RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc

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RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/13/2007 12:57:02 PM

EUBanana

Posts: 4552
Joined: 9/30/2003
From: Little England
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It's a good game. I'm still playing it after the best part of a month, thats actually pretty unusual for me and games. It's lasted a lot longer than Dawn of War did so far.

My only issue with the UI was that you had to cycle through all your units when refitting them, that really was a pain in the bum. But thats been fixed in the patch so you can refit them individually now, so far as I'm concerned the interface is peachy. It took me about 20 minutes to grok what the little numbers on the counters mean, but as theres only readiness, strength and entrenchment level really thats not so hard.

I don't think the game is really all that complex or unintuitive, the learning curve is much less than something like Hearts of Iron 2, which is really a much more complex game IMHO. People don't complain about the UI on HoI2 much that I've seen...

_____________________________

(in reply to FrankHunter)

Post #: 31

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/13/2007 2:04:40 PM

Hanal

Posts: 2312
Joined: 11/1/2003
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I actually have put the game on hold for the moment because I have been using my limited gaming time for a couple of other titles, but I am always thinking about GoA and how I'm going to tackle my next campaign. Most games, like the women I've gone out with, don't have me thinking about them when they are not around, but GoA has that appeal to keep me drawn in, even though I have temporarily kept my hands off it!

(in reply to EUBanana)

Post #: 32

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/13/2007 2:33:04 PM

hjaco

Posts: 872
Joined: 3/23/2007
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I am still addicted with this little gem despite its shortcomings

So music, graphic, manual, interface and all that are not quite up to standard as the genre is to used to these days but all this is only potentially going to add value to a good product - it can not get a lousy product to be good on its own hand.

As with everything else in life you get what you pay for or rather you can't expect to get more than that. This game comes very cheap compared to most games on the market so you can't really expect all the extra chrome on top of that too.

Lack music - well play some MP3 instead.

Dissatisfied with the manual ? Well when did you the last time get your hands on a manual which really suited exactly your needs ?

Graphics - hey concentrate on the game dude !

And interface is no problem after all it's only moving around in Europe. But it would have been handy with a hotkey to enter the strategic map - it closes again automatically when you select a spot on the map so that would have saved some movement.

But hey - I am having great fun playing this game and that's all that matters to me

(in reply to Hanal)

Post #: 33

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/13/2007 5:12:07 PM

*Lava*

Posts: 1924
Joined: 2/9/2004
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Hi!

Just some comments and observations...

I noted that the original post failed to mention an innovative command and control system, which, IMHO, is the heart of the game and separates it from all the rest.

I really hope this isn't the last time we see such a system (but sadly I don't think we will because it is too challenging for the player). It is really quite revolutionary and, IMHO, is the best simulation of command and control I have ever seen in a wargame at the grand strategy level. And there is the rub... too much thinking and not enough counter pushing.

Of, course, this system puts a lot of limitations on the player. It forces him to really think out a strategy, to plan way ahead, especially for the summer campaign season, and to allocate his very precious strategic points in attempting to meet his goals.

Now nobody has really delved into this aspect of the game, its' truly innovative command and control system, on these boards, and it is IMHO, a real shame.

If you get into a PBEM game, you will rapidly understand just how radical this command system is. Believe me, you do not need to mouse scroll all over the map. You find yourself staring at a front, thinking about your strategy, then switching to another front via the jump map, and again... staring at it... your brain just whirling around trying to figure how to proceed.

My personal opinion is that the game system requires a lot of thinking, more than what the casual wargamer may want to put in.

No insult intended here, but a 24 hour impression of this game is almost worthless.

But what we do see here, and I have seen this on other game boards, is that folks now adays are just unwilling to put the effort into understanding how to play a game... any game.

An example, Mad Minute Game's Take Command Series. If you had watched that forum from day one and followed studiously throughout the evolution of the two games they produced you will see that the majority of the folks only play half the game. MMG's games can be broken up into two quite different games (mechanics wise) at the point in which the player cannot micromanage every unit on the field.. the Corps and Army level. At the brigade and division level, folks are free and have the time to micromanage to their hearts desire, and this is the game they play. But the Army/Corps level requires a far greater understanding of how the units work autonomously (ai controlled) and it is quite apparent, that folks just aren't willing or care to learn how to play at the level. It requires a far deeper understanding of the game, and thus goes neglected.

It appears to me that the a large percentage of folks have a threshold of about one or two sessions with a game in which they expect to, in general, be able to understand all major features. When that doesn't happen the game is shelved and/or they find reasons to try to explain why they couldn't grasp the methodology in the time it takes to eat a Big Mac.

