The movement was very choppy. I think it would be better if you let the client calculate the movement, and send the absolute position to the server. Or do somehting to make it easer to control the ship.

Could not get anything to work except move. Nothing happened when I pressed "/", "d" or "~", nomather where I were.

Btw. you need to change the "~" key. On my keyboard I have to type "Left ALT"+"A key left of enter", then press space, to show it in a text editor. Maybe the tab key instead?

When I pressed Esc a sending logout request was printed to the console. I lost control of the ship, but the frame still shows and it still renders. Had to kill it in the task manager. I would like it to quit right away when I wan't to exit. There should be no need to send a logout message to the server. Instead the server can detect the proken socket.

I don't mind it being a keyboard only game, but it needs a help system. There should be "press F1 for help" in a visible place when you start. The there should be a menu describing how to play, key shortcuts etc.

Looks like it could be a nice game. Keep it up.

WinXP, java 1.4.2_03

thanks tom and thanks kev!!

Um, thanks I guess Probably due to a lot of practice.

EDIT: Badly needs comments tho.

Kev

The new login works fine, although for some reason the bottom 1/3 of all the letters in the name, password, alias boxes was being cut-off?

(nb: The cursors worked well enough that I forgot that had been a problem originally . This is how it should be - people don't even notice the UI, it's just "there" .)

Have you updated the network code yet? It seems to be exactly the same. The instructions in top right are helpful (but I'd suggest that when someone comes into the game for the first time, you have those instructions appear in the middle of the screen with a "press any key to continue" prompt, or flash momentarily to draw attention, etc - if you've never played before, there's a lot on screen and it might take a while to spot those instructions) and the mouse aiming makes a big difference, so that this time I made it into a dock (although I had to randomly bash the keyboard - didn't rememeber what the dock key was. Shortcuts are great once you've used the game/app a lot, but for beginners the non-shortcut way should be more obvious (howabout a 5 second popup every time you move over a dockable thing and/or each time you select a dockable thing that says "Fly over the thing and press D to dock"?) but the netcode problems meant that trading was impossible:

• Press t to trade. Nothing happens.
  
• move up and down lots. Nothing happens.
  
• Nothing happens.
  
• Nothign happens
  
• Suddenly trade list scrolls.
  
• Get excited, press up / down again
  
• ...(nothing happens for several seconds)...
  
• etc
  

I think that is probably the numero uno problem at the moment

still havent made any network changes, but did test logging in from my office over a 64k line and it ran pretty well.  Trades were instantaneous, movement, though it had some jerks, was pretty good.  Chat was instantaneous as well as teh initial space station load, which is sent in its entirety from the server when you press d.    weird.

Just a note...will be adding a secondary navigation style to the game this week, so those of you returning over and over, keep it up and thanks!!  Still not as lucky as kevglass   , have 54 user profiles in my system, but have only seen a simultaneous usage of 2 at a time.  :-/

Thanks again.

I apologize for the continual post about little changes, but you know how it is when you build something one way, play with it, test it and it either doesnt do what you want it to do or you just don't like it....well that happens a lot here....  

Anyway, a few more things in the game...all mouse driven except flight (arrow keys) and when you need to type chat or numbers...

Help fleshed out a little more too...

Just tried the latest version. Coming along nicely.

• no lag problems; perfectly responsive (maybe this is just luck, or maybe you fixed the net code?)
  
• The help is great
  
• Pressing Esc should either be ignored in help or quit the help - people are used to hitting esc to get out of help screens, but in GT6 it just quits the game! This could easily be mistaken for a crash
  
• Text is all a bit too small on high-res monitors . Suggest you eventually add a "choose resolution" or similar which just scales all text, graphics etc (e.g. on my monitor, the current game only takes up 1/4 of the screen)
  
• For stats, suggest you do something elite never did - automatically record how much money you paid for each of the things in your hold! Otherwise, the player has to get out pen and paper and write it down . Stupid (elite). Also lets you do funky stuff like in the trade screen have an extra column "Profit" which is +ve, 0, or -ve depending on what you paid for the items originally. Note: if you want to preserve some of the reward for people who are careful, you only need to record the *total* amount paid for the cargo, so if someone bought 1t for 10, and 1t for 90, it would record 100 for 2t, and in the display this would show up as "50 per 1t".
  

Another update.  You can land on the Moons and mine for ore, planets coming soon along with more Moon functionality.

Reworked the main game loop with some of the Space Invaders tutorial in mind (thanks kev).

Login should be cleaner as well.

as always, feedback is priceless!

Thanks!! Comments like that truly drive the creative effort!!

Ask and you shall receive...a minimap, though I call it a sector scan, is now up.  It is stationary of the entire "known" sector and your ship moves around in it.

more to come soon!

M

Thanks, been meaning to do the formatting.  Originally it was only so I cousl see acceleration, but I may leave it, as other ship will be slower or faster.

Thanks for the Mac note...I have no way of testing on a Mac.  

M