Metal, energy, and the gui

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 26 Jun 2005, 11:10

Could I just ask a question out of curiosity?

How useful is the information displayed in that transparent box? You have a unit selected, does anyone ever look at the information about cost, experience or range?

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 26 Jun 2005, 11:14

i always look at the metal cost of buyildings early game

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 26 Jun 2005, 11:18

same, but that's not what I mean. You know when you have a unit selected, and you are looking at ITS cost.

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 26 Jun 2005, 11:29

oh no i don't look at that or the range the shift button is damn useful though :D

mongus · Post by **mongus** » 26 Jun 2005, 21:08

i usually watch my units exp.
the metal cost is nice to look at, as it increases with exp.

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 26 Jun 2005, 21:58

lol does it! why???!!!!???!!!!

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 27 Jun 2005, 00:06

"the metal cost is nice to look at, as it increases with exp."
lol that is so retarded :)

Okay, another question (I'm going to suggest sime changes to the GUI, but I need to know how other people play)

Does anyone use the 'Move' or 'Guard' commands (seeing as they are activated by default)

Delta · Post by **Delta** » 27 Jun 2005, 08:12

Doomweaver wrote:...
Does anyone use the 'Move' or 'Guard' commands (seeing as they are activated by default)

Only the hotkeys G / M, never the buttons

munch · Post by **munch** » 27 Jun 2005, 10:03

I agree keeping track of resources is hard and I really like the suggestions everybody is making here - certainly get my vote. Another alternative to indicate the scale of the resource bars is to increase the thickness of the line, so that the area of the bar is always proportional to the amount of resource. So when you start a 1000/1000 resource game you'd have a 1 pixel wide bar. If you add metal storage up to say 10k then you have a 10 pixel wide bar. Hopefully this will give you a visually intuitive way of seeing what's going on? Just a thought. I guess it might end up taking more space up, but resource management is such a key part of the game, I'd gladly give up a few extra pixels just to be able to monitor it better.

In fact if I could vote for a single easy resource management change in the next release, it would be a big flashing sign in the corner of the screen saying "METAL STALLING" or "ENERGY STALLING", perhaps giving a percentage indication of how much more you're using than you're making.

Cheers

Munch

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 27 Jun 2005, 11:44

munch, perhaps a voice saying that would be more useful. (It would be good to move TA:Spring in the direction of sonification!)

Kixxe · Post by **Kixxe** » 27 Jun 2005, 12:06

In fact if I could vote for a single easy resource management change in the next release, it would be a big flashing sign in the corner of the screen saying "METAL STALLING" or "ENERGY STALLING", perhaps giving a percentage indication of how much more you're using than you're making.

This should be implented at the same time as acitive sounds/music. Then a sound That says ''ENERGY STALLING'' or something. And a option to turn it off offcourse.[/code]

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 27 Jun 2005, 13:11

Can anyone produce such a sound? (it's surprisingly difficult to make it sound good) Also, what kind of theme do we want for it? A woman's voice? A deep, demonic one? A cold, emotionless one?

Delta · Post by **Delta** » 27 Jun 2005, 13:12

munch, perhaps a voice saying that would be more useful.

That would only be extremely annoying

This should be implented at the same time as acitive sounds/music. Then a sound That says ''ENERGY STALLING'' or something. And a option to turn it off offcourse

even with an on-off switch i still think its a bad idea. I dont whant to have to go throu tons of menuchoises to find the little switch to dissable the stallwarning driving me insane every time i have a bunch of metalmakers (using mmAI) constantly dropping my energy to near zero

Doomweaver · Post by **Doomweaver** » 27 Jun 2005, 13:25

We can have it off by default, if people think it would piss people off.
Infact, we can have it so you set exactly how many messages are read out aloud.
i.e.
Resource related (i.e. metal approaching full, you are losing energy rapidly etc.)
Combat Related (i.e. We are under attack, incoming nuclear missile)

etc. and you can tick them on or off.
In fact we can have a voice for guiding n00bs. If they go to build something they are a long way off being able to afford, a voice warns them "Bad Idea, you don't have enough metal to support that" or whatever.

Delta · Post by **Delta** » 27 Jun 2005, 13:27

That could work...

munch · Post by **munch** » 27 Jun 2005, 14:37

Doomweaver wrote:.....
In fact we can have a voice for guiding n00bs. If they go to build something they are a long way off being able to afford, a voice warns them "Bad Idea, you don't have enough metal to support that" or whatever.

I think that's an excellent idea. Moving it a step back towards where we are now - it would be handy if the (very useful) units stats displayed in the bottom left of the screen included "metal build drain" and "energy build drain" figures, in addition to the raw metal/energy cost and build time figures. Obviously this would vary depending on what you were building them with. A con-air building an HLT gives a much lower drain than a Fark building the same thing for example! That way you could compare it with your current metal/energy excess income and see if you could afford it right now. I guess you'd need to be able to easily see your excess income for this to be really worthwhile.

Cheers

Munch

aGorm · Post by **aGorm** » 27 Jun 2005, 15:07

Although

Bad Idea, you don't have enough metal to support that

Has to be the lamest wording ever, it would need somthing cooler.
Just somthing like "Resources will be Exceded" or "More resorses required".

IMO the voice would have to be male and slightly robotised... not over the top. Femail would make it to StarCraft like...

Also it could promt if your not using your energy and metal with a "Power overflow warning" and "metal capacity exceeded"

aGorm

Min3mat · Post by **Min3mat** » 27 Jun 2005, 16:23

omg someones GOT to do that...the metallic sounds units emit when ordered to do something are fine and dandy (I HATED RA,C&C etc units would talk and REALLY annoy you

) but warnings on your m/e would be cool! (espicaially so for me... :))

Dakar · Post by **Dakar** » 27 Jun 2005, 17:20

Doomweaver wrote:We can have it off by default, if people think it would piss people off.
Infact, we can have it so you set exactly how many messages are read out aloud.
i.e.
Resource related (i.e. metal approaching full, you are losing energy rapidly etc.)
Combat Related (i.e. We are under attack, incoming nuclear missile)

I don't think this would be such a great idea.

First of all, it would likely require a large amount of work, and add more bloat to the program. Second, most of the newer people would not know how to activate it, and the more seasoned players would probably know about being under attack/losing energy/full metal before the voice even sounds, so it would be pretty useless.

mongus · Post by **mongus** » 27 Jun 2005, 19:30

lol.. i really heate that voices telling you not enough resources..
also, it doesnt go much with the resource model of ta, resources are not taken apart for an especific unit being build, they are used while the unit is being build, thats why you can queue 100 kroggis and nothing is telling you "OMG have you become insane??" or something...
also, i dont use sound, it almost BREAKS my headphones (and my ears) when i dgun in fps, or any other big explotion sound.
dont know how, but the sound really gets distortionated.
sound volume controll would be much appreciated.

The resource management must be able to stand visually only.
sounds are a good add on, but we cant deppend on them.

Spring RTS Engine

Metal, energy, and the gui

Stalling