The Ship's Free Weekend!

Sorry to steal the wind from ReNo's sails (pun intended) by posting this before he has a chance to but...

Steam said:
The Free Full Game Trial of The Ship casts off Thursday, November 2 at 1 pm PDT and will conclude on Sunday, November 5 at the same time.

Built with Source technology, The Ship is the critically acclaimed debut from Outerlight, a UK-based studio.

So fellas, time to try before you buy!

Indeedy - take advantage guys! The Ship is a really unique FPS which obviously makes it a "risky" purchase for a lot of people, so if you had any concerns (or hey, if you just didn't think it was worth the cash!) now is the perfect time to jump in and have a go :smile:

I'll try and find some time to have a play at the weekend, so maybe we could organise a little snarkpit session if anybody is interested?

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

What's that? Free trial? Hell yes, I'm in. The ship mod was good fun originally, so I'm sure to have a good time :smile: Only reason why I never bought the "game" was mainly cash issues, and that I'm stingy about money :/

Finally!

I will be trying this out, let's set up a snarkpit night.

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

Oh man, worst possible time of the year for me :sad: My first exam is on the 7th of november, so I cant download it for fear of failing something. I'll try it out next time (if theres a next time). Definitely looks like a fun game.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

• My yr11 Economics teacher

Ha, I've been waiting for this! :heee:

loading

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Why snark works.

So when is this Snarkpit get-together? :razz:

I must say this game is pretty fun, but I see an inherant flaw in which
jack asses can just kill you over and over again (even if you arent
your target), which can detract from the gameplay. But if everyone
followed the "rules" then I can fore-see many hours of fun gameplay.
Its worth checking out fellas!

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Posting And You

The steam servers seem to have collapsed from all the ship-downloading, I'm finishing now :smile:

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Why snark works.

Well it seems to be going pretty well so far - we normally have a pretty low player count and its just a fairly tight community of dedicated players, but last night there weren't any free slots in the servers :smile: Glad you enjoyed the game omega. As you said the game certainly does suffer if you are playing with griefers, but with the right bunch of people it plays unlike pretty much everything else out there.

My PC is out of action at the moment until my new PSU arrives and I get it all setup, but hopefully I'll be available for some sessions by Saturday.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

I just found the "Ship Manual" and clicked it, expecting a helpful PDF/whatever to be downloaded. Now I got suspicious after it started loading and loading foever and clicked the properties and it says: "1114 MB".

A 1 GIGABYTE MANUAL? This thing almost killed my precious flatrate once again and now I'm a little... uhm... confused. Especially as the game itself was only 192 MB. This makes reading the manual before playing the game a little... difficult. I don't know what to think of this? Reno? What is that manual, is it really 1 GB of size? Man, I don't even have a GB available on the HD. :biggrin: Couldn't you get this on a simple website or something?

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Why snark works.

....ummm.....

http://www.theshiponline.com/play-guide.php

Thats the online manual I used

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Posting And You

Alright, I'll use that and skip the huged tutorial download for now...

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Why snark works.

I'll give it a shot sometime this weekend. I really don't feel well though, so I doubt I'll be playing long.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

This is off topic, but reaper47 I like your new arco avatar :smile:

Sim City 2000 lives on!

Addicted to Morphine said:
This is off topic,

As if this is something original.. Funny thing is, there is a favorite games thread that not only mentions Sim2000, but has reapers new avatar in it..

Woulda been on topic there ol chap. :heee:

I know, I know... Shut up Jon.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

But I have DirectX 9.0 C :/

I missed Reaper's comment about Sim City 2000 because the thread went to a new page. Oops.

Oh noes!

"Performance Warning

Your system does not meet one or more of The Ship's system recommendations for CPU, Memory or Video Card.

RECOMMENDED / YOUR SYSTEM:

CPU 1.8 Ghz / 2.8 Ghz
RAM 512 MB / 512 MB
Video Card DirectX 9 capable / NVIDIA GeForce FX5200

A link to high-perfomance video cards is below. For the other items, please consult your favorite computer store."

after typing this i wondered what is what i need?.........

