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First Impressions


Supreme Cmdr
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From the demo (Homeland Security CMDR IA mission), I could never keep the damn New Yorker alive long enough for it to carry out its mission. Staying alive myself was no problem, but once the New Yorker jumped into the Mars region, it was toast. I even tried pulling the reds away from where the New Yorker jumps in by jumping to another gate beforehand.

I have to revisit that mission now that I have the full game.

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Ok, one word. Awesome. You really nailed it SC. Though I've only played for a short while it's rock solid and beautiful to look at. The hyperjump animation is killer.

I need to play around with it a lot more, and play with some settings because I noticed a few small issues on my rig. I don't have the large green reticule in my HUD and Saturn has no rings!! I'm sure it has something to do with my VC settings, so I'll massage them a bit to see what's up.

It really kicks ass though and I can't wait to dive in deeper.

More to follow...

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

That large Green reticle was removed because I found it to be too goofy.


Ah, actually that was a wise choice, I honestly like it better without.

quote:

Saturn having no rings is a different story. You might want to create a topic in the tech support area so that we can check it out.

Will do. Lemme see if I can get them to show then I'll put up some info.

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I just installed it for the first time last night. My thoughts:

1) The ship lighting effects were the first noticeable enhancement that I could see. The way the ships glimmer in the light given off by the Nebulae and suns gives them a distinct shiny metallic look. I like it.

2) The planets (viewed from space) have a noticeable cloud cover. A very nice effect, but on my machine the cloud cover gives the impression that it is rotating very rapidly. Not sure if this is a graphical glitch with my PC or not, but it's no big deal.

3) The hyperspace and planetfall animations are spectacular.

4) The planet terrain is a MAJOR improvement. The planets finally feel like living breathing ecosystems, and add tremendously to the level of immersion.

5) The FPS controls are improved but the contol/movement still feels a tad clumsy (this is comparing a game that does virtually EVERYTHING to a game like Doom or HL that only need to focus on the FPS control scheme, so I'm not surprised.) Being a very adaptable gamer, I'm sure I will get the hang of it.

All in all, I plan to be spending ALOT more time in First Person.

So far, a very worthy upgrade, in my opinion.

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I've downloaded and patched the game without a problem.

Improvments are numerous:

-gfx effets (hyper jump cinematics)

-Hud simplifictaion

-terrains looks realistic

-shaders on planet gives a niice looking effect

-And many more

For me the main jewel is the improvement in the game stability. 5 hours of gameplay without a straight CTD. Its my new record.

UCAWA is, without doubt, a major step in what will be the reference in space sim games scene.

keep it up SC.

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Ok first impressions...

Autopatcher is excellent! couldnt find another word for it.

Graphical improvements are excellent also, spent most of my shakedown cruise admiring the eye candy.

Stability is great, though I have a bit to report which I'll do so on the tech sup thread if it doesnt already exist as a known problem.

All in all, very impressed. I'm as impressed now as I was way back when i was first blown away at the concept that bc3k v1.0 offered. Thanks for all the work SC, you've done an incredible job, and congrats on getting the digital download working!

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Additional first impressions:

So I loaded her up just to play for a little while last night. Had retrieved some mining drones from the surface of the moon, and wanting to maximize my profits, decided to head to Velari in Polaris to unload the minerals. I had been fortunate enough to afford some shield and armor upgrades before I began my trek, and boy would I need it.

I find that lots of enemy craft jump into a system and just ignore me, so I'm happy to concentrate on my task. Jumped through Jupiter and Lyrius without hassle and I think I was about to jump to Lennen, or I might have made it to Lennen and was going to jump to Polaris, but I can't remember because what came next had me fighting for my life for about an hour.

Pretty much every kind of Cap ship and fighter from every kind of race suddenly decided they had tolerated my presence long enough (or maybe it was because I turned the music on, I usually play without it.) I found myself engaged in the largest firefight ever in my BC/UC career. There was simply too much going on to describe it fully, but man was it a blast! It was pure mayhem and just when I thought I could take a breath the red glow of shield damage filled my screen and I was attacked again, over and over! I ended up with about eight intruders on board, destroyed a half dozen cap ships and countless fighters.

I finally had to turn tail and head for safe haven as all of my Marines were nearly half dead from the beating the intruders handed out. I had nearly depleted my stores of missiles in the process and the Officers quarters was nothing but a smoking hole inside my ship.

It was pure insanity, but I survived and I can't wait to give it another go tonight! This is the best version in the series to date!

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

quote:

Originally posted by Grizzle:

(or maybe it was because I turned the music on, I usually play without it.)

LMAO!!!


Don't laugh! I've since taken to listening to Hearts of Space internet streams during gameplay. I'm not taking any unnecessary chances!
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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, I'll put in my 2 cents now that I got some time on it.

It's amazing how the graphics have improved and how the universe where you are immersed seems alive comparing to UC and even BCMG.

All seems more realistic and now even a single fighter can dare to pose a treat to a carrier if it's skillfull enough; it seems to me that the AI has largely improved over UC and even my fighters can achieve kills on enemy from the very start of the game, something that was not likely to happend before.

