Feature Request

[MikeMarchant_ssl]

The game is click-heavy and the UI does need work, but let's be patient here. This is the first version of the game and it's clear that a huge amount of work has gone into it. I can't even imagine embarking on a project of this scale and being able to get it to the stage it's at right now. Hopefully, in time, with patches and perhaps new versions (Tigers on the Hunt 2 - The Mauling) things will improve and improve and improve.

I think it's right that we point you things that we don't like or think don't work, but I'd like to do that in a calm and sympathetic way.


Best Wishes

Mike

[Krasny]

ORIGINAL: keas66

I think you got the bit " in my opinion" right ? . Yes some enhancements would be nice but it is perfectly playable the way it is at the moment . Also there are plenty of play reasons why selecting the whole stack up front would be the right way to go . Since this is ASL like - I need to be careful about what units I am selecting in a stack to perform what action I want to carry out . Maybe I want to fire just that SW weapon . Maybe I want to individually assault move that half squad into the next hex as a sacrifice to draw fire . Maybe I want to add that leader and full squad into the firegroup using the LMG or maybe I don't want that . Individually selecting each counter in the stack lets me make those decisions in the simplest way .Your approach of selecting everything in the hex then means I need to start un-selecting counters if I don't want everyone pulled into whatever action I want to perform. Which way is better ? In "my opinion" I prefer the current method .

I was discourteous, and for that I apologise. More things are making me grind my teeth than the UI of this game, and I was in a rather poor mood this morning. However that this game has an inefficient UI is not my opinion, but a demonstratable fact. When playing the game it feels like I'm fighting the UI rather than the Germans.

UI aside though, it is a splendid game, especially when using the ASL mod.

I take it that the first scenario is deliberately easy to play as the Germans because I beat it without thinking and one of my Stugs becoming bogged because I foolishly drove it into a building.

[keas66]

I think there is a lot of room for optimization in the UI as well - I would like to be able to find a counter by clicking in it in the OOB for instance , or by clicking on a log message . I think selecting the whole stack is a 50/50 choice - it might speeds things up but it could also slow some things down . I guess I don't have a strong dislike for it yet as a selection method as I have been playing only smaller scenarios . Maybe it will show itself to be more unwieldy in the larger scenarios -I'll have to see .

[blackcloud6]

I would like to see a "mouse-over" to call up the window that shows what is in a hex instead of having to right-click the mouse to do so. Right click the mouse is mainly for conducting the fire/move/advance action and also making it bring up the stack window feels counterintuitive.

[Storm72]

ORIGINAL: Krasny

UI aside though, it is a splendid game, especially when using the ASL mod.

I take it that the first scenario is deliberately easy to play as the Germans because I beat it without thinking and one of my Stugs becoming bogged because I foolishly drove it into a building.

Good Morning;

Easy for you is not easy for me!
[:)]

I am not very good at these types of games yet but I am learning - and I am having fun even though I get pummeled on occasion!

I barely beat this scenario on the Hard Level - down to the last close combat on turn 7. WHEW!!

1 of the greatest selling points to me were the varied difficulty levels AND The ability to quickly and easily modify the scenarios.

If a scenario is too hard - add an extra squad or AFV to the Home Team.
If a scenario is too easy - give the visitors a little something extra.

it took me 2 minutes to modify the Stugs scenario like so:
(Spoiler Alert!)





This one is now far from easy!

[idjester]

ORIGINAL: Storm72

ORIGINAL: Krasny

UI aside though, it is a splendid game, especially when using the ASL mod.

I take it that the first scenario is deliberately easy to play as the Germans because I beat it without thinking and one of my Stugs becoming bogged because I foolishly drove it into a building.

Good Morning;

Easy for you is not easy for me!
[:)]

I am not very good at these types of games yet but I am learning - and I am having fun even though I get pummeled on occasion!

I barely beat this scenario on the Hard Level - down to the last close combat on turn 7. WHEW!!

1 of the greatest selling points to me were the varied difficulty levels AND The ability to quickly and easily modify the scenarios.

If a scenario is too hard - add an extra squad or AFV to the Home Team.
If a scenario is too easy - give the visitors a little something extra.

it took me 2 minutes to modify the Stugs scenario like so:
(Spoiler Alert!)





This one is now far from easy!

I agree...You can edit the scenarios in like 3 minutes to add/delete/alter it anyways you want.
That is totally awesome. Find a scenario to easy or to hard just do like Storm72 did.

We are all playing the game with different skill levels in ASL and different knowledge of the gaming
system. Don't think that the game is not for you because its to hard or to easy because you can
make it just want you want with just a few minutes of time.

I.E. a pro tip for you guys out there that haven't watched my scenario creation videos. You can setup
different zones for the units to be placed in. (For example German Zone 1). In that zone you can choose
a bunch of hexes for those units to be placed in. This way the units are not static and in the same place.
This will allow the units to be places in different setup hexes every time the scenario is played and will
therefore it will play different each time you play the scenario.

Make 3 or 4 different zones for the computer to place his units and assign units to those different zones.
The computer will than random place those units in the setup zones and you have a totally different scenario
just by how you designed it.

Hope that helps.

idjester

[Missouri_Rebel]

My question is this; is Peter even interested in providing any improvements to the current game?

He has said in several various posts that the reason he didn't implement things is because it is just a one man project 10 years in the making.

Does he consider it finished other than bug squashing? I'd like to purchase this but am a little leary that plausible UI features won't be tackled.

With most developers patches with improvements come out and are planned. Maybe someone could show me where I'm wrong but, it seems to me that this will not be the case with this system.

[RobearGWJ]

First off, I really enjoy this game. The UI is a bit click heavy, but then, moving stuff around and examining stacks and such on a board is even more labor intensive. I find I'm clicking through things intuitively now, with just a few scenarios tried.

