Jay
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 10
Registered: 12-17-2007
IP: Logged
|
Re: Leylines: still beta testing (updated) (0)
I wasn’t sure where to place these, since they’re feature suggestions rather than bug reports, but here goes. First, let me say that I’m extremely impressed by the game. It has elements of all my favorite 4ex games (Master of Magic, Alpha Centauri, etc.). In fact, I found it during a recent replaying of MoM. I looked up MoM in Wikipedia, and references there eventually redirected me here! In any case, with an attitude of appreciation, here are many suggestions:
USER INTERFACE
Reading the forums, I’ve seen many rather unfocused gripes about this – it is “inconsistent” or needs to be re-arranged somehow. Further, many people ask for keyboard equivalents (only to have you point out that nearly everything HAS a keyboard equivalent). Plainly, “discoverability” needs to be improved.
With that in mind, I’d suggest a more unified conceptual model for the mouse and keyboard. First, the general goal should be that the entire game could be played with mouse only, or with keyboard only. (Hard to rename cities or name saved games, but that’s okay.) With that in mind, I would suggest:
BACK/ESCAPE: Whatever screen you’re in, this pops you out one level, back toward the main map screen. It has no effect at the main map. In any yes/no dialog box, this is “no.” Either key performs the same action.
LEFT MOUSE / ENTER: Everywhere, this is the action, the “do it”, the “YES” response. The keyboard and mouse button would have identical functionality.
RIGHT MOUSE / SPACE: This is the “give me info”, “give me details”, button. In some places, there is no deeper info layer (or you’re already on the info/details display). In that case, this has the same effect as the BACK/ESCAPE button. (Frankly, I don’t have a strong opinion about the proper keyboard equivalent here. I picked the space bar, but I think other choices could also work.)
If the dialog box is basically “Message, now click OK”, then either a yes or a no choice should work to exit.
This may seem straightforward, but the current operation often flips the left and right buttons. For example, on the build and spell-casting screens, the left mouse button gives info, while the right mouse button is “do it.”
As a lower priority, in the “nice to have” list of feature requests, I’d add some customization options to the setup screen. This would allow you to switch left and right mouse buttons (for lefties). It would also allow you to map a mouse button to “back/escape”. Many modern mice already include a back button; it would be nice to use that for the back/escape signal.
I think this would go a long way toward improving the ease-of-use, but it still leaves the problem of discoverability. The tutorial was great, but some people will skip it or forget it, and you want to make the basics obvious, while teasing users to discover more. With that in mind, whenever one of the on-screen buttons was the default left-click “action” buttons, I would highlight that button somehow. A bolded outline, or a brighter background. Likewise, when displayed buttons can’t be selected (the unit has finished its move, for example), I would make the unavailable choices greyed out. Finally, when there is a keyboard letter equivalent, I’d steal the convention of several menu systems and underline that letter.
Frankly, I think the buttons highlighting, graying, and what-not will be a fair amount of work. I think it will also be worth it in terms of usability. For example, a minor frustration that I frequently have is that an army has reached the end of its movement, but I don’t realize that immediately. Sure, I can look down and read about “0 moves left”, but that’s effort I usually spend after the fact. If, instead, a whole slew of buttons suddenly went gray, then I’d know instantly.
SAVES
The “autosave” and “autosave -2” -- these are great! I’m a terrible cheater, and frequently go back one turn to do it over. (Shrug) It’s my playing style, so sue me. By automatically saving at the end of every turn, you have in one stroke saved me a ton of effort, and the “autosave -2” is even better! My only complaint is that they aren’t immediately obvious, and without a manual I couldn’t look them up. I think the issue could be cleared up by naming them “end of last turn” and “end of previous turn”, rather than “autosave”. The new names are sort of self-documenting.
UNIT SUGGESTIONS
Wandering / invading armies have grey boarders, which has the effect of de-emphasizing them. Instead, I would deliberately emphasize them, to make it obvious that dangerous intruders are entering your territory. Nicest might be some sort of transparent red overlay that tints the background behind the unit. I don’t know the details of your programming here, so I don’t know whether that’s easy or hard. Second best would be to have a red border. Whatever solution you use, I’d then have a safe color (green?) for pact armies. Caveat: I haven’t yet played with a pact wizard, so maybe you’ve already done this.
There have been some complaints/requests about the arc of color representing the health and experience. I like your solution; I haven’t seen it before and it gives a nice flavor to the game. But… it’s hard to tell where things begin and end. At the moment, I believe that cyan means 100% healthy, green means “some wounds”. I would expand this: Cyan: 100%, Green: 99% - 50%, yellow: 49% - 25%, red: <25%. Furthermore, I would change the position of the arcs slightly. Currently, it seems to me that the health arc goes from about 8:00 --> 10:00, and the experience arc from 2:00 --> 4:00. I’d change that so that each covered the full half-circle. That is: Health: 6:00 --> 12:00, Experience: 6:00 --> 12:00 growing upward on the right side. I think the full half-circle would make it far easier for people to glance at an arc and judge real percentages: “Oh, that’s about 90%” or “That’s his last quarter of hit points.”