Very nice work SC, now we play in a more challenging universe that before, it'll not be a piece of cake to get to GAMMULA this time.

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Hi guys,

I just bought UCAWA big improvement over UC, anyhow this question and or observation is just out of curiosity. In the game I approached earth and landed on it multible times on different sides of the globe but for some reason it is always dark? is there a way or going to be a way to detect the side of the planet body that has day break? I know this is probably a stupid question. Other than that pet peve of mine this game is solid.

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quote:


Originally posted by SpikeBC:

I know this is probably a stupid question.


Yes, you're right. Apart from that, this is not the thread for it. But consider this your one - and only - free pass.

Look in the Tacops section of the manual on how to determine where to land. Heck, its even in the tutorial. Basically, pick a spot that is daylight on Tacops and go from there.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi everyone... I'vejust installed UCAWA and played it a little, haven't had time to test it deeply, but it's first impressions we are here to talk about, not a complete review, ain't we?

At first, I have to say that i've never played a UC game before, i've played only BCMG.

Anyway, starting from the interface, gameplay, controls, etc I found myself pretty at ease: as said in the manual, controls have remained almost unchanged, and remembering the few different ones is quite easy.

The "feeling", as far as I've played, has remained almost unchanged, which is a good thing... I've noticed that cap ships are much slower than their counterpart in BCMG, which is a good thing also, because these ships should be huge and bulky, but I wonder why also fighters have all been slowed down under 1000 m/s (i repeat I'm still used to BCMG, dunno about other UC games)

Graphics is good: interface is "friendly", nice ships, much better models of people, and nice environment on planets.

Sound environment is good, with nice music, the chatter of the crew, laser sounds and so on.

The game runs smoothly, with almost no slow downs or trouble of any sort (there are a couple of things that maybe will deserve a Tech Support topic, but first I'm gonna check the manual, update the drivers, and properly test the game).

Anyway, thumbs up for UCAWA

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just downloaded UC AWA from Direct2drive (thank you SC for making that deal, I love that place and trust them beyond words for the service they've provided me in the past) The first thing I did was play the as a EF marine in some IA gigs. I found that I died without knowing what was going on, just seeming to get wasted without every even hearing fun fire. I was getting rather angry, disappointed even. Then I realized (because I'm slow and take a while to understand) That I'm not playing half life 2 any more, and that this game should be treated more like delta force with extreme realism settings on I started using all the tools I had on me and soon found myself crawling through dense beautiful land scapes using my radar to find and kill enemies before they ever saw me.

I love this game, with all my heart and soul if only for the intense and !Realistic! FPS part of the game. The first time I was sneaking into kill range of an enemy base, and friendly fighters began to attack it I almost threw my mouse across the room as the enemies anti-air defense systems filled the sky with so many lasers I couldn't tell where they were all coming from. Hence I gave myself the mission of sneaking into base and taking those defenses out.

So my first impression of the game is that all the bad reviews I read about the game were false. (duh) One even went so far as to say that all you could do in the game is command a complex command ship or run around alone as a marine and left the review at that (kinda leaves out a lot O.o) I find that you had added depth to the FPS part of the game that was always there in the space combat. Sadly I'm a horrible pilot and even worse commander so I think I'll stick to ground pounding for now. Thanks again SC and I hope I didn't say anything to offend you.

BTW It has been a while since I've posted to the boards. I pray please don't smite me because I don't have a system profile. My profile says it has been locked and I can't edit it. Forgive me

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Whoa!!! Look what the cat dragged in!!! Where the heck have you been!?!

Anyway, you don't need a profile in your sig UNLESS you are posting in the tech support area. We changed the rules while you were AWOL.

Nice to have you back. The gang's still here; plus a few wet-behind-the-ears newbies. You'll notice them soon enough. Two words: LB

As for fp mode, you might want to read this thread over at AVAULT.

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I played UC awhile back with a pretty old rig and was very impressed with the game, despite the obvious issues with trying to run it on a rather weak box which was well below the min. reqmts. Anyway, I recently upgraded my machine and wanted to check out the latest offering since I now have a better equipped machine.

I'm still working through the tutorial, but figured I'd stop and post some initial impressions.

[*]I bought UCAWA online through Digital River. Being able to do the whole thing online was a big plus for me. The purchase/download/install process was very smooth.

[*]This one is probably just me, but I couldn't figure out how to add another game to my web registration. The result is I have two separate system profiles, one for each game key (UC and UCAWA). Perhaps this is the way its intended to work. Hopefully I didn't do something incorrectly.

[*]It was confusing that the updater just runs and exits without indicating you're up to date. A quick check of the forums, VCF, and downloads page along with a manual examination of the updater XML file being downloaded by the updater cleared things up for me. I did notice the VCF seems to indicate one later version (v1.00.09) than is available from the updater or the web site (even after registering the game key). I'm guessing this is only available for internal/beta testers?

