A Thousand Little Papercuts

[Hell-demon]

In this thread we post our tiny annoyances that could easily be fixed or tweaked (at least we can hope so). We post our small qualms and how they can be fixed. Hopefully these suggestion will make it into the game. These are tiny things that all add up. One papercut is bad enough, but enough of them can ruin your day. All suggestions here must not be associated with balancing, that is a separate issue. Add to the list if you can:

User Interface
•Built in HUD colour changer. It’s annoying having to type in the code, why not streamline it by having it built in to the F11 setting box?

•Extra mouse button mapping. Seems like you can only map up to mouse button four. My mouse goes up to 5 and some special snowflakes have ones that go up to 11 (spinal tap anyone?). Possible to add more?

•Maybe personal preference but the dialogue window is clunky and often bugs out. Can we not have the old version which showed your character in third person and created a cut scene effect? I thought it was cinematic and reminded me of Deus Ex (a heavy influence in Neocron). As it stands it’s all very static and not engaging. I know this is being worked on but I personally would not consider changing something that previously worked quite well.

Video/Graphics
•New graphic icon for the cloaking device that isn’t a hack tool icon. Gets confusing. Make it so I can tell from my inventory what is a hack tool and what is a cloak from a glance.
•Add an R to the remote tool icons. Again, this is to distinguish from a personal tool and a remote tool.

Audio
•”Neofrag - Hovercab your skills with other runners” WHAT!? The other Neocron announcer voice promotes Neofrag properly, but this one is screwed up. Remove it or fix it.

•Military Base gene replicator area is pure ear rape. You have the game’s Industrial music playing over the stripper club music next to the generep. It is a cacophony of ear bleeding horror. Please fix.

Content/Game World
•More psi vendors, and possibly more vendors in some other areas. Breathe a bit more life into Outzone, Dome of York and some parts of the wasteland. Some traders in the more dangerous parts of the wasteland sell useless low level items. Does not make sense. Have them sell ammo and med kits.

•The NExT HQ has a tiny NExT jeep on a desk. Is it possible to make that into a new furniture item for our apartments?

List your gripes and tiny things - just maybe they might go away.

[Odimara Orca]

1) Fix the Chatbug
2) Fix the Chatbug
3) Fix the Chatbug

Thanks :-)

[Trivaldi]

In this thread we post our tiny annoyances that could easily be fixed or tweaked (at least we can hope so). We post our small qualms and how they can be fixed. Hopefully these suggestion will make it into the game. These are tiny things that all add up. One papercut is bad enough, but enough of them can ruin your day. All suggestions here must not be associated with balancing, that is a separate issue. Add to the list if you can:

Usually we'd like to see ideas have their own thread, it means we can effectively tick them off a big list. However I think this may work as a new approach - so long as we stick to very small pieces of work!

If suggestions are made which are beyond the "paper cut" level of impact, we'll point those out. Changes where we don't know the effort involved, we'll not respond to until we know either way. Please don't take that to mean we will actively seek out how easy it is to implemented things in the list though.

List your gripes and tiny things - just maybe they might go away.

Sounds reasonable - just remember to keep these small.

A running joke within the team is that we have "roughly 345873945870387" 10 minute jobs on the to-do list. The number varies wildly as it is always generated from keyboard mashing. There's so many of these that it's impossible to pick a starting point, without thinking that you should be doing something more significant or you stress out that whichever one you pick - someone - will complain it's the wrong priority.

So let's start a bit of a new initiative - the community can list some of the things they think are 10 minute jobs and where possible I will complete a handful of these at a time. As the thread grows I hope folks will begin to realise what is and isn't possible within a short space of time. Everyone gets to see a bit of active progress, the game gets that little bit more polished with every change AND we remove the mental roadblock which has likely existed long before the Neocron Support Team took the reigns.

•Built in HUD colour changer. It’s annoying having to type in the code, why not streamline it by having it built in to the F11 setting box?

I take it you mean switching between the presets, rather than building your own colour scheme?

•Maybe personal preference but the dialogue window is clunky and often bugs out. Can we not have the old version which showed your character in third person and created a cut scene effect? I thought it was cinematic and reminded me of Deus Ex (a heavy influence in Neocron). As it stands it’s all very static and not engaging. I know this is being worked on but I personally would not consider changing something that previously worked quite well.

This change was made to improve support of better text sizes when speaking to NPCs which the old system did not allow for. I appreciate it's still pretty rough. Unsure what it'd take to switch back and it's not something we'd do lightly. We do need to finish/improve what is currently in place though.

•New graphic icon for the cloaking device that isn’t a hack tool icon. Gets confusing. Make it so I can tell from my inventory what is a hack tool and what is a cloak from a glance.

Not an unreasonable request however art resource is limited at the moment. In the short term we can add text to differentiate as per the below.

As of the next patch Stealth Activators carry the I, II, III badges like implants. The Mr Jones Stealthtools carry SPY and PE notations. Hacktools that didn't already have it now have their TL as per other tools.

•Add an R to the remote tool icons. Again, this is to distinguish from a personal tool and a remote tool.

Consider it done (literally, just now) for the next patch for implant tools and the remote repair tool.

