Space Fans: X Rebirth has a Release Date!

[Keyrock]

Can't believe it's almost here and I haven't got a new PC yet.

 

*cries*

 

I'll buy it anyway, have it lurking on my Steam account.

 

Yeah, my lappy won't be able to get this to anywhere near maximum eye orgasm, but my new system building isn't scheduled for some 9 or 10 months so I'll just have to run it at reduced eye orgasm until then.

Hm, wonder how soon it will be on a Steam sale.

The next Steam sale is probably only a month or so away...

[Malcador]

Would be a slight sale that early, but who knows.

[Keyrock]

Would be a slight sale that early, but who knows.

Yeah, I wouldn't expect a discount of more than 20 or 25% this close to release.

[Malcador]

 

Needs more dubstep.

[Keyrock]

 

Needs more dubstep.

I was also disappointed in the lack of BRAHHHHHM!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXLDv-fUINM

 

On a more serious note, I have this pre-loaded.  Just one more day until my galactic trading empire begins to take shape.

 

/rubs hands together

[Gfted1]

I want to like it but the first person perspective gives me pause. It would probably give me vertigo.

[Keyrock]

They should have gone with second person.

[Mamoulian War]

To bad it's Steam only...

[Bos_hybrid]

7 hours...

[Keyrock]

3 hours to go until it arrives 

 

7 hours to go until I actually get to play it 

 

At least it's pre-loaded so I won't have to sit through an hour of downloading.

[Mamoulian War]

I am eagerly anticipating your review, though I will not purchase it on principle. I will just hope they will do in time the same right thing, as they did with X - Superbox, and offered DRM-less executables on their website. Then I can freely purchase it.

[Keyrock]

I'll give impressions in a day or two, but a full blown review, for a game like this, will have to wait for quite a long time.  I just hope they didn't destroy the game's complexity and depth in the attempt to make it more accessible.  I know they've been saying all the right things about not making the game more shallow, but I'm still a little worried.  We shall see.

[licketysplit]

The FPS walking view is...not too good. Voice acting is bad, but it wouldn't be an X game if it wasn't. Full Joystick support is not there yet, it seems. A disappointment. The menus and loading times are pretty bad so far. Everything else seems good. Just my very first impressions.

[Keyrock]

As per standard Egosoft protocol, the game is a bit of a mess right now.  Definitely a bit of a learning process for me, even as a seasoned X player.  I don't know if it's not detecting my flightstick correctly or what, but I can't set it up entirely right now because it's picking up a couple axes as one and the same, so, begrudgingly, I'm playing with m&kb at the moment.  As licketysplit mentioned, this is not an isolated issue (you'd think a freakin' space sim would take care to get its flightstick support in order before launch).  Cringeworthy voice acting, which is par for the course for Egosoft, and some Morrowind-level character animations makes the on-foot parts of the game pretty hilarious.  The space part of the game, which is obviously the bulk of it, is quite good.  Even having to use m&kb, the ship controls quite well, once I set up the controls to my liking and inverted the Y axis (Why isn't the Y axis inverted by default?  Who plays a space/flight sim without the Y axis inverted?), anyway.  I'm not sure how I feel about the highway system yet, but you can always just not use them.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Keyrock

[alanschu]

I really enjoyed 1 and 2 but I think maybe was burnt out for 3?

 

This is on my radar but will probably be a cheaper purchase.

[MacMichael]

I'm told the power company is going to turn my power off, along with the entire block, to do... something.  So I've only gotten about 30 minutes.  Enough to land once.  It feels weird.  The flying seems fine, but then walking around is odd.  The menus look like they're going to be bad.  But I really REALLY want to fly around space all night after my couple minutes flying around a station watching things float around in space.  Damn you power company, you had to pick tonight to do whatever it is that you're doing!

[Keyrock]

Yeah, the on-foot part of the game is...   awkward.  Honestly, they should just not have included it if it was going to be this shoddy.  This looks like something they hastily added so that they can add a line to the back of a box (ironically no physical version exists right now): * Walk around space stations and interact with its inhabitants!  They should have just kept it as it was before where you'd just open a channel of communications to whoever was on the station.  Whatever, the space part of the game is what really matters, and that part is quite good, even without proper flightstick support (*shakes fist*).  So far the campaign is pretty awful, as per Egosoft protocol.  I'd probably be better off just playing in sandbox mode, that's what these games are all about, but the completionist in me demands that I go through the nonsensical campaign at least once.

[licketysplit]

I was hoping the campaign would be better but I bailed on it 40 minutes in. They really should be able to hire better writers and voice actors by now, they've been making games for like what, 20 yrs? My PC can play it but it struggles in spots. I might just hold off till it gets patched a bunch.

