Feedback after few afternoons spent with Warzone2100

[dpc]

Hi,

Frist of all I'd like to thank you for this great game. Although for the rest of my post I'm going to complain most of the time , I do enjoy plaing WZ2100.

OK. I've found discussion about "switching mouse buttons" and as there is no way to cross-out previous text I've changed it in italic. The label in the menu is misleading. But I still think that too easy view rotation can be painful.

[Edit by Zarel: Crossed it out for you. ]

First of all - there are two types of RTS mouse controlls. RedAlert-like (LMB: select, then action, RMB: unselect) and StarCraft-like (LMB: select, RMB: action). I think StarScraft-like is better and does not lead to selecting something instead of giving an order which happens with RA-like. WZ2100 is using RedAlert-like and I'd be glad to have an option for this or if WZ2100 switch altogether, but that's more like personal preference than a real problem.

More imporant thing is -- even with the current style of mouse controlling unit unselection is failing miserably. You click RMB and if you're not doing it very fast and carefully you're getting camera rotation instead of unselection. This leads to massive confusion and each time I'm bitten by this I curse loudly. Really, who is going to rotate the screen that often in the RTS game? I could live happily if there is no option to rotate the view at all, but I can't play without a way to unselect units! And there is no way (that I'm aware of) to disable this big show-stopper. Please change this, really.



Another thing is massive tech tree. This is both advantage and disadvantage of this game. There is always a race for development and this is really nice aspect of the game. But without some kind of a way to select future invention for automatic researching of prerequirements and good system of in-game hints about meaning of each research it's just to hard to handle. I spend so much time clicking each research that I don't have a time to manage my units. Is it only me? I play the game switching to another screen where I have a tech tree opened and pause the game constantly to decide what should I pick reading what my selection should be. Even though I sometimes know that "I just want mortar as fast as possible". The concept is great, and with experience I'm sure it gets much easier, but even experienced players have to click thousands times just to handle tech-development part of the game. Every way to ease and automate this task will improve the gameplay.

Connected with a massive tech tree and constant development is the way that selection menus are constantly changing. Each item can be at different place each time and -- which is even worse -- can change at the time you're going to click it. And those "pagging" buttons are terribly small. It's hard to click them and navigate. Why should we have pagging buttons at all? If I'm selecting new discovery to be researched I'm not *that* interested in a gameplay so that only small part of the screen can display selection list. I wouldn't mind if the research menu would work like desing menu - be a little transparent but more or less cover the center of the screen and be relatively big.

The pathfinder hurts sometime. Units stuck (walking into walls) for long moments are common.

I hope you'll find this information constructive and well explained. If there is anything that you'd like to discuss I'm all ears. I enjoy playing WZ2100, but I'd love to play WZ2100 with some improvements.

[Safety0ff]

I hope you'll find this information constructive and well explained.

Most definitely. The mouse control feedback is food for thought and I agree that menu page changing has much room for improvement.

[Zarel]

OK. I've found discussion about "switching mouse buttons" and as there is no way to cross-out previous text I've changed it in italic. The label in the menu is misleading.

Yeah, I'm probably going to rename that option.

But I still think that too easy view rotation can be painful.

I'm going to add an option to turn rotation into LMB+RMB or MMB, so that should fix the rotation aspect.

Another thing is massive tech tree. This is both advantage and disadvantage of this game. There is always a race for development and this is really nice aspect of the game. But without some kind of a way to select future invention for automatic researching of prerequirements and good system of in-game hints about meaning of each research it's just to hard to handle.

Oh, a system for queueing research is already under development, and so is a system to view details of research upon mouseover.

Connected with a massive tech tree and constant development is the way that selection menus are constantly changing. Each item can be at different place each time and -- which is even worse -- can change at the time you're going to click it. And those "pagging" buttons are terribly small. It's hard to click them and navigate. Why should we have pagging buttons at all? If I'm selecting new discovery to be researched I'm not *that* interested in a gameplay so that only small part of the screen can display selection list. I wouldn't mind if the research menu would work like desing menu - be a little transparent but more or less cover the center of the screen and be relatively big.

Hmm, so you're looking to make the research list bigger? I'm not sure that's a good idea, it would require a a lot of interface work. Can you provide a spec sheet?

The pathfinder hurts sometime. Units stuck (walking into walls) for long moments are common.

Yeah, I know, we're already in the process of fixing that.

I hope you'll find this information constructive and well explained. If there is anything that you'd like to discuss I'm all ears. I enjoy playing WZ2100, but I'd love to play WZ2100 with some improvements.

