Some issues I noticed playing the demo [1.24]

I’m playing with the Demo (1.24). I’ve encountered several bugs / quality assurance issues:

a) Maybe a bug or a suggestion - I alt-tab to windows, the game minimises but the music keeps playing. Personally I believe if something isn’t showing the sound shouldn’t play.

b) I Alt-tab from the main menu to windows (having just started the game). Then back to the main menu. Fine. I then click “ship-design” and the game crashes - “Runtime Error - Abnormal program termination.”
Stuff added to Debug.txt after crash:
“Clearing textured sprites
Rebuilding directx resources
refreshing textured sprites
creating render targets”

end of drawdebut.txt:

"
star.dds
menu_backdrop.jpg
Releasing texture: rt_ship
Releasing texture: rt_offscreen1
Releasing texture: rt_offscreen2
Releasing texture: rt_transition
Releasing texture: titlescreen2048.bmp
Releasing texture: cwfont20.dds
Releasing texture: zekton16.dds
Releasing texture: box_background.jpg
Releasing texture: textbutton.dds
Releasing texture: textbutton_h.dds
Releasing texture: star.dds
Releasing texture: menu_backdrop.jpg
D3DEngine Restore called
D3DEngine Restore worked ok
star.dds
box_background.jpg
textbutton.dds
textbutton_h.dds
titlescreen2048.bmp
menu_backdrop.jpg
cwfont20.dds
zekton16.dds
Initialising Render target of 512 X 512 rt_ship
rt_ship
Initialising Render target of 2048 X 2048 rt_offscreen1
rt_offscreen1
Initialising Render target of 2048 X 2048 rt_offscreen2
rt_offscreen2
"

c) Alt-tab to windows from the “ship-design” screen. Fine. But when I click back to the game the game doesn’t re-maximise properly (the top menu bar is showing and the game window remains black). Have to Alt-F4 to quit. Note - this also happens from the main-menu if you’ve been into submenus then gone back to the main menu. (probably the alt-tab bug fixed in 1.25).

d) When I first went into the ship-design screen there was the tutorial box telling me what to do. When I moused over the “close” button it told me it would close the box. However when I moved to the right side of the close button, the tool-tip came up for the weapon underneath the box and close button.

e) Textual quirks:
i) Which spelling system are you using, UK or US? Because you’ve got both armor and armour in use. Personally given you’re a UK dev I’d suggest UK English, but you seem to have given preference to US.
ii) Map sizes (“small” etc) aren’t capitalised like everything else.
iii) On the ship design screen when looking at weapon stats, there are several “ranges”, such as max, min, optimum and fuel, depending on the weapon. May I suggest placing these one on top of another (they’re rather scattered at present). I.e. Min, optimum, max, fuel would seem most logical.
iv) The “New Orders” tutorial box says to “click the add new order button” - there is no such button. There’s a “add order” button however. Also might want to highlight it with a white-box.

f) Fleet headquarters, the “races” tab - the “empire” one does not have an icon (it’s a white box). The same is true for three of the ship hulls.

g) Some of the ship names are too long. When I shrank to windowed game (1024*768), the “Normal laws of engagement do not apply” tutorial ship name overwrites the “ship name” tag in the victory screen.

But it looks to be a very nifty game. It could use a someone with extra-pedanticism reading the strings and QAing it though. 8)

I suspect alt+tab bugs will be fixed in patch 1.25 due in a few hours (there will be a new demo also updated)