Nice icons! I think I may just use that, one of the biggest issues I had was fitting large words into that small area!

The esc key was for the android devices, as there are 3 buttons and no really easy way to quit an app on android this was just a temporary shortcut (on the PC you have a lot of other options such as the red cross etc) pressing escape will pause the game with a pause menu and options.

The double click would be a nice touch, the conversion from a touch input to single click was the most convenient - will deffo look into this

I am considering re-working the entirety of the building menu UI, mainly because I feel its a bit slow (with the animations)  and as you say too much information - the hovering is also an interesting idea - it will be improved in some way though but will depend on time and other factors.

the unlocking of the currently unlocked buildings with 0 is a temporary one as its to do with the career mode reset, the reset locks all buildings as well as resets everything else, when the buildings are final I can then adjust the reset to keep all 0 buildings unlocked, until then I would possibly have to keep changing this so expect the fix near the end of development.

There wont be any non-available items at the end, just locked or unlocked, as such making them darker only adds more work that is only going to be used for the alpha. - unless a tech tree is implemented but I feel as if this starts limiting the players choice and takes away from the reward of collecting science points.

I am sure my audio guy will be pleased with the first feedback being that you like the music (the audio is about the only thing I haven't done myself) 

The initial plot choices was a temporary one as there are only 2 to select from, both actually using the same map terrain, this was purely a test to get multiple maps working. the initial idea was to have them all showing but I like your idea there too, it will simplify the tutorial that I had planned and keep it simpler as the player progresses!

I really appreciate the feedback, this is the first lot I will have received outside of my close friends - by all means if you do have negative views don't be afraid to voice them, as you can see from the post I am open to all suggestions and unless people speak up the chances are they may not be changed or improved!

Yay! finally got my alpha email and installed for my first look.

Agree with all of webpro's point's, give the music guy a pat on the back as well.

Appreciate that this is an alpha build so I'll start with the niggles;

* Something I noticed which could well just be me, but when I use the wheel mouse to scroll in and out I noticed that it did the opposite to what I expected.

In most games, wheel up zooms in and wheel down zooms out, seems the opposite, would be good if that could be an option.  Actually I did notice an inverse option in the control menu so it might not be implemented yet tbh.

* The Temp UI for 'not enough resources to build x' is hard to read if you've already opened a building status and have deactivated and tried to re-activate - perhaps a shaded background on that dialog would resolve that in the meantime.

* When evaluating the 'Colonists' tab there are quite a few typos that have slipped passed quality control 😉    Pleanty should be Plenty, Ammount should be Amount and Reservs I guess should be Reserves.  Sorry I notice these things....

* I noticed in your original trailer you rotated building's before placement, is that cut from the alpha as I couldn't figure out how to do it ?

* The flight mode let's you go under the moon's surface - a unique persepective on your base indeed 🙂

* I think you should relocate the 'Water Mining Outpost' in Life support to the first slot so the items are in resource cost order, would help the player get things in the right sequence.

Now onto the good things;

   * Intro screen with moon and location selection a great idea and looks good

   * I like the current selection of buildings

   * Like the resource counter dashboard at the top, easy to see what's going on at a glance, colour coding would dramatically improve that as per webpro's suggestion.

   * Building stats and descriptions are useful.

   * The In/Out metrics on the resource dashboard (when clicked) are well presented and clear

   * What a nice surprise to see some ships arrive but what are they, would be nice to have some radio chatter announcing the arrival, even if it was some kind of chat box window, could also alert you to building's the are immeniently going to fail etc.

   * Navigation is fluid and quick, I did misplace some building's to the far right, I'm putting it down to me missing the button when buying a building.

   * Moon looks amazing, really like the shading during building placement.

   * I like the water finding mechanic which shows you the little graph on the bottom right corner to aid placement, would be good to see that for ore mine as well.

That's it for now, time for bed, but can't wait to get back into it tomorrow night and explore some more advanced buildings, I have some thoughts on the Structure Menu's but want to wait for other backer opinion's before I delve into that area.