Turns out, most of your suggestions are things we're already working on, so we're glad we're going in the right direction for you.

[dpc]

Hmm, so you're looking to make the research list bigger? I'm not sure that's a good idea, it would require a a lot of interface work. Can you provide a spec sheet?

For starter, if you could make it like it is now, but with 4 columns instead of 2 - I guess that this could be fairly trivial. Just so that you don't have to click around that much

Next step would be to completely redesign it. Developments should get some categories: vehicles, cyborgs, weapons, economy, etc. I guess. Hovering mouse on the tech should immediately display: immediate results and unblocked researches.

Some way to traverse in-game through tech tree and be able to "select for research with all prerequirments" would be nice as well.

This along with queuing of research should (in my opinion) help handing R&D aspect of the game.

Turns out, most of your suggestions are things we're already working on, so we're glad we're going in the right direction for you.

Thank you! That's great.

Please not that I was playing 2.3.0 version from Ubuntu and I'm in the middle of downloading the current source to build it myself.

[Zarel]

For starter, if you could make it like it is now, but with 4 columns instead of 2 - I guess that this could be fairly trivial. Just so that you don't have to click around that much

The problem is, on small screens, that would take up a fairly large proportion of the screen. And the menu is often kept up while you're doing other stuff - it doesn't close automatically. How do you plan on dealing with that flaw?

Next step would be to completely redesign it. Developments should get some categories: vehicles, cyborgs, weapons, economy, etc. I guess. Hovering mouse on the tech should immediately display: immediate results and unblocked researches.

I've thought about adding categories for a long time, but there are several flaws of that approach. The major one being that people might accidentally forget a category while going through them.

Some way to traverse in-game through tech tree and be able to "select for research with all prerequirments" would be nice as well.

LOTS of work there.

Thank you! That's great.

Please not that I was playing 2.3.0 version from Ubuntu and I'm in the middle of downloading the current source to build it myself.

Oh, only one of those things have actually been committed to trunk. The others are still being worked on in patches and separate branches.

[Safety0ff]

Some way to traverse in-game through tech tree and be able to "select for research with all prerequirments" would be nice as well.

If the game ends up with power queueing, research queueing and premade templates (all features which at least one dev wants), adding this would make the game too one dimensional in my opinion, and so I would take a stand against adding this to the other features listed.

[Zarel]

If the game ends up with power queueing, research queueing and premade templates (all features which at least one dev wants), adding this would make the game too one dimensional in my opinion, and so I would take a stand against adding this to the other features listed.

I don't think that's necessarily true, but I've honestly never liked the "queue this and all prerequisites" idea. The way I'm planning on implementing research queueing would be to reveal only one step in advance - i.e. techs that would be unlocked if whatever is currently being researched is finished would be available for queueing, but no others.

[dpc]

The problem is, on small screens, that would take up a fairly large proportion of the screen. And the menu is often kept up while you're doing other stuff - it doesn't close automatically. How do you plan on dealing with that flaw?

Well, the unit designing screen is big and is already there. I'd be happy if the research screen was done in the similar way. Why would I want to do other things while picking up techs? I just want to click them AFAP and get back to the game.

More comments - this time about moving.

It's irritating how units are "wandering around". If the tank can rotate 180 in place and I've given him an order to pull back why the hell is he doing circles like a car? Circling will end with pushing other units on front line and thus stopping some of them from firing or forcing to break the line (and ie. go under additional fire). I'd expect the tank to start rotating his body in place while still firing and when ready to move forward (into the backline direction) and still firing if possible to the enemies he leaves behind.

Repair tanks are very useful, but it would be great if they could be "assigned" like other tanks (guard icon) to repair when necessary and follow unit they are assigned to.

Current way of units getting out of the way of each other is ... permissive. The whole group will not sit tight together no-matter what. One will push another and this one will push one more ... . I'm sure this could be much clever.

After assigning artillery to scanner the units will move only when they have to (due to being out of range). It would be great if they tried to stay much closer to the scanner if there is not target to fire. It's irritating when you order the scanner to attack and the scanner stops waiting a minute for assigned units to get closer because they were siting idle when he was moving and now they got stuck in some corridor.

Units combing back for repairing (due to setting something other than "do or die" and reaching that damage limit) are not really smart. They should not try to do this through the fog of war, obviously. And they should in first place try to get out of the range of other units and omit encounters. This should be their first priority and if there is no one hostile around visible - they can start moving to the nearest repairing facility omiting know enemy structures and anything hostile spoted. Another thing - couldn't they stop if they find a repairing unit in the meantime? Why would only repairing units look for damaged ones while damaged unit could look for repairing ones as well?

