Vampyroteuthis' Big Suggestions and Bug Thread - Part I-Bugs/Niggles
Vampyroteuthis
Austria Join Date: 2015-06-25 Member: 205777Members
Austria Join Date: 2015-06-25 Member: 205777Members
Dear Unknown Worlds Team;
First things first; I'm very, very glad that I've picked up Subnautica. It speaks to the Science Fiction love as well as the (sadly long dormant) diver in me, a game that has exploration, survival and (to a degree) world-building. It is fun, it is mysterious and eerie - it is fantastic. I look forward to future contents and would like to contribute to the development of this game. What follows is a collection of things that I notice while playing the game, from bugs to niggles to suggestions. It's a big list that is worth the read, specifically aimed at the developers, but I'm open to critique or explaining details to anybody.
Edit: I had to break this into multiple parts as the Forum won't allow for longer posts.
They are in order:
This one (Bugs/Niggles part1)
The Second (Niggles part2/Suggestions part 1): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138023/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-2-niggles-and-suggestions?new=1
The Third (Suggestions part 2): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138024/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-3-suggestions-part-2?new=1
==========
A) Major Bugs:
1) Climbing the Constructor: At random times (usually after having bumped into a deployed constructor) the mounting animation will start with the diver well below the unit and thus not deposit him on the platform from where he can activate the constructor - packing it in and redeploying does not solve this, however exiting the game and loading it again sometimes does, sometimes doesn't and sometimes moving it around (by bumping into it), then reloading might solve it. Seems to happen entirely at random.
2) Building Plan bug between loads: Having planed a base (f.e. a couple of corridors onto platforms), after reloading the game (not having built all of them) led me to being unable to place new pieces, until I found out the old planned ones were still there, just not visible. Pointing the builder tool at the place made it possible to actually build them (or de-construct) although some weird graphic glitches would occur that usually would desist after completing the part.
3) In-Game Options: The game needs them. Including key-settings, graphical settings, audio, etc.
4) Terraformer button: Playing with a very different key-layout I had shift mapped to descending, making use of the terraformer pretty much impossible until I remapped descending to control. Being able to set the modifier button to a personalized key might be a solution.
5) Repair Panel in Pod: Repairing the damaged panel in the Escape pod leads it to stop emitting smoke, but when loading the game up again, the panel will be broken again (including smoke). Repairing it should be permanent and probably give the player an incentive to constructing the welder (maybe make the escape pod manoeuvrable, albeit slowly, or drop an anchor to keep it in place.)
6) Same button to Enter/Exit vehicle: I chose 'E' for using most things in the world, rather then Mouse 1 (which I liked more for tool-use i.e. Right Hand; Admittedly most of my preferred keymapping still hails from the 90's and I never could adjust to replacing the right mouse button with the current use of Space for jumping) and it works fine except for exiting a vehicle - entering the Seamoth for example works by pressing 'E', but exiting defaults to mouse 1 (left mouse button). Entering and exiting should be the same button.
7) Get Stalker teeth from killed Stalkers: Besting a Stalker (especially in the beginning) is quite a challenge with your basic knife, and finding out that they only drop teeth by munching on metal takes a while of very dangerous observation or a look on the wiki - killing a Stalker should maybe drop a single tooth and after a while respawn that Stalker (see below, B-17) in a matching location.
8) Cooking recipes reset between loads: Every fish you catch and bring to the fabricator gives you a recipe on cooking it - and are lost when next loading the game, including the tooltip that would be nice to have when looking up which type you should be hunting for next.
