Praise for making this game more approachable

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Veyrdite
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Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Veyrdite »

Greetings to all, including the awesome devs and the almost as awesome players!

This morning I woke at 2:00 AM to get ready for the weekly planned match on the dev server. It turns out the time emailed out was wrong -- it's at 20:00 GMT, not 15:00 GMT -- so I had a few hours to muck around with the game seriously for the first time in more than a year.

By the mighty blood of Armok this game is fun. And it has been improved SO much.

I don't know what drives the devs. Perhaps they are strapped to padded sleds in front of computers in dark rooms, forced to develop the game further in order to please the hive. Around them viscous black compounds drip from disembodied talons, glinting occasionally in the dark. They sit like this for months, only occasionally being let out when the basilisks gas out the cockroaches:

Image

...or they enjoy something to do with working with and developing the game, which is hopefully more likely:
Image

Either way, this forum is too quiet and I want to throw some praise around. Some of it might not be well targeted at the development since forking from Tremulous, but I still want to throw it out here.

User Interface
Forcing the changes & new mechanics explanation dialogue to open on game start is awesome. It explains some of the elephants of the mechanics, even if it's targeted towards old Trem players instead of new ones. It's also very short and uses lots of colour -- not a wall of grey text.

The confidence bar system is almost completely self explanatory -- the icons along the bar really help. It is also not intrusive (especially compared to the rest of the HUD :P ).

The confidence system
I remember how fun unlimited Trem servers were, and how I disliked the fact you could not expand beyond an arbitrary size in normal games. But infinite resources also posed balance problems, with humans able to win RTS style simply by marching forward lines of rets. The new confidence system feels like a unification of these two systems -- but with a control (mining) to the expansion, so that building is not the only form of gameplay.

New content
Arguably this is the most two-dimensional of expansion, but it is always appreciated to have new maps. I'm going to have a stab at developing the old maps (eg Niveus) further to see if I can reform them with some minor changes & prettier surfaces to match the graphical improvements of the rest of the game. FYI: critique me to hell, I'm happy to take stab wounds at all of my work.

The new website
... looks really friendly to new players. The developer blog makes me seethe with desire. Don't ever stop using it -- blind development leads to community thinking projects are dead.

Bots that dance on crates
There are not many players at the moment, so bots are great -- but not perfect -- fill in. The best part is that they exhibit many dodging and attack behaviours for the aliens, which is something very opaque to new players. Now they can learn in their spare time.

Everything else I have missed
I've only played one serious session of games. Also, snowstation FTW.

The only thing I want to push is making the game UI even more approachable to new players, rather than just the dying race of old Trem nutters like me. Adding some more words to menus to explain a few things (eg to play a local game, you have to start your own sever) and adding an easy UI for bots would save players from having to be ex-quakers to know how to operate things past the main menu.

In no way should the gameplay be changed to suit beginners -- the learning curve might be big, but it has a fair slope. There are an infinite amount of skills and tactics to this game, giving everyone the opportunity to fight and learn in their own way. Anyway, enough of my shameful plugs!

Two things have kept this game succession alive. One is the gameplay style -- forcing an infinite variety of skill-level players from the absolutely clueless to the crack-cocaine 300hz freaks to work together. It does this without making anyone feel like they have been unfairly treated by the game mechanics, so that anyone can enjoy the bliss of slicing human faces off regardless of how long they have played.

The other is the people. You could have thousands of players and the best game ever, but it will die within a year without individuals that stand out. Many game communities have kept going for more than a decade online because a group of people have kept patching and improving the game for everyone else to benefit. Sound familiar? Our current devs, although they might enjoy what they do, will always want to do other things in life. Having more people will not just populate servers, but also help them too.

Thank you to all of the current players and devs. We need to get more people playing Unvanquished -- unique players from everywhere on the planet -- to take a little of the burden off the devs and give this community what it deserves. Get your friends playing. Share this game on social media. Push it and you will see this forum catch fire and the gameservers kneel before hordes of happy people.

And keep having fun!

