Ember level glitch

[Slap Lord]

half way or something thru the map there is this one jump that goes upside down. but as soon as u jump or go foward or do anything like even turning sideways, u automatically just float up and die instead of going down to the road. so u can never ever pass this level. u guys should put this game back on early access

[IkkouSoryu]

Maybe it's the other way, floor-to-ceiling traansfer? There is one. If you're in cockpit view try switching to third person, it might clear things up.

On a related note, I'd like to adress this little rant below to the developers.

Embers, as a tutorial for manuevering thrusters and transfers, is garbage when compared to its EA counterpart.

The entire level lacks lighting badly, almost all help text has been cut out, the visual aid (arrows and such) is gone. I'll elaborate with few examples.

Instead of first-ever transfer being a clear-cut 90 degrees turn there's some weird 120 with two disconnected road pieces. You cannot even see it coming up because of green grid obscuring everything, and the help text is displayed mid-jump(!). Slo-mo is cool and all, but if player botches their first attempt (and first time players surely will) that's it for tutorial.

The help text is all wrong too - new players don't boost all the time, the reminder to keep boosting comes too late, the "use thrusters to rotate and align" line is vague (in EA level it clearly stated "use thrusters to rotate LEFT"). Gamepad users are doubly-screwed 'cause onscreen prompt (LS) doesn't help. I've just watched a streamer with no prior experience get to that point and rotate out of control because he couldn't understand what to do with left stick. It took him several tries to clear FIRST EVER transfer. That's terrible.

Next there's floor-to-ceiling transfer. EVERYTHING about it sucks. It comes even before wall-to-wall transfer (WHY?), there's NO help text, NO visual cues and if that wasn't hard enough it comes right after 90 degree corner. WTF guys, is this supposed to be Aftermath or Monolith? Remember, new players might even not be aware that such transfer is possible.

The transfer is pretty tough by itself. Really tight gap between two pieces gives just enough time to do a 180. Just enough, that is, if you know exactly what to do and have muscle memory down. Also, two pieces are parallel to each other so if you don't finish rotation in time you'll fall away, never to recover. I mean, experienced players can help themselves with Grip, but whoops! Grip gets introduced several levels later.

Last but not the least, there's a segment where you must navigate a gap in the road by rotating onto a building. Whose idea it was to butcher it so badly? The entire area is pitch black, NO help text, NO arrows, no nothing. Again, new players might not even know that you can do that, hell, some might assume that objects outside "play area" have no collision. The aforementioned streamer kept dying a lot on this segment 'cause he kept driving into the edge of the road he was supposed to jump onto. Because there's no light at all. Random spikes didn't help him any.

I guess scrapping Embers and replacing it with Aftermath is out of question, so I'll keep my suggestions within reason.

1) Add light sources to the infected area, optimally change track geometry so players can see every transfer coming up with time to spare.
2) Add help text to EVERY transfer, make existing one clear.
3) Add visual cues. Arrows are awesome. If you're hellbent on keeping power failure theme make 'em spark and blink, that'll actually get attention.
4) Inform player that every wall is a driving surface, light that building up.

[win8linux]

Yep, all of what IkkouSoryu is true. I'm still stuck with the floor-to-ceiling transfer and I've tried so many times to do it. I even considered jumping onto the wrong side of the track a couple of times thinking that it would be easier. Nope, no dice.

[Californ1a]

Video for reference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUCZl0q5TmU

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

Instead of first-ever transfer being a clear-cut 90 degrees turn there's some weird 120 with two disconnected road pieces. You cannot even see it coming up because of green grid obscuring everything, and the help text is displayed mid-jump(!). Slo-mo is cool and all, but if player botches their first attempt (and first time players surely will) that's it for tutorial.

The reason it's rotated slightly away from you is so that you have to learn to rotate to align the car to land, instead of being caught by the road or driving sideways along the small walls on the edges of the road. It's so the road doesn't catch you; you instead have to learn the mechanic rather than "getting lucky" to get through.

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

The help text is all wrong too - new players don't boost all the time, the reminder to keep boosting comes too late, the "use thrusters to rotate and align" line is vague (in EA level it clearly stated "use thrusters to rotate LEFT"). Gamepad users are doubly-screwed 'cause onscreen prompt (LS) doesn't help. I've just watched a streamer with no prior experience get to that point and rotate out of control because he couldn't understand what to do with left stick. It took him several tries to clear FIRST EVER transfer. That's terrible.