Anyhow thanks for the fast Alpha deployment, I guess you are shattered so get some rest and enjoy the praise, this game has some amazing potential and you should be proud of what you have achieved so far.  Well Done!

@apollo11 - building's are de-activated when they have those barriers around them - could be that they have failed or you can manually deactivate them to build up some much needed resources, I had to do this a few times to get my colonists up in order to build more essential buildings.   Just single left click on the building and it will bring up it's status.

btw I also agree with the right alignment of the 'spend value' - it's a cosmetic change though..

Odd you had to right click to purchase a building, I was left clicking, I'll try that later.

sorry, completely missed the question there, yes its to represent the building is inactive, its supposed to be a hazard barrier with lights on top, there is currently an error where they have the exact same model on top of each other but the other is blue, thats why you see the flickering as its fighting with each other.

They will automatically de-activate if you do not keep them repaired, building a repair depot will give you repair ships to either automatically repair or you can send them to repair a specific building.

You mentioned you were going to change the building selection dialog but didn't know yet what you wanted to do with it.  I worked up a quick idea I had if you're interested (see screenhot).

* Edit: I noticed I forgot the price for each building, but that could easily go just underneath the model of each building.

Thanks... maybe I should hire you at this rate 😛

That looks a lot more cleaner than before, if you have any other suggestions for the UI that would be cool, some of it still feels bulky due to it being designed for small screens and having to touch objects, thus giving a lot of space between so not to accidently press the wrong thing.

The set of menus I most want to change is the resource menus, while they done their purpose for android these can be greatly expanded I feel - I am having a few performance problems though so going to have to look into them first before changing them to be more complex.

Ok, I think I've played it enough now to be ready to post.

FIrst, the "lacking" (I don't like dislike)

• Needs an ultimate goal, or achievement system.  I know this has been mentioned elsewhere.  Something to work towards.  City building is fun and all that, but without some goal, a lot of people like me will get bored.  I'm hoping the missions system will take care of this. 
• Map controls in operation view are less than intuitive.  They feel like an attempt to combine flight mode and overview mode.  I'm sure that this is at least partially a carry over from android, so not picking at it, just pointing out.
• Mouse wheel sensitivity in overview needs to be higher or at least configurable.  Having to spin my wheel a dozen times to get out of the surface of the moon after letting my cat at it... yeah.
• Flight mode should get a mouse look controller.  Simply put pitch and yaw are given by the mouse motion rather than click and drag, then forward goes in that direction.  Also a collision system is needed for flight mode so you don't end up underground.

Now the Likes!

• OMG this is awesome!  I love the graphics and the unified look and feel.  You've done a good job of keeping a theme and sticking to it across UI, buildings, and music.  Love it.  It feels like a cohesive complete game already.
• The resource mechanic is really good.  I like the fact that if you're not paying attention, putting down a new building can easily give you negative resources over time.  Being able to shut down a building to redirect limited colonists literally saved me from a restart on my map.  In short, it feels like a very complete mechanic and really gives a lot of depth to the game.
• Building placement is awesome.  I love the fact that you can hide a building inside a crater.  It just looks COOL.

Now for some thoughts.

• A new building which could be either a simple landing pad or even a colonist hq or something would be nice.  Basically it'd be some facility whose purpose is to handle incoming colonists.  Your colonist rate is limited by how fast this building can let them in.  To expand faster you need more of these which takes more resources, etc.  It could also be able to "report" how fast the colonist applications are coming in.  (We're swamped with applications, build a new processing center! or We're all bored here, why don't you find us some applicants?).
• Construction bases might be more "practical" if they also had a monetary cost no matter what (gotta get help from earth to build this thing) unless you have open build slots.  That way if you run out of build slots and go to build a construction base, you are paying earth to put it in and send the facilities to establish it.  Or maybe the build with resources option requires them to take a construction slot while building, therefore is unavailable if you ran out of slots.
• Perhaps instead of "In" and "Use/Out" it should be "Produce" and "Consume"

All in all, I love the alpha, and it was more than worth the wait.

Thanks for your feedback, a few comments to those thoughts.

