining to that sort of thing was when Dushan, one of our programmers, played NS2 for the first time. Because in the early days the Gorge's tongue moved up really far into view, past the crosshairs, during the spit animation, he didn't notice the spit effect and thought he was licking the marines, so he was running around trying to get close to the other players to "lick" them. We therefore made some changes to the spit attack such as not having the tongue animated to extend up as far into view.

One thing, you mentioned was

"She wasn't nearly as impressed with the bioluminescence as I was when I first saw it. Now that everything is a little brighter at night, It doesn't stand out as much, and it doesn't seem as magical anymore."

Do you mean the lighting at night is now brighter or something else? I'm trying to think of any changes that were made that would have taken away from the biolumiscencent look, but in general all the changes I can think of made the lighting and props darker, so the glowing parts should be standing out more.

moultano

Squeal_Like_A_Pig wrote: »

"She wasn't nearly as impressed with the bioluminescence as I was when I first saw it. Now that everything is a little brighter at night, It doesn't stand out as much, and it doesn't seem as magical anymore."

Do you mean the lighting at night is now brighter or something else? I'm trying to think of any changes that were made that would have taken away from the biolumiscencent look, but in general all the changes I can think of made the lighting and props darker, so the glowing parts should be standing out more.

I might be wrong about that, but I thought things used to be much darker at night and now seem a little washed out. This is just my vague recollection though. I remember being really amazed at all the things lighting up that I didn't expect the very first time the sun set, and I remember it being almost pitch black under the water except for the lights from the creatures. The fog gets down to a dark blue now but never black, I don't know if that's a change or of it has always been that way. I was really wowed by it, and she didn't really react. That might be unrelated to any changes though.

reh

moultano wrote: »

Squeal_Like_A_Pig wrote: »

"She wasn't nearly as impressed with the bioluminescence as I was when I first saw it. Now that everything is a little brighter at night, It doesn't stand out as much, and it doesn't seem as magical anymore."

Do you mean the lighting at night is now brighter or something else? I'm trying to think of any changes that were made that would have taken away from the biolumiscencent look, but in general all the changes I can think of made the lighting and props darker, so the glowing parts should be standing out more.

I might be wrong about that, but I thought things used to be much darker at night and now seem a little washed out. This is just my vague recollection though. I remember being really amazed at all the things lighting up that I didn't expect the very first time the sun set, and I remember it being almost pitch black under the water except for the lights from the creatures. The fog gets down to a dark blue now but never black, I don't know if that's a change or of it has always been that way. I was really wowed by it, and she didn't really react. That might be unrelated to any changes though.

There was one experimental build that didn't last long in which the night was pitch black. I think it was build 10000, maybe just over a month ago. Perhaps that was what you saw.

It was my favourite representation of the night. All you could see were the lights of plants and creatures. A completely different, separate, second world to explore. More dangerous and alien than the safe time of the day. It was a strange feeling of simultaneously being completely exposed to whatever lurked in the shadow and being safely wrapped in darkness. It was such a strong and unexpected experience that I still think about it sometimes. Such a shame that was scrapped. Night was so memorable then.

moultano

reh wrote: »

There was one experimental build that didn't last long in which the night was pitch black. I think it was build 10000, maybe just over a month ago. Perhaps that was what you saw.

It was my favourite representation of the night. All you could see were the lights of plants and creatures. A completely different, separate, second world to explore. More dangerous and alien than the safe time of the day. It was a strange feeling of simultaneously being completely exposed to whatever lurked in the shadow and being safely wrapped in darkness. It was such a strong and unexpected experience that I still think about it sometimes. Such a shame that was scrapped. Night was so memorable then.

That sounds like what I remember and that seems like the right timeframe for when I first got the chance to sit down and play properly. I remember that being totally amazing, because all of the creatures seemed to change shape. The boomerangs turned into just their wingtips.

Seldkam

Would be cool to go back to that dark nighttime IMO... For Atmosphere! (not in the literal sense)

aeroripper

"She wasn't nearly as impressed with the bioluminescence as I was when I first saw it. Now that everything is a little brighter at night, It doesn't stand out as much, and it doesn't seem as magical anymore."

Do you mean the lighting at night is now brighter or something else? I'm trying to think of any changes that were made that would have taken away from the biolumiscencent look, but in general all the changes I can think of made the lighting and props darker, so the glowing parts should be standing out more.

I know this isn't supposed to be earth, but doesn't bioluminescence usually happen in deep water places on earth as an adaptation to the extreme darkness? Does it occur a lot in our own oceans near the surface, or is there just reflection on the ocean floor from the moonlight?

LumpN

As far as I know bioluminescence happens pretty much everywhere. E.g. fireflies. It's just more noticeable and/or has actual consequences in extreme darkness.

Regarding the night lighting I would like to keep it as is. As long as the sky is visible the terrain is lit a little bit. It looks good and makes sense. If you want total darkness there are lots of caves and deep areas to go. In my opinion Safe Shallows should be safe. Even in darkness.

moultano

LumpN wrote: »

As far as I know bioluminescence happens pretty much everywhere. E.g. fireflies. It's just more noticeable and/or has actual consequences in extreme darkness.

Regarding the night lighting I would like to keep it as is. As long as the sky is visible the terrain is lit a little bit. It looks good and makes sense. If you want total darkness there are lots of caves and deep areas to go. In my opinion Safe Shallows should be safe. Even in darkness.

For me the most stunning thing about bioluminescence is how creatures appear to change shape. The profile of the creature changes because only the illuminated parts are visible, and that's a magical effect. I don't get that effect if there's any light illuminating the creature's body, and the bioluminescence looks more like a rendering bug than something intentional.