RPS Exclusive Hands-On With A Valley Without Wind

[x4000]

Sorry!

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh, how do you do it if players use a lower resolution? Do we get a smooth zoom function (at least 50% reduction) so that we have an overview on lower resolution thats comparable to the widescreen benefit?

Does the engine even allow for this? Reason i ask is that it would be very very zoomed in if you maintain the ratio... on my lame ass CRT ;P

[Nalgas]

Mhh, how do you do it if players use a lower resolution? Do we get a smooth zoom function (at least 50% reduction) so that we have an overview on lower resolution thats comparable to the widescreen benefit?

Does the engine even allow for this?

It's exactly like AI War.  Using a lower resolution just means you see less stuff on the screen, no scaling involved.  In my own personal opinion, I don't understand how anyone could possibly play it at a lower resolution after being spoiled by 1920x1200, but apparently other people are doing just fine.  I get super cranky when forced to play AI War on my laptop at 1280x800, though, and half the people in my multiplayer group play that way normally and think it's just fine and that I complain too much, so maybe I'm the weird one.  Heh.

[eRe4s3r]

But in AI War you can zoom out to infinity.. which negates the problem pretty much altogether   

I could play at 1600x1200 but then the text would be pretty small ,p and i'd be missing out on those 320 pixels, and unlike AI War this would be gameplay changing.. its not gonna be huge difference.. i know, but i am just wondering whats the thinking on that yet.

[x4000]

There's no zooming, and the game doesn't support that at this time.  Adding that support would be a multi-week overhaul, and would really negatively affect performance on the machines that used it, so it's not super likely.

The game technically fits on screens all the way down to 800x600, but I don't think it plays very well there, honestly.  On 1024x768 it's quite comfortable, but you don't get such a vista as you do with the larger resolution.  What resolution are you running?

EDIT: And, like Naglas said, we have some folks doing just fine on the lower resolutions.  Personally I played AI War on 1024x768 for the first year+, and then on 1280x1024 for the next year.  And I did the 1280x1024 thing with AVWW, too, until about a month ago -- it was more than comfortable, it was just like any other game.  On the 1920x1280 that I play now, I get a wonderful vista which is great, but I only upgraded my monitor so that I could take video in 1080p, honestly.  In retrospect I'm glad I did, but I wasn't feeling like anything was lacking before that.

[eRe4s3r]

I am alternating between 1600x1200 in games where theres no small text (Shogun 2 or BC2 <3 ) and 1280x1024 where there is small text.. i sit a bit away from the screen nowadays (like an additional 10cm ~) which seems to make all the difference..  (the blessings of a CRT with no native resolution ,p)

But if you say it plays fine in 1280x1024 then thats good enough ;p

[x4000]

Yeah, I'm sitting further away these days, too.

I actually was typically playing in windowed mode with something more like 1100x900 for 80% of my time playing the game, with no issues.  Actually, even now I'm playing at... let's see, 1902x826 windowed.  That's what the screenshots I uploaded should have been, roughly.  All the extra width is pretty cool, but it's definitely not needed in any way.  And I'm playing with less height than you'll be even at worst, so that's definitely fine.

[Nalgas]

But in AI War you can zoom out to infinity.. which negates the problem pretty much altogether

You'd think so, but it ends up not really working that way when you lose a third of your pixels in both directions.  The interface still stays the same size and takes up the same number of pixels on all sides of the screen, and when zoomed out, all the icons are the same size as at a larger resolution, and all the text is the same size, too, so it feels much more cramped to me.  It's still completely playable, but it's not nearly the same.

As far as AVWW goes, though, I tend to have problems with lots of small text in games, but I've been just fine with it at the huge resolution I run it at while sitting back far enough that I can comfortably see the whole screen in my field of view.  At least for now, there just isn't a whole lot of text to worry about most of the time, and what there is has either been readable to begin with or I've complained about it until it was changed to be, for the most part.  Heh.

Also, regarding 1280x1024, I would like to reiterate my previous statement that went something along the lines of this.

[c4sc4]

Well, while doing alpha testing, I've been playing mostly at 1024 x 768 and it's been fine. The only thing is that occasionally I'll be trying to attack an enemy this is off screen (mainly the dragon miniboss, have to keep my distance from his flame breath) so a wider screen would be nice but otherwise I've had no issues playing at this res.

[eRe4s3r]

Good to know I guess more advanced bickering will have to wait for the beta.. ^^

[Nalgas]

Well, while doing alpha testing, I've been playing mostly at 1024 x 768 and it's been fine. The only thing is that occasionally I'll be trying to attack an enemy this is off screen (mainly the dragon miniboss, have to keep my distance from his flame breath) so a wider screen would be nice but otherwise I've had no issues playing at this res.

At least before the super-long range on a lot of spells got nerfed, I was killing bosses from maybe 1.5-2.5 screen lengths away if I could get away with it, and those were screen lengths at my resolution.  Might as well do something cheesy if it's the safest way to go.  Silly patches taking my borderline-cheating strategies away in the name of making the game actually good and fun for the general public instead of my own private glitch-fest...  Heh.

[x4000]

At least before the super-long range on a lot of spells got nerfed, I was killing bosses from maybe 1.5-2.5 screen lengths away if I could get away with it, and those were screen lengths at my resolution.

I was doing that, too, which is what made me realize that needed to be changed.

[c4sc4]

At least before the super-long range on a lot of spells got nerfed, I was killing bosses from maybe 1.5-2.5 screen lengths away if I could get away with it, and those were screen lengths at my resolution.  Might as well do something cheesy if it's the safest way to go. 

Heh, yeah before the range change, sometimes I was using the minimap to aim my spells to hit the amoeba boss while it was off screen, worked fairly well too.

Silly patches taking my borderline-cheating strategies away in the name of making the game actually good and fun for the general public instead of my own private glitch-fest...  Heh.

Heh, yeah, after reporting the bug about the upgrade cost on the house, I totally took advantage of it as much as I could before the new patch came out. This is why most of my settlements have a bunch of level 5 houses in them.

[Nalgas]

Silly patches taking my borderline-cheating strategies away in the name of making the game actually good and fun for the general public instead of my own private glitch-fest...  Heh.

Heh, yeah, after reporting the bug about the upgrade cost on the house, I totally took advantage of it as much as I could before the new patch came out. This is why most of my settlements have a bunch of level 5 houses in them.

I totally intended to build at least one of every building and upgrade all the houses in every settlement when everything still had placeholder costs, or I at least considered being cheap like that, but I ended up forgetting about it when I got distracted by some other major bug I'd reported that seemed like verifying the fix for it worked was important enough that I ended up installing the patch anyway.  I got so caught up with actually doing the testing job that I signed up for that I forgot entirely about cheating at the game.  Go figure.

[c4sc4]

I totally intended to build at least one of every building and upgrade all the houses in every settlement when everything still had placeholder costs, or I at least considered being cheap like that, but I ended up forgetting about it when I got distracted by some other major bug I'd reported that seemed like verifying the fix for it worked was important enough that I ended up installing the patch anyway.  I got so caught up with actually doing the testing job that I signed up for that I forgot entirely about cheating at the game.  Go figure.

When I ran into a bug where minibosses weren't spawning in rare commodity towers, I only took advantage of it 3 times to get memory crystals, all 3 times were for bug reporting: first time I thought it was a bug, the second was to verify it and the 3rd was to get a save to submit.

And I think we derailed this tread.