Arcen Games
General Category => The Last Federation => Topic started by: x4000 on March 31, 2014, 08:58:50 pm
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Heya folks.
So, despite a number of people loving the combat, we are also getting some persistent gripes. Some of those were things that I have come to feel on my own anyway (the need for panning, for instance, pains me as well), while others are things that a number of players keep suggesting despite my feeling it's not the best (the "weight" to your ship and limited turning arcs). And still others I did not think of, but as soon as they were mentioned, I knew they were awesome (managing power between shields, attack, and speed).
This stuff is currently in-progress. The middle category of things -- the "weight" to your ships -- is actually done, and despite my initial worries, it feels really awesome. A lot of things have to be rebalanced around it a bit, and shield recharge is one of them. That's one that's been bugging me, but that nobody had brought up yet, to my surprise. Anyway, that change is also in, and on Normal difficulty mode it is feeling pretty good to me at the moment.
Oh, and also the little lines that _K_ suggested for marking where shots came from was a stroke of brilliance. I didn't do it quite the way he suggested, and I actually tried two different approaches today, and the one I chose I think just works extremely well. It's unobtrustive and really clear.
That said, the panning stuff is not in, and neither are the power bars (though the graphics for that are done, I just have to code it), and there are some other things that are related, as well. Impacts from shot hits being more noticeable. Numbers popping up to show the results of damage taken and so on from the past round. Changes to ship tooltips to give you the effective DPS of all your weapons against them. Stuff like that. Oh, and your objectives for the battle at the top of the screen, so you don't feel lost in the oblivion of "what should I do?" during the first battle in particular.
I guess I could release this piece by piece, but honestly I keep touching and tuning numbers on each piece as each further piece gets added. So I'm thinking that would be a waste of your time to test something that is in that much flux, and a waste of my time to read your feedback on the non-final version. Saving us both some time, I am hoping to have the most critical improvements done by the end of tomorrow, and then I welcome feedback at that point.
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In general it worries me quite a bit the number of people who are rage-quitting due to lack of information or other factors, and I'm hoping that the next round of changes here will cut out the vast majority of that. This really is turning into quite a polished little turn-based tactics system in my opinion, and despite my earlier feelings the "feel" of the flagships in the new version is a lot better and doesn't actually make dodging impossible -- it does make it harder, but that's not a bad thing. When paired with the recently-changed ability explosions, and with the upcoming power-distribution stuff and the just-added shield recharge changes, I think those things balance themselves out while at the same time giving you more (hopefully interesting) factors to juggle. I am finding it increasingly fun, and I already thought it was great. But my great mission right now is to win over the people who want to like it but just can't for whatever reason. We shall see.
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I'm really impressed Chris with just how nimble you seem in developing the game to try to expand the audience for this game. I won't know how I will stand once I actually try it* but the effort is impressive.
*My dislike for SHUMPS (is that how it is spelled?) is at least as strong as my liking grand strategy games. We shall see how it goes.
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Hmmm, interesting. Dunno what to think of that till it's out, though I have to say the power/shield/speed management thing sounds.... rather annoying, to me. Sounds like the sort of thing that simply slows down the flow of turns. At least within the current model, I cant think of situations where I would want to change these. If I need to change shields, well... it means I'm getting hit too much, so I need to simply stop getting hit too much. If I'm playing right, I'm probably not getting hit much anyway. Speed only helps so much and doesnt matter too much with my own playstyle (slow or fast, it's fine to me), and attack power is fine on all weapons so far.
What does "weight" mean? That bit in particular sounds concerning. The idea that the ships' simple movement needs changing in a turn-based structure kinda baffles me. They move in the straight line given... doesnt that make the most sense? If there's shifting of speeds/angles or something DURING this movement, ehhhh.... I cant see that one as being at all good with this, particularly not at high difficulty levels (will get you really dead, really fast). It'd drive me up the wall, at any rate. Some actual shmups do this, and they quickly become a sort of situation where I just go "aaaaarrrrGHHGHGHGHG JUST DO WHAT I TELL YOU" followed by game deletion.
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I think ships having more "inertia" to them will fit pretty well with the new combat. It basically means you have a performance ceiling and need to do a bit more prediction to evade effectively, which is a theme the current combat system pushes so this would extend that somewhat. Having better trajectory and speed info for projectiles fits with this as well as that also pushes thinking ahead.
Having some degree shield management fits would fit this too, as that means that taking hits is a viable option.
I guess taking a detour into tactics for a bit, this might sound a bit odd at first but recharging shields can often be thought of as an additional replenishing resource you can use to attack.
It might sound like good idea at first to keep your shields full all the time, and sometimes yes it is a good idea. However, having full shields that means that you have room to be more aggressive in your attack and you are not using it. There are advantages to being more aggressive to where you start taking hits to your shields, as that means that "resource" will keep flowing in and you can use it to spend more of your time maneuvering to attack rather than to evade and maximize your damage output.
Sure, sometimes it makes sense to keep your shields full especially in situations that are less predictable and where you need a margin for error, but at the same time there are also going to be situations where you can strengthen your attack by expending them.