• Needs an ultimate goal, or achievement system.  I know this has been mentioned elsewhere.  Something to work towards.  City building is fun and all that, but without some goal, a lot of people like me will get bored.  I'm hoping the missions system will take care of this. 

This is something a fair few people have commented on, and I myself feel the same, the current version can get a little boring and repetitive over time with no objectives as you say the missions should solve this and the story should give direction.

• Map controls in operation view are less than intuitive.  They feel like an attempt to combine flight mode and overview mode.  I'm sure that this is at least partially a carry over from android, so not picking at it, just pointing out.

Have you any suggestions, at the moment I have attempted to give both keyboard and mouse control, you can currently click and drag the camera around as well as use the WASD movements, in the next version you will be able to rotate the camera left and right with the right mouse button. I wanted a balance between keyboard and mouse input that people can choose from or mix together.

• Mouse wheel sensitivity in overview needs to be higher or at least configurable.  Having to spin my wheel a dozen times to get out of the surface of the moon after letting my cat at it... yeah.

The mouse wheel sensitivity is set to that rate at the moment as if you zoom in too fast you can go through the ground, breaking the game, this still happens at this speed if you zoom in super quickly, there will be a variable speed change (had this on the android but not working for the PC atm) where when you get nearer the ground it slows down and also rotates your camera to a less top down view.

• Flight mode should get a mouse look controller.  Simply put pitch and yaw are given by the mouse motion rather than click and drag, then forward goes in that direction.  Also a collision system is needed for flight mode so you don't end up underground.

The thought behind this was to give a natural movement that is like you're flying a craft, similar to that of an FPS control scheme, I am thinking of adding a throttle to control the speed instead again the issue here is if you got too fast near the ground you could go through it

• OMG this is awesome!  I love the graphics and the unified look and feel.  You've done a good job of keeping a theme and sticking to it across UI, buildings, and music.  Love it.  It feels like a cohesive complete game already.

I am glad you like it, the building detail was my main concern as its a port from android (would of looked epic on your smart phone huh...) I am thinking of adding a rock bed around the base of the building to give a better transition from the building to the surface, will have to see about this though (this was something that would not of been feasible at all on android phones)

• The resource mechanic is really good.  I like the fact that if you're not paying attention, putting down a new building can easily give you negative resources over time.  Being able to shut down a building to redirect limited colonists literally saved me from a restart on my map.  In short, it feels like a very complete mechanic and really gives a lot of depth to the game.

With most city building games a single building does not normally have a massive impact, I wanted to have it feel like it is much more difficult to do stuff on the moon and also stopping you from just placing anything you like, you need to prepare and be ready for what your about to do.

• Building placement is awesome.  I love the fact that you can hide a building inside a crater.  It just looks COOL.

This is one of my favourite things about the game, its why I have insisted in a free placement scheme, with the rotation of the buildings in the next build it should be much better.

• A new building which could be either a simple landing pad or even a colonist hq or something would be nice.  Basically it'd be some facility whose purpose is to handle incoming colonists.  Your colonist rate is limited by how fast this building can let them in.  To expand faster you need more of these which takes more resources, etc.  It could also be able to "report" how fast the colonist applications are coming in.  (We're swamped with applications, build a new processing center! or We're all bored here, why don't you find us some applicants?).

This is something I have been considering, mainly because the influx of colonists can be too much and hard to control, I have been considering having a more realistic setting where you have to buy colonists, would be in the form of paying their travel costs from earth to the moon - then introduce a small population increase of natural births when the population starts growing. - it also makes it much more in your favour to look after them, if they leave then you have to buy them again.

• Construction bases might be more "practical" if they also had a monetary cost no matter what (gotta get help from earth to build this thing) unless you have open build slots.  That way if you run out of build slots and go to build a construction base, you are paying earth to put it in and send the facilities to establish it.  Or maybe the build with resources option requires them to take a construction slot while building, therefore is unavailable if you ran out of slots.

