13 September Update

That ship looks great!
The text does look a bit silly--like "Hey, I'm a locker!", "I'm for fuel!", makes me feel semi-stupid. Maybe instead of having text or pictures just have the locker have a slight glow to it--inviting the player to explore what it is. After the initial discovery of the locker/fuel/beam the glow disappears.

Players love clicking on glowy things-- once they open it up it will quickly become apparent that it is a locker/used for storage. This invites the player to explore and is consistent with the theme of the game--exploration and player discovery.

 

Personally, I would rather have a small tutorial that points out the objects, and if you want text then let it depend on the ship. Make up words for the alien races, And maybe barcodes for glitches. During the tutorial quest on the ship it simply explains everything before the teleporter pad is even activated. And if the player still wants to go down empty handed then they don't have to take the stuff in the locker!

 

Instead of having it be obnoxiously obvious saying "Locker" in big letters, disable the teleporting action until the locker has been successfully found and/or until the items have been retrieved from the locker. To be honest, it's obvious enough without the letters. The problem was simply lack of reading directions due to eagerness of playing the game.

 

Awesome!

 

Would it have been too difficault to have the teleport function be disabled until the first quest is completed; or make teleportation the quest reward? I'm just worried about too much text and I kinda liked the original placement of the teleportation pad.

 

Every time you think you've made something foolproof, along comes a better fool. There's no such thing as too obvious. There's no outline or delineation between scenery and active elements you need, thus they must be painfully obvious or some people will blunder right on.

 

just refreshed and 42 comment already , poor f5 keys on yer keyboards;]

 

I like the font as it is. No changes required.

 

That looks like that's as small as the text can be, while still being legible.

Edit: Just realized George had already said this

 

I think it is a bit too texty, and in overall it would be annoying to have that on your ship. I think this should be changeable by the settings and possibly asking about this when you start up the game for the first time.

 

"Beam" text placement is just bad and it's ugly, no offence of course.
Other than that it's pretty cool but at the same time a smaller indicator of "what's what" would be better, like an arrow with small text or something; it would also disappear after your X visit to your ship.

 

Its been said, besides offering some feedback on the tutorial changes here is more important then that (for the moment).

Icons have been suggested and I think are a great way to go as well as any sledgehammered implementation like this being temporary. There is no reason to keep it as a permanent feature (large gaudy text) since as you said George, once they got over it that was usually that. Make it obvious sure just.. not permanently so.

 

yea I winced when I read that, let the shenanegins commence for todays update :S

 

The text seems a bit big. One way to do it would be to add some kind of hover text so when people walk past it, you know its either fuel, a locker or the beam. Just an idea

 

wh-why quote me?

 

Wooow looks nice!

 

What's wrong with text? I don't see what the big deal is.

 

When a new player is playing for the first time, play an audio file that tells them to "Take some time to get accustomed to your ship." It's a quick lock-down mission that prevents them from beaming down until they complete it. They can complete it simply by walking from one end of the ship to the other. When they pass near to interactable objects on the ship, that's when you should pop up the text that says "LOCKER" or "NAVIGATION" or what have you. This can be kept minimally texty by only having the text pop up when they are close, and make the pop-up-text an option you can turn off in your options menu.

 

Alternatively you could Highlight some keywords in the quest dialog that shows, so newbies won't miss it.