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I think ships having more "inertia" to them will fit pretty well with the new combat. It basically means you have a performance ceiling and need to do a bit more prediction to evade effectively, which is a theme the current combat system pushes so this would extend that somewhat. Having better trajectory and speed info for projectiles fits with this as well as that also pushes thinking ahead.
Ehhh.... I dunno. Frankly, it sounds more like an unnecessary addition that'd just bog things down. The thing with this type of combat is that, PARTICULARLY if the game is outright pointing it out to you, it's very easy to not NEED to spend any time trying to predict. It can become effortless. I realize I'm not exactly the best example for this, but even on the highest difficulty, I find there's no thought involved in figuring out where the shots will be next; their speed and trajectory make it extremely obvious. There's no effort on my part to see this.... and that's without this addition that shows you their pathing.
The prediction element never seems to apply to the bullets... it only applies to the enemies. It's never a question of "Ok, these bullets are going THIS way right now... but what direction might they go NEXT turn?", instead it's that sort of question but related to the ships themselves only... which to me, is how it should be. The ships themselves can require prediction.... to a point, anyway, as their AI is pretty simple. But the stuff they fire, there really isnt any need for that as you get used to it.
With the prediction element blanked out, messing with the ship's movement... and making it less "direct" (like it is now) would cause more of a "I wish it'd just move in the straight line at the speed I want it, it's annoying that it doesnt" sort of thing. Extra effort/time becomes necessary without actually increasing the challenge.
Honestly, the whole idea of this.... if indeed it is what I think it is.... would be something I would classify as "fake difficulty", and that's NEVER a good thing in any game.
Far as I'm concerned, if something like that were to occur, I'd end up just dropping the difficulty as low as it'd go just to crash through and get the battles over with ASAP, if the game does not allow to outright skip them. Definitely not a game element that I tolerate well.
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Ehhh.... I dunno. Frankly, it sounds more like an unnecessary addition that'd just bog things down. The thing with this type of combat is that, PARTICULARLY if the game is outright pointing it out to you, it's very easy to not NEED to spend any time trying to predict. It can become effortless. I realize I'm not exactly the best example for this, but even on the highest difficulty, I find there's no thought involved in figuring out where the shots will be next; their speed and trajectory make it extremely obvious. There's no effort on my part to see this.... and that's without this addition that shows you their pathing.
The prediction element never seems to apply to the bullets... it only applies to the enemies. It's never a question of "Ok, these bullets are going THIS way right now... but what direction might they go NEXT turn?", instead it's that sort of question but related to the ships themselves only... which to me, is how it should be. The ships themselves can require prediction.... to a point, anyway, as their AI is pretty simple. But the stuff they fire, there really isnt any need for that as you get used to it.
With the prediction element blanked out, messing with the ship's movement... and making it less "direct" (like it is now) would cause more of a "I wish it'd just move in the straight line at the speed I want it, it's annoying that it doesnt" sort of thing. Extra effort/time becomes necessary without actually increasing the challenge.
Honestly, the whole idea of this.... if indeed it is what I think it is.... would be something I would classify as "fake difficulty", and that's NEVER a good thing in any game.
Far as I'm concerned, if something like that were to occur, I'd end up just dropping the difficulty as low as it'd go just to crash through and get the battles over with ASAP, if the game does not allow to outright skip them. Definitely not a game element that I tolerate well.
Maybe it's the wording of this, but I'm having a trouble following how this goes.
If giving the ship movement more inertia and making it less direct doesn't increase difficulty at all, I'm not sure how it can be called "fake difficulty" as it isn't introducing difficulty to begin with.
At worst it's slowing the flow of combat and that seems like it would be more of a pacing concern than anything else.
If it does introduce difficulty but it becomes a habit to the point of being trivialized, I'm not sure how that's much different from anything else. Most moment to moment actions in games become trivialized given enough time with them time, that's part how you get better at games. Not to mention that would mean that it can be learned and trivialized seems to directly contradict the idea that it can be "fake difficulty".
I'm sort of reading the idea that somehow making control of movement "indirect" results in "fake difficulty", but that seems a bit too sweeping to make sense.
This would pretty much hold that any game that involves much of a physics engine that affects your movement would involve "fake difficulty". Games that involve maneuvering a size-able vehicle or aircraft would involve "fake difficulty". Even Dark Souls would have a lot of "fake difficulty", as it's combat system was intentionally designed to have most attacks and moves be pretty slow compared to most other games in its genre.
The biggest thing I'm getting from this is the vague idea that somehow making movement control more "indirect" somehow "feels wrong" and is "annoying".
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So what's the release date on this again? Is it announced yet?
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Ehhh.... I dunno. Frankly, it sounds more like an unnecessary addition that'd just bog things down. The thing with this type of combat is that, PARTICULARLY if the game is outright pointing it out to you, it's very easy to not NEED to spend any time trying to predict. It can become effortless. I realize I'm not exactly the best example for this, but even on the highest difficulty, I find there's no thought involved in figuring out where the shots will be next; their speed and trajectory make it extremely obvious. There's no effort on my part to see this.... and that's without this addition that shows you their pathing.
The prediction element never seems to apply to the bullets... it only applies to the enemies. It's never a question of "Ok, these bullets are going THIS way right now... but what direction might they go NEXT turn?", instead it's that sort of question but related to the ships themselves only... which to me, is how it should be. The ships themselves can require prediction.... to a point, anyway, as their AI is pretty simple. But the stuff they fire, there really isnt any need for that as you get used to it.
