Hello Galactic Survivalists! In the last blog we teased you a little with the story arc that would be concluded later this year. This is still a bigger project, but we can update you on some other stuff in that regard. Those of you that are with the game for a while might have played through most of the story missions already several times. Some of the major updates changed things here and there, due to the technical possibilities changed as well. We are trying to take advantage of every new addition that helps storytelling. Be it planet design, mission feature or dialogues. That being said, with 1.5 the content team finally found the time to achieve most of the badly needed rework of the first six story chapters. These once existed individually, were joined together later but were lacking a lot of consistency - not only in the information they give to the player. This has now been improved to a merely pre-final state and will be ready for testing in the upcoming Experimental phase. Without too many spoilers: the initial missions on the starter planet have been revamped a lot. The following missions have been spread in the starter system and do NOT take place in the same starter orbit anymore. Also: as we hope these are now in good shape in terms of story content, the missions are now following a certain progression of a literal story LINE, although most of them will NOT activate automatically anymore. Instead you will be given enough info on where to find the next story tidbit and how to activate it. The question if this setup works and if the information is given in an adequate way, is of course to be answered with your feedback we hope to see a lot in the upcoming Experimental phase. Last, but not least, there is one open topic which is a quite delicate one: the ingame tutorial. For 1.5 we have re-added an improved ‘Robinson Protocol’ for everyone starting out in the galaxy of Empyrion the first time. As always the tutorial can be skipped at game start for those that do not need it, but for all the others it should offer the most basic training for the most basic things you need to know about the game. This is, again, a question that we hope to answer with your help in the upcoming Experimental phase. Although those participating in the Experimental are usually not new to the game, we hope you can help us to answer the question of the tutorial steps will help a new player to survive his first hours and be specific enough to give valuable info, but not be too annoying at the same time. There is one addition to this topic, which might be quite important for those helping out on that topic: When playing the tutorial, most of you might still find it quite linear. It is still very linear, that is true, but the goal for 1.5 is to track down which elements are really necessary for a new player. As we wrote in the first paragraph: we aim to include any new technique the game code allows us to use. While we develop version 1.6 and 1.7, new technical features will be added that shall allow us to leave most of the linearity behind and improve to a point where the presentation of the necessary lessons will feel more like an “inline explanation” than following a guide. Not only for the tutorial, but also for mission design. Which of the current game story missions did you like the most? Which do you think needed improvement because they were too hard or confusing? Anything else you wanted to say on this topic? Let us know - we still have time to evaluate your feedback. Have a great day! Read you soon. Empyrion Dev Team
There is more coming in the future. More than I thought. A lot. It is good and I hope everything will go smooth. As smooth as possible that is. I was planing on trying Robinson protocol again since its been a while since I last did. You guys give me more reasons to do so. Looking forward for the future releases.
Thanks for trying to improve the missions somehow. But I still won't be able to advance further than the first one. Because there is no translation of missions into my language. Although, on the other hand, when they are completed, they may be engaged in translation. And then I will know the final, modified version of the plot.
The Ilmarinen. I hate that place. I don't mean the lack of guidance markers to know where to go. I mean the enemies. How many, where they spawn, and which ones spawn. Too many, right on top of you, way too tough. If you die and respawn outside the ship when doors are locked/disabled, you have to cheat back in. And the worst part is the chamber with the alien turret. It's near impossible to destroy it without dying. You have to cheat to kill it. And yes, I used the platforms to get closer to it to avoid being shot. But those don't cover you for getting past it at the end. And the pirate base when finding the A.I. for the story. The NPCs (not pirate) that spawn and shoot you, spawn indefinitely. So when you get stuck in conversation, you DIE and miss dialogue because you are thrust into conversation when you get near him. I'd change those two things. But the rest of this looks cool. I'm looking forward to the new setup.
Not too long ago the Devs asked Players for stepping forward and help them to TRANSLATE Texts into their Language and I believe the request is STILL THERE. -> https://empyriononline.com/threads/community-localization-contributors.95917/ So, why not helping them and you instead of complaining?
