Thought I'd share my first impressions with the Evochron Demo, being an X3-er an' all.
First off, I am very impressed indeed.
Who wouldn't be with one guy heading it all.
I like....
it means that things are kept simple from a development point of view.
Initially, if you take the time to enjoy the demo properly, shes fairly beautiful to play.
Its easily immersible with seemless jump drive, docking and even planet fall - something X3 never had.
The jump sequences are beautifully rendered and very convincing like they are organic to the environment.
And, Oh!, pangs of Tachyon with the IDS/Slide key - Love it!
Much more realistic and satisfying than the Einstien Dubious Seta drive.
A better system too, PC resource wise.
I'm er... older, but I'm fairly convinced I'll get the full version soon.
But (hehe) as I'm older, I'm afraid of long nights in the Evochron universe,
especially with the multiplayer universe, and subsequently shaky and short work days -
so, we'll see...
The Good
Its all Good.
The Download Footprint really cracks me up.
under 300mb lol!
How does a guy do all that in under 300 mb?!!?
He doesnt work for Reaper as a sideline does he?
Y'know, I always had my suspicions about the way graphic development was going with crazy hikes in texture memory and the cards following suit.
I could never understand why, when original dos games in the early days of the Banshee eg TFX relied much more on algorithm deployment,
why developers forgot their roots, so to speak.
Of course, thats not to say that texture heavy games dont have their beauty as X3 proves,
but it seems to me that Evochron have got the very basics down first, and it looks,
and more importantly, FEELS , very very good indeed.
I don't understand really some of the negative criticism.
Spacesims by nature have a learning curve so anyone expecting to jump right in and know everything is really asking too much.
The tutorials, at least from a demo point of view are satisfactory and y'know, if one bothers to give it a fair crack of the whip,
most things are fairly intuitive.
In any case, with this forum, I rekon we'll see more than a number of user- submitted tutorials in the future.
IMO the GUI is fine, and in-cockpit looks amazing!
Though I'd like some legs plz - lol - else I'd be afraid of mistaking myself for some genetically produced human braincast.
The Geo-positional Radar system is great in both the realism and functional dept. - less confusing than X3's IMO.
Love the Music - I know its only one piece in the demo I've heard so far but its lovely - nice and organic to the enviroment.
I love the way the ship feels in flight too btw.
The Desired
These are just a few pernickity things really.
It is fairly annoying when I ALT-in into the Nav panel to select a destination,
and then when I Alt- back-out, the ship lurches to a mouse screen co-ordinate, presumably,
usually the ship lurches hard-down- left for me.
I think that process needs a little re-thinking.
X3's deployment of this is very good.
Also, I think if the ALT- cursor could be made sticky, ie. I would assign it to MB3, click it to deploy the screen cursor, do my business Nav-whatever,
then MB3 to close the cursor again.
I don't know if its just me, but I get the sense during planetfall that the atmospheres of the planets are fairly thin.
It seems that no sooner am I through the clouds, than I'm almost about to hit the ground.
Of course, that may be how it is realistically at these velocities, so its no biggie.
Hotkeys for the various panels I think is a must.
But I expect these and more to be added sooner or later.
Also, although the comms chatter sounds effective and adds nicely to the environment, it does get irritating sometimes,
so I'd like to be able to turn it off now and again, without turning off the other voices.
Thats it so far.
Apart from the big lurch out of the Nav panel, its a beautiful job.
-----------------------------
Now,
Forgive me, but because I am very impressed with this Sim and the idea of people getting into the community more quickly,
I must with more severity, criticize the Forums Front Door.
I had NOT so fun time registering y'know.
I don't think I've ever been faced with a more complex and indecipherable Captcha Image Verification field.
I didn't know if I was to type in the ghost letters - or if they were even ghost letters or what.
It took me about 8 attempts, and then it was hit and miss, sheer luck that I got registered atall - lol.
IMO, its the kind of thing that would make people give up quickly on joining the forum which would not be a good thing for the game.
It can give the impression that the Forum is kind of abit paranoid on security and possibly a bit over- heavily moderated, which it isn't.
So if your finding registration requests are not what they should be, that might be the reason why.
Of course, I understand that these protections are necessary, but I'd recommend scaling it down abit - to a more easily legible Captcha Image Verification.
In any case, Ausraider abides...
Anyways, many thanks for the demo and best of luck with a very good and promising Spacesim.
Ausraider.
LOL 