With the prediction element blanked out, messing with the ship's movement... and making it less "direct" (like it is now) would cause more of a "I wish it'd just move in the straight line at the speed I want it, it's annoying that it doesnt" sort of thing. Extra effort/time becomes necessary without actually increasing the challenge.
Honestly, the whole idea of this.... if indeed it is what I think it is.... would be something I would classify as "fake difficulty", and that's NEVER a good thing in any game.
Far as I'm concerned, if something like that were to occur, I'd end up just dropping the difficulty as low as it'd go just to crash through and get the battles over with ASAP, if the game does not allow to outright skip them. Definitely not a game element that I tolerate well.
Maybe it's the wording of this, but I'm having a trouble following how this goes.
If giving the ship movement more inertia and making it less direct doesn't increase difficulty at all, I'm not sure how it can be called "fake difficulty" as it isn't introducing difficulty to begin with.
At worst it's slowing the flow of combat and that seems like it would be more of a pacing concern than anything else.
If it does introduce difficulty but it becomes a habit to the point of being trivialized, I'm not sure how that's much different from anything else. Most moment to moment actions in games become trivialized given enough time with them time, that's part how you get better at games. Not to mention that would mean that it can be learned and trivialized seems to directly contradict the idea that it can be "fake difficulty".
I'm sort of reading the idea that somehow making control of movement "indirect" results in "fake difficulty", but that seems a bit too sweeping to make sense.
This would pretty much hold that any game that involves much of a physics engine that affects your movement would involve "fake difficulty". Games that involve maneuvering a size-able vehicle or aircraft would involve "fake difficulty". Even Dark Souls would have a lot of "fake difficulty", as it's combat system was intentionally designed to have most attacks and moves be pretty slow compared to most other games in its genre.
The biggest thing I'm getting from this is the vague idea that somehow making movement control more "indirect" somehow "feels wrong" and is "annoying".
Aye, my wording isnt always very good.
The bit without the difficulty is ONLY the prediction. That bit is effortless. What I essentially mean though, is adding stuff like inertia and whatever can make you crash into the damaging stuff ANYWAY, in the exact sort of manner that should only exist in a twitch-style game. Your movements are no longer exact, so even though you know where you SHOULD go, you may not end up there. For a game like this, that's exactly the wrong way to do it, and that's where the "fake difficulty" comes into play. It's adding difficulty in a very artificial way.... not by altering the attack patterns, not by increasing the intelligence of the AI, not by adding new and dangerous mission types or elements like more turrets or something, but instead just by going "Well, now your ship doesnt move directly anymore, so, yeah, good luck with that". The fake difficulty concept goes deeper than just that, but that's a good enouch explanation.
This game working like it does, the movement should be very direct; you click a spot, and without any funky movements or wonky curving, or speed-up/speed-down your ship moves to that spot, and that spot is where it ends up. Anything beyond that adds nothing but frustration and cheap deaths.
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I think it's best to see it in action before making judgement.
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Yeah, I know. This concept of "weight" might not even mean any of that, but that stuff is the only explanation I could think of.
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@chemical_art: Thanks, I appreciate it. :)
@Misery: I will indeed be particularly interested in hearing your feedback on these things. The goal with the shifts here is not to increase difficulty at all, but rather to give it a more... pleasing feel to the space game crowd. To feel a bit less fighter-like and more flagship-like. That's a big part of why I'm making many changes at once, is specifically to avoid the annoying "fake difficulty" factor.
In terms of projections of where bullets are headed, that's something that if you are good at it, bully for you I guess. ;) I'm good at it, too. That said, the sine shots do still surprise me from time to time, and for new players who are just getting the ropes, and are not used to these sorts of games with lots of shots in general, letting them have a visual aid to immediately understand shot movement doesn't seem to be to be a big deal at all in terms of it being something that should bother you or I. That's something that I would classify as "fake difficulty," actually, if we're making people play the memory game there.
All that said, again, I will be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Like you, I really prize the flow and speed of the battles, and my interest is not at all in slowing these down. Fiddling with the power granted to each subsystem is not normally something I would want to do, but here it actually does increase some tactical options AND it actually will allow you more flexibility for playstyles, too. Let's say you are very good at dodging: fine, turn the shields way down, and apply that to movement. A lot of the turning radius restrictions will then ease, and you can move more freely. BUT you won't have the benefit of your shields. Or in a different battle, let's say you really outclass the enemy in terms of your health and so on, but it will take a boring amount of time to whittle them down. Crank down your shields and maybe even your movement (who knows), and throw all that into your attack. Blast the heck out of them in just a few turns, not even bothering to dodge, because you just own these guys. Another situation is that you need to retreat. Take all the power out of your guns, and put it into shields or movement, and use that to help you withdraw better. It's something to help you adjust to tactical situations, not to fiddle with every turn.
@Cyprene: Sigh, likely the 18th of this month. Are we insane? Yes we are. If we had to we could push it back as late as the 23rd, but we really don't want to. We have a metric ton of stuff to do in a very short amount of time, which is frustrating. But we are out of money, plain and simple. So we're going all-out guns-blazing trying to make this into everything we want it to be before D-Day. I think we can do it, but it's going to be extremely tight.
