Demo 7 Download and Comments

[Nebula]

My impressions.

- It would be nice if you could get a message from the game that you colonized a area. One with a checkbox to not display it again if it gets anoying. The cursor blocks the blue color from the province.

- The economy screen looks horrible. use graphics is my advice.

- It would be nice if you could right click on a square and select to view the province economy

- You do need a help system to explain everything. Its easier to look up stuff you do not understand.

I lost again btw

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Nebula:

Originally posted by Nebula
My impressions.

- It would be nice if you could get a message from the game that you colonized a area. One with a checkbox to not display it again if it gets anoying. The cursor blocks the blue color from the province.

Hmmmm... I'm not sure why this seems important to you. You'll generally see on the very next turn that something has changed. As usual if lots of people agree its important, it'll likely happen, but IMO most everyone would check that box

- The economy screen looks horrible. use graphics is my advice.

Graphics will come eventually. But we have no artists on the team at the moment, and if we did, there's lots of more important things for them to do IMO...

- It would be nice if you could right click on a square and select to view the province economy

I like that too. I expect it'll happen sometime.

- You do need a help system to explain everything. Its easier to look up stuff you do not understand.

Well, the preponderance of people said a tutorial was more important, so that's what we did first. Online help will come, though I don't know if it will be there in D8 or not. Some of the Econ gui has tooltip support already.

I lost again btw

Bummer, dude

No comments on how the simultaneous turns work, or how the military or econ model work? Do they feel like with better interfaces they will be good? Any fun yet? Completely dull? I have to admit the high-level stuff is what I'm most anxious to have comments on. That's because the small details are easy to change later, but the big complicated things will be much more difficult to alter, and so are more make-or-break for us.

Thanks for the comments!

[Fosse]

I've played the Demo 7 version in the past (few weeks ago), and am currently playing 7.1. I have only brief thoughts right now, but I decided I should post them before I forget them (as happend last time!).

Clicking on End Move each time I want to issue orders to my task forces, especially if I only want to move them one or two squares, is annoying, and is very easy to forget to hit end move.

What if clicking once assigns the move just as it did in Demo 7, and ctrl-clicking adds a waypoint, with a click making the final waypoint?

This could be done for road building as well. For me, this would be a much more intuitive way to go about it, and it would eliminate the need for End Move and End Build buttons altogether.

Some boxes (rename Task Force or Provincesprings to mind) don't let you close them by pressing enter, so you have to type the new name and then click OK. I know that this sort of thing is extremely low priority stuff, but you can always ignore it, so no harm done it posting it.

The game is fun to play, and is showing great potential. As I think of more to say I'll post it.


edit for typing errors

[Fosse]

When I start dealing with large task forces and my economy is churning out a couple of units every turn or so I begin to feel the beginnings of a click-fest.

This is because I build around ten to a dozen units for each task force, and I have to wait for my economy to build each unit, bring them together, and then band them into a task force.

What if we were able to build entire task forces?

There could be a screen in which we select the componants for different generic task forces we might dream up. Perhaps the player would like for a Type one TF to have six chariots and 12 warriors. Then we could tell a province's economy to build a Type 1 Task Force, and it would.

The individual units of the TF could appear on the map (all in the same spot... where the full TF will eventually be) as they are completed, but will not be available for the player until the whole thing is done. Of course, if for whatever reason the player wants to use parts of the eventual TF right away, he could activate them, allowing the TF to continue building (with new units remaining in the original square, to await the player joining the different parts of the TF), cancel the remaining units, or whatever.

This could eliminate a lot of the tedium of waiting for X number of this unit, and Y number of that, just so you can finally have your battle group later.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Fosse, thanks for the comments.

Originally posted by Fosse
The game is fun to play, and is showing great potential.

Especially this one

Clicking on End Move each time I want to issue orders to my task forces, especially if I only want to move them one or two squares, is annoying, and is very easy to forget to hit end move.

What if clicking once assigns the move just as it did in Demo 7, and ctrl-clicking adds a waypoint, with a click making the final waypoint?

I'm with you that the new way seems cumbersome. But I don't think needing to control-click each time is a viable solution. Maybe if you left-click for the first move then the move is considered done, whereas if you right-click the first one, it expects more? Still seems a bit kludgey. Hopefully we can come up with something better. I don't see a problem with road building as-is, YMMV.

When I start dealing with large task forces and my economy is churning out a couple of units every turn or so I begin to feel the beginnings of a click-fest.

With you on that one! That's just because we're not much streamlining things yet. Your build-a-TF idea seems reasonable, if we can implement a special TF order of something like "wait for reinforcements" which I think we need anyway. We're already discussing building multiple units in the
Working out a new Economy GUI for Demo 7+ thread. You might want to look it over and comment on what you think we should do there. That level of gui may not happen for a while, but a refined econ gui should be on the way for D8, so you may well get your request...

