Parts of the game where polishing is needed

[Erik]

You can create a very big and cool game, but when it lacks polish, it will feel incomplete and bad to play, no matter how much cool content it has.

The following suggestions are very minor things, but their polishing would improve the whole game a lot. Some of the suggestions are easy to fix and have a huge impact, while others might be hard to fix, although they have a very small impact. Some of these suggestions might also be planed, but I can't be sure if you are aware of every little issue, so I list everything I found.

1. Movement:

Movement is a very important part of a video game, it's probably the most used feature of most games, excluding rail shooters. VintageStory's movement feels very uncomfortable and wrong at times. Your flight path when jumping seems unusual and your vertical movement is "broken":

That out of the way, for me movement feels "chunky" and "stuttery", the movement doesn't update your position fluently and I can't figure out why, framerate is definitively not the issue. While fixing these issues, implementation of a few other movement mechanics may also be possible, like sprinting, sneaking and maybe even crawling, there's some MC mod, that changes movement  (Smart Moving mod). And add a flying mode, with a fixed y-axis, like MC creative mode has one, would make building much easier.

2. GUI:

The texturing of the GUI doesn't reflect the graphical style of the game (32x32 textures) and the health and hunger bars look especially ugly. It's not very important, but some change might probably improve the game by a bit. The health and hunger bars need some change, really, they are small, don't represent their function and there's no indication that health or hunger is very low.

3. Item icon sizes:

Everything held in your hand seems tiny, like Donald Trumps hands. Make the items seem bigger, would improve the game a whole lot visually. Thrown items in the world are also very tiny, it's easy to overlook them, because they don't even have an animation.

4. Mobs:

A zombie as the first mob? Really? From an outside viewpoint it looks like copying minecraft, especially in areas where minecraft shouldn't be copied, because it's very well known for it's choice of mobs. You could instead go for something more original, maybe fantasy creatures, like goblins, orcs, trolls?

5. The world, while visually beautiful, sees empty and not alive.

This will probably be fixed to an extend with the addition of mobs, but a improved sound atmosphere could really make the game feel more alive (take a look at the Matmos mod). Cave sounds are nice, but not enough.

6. Sounds:

There are many sounds that need replacement, like the block breaking sound and the hurt sound. 

[Tyron]

ad 1.

• I am unable to reproduce what you are observing there. I've added a line of code that spawns a particle at the players feet every frame and then did some jumps, this is how it looks:
  
  
  Seems like a perfect arc to me. With the diagonal movement, do you mean walking diagonally is faster? I could probably add a speedometer to verify it mathematically but I cannot notice any significant difference in speed while walking diagonally.
   
• I am indeed able to reproduce stutter when strafing and turning the camera at the same time. Thats indeed pretty bad, but couldn't see any obvious causes for it. I'll look some more if i can find the cause.
   
• Sprinting and Sneaking already is there under the same key controls as in minecraft (ctrl and shift) and I do would like some more movement options and proper animations for each of them
   
• Flying mode: 
  /gamemode 2
  then hit F3 to cycle fly modes. Hit F2 for 5x speed, and F1 for normal speed again
   
• >with a fixed y-axis
  type the following command:
  .lockfly 2
  Documentation: https://www.vintagestory.at/how-to-use/worldedit.html/
   

ad 2.

• We spent a lot of time trying to come up with a decent GUI, but we're very open to suggestions
   
• Please elaborate why you find the health/hunger bars ugly and why they don't represent their function for you. I agree that an alarm on low health/hunger is definitely useful, but I would see no reason why they don't fullfill their function or why they need to be bigger. I usually rather prefer less gui clutter on my screen.

ad 3.

• Same as before again, covering a larger part of your screen will obstruct your view. I rather think smaller is better, as long as you can clearly identify your currently held item. There are some small items that could be enlarged though. 
  On what resolution, screen size and what gui scale do you play? Perhaps it just looks fine on my screen. 
   
• Dropped items do have an animation, they rotate and bob up and down. Size is debatable.

ad 4.

• There is more to come on the hostile features front. This is just the very beginning. Also it's not a Zombie, it's a Drifter ;-)

ad 5.

• Yes, all in time

ad 6.