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This is an idea I have and its not about the gameplay or something its about this forum.
I dont understand why new games show up at the bottom of the category list. Some people who play
Ai war didn't even know Bionic dues exist and that is strange. I would put TLF under Ai war or even above it
and made a subsection in the Ai war forum to come checkout your latest game.
This is just an suggestion maybe you dont agree with it but atleast I've got it out of my head. :)
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I dont understand why new games show up at the bottom of the category list. Some people who play
Ai war didn't even know Bionic dues exist and that is strange. I would put TLF under Ai war or even above it
and made a subsection in the Ai war forum to come checkout your latest game.
I mentioned and linked TLF in the latest AI War update blog and forum post, partly for this reason, and will probably keep doing so until they all buy it until a bit after release :)
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Good point on the categories. I've rearranged them all, thanks. :)
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Good point on the categories. I've rearranged them all, thanks. :)
No problem
Hope it helps a little.
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I'm not in the alpha, so I can only add that the new TBS combat looks....tedious? Having to pause, move the ship, target enemies, etc, every few seconds seems like taking micromanagement to the extreme, and at least for me, doesn't look very fun. The demo video you recorded was close to 20 min, and it seemed like very little was accomplished during that 20 min vs. If you were using a real-time system.
Just my two cents.
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I'm not in the alpha, so I can only add that the new TBS combat looks....tedious? Having to pause, move the ship, target enemies, etc, every few seconds seems like taking micromanagement to the extreme, and at least for me, doesn't look very fun. The demo video you recorded was close to 20 min, and it seemed like very little was accomplished during that 20 min vs. If you were using a real-time system.
Just my two cents.
Bear in mind that I was talking for most of that 20 minutes, so I could have easily done that in more like 4 or less had I really been paying full attention to the game. That said, I mean, turn-based games are all about giving lots of orders. I dunno. Anyway, I'll have a new video soon, and we'll see what you think.
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I'm not in the alpha, so I can only add that the new TBS combat looks....tedious? Having to pause, move the ship, target enemies, etc, every few seconds seems like taking micromanagement to the extreme, and at least for me, doesn't look very fun. The demo video you recorded was close to 20 min, and it seemed like very little was accomplished during that 20 min vs. If you were using a real-time system.
Just my two cents.
Bear in mind that I was talking for most of that 20 minutes, so I could have easily done that in more like 4 or less had I really been paying full attention to the game. That said, I mean, turn-based games are all about giving lots of orders. I dunno. Anyway, I'll have a new video soon, and we'll see what you think.
Thanks for the reply Chris - I hope you didn't take the post the wrong way - I am a big fan of Arcen games and what you do. These were just some of my initial reactions to the new combat system.
I think what put me off was how at the end of a ships movement, it simply stops, and you have to continue to give it new movement orders, over and over. It was a bit unsual, since in space you wouldn't expect ships to stop on a dime, or ever really even stop moving (since that simply makes you easier to hit) Everything else looked great.
I'm wondering if there would be a good way to implement continuous movement/firing - So that the player would only need to pause and issue specific fire/move orders if they felt like they needed to, rather than always having to constantly issue move orders. Perhaps some kind of automatic movement options (orbit, patrol, move to, etc) would go a long way in streamlining the TBS combat.
Am I making any sense?
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This has been discussed in other threads, but generally: if you are not dodging the enemy shots, you die. So if you just orbit randomly, you're either playing on a super easy difficulty, or that kills you. Planning where you jump to in terms of position is like planning your next move in Chess, to some extent. Not only does it matter for where you want to go in the future, but it also matters for where you aren't directly taking damage right now. And where you can best deal damage.
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This has been discussed in other threads, but generally: if you are not dodging the enemy shots, you die. So if you just orbit randomly, you're either playing on a super easy difficulty, or that kills you. Planning where you jump to in terms of position is like planning your next move in Chess, to some extent. Not only does it matter for where you want to go in the future, but it also matters for where you aren't directly taking damage right now. And where you can best deal damage.
Ah ok, I understand. Well I'll just shut up now and let you carry on with making the game. I'm sure it's going to be great regardless :)
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No, it's good to have the impressions. I just can't concentrate to play at a reasonable speed and talk at the same time. Too much to think about. In the next video I will note this, and then just play quietly for the bulk of it.
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No, it's good to have the impressions. I just can't concentrate to play at a reasonable speed and talk at the same time. Too much to think about. In the next video I will note this, and then just play quietly for the bulk of it.
But I actually Like hearing you talk!
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I will talk some at the end, or in a second play. But I need to get one quiet session in there quickly to show what I'm doing, I think, heh.
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Aye, my wording isnt always very good.
The bit without the difficulty is ONLY the prediction. That bit is effortless. What I essentially mean though, is adding stuff like inertia and whatever can make you crash into the damaging stuff ANYWAY, in the exact sort of manner that should only exist in a twitch-style game. Your movements are no longer exact, so even though you know where you SHOULD go, you may not end up there. For a game like this, that's exactly the wrong way to do it, and that's where the "fake difficulty" comes into play. It's adding difficulty in a very artificial way.... not by altering the attack patterns, not by increasing the intelligence of the AI, not by adding new and dangerous mission types or elements like more turrets or something, but instead just by going "Well, now your ship doesnt move directly anymore, so, yeah, good luck with that". The fake difficulty concept goes deeper than just that, but that's a good enouch explanation.