GoA is not your normal wargame. It is a completely different system; a far superiour system of simulating war at the grand strategy level. Unfortunately, while folks beg for innovation in wargames, when they get it, the "Big Mac" mentality of game playing means they don't have the time to actually appreciate it.

This doesn't apply just to wargaming (where folks have built an urban legend that their "thinking" games set them aside from the rest), it now, IMO, applies to all games. The "Big Mac" mentality is here to stay, whether you are an FPS affectionado or a wargames grognard.

I guess we need to get used to that.

Again, this is merely my observation of folks who play games and the feedback I see on the forums of many games. Nothing personal intended.

Ray (alias Lava)

(in reply to hjaco)

Post #: 34

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 12:37:07 AM

pelle75

Posts: 97
Joined: 7/14/2006
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I made my second attempt tonight at playing this game. This thread seems like a good place to put my comments instead of creating a new.

First good impression: It works perfectly in WINE in Linux! Great! Of course native Linux (and MacOS etc) support would have been better, and hardly difficult to do, but being able to play at all without rebooting to Windows is wonderful. I think the scale of the game is perfect (more/smaller units would have been too much work to keep track of on a computer screen), and I have looked forward to playing this a long time. I own three boardgames covering the same situation (strategic WW1 in Europe) and a forth that was recently released and should arrive here any day, but I have always wanted a computer game as well (to play against the AI only... human opponents are a lot more fun to play over a real gameboard IMHO). I am very happy that this game was published, and I didn't hesitate to buy it the same day I finally noticed it had been released (a month late... but anyway).

But then... The UI... I thought it was the fact that I played in a Windows Emulator that caused many of the problems. But after installing and playing in Windows XP I realised that it was just as bad there. Both my games ended before turn two, as I just couldn't stand fighting the UI, and I have played wargames on the computer for 20+ years so I should be able to cope with almost anything (or so I thought). :(

First warning was when starting the game I have to click the arrow to go on to setup. Why? It is nice that in 1.1 I at least get a popup first telling me what to do, but why not put me in setup mode directly? If I want to see the map without units there is a button to do so. This isn't a killer really, but it got me worried about the UI quality of the game.

It is not easy to guess which buttons are nation-specific and which applies to all my nations. It seems as if the diplomatic screen is common to Germany/A-H when playing CP, but it appears with the buttons that show up only when a nation is selected.

Limited, if any, keyboard support. I hate to have to bring up the context menu to order units around. Perhaps there are undocumented keyboard shortcuts? Perhaps they can be added in 1.2? It would make the game many times more playable if I could hit M for move or B for barrage etc (no F-keys though please... single letters are very nice and easy to remember). Same for bringing up the different dialogs (and again, no F-keys please).

There is very little feedback about what is going on. It would be nice if the selected unit were highlighted.
It would be nice if when I select an artillery unit I would somehow see what hex it has been ordered to barrage (if any). etc

There is no good and consistent way of getting out of dialogs. When I press the production button I can get back to the game by hitting ESC. If I press the refit button and then press ESC I get a question if I want to quit the game. It would be nice if ESC (or backspace or the right mouse button or ...) could always and consistently be used to do "back"/"cancel" and some other key for "OK". I don't want to chase a small OK/Cancel button with the mouse pointer. :( A consistent way of deselecting things would also be nice (sometimes right-click seems to work, sometimes left-clicking outside of selectable hexes).

And while at the subject of the dialogs: most of them are not very easy to use and give very little feedback. Sometimes I click a button and it seems like nothing happend, and I do not know if it did or not. And important things such as the cost of upgrades can only be seen in the manual (or the faq).

The diplomatic screen shows only countries that are neutral. Shouldn't there be any way of getting a report on which countries are currently with me or against me in the war?

And since I can not interact with the game board while in a dialog, why not let the dialog cover the entire screen instead? That way perhaps they could have enough room for all the needed details?

When setting up pre-game there is firstly the problem of no visual indication of which unit is selected. Then there is no way (I have found) to easily pick units within stacks. I can right-click to "shuffle" (more like "cycle through" it seems), but then when I left-click I get the same topmost unit anyway (not the unit shown after the shuffle). To move units around I end up doing a game of Towers of Hanoi to get the units I want where I want them. (The small positive effect of this is that it gives the game a nice boardgame-like feeling. :) ).

The warnings when going from the activation phase without having allocated all air support or activated all HQs could provide more information, or be removed. I still haven't quite figured out how air support works, other than that I sometimes can click an enemy stack and select air recognozation. And why is there a warning when I have not activated all HQs? Perhaps it should be more important to warn me when I have not set all artillery units to barrage, or moved all activated units, after the orders phase? Perhaps it would be better to just have a generic "are you sure" when the player wants to end a phase?

