I keep making updates and asking for people to check things… but get no response. Is there something about the game that’s losing peoples’ interest or making them not want to bother? I’ve been expecting more active response like I’ve seen for the other games, so I wanna know what makes my game less popular. Thanks!
I was wondering the same thing a while ago. I’ve been told that once a game reaches a certain standard that developers stop commenting simply because there is nothing “obvious” left to comment on. Then you’ve got to look to your player base.
Kev
Get some logging in there so you can see who’s playing it, how often, on what spec machine, for how long, etc.
Cas 
Some screenshots on the site would be nice, might even entice me to try it…
Ok I just tried it for the first time.
Tutorial:
I like it. But the messages can get knocked off the top of the screen by the pilot chatter during combat. I bought and sold the stuff. Checked out the “Q” key and then I looked back at the message area and saw no more messages about the tutorial. I’m not sure if it was done or not. Perhaps if you had a second message window displayed just for the duration of the tutorial.
Quests window:
The new quest window was empty. So I wasnt sure if I still had a Tutorial quest still. The finished quest area was quite full. I think you need a way to collapse quest info so you see the title of each quest only then you can click on it to reveal the info. This would make scrolling much easier.
Window scrolling:
Clicking on the arrow buttons is the only thing that worked for me. Dragging the bar didnt drag, and clicking in the non-bar area to get a big jump didnt work. Clicking in the non-bar space closed the window, which is a bug. So piling up 100 pages worth of quest info in one window means you must click the arrows for a very long time.
Combat:
Combat itself isnt too hard, but trying to target just one ship is. The ships enter and exit the screen space very quick and even if you try to follow and attack, that seems hard. It may just be because I havent played enough. I did play a top down space game like this (just arcade not trade) and I liked it a lot, it had a very good combat system. Unfortunately I cant remember the name. It was at least 5 years ago.
Ship ID:
There are markers at the edge of the screen that give a hostility rating but I have no way of knowing what the ships on the screen are. Perhaps each ship maps to a race and I havent figured it out yet. A ship ID page would be good so that you could let the player know what ship model belongs to which faction. You could also exagerate the different hull shapes to map to the various factions.
So you could have long thin ships all belong to faction A
square boxy ships faction B
round circular faction C
etc…
Also color coding wouldnt hurt either. Faction A’s ships mostly green etc…
The races in many scifi movies often have unique shapes and colors. Even if the Factions are not races it helps players identify things quickly in an action game.
Win98
PIII 700
GF4800
“I like it. But the messages can get knocked off the top of the screen by the pilot chatter during combat. I bought and sold the stuff.”
You should have read all the tutorial related messages up before you start fighting. However some crossfire may have sparked dialogue between other ships. I’ll change the code to handle that. Thanks!
“Checked out the “Q” key and then I looked back at the message area and saw no more messages about the tutorial. I’m not sure if it was done or not. Perhaps if you had a second message window displayed just for the duration of the tutorial.”
The console messages aren’t displayed if you’re not in the main play screen. Once you leave that Quests menu and go back, you’ll see a new message from your Trainer. Did you not get the message when you left or something?
“The new quest window was empty.”
Thanks I didn’t even notice. I’ll fix that 
“Window scrolling:”
Yeah, all the events you experience there were intentional. However I realize that the scrollbars aren’t as functional as the could and should be. I’ll work to make them better, thanks!
“Combat:”
The idea there is you have as much time as you need to just get one transport to drop his cargo. It is true that if one’s already planning to jump out of the system, he’ll continue to run away and not defend himself. However you have no time limit there and the more time you spend, the more practice you need, and the more practice you’re going to get there. It’s a good scenario to practice in since transport ships are the only ones out and they’re not very dangerous. I think that supply/demand relationship of time is a good thing, don’t you?
Ship ID:
It is true that each faction has different ship designs. I’ve been working on some ideas for extra displays to show on the main screen to make them easier to identify. I’ll move that up on the priority list since you said that. You’re very right about that, thank you!
Thanks a ton for all these comments, this was really great! Hopefully all of your concerns will be resolved within a day or two
I tried it today - logged in as Cas - and it just took me to some battle scene, following some ship or other, and a bunch of other ships were shooting at each other. I couldn’t do anything, none of the keys or mouse did anything. I was about to end task it when it unexpectedly went away.
Cas
You didn’t have the main menu on top of that with the title “RIMSCAPE” displayed across the top?
Nope. After the little dialog thingy asking me my name and screen res prefs, it just dumped me into this spectator mode.
Bloody Java2D 
(JRE1.5)
Cas
wild! I haven’t heard of that one before… I’ll poke around at it and see if I can come up with a reason why that might be happening. At any rate I’ll come up with a version of the game that’ll print out all sorts of good stuff for you to try so we can see what exactly is or is not happening when your game runs. Thanks!
