Review the Demo! Thread - Shattered Origins - Guardians of Unity

This is a thread created to make sure we read your opinion about the demo! What did you like about it? What is it that you would change? Tell us what you think, post a review of the demo!

Just to post my thoughts thus far:

1) Excellent documentation in the demo ReadMe PDF
2) Very good English so far, just spotted two small details - p9 of the ReadMe 'Researches' isn't a word, it should be 'Research Items' or 'Research Areas' or similar. p11 onwards you have 'equipments', which isn't a word - 'equipment' is already plural.
3) It's a shame a restart is needed after installation of the demo
4) Unfortunately when I then launch the demo I get a PhysX failed to initialize error. Actually I get a black screen and a cursor with no idea what's gone wrong originally - I have to alt-tab out to find the error, which when I then click 'okay' does the game actually close properly. Just presenting a full, black screen to the user isn't very friendly!

I will try and sort out the error and post more impressions if I can get the demo running.

kalniel wrote: Just to post my thoughts thus far:

1) Excellent documentation in the demo ReadMe PDF

Thank you

kalniel wrote:
2) Very good English so far, just spotted two small details - p9 of the ReadMe 'Researches' isn't a word, it should be 'Research Items' or 'Research Areas' or similar. p11 onwards you have 'equipments', which isn't a word - 'equipment' is already plural.

Will fix, actually throughout the game, thank you for pointing out.

kalniel wrote:
3) It's a shame a restart is needed after installation of the demo

Only if you install PhysX, that requires it unfortunately.

kalniel wrote:
4) Unfortunately when I then launch the demo I get a PhysX failed to initialize error. Actually I get a black screen and a cursor with no idea what's gone wrong originally - I have to alt-tab out to find the error, which when I then click 'okay' does the game actually close properly. Just presenting a full, black screen to the user isn't very friendly!

Yeah, the reason for this black screen is that this is an unexpected error that normally shouldn't happen. There are a few things I can recommend:

1. Try uninstalling PhysX from your Control Panel, and then reinstall the game with PhysX (reboot after install, yeah, sorry )
2. Run the game as an administrator, this usually resolves the issue
3. Run the Updater.exe if the game did not update to the latest version, because there's already a newer executable available for this demo, which might solve your issue.

Tell me if any of these solve your issue, if not, write a mail to support@shatteredorigins.com , and send the logfile which describes the error from the game's main folder.

Actually I found a better fix - simply repair PhysX from the control panel. I think this happened because I had PhysX installed before installing the demo. The demo then installed PhysX ontop of itself, and despite the restart, didn't necessarily do it cleanly. Repairing PhysX from the control panel didn't require a restart and enabled the game to work fine.

Some more thoughts as I went through the tutorial:

5) The Shattered Origins splash screen on starting the game looked a little stretched on my 16:10 display - only noticeable because the background has a nice round planet in it!
6) When first trying to control the ships I find it hard to fly straight. It might be an idea to have some dampening or mild auto-centre only at the point where the cursor is near the centre of the screen, to help with that. You're obviously aware of Freelancer (I hope!) so have a look how they do it for a suggestion.
7) I instinctively wanted to be able to strafe sideways! It feels oddly restrictive to only be able to fly forwards. Again, see Freelancer to see how fun mouse controlled battles can be with strafing!
Voice acting is good so far. In the tutorial the only word I could fault was 'hangar', which should be pronounced more like 'hang-er'. Please don't get some American or Brit in to do it though, the accent of the speaker actually adds a nice touch.
9) Possibly add a tool tip to the different skill buttons when levelling up?
10) 'Equipments' in the game as well (you've already pointed this out above)
11) Similarly you don't 'point at an equipment' you 'point at an equipment item' or a piece of equipment.
12) When looking at Cruiser build options it feels like right clicking to get more information is a bit unnecessary when there is a tool tip with most of the information as well. I think you could get rid of the right click information if the tool tip contained enough information, or alternatively you could add more information to the right click description to make it worth having a separate screen for it.
13) It's annoying to have to right click again to close the switch menu. You could either auto close once a selection is made, or allow us to hold the right mouse button and close when we let go - the latter was what I started to do instinctively.
14) Is there any option to roll my ship? It's not really needed for combat, but when I'm out of alignment with the Cruiser I want to roll back!
15) I would change 'produce' to 'build' in the Cruiser menu
16) Hold production, hold research and mining operation icons look the same.
17) White bars for mining operations/hold production etc. are very hard to see against the white icons. Progress bars for icons could perhaps be solid colours to make them easier to see.
18) Key polling when typing in a save game name is too fast - if I type in 'hello' it comes out 'hhheellloo' If I am very quick on the keys it's fine, but it's much faster than the polling in windows or anything else.

I'll give more subjective/overall opinions when I've played more - sorry that this is quite low level feedback at the moment. The polish and design are already standing out as good things as well

very nice

SO is Physx really used in the game(you used the word, unfortunately) or it's just a necessary burden that comes free with unity engine?

The engine is not Unity, it is our own engine called ArcanENGINE2, and we used PhysX for collision detection and object movement.

I have only one suggestion, to make a feature to adjust mouse speed, its wind-fast for me, and so the game is a bit hectic.