[*]overall I'm once again impressed by the depth of the simulation as I've been every time I've dabbled in the products in this franchise. I've never spent enough time to gain significant expertise mostly due to having a crappy machine before, but it is pretty cool how much thought/time has gone into this. you get the feeling you could spend tons of time with the game and still not scratch the surface of possibilities.

[*]I love the way the interface works wrt the priority targets list, the "tab list", and ctrl+p designation. This greatly simplifies things in heated situations, allowing you to very quickly order your ships around.

[*]The lighting effects on the ships are awesome!

[*]I got the impression that the scale of things wasn't consistent between the first and third person pov when outside your ship standing on your ship. i.e., from a 3rd person pov, zoomed out, you look like a dot compared to your ship, but when you switch to 1st person pov it seems like it would look bigger than it does. Sorry if this isn't clearer. It could just be too much caffeine and not enough sleep :-)

[*]When landing a fighter on a planet, exiting it, and then running back to the fighter, the game bounces you away from the fighter if you try and run right up next to it. If you then use the jet-pack and try and land on top of it, you get in a wierd sort of oscillation rapidly moving up and down until you jet-pack away. On a similar note, when trying to land on my ship in space, my char sunk waist deep into the ship and had to move a bit to eventually surface.

[*]the transition between the bridge interface and the tactical/logistix/etc. interface has always seemed a bit jarring to me. it seems like the tactical/logistix screens could be overlaid on the bridge display using the same visual style used by the other bridge tactical displays providing some more continuity. not a big deal though. it gets the job done.

[*]although there are a number of ways to target things in space, when you're sitting in front of something, it'd be nice to be able to just click it in the 3D world and have it targeted.

[*]it would be nice to be able to configure the distance at which you drop out of hyperspace so you wouldn't have the additional time closing that last bit of the trip to the gate for example.

[*]being able to zoom in/out in the F9 view using the mouse wheel would be a big plus.

[*]despite having all the settings cranked up, when flying very low over a planet's surface only a very small radius appears to be rendering in high detail (trees, etc). i think my machine could handle a larger radius and it'd be nice to increase this. perhaps this is an option I haven't yet discovered.

Anyway, my overall impression is a 10 out of 10 for UCAWA as I would have expected with something in the BC series. Excellent product and it makes other space games look pretty trivial in comparison.

Note that I was brainstorming from my initial experience with the game to get the above list. All said and done, the game is great. I just wanted to provide what I could for feedback.

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Lets see..

  1. You need to register each game separately. So yeah, you did it correctly.
  2. Thats how the updater works. If there is a new version, it will tell you. Otherwise it will just quit. No fuss. No muss.
  3. The scale is consistent. The internal and external views use different cameras.
  4. The collision detect will push you away from an object which is not a support structure. Fighters - unlike cap ships - are not support structures.
  5. The bridge and frontend (Logistix, Tactical) systems use a different system. Not sure difficult it is to click a mouse to activate a frontend system. Don't sweat the small [irrelevant] stuff.
  6. Click in the TRS for selecting objects using the mouse. Thats why its there. The bridge is not a radar system.
  7. The hyperspace jump distance takes into account your velocity, size and size of the target, when it determins how far to emerge. There is no need to configure it because most gamers will just screw it up and wonder why they keep missing their jump target. I trust my computer's AI system more than I trust any gamer's brain cells.
  8. The mouse is not used - nor required in external views. So there is no reason to implement mouse zoom just for that. Use the keyboard. It actually works just fine.
  9. Go to Config and configure your terrain visibility. Good luck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello Derek!

I just managed to get my copy of UCAWA

Great job with this version. The game plays great, the missions are engaging, and the visual upgrades really made a difference for me.

One of the things that I liked about the original BC3K was the ability to transport the AE to any craft any time you wanted to do so. I realize that this had been changed a long time ago, but I still miss it because it added another level of tension to the combat that I enjoyed. Any chance of bringing back that function into the game?

I hope all is well with you and your family.

Take Care,

Nick

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quote:


Originally posted by Nicholas Dogris, Ph.D.:

One of the things that I liked about the original BC3K was the ability to transport the AE to any craft any time you wanted to do so. I realize that this had been changed a long time ago, but I still miss it because it added another level of tension to the combat that I enjoyed. Any chance of bringing back that function into the game?


I removed it because it was unrealistic and left too many holes in the game. I have absolutely no intentions of bringing it back. You can still send your AE to any craft you choose; you just can't hot-switch between crafts regardless of where your AE happens to be.

If anything, the new method adds more tension than the previous method, because your AE is more in harm's way. Leaving the bridge of your CC should have consequences. Now it does.

Glad you like the new game. A lot of work went into it.

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  • 1 month later...

my first impression is that I try the first IA scenario as either a pilot or commander of Homeworld Insecurity, and I instantly lose 25000 experience when we jump to mars because the ship I'm supposed to protect gets blown out of the water while my ship is still launching fighters and acquiring targets! Worse if I jump in FIRST I die within 30 seconds from missle hits which I can't evade nor do my turrets or fighters succeed in shooting any down no matter what I do...how does this make me want to buy the game? Nice demo...

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