EE version 0.173 Final (no more stuffs) - Page 21

EE version 0.173 Final (no more stuffs)

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AF
AI Developer
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Post by AF »

The primary methods fo identifyign a unit are:

general shape
overall colour
overall size.

This flies in the face of EE as all lvl 1 URC attack bots are the same general shape size and colour. As arghs aid you ahve to think about things, and thats straining. I find EE a lot more mentally taxing than XTA to play, hence why I host XTA and not EE games when I can.

When I play XTA I dont actually look at the buildpics, ebcause I just glance and I click on the general squares, like the red square(AK), or the stripey square(conbot), but in EE I have to actually look at them because if I'm not directly looking at them they look very very similair. Some of them I dont have too, I can just click on the red (laser tank) or the orange (flamer bot).

So buildpics are fine, if youa dd lvl bars/stars to hubs, and show the units firing their weapons. Shove an aircraft in the SAMs background, put plasma fire in the plasma bots buildpic, it aint hard, make 1 plasma shot and photoshop it onto all of them.

Thus I suggest that no modelling need doing save changing the physical size. Make the med shotgun mech bigger than the plasma, not by say 5-10%(rocket pods versus plasma cannons on lvl 1 bots?), but 30-40%, make the bombardment cruiser bigger than the plasma cruiser, make the flamer bot smaller, or the rocket artillery wider.

And make the weapons larger too.

But keep the lvl 1 plasma bots the same size. Rocket pods need making larger.
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Zoombie
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Post by Zoombie »

Thanks Sean.
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

I realize it's Fang's mod and that any changes to make the units more distinct would be a huge pain-in-the-ass (especially since skinning 3D0 is such a headache) but I still think that the best approach to ending this "everything looks the same" is to start colouring the weapons (and physically write the number of the level of buildings where they look similar to other buildings on them). Plasma gets green highlights, AA gets white highlights, etc. Ugly, but effective.

Seriously, would it kill the L2 Hub to have a fscking big "2" on it?

Either way, we have to admit one thing: Fang is too damned busy to do it, and too (justifiably) possessive of the mod to let anyone else do it, so it's not gonna happen. Learn to love EE as is, or play something else.
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Zoombie
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Post by Zoombie »

Fortunantly he's busy working on the NI!

And the NI are awsome.
j5mello
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Post by j5mello »

Seriously if you guys want new BPs, go ahead make them we will give them a try for sure. Hell i can rally up some newbs to test them on. While it might not seem like it, Fang does try out most ideas thrown at him. If someone complains about X unit being OP Fang looks through the files and if he finds nothing asks the complainee to show/prove it. As proof of this the lvl 2 minelayers are getting a new anti-mine EMP weapon as suggested by chlue.

The big point that is trying to be made is that all that Fang seems to hear are the same complaints over and over. This is the 4th major iteration of bulidpics E&E has gone through. Each time people have wined that they aren't intuitive enough so we go back and change them. All we ever seem to hear is that TA style "glamour shot" buildpics are the way to go...

Same goes for unit differentiation. People keep saying units need to look different if they have a different function or need to be easily identified as unit X. But the majority of you are basing this off games where each and every unit is individual. Nothing is shared not even color schemes. How many of you have played the Earth 21XX series? or Warzone 2100? has the same setup as E&E. But maybe it is that setup that keeps the game from going mainstream. Cause if you look around most mainstream games have units that are totally unique to any other in the game:
C&C? Check.
Starcraft? Check.
Warcraft? Check.
TA? Extra Check.
Age of Empires? Check.
Dawn of War? Check.
Rise of Nations? Check.
you get the picture...

In fact im pretty sure only the Earth Series has similar looking units in it. And since E&E is an inspiration of that series it too has similar units and a lack of players because, it seems most players don't like that setup. Probably explains why no one plays Gundam as well... All the units look alike at first glance but if you play games you learn they aren't. i guess that is just how it goes. EE and Gundam are niche mods that certain people play & enjoy and others who don't.

Oh and to clairfy Smoth's forum isn't a private forum, its just one with very tight administration. People long as your not an asshat you get to stay, plain and simple...
Egarwaen
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Post by Egarwaen »

Fanger wrote:Yeah Ill go mull this over..