• Which block breaking sounds? These are block type dependent. 
• I'm open to suggestions for different hurt sounds

[Erik]

1 hour ago, Tyron said:

ad 1.

• I am unable to reproduce what you are observing there. I've added a line of code that spawns a particle at the players feet every frame and then did some jumps, this is how it looks:
  Seems like a perfect arc to me. With the diagonal movement, do you mean walking diagonally is faster? I could probably add a speedometer to verify it mathematically but I cannot notice any significant difference in speed while walking diagonally.

Ok, my bad, something seemed strange about jumping, I first thought it was the flight path, but it was the lack of jumping sounds, when you jump, you jump totally silent

As for the movement speed, I'm 95.241% sure that you walk faster when moving diagonally (pressing W and D at the same time for example).

1 hour ago, Tyron said:

ad 2.

• Please elaborate why you find the health/hunger bars ugly and why they don't represent their function for you. I agree that an alarm on low health/hunger is definitely useful, but I would see no reason why they don't fullfill their function or why they need to be bigger. I usually rather prefer less gui clutter on my screen.

ad 3.

• Same as before again, covering a larger part of your screen will obstruct your view. I rather think smaller is better, as long as you can clearly identify your currently held item. There are some small items that could be enlarged though. 
  On what resolution, screen size and what gui scale do you play? Perhaps it just looks fine on my screen. 
   
• Dropped items do have an animation, they rotate and bob up and down. Size is debatable.

I play on 1920*1080, with GUI scale 7. The Hunger and Health bars don't need to be bigger, they need a style rework, imagine if you're color blind (Red-green-blind, if that exists?), how can you decide which bar is the health bar? The very simple design of the bars also make it hard to exactly say how much health or hunger you have, without counting every segment. Take a look at this: http://pixelartmaker.com/art/49e2498a414f221 You can probably tell what it is, it won't be mistaken for a stamina, hunger or manabar. As for the item sizes, an axe looks tiny, while a knife looks fine. But seriously, it's really bad for immersion. If you stand right before a log with that axe, it seems even worse.

 

1 hour ago, Tyron said:

ad 6.

• Which block breaking sounds? These are block type dependent. 

The wood and stone breaking sounds.

[Tyron]

2 hours ago, Erik said:

Ok, my bad, something seemed strange about jumping, I first thought it was the flight path, but it was the lack of jumping sounds, when you jump, you jump totally silent

As for the movement speed, I'm 95.241% sure that you walk faster when moving diagonally (pressing W and D at the same time for example).

Well, sometimes something seems bothering about a jumping mechanic without really being able to tell the reason for it. Perhaps we do have to distort the jumping arc somehow weirdly for it to feel better. Or some more freedom of control, i.e. moving mid-air

Right, it does seem faster when pressing W and D simultaneously, I only tested it by walking straigth at a 45 degree aangle.

2 hours ago, Erik said:

they need a style rework, imagine if you're color blind (Red-green-blind, if that exists?), how can you decide which bar is the health bar? The very simple design of the bars also make it hard to exactly say how much health or hunger you have, without counting every segment.

Oki,  I can agree with those points. Thats what the bulge in the middle was supposed to be for - indicate which bar is what. Never got around to finish that part. Furthermore i was thinking of displaying a number on top or beside the bar to give you an exact value.
 

2 hours ago, Erik said:

As for the item sizes, an axe looks tiny, while a knife looks fine. But seriously, it's really bad for immersion. If you stand right before a log with that axe, it seems even worse.

Ok that sounds more reasonable. Let's see what others think about that.

[Jdbener]

My two cents... Red is always health, Blue is always mana, Green is always stamina. These are the tropes that games have instilled. If food is going to act as stamina... make it green and say that food refills stamina instead of hunger. If it isn't, make the food bar an amber color and say that food refills hunger.

Also don't judge a game by its first mob... as I understand it the drifter is more of an AI test than anything else... similarly to how the creeper was just a coding mistake. 

[Tyron]

Ok @Erik, so apparently the stutter does seem to be caused by the FPS. I've now added a Max FPS slider and my stuttering is gone at MaxFPS=38 but when I do unlimited i have really bad stutter. Probably linked to the problem of monitor refresh rate syncing (if either cpu or monitor refresh at different speeds, it causes stutter).