Can't even play it

[Sevrin]

Something weird goes on with the resolution, it's like it adjusts my monitor to a lower resolution but uses the one I selected, so the edges of the screen are cut off and I can't even really figure out what's going on before I start playing.
I get a world running and I'm trapped in some bubble, I can't do anything and the help guide doesn't adress this situation. I try another world, same problem. I selected survival mode but I have access to all the blocks as though it were creative mode, yet I can't place them and I'm just stuck in the bubble with a couple machines.

Also unrelated to these problems, the opening crash scene doesn't seem to have a way to be skipped which is really annoying.
There doesn't look like a way to adjust the controls from within the game, it must be exited, that's also annoying.
I can't see any way to exit to the main menu while in a world, it just exits the game entirely.

[PhoenixPDG1]

this post is about the bubble http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/537405286658223131/

[Mithious]

Okay, I'll try to cover each in turn:

Resolution:

I've no idea what is going on with the resolution, all of that is handled by Unity, the 3d engine we're using. Can you supply a screenshot so I can take a look at what you're seeing.

Bubble:

This is the tutorial, it stops people running off while we're trying to teach them the game. I honestly have absolutely no idea why so many people seem to be having trouble with this. There is a big floating instruction message over the centre block of your base telling you what to do, I really want to know why are people ignoring this to the extent that they bring it up as a bug in the forum?

If you *cannot* see a floating message over the central machine of your base then let us know because that's a serious bug we need to fix right away.

Creative Blocks:

Did you access this by pressing the = key for the creative block picker? Right now that exists for debugging and testing purposes, we'll disable it sometime soon. All survival blocks need to either be picked up or constructed in the manufacturing plant.

Crash Scene

While the crash scene is going on the game is generating the landscape around your starting area. If you were able to skip the intro you'd just be sitting there waiting instead. Considering most people will spend upwards of 40 hours playing in a single world the minute or so to wait isn't too bad. If you've ever played terraria you'll know what it's like while you sit there forever waiting for the progress bar to complete.

Controls

The unity control system is an absolute pile of excrement. We totally agree with that, there is no built in way to rebind keys outside of the launcher, or even find out what it has been rebound to. We want to replace the entire system with a third party option however that is a lower priority than fixing bugs. Personally I'd recommend against changing any key bindings at the moment because often it doesn't handle it that well (sometimes our fault, usually unity's) and unity provides no way to reset them if something goes wrong.

Exiting to the main menu

Currently there is no way to exit to the main menu because of some percularities with the way we store the data makes means we need to do a lot of work to make sure it's all cleaned up properly. It's one of the things I've volunteered to take a look at (I'm a volunteer developer that works on the game in my spare time). Generally most people play with a single world and therefore are unlikely to need to exit the the menu which is why it's not been a priority, however with multiplayer finally becoming playable there is obviously a bigger need there to be able to do that.


I hope that helps answer the points you've raised, if you could provide a screenshot for the display issue (which is a new one for me), and clarify about the tutorial I'll see what I can do to help there.

[Sevrin]

Okay well the tutorial wasn't obvious to me because I wasn't aware I was in a tutorial. I thought it was simply instructions for using that block and didn't realize I was supposed to actually do that to be able to do anything else, when I looked for help in the help screen it didn't say anything about my situation either. Maybe some kind of notification that you're in a tutorial during the loading screen? also a notification that the game is loading during the loading scene would clarify that point for everyone.

Is there a way to post the screenshots in this chat? or do I have to upload it to somewhere and give you a link.

When re loading the world I came across an interesting glitch. It started playing the loading scene but I was in the bubble. Almost as if when it tried to put me in the ship the bubble snapped me back because I had already been in it and re loaded. I was unable to move for a few seconds, and the graphics went wonky, as if the loading scene was still playing but doing so THROUGH the blocks around me. I could see black objects moving through the blocks.

Also having completed the tutorial I still feel stranded, like I have no idea what to do. It made me craft some power core and didn't tell me what it was for. I feel like the tutorial was pointless at this point cause I hardly learned anything.