@argh could you be a little less condesending.. I know you hate me and all think my work is hack job bullshit.. but you know..
Chill please. He's not being condescending, he's being exhaustive, or perhaps slightly academic, to try and convince you that this is a serious issue.

I loaded up EE a couple weeks ago after Neddie was trying to convince me to get back into the game, and this is basically why I gave up after 5 minutes and decided to go back to playing with the SupCom demo. I realized that I'd pretty much have to memorize buildpics to be effective at playing it, and that's too large an initial hump to get over.

Vehicles can be fixed by adding weapon effects, as AF suggested. I really like that idea, especially since it's very "visual". You can see the kind of fire a force of units is putting out and work out what you're lacking.

Buildings are another problem, though. One thing I always ran into with EE was trying to pick out my upgraded buildings from the build menus.

The reason you keep hearing this is because it's a legitimate complaint. If you can't tell at a glance what unit a buildpic is for, you have to spend time mousing over and reading the tooltip or take time to memorize them. With TA unit designs, buildpics are easy to recognize. Your Moho Mex is very different from your Mex, your Adv. factories are very different from your base factories, etc. You even see this in the Gundam anime. The Dom, the Gelgoog, and the Zaku II look very different. Why? So when the viewer sees one on screen, even if only for a split second in a large, mass battle scene, they can identify it. (Plus marketing concerns, but let's ignore those. ;) )

I'd love to play EE again, but I'm not going to dedicate days to just learning the buildpics and finding good maps to have a chance of being effective in hosting and playing in newbie games.
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

EE is not hard to learn to play. its simpler than ta. once youve played a game you know what your building and you know what every icon is. if you cant be arsed to do that and you need to be spoonfed EE probably isnt the game for you anyway, EE is fast and micro intensive. if your like "omg i dont want to have to play it to learn how wo play it" then its quite possible you would be better suited to supcom, which is noobtastic.
Egarwaen
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Post by Egarwaen »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:EE is not hard to learn to play. its simpler than ta. once youve played a game you know what your building and you know what every icon is.
Not true. I played a fair bit of EE before I stopped playing Spring, and this isn't the case. It took me several games to sort out the factories and economy buildings, and I was still sorting out aircraft during the only EE tournament game I actually played in. (Which I'm sure AF remembers. ;) ) Once you get the buildpics down, work out how the weapons work, and such, it is easier, but that initial difficulty spike is a bitch.

Being newbie-friendly is not a bad thing. It's not "spoon-feeding", it's eliminating unnecessary redundancy and obfuscation. You want to reduce the overhead needed to recognize an icon to an absolute minimum. TA does this by making everything look very different.

Argh, screw it, I'm not going to be able to explain this, I'll just defer to an expert: One Billion Buttons Please: Should we build features for experts or newbies?

Now, if you don't care about getting people to play, good for you. But then you have no cause for complaint when they don't play.
Last edited by Egarwaen on 19 Feb 2007, 20:56, edited 2 times in total.
tombom
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Post by tombom »

j5mello wrote:All we ever seem to hear is that TA style "glamour shot" buildpics are the way to go...
Same goes for unit differentiation. People keep saying units need to look different if they have a different function or need to be easily identified as unit X. But the majority of you are basing this off games where each and every unit is individual.
People like them because they're easy to see and stuff. There's a reason pretty much every game, especially popular new guy friendly ones, have buildpics and units with different shapes, colours and textures mixed and matched. I don't think Gundam is like that because pretty much every unit has a different colour scheme or shape or huge weapon. It's fine to keep it the way you have it, but don't shrug off every complaint as "YOU ARE STUPID THESE BUILDPICS ARE GREAT". The horrible perceived elitism surrounding some mods might not help matters on the whole getting people to play front.
chlue
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Post by chlue »

I begin to wonder if I am the only one, not involved in the development of EE, who actually likes the look of the units and buildpics.

