Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.805

[x4000]

So, the new version is out: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Skyward_Collapse_-_Pre-Beta_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.805. 

Lots of discussion has already happened on why most of the big changes are in there, and more are planned.  Basically players are a wily bunch, and no plan survives contact with the enemy.  "The enemy," in this case, being the clever players (affectionately).  Definitely one of the reasons we do alphas/betas is that people think of all sorts of crazy stuff that we don't.

The first of the god tokens are also in this version, although it's only for three gods so far (but the complete set for those three).  I got rather pulled away from that today, working on things like the playback interface working-over, but I'm super proud of how that's turning out.

Enlightenment should no longer be busted in a balance sense, and oh-man you'll pretty much have to relearn the basic economy balance from scratch.  Definitely read up on those notes or you'll be super confused at first.

The old tutorial is basically gone and broken, and the new one is not yet in place.  However, the actual setup round is now done in the new way that it will be handled from here on out, so see how you like that.  I figured that was pretty important to early balance, too.

Cheers!

[Winge]

If only I didn't have to sleep 

[Mick]

I was only able to get like 7 turns in, but I like the feel of things better already. Really looking forward to some objectives!

[Greywolf22]

Well, I was able to complete the red turns on the tutorial level, and upon completion of the blue turns I hit a runtime crash.  Has been reported
on Mantis.

[Misery]

Had a look at the changelist..... this really sounds like a good update.   Getting rid of the clusters of Chapmen is a good thing, particularly when your actual armies are abundant later in the game!

Everything else here looks good too, though I have to say I still find the enlightenment system baffling.   Correct me if I'm wrong, but it provides the city with total invincibility while it's maxed out, yes?   I dunno, that mechanic seems..... out of place, to me.   Hard to explain why.   


I also suddenly realize.... I have *no* idea what crime does or how it works....


And the new mechanics for captured buildings sound MUCH better.   .....provided they have immunity to Smite (which is how I've been dealing with them;  blast them, replace them.... easy) 

[Misery]

Argh argh argh.


Ok, I did find one thing I dont like:   The action viewer.  Ugh.  This thing went from "good" to "I cant even look at it".


Previously, I had it as such that it was moving at 2x speed, to keep military units moving pretty fast, but it would stop after each one to give me a moment to think about and grasp what it had just showed me, notably who attacked who for how much damage.   I also had it to auto-center on each one..... but NOT auto-follow.

When auto-follow is on, A: it gives me a near instant headache, and B: I cant tell what in the hell is going on, because *everything* is shifting all over the screen.   Having no pause between isnt helping either, it's like "Ok, watching this now, that guy just attacked... wait, now this guy is moving, and he.... oh wait, we're on the thrower, and... agh, the screen shifted with the rock, and.... what the heck did I even just watch?   Who just struck at who?  What's even going on?"


REALLY annoying.   That, and the default speed of movement is that of a brick in sludge.


I'm also noticing one thing:  Despite the change to building placement, I'm *still* ending up with huge blobs of buildings, which ends up being just as hard to look at.    I'm thinking that if things are going to be extremely city-focused, the cities need to be much further apart;  right now they only need to be about 6, which, considering the radius of them, is.... next to nothing.   It may as well just be the huge resource heaps all over again.

[orzelek]

I played few turns with new version.
New economy is different. And makes lack of resources flow information much more annoying.
You have very limited space for resource production now and it's very hard to calculate your actual income and unit production use of raw resources.

[Aquohn]

Ah, the buildable areas highlighting is a sight for sore eyes. And the end-of-turn button colour.

Pretty good so far, but I agree with orzelek; to quote Misery in another thread, we are still required to "stare at the landscape and count things". I proposed a bunch of UI additions that could make the game less frustrating/confusing, especially for beginners: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13019.0.html

[x4000]

Guys, we're not ignoring interface additions... But yeah, we are, right now. You want feature completion and goals first, I presume, right?

