I-War 2 woes

[DraQ]

Ok, I have obtained the game and so far I've noticed several things:

1. The backgrounds are too bright and colourful for my frontier-trained eyes.

2. The authors wouldn't know good interface if it hit them in the face - come on, compare system maps in Frontier and I-War 2, for example, same with using the mouse - in frontier you could do anything with it if, for example, you haven't yet learned all the hotkeys.

3. The tech fluff ranges between promising and awesome - keeps me optimistic.

4. LDS pretty much kills the sense of place and distance.

Now, I have several questions:

42. How many G's can the starting ship clock on main thrusters?

69. How possible it is to play this game without a joystick? Is it better or worse than playing last missions of TN:SFC on high difficulty as a southpaw?

404. Is it even possible to use the mouse in any constructive manner in this game (apart from hitting yourself in the forehead with it to relieve stress)?

666. How, if it's possible, can you operate ventral and dorsal thrusters manually?

1024. Can you toggle assist rather than having to keep Num5 pressed if you want to do something elaborate?

 

[Clooney]

I-war 1 was great. Put I-war 2 down straight away because of the joypad. Didnt make any sense to me I found the control in 1 to be fine. As for not using the pad in 2, no I never found a way.

 

[DraQ]

I-war 1 was great. Put I-war 2 down straight away because of the joypad. Didnt make any sense to me I found the control in 1 to be fine. As for not using the pad in 2, no I never found a way.

I think I have found one, but have to test it. Apparently there are configuration files with control settings, even though there is no option to customize them, so I'll just try manual edition.
Too bad it doesn't have Frontier's ergonomic interface or it's depth of Newtonian simulation (stationary planets, lame LDS, no gravity, no varying frames of reference, no actual buzzing around at 4000km/s, etc.).

 

[Clooney]

Well if you find a way let me know. Its so annoying about i-war2 if i'de wanted to use a joypad i'de have bought a Playstation. Ive never found a game that accurately replicates Elite, or even tries to. Though as for as i-war goes its probably my second favourite. Found Freelancer and Dark Star quite entertaining but nothing really has held my attention like the Elite series.

 

[sfried]

I-war 1 was great. Put I-war 2 down straight away because of the joypad. Didnt make any sense to me I found the control in 1 to be fine. As for not using the pad in 2, no I never found a way.

I have one big qualm with I-War 1, and that would be it crashing everytime I try to exit. Mind you, I'm using glidewrappers for it (the one that would allow me to play it even if I have more than 512MB of RAM), so I don't expect it to be perfect.

I'm kind of happy over the fact that I can run I-War 2 without much problem.

 

[DraQ]

Well if you find a way let me know. Its so annoying about i-war2 if i'de wanted to use a joypad i'de have bought a Playstation. Ive never found a game that accurately replicates Elite, or even tries to. Though as for as i-war goes its probably my second favourite. Found Freelancer and Dark Star quite entertaining but nothing really has held my attention like the Elite series.

Just edit the .ini - I have what effectively amounts to an equivalent of full Jordanian Controls now, the only complaint is that the velocity meter is useless and broken beyond comprehension and that turning is very sluggish - I can do it with the mouse now, though, so I'm relatively happy.

 

[Tikigod]

I-War 2 is almost certainly a game designed for Joysticks rather then mouse or anything else I must admit.

Which is probably the reason you're having so much aggro with the system map, as it's designed to be navigated using a joysticks hat-stick rather then a keyboard.

Do agree with the skybox art however, whilst it is nice at times to have a colour skybox in some areas having it constantly glaring at you throughout the many solarsystems is to me a bad move, and one far to many art teams in space themed games make.

As for vertical and lateral thrusters, they can indeed be fired manually. I believe the default keys are bound to the keyboard around the A,D,W,S area if memory serves.

You can also disable assist as it has two modes, temporary disable and toggle on/off, can not remember the toggle key command, but the game does actually tell you what key turns it off completely in the early learning training sections. (I think it's something like alt or x, but best to play the game or check the settings file and actually find out for sure).


My advice would be to not dismiss I-War 2 based on the early pace of the game, as after the prologue it starts off quite slow paced as it builds up the story and establishes you and your place in the universe. Once that is done (End of Chapter 1) the game really picks up and becomes something else entirely in feeling and scale.... but to really get anywhere you really need to use a joystick for this game, alternative options really don't work that well.

