I-War2 woes

Ok, I have non-removed this game from an inventory (because most of the inventories I can access don't have copies I could remove) and so far noticed several things:

1. The backgrounds are too bright and colourful for my frontier-trained eyes.

2. The authors wouldn't know good interface if it hit them in the face - come on, compare system maps in Frontier and I-War 2, for example, same with using the mouse - in frontier you could do anything with it if, for example, you haven't yet learned all the hotkeys.

3. The tech fluff ranges between promising and faptastic - keeps me optimistic.

4. LDS pretty much kills the sense of place and distance.

Now, I have several questions:

42. How many G's can the starting ship clock on main thrusters? It seems to decelerate/accelerate no slower than you can adjust set speed. Kind of kills part of the fun for me.

69. How possible it is to play this game without a joystick? Is it better or worse than playing last missions of TN:SFC on high difficulty as a southpaw?

404. Is it even possible to use the mouse in any constructive manner in this game (apart from hitting yourself in the forehead with it to relieve stress)?

666. How, if it's possible, can you operate ventral and dorsal thrusters manually?

911. Where is the quick-ref chart? FFFFFUUUUUU-

1024. Can you toggle assist rather than having to keep Num5 pressed if you want to do something elaborate?

Weapons Ref: http://web.archive.org/web/200412071537 ... Guide.html

Better keyboard reference, covers numpad: http://keycardhq.dlh.net/t/iwar2.pdf

The backgrounds are too bright and colourful for my frontier-trained eyes.

There's possibly a mod, I know Torn Stars has darker space as a whole, but it's more a total conversion. Not sure how it interacts with original campaign as I've not tried it for years.

LDS pretty much kills the sense of place and distance.

Meh, if you like watching paint dry I recommend the X series.

The authors wouldn't know good interface if it hit them in the face
How possible it is to play this game without a joystick?
Is it even possible to use the mouse in any constructive manner in this game

If your playing it with a mouse, kill yourself. It's designed for kb + joystick, they assumed you'd have one hand glued to the stick the other the kb and not bother using a mouse much, if at all, and designed the interface as such.

How, if it's possible, can you operate ventral and dorsal thrusters manually?

Dorsal and Ventral thrust is on the joystick Y axis with ALT held down

Can you toggle assist rather than having to keep Num5 pressed if you want to do something elaborate?

Doesn't "N" toggle it?

How many G's can the starting ship clock on main thrusters?

Can't remember.

NiM82 said:

*refs*

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Thanks! I'm not sure if I'll use weapons ref as they seem pretty well described in the encyclopedia, but quick-ref is what I was after. :D

LDS pretty much kills the sense of place and distance.

Meh, if you like watching paint dry I recommend the X series.

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X-series is, from what I've heard, non-Newtonian, which makes it a step in the opposite direction. It's simply that you're zooming around the system in a matter of in-game minutes that makes spaceflight less of a serious business. It also doesn't allow for some interesting situations and mechanics - in frontier it took you days of continuous thrusting to get to peak velocity and days to decelerate before reaching destination - pirate intercepts often took place in the middle of nowhere with combatants travelling at several thousand km/s relative to about any body in the system. Here you still have Newtonian mechanics, but never reach velocities that would make you say "oh bloody fuck" in conventional way. You just flutter around on inertialess wings of your modified stutterdrive, accelerating to/decelerating from absolutely silly velocities in the matter of seconds. The time it takes from your perspective may not be much different (in fact, travelling through most systems took shorter in Frontier on max time compression - so much about watching the paint dry), but the gameplay context makes all the difference in the world.

The authors wouldn't know good interface if it hit them in the face
How possible it is to play this game without a joystick?
Is it even possible to use the mouse in any constructive manner in this game

If your playing it with a mouse, kill yourself. It's designed for kb + joystick, they assumed you'd have one hand glued to the stick the other the kb and not bother using a mouse much, if at all, and designed the interface as such.

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Fuck you sideways.
I'm not buying a joystick to play one or two games belonging to a subgenre consisting maybe of five or six.

