Messages

31

Suggestions / Re: Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: September 04, 2010, 02:53:51 pm »

Perhaps it is a cop out to not have it, excuse the pun "in black and white" off the bat but you would only need to decipher the colour code once, instead of "Murphely Lawely" guessing the wrong savegame every time.

From experience, I can assure you, that if a player has the slightest possibility of misinterpreting a situation it will happen - and usually not just once. Its not that they are ignorant or stupid - they are just paying attention to something else (the game!) and expect auxiliary functionality such as saving to "just work" and "make sense"...

32

Suggestions / Re: Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: September 04, 2010, 12:53:23 am »

Red Text Tactical mission, blue text geoscape view?!?

Interesting thought - color is a simple and elegant way of showing a difference! Only problem I can think of is that players would have to interpret which color means what, unless the color distinction is made even as you fill in the save game name or if there are clues in-game that connect one color with each game mode. Giving each game mode a particular color tone might actually be an effective and unobtrusive way of providing the player with clues. But I suppose that is way out of scope for a remake

33

Offtopic / Re: Daiky's x-com project

« on: September 03, 2010, 03:00:42 pm »

That is very neat!

I knew there were some pseudo-3D going on for line of sight/fire calculations, but this is familiar in an almost eerie way.

Although it doesn't have the detail/texture one would expect of 3D today it would at the very least be a neat way of grey-boxing without requiring 3D modellers to help out

34

Suggestions / Ideas for improving soldier usability

« on: September 01, 2010, 02:09:15 am »

In continuation of my post with ideas for improving on UFO's usability-issues, here are my thoughts about the functionality of soldier features - from the same point of view, that is. I still try to keep new features to a minimum, and work with what is already there to help the player be better at playing. Feel free to comment and add your own ideas!

SOLDIERS:

# Make an initial recruit evaluation system provide a simple numerical rank according to stats to make it easier to evaluate their cumulative worth and pick out the worst slackers. This could be in the form of a "screening result" that show in base "soldier stats" screen, in the line beneath "wound recovery" line, to the right of "In Psionic Training" indication (neither normally shows, so the indication would be quite visible).
* Such an indication would make the life of players easier, while not giving too much away. Being an overall rank, it might not take into consideration if soldiers were low on important stats, or just really mediocre - players would have to figure those things out on their own. But it would be starting point from which to learn more about soldiers.

# Enable player to modify order of soldier list, to decide who leaves landing craft first. Could be done by adding arrow up/down from buy / sell / transfer to left-most side every entrance in "squad selection" list and "armour selection" list for crafts. I guess the first guy in the list would be closest one to the exit.
* This has great implication on the player's control of which soldier leaves craft first - gives him more control over an otherwise seemingly random situation.

# Show soldier ranks in "armor selection" list under "equip craft", to provide best possible information to base choice of armor on. The "armour selection" list could be made without craft name (only showing soldiers designated to particular craft would appear in it) but with ranks instead.
* This would improve the players ability to quickly and meaningfully assign armour - especially when only limited numbers are available in storage.

# Make "armour selection" list into a "load-out selection" list, in which the player can change order of soldiers assigned to craft (by arrows in left side), click on names to enter "load-out screen" where changes can be made to their default equipment and armour template. This would be used on missions, so players would not have to remake & reconfirm desired load-out for each separate mission.
* HUGE game changer for player as it makes more specific load-outs possible (without wanting to kill yourself), which allows for more variation in tactics. Such a change would make the game more interesting and provide easy access to greater variety to the player's experience. All good stuff

35

Suggestions / Ideas for improving xcom craft usability

« on: September 01, 2010, 02:07:24 am »

In continuation of my post with ideas for improving on UFO's usability-issues, here are my thoughts about the functionality of xcom craft features - from the same point of view, that is. I still try to keep new features to a minimum, and work with what is already there to help the player be better at playing. Feel free to comment and add your own ideas!