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Viech
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Re: Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Viech »

First of all, I love your avatar! Arch & Unvanquished ftw!

Veyrdite wrote:

User Interface
Forcing the changes & new mechanics explanation dialogue to open on game start is awesome. It explains some of the elephants of the mechanics, even if it's targeted towards old Trem players instead of new ones. It's also very short and uses lots of colour -- not a wall of grey text.

Wow, someone reads this? And even appreciates the colors? I should update it, since it is massively outdated and incomplete. :grin:

Veyrdite wrote:

The confidence bar system is almost completely self explanatory -- the icons along the bar really help. It is also not intrusive (especially compared to the rest of the HUD :P ).

Veyrdite wrote:

The only thing I want to push is making the game UI even more approachable to new players, rather than just the dying race of old Trem nutters like me. Adding some more words to menus to explain a few things (eg to play a local game, you have to start your own sever) and adding an easy UI for bots would save players from having to be ex-quakers to know how to operate things past the main menu.

We want to redo the UI from scratch after Ishq finished implementing librocket. This is a lot of work though so it can take a little while.

Veyrdite wrote:

New content
Arguably this is the most two-dimensional of expansion, but it is always appreciated to have new maps. I'm going to have a stab at developing the old maps (eg Niveus) further to see if I can reform them with some minor changes & prettier surfaces to match the graphical improvements of the rest of the game. FYI: critique me to hell, I'm happy to take stab wounds at all of my work.

But… but… I wanted to remake Niveus. :frown: Well, it's fine, I'm too busy anyway. Check out Chameleon if you want to retexture old maps.

Veyrdite wrote:

The new website
... looks really friendly to new players. The developer blog makes me seethe with desire. Don't ever stop using it -- blind development leads to community thinking projects are dead.

Yes, kharnov's latest news-spree seems to resurrect the forums. I hope we can keep up with development!

Veyrdite wrote:

Everything else I have missed
I've only played one serious session of games. Also, snowstation FTW.

Indeed, I never went so fast as a mara in a live game before. The outside area is epic.

Veyrdite wrote:

In no way should the gameplay be changed to suit beginners -- the learning curve might be big, but it has a fair slope. There are an infinite amount of skills and tactics to this game, giving everyone the opportunity to fight and learn in their own way.

I think easy to learn and hard to master don't contradict each other, as I outlined in defense of the jetpack control changes.

Veyrdite wrote:

Thank you to all of the current players and devs. We need to get more people playing Unvanquished -- unique players from everywhere on the planet -- to take a little of the burden off the devs and give this community what it deserves. Get your friends playing. Share this game on social media. Push it and you will see this forum catch fire and the gameservers kneel before hordes of happy people.

You're welcome! And yes, currently we won't advertise this game too much since we don't want people to see the unfinished game, misinterpret it as incoherent and leave. But when you introduce your friends to it you can always point out that it's in development and has rough edges… but potential. :smile:

PS: You seem interested in community building and you have illustration skills. Would you like to help us by creating some promotional artwork that we can use when we hit beta?

Responsible for: Arch Linux package & torrent distribution, Parpax (map), Chameleon (map texture editor), Sloth (material file generator), gameplay design & programming, artistic direction

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Tom
Dragoon
Posts: 253
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Location: France

Re: Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Tom »

Viech wrote:
Veyrdite wrote:

New content
Arguably this is the most two-dimensional of expansion, but it is always appreciated to have new maps. I'm going to have a stab at developing the old maps (eg Niveus) further to see if I can reform them with some minor changes & prettier surfaces to match the graphical improvements of the rest of the game. FYI: critique me to hell, I'm happy to take stab wounds at all of my work.

But… but… I wanted to remake Niveus. :frown: Well, it's fine, I'm too busy anyway. Check out Chameleon if you want to retexture old maps.

I cry tears of joy. :love:

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Veyrdite
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Veyrdite »

Viech wrote:

First of all, I love your avatar! Arch & Unvanquished ftw!

Almost every single Unvanq player at the moment is using Arch. I have a feeling we all read Phoronix too. PKGBUILDs are always appreciated.