9) Bug when placing something at the same place you occupy: Especially noticeable in the Cyclops. Either the diver is glitching or both diver and vehicle go 'completely naners'. It happened twice to me: The first time I placed a locker on my Cyclops, but put it too close to myself while trying to arrange it perfectly - The bounding boxes overlapped and the game started shaking like a parkinsons patient on a magic fingers bed and by the time I managed to de-construct the locker, me and the Cyclops had been thrown halfway across the map, far enough to almost drain the 6 powercells installed in the submarine in order to return. The second time I had placed a set of Lockers in an open space, which turned out to be the spot you get displaced to when entering the Cyclops by way of Seamoth. I didn't manage to de-construct the Locker in time and got thrown so far off the map that there was no more ground structure under my new position. (http://i.imgur.com/gXWZdZ6.jpg - problematic placement)
10) Performance issues around Base/Terraform: This one is a bit tricky to pin down. I first noticed it when I came back to my Homebase which is admittedly rather large (albeit only corridors) and took a lot of titanium and glass to build below and above the waterlevel. I had also terraformed a bit of terrain to create a landmass about the size of 1 or 2 platforms above water. Returning I found that performance dropped sharply, leading to framerateloss, down to 1 or 2 FPS. Building a couple more giant bases in another game to find out why this happened, I found that big bases will drop performance a bit (especially when they protrude the water surface and have some bits above water) albeit not even close to what happens when you terraform the landscape. Pretty much any terraforming will (conjecturally) fill up the RAM, but raising the terraformed landmass above the watersurface is where the biggest problem seems to be located. I don't know whether the game needs to calculate waves breaking against the land or whether this has some other roots, but terraforming is -at present- not a good idea. The game continues to work normally when out of drawdistance, and usually even when not looking in the direction of the offending landmass/base.
11) Possible to create disconnected Base-parts: See attached picture. It is possible to de-construct a corridor after placing another one behind it, thus creating a single corridor nominally attached to the base but free-floating. This is not a big problem, especially since it'd allow to build free-floating bases (which would be awesome, maybe implement a free-floating platform by harvesting 4 floaters and 4 titanium), but I thought I'd mention it. (http://i.imgur.com/B344DE5.jpg - example)
12) Opened Cyclops with multiple Seamoths: When driving up to a Cyclops that has a Seamoth docked already, it'll open the bay in expectation - if you exit the Seamoth and enter the Cyclops you can walk around inside, through an invisible hangar door and through both airlocks while looking at the seaground underneath but not being exposed to it. I never tried to place a locker in the hangar bay, I suspect something terrible would happen to the locker, the Cyclops and the Seamoth. (http://i.imgur.com/Qe800T9.jpg - Cyclops with open belly - acts normal with invisible walls)
13) Cyclops person hatch won't close: The forward hatch looks like it should close when the diver moves too far away from the hidden airlock, but doesn't. It looks a bit silly and I'd suspect it is supposed to close/open as the diver moves away/comes closer, akin to the Seamoth dock.
14) Depth indicator on the right side of the Cyclops cockpit is stuck on 194m: Static texture on the depth indicator in the Cyclops' cockpit is a bit immersion-breaking. Either put some other, static value (f.e. the crafts' name) or make it an actual display.
15) Dropping things inside the Cyclops might cause bugs: Dropping a piece of titanium for instance in either the Cyclops or the Escape pod is problematic, dropping more things like small containers and other stuff gets downright crazy. The dropped items will whirl around the submarine/pod and (if lucky) glitch out of it a bit later. I managed to find two of my small containers again after they'd been glitched out of the escape pod, as well as some small items, although the 3rd container remains missing to this day. (I had not noticed the in-built Storage container until after the fifth small crate, and found that digging a hole into which one could throw the boxes under the escape pod was way more manageable)
16) Drain Cyclopse power: When installing new power cells in the Cyclops some of them always still have between 1% and 8% power left - It'd be less wasteful and frustrating to drain them in order from 100% to 0%, so exchanging them doesn't feel like wasting 10% each time.
17) Set keys displayed in HUD to the changed ones: The HUD messages will keep displaying to press the original Bindings in order to (for instance) break a rock or enter/exit a Sub or similar.
18) Display on Radiation Suit chest wrong way around: When looking down upon the (static) texture of the chest-display (or the leg display) one quickly notices the values are the wrong way around - good to read from the front by someone looking at the diver, not readable by the diver himself and since the chest display is angled/positioned so that it is easy for the diver to see but a bad position for any onlooker (say alien fish) it makes little sense for the chestdisplay to be turned the way it is.
