true coco believer - Page 5

true coco believer

A dynamic game undergoing constant development and refinement, that attempts to balance playability with fresh and innovative features.

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Johannes
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Johannes »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:microfests are stupid, and reward practice more than intelligence. the future is in intelligent controls. Que a spotlight swinging back onto springs beautiful line formation draw. if someone else can point me to a comparable ease of control in another competitive RTS game, that could be ace.
Huh, line draw does nothing to eliminate micro or take focus off it, just changes the way you must micro.
Google_Frog
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Google_Frog »

The LLT overshoot thing isn't a limitation of everything in Spring. It was Midknights involvement in CA coming back to haunt us. We've already had problems with the LLT model because he gave it armour when closed.

The overshoot is a much subtler problem in which the turret extends slightly when it fires. This gives it slightly more range while firing so if you fire at the ground then target an enemy LLT that is just out of range you can hit it.

The Stardust (and Farady) thing could be fixed with a fake weapon with more range than their real weapon.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: true coco believer

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

Johannes wrote:
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:microfests are stupid, and reward practice more than intelligence. the future is in intelligent controls. Que a spotlight swinging back onto springs beautiful line formation draw. if someone else can point me to a comparable ease of control in another competitive RTS game, that could be ace.
Huh, line draw does nothing to eliminate micro or take focus off it, just changes the way you must micro.
Image


wat

line draw it allows me to array units in a line of my choosing with one click instead of about thirty. which is an example of taking the focus off micro - you know, giving the players powerful controls that allow them to solve problems in a smaller number of commands.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Forboding Angel »

Google_Frog wrote:How do you do the laser thing? I cannot reproduce that at all and your described method does not work.
Maybe one of the lasers needs collision checking (fast projectiles, yadda yadda yadda).
Saktoth
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Saktoth »

Sirlin's "Scrub" speech was a line to players.
Yeah, which is why when I'm saying that 'many competant PLAYERS could make a decent game', I know that a lot of players (pro or 'aspiring') simply refuse to engage in any kind of design discussion: Talking about what could be changed or improved about a game, what mechanics work, are fun, etc, is scrub talk.

I understand why they take this attitude. A lot of people who engage in this kind of discussion either have failed to understand that they'd be changing an important mechanic, or worse, are of the 'Wouldn't it be COOL if x had like 50 more guns' (NSFW) level.
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Johannes
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Johannes »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:
Johannes wrote:
1v0ry_k1ng wrote:microfests are stupid, and reward practice more than intelligence. the future is in intelligent controls. Que a spotlight swinging back onto springs beautiful line formation draw. if someone else can point me to a comparable ease of control in another competitive RTS game, that could be ace.
Huh, line draw does nothing to eliminate micro or take focus off it, just changes the way you must micro.
Image


wat

line draw it allows me to array units in a line of my choosing with one click instead of about thirty. which is an example of taking the focus off micro - you know, giving the players powerful controls that allow them to solve problems in a smaller number of commands.
But you wouldn't use thirty commands to line up units in a game with no line draw if you got any sense. You might just point your whole army to 1 point, or split it into 2 ctrl roups and send those the 2 separate locations, approximating a line formation, or some formation that just gets your army about where you want it. Then you go do something that demands your attention more than clicking a move order for each individual unit of that army. Of course if you've got nothing more worthwhile to do you might line them up perfectly, but there's always finetuning that could be done to a spring formation as well.
So at least in this example, powerful tools give you (and your opponent) better fidelity into the micro you do, but doesn't de-emphasize it. It even forces you to line up your units carefully in situations where you'd (and anybody else) in a game without linedraw would just send them in in a blob, which is easier and quicker. But when your enemy does careful linedrawing, so must you.

If you want to de-emphazie micro, easiest way to go about it is to make units that are really straightforward and simple to use.
Google_Frog
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Google_Frog »

To some extent powerful tools do de-emphasised it depending on the "shape" of the micro landscape. Picture a relationship between unit effectiveness and micro used on that unit. This is often a sharp curve that slowly levels off to flat as the unit is used as effectively as possible. When you are microing very well a lot more micro is required to make a significant improvement but at the low end a little extra micro may be a large improvement.