Viech wrote:

Wow, someone reads this? And even appreciates the colors? I should update it, since it is massively outdated and incomplete. :grin:

Definitely -- it's the first thing shoved in the user's face, and the only way to get past it is to hit Esc. It's short enough that people don't tl;dr (but shorter would always be better). And when was the last time a game used graphics in the middle of text to explain what things look like?

We want to redo the UI from scratch after Ishq finished implementing librocket. This is a lot of work though so it can take a little while.

I was reading up about this on your wiki. Seems like a good route as it will allow folks with web dev skills to use them on the project.

Viech wrote:

But… but… I wanted to remake Niveus. :frown: Well, it's fine, I'm too busy anyway. Check out Chameleon if you want to retexture old maps.

Thanks Veich. I'll have a look at Chameleon, but at the moment I'm stabbing it with netradiant to try out that workflow. On that note, it seems the *radiant devs have not discovered colour yet :P

Veich wrote:

Yes, kharnov's latest news-spree seems to resurrect the forums. I hope we can keep up with development!

I'm really surprised at the level of organisation in this project. You seem to avoid at all costs people doubling up on work -- which favours the devs greatly by avoiding the fatalities and damage done by competition and argument. On the other hand you miss out on some variety of choice because of this, but it is an interesting framework for a FOSS project that definitely seems to be working.

(Meanwhile in Veich's mind:"This idiot knows nothing about the politics here")

Veich wrote:

I think easy to learn and hard to master don't contradict each other, as I outlined in defense of the jetpack control changes.

:thumbsup:

... rough edges ... we won't advertise this game too much since we don't want people to see the unfinished game, misinterpret it as incoherent and leave.

Wow -- I never expected this :) . You have already come a long way from Trem and it had a strong community for a while. Most of the brain knotting new people need to do is discover the unique gameplay of Unvanq, alien to most modern FPS horde bathers. But there still are a lot of jagged edges in the UI.

PS: You seem interested in community building and you have illustration skills. Would you like to help us by creating some promotional artwork that we can use when we hit beta?

I would be happy to. Keep in mind I'm just a fool throwing lines on my screen with a tame rodent and Inkscape. I'm sure there will be a lot of people unhappy to see artwork like this -- and I encourage them to vent their feelings about my work :)

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Veyrdite
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Re: Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Veyrdite »

@Chameleon

Very nice, but best used with the game or an editor to see where the textures all fit in (unless you are doing a 1:1 recreation at higher res). I'm surprised how little texture content is actually used in the old maps.

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Anomalous
Programmer
Posts: 318
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:51 pm UTC

Re: Praise for making this game more approachable

Post by Anomalous »

Veyrdite wrote:
Viech wrote:

First of all, I love your avatar! Arch & Unvanquished ftw!

Almost every single Unvanq player at the moment is using Arch. I have a feeling we all read Phoronix too. PKGBUILDs are always appreciated.

There are plenty using Debian or Ubuntu too, and it's easy enough to provide packages…

Wow, someone reads this? And even appreciates the colors? I should update it, since it is massively outdated and incomplete. :grin:

Definitely ­— it's the first thing shoved in the user's face, and the only way to get past it is to hit Esc. It's short enough that people don't tl;dr (but shorter would always be better).

And yet people have complained about its presence, so I tweaked the code to allow not automatically showing it to registered players. That quietened things down, and I think that it's become accepted anyway now.

And when was the last time a game used graphics in the middle of text to explain what things look like?

Good question. It's been done before, I'm sure of that…

[…] But there still are a lot of jagged edges in the UI.

Given the planned use of librocket, we're not too concerned about that; but we'll still experiment (recent addition of icons below the confidence bar, for example) and if there's a clearer way to present the information, the eventual switch to librocket isn't a reason not to make the necessary changes.

Debian and Ubuntu packages (squeeze, wheezy, sid; 12.04, 12.10, 13.04) may work on derivatives

OFFEND! … no, that's not right… ATTACK!

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