However, that leads to a problem I've had a few times. It's easy to click to advance the phase, see nothing happen immediately, and click again, only to find that the phase advance occurred and now you've clicked through the *next* phase, skipping the first one entirely! I've lost entire Advance Fire phases that way... Not good.

Perhaps a way to "back up" a phase, as long as no actions have occurred, would be a good safeguard? I don't really want to have a pop up question "Are you sure?" each time. I just want to be able to back up if I accidentally skip my Advance Fire phase.

[idjester]

I can tell you that Peter is very passionate about this project. I was working with him right up to the final release date so that he could provide everyone with the most update to date, bug free version he could. We were working on things that he wanted to look at just hours from release.

I can't release any information because its not my project and that is just for Peter to do but I know there are things he is already looking into. I'm sure he will announce this things when he is ready but rest assured that he is looking at many things.

If your afraid that things won't be updated, changed, fixed, altered, you are dead wrong.

[Paullus]

Great work Storm. Just what we wanted people to do. [:)]

[Paullus]

Oh there will be development, don't you worry. First off fixing bugs though and then we'll see what Peter will do. Off course this also depends on how well this game does. Peter is listening to requests don't you worry.

[Storm72]

ORIGINAL: idjester
I.E. a pro tip for you guys out there that haven't watched my scenario creation videos. You can setup
different zones for the units to be placed in. (For example German Zone 1). In that zone you can choose
a bunch of hexes for those units to be placed in. This way the units are not static and in the same place.
This will allow the units to be places in different setup hexes every time the scenario is played and will
therefore it will play different each time you play the scenario.

Make 3 or 4 different zones for the computer to place his units and assign units to those different zones.
The computer will than random place those units in the setup zones and you have a totally different scenario
just by how you designed it.
Hope that helps.
idjester

THIS! ^
+1.

[Vinya]

ORIGINAL: Krasny

The UI is a huge mess, and Peter's reason to disallow stack selection is entirely specious. Also what's with having to click on a hex containing a single unit THEN having to move the mouse pointer to another part of the screen THEN clicking on bloody unit again to select it?

The UI renders this game borderline unplayable.

+1. The UI is really bad and it hinders the actual game experience. May be (havent had the chance to test it) the game has the best AI in the world and provides a challenging experience to players, but if you cannot use the UI efficently you will not enjoy the game.

I work in the IT sector, and a program with such a poor user experience should never be sold to paying customers. I really like the idea (I am an active ASL player and I can use a program to keep my play up) but if I cant enjoy playing the game I will not do it...

Regards

[Cafe]

In the spirit of constructive criticism (I am a Project Manager for a simulation company so I work with devs all the time), I'd echo some of the thoughts here about unit selection Ux.

Having played just the first tutorial I haven't drilled in too deep, but the CTRL-Click experience is clunky. For 2 reasons - one is that most often you will want to select more than one unit, so a default select only one puts the work back on the user. Also, the line by line selection is a little finicky. As a suggestion - why not reproduce the counter artwork in the bottom left pane and allow a single click to select/deselect individual units (with a highlight to indicate selection)?

This UI change could be used whenever selecting a hex and if you included markers as well, would provide a visual cue rather than having to read text - besides it makes use of the excellent UI art that is already there (no extra assets) and keeps the whole thing consistent with what is happening on the board.

The combat results panel on the right could also use this same approach to keep in line with a more visual representation of the combat results.

Things like MG ROF continuation would also be more obvious - with the lack of a "FIRED" marker indicating it was good to go.

Please don't take these comments as a negative oh solo dev - it must have been a huge labour of love for you. I will play the game regardless, but I am trying to lend you some of my design experience to make it better for all.

Cheers,

Cafe

[Gerry4321]

Would be nice if this was stickied as an official thread.

Biggest requests for round 2:
1. Multi-level buildings - when I asked for this months ago Peter IIRC mentioned doing this when he went 3-D (I may have misread). I hope he won't go 3-D! Just do LOS for buildings like ASL does it. You already have the LOS with hills down so don't make it any more complicated than that.
2. Matrix or someone to set up a multi-player server.

[Krasny]

Let's get the UI fixed before squawking about multi-player!

[jascou]

ORIGINAL: Cafe

As a suggestion - why not reproduce the counter artwork in the bottom left pane and allow a single click to select/deselect individual units (with a highlight to indicate selection)?

This UI change could be used whenever selecting a hex and if you included markers as well, would provide a visual cue rather than having to read text - besides it makes use of the excellent UI art that is already there (no extra assets) and keeps the whole thing consistent with what is happening on the board.

I think that this is a great suggestion, and would make the user interactions smoother. Far easier to click on a counter image than a line of text.

[iPhoneAppz]

ORIGINAL: Gerry

Would be nice if this was stickied as an official thread.

Biggest requests for round 2:
1. Multi-level buildings - when I asked for this months ago Peter IIRC mentioned doing this when he went 3-D (I may have misread). I hope he won't go 3-D! Just do LOS for buildings like ASL does it. You already have the LOS with hills down so don't make it any more complicated than that.
2. Matrix or someone to set up a multi-player server.

You don't even need a multi-player server. Player hosted multiplayer would work fine in this game.

[Gerry4321]

How would that work? Thanks.

ORIGINAL: iPhoneAppz

You don't even need a multi-player server. Player hosted multiplayer would work fine in this game.

[iPhoneAppz]

ORIGINAL: Gerry

How would that work? Thanks.

ORIGINAL: iPhoneAppz

You don't even need a multi-player server. Player hosted multiplayer would work fine in this game.

Two players connect to each other. One acts as the server, the other, the client.