19) A way to rotate Ladders in Bases: The ladders can only be installed statically (I suspect depending on the way the corridor is positioned) which is incredibly frustrating to navigating the base easily. Using Q/E to rotate place-ables is a very nice idea, it should apply to most place-able things. Especially ladders that keep standing in the way.
20) Gasopod gas hurts inside Bases: A friend built a base quite close to an idling Gasopod and when he entered his base the animal threw out some acid blobs that were able to hurt him inside the base (and with no way to get out, since it was a single corridor at the time he died quickly). Admittedly you can install current generators or go out and kill the animal, but it is a bit weird to be damage-able from outside beasts while standing inside a structure.
21) Quit to Main Menu button missing: Quitting to main menu and loading a different game should be a possibility. Always having to exit the game seems unnecessary.
22) Building a Corridor over a Crash and approaching it from outside (not inside) will make the Crash explode and instantly depressurize the part: Self-explanatory. Building a corridor or similar over flora/fauna should remove them like it does to surroundings.
23) Killing a Crash nest by exploding a Crash into it yields an extreme amount of Crash Powder: The Alien-Egg should probably drop between 3 and 5 crash powder instead of 14 when destroyed.
============
B ) Improvements/Small Niggles: (contain suggestions)
1) Waterlevel when building above water: A corridor placed half above/below the waters' surface will be half-filled with water, but going down a ladder will show it to be only full of air. (http://i.imgur.com/8KatirZ.jpg - Screenshot)
2) Surplus Fragments: Finding fragments (especially the Seamoth) gets crazy, fast - I have probably 2 lockers filled with only Seamoth Fragments, not to mention the others. Placing 4 in the Analyzer to speed up the process seems pointless. A suggestion I'd like to make is that every subsequent scan of a fragment slightly improves all objects of the type. For instance analysing subsequent seamoth fragments could improve its maximum depth by 1 metre, its Energypool by 1% and its Health by 1. Analysing more fragments of the Workbench could improve its energy-consumption, reinforced hull give the Cyclops it is inserted in another meter of depth and Stasis Rfile/Propulsion Cannon could slightly increase range and energy- efficiency, as the diver is reconstructing the advanced technologies of the Aurora.
3) submarines not getting stuck: Admittedly this can be circumvented by liberal use of the terraformer, but stranding the Cyclops in shallow waters is a definite possibility. Maybe a short-range teleporter could unstuck big subs by using up a lot of energy. (birdsview of the sub, a white circle where it can be placed to and a green/red shadow of the vessel, moveable via mouse, then re-aligning the subs' coordinates to the players chosen coordinates. Q/E could even turn the sub.)
4) Hull breach Cyclops message at 235m with armour installed: Despite having installed 3 armour modules, the Cyclops still messages that Hull Breach Depth has been reached at 235m instead of 700m. (although the HUD message turned correctly yellow, not red). Only happened once yet (3 Armour Mods and the Energy Mod from the Aurora).
5) Model for Diamond: Using the same model as Quartz looks lazy and confusing. A diamond model (not a cut one, admittedly) is easy enough to make, then maybe decrease opaqueness over the Quartz crystal but use same material basically.
6) Diving deep without special Suit/Oxygen/Nitrogen: The alien atmosphere might consist of some strange elements, but being able to dive without a suit at depths where the Seamoth would be crushed easily confuses the diver in me. Everything under 150 metres should use a special tank and suit (see C-b)
7) Lockers in Cyclops?: Building Lockers and placing them wherever you want is awesome, but what are the lockers on the lower level of the Cyclops? you can open them and close them, but not put anything in? Maybe it'd be interesting to make them loadouts for your diver, activated simply by opening the locker, then having a paperdoll UI on either side and a big 'Switch' button.
8) Reduce chance of Copper: I've stopped picking up copper- too few things to make with it (even including batteries, which you should need a ton of) - decrease it in favour of:
9) Higher Quartz spawn rate: Silicone and Glass (especially when you start putting lockers in your Cyclops and windows on your base) need perverse amounts of Quartz and you keep finding copper. The spawnrate of Quartz could use a bit of a tweak.