[2 minutes later...]

"Install - The Ship

You are about to install The Ship.

Disk space required: 1214 MB
Disk space Available: 1093 MB
Estimated download time: 5 hours 23 minutes at 64 KB/s"

nevermind.

But I have DirectX 9.0 C :/

There is more than one version of Direct X 9c. (Note: clicking the link will redirect you, right click and save ... then virus/spy/adware scan it if you wish)

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Video Card DirectX 9 capable / NVIDIA GeForce FX5200

Why would a game require fairly advanced settings but run on a pissy ass 5200?

/me is confuzzled but since i didn't download (due to my machine being to small) I guess I will just be confuzzled.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Video Card DirectX 9 capable / NVIDIA GeForce FX5200

Why would a game require fairly advanced settings but run on a pissy ass 5200?
/me is confuzzled but since i didn't download (due to my machine being to small) I guess I will just be confuzzled.

You should learn how to measure graphical abilities more intuitivly. FX 5200 cards support newer pixel shaders than GF4, for example (If you had a GF4 card that had pixel shader support at all, that is). This is, also for example, why the "lowest" end card to be used in BF2 (nvidia) is a FX5200.

I ran though the ship last night. I've got to say, this takes some time to get fun. I mean, it's really sort of a pain in the ass trying to manuver around the ship. I didn't find the map to be all that helpful either. I'm sure it'd be more intuitive with more play.

I also found it quite simple to murder the target in front of other people. It's because of their line of sight, I think. That or, I just murdered the other person as well.

Anyway, those are just my initial impressions.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

A lot of it comes down to server settings - something I sort of feel we should limit as many servers destroy the way the game works. For example, the witnessing system is based on the number of people seeing you and the amount of time they see you, but both can be varied by the server. So by default, you need to be witnessed by 2 people for 1 second to be caught (2/1), but if a server changes that to be 3/2 or something, witnessing becomes insignificant.

Glad some of you guys have given it a shot :smile: As you say Crono, it does take a bit of time to "get into the grove" as it were, but I hope those of you who are giving it a shot enjoy the free weekend.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Crono said:
You should learn

I should learn that I will always be ever so subtly corrected when you arrive Master Adam.

I however know that a 5200 is basement level for that generation card, but its just...... So awful a card.

People made fun of my ATI 9000 card because it was older than even a 5200 but it ran circles around it.

I owned them both and of the two, I'd pic the 9000 any day.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus, I didn't go about correcting anything you said, I was giving an explanation. You asked a question, remember?

My statement was that "there's more to a card than processing power". However, I never said anything along the lines that a GF FX 5200 was a fantastic card, or that it would perform better than, say, a GF4 or equivalent.

There are still games, however, that the GF4 and ATI9000 can't run because of pixel shader requirements. The 5200 can run (some of) them though, even if it's computational ability is below those other cards.

Do you get what I'm saying this time?

I ran through the Ship one more time. I enjoyed myself more this time and I got arrested for the first time! (oh noes)
The only thing I find annoying now is when people get in my way. I'm still learning layouts of the maps though so I'm missing a bunch of kills.

I guess the only other thing that I'd like is that if you have a weapon that doesn't look like a weapon, you shouldn't get arrested for pulling it out (a cooking pan for instance) of course, having that object might be a bit pecular, but it's not a "weapon" per say. It'd be cool if there was like ... a suspicion indication, so the eye thing would have another type of mode.

But, I'm sure you guys have thought about that and scrapped it. :smile:

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

One of these days your gonna admit how much you care about me Adam.. Holding it in is unhealthy though. You should just admit it and move on. :wink:

(notice last post was blue of humor)

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The best things in life, aren't things.

