Because you can
never have enough Heavy Shells
Ok, on to stuff...
A model I made 6 months ago disagrees with you
Actually, you forgot, the spheres have both inner and outer parts, and the bits that come out when activated, etc. Let's just say that while I think that some friendly argument about whether or not to add bases is just fine, I'm not promising that will be done, nor can it be done for anything like 244 triangles
Make the spheres generate power and the cubes generate material, and swap the colours.
Hmm... you might want to actually
play the game sometime, since that's
exactly how they are, and they've been like that for a year.
On the UI in General
At this point me and DRB have logged probably 50+ hours of weekly testing and refinement of the balance, and at no point were we ever confused by the base UI, to be perfectly honest. That said... I really
don't mind changing the colors of the bars. It's such a minor thing, and if it'll make people happy, great. I'll get to that today.
Speaking of UI, I'm almost done with the main UI revisions- we're getting rid of a lot of the remaining buttons including a lot of silly OTA anachronisms like the 3-state Move / Fire, where two of the states are totally useless (Hold Fire + Move or Roam) and one of them is of dubious value and practically never gets used by real players in a real game (Return Fire). We're going to a more modern system, where you basically have Hold Fire / Hold Position, Free Fire / Move, Free Fire / Roam. Three buttons, but no state stuff.
Don't complain (
yeah, right, lol... where am I posting this again?), this is the result of a lot of testing and looking at all the RTSs we could take a look at (
heck, we even stared at the UIs of several games that were turn-based, since that's where all of this stuff has its roots, in old-skool tactical games), and I'm quite sure it's the right way to go.
Spring's default interface is pretty unwieldy, and is full of commands that aren't really useful, and a few that are genuine time-wasters. I cut the UI down quite a bit with RC3, but after reviewing the RTS games, I found a pretty straightforward pattern. Basically... the newer the RTS, the simpler the interface becomes, and the more it's focused on giving users the controls they'll actually use... and nothing else.
Old RTS games had very complex UIs, which required a ton of fiddling with stuff. Newer ones have simpler interfaces, with smarter controls, less micro waste, and static UIs. Not one of the high-sales RTS games made in the last 3 years that we looked at had
any mobile elements in their UIs. Lots of pop-ups and other situational stuff, but that's what we saw, and I'm entirely convinced that there are very good reasons for that.
LoTR II's interface, for example, was a good example of why it was one of the best games of its release year. It's very, very smart and elegant, and gives the user all of the things they need to play the game as designed, with no fat at all. While I have a few quibbles, because nothing's ever perfect... it's still excellent.
Now, we're big fans of the OTA-isms like Patrol and Repeat over here, don't get me wrong, and you can expect those kinds of features to still be in the game, but I thought it would be wise to say that if you just play BA, you can expect to have to learn some new things. I suspect most BA players have played other RTS games, though, and won't find it very confusing. At any rate, feel free to quibble, since I know you guys will anyhow, but that's the plan, and I'm executing it today.
Gameplay
In other news... the whole building-infiltration system is
finally done-done and feels polished. Like the C&C series, you are able to take and hold buildings with infantry, using a straightforward play mechanic. It's
finally intuitive and bug-free, which was quite a lot of work for something that seemed so "simple" in concept.
We were testing that yesterday, and after many hours and a few last tweaks, I'm pretty sure it's done and will be
very fun. Among other things, players can queue up taking multiple small houses with their squads of infantry (both sides can do this, it's just easier for Resistance) and this means that the little "Mr. Roger's Neighborhoods" I've built become insane deathtraps for people trying to blindly assault, and skyscrapers, due to their height advantages and high hitpoints, become deadly defensive bastions with strategic importance.
I've never played a game where urban warfare was more fun and felt more realistic, to be honest. Taking a city involves reducing strongpoints, just like it works in reality. It's intense, especially during late-game play, where everybody can finally reduce a city to shreds, and it becomes a struggle to reach Armageddon in a real hurry. But due to the nature of play... this is a game where you can expect to see all of the tiers get used, unless somebody screws up badly, and all of the tiers remain
useful even up to the end.
I actually had more fun with the game yesterday than I've had in months, tbh. As the game designer, I tend to get pretty jaded, and for a long time, it was frustrating, because things would work until a certain point on the curve, then things would totally fall apart for one side or another, and it was back to the drawing-board. Pretty sobering, given the huge investment of time and energy and the hours logged in testing things, and I can't really point at anybody else and be like... "that's your fault that the curves don't work".
I've always been honest with myself about what I've learned, so it's been a huge burden, knowing that the game had a large places where it just plain sucked. For RC3 players, I'm sure you're all like, "yeah, we
know it sucked"... but you have to remember, that was months ago, it's been changing daily... and up until yesterday, it
still sucked. It was better, a
lot better... but only up to a point, on certain maps, and only under certain conditions. But then we'd go to a different map, try a new tactic... and it would all fall apart.
Then... with a number of things I added last week, like the mobile pillboxes and the urban-combat stuff, and a major revamp of the economy (I'll talk about that later)... it just started working. Really, really working. Balance issues, here and there, units needing buff / nerf... sure... but a basically-solid frame
finally emerged, where neither side falls apart at a certain point. I've been getting closer, but yesterday was the key point.
It's a good feeling. I'm glad I kept sticking to the grueling test routine, even though it's been a major time-drain every week. There just wasn't any other way to work through this, I wouldn't have gotten to this point with online testers. Don't get me wrong... everybody who's beta-tested online has been great about submitting bugs and stuff like that, but on the issues of balance... not so much. There are too many things you can't really pin down until you're in the same room with an experienced player on a LAN, and can quiz each other about all of the variables, repeatedly test timing stuff, etc., and with this game, I want this last RC to have a balance that's a lot closer to ideal. I already think it's a lot better balanced than a lot of commercial stuff I've played at this point, tbh.