10) Reel sometimes clips: Running the Diving Reel past stones might make it clip through them (f.e. 'wrapping' it around a column). Also the infinity of the reel seems strange, make it 500m per reel with a counter on the side of the case for example. That'd make farming kelp a tad more necessary (well that and 1st aid kits) and having multiple reels for deep caves a necessity.
11) Colours for Fins/Tanks/Suits: The auras around the different Fins are horribly inadequate at showing which one you have. Anything that has to do with speed could be green (including Icons and Fin texture when looking down), the electricity generating ones blue (the lightning effect on the Charge fins is awesome btw, but a different colour would make them instantly recognizable) and similar for oxygen tanks in green for light plasteel and blue or anthracite for heavy tank icons. I'll do it for you if send me the .dds or whatever format you have the textures in. I'll even put a snazzy racing stripe on the fin-texture
(http://i.imgur.com/z3erpKX.jpg - Mock-up. Coloured Fins and Tanks.)
12) Regeneration chamber: Having something in the Emergency Pod/in a Base/in the Cyclops that explains how the player spawns back there would be nice and could double as a possibility to set respawn if you don't want to keep coming back to your escape pod, then swim 5km to where you left your Cyclops.
13) Attach Fabricator to outside of Bases: This'd be useful for building that quick pane of glass or turning some scrap into titanium while building a base or building some item you'd need while under the sea.
14) Fish getting out of Subs' way: Fish have a horrible tendency to tranquilly wait for your Seamoth or Cyclops to run into them and paste them all over the windshield, then ragdoll across the map stunned. Maybe they could at least try to get out of the way of an oncoming sub.
15) Diamond Knife different texture: The diamond knife is barely distinguishable from the basic knife, maybe make the ring glow a green colour and tint the blade more blue or less opaque.
16) More Letters on Beacons: A couple more letters on the beacon wouldn't hurt, having to abbreviate everything is a bit of a niggle; The font could be a tad smaller at the same time, thus allowing more letters.
17) Killed Fauna disappearing: Killed Aliens will stay forever, this could make an interesting game-mechanic as the Fish start decomposing, giving you the ability to harvest bacteria or plankton that you can't get any other way, then despawning the body.
18) Activate/Show Beacons: Having a tab in the PDA to disable Beacons could clear up the HUD. Activating and deactivating could be as simple as scrolling down the row of beacon entries and clicking them to grey them out/show them.
19) Stasis Rifle - No auto release: Charging the Stasis Rifle fully and keeping it at the ready would make a lot more sense than having it discharge once the timer has run out. This would also allow players to put it away rather than waste a charge or frantically hit buttons.
20) Make Small Storage Cubes equipable and placeable: Harking back to my earlier mention of the Boxes (A-14) deploying the small storage cubes anywhere but a base is fraught with problems. Being able to assign them to an action slot and then placing them would probably work better.
21) Display Energy/Charges on item icons: When looking at a locker or your inventory it'd be nice to have an instant grasp on how many charges it has left, or how much it is charged. (http://i.imgur.com/CwitYcp.jpg - Mock-up, charges on icons)
22) Reclaim Titanium Ingots: Early game the titanium ingots are a marvellous space-saver - only they won't come in handy until quite a bit later. It'd be nice that for some items, if you have them in your inventory, go to a fabricator and by right clicking the item you can reverse-nanoassemble the item into the pieces it's been made from.
23) Autoalign Corridors: Corridors (especially the straight one) will continuously 'spawn' for placing, locked into the one basic direction. When looking at a connection point they will snap to it, but only so you can place them next to each other. For continuous building, snapping hatches together (!!!but retain the possibility for the player to turn them!!!) would make for quicker and easier building.
====
continued in:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138023/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-2-niggles-and-suggestions?new=1
====
Here's the link to the album with all Mock-ups and Screenshots of bugs/suggestions/improvements: http://imgur.com/a/8rKeh#0
That's the lot, thanks for reading. Maybe some of the suggestions resonate with you; I'll be adding more as I continue playing the game.
Have a good day and continue on your awesome path!
PS.: Do you have any openings? If you're in need of a creative madman, QA-Tester or Localizer, drop me a PN.
