Feature request: Building

[Mabsterone]

So this is my first feature request at all:

I recently played a bit supreme commander forged alliance, and i need to say there are 2 features in there wich are really astonishing good.

First: Build queue

WZ already features a good build queue tool ( i like the new added visual feedback ) but there could be 3 improvments.

1. Ignore units blocking build while doing a queue ( its rather inmpossible to build stuff under partoulling vtols and why does a vehicle block a placment of something build in 5 mins ? )

2. Make queued stuff movable.
Explanation:
In Supreme commander, if you selcect the buiding unit, you et a visual of the whole buildqueue of that unit highlighted ( which is a great feature too ). When hiolding down shift key, you can select none build stuff ( queued ) and drag it into another place. Works only as long as the building hasnt started yet.
This is a very powerfull and playerfriendly tool.

3. Let trucks aid other trucks
Just let trucks be possible to aid another truck. Truck A has a build queue, and i got 3 other trucks free after a while. RIgbht now ( afaik ) i need to select all4 trucks and reclick the missing queue to make them build all stuff.
Why not just select the free trucks and click right once onto the building truck and the free ones get the remaining orders of the building one too ? I am not sure if this is possible by the protect unit function already though, if so nevermind.


Second: Map and scrolling

Can we please get a bigger max cam distance, i mean the mouse wheel down limit. On big screens, you stil feel its too close. and does not really provide an overview.

There is an intersting feature in supreme commander too, wich i do not recommend but like a lot.
SC scolls out from detailed unit view to satellite view and does not provide a minimap ( only optional ) anymore.
Sounds weird, but honest..that aids gameplay a lot. Instead of scrolling out a bit and dragging/strafing around the map o rclicking on the minimap, SC is just about scroll out and scroll in on a new mouse focus.
First time i played with it it was a bit confusing ( i still tried to strafe the view ), but after some minutes you get used to it and will not miss that feature anymore. it just provides anything from detailed view to map view just with one small scroll at full screen scale, and scrolling in at a hot spot is just moving the mouse their and use the wheel again. Very fast, accurate and gives a ton of info you need just using your mouse without switching point of view by a minimap. This would be a great improvment to wz, though i do know its a massive amount of coding and a huge change to gameplay.

At the developers: Just try supreme commander or the forged alliance addon tounderstand what i mean. its a revolutionary way to provide detailed and overview information on one ( or multiple ) screens.

[Zarel]

Third time someone's posted in the wrong forum in the past two hours. This stuff belongs in Ideas and Suggestions, folks.

I've been meaning to improve build queues for a while. It's on our to-do list. But as for:

There is an intersting feature in supreme commander too, wich i do not recommend but like a lot.
SC scolls out from detailed unit view to satellite view and does not provide a minimap ( only optional ) anymore.
Sounds weird, but honest..that aids gameplay a lot. Instead of scrolling out a bit and dragging/strafing around the map o rclicking on the minimap, SC is just about scroll out and scroll in on a new mouse focus.
First time i played with it it was a bit confusing ( i still tried to strafe the view ), but after some minutes you get used to it and will not miss that feature anymore. it just provides anything from detailed view to map view just with one small scroll at full screen scale, and scrolling in at a hot spot is just moving the mouse their and use the wheel again. Very fast, accurate and gives a ton of info you need just using your mouse without switching point of view by a minimap. This would be a great improvment to wz, though i do know its a massive amount of coding and a huge change to gameplay.

This is the main "innovation" of Supreme Commander, and they achieve it by a custom-written engine and extremely high graphics cards requirements. In other words, it'd be nearly impossible to do in Warzone.

Personally, I think it sucks. :/ It's a philosophy of "we don't want users to be restricted to a certain zoomlevel" and "there is no best zoomlevel", but the result is that the zoomlevels at which you can actually play the game are too far out to actually see anything, and none of the zoomlevels are any good. At least, that's been my own experience playing SupCom.

btw, please don't abbreviate it as "SC". SC = StarCraft. SupCom = Supreme Commander.

[KukY]

My mesagge to all who want bigger viewing range:

When you start a game, you usually start zooming out...
And then it stops.
But you fell it isn't zoomed out enough.
You fell you don't see enough of things happening.
You have a fell you just need to zoom out little bt more.
But it isn't true.
Even after that change you will still have that felling "just little bit more...".
And you will want to zoom out more and more until you run into a graphical glitch because of that.
Why?
Look at the thing I underlined before.
You want to see it all. You want to be The GOD.
The one that sees everything, the one that hears everything, the one that feels everthing, no matter about time or place.
Since human first existed, they felt that there is something bigger than them, that has incredible powers, and they felt weak beacause of it's presence.
Not weak but vulnerable.
So people want to be that higher form of life, to be on the top of everything.
This has nothing to do with your religion.
I could go on explaining, but I won't get further into complex psychology...