CRAFTS:

# In dogfights, give a clear indication of whether over land or sea
* In fringe cases it is very difficult to tell from indications on the globe

# Let the player send the same craft on two successive tactical missions without returning to base in between.
* In UFO crafts get a "low on fuel" indication after landing at a crash site even though it has much more than 50% fuel left.

# In dogfights, let player click on craft weapon icons to activate/deactivate weapon. This would enable attacks with only one weapon.
* This would be useful against smaller UFOs, if you don't want to destroy them completely!

# In UFO the game has trouble auto-zooming-out after engagements with more than 1 xcom craft - it would be nice if it worked as expected in OpenXcom (full zoom out after every dogfight).
* It is bothersome to manually resetting zoom, when you are left with the feeling that the game should be doing it on its own.

# Don't show "fuel low - returning to base" dialog for crafts already heading for base, just make it impossible to redirect them to other objectives after they run low, and make sure it shows clearly on the craft info dialog.
* Superfluous information that the player doesn't know unless he intends to redirect the craft, in which case the descriptive dialog will show it.

# In dogfight, change distance indicator units to KM rather than the "range units" used in UFO.
* Such a change would make it much easier to relate to distances than arbitrarily chosen units allow for.

# In dogfights, show of how damaged UFO is / how close it is to crashing / evaporating in the dogfight dialog. This could be done by making the UFO glow yellow / orange / red (instead of always green) after hits.
* The indicator would enable players to decide on whether to keep on pounding away at the battleship or send his interceptor home.

# In UFO Skyrangers rearm after missions, which seem odd as they have no weapon mounts. Perhaps restocking equipment is a better description?
* The message may confuse players, making them think that there are weapon mounts that they can not figure out how to use. Better to leave no doubt.

# Enable players to change craft names in "equip craft" screen.
* Way cooler to order around "Firefox" and "Serenity" than "Interceptor-1"!

# Let alien craft info dialogs show what kind of terrain they are on when grounded, in clamps after the "altitude" indication (which could read "GROUND (FOREST)" in such scenarios).
* Providing players with more information for decision-making is a nice thing to do.

36

Suggestions / Ideas for improving research & development usability

« on: September 01, 2010, 02:03:26 am »

In continuation of my post with ideas for improving on UFO's usability-issues, here are my thoughts about the functionality of research & development features - from the same point of view, that is. I still try to keep new features to a minimum, and work with what is already there to help the player be better at playing. Feel free to comment and add your own ideas!

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT:

# When clicking a project in the "new research projects" dialog, the whole "start project"/"cancel" screen could be removed if the "scientist allocation screen" had a "cancel" button next to the "OK" button! This would also enable the player to remove research projects from the "current research" list, which is not possible in UFO.
* Fewer screens would simplify the process of researching projects for the player.

# State difficulty level (easy/hard/very difficult/etc.) for completing research of a project based on average hours for completion, to ensure initial alignment of player expectation for actual research time. This could be done by showing difficulty in brackets after research project name in the "new research projects" dialog. Also the information could be communicated nicely by adding a "difficulty" column in the "current research" screen and a difficulty assessment line between title line and "scientists available" line in the "research project scientist allocation" dialog.
* This would much better enable the player to evaluate which types of projects he is willing to commit to. Decisions without information become meaningless!

# Modify "research progress" descriptions (unknown/poor/average/good/excellent based on calculations related to unknown difficulty) to better communicate how far along a research project is. This could be done instead by showing an approximate completion percentage or another well thought out scale that is less specific.
* It is important to use description that can be related to a scale in which the player intuitively understands its meaning. UFO use 5 arbitrarily chosen words - it can be made better for the players!