Yours Faithfully;
Vampyroteuthis
First things first; I'm very, very glad that I've picked up Subnautica. It speaks to the Science Fiction love as well as the (sadly long dormant) diver in me, a game that has exploration, survival and (to a degree) world-building. It is fun, it is mysterious and eerie - it is fantastic. I look forward to future contents and would like to contribute to the development of this game. What follows is a collection of things that I notice while playing the game, from bugs to niggles to suggestions. It's a big list that is worth the read, specifically aimed at the developers, but I'm open to critique or explaining details to anybody.
Edit: I had to break this into multiple parts as the Forum won't allow for longer posts.
They are in order:
This one (Bugs/Niggles part1)
The Second (Niggles part2/Suggestions part 1): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138023/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-2-niggles-and-suggestions?new=1
The Third (Suggestions part 2): http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138024/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-3-suggestions-part-2?new=1
==========
A) Major Bugs:
1) Climbing the Constructor: At random times (usually after having bumped into a deployed constructor) the mounting animation will start with the diver well below the unit and thus not deposit him on the platform from where he can activate the constructor - packing it in and redeploying does not solve this, however exiting the game and loading it again sometimes does, sometimes doesn't and sometimes moving it around (by bumping into it), then reloading might solve it. Seems to happen entirely at random.
2) Building Plan bug between loads: Having planed a base (f.e. a couple of corridors onto platforms), after reloading the game (not having built all of them) led me to being unable to place new pieces, until I found out the old planned ones were still there, just not visible. Pointing the builder tool at the place made it possible to actually build them (or de-construct) although some weird graphic glitches would occur that usually would desist after completing the part.
3) In-Game Options: The game needs them. Including key-settings, graphical settings, audio, etc.
4) Terraformer button: Playing with a very different key-layout I had shift mapped to descending, making use of the terraformer pretty much impossible until I remapped descending to control. Being able to set the modifier button to a personalized key might be a solution.
5) Repair Panel in Pod: Repairing the damaged panel in the Escape pod leads it to stop emitting smoke, but when loading the game up again, the panel will be broken again (including smoke). Repairing it should be permanent and probably give the player an incentive to constructing the welder (maybe make the escape pod manoeuvrable, albeit slowly, or drop an anchor to keep it in place.)
6) Same button to Enter/Exit vehicle: I chose 'E' for using most things in the world, rather then Mouse 1 (which I liked more for tool-use i.e. Right Hand; Admittedly most of my preferred keymapping still hails from the 90's and I never could adjust to replacing the right mouse button with the current use of Space for jumping) and it works fine except for exiting a vehicle - entering the Seamoth for example works by pressing 'E', but exiting defaults to mouse 1 (left mouse button). Entering and exiting should be the same button.
7) Get Stalker teeth from killed Stalkers: Besting a Stalker (especially in the beginning) is quite a challenge with your basic knife, and finding out that they only drop teeth by munching on metal takes a while of very dangerous observation or a look on the wiki - killing a Stalker should maybe drop a single tooth and after a while respawn that Stalker (see below, B-17) in a matching location.
8) Cooking recipes reset between loads: Every fish you catch and bring to the fabricator gives you a recipe on cooking it - and are lost when next loading the game, including the tooltip that would be nice to have when looking up which type you should be hunting for next.
