Random bugs/thoughts

[x4000]

Though I managed to emplace myself properly on a x6 starting planet (without even parasites on it!) in an AI 7 this time, so I'm getting somewhere with the annoying starts.

Nice!

Yeah, I think I prefer the smaller maps because there's more, umm, "carrots" nearby, usually guarded by big sticks. (Which reminds me there really needs to be a "carrot fighter" bonus craft. )

Haha, yeah, that's certainly one of the classics from Tryian.   I'll have to do something with that at some point, for sure!

In the harder AIs, I'm finding lots of those insta-kill turrets and such on nearby planets, so it cuts off a lot of my exploration options, plus in the early game the turrets really are just even more of an excuse to turtle for game-hours and every now and again through a few hundred units at them until you take them out.

Those vary by map, but they are much more frequent on higher difficulties.  The longer you leave a planet with an ion cannon on it, however, the bigger it will get.  I've left ones for 6+ hours next to my home planet, only to come back and find 2,000 Mark IV ships and 30 Zinth/Spire starships there.  So that's one incentive not to turtle!

I was avoiding the "kill the enemy control center then build your own" because with the various bugs related to that it felt a wee bit too much like cheating.

Referring to the instant-capture exploit?  Well, now that that's fixed on 1.008A, shouldn't be a worry.  But with the AI having a serious chance to come kick your behind off the map when you try that exploit on a planet that was too strong, I was always discouraged from doing that for that reason.

Maybe just an option to increase the side of the tooltip font?

Awesome idea, added to my list.

And I keep forgetting the various display options are there on the galaxy map, I really should pay more attention to them at times...

Yeah, those were a post-release addition based on player suggestions, and man I can't live without them now.  Especially R, K, W, I, and Q.

No problem, just my paranoia showing. I've been doing reverse engineering stuff since I was a kid, and I currently work at a university so I'm way too used to encountering java/c#/random-bytecode-language programmers with a few years experience under their belt who have this strange belief that compiling their code into object files actually protects them from people's prying eyes.

Of course the irony is that I spend way too much time on online programming forums telling people "there's no point encrypting your program's data files to protect them from people stealing your stuff because they'll just rip the data off the video card, the memory bus, or grab the decryption key out of memory and  manually decrypt/unpack the file anyway". On the plus side, the Limbo of the Lost fiasco is a nice demonstration of this nowdays.

Does make you wonder where the stereotype of the programmer being paranoid and detail orientated, but the artist being relaxed and unconcerned game from when they are completely the opposite most times in protecting their work in this respect. But that's probably getting way to philosophical for a game forum post.

Yeah, I've had a lot of the same observations.  As for DRM and anything else, there's nothing I can think of that would stop me from cracking the game if I wanted to, so I figure there's nothing for it except the honor system.  No point making bug reports harder to read, or using DRM that makes it harder on players, since it wouldn't stop anyone who was really motivated, anyway.  A license key keeps away the casual pirates, and works wonderfully for letting the demo be unlocked into the main game (lots of benefits to that style, versus having a separate demo), but otherwise it's always pretty much the honor system with any client-side software.  But now we've really drifted off topic!

I'm still working on those movement issues, by the way.  I fixed the bug you mentioned, but now of course some of the stuff that was working with the attack-moving doing better, etc, is now broken again.  C'Est la Vie.

[Admiral]

A few other things I've thought of in relation to the UI, but they're probably a case of "I have a too large monitor" (2560x1600 res) problems:

I also play at this resolution (Apple 30"). I have gotten used to the fact that most games don't have UIs that are particularly friendly at this resolution. Some, however, have the ability to scale the UI separately from what's being displayed (MMOs mostly?).

When I'm mousing around on the galaxy map, I'm looking at where the mouse pointer is, but the description text of the planet is appearing in either the bottom left, or bottom right corners (seemingly at random), so I have to keep looking away from what I'm looking at, to look somewhere else. It would be better if it appeared "at" the mouse pointer, the top-left of the box starting about where the mouse pointer is, so that it's not covering up the planet much. Of course this is going to be a problem when at the lower-right corner planets or something.