[Zarel]

Well, the unit designing screen is big and is already there. I'd be happy if the research screen was done in the similar way. Why would I want to do other things while picking up techs? I just want to click them AFAP and get back to the game.

Well, most people prefer to keep an eye on their research progress while playing the game. I know that whenever I'm not using any of the panels, I keep my research progress screen open.

It's irritating how units are "wandering around". If the tank can rotate 180 in place and I've given him an order to pull back why the hell is he doing circles like a car? Circling will end with pushing other units on front line and thus stopping some of them from firing or forcing to break the line (and ie. go under additional fire). I'd expect the tank to start rotating his body in place while still firing and when ready to move forward (into the backline direction) and still firing if possible to the enemies he leaves behind.

Yeah, well, Per thinks doing circles like a car looks nicer. We'll make it so only tracked tanks can rotate in-place by the time we're done with the pathing overhaul.

Repair tanks are very useful, but it would be great if they could be "assigned" like other tanks (guard icon) to repair when necessary and follow unit they are assigned to.

Good idea.

Current way of units getting out of the way of each other is ... permissive. The whole group will not sit tight together no-matter what. One will push another and this one will push one more ... . I'm sure this could be much clever.

That's fairly difficult to do.

After assigning artillery to scanner the units will move only when they have to (due to being out of range). It would be great if they tried to stay much closer to the scanner if there is not target to fire. It's irritating when you order the scanner to attack and the scanner stops waiting a minute for assigned units to get closer because they were siting idle when he was moving and now they got stuck in some corridor.

Yeah, I never really thought of a good way to do that...

Units combing back for repairing (due to setting something other than "do or die" and reaching that damage limit) are not really smart. They should not try to do this through the fog of war, obviously. And they should in first place try to get out of the range of other units and omit encounters. This should be their first priority and if there is no one hostile around visible - they can start moving to the nearest repairing facility omiting know enemy structures and anything hostile spoted. Another thing - couldn't they stop if they find a repairing unit in the meantime? Why would only repairing units look for damaged ones while damaged unit could look for repairing ones as well?

Having units avoid enemies is extremely difficult to do. We have it on our to-do list, but don't expect it anytime soon.

[Assault Gunner]

I recall a discussion about turning around... I think the results were this, in order from best turn arc to worst:

Tracks
Wheels
Halftracks
VTOL
Hover

Ask Corporal Punishment. I think he made the topic....

[dpc]

Well, the unit designing screen is big and is already there. I'd be happy if the research screen was done in the similar way. Why would I want to do other things while picking up techs? I just want to click them AFAP and get back to the game.

Well, most people prefer to keep an eye on their research progress while playing the game. I know that whenever I'm not using any of the panels, I keep my research progress screen open.

Good hint. I'll try that...

After assigning artillery to scanner the units will move only when they have to (due to being out of range). It would be great if they tried to stay much closer to the scanner if there is not target to fire. It's irritating when you order the scanner to attack and the scanner stops waiting a minute for assigned units to get closer because they were siting idle when he was moving and now they got stuck in some corridor.

Yeah, I never really thought of a good way to do that...

Basically for each assigned unit:

Code: Select all

if (unit.sitting_idle && unit.scanner.have_no_target && distance(unit, unit.scanner) > min(3,(unit.fire_range - unit.scanner.scanner_range - 2))) {
  unit.go_to(unit.scanner);
}

This way units will always try to have a front of fire range in the same position than frotn of scanning range - thus be ready to fire immediately. The 3 and 2 I've pulled our of my ... head. 3 will prevent unit from moving if it's nearer than 3 already no matter what (like scanning distance bigger than firing distance). 2 will make units try to be little nearer, just in case and to make room for other units. This two would require little tuning and maybe coordination with a unit tactical options (optimum/close/long range of firing).

Units combing back for repairing (due to setting something other than "do or die" and reaching that damage limit) are not really smart. They should not try to do this through the fog of war, obviously. And they should in first place try to get out of the range of other units and omit encounters. This should be their first priority and if there is no one hostile around visible - they can start moving to the nearest repairing facility omiting know enemy structures and anything hostile spoted. Another thing - couldn't they stop if they find a repairing unit in the meantime? Why would only repairing units look for damaged ones while damaged unit could look for repairing ones as well?

Having units avoid enemies is extremely difficult to do. We have it on our to-do list, but don't expect it anytime soon.

Is it? I'm not familiar with the way game manages units and orders but it shouldn't be that hard. Even non-optimum or naive ways would be good for starter.