Edited November 16, 2013 by licketysplit

[Bos_hybrid]

Oh jeez what the hell happened? The UI is bloody awful, I believe the diagnosis is consolitis.

 

Just trying to imagine running a trade empire with this UI gives me a headache. Honestly I think they've completely stuffed up the trading aspect in this release. I don't see how baby sitting freighters is fun. No ability to automate the process, hiring crew just doesn't allow that in it's current form.

 

Also I'm sorry but having to search those incredibly large stations for docking ports to find crewmen and traders, then having to search the station on foot for said crewmen and traders is not an improvement from X3. It's like simulating driving in peak hour traffic in GTA for immersion. And whats up with that map? That has got to be one of the worst I've seen for intuitiveness. With the removal of gates and the way highways have been deployed, I'm finding it a nightmare to navigate and get my bearings in the galaxy.

 

Combat seems a lot easier too, just seem to be blowing up fighters for fun and doing strafing runs on capital ships. I do think combat has improved, destroying hardpoints on capital ships and stations is fun, just needs to be harder to do so.

 

And freeplay...... No multiple race start with no choice how you start(always Otani with that girl as co-pilot), just dumped randomly. And in my case dumped in a battle between PMC forces and a Xenon carrier(which is the only time I've seen any Xenon ship). No Boron or Paranid in game, doesn't look like there is any Split or Telaidi ships in game either(there are npc models/vo though).

 

Overall I'm pretty disappointed in the direction this game has taken, I can understand them wanting to streamline after the wall of information and windows X3 could throw at a player, I just think they've gone about it in the wrong way. Sure patching can do some good, but it's going to take a radical change to get trading to work well. A lot seems to been cut for minimal gains.

 

Still would like to know the story of the great lice epidemic that caused everyone to shave their heads.

[Keyrock]

The craziest part is that the consolitis excuse isn't even valid as it's a PC only game and controllers and flightsticks don't even fully function properly at this point.  The UI is such a mess and for absolutely no reason whatsoever.  I think eventually, once all the bugs are sorted out and the modding community rescues the awful UI it will be a great game for hardcore space sim fans, but their effort to open the game up to more casual fans is an EPIC FAIL.

[licketysplit]

"SHOW ME YOUR SKILLZ"

 

I think they may have been future proofing for release on next gen. That's what the game feels like, because now there is limited functionality to menus and hotkeys. I mean why would they even bother with gamepad design for something as complex as a space sim?? I always use joystick/keyboard combo.

[Keyrock]

"SHOW ME YOUR SKILLZ"

 

I think they may have been future proofing for release on next gen. That's what the game feels like, because now there is limited functionality to menus and hotkeys. I mean why would they even bother with gamepad design for something as complex as a space sim?? I always use joystick/keyboard combo.

Same here. My flightstick doesn't have enough buttons to accommodate everything, but there is enough for all my regular flight/combat stuff. Communications, maps, obscure squadron commands, and trading commands are all keyboard buttons. Right now, in X-Stillbirth, everything is done by keyboard and mouse because of the broken flightstick support (it's a friggin' space sim, how the **** do you not make flightstick support a top priority?) 

 

Edit:  Holy ****, there isn't even a key for target next enemy?  What the ****!?  How do you not include a target next enemy key?

 

Damn, I guess I'll go back to playing Terran Conflict until this reaches a somewhat playable state.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

Sounds like fixes/added functionality is incoming:

 

http://www.incgamers.com/2013/11/egosoft-apologise-for-the-state-of-x-rebirth

 

 

###### Bugs we are investigating ######

 

- Broken or missing voice recordings in language other than english

 

There is an update for german voices today (nov 15th) and another update end of next week. We apologize for these problems. French voices are expected to be added in mid december, russian voices should also follow in december.

 

- Performance problems on very high end PCs

 

It seems that some of you experience an unsatisfying framerate even though you have really high end machines. We want to know which systems are affected by this and need to reproduce these problems here. To do this it would help us immensely if you could send your DXDIAG reports and describe the framerates you measure (e.g with the FRAPS tool) in certain situations. Please describe the situation and give different examples (e.g landed on a station, in an empty zone, close to a station, in a highway etc.). Please send your information to info@egosoft.com with subject #PERFORMANCE INFO#

 

- Stuck object on platform: We are sorry that this still happens sometimes and will fix it ASAP, but you should however always be able to simply use ENTER – 5 to get back.

