I agree. There is definitively a lack of "human factor" in the game as it is now, and the consequence is a "cold" gameplay. In v0.7.7 it's like "oh, I lost another astronaut, I have to think to recruit another one", and period.
In BARIS you had footages of crews in flight (or in simulators
), a full funeral ceremony sequence with low drums, black cars, the Red Square and everything, and the Arlington Cemtery / the Kremlin Wall were always in the background to remember you the dangers of spaceflight or to make you feel bad about your carelessness. So yeah, definitively an area of the game to improve. Of course, the same "black head picture" shared by all the personnel (except the PR officer
) and the fantasy names don't help to get attached to the astronauts.
Inside views of the spacecrafts would sure be nice, even if you have to simplify a bit the control panels and that kind of details. "Looking through the hatch" views, contemplating the curvature of the Earth horizon in Mercury missions. Pilot view with the Agena docking target aligned (or not !) in Gemini, views of control panels blinking with red flashes when things go wrong, that kind of things.
Of course there are limitations, and those can be IMHO be accepted in two different ways :
- Make several 3D models for astronauts pictures in management screens. Use those models in renders, and make enough renders to match all the possibilities of crew assignement (which would probably be a lot of work and would mean huge files).
- Use photographs in management screens and generic head renders for mission animations. Still, all the cases of male/female crew combinations should be rendered.
)