This game working like it does, the movement should be very direct; you click a spot, and without any funky movements or wonky curving, or speed-up/speed-down your ship moves to that spot, and that spot is where it ends up. Anything beyond that adds nothing but frustration and cheap deaths.
I don't get how movement not always exactly following your intentions contributes to "fake difficulty". There's nothing random about this unless it is somehow intentionally implemented to be random. If movement follows the same set of rules consistently then it's just changing the pacing of combat how you handle your input, I don't see anything "fake" about that.
Outside of certain platformers, shmups, and similar genres (and often even then) most games don't have control that offers exact 1:1 with player input all the time. Vehicles have mass, fighting moves have start-ups and cool-downs, physics objects have inertia. There's not much random or unpredictable there, it's just movement working under a different rule set. If the movement follows its rule set consistently then the player can account for it consistently, and as such there's nothing "fake" about the difficulty it presents.
Maybe I'm driving a car, and cars have mass. I can only make the car turn so fast before it skids or flips over, and the rate at which I can accelerate is limited. Is that "fake difficulty"? No of course not. Again, the behavior is consistent, I know that the car can only turn so hard, I know it can only accelerate so rapidly, and I take that into account when I decide how to drive the car. There aren't any unexpected random factors coming in and messing me up, at least not from the driving system itself.
Maybe I'm ordering some soldiers around and they take maybe few seconds to respond to my commands rather than instantaneously. Does that introduce "fake difficulty"? No it doesn't. I know the soldiers take a few seconds to respond to my commands, that's consistent. I can expect that behavior and take that into account when I give my orders.
If my spaceship has mass and can only turn so hard and accelerate so rapidly, does that introduce "fake difficulty"? I don't see how it does, as it isn't introducing any random unexpected behavior at this level.
I can know how hard my ship can turn, I can know how rapidly it can accelerate, and in general I can know what behavior to expect when I give it a command and take that into consideration when I decide how I give it commands. Yes it is not following my intentions 1:1, but the ways in which it deviates from my intentions are the sort that I can anticipate and compensate for accordingly.
There's no unexpected behavior spontaneously popping out of the system that then proceeds to ruin my day in a way that I can't predict, at least not from the movement system itself. I suppose maybe if some hit-scan death-ray of doom comes out of nowhere and ends me in one hit I could make an argument for it being "unfair", but that's a problem of balance and not really a problem with the movement.
I can see how maybe it could slow down pace of combat a bit too much, I can see how it could be annoying to people who do prefer more perfect 1:1 movement as a personal preference, and I can see it maybe causing balance issues in the short term.
I don't see how it can fall under what might be called "fake difficulty" by itself.
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Played briefly with the new TBS model. Ambivalent, in one word. I've rarely paused in an tactical battle, and this sort of breaks up the action. I agree that it brings the pace between the tactical/strategic layers closer.
- Searching for hydral tech mission suddenly become very tedius - the player needs to auto-win when all hydral defenders have been defeated, otherwise spend extra 15~30 turns sitting around the tech bonus.
- Convoy raids don't allow you to target the freighters specifically?
- Bullets sources become confusing at very large battles, as the colours define the shot-type more than their FoF status. Are we dodging friendly or hostile bullets?
- Special ability shockwave bit contrived and OP. Is it not possible to have them simply trigger in addition to movement? Afterburners seems weird to have you sit around for a turn, and then grant a disc bigger than the screen.
- Various introduced bugs that don't allow real progress into the game, e.g. unable to customise flagship as choices don't stick.
- First glance of strategic pace seems ok. Better visual indication of year progress (a progress bar?) would be more informative than a foreign month/date system. If players see a bar that fills out over a year, it might help them settle down to see the game in terms of months, rather than days.
- Evucks trying to blow themselves up because of teethworms... -_- cure overkill much?
Imposing turning arcs technically makes the reachable area in one turn a heart-shaped template instead of the full circle as it currently is. It could be shown, which helps in the polish. Not sure if it's feasible to calculate this can draw a decent looking template. I'm still leaning towards having it in game...
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- Evucks trying to blow themselves up because of teethworms... -_- cure overkill much?
You've obviously never had teethworms.
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BTW, to illustrate the heart-shape outcome of having turning circles, I tried to look up an appropriate image of the tactical from Legend of Galactic Heroes IV-EX. 'Twas a case of too old for the internet.
On a related topic, that game gives you a tight 12 combat turns (corresponding to 3 days in a single strategic turn) of simultaneous resolution to make your mark. Mediocre positioning drags you into an endurance battle lasting multiple strategic turns, and good positioning under the right conditions allows you to wipe a significant portion of their fleet. Very naval. Most games in that series try to preserve the spirit of grand positioning, as it was one of the main plot devices in the fictional series.
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As one of the mentioned "rage quitters", I don't have much of anything to say on proposed combat changes. I'm still ignoring them until given the flag to try again.
