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Igard -> RE: Wow...! (11/5/2010 9:50:41 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel


quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard


quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

What is WitP AE?


War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition. It looks like a massively complex game that I would love to play if only I weren't terrified of it.


I normally like micromanagement and massively complex games but even it's pre-pre-cursor, Uncommon Valor, made me want to tear my hair out. Mainly because it felt like I was fighting the interface instead of the AI. It was so sluggish and buttloads of slowly responding clicks eventually persuaded me to shelve it. This coming from someone who actually enjoyed 'Star Wars Rebellion' ages ago when it was getting shot down by reviewers for it's clunky interface. [:D]


I enjoyed SW Rebellion too only it was called 'Supremacy' in the UK. I actually preferred it to Empire at War.



Aures -> RE: Wow...! (11/6/2010 12:55:56 AM)

Yeah Rebellion is awesome. I didn't find the interface too clunky, the only thing that got me was the inability to do anything while paused (probably my most hated feature of any management game, ruined The Movies for me as well as many other games).

I must finish that last game I was playing, as I recall I had nearly wiped out the empire and was considering "farming" them for kicks.



LoBaron -> RE: Wow...! (11/6/2010 3:57:30 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: NefariousKoel


quote:

ORIGINAL: Igard


quote:

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

What is WitP AE?


War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition. It looks like a massively complex game that I would love to play if only I weren't terrified of it.


I normally like micromanagement and massively complex games but even it's pre-pre-cursor, Uncommon Valor, made me want to tear my hair out. Mainly because it felt like I was fighting the interface instead of the AI. It was so sluggish and buttloads of slowly responding clicks eventually persuaded me to shelve it. This coming from someone who actually enjoyed 'Star Wars Rebellion' ages ago when it was getting shot down by reviewers for it's clunky interface. [:D]



AE does have the same basic interface setup as UV, but there were a lot of enhancements which makes it more comfortable now. The sluggishness is gone because some of the dev wizards found that
you can accelerate the GUI with a few simple additional commands to the .exe, and there are many more well though out shortcuts available through the menues that let you get the information
you need. And for everything else theres free 3rd party software, like WitP Tracker.

Still the GUI is not up to date and does not live up to DW. The one thing I want if there is ever a WitP 2 would be a GUI which is highly customizable and based on todays W7 or snow leopard standards.


But even with this small drawbacks its probably no exaggeration to call it THE top WWII strategy game. I donīt know anything that compares even remotely on scale, detail, accuracy and excitement when
you go to war in multiplayer. The FOW and the level of uncertainty - when considering the opponents actions - which accompanies every single operation make your skin crawl sometimes... [;)]




Aures -> RE: Wow...! (11/6/2010 6:24:22 PM)

Speaking of slick user interfaces for complex systems have you ever seen the Microsoft Dynamics NAV database interface? It is awesome, that is where database interfaces are heading. It is not far removed from causing serious database users to get excited in their pants.

Any complex management game needs a database component so many games would greatly benefit from using industry best practice in their user interfaces. Sadly games are rather slow on the uptake and the people designing the interfaces in games are rarely familiar with heavy duty database interfaces. DW is pretty slick compared to most games I have seen but it is primitive even compared to the legacy database software I work with, never mind the next gen product.

We will probably see games using 2010's best practice for industry interfaces somewhere in the 2020's at the rate things are going. Sadly no one is paying gamers for all the extra time they waste slogging through the interface. Industry has billions of dollars in productivity savings driving improvements to user interfaces. Games would be much better off ripping off industry standards wholesale rather than slowly working out the problems industry applications solved 15 or more years ago.

I still remember playing sim isle and having to do a mouse click for every single amount you want to purchase (ie you want 10,000 lumber = click to buy 100 lumber 100 times and 10,000 is not a lot of lumber). At least games have generally moved beyond that, although keen observers may note adding 1,000,000 cash to a diplomacy offer in DW also requires 100 mouse clicks...



LoBaron -> RE: Wow...! (11/8/2010 5:35:41 AM)

DBīs are changing fast, true. The problem is that at the moment a DB exists in its basic structure it gets modified but not radically changed anymore.
Never heard of NAV but thts not really a surprize, at work we are using an older SQL DB, at least updated to the latest toad version, which helps, but it
is more a maze than a DB tbh. Always have to grin when I have to join 5 different tables to get an information which should by sheer logic be stored in
one. [;)]

By coincidence I fired up BotF recently. Amazing how interfaces have changed from back then. I could not force myself to do more than a few mouseklicks, wondering
how the hell I was able to play this game and shelving it after a couple of minutes. It felt like they deliberately hid the most useful functions far in the dephts of the interface
in order to make the player pay for daring to look at them. What a clickfest! [X(]



Aures -> RE: Wow...! (11/8/2010 8:43:10 AM)

Lol LoBaron. You should see the stuff I work with, either a meld of SQL with Foxpro or pure SQL with a bunch of .net interface stuff. Loads of fun, at least the table structures I work with are well suited for the purpose (although there are cases where you are trying to efficiently join back onto the same table half a dozen times or more).

NAV is a financials/ERP package and the kind of flexibility it offers end users for viewing stuff (rather than people who actually know what they are doing making reports etc) is amazing. You can take a free online test drive if you are interested. It is the kind of stuff I would really love to see in interfaces for complex games.

Getting into interface ergonomics has near ruined a whole bunch of games for me, the kind of thing that would have a business client refusing to accept the product is almost par for the course in games. When you think back to how logical and easy to use the interface for some old management games is (take your pick but I've got bullfrog games in mind atm, such a shame they are no longer with us) the quagmire of modern games is enough to make you tear your hair out.

I for one did not find going through my list of agents every turn in Medieval Total War a fun experience. Scroll list, select unit, move unit, list regenerates and resets position to top (despite it being totally unnecessary as no information on the list has changed), scroll list until you find the next unit on the list, etc etc. Doing that 200 times a turn really sucks the fun out of stuff. Sadly there are a few cases where DW has similar issues. That the interface for DW is better than the vast majority of games with this level of complexity is more a testament to how backward the games industry is than to how good the interface in DW is (although in some areas the DW interface is nearly ideal and I wouldn't want to discount those).



oxenshtrudel -> RE: Wow...! (11/8/2010 9:39:40 AM)

Wow, I thought Foxpro was dead and buried now. In my old work they had a foxpro based product 10 years ago and it was old then too. Think the last customer upgraded 5 years ago from that system.

I wrote a simple WAP interface for that system though. My boss loved that he could show a small portion of the system on his phone when he was selling the system to new customers. So the interface was a big success even though no one ever bought that part...



Aures -> RE: Wow...! (11/8/2010 10:15:00 AM)

Yeah Foxpro is dead, but the legacy product using it is over a decade old and is still being supported and developed. Perfectly serviceable for most purposes, though I can't say my skills in writing queries based on Foxpro/SQL mixed syntax are very marketable[:)]. But programming languages are easy, the ability to learn a new one is far more important than what you know. Luckily people are starting to realise that having someone competent is far more important than having someone who has been trained in whatever language they are using. Odd that it took a few decades to get back to the same viewpoint everyone had in the early days of computing when no one you could hire had formal training in the system you were using.



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