# Show completion date/time of manufacturing projects in "current production" screen rather than "days/hours left"
* It is difficult to interpret how soon/when 15 days and 9 hours is when current time is not visible - better to show finishing date/time instead

# Don't remove item from production planning list even though it is being produced already
* I should damn well be able to set up 2 productions of the same item type if I want to - and be able to check out resource use/cost of an item type even though I am already producing it (resource use/cost/manufacture time/etc. info really ought to be part of the UFOpaedia also, but I think it would be too difficult to make room for it there unless a new category of "blueprints" or something similar was created)

# In the "new production" dialog, change button text from "OK" to "NO PRODUCTION" or simply "CANCEL".
* As-is "OK" seem to indicate a confirmation of item choice rather than its true function, which is to close the dialog!

# In the "engineers allocated / units to produce" dialog, show production hours, cost per unit in resources / funding and work space required (basically all info from the previous dialog - just made contextual in response to how many units the player wants to manufacture), when deciding how many units of an item to produce. Realistically, making room for the additional info, the dialog would probably need to be redesigned, using smaller text. It might even benefit from the smaller arrows of the type used in buy/sell/transfer lists.
* The required information shows fine in the dialog just prior to assigning engineers and numbers to produce, but is not visible when the player is making his decisions. At the very least there should be developed an item number cap, so accepted production is dependent on current stock of resources / funding.

# Make a button in manufacturing order to "sell off directly" and "set number of units to produce to infinite", so you don't have to start new orders over and over and constantly keep track of room in stores to produce items that would be sold off anyways.
* This would essentially turn the workshop into a money press, but it is better than forcing the player to repeat tedious tasks.

37

Suggestions / Ideas for improving base usability

« on: September 01, 2010, 02:00:44 am »

In continuation of my post with ideas for improving on UFO's usability-issues, here are my thoughts about the functionality of base features - from the same point of view, that is. I still try to keep new features to a minimum, and work with what is already there to help the player be better at playing. Feel free to comment and add your own ideas!

BASE VIEW:

# If a hangar is occupied it could be indicated even when the craft is on a mission - fx show it as a grayed out or transparent craft?
* Such a change would make it immediately obvious to the player why he cannot dismantle a hanger facility that would otherwise appear to be empty, and that his craft still belongs in the base even though it might be on a mission.

# When exiting base view to geoscape OpenXcom does not remember which base was last viewed - it would be nice if it did.
* In UFO the feature makes it easier to interact with the same base repeatedly, and does not make it more annoying to choose another base, than it would when it defaults to the same every time.



BASE INFO:

# Change scale of defense strength bar in base information view screen to match actual numbers better.
* As is, even with a few of the weakest defenses, the bar goes way too far off the screen to make any sense. Changing it by about a factor of 10 would probably do the trick.



FACILITY CONSTRUCTION:

# When placing a facility chosen from the "build facilities" list in base view, don't abandon placement mode if the player (accidentally) attempts to place facility on top of an existing one and the "can't place here" dialog appears. Give the player another try and require manual canceling.
* Bothering the player with redoing the same sequence of clicks because of an accidental click is just evil.

# Let the player to dismantle facilities from within the "build facilities" menu in base view - don't make it the default action on facilities in the base view!
* The player is unlikely to want to dismantle his precious facilities as his first / default action in the base view mode. It would be beneficial to make it explicit that dismantling action is activated - this could be done as the default action when opening the "build facilities" menu. Perhaps making it into a more general "manage facilities" menu.

# In base view, when LMB click on facilities, the dialog concerning the facility should pop up (research for laboratories, manufacturing for workshops, buy/sell for general stores, base information for access lift). In this case dismantling facilities could be done in the "build facilities" menu (perhaps made into a more general "manage facilities" menu).
* Using the base graphics as a UI for accessing base functionality is likely to be as intuitive or better than the purely button / textual interface implemented at the moment. Also such a change would likely ease future redesigns of the base view in OpenXcom fx if you wanted to remove some buttons to make room for contextual information about facilities under hovering cursor or other such features.



BUY/SELL/TRANSFER:

# In buy/sell & transfer screens enable "click+drag" & key modifiers (fx CTRL for +10 and SHIFT for +100)on +/- arrows when deciding amounts.
* Would increase ease of use tremendously.