I rest my case - in times where fully configurable interface is a bloody norm not only not allowing players to change key bindings, but also not allowing them to use the other precision control device should they lack a joystick is criminally retarded.

Besides, just compare 3D, freely rotable and zoomable system map with simulated movements of celestial bodies and all the other objects we could see in FE2 to planar overlay with fixed zoom steps to see who wins here. No contest.

How, if it's possible, can you operate ventral and dorsal thrusters manually?

Dorsal and Ventral thrust is on the joystick Y axis with ALT held down

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How very helpful.

Can you toggle assist rather than having to keep Num5 pressed if you want to do something elaborate?

Doesn't "N" toggle it?

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Fuck, yeah! I can finally put my frontier experience to a good use and stop sucking. Shame you can't control ventral/dorsal thrusters with keyboard (instead of maybe having half a dozen buttons for locking on the target? ) - given that the ships in I-war are rather sluggish (as they should, admittedly) and that the game lacks precise control because some moron designed the interface ass-backwards, direct dorsal/ventral thruster control would be most helpful. I imagine it sucks even on joystick, as you don't seem to be able to pitch and thrust at the same time.

Oh, well, I'll have to roll.

I thoroughly love the way the shields work, BTW - orb, on the other hand is pretty wonky - they should have gone with Elite/Frontier style scanners that display pretty much the same information, but in much more readable fashion.

DraQ said:

NiM82 said:

Can you toggle assist rather than having to keep Num5 pressed if you want to do something elaborate?

Doesn't "N" toggle it?

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Fuck, yeah! I can finally put my frontier experience to a good use and stop sucking.

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Yeah, now we're flying. :D


Two more complaints though:

Velocity meter is borked and of no use - it lists only your z-axis velocity. The one in Frontier consisting of velocity reading, vector sight and FOR was a prime example of how it should be done, the one in I-War 2 - of how it should not.

Situations in game can make you go FFFFFUUUUUU- and not because they are teh hard, but because they are stupid: police asking you to stop in mid-system - wut? Would it be insufficient to just keep still and not fire any thrusters? Stop relative to what? Did any of the devs, save for those who coded the actual flight model, know who the fuck was Isaac Newton? Not to mention that this is yet another instance of LDS breaking the Newtonian mechanics - in Frontier such a demand would be both meaningless, impossible to meet and unnecessary. Speaking of which, does I-War feature simulated gravity and orbital movement? It's hard to notice amidst all this LDS extravaganza, but if not, the resulting absolute FOR would explain Police's retarded demands and elicit one more FFFUUUU- from me.

I really dig the piracy system, though - I think I'm going to like this game. And once again - whoever came up with the shield system in I-War was fucking genius. :D

Wasn't this the game you could play with, like, two joysticks plus keyboard instead of just one plus keyboard? I always wanted to give it a try with that setup, but buying another joystick just for this game would have been kind of silly and, like, stuff.

There are lots of mods for I-War 2, a lot of them really make the game better. Best of all, very few of them need more setup than "drop the zip into the mod folder"

The ones I use are

MultiMod (required for some)
MultiMod Location finder (navigatings a breeze)
MultiMod Countermeasures (manual CM firing)
UniGui V2a (another required)
Unigui Future Trader (buy and sell at stations)
Unigui MP3 player (Rock OUT)
Unigui location finder v1e (adds filters to MultiMod LF)
Custom Jafs (Jafs in a large freighter. Requires some settings in a config file)

http://www.i-war2.com/downloads.htm

For the Unigui stuff, look under Assoc Mods.

Wasn't this the game you could play with, like, two joysticks plus keyboard instead of just one plus keyboard?

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Not sure on that, don't remember anyone even mentioning dual joysticks on the forums, back in the day. It's fine with just one joystick really, provided it's a decent one with throttle, POV Hat etc. Playing it with a mouse, like Draq, is just faggotry though.

speaking of which, does I-War feature simulated gravity and orbital movement?

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No. Torn Stars (which I recommend you try after the OC) has an optional module that fakes orbital movement, with moons/planets rotating, but they only update position while your in another sector, the engine can't do it in real time sadly.