The whole naval aspect of the game is just confusing. Nowhere in the ui or in the manual are there enough information to tell me anything about what is a reasonable strategy to use for my ships. The ui does not give me much feedback on what is going on. I do see some counterstacks at sea that seem to indicate which units are located there, but there seem to be no way to issue orders to them there or even inspect their current status/missions. The naval dialog isn't very useful either. I think removing this part of the game would be an improvement (perhaps make it optional in the future?) and let us concentrate on ground forces. Or make the ships appear as tokens on the board the same way ground units do to make the UI more consistent perhaps?

I have tried to figure out how terrain works. It seems cavalry can never enter non-open hexes. I have not been able to find any movement advantages of cavalry that I see mentioned in the forum, as I only seem to be able to move units one hex per turn regardless of type (and I haven't been able to strat move at all, but perhaps the CP do not get any rail points until later in the game?). It would be nice to have a table of the terrain effects, like is common in boardgames. I know I can see terrain effects after a battle, but that is of little help when planning, and it still does not tell me the effects of terrain plus river crossing (or terrain plus town) when both may apply as far as I can tell. (What effect does rivers have, btw?)

It is not easy to tell if there is some kind of "ZOC" in the game. Will hexes adjacent to my units be difficult for the enemy to move through or trace supply through? It would be good to have an idea of the rules on how supply can be traced and not.

I still wonder what the big grey area in the lower left of the board is used for. Perhaps it will become obvious later in the game?

I will give GoA another chance after next patch (and each following patch), but in its current state it just is not playable. Sorry if I sound too negative. :( I hope to return here with many positive comments after the next (or some later next) patch. :) I'm sure there is a nice game somewhere hidden below the UI. It seems promising after reading the comments from those that have managed to play it.

(in reply to *Lava*)

Post #: 35

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 1:09:20 AM

pelle75

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And a note to Lava about Big Mac mentality: I have no (or very few) problems with Operational Art of War 3, or with most older games I have played, including some using a WEGO system. I have no problems playing huge boardgames with rulebooks many times the size of the GoA manual. I have no problem with the complexity of this game, or the way the turns are strucured, and I did read the manual (and FAQ, and forum posts) before trying to play it. I only wish the user interface provided me with the neccessary feedback and shortcuts to make the game enjoyable. This is not a case of me expecting to be able to start the game and immediately understand everything. I actually prefer a user interface that has a steep learning curve if it allows me to later use the software in a better way ("user friendly" is better than "newbie friendly") (check out the 3D modeller Blender for a great example... or the GNU Emacs text editor... both applications that can scare any newbie away, but are extremely fast and easy to use once you have spent a few weeks practicing). So the problems I (and others) have described does in my mind have nothing to do with any kind of "big mac mentality". And I do like the structure of the game and it seems superior to other strategic games I have played (except, well, possibly, for the naval subgame), and the use of HQ activations is very nice, and it is one of my favorite mechanic from other games.

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 36

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 1:39:47 AM

jchastain

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From: Marietta, GA
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That's actually one of the better posts I have seen providing an unemotional critique of the UI with illustrative examples. Thanks. I think that kind of feedback is useful for the developer as well an the entire community.

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 37

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 1:47:59 AM

SMK-at-work

Posts: 3396
Joined: 8/28/2000
From: New Zealand
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I can't agree - the poster is clearly confused....WW1 without the naval aspect - ie no U-boats??� not going to work.�

I dont' have the manual to hand so can't comment on many of his points, but for example the advantages to cavalry IIRC are quite well laid out - they can enter enemy owned open terrain if htey start the move stacked with infantry - infantry would require expenditure of activations points to do the same.� What's unclear about that?

He hasn't played long enough to get to a 2nd strategic phase - he complains of no strat movement and no means to give orders to naval units showing in the seas....yet IIRC these are explained in the manual?

All in all it's someone with minimal experience complaining about things that he has not played the game enough to know about.

He states he's played a lot of complicated wargames......as have many of us....and that, for example, TOAW 3 is fine with him....but I wonder if he was so comfortable with it after 2 sessions of only a little time each?� Did he really come to grips with the subtleties of artillery support in that game so soon?� I know I didn't - it took me months, along with many other aspects!!

IMO anyone who complains about a game interface after "my second attempt" should really�not post....there's no reason why you should be familiar with hte game interface so quickly at all.

Pellen to answer some of your questions:

1/ Cavalry can move into an open terrain enemy controlled hex without needing to be activated if they start the move stacked with an infantry corps....that is their only advantage.