To further improve it, get rid of the green bars underneath on the combat screen. Every game uses a green bar for health. You used a different image out on the main display; use it here as well. Furthermore, it will aid in comprehension and understanding if people see the cyan arc shrink and change color as combat occurs. One or two fights and they’ll definitely know everything they need to know about what that arc means. There is an issue of cluttered graphics – that the arc is visually in the way. I think that will be okay. In a way, it’s sort of like a mystic shield -- their life points acting to shield them from damage? If it’s too distracting in the combat screen, darken the arcs. (Sort of an alpha blending, but since you know the background is flat black, you can just darken things.)
Continuing that theme, I would also show the experience arc for each figure. It would be nice to see this moving up as a battle progresses. I don’t know whether fleeing causes you to not gain that experience. I would suggest (mostly for visual reasons) that experience accrues on a hit-by-hit basis, and that fleeing leaves your experience of the moment unchanged.
Low priority feature request: The arrow and fireball animations are great! It would be nice to have a little dueling swords animation when figures meet face-to-face. For extra fun (and a pile of work) I’d put in different animations for many of the different effects: an arrow is an arrow, but fireballs, lightning bolts, swords and axes are all different. (Yeah, I know, too much work. Heck, I’ve given a ton of suggestions already -- I have to leave you something to cut from the list.)
Up on the main map screen, as I mentioned before, it’s difficult to tell when an army is out of movement. I understand that you need to leave the stack figures (on the right) blinking, and the map figures blinking, so that you can tell what your selection is. Heck, a lot of times you want to check details on a unit that has finished movement. But there should be a visual indicator that this unit can’t move any more. My suggestion: gray them out. Second best, down in the camp/guard/build area, display an “X” to indicate they’re done moving. Also display that (perhaps semi-transparent?) on the map figures, as well as the stack details on the right. When you have different conditions on the same map square, I would decide in favor of displaying the figure with the most movement potential: active/moving beats guard beats camp beats out-of-movement points.
Suggestion/idea: I’m not aware of all the “body” spells yet, but a quick spell (that could become instant) that adds say 2 movement to a unit or to a stack – that would be a lifesaver in some situations. (“Ack, I’m about to be ambushed! Quick, abort my current spell and burn off some movement magic!”) If the spell was low enough cost, you might cast it a couple of times in a turn. Hmmm, how would that interact with the Teleport ability? Multiple ports, I guess. Yikes!
Back to “the unit that is out of movement”. As I mentioned much early, many of the unit buttons on the right should suddenly be grayed out. When the unit is out of movement, I would change the focus/emphasis to “Next unit”, indicating that “next unit” is now the default choice for enter/left mouse click. I think this will make working through large armies much faster and more convenient. After all, we want people’s minds engrossed in the strategy and action, not the minutia of where to click.
Along the same line, when the last unit has finished moving, I would change the focus and default action to “end turn.”
Both of these leave you with a bit of a dilemma on what to do with the point reticule (the white circle with the magical sparkle in the corner). Left-clicking on the map shouldn’t perform a map action in these cases, it should (next unit) or (end turn). You can still right-click the map for info (let’s check that city), but you can’t left-click for action. Obviously, the reticule should change. Either the bright circle dims or changes color, or else the emphasizing sparkle changes in detail somehow.
One “bug” I’ve heard mentioned is the situation where part of a stack has movement left. Going to “next unit” selects the subcomponent, which you can then accidentally move, breaking up your carefully arranged stack. The suggestion above (visual markings that indicate when the stack and unit have used all their movement) would help this. When the stack (as a unit) has no movement left, the stack icon (on the map) should indicate that it can’t move, and the individual units (on the right) should have that marking applied, but some units would remain unmarked – showing that they still had movement left. “Next unit” would go to the next full stack, no longer selecting out the subcomponent, but a player looking would be able to quickly realize that he could manually divide up the stack and split it.
The detail/info screen on each unit: Many people have suggested graying out the hearts to show a unit’s damage. Likewise, I would gray out the swords or shields (or whatever) whenever something like plague had temporarily reduced that, and I would have some special emphasis (gold?) for added swords or shields or whatever due to a beneficial effect like bless.
I like the experience medals: silver and gold, and I also appreciate the name changes (grey vigilante, black vigilante). All those different names for different races and different units gaining experience – it’s a heck of a lot of work, but adds some really neat flavor. I appreciated it. I would make some more changes, building on these things. First, I wouldn’t restart experience after reaching the first (silver) level. It seems to me that 50 points puts you at silver, and an additional 100 points (150 total) puts you at gold. I would keep this just counting up and up (“Units reach their first level of experience at 50 points, and their final level at 150 points”). I would also have the purple experience bar move through a continuous arc: bottom is 0 points, top is 150. Perhaps it changes brightness or hue slightly at 50 points, or maybe the appearance of the medal is enough feedback.
Here’s a suggestion for balance: Why should all races have the same 0,50,150 experience levels? Maybe some races learn faster or slower. I would make the explanation for experience a piece of plug-in text that depending on the unit’s race. “Goblins learn quickly. Units reach their first level of experience at 10 points, and their final level at 30 points.” Well, maybe not that extreme. Now... is a race too powerful? Tweak them to be (0,60,180). Too weak? Make them (0, 30, 90). Obviously, whatever the case, the purple experience arc should cover the same half-circle when they’ve reached their final level.
(continued next post...)
|
[/edit]
...
?