38

Suggestions / Ideas for improving geoscape usability

« on: September 01, 2010, 01:57:56 am »

In continuation of my post with ideas for improving on UFO's usability-issues, here are my thoughts about the functionality of geoscape features - from the same point of view that is. I still try to keep new features to a minimum, and work with what is already there to help the player be better at playing. Feel free to comment and add your own ideas!

GEOSCAPE:

# Would be nice if earth rotation after RMB click in geoscape happened over several frames with a bit of a "rubber band effect".
* More "organic" movement often makes it easier to perceive the relation between two different states (such as the transition between two different view points in the geoscape).

# Would also nice if earth rotation followed mouse movement when RMB is pressed - sort of a drag-rotation movement.
* It would give a more direct sense of control over what part of the globe shows.

# When pressing LMB on globe near several objects, but don't want to select either on list in dialog, put in a "cancel" button.
* Much more effective for the player!

# When in geoscape and clicking on base the "launch interception" dialog that pops up, could also offer an "enter base view" button next to the "cancel" button.
* Cheap way to ease access and put more control in the hands of the player. A more thorough review of the interception dialog might differentiate between global access from the menu button (all crafts from all bases) and local access from the base icon on the globe. The global interception dialog could function the way it does in UFO, whereas the local one could be transformed to a base information view (with similarities to the alien base view) with more specific confirmation of base name, location (continent), radar range, etc. combined with a list of local crafts (which would omit the base name indication that shows in the global list)...

# Notification dialog when crafts are ready to launch after refueling/rearming. Could probably also be done by adding fx a dot next to base icons that indicate each craft in base and change color according to craft status.
* Good to have direct feedback loop in situation where you are waiting for the next craft to become available for a pursuit. Helps the player rather than forcing him to re-check the intercept-list over and over.

# When having selected a craft from geoscape or interception list and is about to pick its target it would be very nice to have more text in dialog in top of screen, confirming craft name and possibly also current craft position (or home base name). It would also be helpful to visually point out the craft if it is not in a base when the order is given.
* All a matter of giving the player more feedback to make sure the game is doing what he expects it to.

# When human crafts are moving around in the geoscape it would be great with a graphic indication of the orders of each craft. This could be as a line between each craft and the associated target point. Different line colors could indicate different mission types such as "attacking craft", "flying to point", "going on tactical mission" etc. It would be good with an indicator of which end of the line is craft and target fx by having a dot on the line that repeatedly moves from the human craft to its target.
* Pixel-wide lines may with loads of aliasing may be so horrible to look at, at the limited resolution, that it will be more annoying than helpful.

# It would be neat if crafts shared waypoints in geoscape - that is target waypoints that have already been created by other crafts.
* I have not had the need too often, but when banding a few interceptors against a battleship is is nice to avoid the clutter of many waypoints while planning. Would actually be neat to be able to multi-select or group several crafts, but I don't see how the user interface / interaction modus would support that effectively at the moment.

# In the detailed UFO description given by the hyper wave decoder, after mission type description you could add a pair of brackets with a number in them to indicate how many crafts that the aliens have assigned to the mission are left to deal with.
* That would make it easier for the player to know whether he detected them all and attacked/boarded them in time.

# When clicking alien bases it would be good with some more information in the dialog. Fx they could have an indication of area so that it could easier be correlated with UFO supply activities. Also when a hyperwave decoder has been built they could provide more detailed information along the lines of what you get from UFOs.
* Much of the info can be deduced by paying attention to UFOs, but the player shouldn't be punished for forgetting 5 mins later.

# In the geoscape, radar type and range could be shown as colored rings around bases. This would give a much better indication of in which areas the player should not expect to detect UFOs.



GEOSCAPE EVENTS:

# When showing "research completed" dialog in geoscape, it could easily show which research project has been completed and what the result is.
* Would give the player an informed background on which to choose whether to "view report" or say "OK".