Misery: pretty much all the mantis tickets were counter to what you're saying, so that's all I had to go on. That said, you can still play the way you wanted. Turn off auto-follow. Tap spacebar when you want to center on a unit. Pause whenever you want. Run at 4x speed (same as your old 2x). That said, what would make this more convenient for you?

[Mick]

Well I'm not Misery, but I'll say that what I was really for in the playback was simple:

1) Follow the unit when playing it's action.
2) When play stops for that unit, don't jump immediately to the next unit, wait until I hit play to jump to the next.

The old system allowed what I wanted except for the underlined part.

[Misery]

Guys, we're not ignoring interface additions... But yeah, we are, right now. You want feature completion and goals first, I presume, right?

Misery: pretty much all the mantis tickets were counter to what you're saying, so that's all I had to go on. That said, you can still play the way you wanted. Turn off auto-follow. Tap spacebar when you want to center on a unit. Pause whenever you want. Run at 4x speed (same as your old 2x). That said, what would make this more convenient for you?

Hmm, mostly just the auto-center WITHOUT the auto-follow would help.  It's pretty rare with games that I'll come accross something that can give me that kind of headache, but.... every now and then it happens, and the auto-follow here is one that can cause it.  Heck if I know why.   But simply being able to jump easier from one to the other would be a help;  I tried the spacebar for this, but it's very fiddly about it.  I end up somehow managing to still miss seeing things entirely, even when I tried slowing it to 2x instead of 4x.  And I could swear there were times when I'd hit it with an audible click but nothing would happen.   Not to mention that some days I cant repeatedly click/hit keys that much without making my arm flare up bad (this being one of those days, sigh).  The game isnt too bad about repetetive clicking overall, but anything that reduces it at all is useful to me.


That's about the only change that I'd need;  there's other UI issues of course, but that's honestly the only one that really gets in the way of the gameplay.   The original setup worked fine in my case, though there was a bit of additional clicking. 


Feh, and no matter how many times I explain that, I feel it's a bloody stupid reason for anything.  I cant do much about it aside from more damn pain pills though.



Aaaaaanyway.  On the note of the other UI stuff.... yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say, that bit can come AFTER all of the gameplay bits.   I'm more than willing to wait on that stuff if it means getting to try out more of the new changes sooner

Not to mention.... it seems logical to do it that way ANYWAY.  It'd be pretty silly to change the UI, and then later everyone realizes that the changes made after that cause it to need to be changed AGAIN.   

I'll have more feedback on this patch later.  Aint had enough time with it yet.   Started a new game, still in the early bits of it.

[Misery]

Well I'm not Misery, but I'll say that what I was really for in the playback was simple:

1) Follow the unit when playing it's action.
2) When play stops for that unit, don't jump immediately to the next unit, wait until I hit play to jump to the next.

The old system allowed what I wanted except for the underlined part.

Yes, this actually was helpful to me as well.   A bit much clicking, but I could stop and examine as much as I want (without having to manually pause, which since I'm kinda spacey is easy for me to forget), and could simply slow down on the clicking to make that less of a problem.   

[x4000]

All right, thanks -- I'll try to cook up something in the new release for today, thanks!

[SRombauts]

Hi,

I was asking, as others, for all those changes, and I must say that I am really enthusiast with it!
Now the game seems more fun to me; the fact is I DO NOT want/care to follow so strictly each unit, I am more on the economy/overall strategy. Thus I enjoy seeing the combats like a movie. Now I the default settings are fine for me.

But I perfectly understand others would like to keep the few options that were removed!

Two footnotes:
- 1x is too slow for us "old player", but I think is more okay for a beginner, then easy to increase
- following projectiles does not seem the right thing to me

Cheers,

[x4000]

When it doesn't follow projectiles, you can't actually see what happens when it hits if there is any substantial range.  Ie, you miss the damage popup so you might as well just skip ahead because there's nothing to see.