EE version 0.173 Final (no more stuffs)

Fanger · Post by **Fanger** » 28 Dec 2006, 21:06

They are not very far along and unfortunately may be set back a bit by the fact that my computer has fuzzled out.. I dont know If I will be able to retreive all the info and modeling I had done on it so I may have to start over again which I would find annoying..

As far as the similiarity, yes I admit the units are hard to tell apart I think this is more of a problem due to the lack of a decent GUI than anything else. I meant the units too look very similiar as I wanted them to look like the same chassis but with a different weapon mount and some slight variation to account for this. I have noticed that people complain about this for the first few games but its just a lack of familiarity, as you play the units will start to look different from eachother most of the longer time players can recognize most units..

As for the economy, yes there are 2 levels of Mex but the 2nd level is not a willy nilly slap down, lvl 2 mexs are expensive to build and maintain and require large amounts of energy and are only helpful to use when you have exhausted all expansion points but still need to boost your enconomy. Tech 3 is hard to get to, not quite as hard as a krogoth but near enough, it can be done, but once lvl 3 hits the scene the game is going to end soon. Level 3 units are devistating but they are not invinicible and can be taken out easily if not reinforced and supported, you should always have lvl 2 and 1 units around they are at least good for cannon fodder to pave the way for lvl 3 units.

Other than that Im glad you enjoy the mod I would be working on NI but my computer is down.. Hopefully I will be able to get them done in a timely manner..

Post by **trepan** » 28 Dec 2006, 21:15

Please explain how the similar looking units are a GUI problem.

P.S. Don't take this the wrong way... I think EE could well deserve
to be included as a default mod (GPL). I'm also the guy who fixed
the immobile builder radius problem (with EE in mind).

AF · Post by AF » 28 Dec 2006, 21:18

because certain people cant tell them apart.

Post by **trepan** » 28 Dec 2006, 21:22

Let's try it this way, what would you add to the GUI
so that similar looking unit models are easily discernable.
You want that there should be uniticons over the units as
well as having to draw the models?

Fanger · Post by **Fanger** » 28 Dec 2006, 21:23

I think it would be nice if Like say starcraft you could have an area in the GUI that displayed build icons of whatever units you had selected as well as a number indicating how many, so that a player could band box a set of units and then quickly inventory how many of each he had, this would of course require good build pics and so forth but would I think contribute greatly to being able to tell what units you have selected, I believe several other games do this..

When I said that it was not a slight against the developers I know you have some crazy lua system setup for the next released that can probably already do what I just detailed, but currently I do think the GUI contributes to people having problems knowing what units they have out there by not telling you specifically what you have selected. I still would suggest that my units are hard to tell apart at first or even second glance it is certainly not solely the GUI but a system like that would go a ways to helping.

In addition to that would be if you could get military priority for selecting as far as bandboxing goes.. It is annoying sometimes to select a bunch of units mixed together near buildings and accidently select the buildings too, if maybe a tag could be put in that would mean it would select those units over all unless none were present or something like that.. not sure..

Again I was not trying to indicate the devs are doing poor work I realize you guys have lots of stuff to do I was just suggesting that the GUI does not help with recognition.. which it could..

Post by **trepan** » 28 Dec 2006, 21:40

AF:
Fang's comment: useful
Your comment: not so much?

Fang:
Having a widget to display the currently selected units by type
(with counts), should be fairly easy (if you look at the LuaUI
interface, you may note that one of the calls gives you exactly that).
With the large number of units types, it could get a bit messy if
you select all of your units (unless it's placed in a scroll box).

As for modifying the box selections, I really don't see filtering the
selection by type as being a good idea. It might help if the selection
was done by unit centers (without radius), but I'm not sure how
well that would play out either.

My real concern is that it should be easier to differentiate the units
before they are selected (which would make selecting the correct
units easier in the first place).

Pxtl · Post by **Pxtl** » 28 Dec 2006, 22:14

Well (and this will be a horribly unpopular suggestion) you could always go the Quake3 approach and colour-code the weapons. After all, the chassis provides enough colour information to discern which player owns the unit, so you could colour-code the weapons to make them more instantly discernable.... but it would also mean that your army would look a wee bit silly.

Post by **trepan** » 29 Dec 2006, 02:10

A rough version of a selected unit icon display widget.

Screenshot:
http://trepan.bzflag.bz/spring/selicons.jpg

Code:
http://trepan.homelinux.net/spring/seli ... i.lua.html
(requires current SVN code, ~r2966)

As you can see, even with the buildpics, it still isn't easy to
tell the different types of units apart at a glance (checkout the
second last and third last pics). Also, the commander has no
buildpic...