# When clicking the "view report" button in the "research completed" dialog in UFO, sometimes the UFOpaedia entry is not shown. In some cases UFOpaedia is also "missing" an entry, such as "Laser Weapons" technology - in such cases, the "view report" button does not make sense, as it does the same thing as pressing "OK". Nonsensical choices confuse players
* It is nice to players when buttons does what they expect them to...

# After responding to the "research completed" dialog in UFO, another dialog is shown where the player decides whether he wants to allocate his researchers to a new project. If new venues of research has opened up from the project just finished this screen will tell. There is enough room to describe what project has just been completed, so players can tell the origin of new options and be reminded what they have been researching up until this point. It does not make much sense to put in an "OK" button that passes on allocating researchers to new projects - everybody wants to optimise their resource use, and idle researchers does not contribute to that goal! It could be argued that the player should be left with a choice to pass, but as it is really a non-choice, there does not seem to be much reason to have more than one button that leads the player to the "current research" screen.

# After going through the dialogs and screens related to a completed research project, geoscape time remains at the same pace as prior to the event. As some time has passed and the player has been occupied with other tasks, he may not be ready to handle upcoming geoscape events at accelerated time rates. When the "production complete" dialog appears time is reset to =5secs - the same thing could be done with research.
* It is not nice to move the player's attention between different contexts with the risk of rapidly bringing him back to the geoscape running at full time acceleration, when his attention and goals are no longer oriented towards that situation.

# When showing the player a "production completed" dialog, it would be beneficial to present an "allocate manufacture" button as in the "research completed" dialogs, next to the "OK" button that is there in UFO. The functionality of the "OK" button is to reset time to =5secs and return to geoscape.
* This is also sort of a non-choice situation, since I can't think of a scenario, where the player would rather let the game go on than allocating his expensive engineers to a new project. Optimally there should only be 1 button to "allocate manufacture", but just in case, the "OK" button should probably be kept around.

# When showing the "production of facility completed" dialog, an "enter base view" button could be included alongside the "OK" button, as there is a good chance the player wants to construct new facilities at that point. The text would probably come across more correctly if it read "construction" rather than "production" as the activity is not related to manufacturing. The functionality of the "OK" button is to reset time to =5secs and return to geoscape.
* This would mostly be a helpful feature that would enable the player to perform the actions he wants to as easily as possible - no reason to have him click several time, confuse one base for another and end up building the wrong facility in the wrong base, when a simple extra button would enable him to get the job done.

39

Open Feedback / Re: OpenXcom performance for dummies

« on: August 24, 2010, 08:41:29 pm »

Thank you guys for preventing my head from exploding

After posting I realized that half my question was based on a misinterpretation of the thread, where I first asked the question. I usually know game timers are different from refresh rates, but somehow I managed to excrete a brain fart in public... actually I was more interested in the part about how coding OpenXcom in c++ is different from how UFO was made and what impact it has on the systems that execute the code.

One of the things that fooled me was my observation of day/night cycles in OpenXcom, where I saw the boundary move in relatively huge steps out of sync with the timer. I simply assumed this was an expression of the overall game timer, mixed it up with refresh rate, forgot to look at how fast the time updated and never did the math on how many times per second that corresponded to. Then I decided that the movement of the day/night boundary would be my new measure of performance and fps. I could be doing stand-up with this stuff!

Come to think of it, I have a feeling that the timer updated less than 10 times per second in UFO - but as you pointed out that is dependent on the hardware you run it on...

40

Open Feedback / OpenXcom performance for dummies

« on: August 24, 2010, 04:03:52 pm »

Cut & paste from another thread:

So by default the globe view is only updated 10 times per second? That seem kinda low compared to my refresh rate of 60 Hz...

Makes me wonder how the guys at Mythos ever got UFO to run smoothly on my 486, when OpenXcom on a much more powerful modern system crawls to a halt.