If I build units, I normaly know what I build and where I sent them. So I don't need to easily distinguish at a high zoom lvl what unit it is. I am supposed to allready know. So the similar look is not a problem and adds to the depth of the game.
An further enhancement might be to assign different uniticons to them. Currently all units exect the commander are simple dots. (I use the luawidet 'customunit icons' and set the icon-distance to 175, so I even see uniticons on a 8x8 map when I zoom out.) But this would interfere with the buildings, and I am not sure if many different items would enhance global map control or make it more worse.

I wrote a post (at page 19, the seccond one),where I mentionend six unitpics. The left column show very nice and easy buildpics, and I am sure, everyone who know what units a side have, will have now problem to finde the right one without to think about it. The right column shows buildpics, that should be enhanced in a similary way, but then they would work great, too.
The only problem I still have with buildpics are factories and hubs, expecially, when I don't select the right unit, but instead just draw a selectionbox in the area. So for example I get a lvl1 hub, a lvl2 constuction unit and some battleunits. This results in a rearange of the buildpics and it is quiet tedious to find the right one. Thats why I asked for numers or stars on these buildpics.

edit: some typos and the uniticon part
Last edited by chlue on 20 Feb 2007, 01:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Strategia
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Post by Strategia »

chlue wrote:I begin to wonder if I am the only one, not involved in the development of EE, who actually likes the look of the units and buildpics.
You're not.
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

knorke wrote:
chlue, please edit out your post.
That is a private forum by invitation only.
wtf? :?
if thats true it tells a lot about the mod team (or modder).
explains why nobody is listening to input or all the players who can not tell the units apart because the small details on the model+texture look like noise when zoomed out.
It is my forum, I will run it how I please. For the most part I created it so like-minded people who actually do stuff can collaborate without the distraction of 50-billion "idea" guys who have no idea as to the whys and whats of mod making for spring. I created it because at the time spring moderation was lacking in it's strictness.

It exists to help those who deserve it and for the most part people can join if they are not trolls or people who I consider unworthy. If I consider said person unworthy I will kick them out of my forum. End of story, my house, my rules. For the most part people get to stay. I have only had to expunge one person. However, there are some people who's attitudes or personal vendettas against me merit an automatic punch in the face.

That being said there are members who are not modders in my forum because they are nice and they contribute to the conversation. There are some member who came for Gundam only, or EE. However, my forum is just that. MINE. So unlike the spring forum I can kick people out with relative apathy because they can still do spring stuff here. However, a certain hack moder C***R once put it.. IT IS Smoth's treehouse!






However, my forum policy has NOTHING to do with fang being rigid about HIS game design that was ONCE based on earth 2150 but has grown past that.


So, that being said, we have discussed unit differentiation in EE for oh, I don't know... almost a year now.

For example the C&C or starcraft comparisons need to be thrown right out as you are CLOSE to the units and there are NOWHERE near the number of units OR the variety in EITHER game when compared to EE.

So, stop getting pissed because fang either accepts or rejects a notion. Half of the arguments are not even from fang. Just people bitching about it. This is why my forum had to exist. A lot of people have not made a mod and do not know how things will work out. CONSTRUCTIVE input is fine and that is also why several players DO EXIST on my forum.

Saying "but that is why people do not play EE" IS a cop-out answer. The reason people play TA based mods is because they came here for that! They refuse to learn anything different and frankly will not try it because they play once, try to pull aa tactics and strategy, lose and blame the mod. I WOULD HATE to see what would happen if I listened to said people about Gundam RTS.

All games take a few matches to "get" the economy and/or structures. TA is the same. Hell most TA players take months to "get it." EE took me about 4 matches and that was because I was WORKING ON GUNDAM and playing AA at the time. That means not only was I used to farms and porc but I was also tweaking an entire different economy.

First match: get buildings up and see what kind of metal/energy output I need- fail because I am too slow and get stomped/
second match: I know what I need but build it too slowly"stomped"
Third: get the econ up and build teh wrong thing.... watches replay...
fourth: held the enemy off and did some clever stuff but lost still..

