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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingBattleships Forever | Tactical Space RTS
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Guert
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« Reply #20 on: December 11, 2007, 04:47:54 PM »

Hmmm I remember clicking on the nano matrixicon of the ship then I saw this other icon saying select ship. I thought I had to select which ship to repair...
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th15
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« Reply #21 on: December 11, 2007, 06:52:27 PM »

Thanks for the comments all around. You raise plenty of valid points that I need to address. I'll get to work on applying some changes, especially to the main menu control. There is one point that I need to talk about though:

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-Something has been bothering me for a while. Why do the ships get unselected when we click in space? I can understand when clicking on debris or enemies but, clicking space shouldn't unselect something. It's easy to missclick and it becomes frustrating in times of stress.

This is very interesting. Quite simply, the reason the game acts like that is because Starcraft does, as does pretty much any RTS game with a right-click action interface. To me, clicking on empty space to deselect is an easy way to cancel a selection so that I don't accidentally issue an order to the wrong ship.

This is an issue that all RTS games need to consider, not just mine. The concept behind the left/right click interface is that the left click always does selection and right click performs an action.

I could make left clicking on a ship simply not deselect a ship (there would probably have to be a keyboard shortcut to deselect) but it would be a little strange to players used to this system.

I'm not saying that this is the perfect system, I'm just saying that it's an established system that many RTS games have used and I don't know if I'll actually improve it by changing it. Anyone have any further thoughts on this point?
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Guert
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« Reply #22 on: December 11, 2007, 07:47:18 PM »

Personaly, I feel like this unselect approach doesn't fit an action context simply because the player is bound to make many miss-click while playing. If miss-clicking results in making the player take two steps back, I feel its annoying. For instance, if you're in a battle, you're being attacked from different angles and you want to react (by retreating, attacking, rotating, etc...). you select your ship then issue your order but you miss-click. This means that you have to reselect you ship and then re-enter the order you want it to do, correctly this time. If the ship would stay selected, the player would simply need to re-input the order that was not correctly entered because of the miss-click.

I think it's alot more interesting for the player to have something selected at all time than have moments where he has nothing selected. I don't have my Starcraft installed right now but I double checked with Warcraft 3: Left click is select, right click is order. You cannot unselect a unit with left click, you can only select another. At all time the player has something in control or can view a unit's stats (neutral or enemy) The only time when the player doens't have anything selected is when a)the unit he was controlling is dead b)the game has just started. In other words, the player is not left alone and always have something to do, even when he doesn't control the selected unit.

I personaly feel like this kind of approach fits the action-based rts game more than the left-click select/unselect control. My opinion Wink 
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PHeMoX
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« Reply #23 on: December 12, 2007, 12:17:35 AM »

I tend to disagree, the left/right-clicking works as one would expect. I didn't have to learn a new control scheme because I'm already used to this way of controlling RTS games. I think it's therefore a good thing to keep it the way it is now. It may seem flawed in the way you say, but I haven't made an annoying mistake yet at all.

I do agree that the pace of the game seems a bit fast at times, but it also makes sure the game stays exciting. I have had several missions already that I only barely won, but it made things a lot more intense and more interesting. Only downside of the fast pace is that it's very hard to look after all ships ánd also select separate guns and target separate weapon systems of the enemy craft.

There's barely time to do such things, especially if you need to care about some of your own smaller and faster ships that need a lot of attention to survive. Those smaller ships are pretty useful because they can outrun enemy fire and turn much much faster to protect the bigger ships.

All in all, I really wouldn't say there's a real issue here (an intense game is a good game in my book, especially when things aren't impossibly difficult and when the player has actually do it's best to stay alive with lots of things to do), but if the main focus should be on targeting individual weapons of enemies and so on, there's a bit of a problem fighting against the little time you have to do so... even with the nice short-keys (you know, press M and click and so on). Still, I believe it has been said already, you don't want to change to much about this game though, because Nexus: The Jupiter Incident was an extremely boring game because it focused way too much on the micro management of the spacecraft. Somehow the options killed the joy pretty fast (and it became rather difficult too).

I've enjoyed this game a lot and it's cool it will stay free. Thanks a lot for that, eventhough I would even be willing to throw some money at this game, it's very very good and eventhough the single player reminds a lot of Homeworld, it's very nice to play through and builds up nicely. It seems you've done your homework very well and the overall polish is excellent.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2007, 12:21:54 AM by PHeMoX » Logged

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th15
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« Reply #24 on: December 12, 2007, 07:19:35 AM »

It's nice that someone recognized that Smiley I designed Battleships Forever specifically with the concept of doing away with submenus and GUI wrestling in tactical spaceship combat. There are only two values in the game that you cannot deduce by observation, health and damage. Health is represented by flashing glow on heavily damaged sections and a damage effect. I would like to have a system that indicates how tough a section is but I can't think of a good way to do it. As for damage, hopefully the size/nastiness of the projectile should serve as a good gauge for how much damage it does.

I've been thinking about the left/right click system, and well, it does make sense to me not to have left click deselect for exactly the reasons Guert described (there's basically no point). I don't know, maybe I'm missing part of the equation? Does anyone know of any articles specifically about RTS control schemes?
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th15
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« Reply #25 on: January 24, 2008, 10:06:43 AM »

New Version Released
Get it here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/bfdownload.php

Help th15,
Vote for Battleships Forever

Vote here: http://www.igf.com/audience.php


Talhydras's new fleet

Shipmaker 3.1 is here. I've implemented all of the features that I plan to for now. True customization is now possible with the new shipmaker, assign custom bullet colours, weapon specific values and many other things. It features greatly enhanced features such as group actions which allow you to move/clone/rotate multiple objects at once.

I've tweaked the hp formula for the game itself so that all ships are generally tougher. This should make combat slightly more drawn out. Another big change is that groups of ship use formation-movement by default instead of vice versa. If you wish each ship in a selection to move at its own maximum speed rather than the speed of the slowest ship in the formation, hold down control while issuing the order.

Finally, please do vote for Battleships Forever at the IGF website (http://www.igf.com/audience.php)!
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