As the construction bases and other building limit increase buildings give you small amount of resources the idea was to have to pay for their upkeep, this gives a constant outgoing in cost and thus a good end game scenario - if you don't have enough cash that's game over, it also stops you from just buying them, if you do it is impossible to lose as its a self supporting structure, it produces enough to support itself and colonists, so just keep building that and you have an epic civilisation after a while without unlocking anything or progressing at all.

The construction slot is something I was also considering, it will slow game play down a little and would make sense, the idea was to have a space ship leave this building and go construct your next one (adding more to the build animation) it also stops people spamming buildings down (something that I do a lot) and in turn, if you are in a desperate situation you may not be able to build enough in time to recover from your losses, thus the need for more planning too.

The more construction bases the more buildings to build at the same time, but also at greater monetary cost for the upkeep of them.

• Perhaps instead of "In" and "Use/Out" it should be "Produce" and "Consume"

I was considering this but I wasn't sure if this language may be too 'complicated' as it is aimed at all walks of life of all ages.

Thanks for your feedback, a few comments to those thoughts.

• Map controls in operation view are less than intuitive.  They feel like an attempt to combine flight mode and overview mode.  I'm sure that this is at least partially a carry over from android, so not picking at it, just pointing out.

Have you any suggestions, at the moment I have attempted to give both keyboard and mouse control, you can currently click and drag the camera around as well as use the WASD movements, in the next version you will be able to rotate the camera left and right with the right mouse button. I wanted a balance between keyboard and mouse input that people can choose from or mix together.

I would say a simple wasd/arrow keys for movement, and q/e or num7/num9 for left right rotation. Finally +/- for closer to/farther from the ground. In overview mode you don't have to get right to ground level, so giving the controller a collision plane that is about .1 units above the terrain would guarantee it never ends up underground while allowing the system to maintain a higher response. Then *right* click/drag left or right up or down should move the map while left clicking should be reserved for input. The reason I would consider this intuitive is that every "builder" game I've ever played has used some very narrow variation of this. Observe the controls for any of the newer Sim City or Tycoon type games and they all use a very similar control scheme where right click is for movement, left click is for interaction, and mouse wheel as you move it "up" gets closer to the ground.

• Mouse wheel sensitivity in overview needs to be higher or at least configurable.  Having to spin my wheel a dozen times to get out of the surface of the moon after letting my cat at it... yeah.

The mouse wheel sensitivity is set to that rate at the moment as if you zoom in too fast you can go through the ground, breaking the game, this still happens at this speed if you zoom in super quickly, there will be a variable speed change (had this on the android but not working for the PC atm) where when you get nearer the ground it slows down and also rotates your camera to a less top down view.

See my previous about a collision plane situated above the terrain. Could be an easy solution, as since you're on PC now you have access to all of Unity's collision capability. (I didn't dream up that you were making this with Unity did I?)

• Flight mode should get a mouse look controller.  Simply put pitch and yaw are given by the mouse motion rather than click and drag, then forward goes in that direction.  Also a collision system is needed for flight mode so you don't end up underground.

The thought behind this was to give a natural movement that is like you're flying a craft, similar to that of an FPS control scheme, I am thinking of adding a throttle to control the speed instead again the issue here is if you got too fast near the ground you could go through it

Again, I think just mouse movement instead of click/drag would be ideal. Also, you could have an X/Z vector and a Y vector (this is getting more complicated obviously). The X/Z vector could have a very high max speed, while the Y vector has a negative speed limited to 1/2 the distance to the ground per second or 1 unit per second which ever is greater. This gives a sort of "repulsor" feel to the craft you are flying around (which of course isn't a craft at all, and is just the camera, but details) and will make the speed transition slightly smoother, while still being able to be slow enough to do collision detection. Here again, a collision plane situated slightly above the actual terrain may be sufficient (don't know how varied the terrain can get), and could allow more speed as plane collision detection is far faster then mesh collision detection.
 

• A new building which could be either a simple landing pad or even a colonist hq or something would be nice.  Basically it'd be some facility whose purpose is to handle incoming colonists.  Your colonist rate is limited by how fast this building can let them in.  To expand faster you need more of these which takes more resources, etc.  It could also be able to "report" how fast the colonist applications are coming in.  (We're swamped with applications, build a new processing center! or We're all bored here, why don't you find us some applicants?).