I am somewhat concerned about the general difficulty of this particular development process. If you compare this one to something like Bionic Dues, that one had a lot of tinkering in the alpha but generally always had a set vision of what combat "is". Given all the changes between different combat styles here, I hope that there is still a vision for it.
Don't get me wrong - it's great how much feedback gets taken into account. But as can be seen even in this thread with disagreements over things like ship mass & inertia, the forums are likely going to never stop wanting some kind of change. Given the time still available before you have to release, I'm not sure how much time there is left to keep trying new systems.
Or maybe I'm just rambling. Sick and kind of on pills right now, so I might be out to lunch. Sorry. :)
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Sigh, likely the 18th of this month. Are we insane? Yes we are. If we had to we could push it back as late as the 23rd, but we really don't want to. We have a metric ton of stuff to do in a very short amount of time, which is frustrating. But we are out of money, plain and simple. So we're going all-out guns-blazing trying to make this into everything we want it to be before D-Day. I think we can do it, but it's going to be extremely tight.
Oh dear. That's awful soon. Would it help to have another Alpha Tester, or are you good in that department?
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Concerning the rage quitters and lack of info, I think this will be a difficult thing to solve but I hope the solution can come through elegant game design instead of walls of text. AVWW1, for example, had a TON of text walls and Arcen in general is a very text wall-y company. In one sense, this is great for the forums because we all get an inside look at development with Chris' posts (it's why I'm such a huge Arcen fan). He is able to churn out very informational progress reports in very short amounts of time. In an actual game, however, walls of text can be a huge turn off. This is all by way of saying that the learning curve problem for this game should be solved through gameplay and design elegance and not through walls of text.
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Concerning the rage quitters and lack of info, I think this will be a difficult thing to solve but I hope the solution can come through elegant game design instead of walls of text. AVWW1, for example, had a TON of text walls and Arcen in general is a very text wall-y company. In one sense, this is great for the forums because we all get an inside look at development with Chris' posts (it's why I'm such a huge Arcen fan). He is able to churn out very informational progress reports in very short amounts of time. In an actual game, however, walls of text can be a huge turn off. This is all by way of saying that the learning curve problem for this game should be solved through gameplay and design elegance and not through walls of text.
It's also a UI conveying information thing. I wrote a fairly lengthy post about what happened to me, but in general the UI at this stage doesn't convey some information very well (or at all). So if you don't already know something doesn't work, the game isn't making it easy to find out whats going wrong.
That's not at all abnormal for a game in alpha. There's no sense in creating a super polished UI, tutorial, and such, while the game systems are still changing. So it's not a criticism of the development effort at all when I say that.
A comparison can be made to Age of Wonders 3, which has a really sophisticated turn based combat system and does a great job of conveying information to the player about what's going on. There's no case where something is immune to an attack and the game won't tell you (both before the attack and in the damage popup if you try it anyway).
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I think there are definitely cases in the UI where the text is TOO informative all at once. I definitely like to be told what's going on, but you need to balance that out with the ability to quickly check what something is. As an example, look at the following screenshot:
(http://i.imgur.com/AMWh2LP.png)
The tooltip is showing that I'm currently hovering over the "Defensive Armada Power Level". But it doesn't tell me that, instead it starts off in a lecture of "This is [an] abstract representation of the combined....." ZZZzzzzzzzzz.. Huh? What?
It's great that you are telling me this, but the first line of the tooltip really just needs to (in a different color than the text preferably) say "Defensive Power Level". Even after reading it once, I come back later and think "what was this again?", hover over it, and get slammed in the face with a bunch of text I have to scan through to figure out what it is I'm looking at. For a new player, this is simply information overload. I'm not saying it's bad that the information is THERE mind you, but there needs to be a quick and dirty title saying what it is. Highlighted in yellow. Every word I'm tricked into reading while finding what words are important is a needle pushed into my eye (OK, not really, but it's a good way of thinking when writing tool tips).
Highlight important information in tooltips.
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As one of the mentioned "rage quitters", I don't have much of anything to say on proposed combat changes. I'm still ignoring them until given the flag to try again.
Yep! Not there yet. Your problem was less mechanics, and more tutorials. I haven't even begun to address tutorials, as I'm still addressing mechanics.
I am somewhat concerned about the general difficulty of this particular development process. If you compare this one to something like Bionic Dues, that one had a lot of tinkering in the alpha but generally always had a set vision of what combat "is". Given all the changes between different combat styles here, I hope that there is still a vision for it.
Yes, Keith gets consistently concerned by this, too. Honestly, this is just the way I work. The process for AI War was this way, too. Whenever I'm working on a design for something new and large, I have a vision for how I want the game to feel, and the overall parameters for the genre and so forth. But the specifics are all up for grabs. For instance, AI War was originally turn-based, but went realtime. This game is the opposite. AI War originally had small, squadron-based battles centering around flagship, then went to massive independent fleets with flagships being just "big ships." This game stuck more closely with the original AI War idea, because it had promise. Etc.
Overall, my goals here are:
1. Something that moves along at a pace that is pleasing if you know what you are doing. Aka, you're not waiting around annoying amounts of time before you can do something else.