NiM82 said:

Playing it with a mouse, like Draq, is just faggotry though.

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More than buying a stick for one fucking game?

Besides, you can't play it with mouse - I'm playing it with keyboard alone.

speaking of which, does I-War feature simulated gravity and orbital movement?

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No. Torn Stars (which I recommend you try after the OC) has an optional module that fakes orbital movement, with moons/planets rotating, but they only update position while your in another sector, the engine can't do it in real time sadly.

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Bah. Frontier did it in 1993. To the point where speeding along the surface of a rotating body (game assumed rotating frame of reference for low-level flight) implicitly generated noticeable Coriolis' Force.

I'm not saying that iWar is bad or that Frontier is perfect, but they could have made this game much more than it is through relatively simple means.

Relatively yes, it's still a feat. I think they thought about it and scrapped that idea and focussed om some other stuff, I am already glad that there is spaceflight in it without the constant aid of the thrusters. Something that I really miss in Freespace, but all the games have it's charmes and fill each other out nicely.

Torn Stars looks good, going to try it when I am finished with the plot.

Bah, they were planning to make Elite 4 an MMO, that will really fuk up the concept of Elite. No fast fowarding means more jumping, maybe through gates and stuff, or at the least an LDS drive like in I-War. I rather have a singleplayer game, with optional multiplayer.

RaXz said:

Bah, they were planning to make Elite 4 an MMO, that will really fuk up the concept of Elite. No fast fowarding means more jumping, maybe through gates and stuff, or at the least an LDS drive like in I-War. I rather have a singleplayer game, with optional multiplayer.

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Rumours have it that they reconsidered.

Phew glad to hear that, if I want MMO stuff, I will play Jumpgate or Infinity.

RaXz said:

Phew glad to hear that, if I want MMO stuff, I will play Jumpgate or Infinity.

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You can always register on the official forums. The mods there are very level headed, and won't care unless you start doing some disruptive shit.

Edit: What moron decided that player needs 3 different buttons essentially amounting to "lock on enemy", but not direct dorsal-ventral thruster control? It's just fucking retarded. It's obvious that loosing a whole degree of freedom is crippling in space dogfights, especially if ship's inertia makes pointing main thrusters in any direction you want and giving a short burn a non option, it's equally obvious that having separate buttons for locking closest enemy, the enemy who fired at you last, the enemy who looked at you funny and the enemy whose craft has the fanciest paint job kind of misses the point. From what I understood joystick users are equally handicapped here as they can't simultaneously pitch and burn on their Y-axis, so yeah.

The GUI is atrocious too, with tiny ORB tucked away in upper right corner, no way of displaying the direction missile approaches from, no "countermeasures fired" signal, tiny scrolling target ID, virtually no tactical overlay allowing for quick ship identification and threat assessment, fancy but useless velocity meter and somewhat distracting HUD "space dust". Even arcade shooters like ancient Darklight Conflict managed to have HUDs that were dozen of times more informative and ergonomic with clear 3D scanners allowing for quick identification of incoming threats, clearly displayed ship velocity vectors and even lines linking homing missiles with their targets, so why not proper spacesims that would benefit from informative, yet transparent HUDs?

Stupid ain't it? You have to press and hold ALT for that. Fortunaly I experimented a bit with the control mapping ini, and you can map it to controls. It's in the config directory, the default.ini.

It's this one.
[icPlayerPilot.LateralY]
Joystick1, JoyYAxis, ALT

Change it to

[icPlayerPilot.LateralX]
Keyboard, [the key you want]
Keyboard, [the key you want], inverse

There is your door to another dimension of dogfighting, still it's pretty dumb that you can't map the keys ingame. There is even a tutorial on mapping with the ini in the readme.

I don't even use the velocity meter, the velocity lines are a much better indicactor.

RaXz said:

Stupid ain't it? You have to press and hold ALT for that.

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But this disables pitch control, so you're trading one disability for another.

Fortunaly I experimented a bit with the control mapping ini, and you can map it to controls. It's in the config directory, the default.ini.