Is compiled C++ that inefficient? Is the code immature? Should we all quit our day jobs and go back to hacking assembler code?

Reason I'm asking is not to be an ass, but that my system ought to be able to generate a gazillion fps of this relatively simple low poly representation of Earth .. but somehow it doesn't

Please help me understand why the world of OpenXcom code does not work the way my mind expects it to!

41

Builds & Ports / Re: Makefile for Dingoo A320

« on: August 24, 2010, 12:00:01 pm »

Sorry for going off-topic... I'll just start a new thread

So by default the globe view is only updated 10 times per second? That seem kinda low compared to my refresh rate of 60 Hz...

Makes me wonder how the guys at Mythos ever got UFO to run smoothly on my 486, when OpenXcom on a much more powerful modern system crawls to a halt.

Is compiled C++ that inefficient? Is the code immature? Should we all quit our day jobs and go back to hacking assembler code?

Reason I'm asking is not to be an ass, but that my system ought to be able to generate a gazillion fps of this relatively simple low poly representation of Earth .. but somehow it doesn't

42

Suggestions / Re: Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: August 12, 2010, 10:27:48 pm »

Well, that would be quite intrinsically coherent!

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself there.

LOL .. good call!

I speak too little English, so sometimes it becomes a bit garbled

43

Suggestions / Re: Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: August 11, 2010, 09:51:38 pm »

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the value of this S/T prefix, as I always use the last four slots for saves anyway and usually just name them 0, 1 and so on.

I believe you and I both can figure out how to make it work as is, but that does not change that having two intrinsically different game modes be represented in the exact same way in the save game description is pretty bad UI design. It would be great with other suggestions for showing such implicit information in a coherent manner. I am just arguing against reimplementing bad design

44

Suggestions / Re: Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: August 11, 2010, 01:00:16 am »

# Ability to differentiate between strategic and tactical save games
* In UFO only the entered text description shows - it would be significantly easier to use if there was a difference between the two

Well there's not a lot of room for extra info, but I'll keep it in mind.

I was thinking something along the lines of a single extra letter (a S or a T) at the beginning of each line at the cost of a couple of letters in the description - perhaps something like the pic I have attatched (never mind the mess I made with pixels... just a mock-up)

As for the practical implementation, pmprog, frankly I have no clue how it should be done

45

Suggestions / Make OpenXcom easier to use than original UFO!

« on: August 09, 2010, 11:06:51 pm »

After playing around with openxcom and the original UFO for a while I got really really frustrated with some of the functionality.

As changes to the main game loop is probably off the table for a UFO remake I have focused on features that would make the game easier, more convenient and less frustrating to use - hopefully not things that have a significant impact on the game difficulty or tactics used to play it.

While playing I thought about how to provide as much and clear information to the player as possible, so he knows what his choices mean. Much of the original game is really fuzzy in that way - difficult to understand the exact consequences of actions due to a lack of appropriate feedback.

I really hope SupSuper is interested in feedback on these issues - anyways, here is my first batch of general issues. More to come later



GENERAL ISSUES: These are probably the least controversial points

# Make key shortcuts for game actions
* This would make it significantly easier to play the game - especially tactical missions

# Create main menu options to setup key shortcuts
* Often personal play styles and international keyboard setups require this feature

# No limit to save game slots
* Just plain silly to limit saves - would be more accessible if scrolling was put into the save/load-dialog

# Ability to deselect a save game after clicking it, without overwriting the previous save
* Just one of those irrational design decision that makes it difficult and frustrating to use the game

# Ability to differentiate between strategic and tactical save games
* In UFO only the entered text description shows - it would be significantly easier to use if there was a difference between the two

# Move cursor around in text fields without deleting existing characters
* Basic text editing feature I guess...

# Mouse scroll in all lists with arrown in the side
* So far I have come across research and manufacture lists, but I am sure there are more