2. Something that gives you as much time to think as you need, within reason.
3. Something where procedural aspects really matter, and each battle plays out differently.
4. Something that takes tactical thought in some form, whatever that may be. My favorite method is always positional tactical thought, but that is very hard to achieve. Bionic and Skyward both do that, and AI War does on a grand scale, but not a micro scale.
5. Something that is in general fun and pretty.
There is a pretty clear throughline from the first versions to the current version of me trying things and discarding stuff that doesn't fit with the above as much as I'd like. And when it comes to player feedback, I only EVER take feedback that I actually agree with on some level. Aka, I wasn't sure about the "weight of the ships" thing, but I also did feel like ships were too fighter-like for their size, so I was willing to give it a shot. I didn't think it would work, for various reasons, but I agreed with the core problem of the feel of the ships. And it turns out it did work.
Etc. So there's not cases where I'm just going "well, these guys want X, and I don't, so I'll just do X anyway." That never ever happens. That would not be a game designer you want designing games, it would be a mess. Though something that DOES happen is I'm super resistant to an idea, and then eventually people wear me down. ;)
Don't get me wrong - it's great how much feedback gets taken into account. But as can be seen even in this thread with disagreements over things like ship mass & inertia, the forums are likely going to never stop wanting some kind of change. Given the time still available before you have to release, I'm not sure how much time there is left to keep trying new systems.
The time for trying new systems is rapidly dwindling. Whatever we have at the end of this week has to work. Period. Otherwise there's not time for proper polish, and even that is pushing it. That said, there haven't been any major reinventions since the switch to turn based, and even that was an incremental change in some respects. As a lot of people pointed out, "it's still the same SHMUP, just turn based." And my response was "yes, that's the point." Incremental changes. Since then, there are things that can only be done in a turn-based model that could not be done in the SHMUP model, and we've been gradually adding those, making it deeper. And changing various other things that did not work in the SHMUP mode (slow turning radius is super frustrating in a SHMUP, I tried it, but it works well in a turn-based sense as a tactical limiter, particularly paired with the power system where you can tweak the turning arc at a cost to other systems).
So from my perspective, we're not really trying out new systems anymore, and haven't been for a while. It's been a matter of consistent refinement. MY worry is how many iterations of such refinement are needed, because that rabbit hole just keeps on going and going so far. I don't want to wind up with something half-baked because of just not having time to continue following this rabbit hole all the way down. That's where my worry is, and believe me it worries me.
Or maybe I'm just rambling. Sick and kind of on pills right now, so I might be out to lunch. Sorry. :)
Sorry to hear you're feeling bad! :(
Sigh, likely the 18th of this month. Are we insane? Yes we are. If we had to we could push it back as late as the 23rd, but we really don't want to. We have a metric ton of stuff to do in a very short amount of time, which is frustrating. But we are out of money, plain and simple. So we're going all-out guns-blazing trying to make this into everything we want it to be before D-Day. I think we can do it, but it's going to be extremely tight.
Oh dear. That's awful soon. Would it help to have another Alpha Tester, or are you good in that department?
We will definitely be adding more alpha testers, and at a more rapid pace, coming up. Right now there are enough things that we know we have to do, though, that more testers would be kind of pointless. And we're really trying to get solid first impressions from folks in batches, if that makes sense. If Tridus ragequit because of tutorials lacking, and then we add tutorials, I want to see if anyone in the next few batches has a similar reaction, thus meaning the tutorials need to be expanded, etc. Or if our response to Tridus's initial issue was sufficient to handle everyone's case (haha, not likely), then we've learned something there, too.
Concerning the rage quitters and lack of info, I think this will be a difficult thing to solve but I hope the solution can come through elegant game design instead of walls of text. AVWW1, for example, had a TON of text walls and Arcen in general is a very text wall-y company. In one sense, this is great for the forums because we all get an inside look at development with Chris' posts (it's why I'm such a huge Arcen fan). He is able to churn out very informational progress reports in very short amounts of time. In an actual game, however, walls of text can be a huge turn off. This is all by way of saying that the learning curve problem for this game should be solved through gameplay and design elegance and not through walls of text.
"Elegance" is a funny word. Different people use it to mean different things. Aka, there is the Apple Computer form of elegance, where they strip away functionality to keep things elegantly simple. And for a phone, sure, I like that. Or there is the elegance of a really attractive and flexible system that allows people to do whatever they want with it. But usually that comes with a learning curve. Or there is the elegance of something that is intricately complex, but ultimately hard to get into, like Dwarf Fortress. There is an elegance there, of a certain kind, but not in the UI.
There is going to be a lot of text, there's no way around that. I mean, you just can't have a game that is this complex without that. SimCity has a lot of text, that is inescapable without dumbing it down (which they did do, sadly, to the detriment of the game). The nature of a game of this subgenre (hardcore strategy) is that usually there's a pretty large amount of text. Keeping the number of "walls" low is of course a goal, but that in turn means plenty of little popups here and there, etc. Or tooltips, tooltips everywhere. Or both. In the end, it's both.
It's also a UI conveying information thing. I wrote a fairly lengthy post about what happened to me, but in general the UI at this stage doesn't convey some information very well (or at all). So if you don't already know something doesn't work, the game isn't making it easy to find out whats going wrong.