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Funny, I was poking around yesterday and noticed that contrary to my expectations there are control settings there. Fortunately I'm not a stranger to config editing - full Jordanian Controls, quick locking and precise 3-axis turning, here I come! *cue maniacal laughter*

I don't even use the velocity meter, the velocity lines are a much better indicactor.

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Because the meter is completely broken. I'd prefer vector sights, some additional directional indicators for the times when vector sight isn't in my FOV, and working meter, TBH, not some distracting lines.

It works pretty good, I've mapped the laterals to a 8 way POV, so I can even move diagonally with ease. In almost any game I look for config fails, it sucks when it doesn't have any, I want lots of options. In this respect the ini mapping is much better than an ingame mapping option, I have to look into it if I can map the laterals to the analog ministick on my throttle.

RaXz said:

I look for config fails

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Almost too fitting to be a mere slip. :D

I have to look into it if I can map the laterals to the analog ministick on my throttle.

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Should be possible. I now use mouse for pitch, yaw, firing, targeting, subtargeting and zoom, and numpad for the remaining degrees of freedom, throttle and all the most handy functions.

Maybe my subconscious was trying to relay something. :wink:

The ministick didn't work well, the game doesn't like mapping mouse controls to the ministick. Doesn't really bother me, the ministick is awkwardly placed for the controls anyway.

I am finally further in the game then I was when it was new, a bit of playing around with wingmen. Pretty fun when their not shot to pieces, like in the last station assault.

Some more observations:

Your ship begins to shake vigorously as it's velocity increases - it's retarded, it shouldn't make much difference how fast you're going in open space. The effect could be applied to LDS travel where it would make sense (as LDS is effectively a stutterdrive that works by repeatedly teleporting the ship small distance forward without affecting it's momentum, so some nanoscale inaccuracies would create tensions in ship's hull).

Velocity meter only works up to 9999m/s - da fuck?

Some LDS associated visual effect would have been good to remind the player that he's riding a piece of applied phlebotinum.

Grid (spacedust velocity indicator) lines should be toggleable - they only serve as a distraction in a dogfight where I don't need to know my velocity relative to anything that isn't enemy or their projectiles.

LDS ultimately fails as a method of avoiding time compression: it's stated to be means of sub-light travel, yet even the weakest drives noticeably surpass the light speed - check how much time it takes you to reach a target 1.5E8km away. It would take light whole 8 minutes.

Capsule drive effect is kind of cool, but I pity epilepitic people trying to play this game - instant seizure.

Do you have to hang around 'till Jafs finishes loading loot?

Speaking of Jafs - SnRV design is retarded - you don't place all the cargo on the same side of the vessel, far off it's z-axis. Cargo pods should be arranged symmetrically. I will have to install the mod that gives him a proper freighter.

The way mining laser "expands" is seriously fuck up man.

The game would benefit from proper saves.

Haven was built in kind of nonsensical manner - it should have dock in the middle, domes facing inward and should have been rotating.

Act 2
Mission: Big Jack's Diamond Asteroid

There are three trade offers, but only two cargo pods of uncut gemstones.

FFFFFUUUUUUUU-

DraQ said:

Some more observations:


Do you have to hang around 'till Jafs finishes loading loot?

Speaking of Jafs - SnRV design is retarded - you don't place all the cargo on the same side of the vessel, far off it's z-axis. Cargo pods should be arranged symmetrically. I will have to install the mod that gives him a proper freighter.

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In my experience, leaving the area while Jafs is loading means what he's loading now will show up at base. If there's stuff still floating around, it disappears. So make sure he's loading the really valuable stuff first.

The custom jafs mod really makes a difference, loading 20 pods at once instead of 6 means you can really go nuts at an L point. Especially if 2 megafreighters come through and crash into each other leaving a huge pile of loot (tho not always. I've had a couple times where a MF was hauling dozens of pods of raw sewage.)

Rabidredneck said:

The custom jafs mod really makes a difference, loading 20 pods at once instead of 6

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For some obscure reason he was always loading 12 pods for me using his default SnRV. Two layers of pods.

Anyway, what about those uncut gems?