I don't know what happened the first time I tried to play, maybe it was part of the tutorial or something but I don't have all those blocks anymore, just the ones I pick up.

A unified exit window button would be super cool. I keep finding myself having to figure out what button to press to exit the window I'm in

[Mithious]

You're probably the first person to actually try reading the handbook (if everyone read it we wouldn't have needed to put in the tutorial in the first place) and it's ended up somewhat out of date. Making some updates to it, in particular better integration between it and the rest of the game, is one of the things I'm intending to look at this weekend.

We can certainly look at making it more obvious you're in the tutorial, the possibility that someone would interpret the instruction as purely informational didn't cross our minds. That's useful feedback so thanks, sometimes getting people to tell you what's wrong can be really difficult.

It is possible to take a screenshot in steam by pressing F12, uploading it, then sharing the link here. Alternatively you can upload it to your favourite image sharing website (e.g. imgur).

Regarding reloading the world:

At the moment you generally see the intro for about half a second as that's where the player position is initially set to the Unity scene, it then moves you into the horrible outdated drop pod animation.

This is where you start inside a drop pod that keeps the world hidden for a few seconds while it loads the world immediately around you. I personally hate it and would like it to be replaced with a suit bootup animation or something to similar to perform the same task. These sorts of things are ones that I would like to see polished up in the next couple of months before leaving early access.

One of the things to remember is this game is being developed by a tiny team (I have a full time job and just do this to help out the main dev that's a friend of mine) so we have to be very careful about how time is spent. We don't have a load of junior developers around to throw at menial tasks (I wish we did, that would be great). Right now the main focus is on bug fixing, e.g. I've been doing a lot of fixes to issues with the UI (e.g. where you can end up with multiple windows open overlapping each other, or end up in a broken state where it thinks a UI window is open but isn't).

Despite the lack of polish there is a lot of good gameplay here, and if you can overlook the flaws it is a lot of fun for the price of the game (you'll see plenty of people with 100s of hours of playtime). I hope you stick with it :)

[Mithious]

"Also having completed the tutorial I still feel stranded, like I have no idea what to do. It made me craft some power core and didn't tell me what it was for. I feel like the tutorial was pointless at this point cause I hardly learned anything."

The tutorial is a basic introduction to the following:

1. How to make power in your CPH
2. How to get that power out of the battery next to the CPH into your suit.
3. How to get that power into an ore extractor attached to a coal vein.
4. How to get the coal out of the storage hopper next to the ore extractor.
5. How to use the scanner to scan an unknown block.
6. Which block is the research station and how to research the scanned block
7. Which block is the manufactring plant and how to craft an item.
8. Opens the handbook for further reading (which most people will immediately close anyway)

The item you crafted was simply a power core for your robot buddie ARTHER to make him operational again. With the exception of sending off an ore ping using the left mouse button on the scanner and using the smelter that is pretty much all you really need to know to get started in FortressCraft (hey, it's more instruction than you get in Minecraft! :P)

It's now up to you to look through the items in the manufacturing plant and the research in the research station to work out what you want to do next. What you should be looking to do is finding copper and tin (you'll see most things in the manufacturing plant need them). You have three ore extractors on you, and you know how to power them, so get searching :)


"I don't know what happened the first time I tried to play, maybe it was part of the tutorial or something but I don't have all those blocks anymore, just the ones I pick up."

Where were you seeing the blocks? In you inventory, or in the hotbar? You shouldn't actually be seeing the hotbar at all until you complete the tutorial so I'm not sure how you would have ended up with that visible. I've made a lot of changes there in the next version so it's possibly already fixed anyway, still somewhat strange though.

"A unified exit window button would be super cool."

Escape is the general exit whatever window you have open button. You can also push the button you used to open the window (with a couple of exceptions which should be fixed in the next version).


It's 2am here so about time I was going to bed.

[Mithious]

The issue we have here is we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

With no tutorial people don't know what they are doing, get frustrated and leave a negative review.

With an unskippable tutorial people get frustrated that they can't skip it.

With a skippable tutorial, we're back to problem one, people skip it then have no idea what they are supposed to do.