 

[DraQ]

Do agree with the skybox art however, whilst it is nice at times to have a colour skybox in some areas having it constantly glaring at you throughout the many solarsystems is to me a bad move, and one far to many art teams in space themed games make.

The problem with skyboxes in EoC is three-fold.

First, the usual "how will they know it's space without TUTTI-FRUTII NEBULAE!!!1".

Second, the fact that those nebulae are almost color-coded according to the system - bad, counter-immersive, theme-park-like.

Third, the most aggravating:
All those systems are parts of a single cluster. They are really close together. There is no ' excuse for having wildly diverse skyboxes when the other systems should literally be among the brightest objects in the sky.
They should have done one of three things:

a) ditch the colourful nebulae altogether - blackness, stars, Milky Way.

b) (poor) put the systems inside a nebula, use the exact same skybox.

c) (on par with a, but prettier) put the systems inside/in the vicinity of a nebula, make a 3D model of it along with lighting from the systems' suns (be it a computer model or plasticine plus christmas lights), then use it as reference when making skybox art.

Also, they really should have thought before making planet textures from the same, manipulated map of the Earth.

but to really get anywhere you really need to use a joystick for this game, alternative options really don't work that well.

Disagreed. I already made the game my... umm... 'female dog' through in-depth .ini edition and it plays reasonably well with mouse and 'board, with all the essential keys present and focused in one place.
It only highlights it's horrid design, though - if I could improve controls so much by merely changing the bindings, how much better could it's makers make it by just trying to make it work with all, allegedly valid controls?

All in all the game is nice, but not quite in Frontier's league.

 

[DraQ]

Bumpdate:

In the act 3 now. Quite enjoyable, but I don't think it's good enough for me to ever come back to it once I finish it.
Now that I'm good at it and have reasonable and responsive controls the game is rather on the easy side, provided I don't accidentally get crossfired by the whole fleet I'm fighting.
Too easy, in fact - while I like the way shields work and think E4 should use something similar against projectile weapons (active, tracking defenses, with Zieman shields only working against lasers and maybe splash), lack of lasting subsystem damage and quickly regenerating hull make anything that doesn't kill you outright ineffective.
I like computing power/energy/heat management and would be thrilled to see something similar in E4, but those elements were poorly implemented, of marginal importance and hampered by cumbersome interface.
I find stealth elements plain silly - it's not just that there is no stealth in space, as some stealth might still be possible when using terrain or various objects as cover, and in such cases minimization of signature would be crucial (I want IR view in E4), it's mainly the fact that they seem very arbitrary and inconsistent with in-game portrayal - being hidden while clearly in the visual range and in the open is just befuddling - visual stealth in the open at below 100km? - I could spot a pirate craft at almost ten thousand in FE2, with unassisted eye, in 320x200.
I already mentioned the mudturtle thinking plaguing the game - it reared it's ugly head again, this time in the form of AI. While the AI in EoC has distinct advantage over the one in FFE in that it doesn't suicidally fly into objects, it just fails at coping with Newtonian physics. For example, the AI pilots clearly believe that speed matters and refuse to accelerate beyond certain threshold - it's just hilarious when you turn off flight assist, accelerate to several km/s and watch pursuers' futile attempts to catch up with you. As a side effect it makes LDSI missiles ineffective, as you can simply accelerate on conventional thrusters and wait the effect out without anyone bothering you. The AI also doesn't seem to be able to take advantage of the extra degrees of freedom compared to what they would have in arcadeish "wooo! wooo! pew! pew!" space shooter.
The game also bristles with bugs, oversights and bad design - for example helping defend some station against aggressors invariably invokes the wrath of the defenders, escorts often fail to notice if you pick them off one by one, Jafs is unable to discern between ships that can actually harm him and defenceless transports and stations, the turret fighters gleefully deposit all their missiles in the first hostile ship they see (provided you've allowed them to fire at anything), rather than use them more sparingly (like ships in FE2/FFE did), I haven't yet found any way to check the condition of turret fighters or their munitions stores, there doesn't seem to be any way to see how many countermeasures you have left either, and HUD, already scolded by me in my previous posts, lacks any markers showing the direction your ship is currently facing (which makes accurate fire without aim assist impossible while manoeuvring) or velocity vector.