[Saberuneko]

O_O

[ragnar]

Personally, I think it sucks. :/ It's a philosophy of "we don't want users to be restricted to a certain zoomlevel" and "there is no best zoomlevel", but the result is that the zoomlevels at which you can actually play the game are too far out to actually see anything, and none of the zoomlevels are any good. At least, that's been my own experience playing SupCom.

I'm pretty sure it was never about that, but about being able to move about the map in a more intuitive manner. Scrolling, when you think about it, makes no sense at all.

I've played quite a bit of SupCom and I didn't have any dilemma with the zoomlevels. Want to see more of less? Zoom in. See less of more? Zoom out. Works just fine to me. The minimap isn't an option, afaik it's still standard, you just don't use it much because the zoom works so well.

On the graphics card issue, get WZ to work on multiple cores (no idea if that isn't in the same order of difficulty as using a new engine) and you'll have so much processor time you won't know what to do with.

[Zarel]

I'm pretty sure it was never about that, but about being able to move about the map in a more intuitive manner. Scrolling, when you think about it, makes no sense at all.

I agree that zoomjumping is a bit more intuitive than scrolling, but it's also slower; sometimes by a fair amount (especially if you have a slower graphics card; though even with my 8800 GT 512MB, I still found it too slow more my tastes).

I've played quite a bit of SupCom and I didn't have any dilemma with the zoomlevels. Want to see more of less? Zoom in. See less of more? Zoom out. Works just fine to me. The minimap isn't an option, afaik it's still standard, you just don't use it much because the zoom works so well.

See, the problem is that you have to choose between "more of less" and "less of more". With StarCraft or Warzone, you simply see "more of more", no need to adjust zoomlevels between "bad because you can't see the units" and "bad because you see so little of the map".

The minimap is indeed an option, but it doesn't have the "box showing area of large screen currently visible on minimap", since the minimap is just another regular map; just zoomed out by default. It discards a lot of minimap UI innovation in favor of "this is cool since the minimap is just a regular map screen!" Discarding "usability" in favor of "cool" generally doesn't work out so well, which is why I dislike SupCom's control scheme.

On the graphics card issue, get WZ to work on multiple cores (no idea if that isn't in the same order of difficulty as using a new engine) and you'll have so much processor time you won't know what to do with.

Warzone already works on multiple cores - pathfinding and several other parts are multithreaded. We still have to optimize our visibility model a ton to keep the game at 60fps.

Processing power isn't the issue in this specific case, anyway. The issue is graphics card support, developer skillsets, etc. After all, even SupCom can't do it with DirectX 10 and no support for old graphics cards; how do we do it in OpenGL 2.0 (and even that's assuming we drop support for the Intel GMA X3100, the most popular laptop video card of last year, something SupCom is willing to do be we might not be)?

[Olrox]

One of the best large-area navigation systems I've ever seen is Homeworld 2's system.
It allows the player to change to a "strategical view", where you can see your units like dots, with overlays (shapes) around them that points out what kind of unit it is. It also lets the player see what's his Field of View and what he has already explored but isn't monitoring.

I can't remember for sure, but I think that Homeworld 1 (which is also an old but top-quality game) supported a very similar thing.

This system allowed easy navigation over a really fully tridimensional navigation space (deep space allows it).

A good solution without fancy effects and such said completely free zoom level as in SupCom, would be to make a keyboard shortcut to quickly bring up a maximized (might need filtering not to hurt the gamer's eyes) minimap, from where you can select groups, which teamcolored dots flash when you do so, and assign simple commands such as attack-move, move, move-unload, in addition to the other commands from the standard unit orders menu.

But adding fancy features that would insta-kill weaker graphics card users would be a mean thing to do :rolleyes:
Usually too much eyecandy reduces the efficacy of many interface features or camera controls.

[Mabsterone]

Sorry for posting in the wrong section zarel. I am not brosing this forum much and i just did not recognize the request section yet.

@supcom vs wz zoom/scroll: both is good and has their pro and cons, i do like the supcom version more ( might be related to the huge maps there , you cant just scroll or clickjump on a minimap in a 80x80km map well, the minimap would not provide any accurate info at that level anymore.

Since wz has small maps ( in comparison ) i am fine with the scroll/click version too, i just wanted to bring this into discussion, because i do like the supcom solution a lot. Its just more intuitive to use imo.