The age of people actually putting in the effort to explore the options available in the world, even by some trial and error, seem to have passed :/

And yet people seem to be perfectly happy to work out how to do stuff independantly in Minecraft by looking up the crafting patterns online, or watching a let's play, or asking in the forum. But suddenly when we expect people to work some stuff out on their own, and simply build stuff and see what happens, we're doing it wrong, if you have any thoughts on that let me know.

[Sevrin]

What you're doing wrong is worrying to much about stupid people. Read the comments, if the solution is not in your guide then it's their own damn fault. I didn't feel like I got much out of the tutorial but I've been just fine working things out on my own, just like minecraft. There's actually more direction in your game cause I don't have to go to the wiki to find crafting recipes, they are already in the game.
The thing about people who would skip the tutorial is doing the tutorial is super easy and done quickly (once you realize you're doing a tutorial lol) and there isn't enough time to really let the things you are doing sink in. That being said I wouln't have figured out the scanner for a while if not for the tutorial
I think it's great that you take the time to read and reply to all the comments you get, but try not to take things personally, this is the internet after all. Take the useful things you can get and use only those, ignore the rest of the trolls.

[Mithious]

The problem is the negative reviews are really hurting sales of the game as it's ended up in the scary "Mixed" category.

Take a look at three of the most recent reviews:

"what do i do this game sucks" (0.4 hours played)

"looks like it has potential but it is really confusing, mabye dumb it down a bit or make a better tutorial." (0.5 horus played)

"Piece of ♥♥♥♥." <- this guy deleted the comments, but essentially he started playing, didn't understand what to do, refunded the game, in 18 minutes. Didn't even ask for help.

[Sevrin]

Wait, refunding is a thing you can do?

Okay so here's what I like best in a game. A fun tutorial. (this is the problem with putting your game up as early access) Ever played SC2? It teaches you slowly over the course of several story based missions how to play. Introduces new concepts throughout the entire game, new units for each mission. Now obviously you can't do something like that. But perhaps an optional tutorial with a very visible button and a notification if you start without playing the tutorial that it is highly recommended.
Now this tutorial could be a small pregenerated world with resources close to the surface etc. Voice acting would be a huge benefit too because people tend to not want to read a bunch. If you could find a voice actor to be basically your cortana for the simulation. Picture something like this:
Welcome to the pilot survival training, in this scenario your ship has crash landed and is not repairable with the tools you have on hand, you must learn to survive in the harshest climates in case this worst case scenario should come to pass.
It starts you off by a crashed ship you could program into the game (I don't know what you had before the bubble but maybe go back to that?) and then it walks you through with both text and voice each step of building the things you need, teaches you how to mine and automate and whatever else.
Then in the real game go back to what you had originally, I think you were on to somehting there. Keep your artistic flare in the game. Maybe show you ejecting from your ship, then you have to find the crashed ship and salvage it for parts to build the structres that you need to survive, along with maybe some scrap iron and what not?

That's the kind of thing I'd expect in a finished game of course.

[Sevrin]

The screenshot btw http://www.tiikoni.com/tis/view/?id=d7436b1

[steveman0]

Do you have a multimonitor setup? The way the screen is stretched it makes me think it's doing something funny like trying to connect to multiple screens (even if you don't actually have one).

[Sevrin]

I have two monitors but my display settings are set only for one

[AndreasB]

What got me was the battery for ARTHUR... I had no clue if I had to do anything with it, heck, I didnt even know who/what arthur was! And I did the tutorial.

Why is it still in my inventory? Did I not plug it into ARTHUR? Deos he receive power wirelessly?

The upgrades for my suit, why are they in my inventory using up space? Shouldnt they be in like a character screen or something?

[Sevrin]

Not entirely sure what that has to do with anything that's been posted so far, but are you really gonna complain about inventory space when you have like triple the number of slots as you would in minecraft and things stack seemingly infinitely?

[Mogsie]

I think the screeshot problem is because it's a 1280x1024 monitor. Someone else has told me the title screens don't fit 4:3 ratio screens properly.