This is something I have been considering, mainly because the influx of colonists can be too much and hard to control, I have been considering having a more realistic setting where you have to buy colonists, would be in the form of paying their travel costs from earth to the moon - then introduce a small population increase of natural births when the population starts growing. - it also makes it much more in your favour to look after them, if they leave then you have to buy them again.

Perhaps your first few colonists come from a government program, and after that you have to establish the facilities to get them there/pay their transit cost from earth (or at least help with). Just some ideas. 

• Perhaps instead of "In" and "Use/Out" it should be "Produce" and "Consume"

I was considering this but I wasn't sure if this language may be too 'complicated' as it is aimed at all walks of life of all ages.

I think produce and consume would be more generally understood. I was initially confused as I initially understood "In" to be what the building required as input and "Out" to be what it put out, but then it was called "Use/Out" so I got really confused. Eventually I figured it out (only took a couple of minutes) but to me the logical application of "In" and "Out" where resource flow through the selected building vs the buildings effect on resource flow for the colony.

If you are using Unity for the game, then I have a question for you. Are you using a terrain object with an imported height map or are you using a custom mesh rendered off a height map? The reason I ask is that Unity has a terrain collider which in my experience is pretty effective at preventing underground anything unless you start underground.

Yes you are right, it is using the unity engine, it is currently using a mesh model for the terrain, again left over from the android build as the terrain feature in unity is damn expensive for smart phones to run - after looking at lacuna passage, they use the terrain system with a shader plugin that looks to be fantastic, it is a consideration that near the end, if theres time, to swap to the terrain feature and improved detail this provides.

So currently the terrain is using a mesh collision, the issue with having a simple plane collision is that it would have to be higher than the highest point on that map, if you look at it in flight mode from the edge of the map across the entire terrain you can see there are some high mountainous regions, that if a plane above that level was placed, would stop you getting close to the buildings in the lower creatures and planes etc.

I think I can update the physics timings if need be to allow a better check to help prevent this, you can even go outside the map limits if you click and drag super quickly even though there are massive collision barriers that supposed to stop you.

Yeah, not knowing ANYTHING about android development, I suspect that procedural objects bring it to it's knees.

Physics timings might be a solution, but of course, upping them lowers performance, so balance is key.

One of the points noted was the zoom in/out feature.

Perhaps the zoom in/out needs to be diagonal, as in;

zooming in moves the map forward and down, and

zooming out moves the map back and up.

The persepctive, which is prefect for base design by the way, lends itself to this direction of travel when taking a close up view of the colony.

Glad the right click rotate has been added, that feature I look forward to testing - perfect for those screenshots of the game!

I cant comment on the best way, however there are 2 ways to make money, first is building factories and a few other buildings (some of these buildings may or may not be implemented) and selling resources through trade (it should work...) the original idea for money was for in-app purchase for android, where people could pay money for in game money and thus build what they like, as there are no micro transactions this will change, there will be more ways to get money and also some things will start using money.

Hope this helps in the current game and helps clarify the future of the money mechanic

I find the Tech Centre, Cash +1 and Science +4 makes a useful addition to both point systems, the Control Base is also a winner for its Cash +1 and the other benefits it brings to the colony - I've yet to exploit the larger buildings but I generally build from resources rather than spend the cash.

Personally I've hit a point where I'm really looking forward to seeing more of the larger buildings implemented. The drain on my colony to keep my colony maintained is pushing me towards bigger buildings fast (power was the FIRST thing I upgraded) but I'm noticing that in some tracks the bigger buildings just aren't there yet. So I'm finding myself building a ton of repair bases when I'd rather build bigger and better equipment.

I will try and get some more of them in for the next release (working on a few other things, mostly fixes and improvements) but I would really like to know your thought on progression speed, do you feel like the game is slow? or is the amount of research points to the income of your base ratio good as it is?

