Author Topic: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"  (Read 2184 times)

Offline x4000

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AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« on: August 03, 2017, 08:40:53 pm »
Release notes here!

This is basically completely about the build menu being more usable, and tooltips being more useful and legible.  They still need a background to really be fully legible, but we got a lot of the other things with them.  The unity ui is still... a learning process, sometimes.

This time around, I made a quartet of videos rather than Keith making them:


I wrote: A lengthy look with me at how to set up new GUI prefabs and then use them in code.  This is shown while setting up the build menu to look better/clearer.


I wrote: A quick look with me at how to set up sound effects for buttons.  It's not a complete tutorial with everything in-depth, but there are tooltips for the bits that might not be clear, and this shows the workflow with greater clarity thanks to not going over every detail.  At least that's the goal!


I wrote: For Cinth and for modders, this is how you create new formations for ships of various scales to use in the game.  I look forward to seeing a lot more creative and militaristic formations than my simple grids have been. :)


I wrote: Notes for Keith on how we're using this component at the moment, with a variety of pros and cons to it. Referenced urls:
http://digitalnativestudios.com/textmeshpro/docs/sprites/
https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-2017.1.0

All that said, as noted in the release notes, I think there's a way for us to work around the <sprite> tags in general and not use them.  Even when those are working as well as possible, they still regularly show up improperly because we can't control the exact relative scaling and offset per-font and per-font-settings.

Anyhow -- major usability strides in this new build, although as always there's yet more to do.  Also a number of bugfixes.

Cheers!

Chris
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Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2017, 10:19:52 pm »
First, that looks great! This is a really nice step forward.

But, there's a nasty bug. Holding down CTL, then moving the mouse over a wormhole (like you'd do to send a fleet through it) immediately causes a null reference.

A couple brainstorming suggestions for tweaks.

Is there a reason to show the Science/Metal/Science/Controller in the sidebar? There's a limited amount of space there, and every planet has each of these. If I own the planet then I already know who owns them, if the AI owns the planet I already know who owns them, and if there's a battle going on then I just care about how many fighting units from each side are there. 

For the hovertext, I think for the in-planet text there's not much point in showing the WorldLocation; I can actually see the squad on the screen, and that number isn't really meaningful. I'm okay with it in the Galaxy Map though. Also, could we consolidate the (Player - Color) or (AI - color) line to just have Player" or "AI" with that word appearing in the appropriate color?

When you have Spider ships unlocked then the build menu overlaps with the "currently building" queue.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 12:18:24 am by BadgerBadger »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2017, 07:24:42 am »
But, there's a nasty bug. Holding down CTL, then moving the mouse over a wormhole (like you'd do to send a fleet through it) immediately causes a null reference.
Thanks for letting us know, fixed now. It was the new mark-based color logic, since wormholes literally have no mark level at all (null), and computers have this allergy to getting to close to nullness.

Quote
Is there a reason to show the Science/Metal/Science/Controller in the sidebar?
Good point, they don't show up anymore. That's via the new "does_not_need_sidebar_icon" entity xml attribute, btw.

Quote
For the hovertext, I think for the in-planet text there's not much point in showing the WorldLocation; I can actually see the squad on the screen, and that number isn't really meaningful. I'm okay with it in the Galaxy Map though.
I've simply removed it.

Quote
Also, could we consolidate the (Player - Color) or (AI - color) line to just have Player" or "AI" with that word appearing in the appropriate color?
That would be good. Chris, is there a way to get what's needed from the TeamColor object to impact the text color? I have very little idea what's going on in either side of that equation.

Quote
When you have Spider ships unlocked then the build menu overlaps with the "currently building" queue.
Do you mean that the fleet ship tab will show "fighter, bomber, missile corvette, (blank), (blank), ..., (blank), Spider"?
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Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2017, 08:54:19 am »
I have a mod for a bunch of bonus ships (so I can start with a powerful fleet). Here is a picture. Note there are large gaps between some of the bonus ships

Offline x4000

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2017, 10:39:57 am »
I've just pushed out the build for 0.506, which has the hotfix changes from Keith.  Restart steam to force the update.

