Beta 0.871 now out! (Mapgen, spies, Wars of Aggression)

[Cinth]

Maybe 80% of interface changes I'm proposing could directly apply to Skyward collapse. What I'm proposing there is nothing more than what I saw, and what got praised, in similar genres. Games I would take as an example for proposing how to manage buildings would include : Cities skyline (organisation of buildings), settlers 2 (organisation of buildings), offworld trading company (mouse tooltip proposing real time update under the mouse, and no hesitation to place multiple times the same building), tropico (organisation of buildings) and anno 2070 (organisation of buidlings per tier, and no hesitation to place multiple times the same building).

I don't think I'm in the realm of "interface change that pleases / displeases" people yet. Am I ?

I've never heard of pretty much all of those (anno was brought up in another thread).  How many of those are actually true 4x games?  How many are one type of sim or another?  How many of those studios have a substantial budget and art department?  Temper you expectations with a little realism and remember Arcen's style.

[ptarth]

*whistle*
Careful folks. We all have passion, but there is no need to get cranky over this. Both of you have good points, but burning the place down in our attempts to make things better isn't going to help anyone.

So reset the scrum and try again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28rugby%29

[kasnavada]

I've never heard of pretty much all of those (anno was brought up in another thread).  How many of those are actually true 4x games?  How many are one type of sim or another?  How many of those studios have a substantial budget and art department?  Temper you expectations with a little realism and remember Arcen's style.

SBR aims to be a City-builder and a 4X, I targeted City builders and 4X here to compared and see what can apply. But... I would not hesitate to take inspiration from a board game, a FPS or even tic tac toe if something could be applied to improve give relevant feedback.

Also, nothing in that post is outside of what Arcen can do.

I feel triply insulted here - basically you don't care about what I'm stating, you're thinking I don't take Arcen's possibilities into consideration, and you've not even bothered to do a 3 minute research on the net.

Careful folks. We all have passion, but there is no need to get cranky over this. Both of you have good points, but burning the place down in our attempts to make things better isn't going to help anyone.

Sorry... I generally over-react at "can't do" people. I'm stopping there.

[x4000]

Whew guys.  Coming into this thread was a surprise.  I don't think either side was particularly aggressive at first, but things escalated mainly because disagreement was taken to be insult.

Cinth is correct on the bulk of what he says, in terms of the focus on the underlying game.

kasnavada is right that a lot of the tooltips and so on need to be there, but if you think that interface hasn't been a concern, that's way off.  Everything has been designed with interface in mind, which wasn't the case with, say, Skyward Collapse.

Right now there are a number of things where I haven't messed with the interface more yet because I know what I want to do there, and getting the stuff figured out that I don't yet know what to do with is more important testing-time-wise.

Also, why have players test blind and with few tooltips?  Simple: testing what mechanics are intuitive enough to not require much explanation, versus those that are going to require a lot of explanation.  Many players won't read tooltips in my experience, so if the game requires lots of reading to be at all playable, then that's a big problem.  If you guys can find your way through, more or less, without tooltips, then that's a good sign for those non-readers to come.

In terms of tooltips and so on in more detail, that is something I hope to have sooner than 3 weeks out from release, but there's a lot of things that have not happened the way I want.

I'll also mention that the game was feature complete when we started beta.  BUT some of the features sucked in various ways, so we've been gutting those features and redoing them.  So you're seeing some features that are missing because of that sort of thing.

Regarding AI passivity, the big barrier right now is that if they show up with unbridled hostility, they're going to kill you.  They're perfectly capable of coming over and doing it, and in earlier builds did so.  The things that are required before I can do that well are having you be able to discuss things with the AI and tell them to stop, or take this thing and stop, etc.  And the big holdup on that has been figuring out the best interface for that.  So some "lesser-value" things that still very much need to get done in the short term have been a focus in the meantime.

I wanted to be at a different point at this point in the process, believe me.  But there is a method to my madness, and we're all ultimately working toward the same goals.

[Cinth]

I feel triply insulted here - basically you don't care about what I'm stating, you're thinking I don't take Arcen's possibilities into consideration, and you've not even bothered to do a 3 minute research on the net.

Between playing the game, being dad to two kids (its summer time!), and debating stuff on the forums, I'm all over the place.  I probably play devil's advocate way to much here 

@ Chris: Sorry, feature complete wasn't the right wording for what I was getting at, but you know how finding the right words can be. 

@kasnavada:  First, sorry if I came off combative.  It happens sometimes.  And I don't disagree with the need for informative UI options.  It was one of the first things I told Chris when I started in this beta. 

[x4000]

All good on my end, I don't take any umbrage with anybody.  Just trying to clear the air in general.

[crazyroosterman]

hey chris while your here I thought id find out if 1 the whole giving more options in the set up menu and giving you more info about the races your choosing still on the agenda or did you forget about that in the rush of things? also I remember you mentioning about making the races  feel more distinct to play as whitch was meant to be part of the super patch did you forget about that or is it on the agenda as well?.

[kasnavada]

kasnavada is right that a lot of the tooltips and so on need to be there, but if you think that interface hasn't been a concern, that's way off.  Everything has been designed with interface in mind, which wasn't the case with, say, Skyward Collapse.

Well, sorry if I made you feel that it hasn't been a concern. It was not my intention.