I agree that this is somewhat annoying. I would like the ability to scale the text separately from everything else, as well as specify where the pop-up is. Perhaps there could be a key to hold to get the info to pop up at the cursor instead.

I especially prefer to have the UI put all the information at the bottom of the screen when it is on such high resolution. If I could customize the UI at 2560x1600, I'd put everything that is currently at the top at the bottom, and I would have the right-side scout list (all the ships in the planet) appear at the bottom-right and build upwards instead of the top-right and build downwards. I'd also move the mini-map, etc.

Currently the set of icons has two different sets of things mixed in. The things that hurt me: ion cannons, force fields, super fortresses, etc; and things that I "want" (or want to destroy): advanced research centers/factories and data centers. It would be better if these were filtered out, either on lines by themselves, or by colour type; red for dangerous, and green for things you want.

I like this idea a lot.

Cheers!

[x4000]

I also play at this resolution (Apple 30"). I have gotten used to the fact that most games don't have UIs that are particularly friendly at this resolution. Some, however, have the ability to scale the UI separately from what's being displayed (MMOs mostly?).

When I originally coded the game, it always used the "Scale Resolution for Larger Monitors" option, to keep the resolution constant (widescreen vs fullscreen aside).  So that flexibility really just isn't here, I'd have to recode a lot of the UI to make that work.  Also, the quality tends to drop with most of the UI elements (not text) if they are scaled upward.

I agree that this is somewhat annoying. I would like the ability to scale the text separately from everything else, as well as specify where the pop-up is. Perhaps there could be a key to hold to get the info to pop up at the cursor instead.

See the note about the text scaling for the tooltips in my last post -- that's on my list.  For putting this info at the cursor, that's added to my list.  I'll make it an option in the settings, since it seems unlikely that you're going to want to switch back and forth between styles that frequently.  Let me know if it needs a hotkey, too.

I especially prefer to have the UI put all the information at the bottom of the screen when it is on such high resolution. If I could customize the UI at 2560x1600, I'd put everything that is currently at the top at the bottom, and I would have the right-side scout list (all the ships in the planet) appear at the bottom-right and build upwards instead of the top-right and build downwards. I'd also move the mini-map, etc.

I doubt I'll ever go into this sort of thing, since that's a huge revamp of the entire UI and I don't know that it's really needed in general for people.  Most RTS games (with some notable exceptions) seem to have a pretty fixed-position UI.

Currently the set of icons has two different sets of things mixed in. The things that hurt me: ion cannons, force fields, super fortresses, etc; and things that I "want" (or want to destroy): advanced research centers/factories and data centers. It would be better if these were filtered out, either on lines by themselves, or by colour type; red for dangerous, and green for things you want.

I like this idea a lot.

Sorry, see my later notes to darke.  Just too hand-holdy for me...

Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions!

[darke]

In the harder AIs, I'm finding lots of those insta-kill turrets and such on nearby planets, so it cuts off a lot of my exploration options, plus in the early game the turrets really are just even more of an excuse to turtle for game-hours and every now and again through a few hundred units at them until you take them out.

Those vary by map, but they are much more frequent on higher difficulties.  The longer you leave a planet with an ion cannon on it, however, the bigger it will get.  I've left ones for 6+ hours next to my home planet, only to come back and find 2,000 Mark IV ships and 30 Zinth/Spire starships there.  So that's one incentive not to turtle!

Ow. Yes, definitely a reason not to turtle.

I was avoiding the "kill the enemy control center then build your own" because with the various bugs related to that it felt a wee bit too much like cheating.

Referring to the instant-capture exploit?  Well, now that that's fixed on 1.008A, shouldn't be a worry.  But with the AI having a serious chance to come kick your behind off the map when you try that exploit on a planet that was too strong, I was always discouraged from doing that for that reason.