Regarding team color stuff, sure, you can define whatever in there.  The mark levels already do this, and at one point I was doing it for the team color, too, but I hadn't had time to completely put in all the hexes completely correctly I don't think.  At any rate, it's TextColorHex on that object already, or text_color_hex in the xml.

Eventually I was just going to have this say "AI", since the color there is kind of irrelevant, and then say the name of the player, which currently is the color instead.  But I don't know where THAT data is. ;)
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Offline daktaklakpak

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2017, 10:33:46 pm »
It was the new mark-based color logic, since wormholes literally have no mark level at all (null), and computers have this allergy to getting to close to nullness.

*dedicates engineering team to work on Null Golem.

Offline BadgerBadger

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Re: AI War 2 v0.505 Released! "Tooltips And Build Menu"
« Reply #6 on: August 05, 2017, 12:16:50 pm »
A few comments after spending some time playing last night/this morning. The game has made amazing progress.

A few comments. Well, it started as a few comments at least.

Especially on your first few planets you are capturing, I sometimes had to wait a minute or so to capture the Knowledge/metal/power buildings; time which is just non-interactive. I propose making those structures cheaper.

Once you've extracted the Science from a planet, there's no actual need for the Science Generator structure to still exist. However, if I'm fighting over border worlds I'll continually recapture them when I take my planet back from the AI. This is a waste of metal. I suggest that after you've gotten all Science from a planet that the Science Generator self destruct (this would suggest changing the name to "Science Extractor" or something, so it doesn't match with the Metal/Power Generators).

Cloaking seems like it's in a weird state when the player uses it; it feels like my ships never actually get decloaked. There's a mantis bug with a savegame.

There's some sort of bug that prevents structures (ARS, Golems, Knowledge, etc) from being captured at some point.  There are a few saved games in mantis.

When you have a force on a planet, it reports "Number of Ships (number of Squads)". Should we also include the Strength for both sides, since that's a seperate and not necessarily obvious number? Sometimes the 1K enemy ships are easy to defeat, sometimes they crush me.

There's no obvious way to distinguish between a Drone Fighter and a regular Fighter, which I worry will confuse newer players who don't understand why they can't control "that fighter" when it's a drone. Perhaps drones should be implemented as Anti-AI zombies (though still called Drones), since that will give them a different color icon?

In the sidebar, it's hard to read the mark level; that value is too small. Could we make that larger?

I feel like the best way to start currently is to begin owning the first planet, then to immediately build a starship constructor and some starships. However, this means I need to wait about 3 minutes for the starship constructor to build. Perhaps if you say "Start with first planet" you should always get a Starship Constructor? You can always scrap it later.

As I mentioned earlier, we really need to be able to rally constructors to the front line. I typically have my starship constructor behind my defenses, and constantly going back to the Staship Constructor planet to send troops forward is annoying.

As I mentioned earlier, it's hard to tell when I've build my full cap of a particular kind of ship.

I miss the ability to double click on (say) a fighter and immediately have all my fighters selected.

The Zenith trader definitely gets stuck sometimes. There are a couple saved games in Mantis.

I bound the "Select Mobile Military" to the "M" key and it is invaluable.

At the moment the AI isn't really sending waves, presumably due to the negative wave timer bug.

We are having Exogalactic Strikeforces, right? It would be nice if they could be readily triggered from the External Code.

General balance observation. Since you can't fortify a given planet too heavily with the per-planet power, it feels like you need to take more planets in general to be able to survive a big wave/CPA/Exo. Defending an isolated planet seems nigh on impossible, and you'll need to take more planets to build your fleet due to the fuel restrictions. Low AIP games will be tough, and guerilla warfare in general will be harder I think.

 

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