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[Terry]

Ok! Just played the demo, and I really like it so far The writing's top notch (naturally) - the various characters feel they have a lot of depth; I was already worried about my pilot's welfare in battle even in the first mission

Only problem I have with it is that with all that text on screen, it's kinda hard to follow what's going on. In combat maybe it would help to have appropriate sound effects and lines indicating who's fighting who, who's taking damage and so on, and maybe have the last line of conversation highlighted... and in mission screens it might be nice to make better use of colour to indicate if you've previously selected an option, even better would be to stagger the text display a bit so that it's "typed" out and you can immediately focus where you need to.

I really like where this is going - hope you continue working on it!

[Pacian]

One thing - I think the first time I engaged enemies I couldn't switch commands left + right, but the second time it worked fine and I fired some missiles. Mistake on my part?

Even if it was you, it was me.     Even I have a few issues telling if I've selected something or not in the combat screen, which may be what happened there.  Alternatively there are a few similarly-named booleans controlling the whole thing, and I have mixed them up at least once before in my code.

That one mission isn't nearly enough, I need more!

It would have been very possible for me to include more than one, but by the time I finished I was just too tired to generate the content that would have been needed. It's a shame, because I put a lot of work into finishing the game's handling of ejected pilots and expended missiles, but there's no way for you to see that it works. 

[Good stuff]

Ah, some nice advice there.  I've added it to my to-do list.   

Ultimately, I'd really like to make the combat much more graphical than it is now, perhaps even with little radar blips circling around shooting at one another.  Though that may be a little beyond my abilities, I'm afraid.  I definitely agree that the whole combat experience is a little overwhelming and unclear.  The chief piece of work on the finished game will be to figure out how to do that well...

[shrapnel]

This one ended just as I started getting into it. Nice job.

I really like that approach to combat.  It reminds me of a grittier, space western kind of setting where you really don't know who or what is out there unless your hands are on the yoke of a starfighter.  I don't know that you need a more sensor-driven interface for combat.  You could probably just make the pilots' conversations more detailed (without being verbose).  It seemed like they occasionally talked to each other, which is great.  More emphasis on inter-character dialogue would be welcome.  Crackly radio voice acting would be great, too.

I think I had a hard time keeping an eye on ship damage during combat, too.

The exploration/story side was interesting, but I'll admit that I was mainly interested in seeing the combat in the beginning.  I was more interested in the description after I'd seen how the patrol played out.  Unless you're married to the player-as-an-amnesiac beginning, an intro sequence tracing through the main character's last battle might be helpful.

I really liked how the characters were written to have a good sense of each other and could subtly advise you on ship configurations, too.

[Pacian]

This one ended just as I started getting into it. Nice job.

Heh, thanks.  I'm honestly not very proud of it in its current form.   

You could probably just make the pilots' conversations more detailed (without being verbose).  It seemed like they occasionally talked to each other, which is great.  More emphasis on inter-character dialogue would be welcome.

That's something I definitely want to spend time on.  I also want them to comment if you make them do something stupid, like go back to an empty nav point or something. 

I don't know that you need a more sensor-driven interface for combat. You could probably just make the pilots' conversations more detailed (without being verbose).  [...] I think I had a hard time keeping an eye on ship damage during combat, too.

Yeah, I'd already moved some of the stuff from the combat screen into the dialogue and at about 1am last night I suddenly had a revelation about how to move some more stuff into graphical form and otherwise tidy things up.  Hopefully I'll have something new to show not too long after the competition is over...

Unless you're married to the player-as-an-amnesiac beginning, an intro sequence tracing through the main character's last battle might be helpful.

Would you believe I was hoping to put something like that in there up to about two days before the deadline? 

[Xotes]

Holy hell that was awesome. If you made the music, ya did a fantastic job.

I have to agree on some of the interface comments, and it annoyed me that I couldn't figure out how to order them in mid-battle after I got stuck scrolling through the enemy list.

Otherwise, though, top-notch!

[Pacian]

Holy hell that was awesome. If you made the music, ya did a fantastic job.

The music is from here, through the magic of Creative Commons.
 
Just thought I'd share some of my progress on the game since I started working on it again over the past couple of days:



To be honest, if I do keep working on this to completion, I'm likely to give the entire thing an overhaul: plot, appearance and combat in particular.  But, I am kind of itching to get away from the thing. 

[Xotes]

Aw, you wanna stop? Well, it's understandable, I guess. BUT. You'd better come back to it at a later date, then. GOT IT?

[Stargoat]

I really enjoyed this, like all your games (space shot is brilliant... wish I'd voted in that compo...).

Hope you come back to it, Pacian!