I totally agree on the manpower, gfx support and gpupower parts. supcom is a resource hulk, no doubt.

[ragnar]

I've played quite a bit of SupCom and I didn't have any dilemma with the zoomlevels. Want to see more of less? Zoom in. See less of more? Zoom out. Works just fine to me. The minimap isn't an option, afaik it's still standard, you just don't use it much because the zoom works so well.

See, the problem is that you have to choose between "more of less" and "less of more". With StarCraft or Warzone, you simply see "more of more", no need to adjust zoomlevels between "bad because you can't see the units" and "bad because you see so little of the map".

I don't see that as an issue at all. "less of more" doesn't mean you see less information, just less graphical detail. SupCom switches to symbols on the lower zooms and that works really well. The "more of more" you're referring to I frequently experience as "cluttery".

All that aside: Granted, there's no need to take it so SupCom levels, but enabling zooming out by another factor of 2 would greatly enhance gameplay on large maps. The present maximum feels outdated, especially when playing on a large monitor.

[TVR]

... It discards a lot of minimap UI innovation in favor of "this is cool since the minimap is just a regular map screen!" ...

Actually, the mini-map in Supreme Commander can be set to display a contour elevation of the map, instead of being another perspective camera.

But the unified full-screen strategic map and perspective camera is an improvement from TA, which relied on a tiny mini-map for everything beyond LOS.

[Zarel]

I don't see that as an issue at all. "less of more" doesn't mean you see less information, just less graphical detail. SupCom switches to symbols on the lower zooms and that works really well. The "more of more" you're referring to I frequently experience as "cluttery".

Symbols are less graphical information, though. Which circle is my soul ripper, and which circle is my monkeylord? I prefer to be able to tell my units apart, like in StarCraft.

All that aside: Granted, there's no need to take it so SupCom levels, but enabling zooming out by another factor of 2 would greatly enhance gameplay on large maps. The present maximum feels outdated, especially when playing on a large monitor.

I'll leave that up to the other developers. I'm not really qualified to make these kinds of decisions.

Actually, the mini-map in Supreme Commander can be set to display a contour elevation of the map, instead of being another perspective camera.

The point is that you can't click on it and have your big screen teleport to that location.

[Olrox]

Actually, the mini-map in Supreme Commander can be set to display a contour elevation of the map, instead of being another perspective camera.

The point is that you can't click on it and have your big screen teleport to that location.

If a practically unlimited zoom level was available, I would prefer to have a regular minimap, but with a "zoom to fit sector" feature - you left click, units move to that location. You right click, the camera moves to that location. You Alt+click & drag, the camera moves to that location and zooms to a level you can see the whole selection box. This would allow really quick zooming and moving around on the map. That, in addition to a detail geometry that differs greatly between zoom levels (another great feature from Homeworld games), would allow viewing most of the map or just the little details of a unit's texture without loosing performance.

In HW2, you could zoom out until you saw epic battlecruiser battles or zoom in until you saw the marking stripes and insignia of your fighters, flying around the battlecruisers with stunning muzzle flashes, or keep at a medium zoom level where you could see frigates and corvettes fighting themselves, moving to the battlefront between the cruisers' massive attacks and the small flashes of bombers and fighters... Without noticing any performance changes, or noticing that a model's geometry and textures were simplified.

~please don't take the following lines too seriously. They were not wrote to anyone specific~
But there are other more important priorities for improving WZ2100 in other ways, IMHO. I may not mention any of those here - those are my personal thoughts and surely wouldn't please everyone just like any other decision, but the fact is, my decision power is limited to the content I create or posting on Ideas/suggestions. The Warzone 2100 Project's staff must make the decisions here, and judge which ones brings along the most interesting cost/benefit - the project has goals, and even members of the staff shall be uncomfortable with some changes that were deemed necessary...

We are limited to give suggestions, preferrably in a humble way, hoping that those can be improved in a way they bring as many benefits and as few drawbacks to as many players possible. Putting those "on the scales" and deciding what's good and what's not without making it clear that it's only our own opinion is a questionable action, I think.

That's why I avoid posting all of my ideas everywhere. Inner sense of hierarchy and priority, along with self-criticism.

But enough of this philosophy

[TVR]

... The point is that you can't click on it and have your big screen teleport to that location. ...

I just booted up Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance to verify that, the mini-map DOES work how you would expect it to.

[Zarel]

Hrm. Well, it doesn't do that on the second-monitor map, which is what I've been using as a minimap. :/

[Anon8669]

i like suggestion number 3