User-friendliness

[Ovocean]

This is a thread to make propositions on user-friendly features, to highlight things that we liked or missed in other games.

My top recommandations :

- Customizable shortcuts. (Camera controls included)
- Fast main menu navigation.
- As much options as possible such as camera scrolling speed, hiding parts of the interface, camera locked or free, size of the minimap...


I'm quite an extremist but I'm tending to be turned off fast when a game fails at giving me a feel of comfort and freedom in choosing my prefered way of playing and using the interface.
Last one in date was DoWII, with it's absence of customizable keyboard shortcuts, impossibility to save in mid-mission, minimalist player manual and tutorial, long loading times, and GFWL on top... I'll have a hard time finding motivation to start the campaign.

[nickson104]

Originally Posted by Ovocean

This is a thread to make propositions on user-friendly features, to highlight things that we liked or missed in other games.

My top recommandations :

- Customizable shortcuts. (Camera controls included)
- Fast main menu navigation.
- As much options as possible such as camera scrolling speed, hiding parts of the interface, camera locked or free, size of the minimap...


I'm quite an extremist but I'm tending to be turned off fast when a game fails at giving me a feel of comfort and freedom in choosing my prefered way of playing and using the interface.
Last one in date was DoWII, with it's absence of customizable keyboard shortcuts, impossibility to save in mid-mission, minimalist player manual and tutorial, long loading times, and GFWL on top... I'll have a hard time finding motivation to start the campaign.

This to me would be absoloutely wasted, I rarely ever use keyboard shortcuts as I have a terrible memory and I tend to hit them accidentally at inopportune times...

However it would be a nice feature for others who would appreciate its value

[Ovocean]

@Nickson : If you play strategy games online, not using keyboard shortcuts reduces your overall level, really. It requires some courage to learn to use them and to customize them to your play style, but the reward is great. And once you've learned to use your keyboard, that's a lifetime bonus as you can generally keep the same or approaching key mapping from game to game (if they allow for custom shortcuts).

[nickson104]

Originally Posted by Ovocean

@Nickson : If you play strategy games online, not using keyboard shortcuts reduces your overall level, really. It requires some courage to learn to use them and to customize them to your play style, but the reward is great. And once you've learned to use your keyboard, that's a lifetime bonus as you can generally keep the same or approaching key mapping from game to game (if they allow for custom shortcuts).

I know, it is a great hinderance when playing against guys who really do know what they are doing (thankfully that is a very small ratio compared to the clueless players) I can play well just not so fast so I lose that advantage and it becomes slightly harder

[Joseph Visscher]

Dawn of Fantasy will most likely have fully or semi customizable controls, the editor already does. one thing I love about the editor is the Play Test button, you press it and it will load up the map in game without any starting intro screens or menus, it just loads the map and plays it how it would if you entered the game normally, I know a lot of game editors already have that but the ones that don't are missing out, heh.

[Puppeteer]

ME WANTS TEH EDITORZ XD XD
Sounds all so wonderifulous.

I rarely ever use keyboard shortcuts

I'm the opposite, I try to minimise mouse-action as much as I can.

[nickson104]

Originally Posted by Puppeteer

ME WANTS TEH EDITORZ XD XD
Sounds all so wonderifulous.


I'm the opposite, I try to minimise mouse-action as much as I can.

Thats my favourite part! XD I couldnt ruin my fun by reducing my mouse clicks

[LiTos456]

Are you guys going to have camera tools? To make movies and such...

[raving]

i think they do, since the fan movies are made with the editor. or atleast i think it was with the editor ><. Damn my memory

[Joseph Visscher]

Originally Posted by LiTos456

Are you guys going to have camera tools? To make movies and such...

Originally Posted by raving

i think they do, since the fan movies are made with the editor. or atleast i think it was with the editor ><. Damn my memory

Yea, of course we do, we have camera tracks that blend from one camera marker into the other then to the other and so on. The editor has a cinematic view which allows you to fly around the level at any angle and anyplace, it has 3 buttons to accompany it: Environment setting (change time of day lighting etc), Edit mode (continue building your map), and cinematic marker which creates a new camera at what you are looking at which can later be scripted into a large camera track cinematic going from 1 camera to the next.