9) Bug when placing something at the same place you occupy: Especially noticeable in the Cyclops. Either the diver is glitching or both diver and vehicle go 'completely naners'. It happened twice to me: The first time I placed a locker on my Cyclops, but put it too close to myself while trying to arrange it perfectly - The bounding boxes overlapped and the game started shaking like a parkinsons patient on a magic fingers bed and by the time I managed to de-construct the locker, me and the Cyclops had been thrown halfway across the map, far enough to almost drain the 6 powercells installed in the submarine in order to return. The second time I had placed a set of Lockers in an open space, which turned out to be the spot you get displaced to when entering the Cyclops by way of Seamoth. I didn't manage to de-construct the Locker in time and got thrown so far off the map that there was no more ground structure under my new position. (http://i.imgur.com/gXWZdZ6.jpg - problematic placement)
10) Performance issues around Base/Terraform: This one is a bit tricky to pin down. I first noticed it when I came back to my Homebase which is admittedly rather large (albeit only corridors) and took a lot of titanium and glass to build below and above the waterlevel. I had also terraformed a bit of terrain to create a landmass about the size of 1 or 2 platforms above water. Returning I found that performance dropped sharply, leading to framerateloss, down to 1 or 2 FPS. Building a couple more giant bases in another game to find out why this happened, I found that big bases will drop performance a bit (especially when they protrude the water surface and have some bits above water) albeit not even close to what happens when you terraform the landscape. Pretty much any terraforming will (conjecturally) fill up the RAM, but raising the terraformed landmass above the watersurface is where the biggest problem seems to be located. I don't know whether the game needs to calculate waves breaking against the land or whether this has some other roots, but terraforming is -at present- not a good idea. The game continues to work normally when out of drawdistance, and usually even when not looking in the direction of the offending landmass/base.
11) Possible to create disconnected Base-parts: See attached picture. It is possible to de-construct a corridor after placing another one behind it, thus creating a single corridor nominally attached to the base but free-floating. This is not a big problem, especially since it'd allow to build free-floating bases (which would be awesome, maybe implement a free-floating platform by harvesting 4 floaters and 4 titanium), but I thought I'd mention it. (http://i.imgur.com/B344DE5.jpg - example)
12) Opened Cyclops with multiple Seamoths: When driving up to a Cyclops that has a Seamoth docked already, it'll open the bay in expectation - if you exit the Seamoth and enter the Cyclops you can walk around inside, through an invisible hangar door and through both airlocks while looking at the seaground underneath but not being exposed to it. I never tried to place a locker in the hangar bay, I suspect something terrible would happen to the locker, the Cyclops and the Seamoth. (http://i.imgur.com/Qe800T9.jpg - Cyclops with open belly - acts normal with invisible walls)
13) Cyclops person hatch won't close: The forward hatch looks like it should close when the diver moves too far away from the hidden airlock, but doesn't. It looks a bit silly and I'd suspect it is supposed to close/open as the diver moves away/comes closer, akin to the Seamoth dock.
14) Depth indicator on the right side of the Cyclops cockpit is stuck on 194m: Static texture on the depth indicator in the Cyclops' cockpit is a bit immersion-breaking. Either put some other, static value (f.e. the crafts' name) or make it an actual display.
15) Dropping things inside the Cyclops might cause bugs: Dropping a piece of titanium for instance in either the Cyclops or the Escape pod is problematic, dropping more things like small containers and other stuff gets downright crazy. The dropped items will whirl around the submarine/pod and (if lucky) glitch out of it a bit later. I managed to find two of my small containers again after they'd been glitched out of the escape pod, as well as some small items, although the 3rd container remains missing to this day. (I had not noticed the in-built Storage container until after the fifth small crate, and found that digging a hole into which one could throw the boxes under the escape pod was way more manageable)
16) Drain Cyclopse power: When installing new power cells in the Cyclops some of them always still have between 1% and 8% power left - It'd be less wasteful and frustrating to drain them in order from 100% to 0%, so exchanging them doesn't feel like wasting 10% each time.
17) Set keys displayed in HUD to the changed ones: The HUD messages will keep displaying to press the original Bindings in order to (for instance) break a rock or enter/exit a Sub or similar.
18) Display on Radiation Suit chest wrong way around: When looking down upon the (static) texture of the chest-display (or the leg display) one quickly notices the values are the wrong way around - good to read from the front by someone looking at the diver, not readable by the diver himself and since the chest display is angled/positioned so that it is easy for the diver to see but a bad position for any onlooker (say alien fish) it makes little sense for the chestdisplay to be turned the way it is.
19) A way to rotate Ladders in Bases: The ladders can only be installed statically (I suspect depending on the way the corridor is positioned) which is incredibly frustrating to navigating the base easily. Using Q/E to rotate place-ables is a very nice idea, it should apply to most place-able things. Especially ladders that keep standing in the way.