I’m sort of the lead designer/artist guy on Rimscape so I decided to pop in here.
Anyway, most of the comments here have been great. Scrolling and mouse support in general have been pretty basic as this is intended to be more or less a PC demo of a game for cellphones and PDAs. However, a more intuitive scrolling system is definately a good idea.
Anyway on the Ship ID:
As it is, each of the factions has a unique look and each ship class is distinct with some general features shared in all of the designs.
For example, ships from the Eltanin Protectorate are dark grey with a more industrial look but have green lighting. Kiron Commonwealth ships are a grey industrial look, etc.
Since the indicators show faction color and such, it shouldn’t take too long to associate a ship design with a faction. However, we’re working on some additional documentation to mention things like weapon mods, damage tables, and faction histories which will be in the beta forum.
As it is, the data is accessible in the game, but having it in one place will make it easier for people to see it.
Adding into the ship info in the shipyard a visual reference of the ship you’re looking at is an idea to look into.
On combat:
We’re hoping that the screen size as it is works, but it will be subject to change if it turns out combat is too hard. Newtonian physics are a bit tricky, even when in 2d. Maybe a little automatic scaling depending on ship speed would be something to do, or it might be too confusing for players, we’ll see
Anyway a question:
Some people have replied to the poll that it isn’t fun.
I more than understand not liking the genre, but for the people saying it’s not fun is it because:
*Bugs? (i.e. performance issues, crashes)
*Newtonian physics?
*Balance issues? (super weapons, economic exploits)
*Interface issues? (keep in mind though, this is being designed for PDAs/Phones)
I voted ‘other’ because I do play it but only rarely to see how it’s going on. so it’s not really option one.
First a bit of a disclamer I havn’t played in a while, I’ll try over the next few days if I get some time…
The one thing that I found a bit strange (apart from not knowing what was going on as it was before the turorial) was that I kept hitting this ship with missiles and lasers (I think…) and nothing happened it didn’t seem to die or anything.
As I said I will give it a try in a few days as I kinda enjoyed it.
Dan.
“I’m sort of the lead designer/artist guy…”
Hehehehe that sounds funny You ARE the lead designer/artist guy.
Yeah, that makes me want to put in a colored Name/Hull meter over each ship. I can do that. I can also easily put an image of the ship semi-transparently behind the icons you click to buy ships so you can see what it looks like before you snag it
I did get some messages, but they scrolled off the top. So I didnt know what to do next. When you attack other ships they fire and hit other ships then they all get together and start shooting each other. Generating a lot of NPC chat. After a while there were many cargo containers just lying around. I picked them up and sold them and made 26k with no effort other than flying around and needing to make many trips to pick up all the boxes.
The current tutorial mission needs to be constantly available to the player, so that they can learn the game at their pace. Having the current Tutorial “quest” in the “Q” page would be a good thing. Or on its own message window, or just stop the npc chat until the game starts.
You just described 2 factions as having gray industrial ships, one with green lights. This is part of the problem, they are all gray. The indicators are at the edge of the screen and dont help with IDing ships that are on the screen.
My idea, which I didnt explain, was to have a screen for just ship ID. Hit a button and you get a display with ship graphics and text beside it indicating which faction the ship belongs to.
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/5.png
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/6.png
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/7.png
Eltanin strike craft, transport, and capital ship
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/10.png
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/11.png
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/12.png
KCOM strike craft, transport, and capital ship
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/8.png
http://www.gamelizard.com/images/games/rimscape/9.png
Gommoran strike craft and capital ship
There’s a few examples. Does that help? Would it be good if we set up a section online, ie an online manual, for this sort of thing? It would probably be easier to organize on a web page than to try to shove it in somewhere in the game. Is that acceptable or do you still think I should put it in the game somewhere?
Something like that would be great.
Its location is up to you. In game would be best. So you can just hit a button and get the ship ID screen. Putting it on the web site wouldnt be as useful since you need the info while playing. If the game is meant for PDAs and phones, mobile items, they may not be near a computer to check the docs on the web.
OK! Something will be designed for that in-game. Thanks!
Howabout: it crashes as soon as I click the big blue “play game” button? Doesn’t tend to make people want to come back and play again.
This is why JGF games have to be tested on all platforms by at least 3 different people before we accept them: if the game crashes in the first few seconds, or screws up the sound card (happens in a lot of java games) etc, then quite a lot of people will quit and never try it again. At least until a friend tells them “yeah, but they’ve fixed all that now” or something else happens to make them willing to give you the benefit of the doubt “one more time”.
yeah, I get that too.
Can’t login, and clicking the play button causes it to immediately quit (no error, no nothing =/)
Thats with any resolution/bitdepth/fullscreen combination.
Its possibly linked to me rolling back my drivers a few versions [53.03] (I was getting random system lock-ups with the latest nvidia drivers [61.77] =/)