A couple minor issues

[InnocentBystander]

Hi all! I picked up Mercenary off GamersGate during one of their sales, and I've been loving it. I've been trying to find that perfect freeform space sim, and I think this is it.

Anyway, I noticed a couple minor gameplay issues that shouldn't be too hard to fix.

First, if you are in Mouselook mode and then bring up an interface panel (Navigation or Inventory, for instance) the interface is broken and hard to use. It's especially disorienting if you're in Mouselook mode when you come into dock, because then the Inv screen pops up and you can't control it well without getting out of Mouselook.

So, assuming this isn't just some bizarre bug on my end, it seems like it might be a good idea to automatically disable Mouselook when any panel requiring use of the mouse as a pointer pops up.

The other one is that I find that when I'm flying down into planets' atmosphere with a lot of cloud cover, it's often very difficult to see the approach guidance display through the clouds. There's not enough contrast to see it. Perhaps you could make it so that once we transition from Space to Planetary flight modes, the HUD becomes a vew notches more vibrant and\\or contrasty to make sure it's visible over the atmospheric effects?

Finally, one feature request, although I don't know how easy\\hard it would be to implement: some rudimentary brightness\\contrast\\gamma controls. I'd like the game to be a bit darker and with more contrast between space and objects, but I know other people would prefer the enhanced visibility. (Being able to play around with specularity and the number of ambient lightsources would also be cool, but that's probably outside the realm of what's plausible to put in the UI.)

Thanks for a great game! I'm sure I'll be playing it a lot over the holiday break. :-)

[Ravenfeeder]

One way round that is to buy a joystick!!! I use the Logitec 3D Pro, not expensive.

As for your last request - sorry, but, I think that the brightness, in the game, is spot on. Lots of shiny things in space, like suns, and stars, not to mention the odd exploding Vonari.

In real life cloud does tend to obscure the land when you're flying. Sorry, no IR controls.

Welcome to the forum, and the game. Looking forward to meeting you in MP

[InnocentBystander]

In regards to the planetary landings, I'm not talking about an IR mode; I'm just talking about the glide path on your cockpit HUD, like when you're coming in to land a port. And there's no good reason, realistically, that a consumer-grade spaceship would have a HUD that's so dim and washed-out that it can become unreadable in heavy clouds. And it would be (I imagine) a very simple fix to make the HUD a bit brighter and more colorful when it switches to Planetary Mode.

Otherwise, in terms of the brightness of objects in space, that's why I was saying it should be a user-controllable option. I know it's a matter of preference; I just happen to prefer a darker look.

(That said, I can make it look like I'd like by fooling with the brightness, contrast, and digital vibrance on my NVidia... it'd just be nice if I didn't have to manually change the settings every time I play.)

Cheers!

[Edited on 12-19-2010 by InnocentBystander]

[Vice]

Hello and welcome. Glad you're enjoying the game and thanks for your feedback.

I could probably add a shadow layer to the descent/docking guide bars to make them easier to distinguish. I'll add it to my list to try out some ideas and see how they work.

In terms of brightness/contrast, the Nvidia control panel is one option. Some kind of built in option would be good to, although iirc, when I was working on some ideas along those lines I ran into some quirky behaviors when altering the gamma setting (such as not being able to get it back to default levels without having to restart the whole game). It has been a long time since I last explored those options, so it may be something I can review also. There is an ambient option you can use (details in the customizing kit) which will give you the option to increase the level of contrast for the dimmer/darker parts of the game. Maybe an external file option with adjustable values would work for overall gamma as well.

I could probably re-center the view automatically when a console is opened, unless players want to still be able to look around with a console open and use F10 to manually turn it off when they want.

[Marvin]

I think his last request was answered here:

There is an ambient option you can use (details in the customizing kit) which will give you the option to increase the level of contrast for the dimmer/darker parts of the game.

[49rTbird]

Hello InnocentBystander, Welcome to the forum and the Sim. Have fun and hope to see you out there sometime.