 

- We read reports of people who can not save: Please check if the harddrive that you are saving to has space left and the right are set correctly for the savegame folder. If you think this is all correct, please send us a DXDiag file to info@egosoft.com with subject #SAVING BUG#

 

- Crash right at gamestart (but not in or before start menu):

 

This is very likely memory related. Do not try running the game in 32 bit Windows (this is not officially supported). If you still want to experiment with 32 bit Windows, be aware that it may crash. More importantly it will definitely crash if you do not set your machine to allow more than 2GB of physical memory. There are tricks to achieve this but in general the rule is: Use a 64bit Windows! UPDATE: Patch 1.12 will give you a message at the start if the game has zero chance of running because of “out of memory” and not even start!

 

- Exiting the super highway (blue) millions of km away from anything

 

This seems to be a bug several people report. We are trying to reproduce this but it is not easy. If you have information on how to reproduce, please email info@egosoft.com

Please let us know if you had this problem with 1.12 or above, as we hope it was already fixed.

 

- After loading cursor vanishes

While running around on platforms the mouse cursor is supposed to disappear. If it happens in normal flight, please check if you have more than one physical monitor and the cursor may just moved off the screen?

 

- Ship flying through station:

 

We apologize for this happening. We hoped to have reduced the chance of this happening significantly, but are investigating this.

 

###### Tricks & Tips ######

 

- Dont run game in 32bit Windows and make sure you have enough memory free

 

- Make sure you have latest drivers installed.

 

- If you have problems with the game, reset all settings in the driver to default

 

- If you suffer performance problems set the LOD and view distance to low values. The game should still look good but this helps a LOT. Consider turning off shadows, consider medium or low shaders if your GPU is the bottleneck.

 

- Trading: Some people report problems that trade ships do not work as expected. In most cases this is not a bug with the trade ship AI but the ship did not get the right order through the trade menu. As mentioned above, we definitely want to improve this menu further, but most importantly you have to make sure that when you add a trade order to a ship, you click on NEXT after selecting the order and assigning it to the ship selected at the top of the menu. Then you select the amount and confirm the order. After this you should see that an order was added to the ships order queue. One thing we want to improve is management of this queue and show it more clearly in trade ship info menus.

 

- There seems to be a bug with menus remaining open sometimes. If you end up with a non working menu, please see if changing the screen resolution or AA settings (ESC – settings – graphic settings) helps to make the menus work again. You can undo those changes after it works again. If this happens repeatedly please email information on how you reproduce this to info@egosoft.com

 

###### Feedback about feature requests: ######

 

- Map and other menu improvement: We have a number of menu and map improvements planned. This includes more control over the map like the zoom that was suggested here and changing the layout of some of the text menus. We are also considering showing the “minimap” on the eventmonitor whenever there is “no signal” at the moment. These are a lot of individual improvements some of which will happen soon.

 

- Autopilot / SETA: We will add some autopilot support. However it is our goal with X Rebirth that you do not need to run the game semi-automatically for extended periods of time. This is also he reason why we will not support SETA / SINZA time acceleration. There should never be a need to wait 20 minutes for your trade ships once you have multiple ships. You can queue orders and do many things in parallel. Time acceleration as a trick to accelerate trading will not be in X Rebirth.

 

- Facial animations: We will look into improving facial animations.

 

- External view / Ability to turn around in ****pit: This was asked for a few times. Yes we will look into this but it will be part of a larger update and take more time than just a few weeks. It will also be combined with support for looking around in the ****pit (e.g with a joystick POV hat) and maybe also support for Oculus Rift style VR. So please be aware that this feature will take some time to add.

 

- Targeting hotkeys: Another feature that was requested a couple of times. Yes we will do this. Based on your feedback that is for one of the earlier updates even though such “explicit” targets only work in the mouse / keyboard mode. Not with controllers!

 

- Talking to people on stations: We have a plan for an early patch (early december) which will make the conversations and finding NPCs for jobs a lot easier and more accessible. This has a high priority.

 

- Skipping conversations: We will look into this, but I can not promise that this is always possible.

 

- Joystick support: We are aware that joystick support (as opposed to gamepad) at this time is not perfect. We definitely will make this a priority for one of the next updates, but please allow a little time for this.

I'm going to go back to Terran Conflict for a couple of months, as implementing this will take some time and in the game's current state, building a trading empire is next to impossible (trading is my jam).  Hopefully by early next year the game will be in a lot better shape.

[Mamoulian War]

That's why I completely stopped to purchase game on their release date... I save myself lot of rage...

[Malcador]

Yeah, I figure I'll wait until they patch it up or show that their vision of the game was crap to begin with, either or time works to the advantage.