Left Click: select units of the icon type
Left Click + CTRL: select all units of the icon type
Left Click + CTRL + SHIFT: append all units of the icon type
Left Click + META: select 1 unit of the icon type
Right Click: remove units of the icon type
Right Click + CTRL: remove 1 unit of the icon type

The code lacks:
- unitDef ordering
- click selection consistency checks
- tooltip reporting

Pxtl · Post by **Pxtl** » 29 Dec 2006, 14:59

That looks freaking awesome. The hard part is the controls to use it, since obviously you have to mishmash TA's inconsistent system for screen-selection and buildlist design.

When you say "Left Click: select units of the icon type" you mean to say that the selection is reduced to being only that unit type, right? And "meta" is "alt", right?

knorke · Post by **knorke** » 29 Dec 2006, 17:00

trepan wrote: As you can see, even with the buildpics, it still isn't easy to
tell the different types of units apart at a glance (checkout the
second last and third last pics).

That is why I'd like to see very sympolic pictures in the menus to represent the units. The buildpics are already at a size where it gets difficult to see small differences (radartank <-> battletank, AA-helicopter<->Groundattack-helicopter)

Ich habe da mal etwas vorbereitet:

Notice how the grey outline of the chasis is always the same and only the weapons are highlighted.
ms paint ftw.

Pxtl · Post by **Pxtl** » 29 Dec 2006, 17:30

There is some merit to that. CvC had very nice, iconic pictures instead of the usual screengrabs (or Blizzard's useless headshots) which I thought were wonderful.

NOiZE · Post by **NOiZE** » 29 Dec 2006, 17:32

such kind of buildpics would be good for EE i think!

the buildpics are one of the biggest complains of me

rattle · Post by **rattle** » 29 Dec 2006, 17:48

Yeah buildpics showing weaponry and chassis (light, medium, heavy)... that's a job for forboding.

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 29 Dec 2006, 18:47

I love those build pics. They woulden't look as nice as the ones we have now, but would be so much more usefull!

TradeMark · Post by **TradeMark** » 29 Dec 2006, 19:11

Cant i just make better buildpics?

The problem is that all of them have same color palet on same background, which makes them look same.
If there was any contrast in the pictures, it would look much better.

Just look other mods buildpics, especially Absolute Annihilation buildpics; they all looks different, they all have different palet, and they have contrast.

And buildpics aint the only problem, also the units should look different: in game they all looks same when you look from far away. Some different colors should be added. Doesnt matter is it "realistic" or not.

Maybe you made them look same because you wanted it is realistic, because those units have good camouflage in the terrain...?

Pxtl · Post by **Pxtl** » 29 Dec 2006, 19:28

Yep, that would be an alternative - as I said, the FPS approach of colour coding the weapons - but it would look a little silly.

Quick, what colour is the shock rifle in UT'99? The Flak cannon? The Bio-rifle? You damn well know. Ugly, but effective.

Comp1337 · Post by **Comp1337** » 29 Dec 2006, 23:05

Pxtl wrote:Yep, that would be an alternative - as I said, the FPS approach of colour coding the weapons - but it would look a little silly.

Quick, what colour is the shock rifle in UT'99? The Flak cannon? The Bio-rifle? You damn well know. Ugly, but effective.

You make a damn good point, and you made me laugh at that last sentence :)

j5mello · Post by **j5mello** » 29 Dec 2006, 23:36

TradeMark wrote:And buildpics aint the only problem, also the units should look different: in game they all looks same when you look from far away. Some different colors should be added. Doesnt matter is it "realistic" or not.

Maybe you made them look same because you wanted it is realistic, because those units have good camouflage in the terrain...?

The units look similar cause its a throwback to the inspiration for this mod namely, the Earth series, in which you customized ur units choosing from different chassis's and weapons which lead to only so much differentiation between units. While i understand peoples confusion with units when they first start its pretty easy to learn if you give it time. Same with the build pics in time ull know them more by position than by the pic itself... (which most good players do for other mods). And don't take this the wrong way but coming from TA where there is almost no consistant design philosophy to EE which has one is difficult change.

Just give it time ull get use to it eventually, and if not, i don't know what to tell you.

imbaczek · Post by **imbaczek** » 30 Dec 2006, 00:31

If units have similar mesh, give them different colors. See Starcraft and its Terran infantry, or the very first C&C, where you could tell minigunners from grenadiers with help of like 4 blue pixels :>

Zoombie · Post by **Zoombie** » 30 Dec 2006, 00:54

Why can't anyone just take the time to get familer with the units? I can easily tell what units are what. You know why? It's cause I've played this mod a lot, but it dosn't even take that much time to learn what units look like what. And how many times must I say it: Control Groups!

You don't need to know what a shotgun mech looks like if you've controll grouped your units properly!

Spring RTS Engine

EE version 0.173 Final (no more stuffs)

Hmm