The keep boosting text is late because players will fail it. It appears afterward because when it appeared before (like the in EA tutorial), people just ignored it and let go of boost when they jumped/rotated. I was at a convention with the devs when they had this exact transfer in the convention demo, and it was definitely an improvement in the number of people who understood it compared to the EA tutorial. This transfer teaches to continue holding boost while doing the transfer. Just because something takes multiple attempts in a tutorial doesn't make it a bad tutorial, it just means the player is learning and it isn't an easy thing to do.

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

Next there's floor-to-ceiling transfer. EVERYTHING about it sucks. It comes even before wall-to-wall transfer (WHY?), there's NO help text, NO visual cues and if that wasn't hard enough it comes right after 90 degree corner. WTF guys, is this supposed to be Aftermath or Monolith? Remember, new players might even not be aware that such transfer is possible.

The transfer is pretty tough by itself. Really tight gap between two pieces gives just enough time to do a 180. Just enough, that is, if you know exactly what to do and have muscle memory down. Also, two pieces are parallel to each other so if you don't finish rotation in time you'll fall away, never to recover. I mean, experienced players can help themselves with Grip, but whoops! Grip gets introduced several levels later.

There isn't a floor to ceiling transfer in Embers. If I had to guess, you're probably talking about the first wall to wall transfer (around 1:58 in the above video). I agree there should probably be slightly more space between the two roads, but with that said, having more space between the roads can also be a detriment. The first wall to wall transfer in the EA camapign had too much space between the roads which made it much more difficult for newer players to close the gap. Less space between the roads means you just need to do one rotation movement instead of rotating to align for the landing and having extra time to overrotate - it's just a single motion required and the car aligns itself because of the smaller gap. You don't have to tilt the opposite direction to compensate for your rotation in order to properly align for the landing.

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

Last but not the least, there's a segment where you must navigate a gap in the road by rotating onto a building. Whose idea it was to butcher it so badly? The entire area is pitch black, NO help text, NO arrows, no nothing. Again, new players might not even know that you can do that, hell, some might assume that objects outside "play area" have no collision. The aforementioned streamer kept dying a lot on this segment 'cause he kept driving into the edge of the road he was supposed to jump onto. Because there's no light at all. Random spikes didn't help him any.

This part isn't in Embers, it's in Research, much closer toward the end of the campaign. I definitely agree the building is too dark, however, you can freely increase your gamma in the graphics options and it is visible, but that particular building is much too dark for the default gamma.

[IkkouSoryu]

Originally posted by Californ1a:

There isn't a floor to ceiling transfer in Embers. If I had to guess, you're probably talking about the first wall to wall transfer (around 1:58 in the above video).

You're right and I'm wrong. Still, why does this relatively difficult transfer come immediately after the corner? Why there's no text?

Originally posted by Californ1a:

This part isn't in Embers, it's in Research, much closer toward the end of the campaign.

I'm wrong again, memory tricked me because it was a part of Aftermath. Although that's another good question - why was this segment removed from tutorial? Now it just abruptly comes up in the campaign. Granted, decent lighting and visual cues would solve most of the problem there.

[Californ1a]

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

You're right and I'm wrong. Still, why does this relatively difficult transfer come immediately after the corner? Why there's no text?

I believe the turn actually helps align newer players on the proper position of the first wall (top vs bottom) so that they can more easily make the transfer. If you were going straight, then you may have a tendency to slip down toward the bottom of the wall before trying to do the transfer (as was common in the EA campaign), and then you'd just fall because you're too low on the initial wall. That said, I don't know for sure if that was the design decision for it, but that's my take on it.

Originally posted by IkkouSoryu:

I'm wrong again, memory tricked me because it was a part of Aftermath. Although that's another good question - why was this segment removed from tutorial? Now it just abruptly comes up in the campaign. Granted, decent lighting and visual cues would solve most of the problem there.

Aftermath also never explicitly told the player to use the building. The only time that was explicitly said is during pre-EA private alpha when they used to have a single tutorial map to teach all mechanics. I think it's mainly just because the building in Research is too dark.

[Sysgen]

Next there's floor-to-ceiling transfer. EVERYTHING about it sucks. It comes even before wall-to-wall transfer (WHY?), there's NO help text, NO visual cues and if that wasn't hard enough it comes right after 90 degree corner. WTF guys, is this supposed to be Aftermath or Monolith? Remember, new players might even not be aware that such transfer is possible.

Just started, no clue. Help lol

[nick]

I got stuck on the wall to wall / floor to ceiling too. can't figure out what you're supposed to do.

[FlangEG]

I noticed something through reading this forum. Nobody mentioned the arrow on the roof/HUD of the car. The arrow points toward the gravity. If from the top of it looks like a compass/cross with a dot on it, you're right side up, if it looks like a thick/bold dot. you're upside down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1940613372
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1940613813

I took & posted these screenshots to help you.