Skyward Collapse Official Trailer

[PokerChen]

Whatever you see fit. I didn't really know about it because apart from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I've hardly played any strategy games in recent times. I guess this game is not really aimed at me, though.

Curious, how many of of the series made it to the US/West? There's been at least 11 of the main series lone in SEAsia.

[Pepisolo]

Whatever you see fit. I didn't really know about it because apart from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I've hardly played any strategy games in recent times. I guess this game is not really aimed at me, though.

Curious, how many of of the series made it to the US/West? There's been at least 11 of the main series lone in SEAsia.

Not sure actually, although it's probably more than you might think. Actually the last one I really got into was XI which was on the PC, and that's a few years old now. VIII on the PS2 is probably my favourite of the series. I like,  IV, I think, which was on the SNES. That's what really got me first started on the series. VIII on the PS2 I must have made like a 100 custom characters to populate the world (ok maybe not quite 100).  Love those games. Really need to check out the more recent ones.

Interested in this myself, so I did a quick count: 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11 made it over, I think. Maybe there were a couple of others, too.

[PokerChen]

 We grew up with IV, V, and VI, bought VIII, then lost track thereafter (nothing made it to Australia ). The whole point of buying a new versions was to experience how the new strategic and battlefield systems worked, we could recite all the major events off by heart.  I mostly stuck with historical factions as we knew them well but there were lots of characters made for iterations where I could switch them off for canon play-throughs.
 I think I spent the most time with V, and my brother VIII. Sometimes things get too bogged down for me in the later games as Koei throws in more features.

 The biggest roadblock was that I would never cope with playing it in english (Japanese semi-okay), and we didn't want to deal with localisation issues after VIII. Now you have to pay for windows ultimate to have easy re-localisation so... should remind my friend @ M$ to buy me a copy.

 = = =
 

...shift-click...

The first game I'm explicitly aware of this is in Starcraft, so that would be 1998. It may have been in Red-alert, but not C&C original, Warcraft 2, or Dune 2K. Quickly became standard after that* - before this standard you had to go into way-point mode (such as Dark Reign, 1997) to queue orders.

 I must say the development of unspoken standards is very interesting. Start buttons and terminals seems to be set in stone now.

 *edit: maybe by the time of Emperor:Battle for Dune in 2001?

[Pepisolo]

We grew up with IV, V, and VI, bought VIII, then lost track thereafter (nothing made it to Australia ). The whole point of buying a new versions was to experience how the new strategic and battlefield systems worked, we could recite all the major events off by heart.  I mostly stuck with historical factions as we knew them well but there were lots of characters made for iterations where I could switch them off for canon play-throughs.
 I think I spent the most time with V, and my brother VIII. Sometimes things get too bogged down for me in the later games as Koei throws in more features.

I used to pretty much just go nuts populating the world with my own characters/family lines. This made all the battles/duels/executions a lot more interesting.  8 seemed to have the most character interactions. You could even abandon your rule and just go wandering around the map as far as I recall. Definitely started to become a little too complex, though, in later editions. The production quality of these games is amazing. Some of the music is tremendous.

The first game I'm explicitly aware of this is in Starcraft, so that would be 1998. It may have been in Red-alert, but not C&C original, Warcraft 2, or Dune 2K. Quickly became standard after that* - before this standard you had to go into way-point mode (such as Dark Reign, 1997) to queue orders.

 I must say the development of unspoken standards is very interesting. Start buttons and terminals seems to be set in stone now.

Thanks for that brief bit of history on how this standard was developed. I had no clue. If Nas1m hadn't mentioned it I probably would never know the feature was in SC. Seems a shame for this functionality to be pretty much hidden from newcomers, though. Especially in an accessible game like SC that seems like it might even hook a few new gamers into the genre.

[FroBodine]

Is it tomorrow yet?  I can't wait for Skyward Collapse.  It sounds like such an acid trip of a strategy game, I still can't even imagine how the game plays out.

Oh well, I will continue on my Shattered Haven journey tonight, I guess, in anticipation of getting off work tomorrow and diving into Skyward Collapse!

[Misery]

On the note of the "hold shift to place multiples" thing:   I hadnt known about this either.   I suspect there are others.   It really helps, too.


I can do better than that though!

Something I hadnt realized for the longest time and now feel downright idiotic about:  Is the fact that I can place new tiles ON TOP OF already existing land tiles.   I'd been smiting the damn things out of the way every time..... *sigh*.

[Cinth]

Something I hadnt realized for the longest time and now feel downright idiotic about:  Is the fact that I can place new tiles ON TOP OF already existing land tiles.   I'd been smiting the damn things out of the way every time..... *sigh*.

Consolation? That feature is relatively recent.

[x4000]

Okay!