20) Gasopod gas hurts inside Bases: A friend built a base quite close to an idling Gasopod and when he entered his base the animal threw out some acid blobs that were able to hurt him inside the base (and with no way to get out, since it was a single corridor at the time he died quickly). Admittedly you can install current generators or go out and kill the animal, but it is a bit weird to be damage-able from outside beasts while standing inside a structure.
21) Quit to Main Menu button missing: Quitting to main menu and loading a different game should be a possibility. Always having to exit the game seems unnecessary.
22) Building a Corridor over a Crash and approaching it from outside (not inside) will make the Crash explode and instantly depressurize the part: Self-explanatory. Building a corridor or similar over flora/fauna should remove them like it does to surroundings.
23) Killing a Crash nest by exploding a Crash into it yields an extreme amount of Crash Powder: The Alien-Egg should probably drop between 3 and 5 crash powder instead of 14 when destroyed.
============
B ) Improvements/Small Niggles: (contain suggestions)
1) Waterlevel when building above water: A corridor placed half above/below the waters' surface will be half-filled with water, but going down a ladder will show it to be only full of air. (http://i.imgur.com/8KatirZ.jpg - Screenshot)
2) Surplus Fragments: Finding fragments (especially the Seamoth) gets crazy, fast - I have probably 2 lockers filled with only Seamoth Fragments, not to mention the others. Placing 4 in the Analyzer to speed up the process seems pointless. A suggestion I'd like to make is that every subsequent scan of a fragment slightly improves all objects of the type. For instance analysing subsequent seamoth fragments could improve its maximum depth by 1 metre, its Energypool by 1% and its Health by 1. Analysing more fragments of the Workbench could improve its energy-consumption, reinforced hull give the Cyclops it is inserted in another meter of depth and Stasis Rfile/Propulsion Cannon could slightly increase range and energy- efficiency, as the diver is reconstructing the advanced technologies of the Aurora.
3) submarines not getting stuck: Admittedly this can be circumvented by liberal use of the terraformer, but stranding the Cyclops in shallow waters is a definite possibility. Maybe a short-range teleporter could unstuck big subs by using up a lot of energy. (birdsview of the sub, a white circle where it can be placed to and a green/red shadow of the vessel, moveable via mouse, then re-aligning the subs' coordinates to the players chosen coordinates. Q/E could even turn the sub.)
4) Hull breach Cyclops message at 235m with armour installed: Despite having installed 3 armour modules, the Cyclops still messages that Hull Breach Depth has been reached at 235m instead of 700m. (although the HUD message turned correctly yellow, not red). Only happened once yet (3 Armour Mods and the Energy Mod from the Aurora).
5) Model for Diamond: Using the same model as Quartz looks lazy and confusing. A diamond model (not a cut one, admittedly) is easy enough to make, then maybe decrease opaqueness over the Quartz crystal but use same material basically.
6) Diving deep without special Suit/Oxygen/Nitrogen: The alien atmosphere might consist of some strange elements, but being able to dive without a suit at depths where the Seamoth would be crushed easily confuses the diver in me. Everything under 150 metres should use a special tank and suit (see C-b)
7) Lockers in Cyclops?: Building Lockers and placing them wherever you want is awesome, but what are the lockers on the lower level of the Cyclops? you can open them and close them, but not put anything in? Maybe it'd be interesting to make them loadouts for your diver, activated simply by opening the locker, then having a paperdoll UI on either side and a big 'Switch' button.
8) Reduce chance of Copper: I've stopped picking up copper- too few things to make with it (even including batteries, which you should need a ton of) - decrease it in favour of:
9) Higher Quartz spawn rate: Silicone and Glass (especially when you start putting lockers in your Cyclops and windows on your base) need perverse amounts of Quartz and you keep finding copper. The spawnrate of Quartz could use a bit of a tweak.
10) Reel sometimes clips: Running the Diving Reel past stones might make it clip through them (f.e. 'wrapping' it around a column). Also the infinity of the reel seems strange, make it 500m per reel with a counter on the side of the case for example. That'd make farming kelp a tad more necessary (well that and 1st aid kits) and having multiple reels for deep caves a necessity.
