Wishkah

Howdy folks, Tried getting a game going head-to-head today with two computers, my beloved Macbook Pro for me and a Windows XP PC box thing for the other guy. Everything eventually got running smoothly once we got over the usual frustration of setting up the LAN, until time came to join the game being servered on his machine. I tried to connect and got a password error, although when I went onto the real actual Internet it was still accepted fine, as usual. Then I tried running the server and he connecting, and he got the same error. We're both using my registration code thingie at the moment, which is the only thing I can think of that might be causing the problem... but it shouldn't, right? The idea was that two licenses per copy are available, yeah? Hmm. Thankee! Shane

Actually, I find the underwater visibility to be amusingly Disneyish - a magical undersea kingdom of bright colours and shiny light and visibility into the far distance. Visibility of 30m underwater is something scuba divers write home about, using lots of exclamation marks - 20m is considered clear and stick a tank down there, churning up sediment with tracks and superheating water at its muzzle and you'd be lucky to see your hand in front of your face. It's rare that diving to a depth of 20m you can see the surface when you look up, whereas tearing around the Archipelago the only reason you can't see the bottom from the ground is because of the reflection of the sky. It's dark down there too, increasing fairly quickly with depth. Those disposable underwater cameras are recommended for only down to 5 or 10 metres, not so much because of pressure considerations but just because there's not enough light for an image to capture clearly. I'd estimate that in the Archipelago a vehicle can get down to at least 30m and divers going to that depth bring a light because anything you want a good look at is going to need it. Then there's the way colours leach with depth. It progresses along the spectrum, apparently due to Science. A spiffy fire-engine red piece of gear goes dull rusty brown pretty soon. You can notice that blues and greens are a lot more prevalent amongst diving gear than are reds and oranges, and even so such gear looks a definitely different shade underwater than it does on the surface. Those tropical fish look great in tanks, but although the undersea world can be nothing short of spectacular, it's a somewhat subtly-coloured and mysterious alien type of spectacular, rather than the bright rainbow neon living-downtown-Tokyo look of the likes of Finding Nemo. I'm not sure what my point is. I'd imagine that adding in code to determine a vehicle's depth and shifting the visible colours along a bit as appropriate - or even just having a blanket change for being underwater - would be more work than it's worth. It's definitely WAY too bright though, with visibility far too high, and the amount of crap stirred up by doing anything should be multiplied by like a factor of ten, and take ten times as long to clear. Of course, that'd make underwater a great place to hide because it'd be nigh-on impossible to find anybody down there. But I guess that's why Bond villains like underwater as a place to hide things. This isn't a complaint, really, more some ideas to think about or not if it's not important. Of course I can't stress enough: DropTeam = yay.

I'm using the handle (of my name!) Shane in-game, and fate has placed me in the Eastern Standard Time zone for a year or two. I'm typically good to go after about 6 or 7 on weekdays, although my work schedule is a bit peculiar so that's not always. Great idea, Yurch!

"You get used to it... I don't even see the code. All I see is... blonde; brunette; redhead..."

Something I thought of there that I'd like to see would be, when dropping a new vehicle, to have the view follow the dropship down rather than being a free-roaming incorporeal viewpoint on the ground. I think it'd give a more... dropteamy feel to things, as you watch yourself being inserted from orbit, and can see the battles raging on the ground getting closer and closer. When the vehicle gets released the viewpoint would switch over to it the same way as it already does. Maybe it could be an option to choose the dropship view or the free-roaming one. We're on an express elevator to Hell... GOIN' DOWN!

I would say the biggest problem I'm having is a tendency to freeze for several seconds when switching into, or less often out of, the gunnery view. Switching in, the viewpoint zooms down to the back of the turret and then everything freezes there for some time before actually changing to the sights system. I haven't noticed any particular pattern to it, but it's a pretty major issue because usually when you need to shoot, you need to do it in a hurry (if you can see them, they can see you!). I don't think it's graphics-related because it's been happening with lower-demand settings too, and it happens both in network play and single-player. It seems a bit odd to me because apart from a change of viewpoint I can't really see what's different to the regular view. Running on an Intel Mac.

As regards awaiting the timeout on missions... if you quit the mission when you've fulfilled all your objectives and your score is higher than the opposition's, you win. Same as waiting for the timeout, without waiting for the timeout! Yay science.

I'd been playing the Mac version on an Intel MacBook Pro under Rosetta, and it was jerky with all settings at minimum. The Universal version runs beautifully, the difference is incredible. I'm very impressed, well done and thanks! I'd been waiting to pre-order until I could try out the Universal version, and there was just barely enough time, yay.