That's not at all abnormal for a game in alpha. There's no sense in creating a super polished UI, tutorial, and such, while the game systems are still changing. So it's not a criticism of the development effort at all when I say that.
A comparison can be made to Age of Wonders 3, which has a really sophisticated turn based combat system and does a great job of conveying information to the player about what's going on. There's no case where something is immune to an attack and the game won't tell you (both before the attack and in the damage popup if you try it anyway).
Right, that sense of conveyance is one of the big things on my list for coming up super soon. Some comments originally by Cyborg sparked some things for me, and your further thoughts really cemented it. I have a method for doing this conveyance that is better than in any game we've ever done before, but I haven't had time to put it in yet. I am excited about it, though, as it is elegantly simple and not much text.
The tooltip is showing that I'm currently hovering over the "Defensive Armada Power Level". But it doesn't tell me that, instead it starts off in a lecture of "This is [an] abstract representation of the combined....." ZZZzzzzzzzzz.. Huh? What?
Highlight important information in tooltips.
Yep, we almost always try to, and you'll notice that most of the GUI does in this and Bionic in particular, but there are some that get missed. If you can log those to mantis (putting a list in one ticket that you keep updating is fine), then that would be helpful for me to come back to. There are times when I'm also just overly wordy, and things need to be rewritten. When I've been coding and writing for 12+ hours, sometimes it's just a matter of "get it down there" and then come back to polish later. So definitely let me know when you find stuff like that, I appreciate it.
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Short UI suggestions for polish:
Tactical.
- Expected damage from current weapon with reduction taken into account. Please consider a potential visual format like decreasing bars or circles arcs.
- Mouse-wheel over energy bars also increments and decrements allocation. Lost a turn or two clicking on it only to order a movement command? Six key-allocations for keyboard control - painful but necessary in space combat sim, not sure here.
- With pan in place, disable mouse clicking => movement command near where you would expect click ala energybars above?
- Show spare energy, possibly in form of hollow boxes. (Related: add special ability to boost energy allocation by 6?)
Strategic.
- Ability to pan helps a lot.
- Still difficult to find out, e.g. number of spy probes around a planet and what resources it has at a glance. Plans for visual categorisation and separation of economic / military info?
= = =
W.r.t. to time, try not to change the combat model again. ;P The current model is a bit clunky, but overall fine. You can't, for example, turn in place with vernier thrusters. Alternatively, shift-clicking to let you ship move in an S-shape would be nice. Each movement command is a turn-then-move in you current setup, which is not so desirable. Turning circle is a little large, but it's probably ok give you want players to divert max energy to thrusters for turning as well as movement.
As Misery said, dodging is much more difficult in this setup since capitals don't dodge in general. I think he's also not using Gravity Missiles, which has 30 ammo and gives players that amount of turns of invulnerability sitting in one place as long as there's a valid target (NOT Pirate Ravens). At lower difficulties, circling the target at a comfortable variation of speeds appears to be efficient, exact distance is hard to judge without an explicit orbit command or turning circle, but easy to get a hold of approximately.
In other thread, cited LoGH IV EX for similar movement patterns. It has a two click-system in which you determine target point and desired orientation -> fleet then turns while moving, moves to target, then turns in place (firing arcs very important there, determined by ovals). Also has a small circle around current location in which fleet would simply strafe move with vernier thrusters. Raising for reference and potential ideas.
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Yes, Keith gets consistently concerned by this, too. Honestly, this is just the way I work. The process for AI War was this way, too. Whenever I'm working on a design for something new and large, I have a vision for how I want the game to feel, and the overall parameters for the genre and so forth. But the specifics are all up for grabs. For instance, AI War was originally turn-based, but went realtime. This game is the opposite. AI War originally had small, squadron-based battles centering around flagship, then went to massive independent fleets with flagships being just "big ships." This game stuck more closely with the original AI War idea, because it had promise. Etc.
Overall, my goals here are:
1. Something that moves along at a pace that is pleasing if you know what you are doing. Aka, you're not waiting around annoying amounts of time before you can do something else.
2. Something that gives you as much time to think as you need, within reason.
3. Something where procedural aspects really matter, and each battle plays out differently.
4. Something that takes tactical thought in some form, whatever that may be. My favorite method is always positional tactical thought, but that is very hard to achieve. Bionic and Skyward both do that, and AI War does on a grand scale, but not a micro scale.
5. Something that is in general fun and pretty.
There is a pretty clear throughline from the first versions to the current version of me trying things and discarding stuff that doesn't fit with the above as much as I'd like. And when it comes to player feedback, I only EVER take feedback that I actually agree with on some level. Aka, I wasn't sure about the "weight of the ships" thing, but I also did feel like ships were too fighter-like for their size, so I was willing to give it a shot. I didn't think it would work, for various reasons, but I agreed with the core problem of the feel of the ships. And it turns out it did work.
Etc. So there's not cases where I'm just going "well, these guys want X, and I don't, so I'll just do X anyway." That never ever happens. That would not be a game designer you want designing games, it would be a mess. Though something that DOES happen is I'm super resistant to an idea, and then eventually people wear me down. ;)
Great, I'm glad to hear that. :)
Sorry to hear you're feeling bad! :(
Thanks! Everybody in the house was sick at one point, but we're all on the mend now. :)