Hi bryku, first of all, thanks you very much for taking the time to play my little demo - It really means a lot to me. I'll try to address your observations below
The "Choose your ship" menu presented me with a few ship options. The problem is that each of the ship was having the same stats. I believe that it is because you didn't spend time yet on implementing these.
Also, I really didn't have any idea on what are the ship stats all about (compartment capacity, engine, number of generators, max. land speed). I mean I kinda knew about the capacity, but you might consider adding some explanations of the other ones.
The "land speed" I believe is the speed of the ship on a planet, right? Is it possible to manually control a ship in space as well, or is space travel made automatically?
Yes, you are correct. I haven't differenciated the players options yet. But it will come. I like your idea of giving an explantions to the different figures. I'll put this on my backlog.
During the gameplay I had issues with controls. The ship is controlled by arrows, you are shooting using space and enter, and in some cases you actually need to use the mouse as well. So these default controls require three hands to work, really
Consider using WASD for movement and something else than enter for using a weapon - and then the player will be able to use one hand on all keyboard controls, and the other hand will be able to control the mouse.
On the other hand, there is not that much to do with the mouse right now (although there are things that need to be done with it). So maybe removing mouse usage from the gameplay parts that involve ship movement might be a better option.
In the Options menu, you can refigure the controls to your liking. But I could change the default into ADSW - The reason for the arrows is because I'm left handed ;-)
The idea is that you use keyboard for movement and actions (primary/secondary actions) and the mouse for interacting with the environment, like choosing targets and functions.
The other thing was that I believe that I had to use the mouse cursor to select the outpost before I could press "C". This seems like an unnecessary thing; game could auto-select the outpost when the player would be in its close vicinity.
It's an idea, but it would break the currently selected target. I'll consider it.
It was impossible to see the list of commodities using the communications screen - nothing was displayed.
I know. I forgot to put it in, in the demo
After I landed, there was an information that I need to refuel, and that I need 0.5 l. However, I didn't see any information on what is my max fuel capacity. So I didn't have any information on my remaining range.
If the fuel is important, consider displaying it on the screen all the time.
Also, is the fuel used only during planet movement, or during interstellar flight as well?
Actually the energy bar at the bottom is also your fuel. I need to make this more clear and avoid using the word 'fuel'. Thanks!
The energy is consumed when you fly around on the planets, and when you hyperjump into other systems. Jump between planets doesn't consume energy. Energy is also used to main the current systemes (compartements) on your ship.
When on the market, and during buying/selling ship parts, I missed a "draft" approach - meaning that first I set up the things I would like to sell/buy, and then after seeing the summary I press "accept". This would remove the situations in which selling and then immediately buying the same thing would strip me of some of my credits.
You would like some kind of 'shopping bag'? I'll consider it
I also run into an UI issue with the "Burst gun" item - it displayed both "No room for upgrade" and "Unavailable on this landing pad" texts in one place, overlapping themselves.
Thanks! I hadn't noticed this myself. It's put in the BUG-backlog.
I started a combat with one of the ships travelling on the planet, but was unable to kill it - its HPs never went below zero. Is that desired? Also, the ship did not try to avoid my attacks - I simply was flying straight behind it, firing at it all the time. Was the ship sending a distress call? It should, I guess. I mean it was happening on a colonized planet. Maybe some police patrols should appear?
I've already changed this a bit. The indicator you see in the demo is the shield. But when the shield goes below 100% it will get regenerated, by using energy. When the shield is at 0, energy is consumed at a higher rate and when the energy reaches 0, it's killed. My idea was that without shields, the hull of the ship would get damaged. But I can see that I need to change this a bit, as it takes too long to kill an enemy.
And you're right, the evasive travel from a trader is very boring. It will just try to get away when shields are low. I've already noted that I need to do more to this behaviour.
If police are nearby and sees attacks, they will attack the perpetraitor.
And unfortunately I was unable to leave the planet - after choosing a new jump destination, the game hanged on the "Jumping to..." animation. There was no memory leak (stable 300 MB was being used), but the CPU usage was constantly high. Had to kill the process. Then I tried jumping again, in a new game, and the same happened.
It was hanging? So no animation, what so ever? Damn, I'm sorry to hear that - I will look into it, but haven't experienced it myself on 2 different machines.
Again thank you very much for your comprehensive comments. I realy appreciate it!