"but smoth you lost" have you ever played against me? I just love explosions, I don't care who wins as long as I get to see a great ballet of troop movement. Mine or THEIRS!
Egarwaen
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Post by Egarwaen »

smoth wrote:The reason people play TA based mods is because they came here for that! They refuse to learn anything different and frankly will not try it because they play once, try to pull aa tactics and strategy, lose and blame the mod.
Not true. I play plenty of non-TA-based games, yet I ran into trouble with the buildpics when playing with EE trying to get back into Spring.
smoth wrote:All games take a few matches to "get" the economy and/or structures. TA is the same. Hell most TA players take months to "get it."
Different things. One is learning "A does B, which is useful when C". The other is being able to quickly and easily pick A out of a build menu when C happens and you need B. This is easy when you have very visually distinct buildpics and is harder when you have more similar buildpics.

This has been an obstacle, both recently in the past, when I've tried to learn the mod.
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

we are still talking about the BPs? I thought we were past that.

Ok, let's get down to it.. we are in itteration #4.

Color differentiation is out, the reason is that it would quickly encompass all color.

Icons are out as they are not clear to all viewers

TA styled backgrounds are out because they are both inconsistent and they tell nothing to the player.

Colored borders with icons are out that was already tried

We now have the current setup, some of the problem is that the level 1, 2 and 3 buildings are going to look similar as are many units. However, the illustration of lasers on the laser tank helped I think.

So what do you suggest then? Saying there is a problem(WITH ALL MODS BPS, what people are saying here aplies to ALL SPRING MODS) is not helpfull, we need usefull suggestions. So what do you propose?
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Snipawolf
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Post by Snipawolf »

Well, larger scale BP's could be used.. Like an artillery shooting and a shell landing off in the distance. A laser tank shooting a laser, like already showed. An MBT could just be shooting its cannon, which ever direction doesn't matter much.. (Although the cannon shot could be blown up a little, as to emphazise its meant to be shooting and fighting). An engineer could be in work constructing a building, flamer could be flaming a building..

God, I hate to say this, but, it's like one of those Verb: Do something commercials.. They should be actively doing something in the BP. If a unit is flaming something, its obviously a flamethrower wielding unit, right?
BDCoolio
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Post by BDCoolio »

I think the finest example of the current build pics is the l1 laser tank. NO ONE has any problem telling what that is. Perhaps adding a small firing effect to the other pics is the best way to go. The arty units don't need this, as they already appear with their cannons facing upwards, which clearly indicate what they do. (although GD's artys do look kinda phallic - but whatever)

As for the hubs, they're really not that hard to figure out, as the one that's higher in the build menu is the con unit's same tech level hub, the lower one is the next level higher. I'm all for a small 1, 2, or 3 in the corner of the pic though. This would also be helpful for the con units (specifically hubs) that can build more than one tech level of factories.

These two ideas seem to make the most sense to me anyway. Naturally, little green plasma blobs and purple ion cannon blasts would be more appropriate here, as showing the cannon tanks firing wouldn't be that informative. Of course, uniformity in the style of the pics is clearly a major goal, so maybe they should be firing to.

Edit: Oh, Snipawolf kinda said some of the same stuff...
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Post by Forboding Angel »

If your GUI pics are not 96x96 in game, you WILL have trouble telling what is what.

A certain Dev has decided that it isn't important for us to be able to force people to use our GUI, at which point you get screwed. The gui interaction is a bit different from what most of us had in mind in the first place, but with some work I imagine a mod specific lua gui wouldn't be 100% fail..
Last edited by Forboding Angel on 20 Feb 2007, 07:49, edited 1 time in total.
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Fanger
Expand & Exterminate Developer
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Post by Fanger »

I just have come to a relvelation that I would like to share with you all now..

YOUR BUILD PICS ARE SCRUNCHED DOWN DUE TO THE DEFAULT CONTROL PANEL.. this means that your pics are really really really small

so yeah you need to figure out how to rectify that..
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smoth
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Post by smoth »

I like the flamer suggestion though.. any possibility we could get that added?

Hell I can shoop it for you
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Forboding Angel
Evolution RTS Developer
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Post by Forboding Angel »

This is the EE gui. Make sure to read the instructions...

http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/2388/EE_Ctrlpanel/
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