However, I've seen so many 4X / management games drown behind their UI that I'm really concerned about the current state of the UI at 6 weeks from release. From what I've read from your posts, you do sound like you've got a very clear idea of what the features are (and a lot are in progress), but aspects other than features are less discussed. Or I missed the part where you discussed them in depth. It's strange that you're stating the opposite here - you're confident about the UI and less about the features.

Anway, sorry for this "escalation" and wasting your time into making you answer this.

@kasnavada:  First, sorry if I came off combative.  It happens sometimes.  And I don't disagree with the need for informative UI options.  It was one of the first things I told Chris when I started in this beta. 

Sorry too. It takes 2 people to fight.

[x4000]

hey chris while your here I thought id find out if 1 the whole giving more options in the set up menu and giving you more info about the races your choosing still on the agenda or did you forget about that in the rush of things? also I remember you mentioning about making the races  feel more distinct to play as whitch was meant to be part of the super patch did you forget about that or is it on the agenda as well?.

I have not forgotten about those, but those are very low on my priority list since they aren't directly in the matter of the core game, and they will take a fair bit of time.

kasnavada is right that a lot of the tooltips and so on need to be there, but if you think that interface hasn't been a concern, that's way off.  Everything has been designed with interface in mind, which wasn't the case with, say, Skyward Collapse.

Well, sorry if I made you feel that it hasn't been a concern. It was not my intention.

However, I've seen so many 4X / management games drown behind their UI that I'm really concerned about the current state of the UI at 6 weeks from release. From what I've read from your posts, you do sound like you've got a very clear idea of what the features are (and a lot are in progress), but aspects other than features are less discussed. Or I missed the part where you discussed them in depth. It's strange that you're stating the opposite here - you're confident about the UI and less about the features.

There's a whole lot that I haven't discussed simply because I haven't had time.  I've got extremely long internal lists of stuff, and a variety of other stuff that's just in my head because it's not worth it to write it out.

For the interface I'm feeling confident because it's already doing an "okay" job (with advanced players), and I think I know what to do to bring it into a better realm.  Some of the feature changes that I'm so stressed about at the moment are specifically to do with the GUI, incidentally.  I know exactly what those features should be -- and in a lot of cases those features already exist, just in the old diplomacy form -- but I hate how they play.  So figuring out how to handle that in a better way is my chief concern.

That's why the old diplomacy screen is dying a horrible death in the first place: GUI.  Mechanically there was nothing wrong with it, but I hated the GUI.  My struggle right now with the remaining "missing features" is how to make as simple and clear a GUI for them as possible.  I guess I haven't been very clear on that.

Anway, sorry for this "escalation" and wasting your time into making you answer this.

No worries at all.  Sometimes it's good to get clarity.

[crazyroosterman]

hey chris while your here I thought id find out if 1 the whole giving more options in the set up menu and giving you more info about the races your choosing still on the agenda or did you forget about that in the rush of things? also I remember you mentioning about making the races  feel more distinct to play as whitch was meant to be part of the super patch did you forget about that or is it on the agenda as well?.

I have not forgotten about those, but those are very low on my priority list since they aren't directly in the matter of the core game, and they will take a fair bit of time.

fair enough I was just checking thanks clearing that up for me.

[kasnavada]

For the interface I'm feeling confident because it's already doing an "okay" job (with advanced players), and I think I know what to do to bring it into a better realm.  Some of the feature changes that I'm so stressed about at the moment are specifically to do with the GUI, incidentally.  I know exactly what those features should be -- and in a lot of cases those features already exist, just in the old diplomacy form -- but I hate how they play.  So figuring out how to handle that in a better way is my chief concern.

That's why the old diplomacy screen is dying a horrible death in the first place: GUI.  Mechanically there was nothing wrong with it, but I hated the GUI.  My struggle right now with the remaining "missing features" is how to make as simple and clear a GUI for them as possible.  I guess I haven't been very clear on that.

Well. Whatever this turns out to be... I'll be pestering you about those aspects. Poor you. >D

[x4000]

Keith and I have an ongoing joke about "poisoning from engineer-designed GUIs."  I have some attributes of an artist, but I'm also an engineer.

Anyway, I do need someone to bust my balls on that sort of thing, because people can be too accommodating in the "well I guess that's the way it is" sense.  Or the "surely they'll fix that later" sense, but actually it's a problem we don't know about, etc.

I can't really react to most of that yet, so I'm ignoring most of those posts temporarily because I just have to get through this current batch of stuff or I will literally go insane(er).  But I definitely want that sort of thing in mantis while it's fresh in folks' mind.

Incidentally, I finally had an epiphany tonight on how to handle the worst of the portential-GUI stuff I've been struggling with the last week.  So yay!  Maybe a light at the end of the tunnel after all.

[kasnavada]

Keith and I have an ongoing joke about "poisoning from engineer-designed GUIs."  I have some attributes of an artist, but I'm also an engineer.

Anyway, I do need someone to bust my balls on that sort of thing, because people can be too accommodating in the "well I guess that's the way it is" sense.  Or the "surely they'll fix that later" sense, but actually it's a problem we don't know about, etc.

I can't really react to most of that yet, so I'm ignoring most of those posts temporarily because I just have to get through this current batch of stuff or I will literally go insane(er).  But I definitely want that sort of thing in mantis while it's fresh in folks' mind.

Incidentally, I finally had an epiphany tonight on how to handle the worst of the portential-GUI stuff I've been struggling with the last week.  So yay!  Maybe a light at the end of the tunnel after all.