Powerful unit controls move the average player's ability up that effectiveness curve. Of course controls don't reduce the amount of micro a player can do and because more micro is always advantageous to a player they are in a sense still forced to micro to compete. This seems to be Johannes' main point.

Due to the micro effectiveness curve the difference in ability between two players is less than if the powerful controls were not increasing everyone's unit effectiveness. If a difference in micro ability corresponds to a smaller difference in overall game ability the differences in their other abilities are more important. So finally in this sense I think a powerful UI does de-emphasise micro.

As I said at the start this is all dependant on the shape of the micro effectiveness curve over the relevant region. But I think it is mostly a diminishing returns thing.
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Johannes
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Re: true coco believer

Post by Johannes »

Hmm, I'd say there's a difference between powerful UI and easy-to-use UI. And line draw is the former but not necessarily the latter.

Powerful UI allows you to give more detailed input into how your units act, but might actually make the game more micro-intensive. Take the option to put units to Hold Fire for example - if the option didn't exist, you'd never have to worry about your enemy making use of the feature. But when it exists, when people get good enough you will get thrashed if you don't in suitable situations put some units on Hold Fire and manually fire them into the right targets. Same for other abilities, like jumping, cloaking, dgunning, linedrawing... This stuff is genuinely hard to micro no matter how straightforward the interface is, as long as it still requires input to activate instead of being handled by unit AI.
Or in SC:BW, the possibility to stack air units by way of grouping them with a faraway unit allows the player do things otherwise practically impossible, but it makes the micro much more difficult to execute than simply clicking them around in a loose formation (and stacked mutalisks would still allow and therefore demand more precise imput than loosely flying ones, even if you removed the artificial hurdle of having to group them with a faraway unit).

Simple easy-to-use controls, on the other hand don't necessarily mean that the controls give you a great level of detail, easy learning curve can also be achieved by having controls so crude that even the best human can't make "optimal" moves that a AI with the ability to control each unit individually at all times maybe could.
Let's use the SC:BW mutas again, if you couldn't stack them they'd be quite straightforward to use - all you can do is fly them in a loose formation, no hit&run movement between each attack, period.
Or, if things are automated, they offer a pretty level playing ground micro-wise regardless of the quality of the unit AI if no realistic option for direct fine control exists.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: true coco believer

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

I would define a powerful GUI & controls as allowing me to translate the notion 'unit X needs to perform action Y' into the command 'unit x perform action Y' with the least possible input.

Example, I need these 10 units to form a spread out line then jinx from side to side in order to avoid the effect of enemy artillery.

In spring that is
1) toggle repeat
2) two line-draw commands

3 clicks.

ease of use and power are two sides of the same coin, need not be mutually exclusive.. powerful GUI & controls simply allow me to perform any action I can think of with minimal fuss. the Weak GUI & controls of starcraft II force me to expend large numbers of commands to achieve somthing I could do instantly with the spring GUI, which means only pro elites who have to warm up their hands before games to perform play optimally. Which is stupid. I think requiring great expenditures of practice simply to translate intention into actions ruins the experience for most players. This is why I respect the spring GUI so much.
varikonniemi
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Re: true coco believer

Post by varikonniemi »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:I would define a powerful GUI & controls as allowing me to translate the notion 'unit X needs to perform action Y' into the command 'unit x perform action Y' with the least possible input.

Example, I need these 10 units to form a spread out line then jinx from side to side in order to avoid the effect of enemy artillery.

In spring that is
1) toggle repeat
2) two line-draw commands

3 clicks.

ease of use and power are two sides of the same coin, need not be mutually exclusive.. powerful GUI & controls simply allow me to perform any action I can think of with minimal fuss. the Weak GUI & controls of starcraft II force me to expend large numbers of commands to achieve somthing I could do instantly with the spring GUI, which means only pro elites who have to warm up their hands before games to perform play optimally. Which is stupid. I think requiring great expenditures of practice simply to translate intention into actions ruins the experience for most players. This is why I respect the spring GUI so much.
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