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
I'm with you that the new way seems cumbersome. But I don't think needing to control-click each time is a viable solution. Maybe if you left-click for the first move then the move is considered done, whereas if you right-click the first one, it expects more?

I am unsure about users of Mac systems, but for people coming from a Windows background, the ctrl-clicking is very intuitive.

But, perhaps another solution...

Single click = waypoint. Double click = final destination?

That keeps the command all on the left mouse button... that at least is beneficial!


And about the road building... it's simply that it may be unnecessary to have an End Build button if that command is like the one I've described. It would also lead to consitency, if moving task forces is only slightly different than building roads, why have that slight difference?

I'll check the GUI thread. Thanks.

Fosse

[oneveu]

To move a unit, there is a simple idea that is exactly what you do if you can put your hand :
when you select a unit the cursor changed to look like the unit you pick ( right click )
To show the way point, left click
to end the move, rigth click again : the cursor picture returns to its former look.

Usually, you don't specify the way points, so you click first to select, move the pictured cursor, and right click to the desired destination.

It's very intuitive because it's exactly what you do when you play a boardgame.

[oneveu]

cancel moves

To cancel a way point, you can double click on it, let show a little flag for way point, when you have the unit selected.

To cancel all the move, add the cancel move option to the contextual context menu ( left click). this menu appears only when the unit is not selected ( in my previous proposed model). if you have already selected the unit use a key to cancel the move and the selection.

[oneveu]

Another good thing, you should add a visual effect on the units showing they have some order to perform this turn. It will help when you have a lot of units to not forget them.

[Mark_Everson]

Bonjour oneveu, welcome to the Clash Forum!

Originally posted by oneveu
To move a unit, there is a simple idea that is exactly what you do if you can put your hand :
when you select a unit the cursor changed to look like the unit you pick ( right click )
To show the way point, left click
to end the move, rigth click again : the cursor picture returns to its former look.

Usually, you don't specify the way points, so you click first to select, move the pictured cursor, and right click to the desired destination.

It's very intuitive because it's exactly what you do when you play a boardgame.

This sounds generally reasonable to me, although it conflicts a bit with the existing interface. That's because there can be mutiple TFs in a square, and you don't necessarily want to move the one on top. Lets see what the other team members think of your idea, and take it from there.

Another good thing, you should add a visual effect on the units showing they have some order to perform this turn. It will help when you have a lot of units to not forget them.

I agree, I want this too. I think its already on the feature list.

[LDiCesare]

Single click = waypoint. Double click = final destination?

This one is my preferred solution. It is the one our ergonomy people came up with at work for drawing lines, and is used for drawing polygons in a lot of programs.
I don't like the right-click stuff because even in games (or applications) where right click is used to mean something different, I constantly right-click to get some info on what the mouse is currently over or to cancel what I did. A right-click to me is either get information or cancel. Furthermore on Mac, you don't have a right button on the mouse, so you need a key to simulate it

I also want to point a comment made in Scenario League forum (I posted there asking for feedback on scenarios, and, well, advertising a bit ): Does it run on Mac? Anyone has a mac to try? Does swing run on Mac, and which version of java is needed? I may try to convince my father to download the game on his mac and try it, but he knows less about Macs that I and I don't know the answer, so it may not help much...

[oneveu]

Single click = waypoint. Double click = final destination?

ok,

right click ( or ctrl+click for MAC) to cancel a way point ( or to let appear a menu where you can cancel a way point)

if more than one unit in the same zone, let appear a menu to select which one to pick and when picked, change the cursor with the icon of the selected unit to show which unit you are moving.

[Nadexander]

Where do I get the source for this project?
Do you take patch/source contributions?
Do you have an open bug list/ feature request system for freelance additions?

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Nadexander
Where do I get the source for this project?
Do you take patch/source contributions?
Do you have an open bug list/ feature request system for freelance additions?

Hi Nadexander, welcome to Clash

If you email me I can send you the source and resources. (markeverson@comcast.net) Your fixing bugs for a contribution sounds great to me. We have one other new guy on that also, so we will need a little coordination to ensure no collisions. The bug and feature lists are at the top of this thread. I haven't updated the feature one in quite a while, but the bug list is up to date. If you are interested in becoming a full project member we can discuss that too.

Cya,

Mark

[Mark_Everson]

I've updated the bug and feature lists at the top of the thread. Especially for the features, I've requested comments on whether several requested features are good or bad. It would be great if someone other than Gary could actually comment on them... If its a feature that requires detailed implementation discussion, please start the discussion in the relevant model thread. If its just a short comment, please keep it in this thread.

Thanks,

Mark