Yeah, I certainly wouldn't try it nearer the end game, but I expect it'll work reasonably well in the early game. Fly a bunch of your ships through, seek out the command center and take it out straight away, retreat back through the warp portal to your previous planet (assuming you have any ships remaining after they've been taken out one by one) where you've properly re-enforced the area with turrets and the rest of your mass of ships is waiting, and pick off the ships as they fly through the wormhole. Wait until it's quiet, then pop back through and build your command center.

I'm planning on restarting this map when you get 008B out (and after I get some sleep, since it's 2am, err, now 3am in the morning...), and doing that with the two ion turrets that are one and two jumps off my main world. Should give me some defense on at least 2 of the fronts so I don't need to worry much about their defense reinforcement after that. Even starships only seem to take a shot or two before they go down.

Maybe just an option to increase the side of the tooltip font?

Awesome idea, added to my list.

Yay!

Yeah, I've had a lot of the same observations.  As for DRM and anything else, there's nothing I can think of that would stop me from cracking the game if I wanted to, so I figure there's nothing for it except the honor system.  No point making bug reports harder to read, or using DRM that makes it harder on players, since it wouldn't stop anyone who was really motivated, anyway.  A license key keeps away the casual pirates, and works wonderfully for letting the demo be unlocked into the main game (lots of benefits to that style, versus having a separate demo), but otherwise it's always pretty much the honor system with any client-side software.  But now we've really drifted off topic!

You're the all-powerful sysop so it's all right if you do it.

I'm still working on those movement issues, by the way.  I fixed the bug you mentioned, but now of course some of the stuff that was working with the attack-moving doing better, etc, is now broken again.  C'Est la Vie.

Programming: The art of failing until you succeed.

[x4000]

Yeah, I certainly wouldn't try it nearer the end game, but I expect it'll work reasonably well in the early game. Fly a bunch of your ships through, seek out the command center and take it out straight away, retreat back through the warp portal to your previous planet (assuming you have any ships remaining after they've been taken out one by one) where you've properly re-enforced the area with turrets and the rest of your mass of ships is waiting, and pick off the ships as they fly through the wormhole. Wait until it's quiet, then pop back through and build your command center.

Yep, should work pretty well unless the planet is Mark III or Mark IV.  Then it's pretty deadly what swarms through into your area...

Even starships only seem to take a shot or two before they go down.

If they are low-level enough, yep.  Won't protect you from the big Mark III and up ones, though.

You're the all-powerful sysop so it's all right if you do it.

Well, if you've ever had to reverse engineer your own dll after a mishap with the source code, then you learn how easy it is.  That's why I've been using and loving SVN for the last however many years now...

Programming: The art of failing until you succeed.

Yeah, I think that's true of a lot of things in life!

[x4000]

Okay, new version with some of this:  http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,148.0.html

[Quitch]

This was a late add feature that is really just a convenience to prevent you from having to scan the list of ship types for all of the "notable" ships.

What the game does need though is a key screen which shows you all the ship icons and tells you what they mean, preferably with a notable section topping the list.

[x4000]

What the game does need though is a key screen which shows you all the ship icons and tells you what they mean, preferably with a notable section topping the list.

You know, I hadn't thought of that -- that's a very good point.  Added to the list!

[Quitch]

Might I recommend ordering the icons not by function, but by size, or allowing the player to reorder this way. This would allow for easier discovery of unknown icons.

[x4000]

Might I recommend ordering the icons not by function, but by size, or allowing the player to reorder this way. This would allow for easier discovery of unknown icons.

You mean on the planetary summary, on the right of the screen?  That was the way I used to have it, but some players found that confusing.  With the current by-function ordering, it still usually has the bigger ships pretty near the bottom just because they tend to have a similar function.  But I can definitely add a setting option that forces bigger icons to the bottom of the list.

[Quitch]

No, sorry, I meant if you create a key screen for the icons and what they mean.

EDIT: Except I realised this is unnecessary since you only need a key for stuff you will find on planet intel, as everything else is viewable by you at the time.

[x4000]

Oh, I see -- well, if the "important" icons are at the top of that screen, as has been suggested, then that would pretty much already handle that.  You've got an "icons that can appear in intel summary" section, and then everything else.