The biggest change I want to see to the story and mission is to get rid of the existing horrible UI and interaction model. It looks horrible, those modal dialogs are utterly hateful and very annoying. I really hate having to keep clicking at the text to get it to complete (when it actually responds to this). TBH, I dont really missions simply because the interface to them is so horrible. There are lots of good games around that face similar needs for presenting and managing missions that mange to do this is a much better manner - several of which are also unity based. Whatever mechanism goes in should also support fully co-operative missions where multiple players gain credit for each others actions as well as their own. I dont mean specific co-op missions, but a means for mission to work equally when completely by one player solo or when different bits are done by one or more players in a faction - ie there progress is shared. (Talking of which, would be good to be able to share XP and unlocks too). Please can tech unlocks be made available to scripters as rewards (if this hasnt been done already - it didnt appear to be available last time I checked). I would like to be able to unlock a tech (for eg an tool turret or whatever) as a completion reward.
for the tutorial i think the most important part is to make the game detect your current progress when the next mission triggers, cause there are too many times where you have already achieved the next something (eg. collect 5 rocks) but the game still wants you to collect those rocks while the mission is active... Players will wander around and maybe they will figure out some of the tutorial on their own...
Yes please, please this. It's actually quite difficult to plan missions around cooperative play because for most objectives you need to make sure each player can complete it. Tech cannot be unlocked via the PDA, dialog, or items, sadly. I really wish it was. I tested adding some "schematics" but really all they are are crafting ingredients that you can find.
I think basic improvements for UI are required. For example - if I remove all blocks from POI then it should disappear. We should have an option for hiding markings on map and hud. Maybe some extra label for hidden markings would do the trick. Helps in planet exploration a lot. Also crosshair - remove it or change because now it is useless. Transparent windows - making custom cockpits is pointless because during nighttime it is possible to drive only in 3rd person view. Windows are too dark. Just one small transparent window please More starter planets, please.
[QUOTE = "Germanicus, post: 433627, member: 24653"] Не так давно разработчики попросили игроков выйти вперед и помочь им ПЕРЕВОДИТЬ тексты на их язык, и я считаю, что этот запрос ВСЕ ЕЩЕ ТАМ. -> https://empyriononline.com/threads/community-localization-contributors.95917/ Так почему бы вам и им не помочь, а не жаловаться? [/ QUOTE] Во-первых, я плохой переводчик. Во-вторых, какой-то мудрец сказал, что «ничего не делается, если что-то не доделано до конца». Поэтому вам пришлось подумать о переводе на другие языки, так как вы решили добавить сюжет в сюжет игры.
Well, then you have to wait until one of the other Russian(?) speaking Players helps the Devs to translate the Texts correctly.
They don't hire professional translators. They either do it in house if they speak the language themselves, or the community does it. This is standard for an indie game studio. Many will enlist the help of the community to translate a game into other languages.
If they, for example, were from India, do you think they would act in the same arrogance? - Well, so be it, we will translate it into your English. If the community helps. May be. If you want. If developers position their offspring as multilingual, then they must keep the quality bar. Since the ability to use their native language in the game is nothing more than their audience coverage. If they didn’t need it, they would have done it in the Mayan language and then complained that no one appreciated their result of their actions.
Their native language is German, but all main programming languages are is English. Yourself here use English even if it's not your native language, and I do the same (French speaker). This has nothing to do with arrogance : English is an international language, it's the language used in the code (C++ / C#) and that's the main reason why it's common to practically all games on Western world's digital markets. There could be a problem if some budget for translations were involved, as people from one language could deem unfair translation in other languages being paid for, but not theirs. At worst this would be an economic issue, but definitively has nothing to do with arrogance.
Like Kassonnade explained, games for Western markets are built in English. The localization file goes English > German > other languages. Being rude about the localization isn't going to get it translated any faster. In the time you've spent here you could have probably translated an entire chapter and submitted it to the devs.
Add to that that there are only 7 developers total (I think). And Indie companies have a small budget. So... who is going to do the translating? Volunteers.
And another thing: I have to give documents to professional translators more often. They are really expensive and also only use software that regularly fails on special terms. The short, with control code and very special terms peppered text fragments that are needed here, must be made by human translators (still VERY much more expensive). And importantly, humans who also know what they are talking about. So: players. It is work, yes. But you do it for the community and for yourself. If you want something done, then do it. Whining has never made anything better.