11) Colours for Fins/Tanks/Suits: The auras around the different Fins are horribly inadequate at showing which one you have. Anything that has to do with speed could be green (including Icons and Fin texture when looking down), the electricity generating ones blue (the lightning effect on the Charge fins is awesome btw, but a different colour would make them instantly recognizable) and similar for oxygen tanks in green for light plasteel and blue or anthracite for heavy tank icons. I'll do it for you if send me the .dds or whatever format you have the textures in. I'll even put a snazzy racing stripe on the fin-texture
(http://i.imgur.com/z3erpKX.jpg - Mock-up. Coloured Fins and Tanks.)
12) Regeneration chamber: Having something in the Emergency Pod/in a Base/in the Cyclops that explains how the player spawns back there would be nice and could double as a possibility to set respawn if you don't want to keep coming back to your escape pod, then swim 5km to where you left your Cyclops.
13) Attach Fabricator to outside of Bases: This'd be useful for building that quick pane of glass or turning some scrap into titanium while building a base or building some item you'd need while under the sea.
14) Fish getting out of Subs' way: Fish have a horrible tendency to tranquilly wait for your Seamoth or Cyclops to run into them and paste them all over the windshield, then ragdoll across the map stunned. Maybe they could at least try to get out of the way of an oncoming sub.
15) Diamond Knife different texture: The diamond knife is barely distinguishable from the basic knife, maybe make the ring glow a green colour and tint the blade more blue or less opaque.
16) More Letters on Beacons: A couple more letters on the beacon wouldn't hurt, having to abbreviate everything is a bit of a niggle; The font could be a tad smaller at the same time, thus allowing more letters.
17) Killed Fauna disappearing: Killed Aliens will stay forever, this could make an interesting game-mechanic as the Fish start decomposing, giving you the ability to harvest bacteria or plankton that you can't get any other way, then despawning the body.
18) Activate/Show Beacons: Having a tab in the PDA to disable Beacons could clear up the HUD. Activating and deactivating could be as simple as scrolling down the row of beacon entries and clicking them to grey them out/show them.
19) Stasis Rifle - No auto release: Charging the Stasis Rifle fully and keeping it at the ready would make a lot more sense than having it discharge once the timer has run out. This would also allow players to put it away rather than waste a charge or frantically hit buttons.
20) Make Small Storage Cubes equipable and placeable: Harking back to my earlier mention of the Boxes (A-14) deploying the small storage cubes anywhere but a base is fraught with problems. Being able to assign them to an action slot and then placing them would probably work better.
21) Display Energy/Charges on item icons: When looking at a locker or your inventory it'd be nice to have an instant grasp on how many charges it has left, or how much it is charged. (http://i.imgur.com/CwitYcp.jpg - Mock-up, charges on icons)
22) Reclaim Titanium Ingots: Early game the titanium ingots are a marvellous space-saver - only they won't come in handy until quite a bit later. It'd be nice that for some items, if you have them in your inventory, go to a fabricator and by right clicking the item you can reverse-nanoassemble the item into the pieces it's been made from.
23) Autoalign Corridors: Corridors (especially the straight one) will continuously 'spawn' for placing, locked into the one basic direction. When looking at a connection point they will snap to it, but only so you can place them next to each other. For continuous building, snapping hatches together (!!!but retain the possibility for the player to turn them!!!) would make for quicker and easier building.
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continued in:
http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/138023/vampyroteuthis-big-suggestions-and-bug-thread-part-2-niggles-and-suggestions?new=1
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Here's the link to the album with all Mock-ups and Screenshots of bugs/suggestions/improvements: http://imgur.com/a/8rKeh#0
That's the lot, thanks for reading. Maybe some of the suggestions resonate with you; I'll be adding more as I continue playing the game.
Have a good day and continue on your awesome path!
PS.: Do you have any openings? If you're in need of a creative madman, QA-Tester or Localizer, drop me a PN.
Yours Faithfully;
Vampyroteuthis
Comments
With regard to QA, there are public playtests weekly, Show up to a few and they tend to draft you into the PT team. That is a volunteer gig at this point.
With regard to localization there is the community translation project. hop in and add translations there as well.