* Added the following line to the "Survive Until Turn 6" part of the tutorial"
** Awesome tip: Hold down the shift key while placing tiles or tokens to keep placing more of them!  Right-click to clear your current placement mode.

And yeah, zharmad: I find the discussion of unspoken standards interesting, too.  Although I have found since Valley 1 that there is quite a bit less "universality" to everything than I once thought.  IE, I thought among midcore+ gamers there were certain things that were universal knowledge, but that's not true.  Shift-click isn't one of those things anyhow, and examples escape me, but I found it interesting.

[PokerChen]

I find the discussion of unspoken standards interesting, too.

 The most contentious standardisation in RTS, I am certain, is the battle between left-click command games versus right-click command games (which is coupled to selection and de-selection). I'm not saying that Blizzard got it right or Westwood got it wrong/left, but there was a seriously confusing time in the early 2000s while RTSes fought it out in their autumn glory. There must have been long debates in their studioes, and many others. IIRC, Relic adopted the left-convention in Homeworld 1, allowed both in Cataclysm, then switched to right in 2. Microsoft's Age of Empires series, may have also changed in the same direction (I'll have to bust out AoE1 to check, and I don't have it here with me in Germany).

 I think the left-click command must have initially made sense because of 'right-click to cancel' in a lot of menu options. In RTSes, however, compounding unit-selection with unit-actions was likely discovered to be troublesome, especially when you need to, e.g., heal/follow an allied unit instead to selecting it. Hence the general shift to left-click for all selection/de-seleciton and leave right-click for all contextual commands.

[x4000]

I find the discussion of unspoken standards interesting, too.

 The most contentious standardisation in RTS, I am certain, is the battle between left-click command games versus right-click command games (which is coupled to selection and de-selection). I'm not saying that Blizzard got it right or Westwood got it wrong/left, but there was a seriously confusing time in the early 2000s while RTSes fought it out in their autumn glory. There must have been long debates in their studioes, and many others. IIRC, Relic adopted the left-convention in Homeworld 1, allowed both in Cataclysm, then switched to right in 2. Microsoft's Age of Empires series, may have also changed in the same direction (I'll have to bust out AoE1 to check, and I don't have it here with me in Germany).

 I think the left-click command must have initially made sense because of 'right-click to cancel' in a lot of menu options. In RTSes, however, compounding unit-selection with unit-actions was likely discovered to be troublesome, especially when you need to, e.g., heal/follow an allied unit instead to selecting it. Hence the general shift to left-click for all selection/de-seleciton and leave right-click for all contextual commands.

Oh god, I remember those dark times.  It really started in 1995 or 1996, and around then and the following three or four years were when it was worst for me.  I've never more than dabbled in the Westwood games because I just couldn't control them properly and the whole experience felt "wrong" to me on a lot of levels.  That's a silly and superficial reason not to play a game, but the theme also was less to my liking and I wasn't exactly hurting for other great strategy tiles: Warcraft, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, and so on were my bag.

[PokerChen]

Oh god, I remember those dark times.  It really started in 1995 or 1996, and around then and the following three or four years were when it was worst for me.  I've never more than dabbled in the Westwood games because I just couldn't control them properly and the whole experience felt "wrong" to me on a lot of levels.  That's a silly and superficial reason not to play a game, but the theme also was less to my liking and I wasn't exactly hurting for other great strategy tiles: Warcraft, Age of Empires, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, and so on were my bag.

 It look me a while to switch over, since my first RTS at the tender age of 9 was C&C, and then Warcraft 2. Fighting with a seemingly arbitrary unit selection limit was another thing entirely, and I don't know how people ever coped with Warcraft 1. :S At least the AI was patient enough to wait as I laboriously selected my ballistae and catapults. At least by that time, no RTS game would survive without control groups - it's probably considered blasphemy to assign anything other than 1-0, or at least 1-4, to these functions. (Can't remember the games that used F1,F2, etc.)

 Letter-based versus Grid-based keyboard shortcuts still astound me - I reckon the grid-based layout was probably adopted from FPSes and fast-paced RPGs, although the elements were all there in the command menu design. Mapping 12 of my skills in Diablo2 from the function keys to QWER-ZXCV revolutionised everything - and I'm glad the some RTSes at least offer these conveniences. I don't understand why people would prefer to fly across the keyboard to press 'P' for psi-storm or 'K' for Lockdown when those 0.2 seconds matter in competitive play.

 Notably Starcraft 2 has the temerity to stick the attack button in 'T' rather than 'A' (it's probably faster to type 1t2t3t4t5t than 1a2a3a4a5a). Doesn't gel with all of my games that had 'A' and 'S' for attack and stop, respectively... Dawn of War had some fun times.