One of my biggest concerns after the visual style was the progression rate at unlocking new buildings as there are not as many as there may be in a AAA game for example, one thing I dislike in most games is the game play lasts for a few hours.

Its a hard balance between extending gameplay time and keeping people interested and playing the game.

The chances are if people feel the progression is ok at the moment that I will slow it down a little as the story should fill in the gaps some.

As far as progression goes, there are times that I find myself doing something else and just letting this run, just like with any city builder.  The biggest limiting factor for me as far as progressing up was not tech, but building up resources.  I have a philosophy in city builders to never have a negative income (or have a negative income for as little time as possible when the game forces it on you by meteor showers...)  I do think that science points come in at about the right speed (a little slow early game, but anyways).

There are times that I find myself doing something else and just letting this run, just like with any city builder.

How would you feel for a more involved games, while other games do this, is it something you don't mind, or wish there was something for you to do in the meantime, or are you more than happy to go off doing stuff while you gather resources etc?

I like games when there is always something to do, mostly that will have an effect on the gameplay so there is some point to my actions (either improvements or preventative) to this end I have started working on adding a few more features but would like opinions as to how people play these games.

I think you are right, there does need to be something else to do in between resource gathering and building.   I think I mentioned in one of my other posts the possibility of improving the colonists with a sub mission UI with +/- rewards depending on success, as the missions could complete at pre-determined completion times they can be used to fill the gap.  I did not that some building types construct faster than others, probably an element of realism dependant on the size of the structure although faster builds would speed up the gameplay slightly.

My other suggestion would be around building design but I suspect that's quite a challenge - customisation does reward the more creative player out there.

 

How would you feel for a more involved games, while other games do this, is it something you don't mind, or wish there was something for you to do in the meantime, or are you more than happy to go off doing stuff while you gather resources etc?

I personally like more involved games where my actions (or lack of) have a direct impact on the game.  It gives me more of the feeling that "this is my creation" rather than the game just moving along with or without me.  I also really like the idea of short- and long-term goals to guide the player along.  Without those, some players might get lost, and worse, bored without any kind of objective other than to build, build, build.

The original moonbase game that made me invest in your kickstarter was memorable to me because of 3 reasons:

Buildings - each building had a reason for being and had an impact on where you were headed (success or collapse).  For instance, you had to make sure everything was in proper balance with power generation/consumption, colonists happiness/stress, exploration and mining, etc.  This kept you constantly watching your game to make sure that balance was achieved... it was very engaging.  I especially liked building the LOX miners that went out on an automated path in search of resources to mine.

Infrastructure - Although it had a much lighter impact on the overall game, you could build roads, landing pads (you needed at least one for incoming colonists and imported resources), water pipes and electrical lines... as long as everything was connected, it worked fine.  This kept you not just placing hundreds of buildings down at once, but thinking about layout: "do I have enough space around the building to connect it to the main power grid?", "where's the closest water source?", etc.  It made the game more fun because you had to use your brain to problem-solve, especially as your base got larger.

It was hard! - I must have tried a hundred times to build the perfect moonbase, only to realize that I didn't invest enough in a certain area, then realize it was already too late... running out of the limited income from selling resources back to Earth and coming to a financial collapse.

Your game already has made good progress in these areas.  Just make sure you get the right balance here so someone who really wants to play the game doesn't get bored placing buildings and everything just works automatically... make them use their neurons and you'll get people really excited to play and play again.

In my day job, I am a customer service manager.  A lot of what I do is supervisory and oversight.  I do very little to make the day to day operation happen, instead I am there to iron out the kinks and plan forward.  For me, I spend a large part of my day doing 3 or 4 things at once, so when I get home and boot up a game, I usually do the same with them.  I like City Builders because they build on a skill set I already have.  I like other "occasional attention" or "occasional activity" games such as flight sim.  I also like more involved games that require constant involvement.  So for me, I'm indifferent.  If you build this game to be constantly requiring my attention, then it needs to be paced so I feel like I'm getting something in the game for my attention.  On the other hand, having it be an "afk" capable game would mean that a slower pace can be provided.