Hello old friend (aka: First impressions in years)

[Stratadrake]

I played Warzone for about 15 minutes last night.

The first time in over seven years.

Wow, it's impressive how many things have changed. Little things, of course, but still.

First, the good:
- I like seeing animated textures on the buildings, like the factory fans.
- The rotating map is a nice touch.
- The timers on factory/research progress meters are a VERY nice touch.

Then as I start playing, the not-so-good starts coming to light, and my suggestions for them:
- How do I make multiple research facilities study the same topic to get it done faster? When I select a topic for one lab, if I then switch to a different lab it disappears off the menu. It should still be shown, but duplicate the progress bar of the facility that's currently working on it.
- I seem to have units getting stuck on each other a lot. I'm hoping it was just a fault of the map I was playing (Sk-Highground), but it did give me a few worries all the same.
- I'm having a lot of difficulty scrolling around the map when running the game in windowed mode. Can the window be made sizable? I don't necessarily mean dynamically sizing the (640x480 by default) render area, but some extra black padding between the render area and the window border so I have a bigger target to move my mouse around on. Trying to adjust the camera on a 640x480 window inside a 1024x768 monitor is almost impossible, because the area I have to get my mouse on to start scrolling is relatively small.
- I see Warzone reacts to mousewheel events. Is that configurable now, or can it be made so? I would personally prefer the combination I see in graphical editing programs like GIMP and Inkscape: mousewheel = camera forward/back, Shift+wheel = camera sideways, Ctrl+wheel = zoom in/out.
- Remember how muzzle-flash graphics have animation frames? It seems their playback rates are still broken - can we fix that? All of them? Most weapons' firing graphics have specified playback rates of "1" (as in milliseconds) which results in weapons only ever rendering their first animation frame - the animation as a whole is simply too fast. Lots of weapons will look much cooler if only their muzzle-flashes get animated properly - like the attachment below.

CanFortFiringAnim.gif

[aubergine]

<ignore this post>

[Stratadrake]

I blame technical problems, because the image looked absolutely fine at fullsize. Trying again:

[aubergine]

Not sure having multiple labs research same thing is a good idea, that would totally screw game balance (and there's already lots of heated debate over balance currently).

Pathfinding is an issue currently, also, if you order a group of units to go to same place, they all try and move to exact same spot creating a traffic jam.

As for moving around in window mode, enable "trap cursor":

[NoQ]

that would totally screw game balance

+1, certainly not an interface/coding problem but part of the balance.

- I'm having a lot of difficulty scrolling around the map when running the game in windowed mode.

Use Alt+T.

[Stratadrake]

Not sure having multiple labs research same thing is a good idea, that would totally screw game balance (and there's already lots of heated debate over balance currently).

Okay, I can see balance being a heated topic (it always is), but doubling up on research was doable in the original retail versions. IMHO, it should at least be an available tactic in single player (if it isn't already).

As for moving around in window mode, enable "trap cursor"

If that means what I think it does, I would rather purchase a new PC rig and install a new OS entirely from scratch than do that
...Or at least switch to fullscreen mode.

[aubergine]

Personally I always use cursor keys to move round screen or click the minimap to jump to location. (I use windowed mode on a mac)

[Per]

Okay, I can see balance being a heated topic (it always is), but doubling up on research was doable in the original retail versions.

It was?

I don't remember that. And I don't remember anyone removing such a feature, either. Are you sure you are not mistaken?

[Safety0ff]

Juicy!
I think we should implement that, though it might require some thought about how to make it look right for all muzzle flash graphics.

[aubergine]

I guess the timing was altered because the full animation takes too long?

[NoQ]

Not sure having multiple labs research same thing is a good idea, that would totally screw game balance (and there's already lots of heated debate over balance currently).

Okay, I can see balance being a heated topic (it always is), but doubling up on research was doable in the original retail versions. IMHO, it should at least be an available tactic in single player (if it isn't already).

In campaign? It shouldnt and could not have ever been available in campaign because certain mission scripts seriously rely on an assumption that a certain technology takes exactly that much to research.
In skirmish? Skirmish shouldn't be different from multiplayer, that's the whole point of skirmish.

As for moving around in window mode, enable "trap cursor"

If that means what I think it does, I would rather purchase a new PC rig and install a new OS entirely from scratch than do that
...Or at least switch to fullscreen mode.

Use Alt+T.

[Stratadrake]

I guess the timing was altered because the full animation takes too long?

You know how railguns don't have any muzzle flashes?

actually, they DO.

GaussFiring.gif (22.57 KiB) Viewed 12604 times

THAT is what the top half of texturepage 22 is for. That is what they are (and always were) intended to look like, you just can't see it because their playback rates are totally broken. Look at the PIE files themselves:

POLYGONS 8
4200 3 0 1 2 16 1 32 41 0 41 32 41 32 0

16 frames, framesize 32x41, okay ... but playback rate 1 millisecond per frame?

The animation rendering actually works (at least it did in retail 1.10) provided you specify the right values, but none of the PIE files do. Totally broken. Totally fixable. And totally more awesome if fixed.

[vexed]

Now it makes sense...

[Stratadrake]

One more for the road...

[NoQ]

coool.