•”Neofrag - Hovercab your skills with other runners” WHAT!? The other Neocron announcer voice promotes Neofrag properly, but this one is screwed up. Remove it or fix it.

"Mess with the best in FragZone. Hovercab your skills in virtual flights with other Runners." Yeah. I've no idea either. I've disabled that. Oh and the Yakarma PSI Equipment advert while I was at it. Those will drop out of the rotation in the next patch.

•Military Base gene replicator area is pure ear rape. You have the game’s Industrial music playing over the stripper club music next to the generep. It is a cacophony of ear bleeding horror. Please fix.

We can take a look. Was this implemented in the changes to Military Base Sec-1 in the last couple of patches?

•More psi vendors, and possibly more vendors in some other areas. Breathe a bit more life into Outzone, Dome of York and some parts of the wasteland. Some traders in the more dangerous parts of the wasteland sell useless low level items. Does not make sense. Have them sell ammo and med kits.

Traders need a lot of work. There's a lot more work involved in fixing these unfortunately.

•The NExT HQ has a tiny NExT jeep on a desk. Is it possible to make that into a new furniture item for our apartments?

We can do you one better but it's a while off implementation (both our and your route require effort in this case).

1) Fix the Chatbug
2) Fix the Chatbug
3) Fix the Chatbug

Thanks :-)

This is certainly beyond the scope of Hell-Demon's proposition however have you read this thread?

[Hell-demon]

Thanks Trivaldi very timely and productive.

To elaborate on your points:

•I do not know when the sound changes were implemented on the military base, all I know is it is painful.

•In regards to the HUD I do mean the presets. Possible to have a button you click and it just cycles?

•Any word on the possibility of making extra mouse buttons mapable?

•In regards to announcers any chance of bringing the old DoY announcers like the crahn sect ones back? The content exists somewhere right? Adds some more depth if put in pepper park.

•Finally is it possible to use an existing icon model for cloak devices. Maybe ones that aren’t used as much. How about using the ion pack icon: http://www.techhaven.org/db/showitem/1590.html

Only really used for one quest. Maybe change a single colour. Make it red?

Or this?

http://www.techhaven.org/db/showitem/1031.html

[Trivaldi]

Thanks Trivaldi very timely and productive.

To elaborate on your points:

•I do not know when the sound changes were implemented on the military base, all I know is it is painful.

Will investigate, dynamic location based sounds can be edited relatively quickly.

•In regards to the HUD I do mean the presets. Possible to have a button you click and it just cycles?

Neocron's existing UI is not easily dealt with unfortunately. There's a lot of hard coded elements and we'd need to add code to manage the button which would take a reasonable amount of time/resource.

•Any word on the possibility of making extra mouse buttons mapable?

This falls into "don't know" territory which triggers this:

Changes where we don't know the effort involved, we'll not respond to until we know either way. Please don't take that to mean we will actively seek out how easy it is to implemented things in the list though.

•In regards to announcers any chance of bringing the old DoY announcers like the crahn sect ones back? The content exists somewhere right? Adds some more depth if put in pepper park.

There's a ton of noise and effects on these audio files to fit into the aesthetic and atmosphere of the Dome. Lots of booming echo and white noise. For that reason they don't really work anywhere else in the game-world I'm afraid. We have neither the source files to remove these effects or the available persons/tech to recreate them currently.

•Finally is it possible to use an existing icon model for cloak devices. Maybe ones that aren’t used as much. How about using the ion pack icon: http://www.techhaven.org/db/showitem/1590.html

Only really used for one quest. Maybe change a single colour. Make it red?

Or this?

http://www.techhaven.org/db/showitem/1031.html

We can theoretically use any existing inventory image. I'd rather avoid junk items though. That seems far more dangerous than the duplication of stealth/hacktools is annoying.

[Hell-demon]

User Interface
•Possible to display character rank on character selection screen?

•Give the option to turn off the permanent pokeball reticle on the screen.

Audio

•Brilliant soundtrack bar the royalty free club music. It doesn’t fit and is overused in some of the faction headquarters. I’ve heard the music used in an online video to sell sex toys once. Honest. There’s like two songs that play constantly at most faction HQ and it drives you nuts. Maybe have it play at a few bars and clubs?

Content/Game World

•The normal sized rats that roam the streets of Neocron don’t roam. They are stationary and hump the ground. Find one the little critters and observe it stuck to the spot thrusting into the ground. What gives? Bug? Or were they tweaked due to a map limitation?

•The rewards for the twilight guardian epic are pathetic. I’m not saying change the quest just give us more than some cash and some useless grenades. Every other faction gets imps and vehicles. Give a trophy maybe. Either use the literal model there is of a trophy or a Drom trophy. Just give something more.

•Tanks are missing 2 skill points. Could really help newbies when 2 points is nothing to scoff at.

[Zoltan]

1) Fix the Chatbug
2) Fix the Chatbug
3) Fix the Chatbug

Thanks :-)

The problem is already addressed here:

http://forum.neocron-game.com/showth...nc-dc-problems

btw @Hell-Demon - Nice Thread <3

[Farril]

A fix to the bug which resets the position of the RPOS windows on occassional crashes. It also unchecks most of the chat custom channels

Will have a look. In the meantime, try the following workaround: arrange the windows how you like and then set the file rpos.ini as write protected.