God, I hate you.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

whistles tunelessly

"Love, is a many splendored thing"

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Alright, I'd been waiting for this free weekend for a long time but computer-problems (plus an internet downtime) and a lack of time only allowed me to have a quick look for less than an hour. Which I found to be too little to really get "into" the game. I didn't manage to kill my quarry even once, got lost on the ship(s) constantly.

But, man do I love this game. The art deco style, exploring the ship, finding new things and tools in every spot. I love how you need to plan every kill, delude your opponents, the constant fear of your foes. Something that also caught my attention is the sound design which is excellent. Really pulls you in.

I think I'll get the retail version.

It's just a bit sad to see all the hyperactive people who stop playing the demo after ten minutes lolling they have no clue what's going on. I wish there were more signs and hints of where different places can be found on the ship and the stairs weren't almost hidden on the plan. It took me almost 90% of my first hour of gameplay to figure out basic navigation and I already knew the HL1 ship mod so I was kinda familiar with certain things.

Maybe I'll get to play a few more rounds this afternoon.

PS: Does this version already include a level of yours, Reno? I'd love to know :wink:

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Why snark works.

Well, let's give this game a try while I still can. Downloading as we speak, hopefully there's some time left to play this evening. :smile:

Bytheway, is there a singleplayer tutorial level or such, or do you have to learn what's important to stay healthy when you play? I'd prefer a less stressfull environment for educations sake. Ah well, I'll just see how things go. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I'm not sure if the tutorial comes with the free weekend or not. It is a standalone game in Steam, and I believe our intention was to include it, but I've a feeling there might have been some mixup and it hasn't been. If it is, I'd recommend going through it as it is just a short but handy introduction to the controls and idea of the game. Nothing an experienced FPS player wouldn't pick up pretty quick on their own though.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Ah, yes, the tutorial was available. No problems there. :smile:

Too bad I couldn't connect to any real server (crappy router & port forwarding here, plus I'm horrible with networks), but I played a few games in arcade mode, which seemed quite fun. Got me interested to see how it plays against real humans, but meh. Crappy router.

Oh, just a thing I noticed: it could be handy to hightlight the weapons you're carrying in the MFK list. Makes it faster to lookup the relevant weapons.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I just found the "Ship Manual" and clicked it, expecting a helpful PDF/whatever to be downloaded. Now I got suspicious after it started loading and loading foever and clicked the properties and it says: "1114 MB".

A 1 GIGABYTE MANUAL? This thing almost killed my precious flatrate once again and now I'm a little... uhm... confused. Especially as the game itself was only 192 MB. This makes reading the manual before playing the game a little... difficult. I don't know what to think of this? Reno? What is that manual, is it really 1 GB of size? Man, I don't even have a GB available on the HD. :biggrin: Couldn't you get this on a simple website or something?

Sorry, shoulda done this earlier! I just checked, and the manual is only 2.2Mb. No idea why it was trying to make a 1Gb download for you mate...sounds a little suspect! What link did you use?

PS: Does this version already include a level of yours, Reno? I'd love to know :wink:

Indeed it does - Cotopaxi and Connemara are (primarily) my levels.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Hats off to you and your team ReNo. You've made a very original game
here that is not only different, but fun to play. I can see this as
being a major milestone for new FPS, and I hope to someday see more of
games like these because its a good clean break from the "point and
shoot" games im acustomed to with HL2 mods.

/hats off

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Posting And You

Sorry, shoulda done this earlier! I just checked, and the manual is only 2.2Mb. No idea why it was trying to make a 1Gb download for you mate...sounds a little suspect! What link did you use?

The Steam link. I was kinda suprised, still don't know what was going on. It downloaded 120MB beofre I stopped it. But the online tutorial on the website helped me enough.

Indeed it does - Cotopaxi and Connemara are (primarily) my levels.

What a shame, I believe these are maps I didn't get to play. :smile: I played a little more after my last post, getting some nice kills, and I can say (even without my underlying loyality towards snarkpitter's creations :wink: ) that this is the most enjoyable online experience I had in a Source game so far. The different ways you can play this game really impressed me.

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Why snark works.