2/ Yes everythign only moves 1 hex/impulse

3/ There is no strategic movement for anybody on Turn 1 - all railways, shipping, etc is assumed to be used for eth mobilisatino processes that will be happening

4/ Naval orders are given only in strategic phases - you cannot do anything with the ships and their presence on the map is just to show you some indication of who is where. the naval aspect is VERY important to this game - you can force the UK out of the war if you have a successful U-boat campaign, and allied landings against Turkey etc can be a bit more decisive than Gallipoli was!!

5/ There are no ZOC's - a hex is either owned by you or the other guy. If you own it you can trace supply through it.

6/ Air works like this - you allocate air points to a front. Each air point you allocate has a chance of getting you 1 recce report - the higher your air tech the better thr chance. Each recce report can reveal teh contents of 1 enemy occupied hex adjacent to your front lines, and improves the effect of artillery bombardments on that hex. At tech level 2 and above air points also have a chance of shooting down enemy air points, thus decreasing their recce abilities.

7/ The status of countries at war is displyed in the Victory screen on the top bar - it's the right-most one most of hte time - except in the strategic phase when more buttons are available to deal with strat phase matters.

8/ The big grey area at the botom left of the map is nothing - just an area that has no effect on the war at all so eth map maker didn't bother filling it in.

< Message edited by SMK-at-work -- 9/17/2007 2:08:28 AM >

(in reply to jchastain)

Post #: 38

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 2:30:31 AM

pelle75

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SMK, I can understand your reasoning, but I still think the designer(s) should listen to these comments from newbies, especially about the user interface. I probably should have left out some of the comments on terrain rules, cavalry or naval units, as these may become obvious later (possibly even by just rereading the manual, yes). My goal was to be constructive, and I apologise if jchastain was the only one who think I was.

I needed many hours of playing TOAW3 to even start to understand it, and I still stay away from many scenarios because I have yet to reach a level where I can play them. But after a half game I already had a good idea about its UI and that it was good enough to be worth investing more time in, and as far as I remember it has none of the issues I mentioned here. As an example while the mechanics for battles and time management in that game were completely confusing until reading the manual several times AND getting the help from experienced players, the user interface to issue orders and inspecting planned attacks was obvious the first time I played the game (and reading parts of the manual). Allocating artillery was about as difficult as planning barrages in GoA, but in TOAW3 I can easily see which artillery units are allocated to attacking which hexes, and I can even click on an enemy hex to bring up a very useful screen that shows me all the info I need on what planned attacks (and barrages) I have for that hex and get hints about my chances of success are. Of course I do not expect GoA to get all that (at least not until version 3 :)).

Labeling me as "clearly confused" for wanting to remove the naval aspect... I don't know about that. Paths of Glory only handles naval warfare in a very abstract way by mentioning it on a few cards, As far as I can remember the old Avalon Hill Guns of August hardly mentioned the naval war except in a later expansion. Neither does the recently rereleased Great War in Europe Deluxe boardgame, or the old SPI First World War (as far as I know). The same is true for many WW2 games (computer and board) on a similar scale.

(in reply to SMK-at-work)

Post #: 39

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 2:35:48 AM

pelle75

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Btw thank you for answering my questions. :) It does make me a bit less hostile to the game. Very nice that it actually was possible to see which countries I am at war with. That frustrated me quite a bit. I would probably not have bothered to look much on the victory screen until near the end of the game, so I would most likely not have noticed it otherwise. (Especially when learning a game I care very little about winning or losing.)

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 40

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 2:58:20 AM

pelle75

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Joined: 7/14/2006
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Oh, and now I noticed that I actually do get a warning when not having moved all activated units. Also nice.

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 41

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 3:13:28 AM

FrankHunter

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Joined: 3/26/2004
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quote:

but I still think the designer(s) should listen to these comments from newbies, especially about the user interface

Oh I do. I certainly read all opinions, whether positive or negative. And thank you to everyone who has voiced an opinion on the game or the UI, whether negative or positive. I appreciate it very much. And since I didn't say so before, thank you to Out Of Eight, the Wargamer and Jim Cobb for taking the time to review the game. I appreciated all 3 reviews.

As for Linux, I have been running a Linux box for almost 10 years and have tried about 30 distributions on it. I did work on a Linux version of Guns of August that is PBEM-compatible with the Windows version and I still hope to get it finished.

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 42

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 3:23:36 AM

jchastain

Posts: 2164
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From: Marietta, GA
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SMK -
You are right that many of his points are merely misunderstandings or questions. And I think your responses were very helpful and I applaud you for taking the time to share your experience. But I also believe he had some constructive points regarding UI. Though I would not expect you to know this, I have actually been focusing on UI items across many of the matrix forums recently - my interest in this topic is not focused exclusively (or even primarily) on GOA. And I think there are some constructive items presented by pellen that might prove constructive (either for a patch or merely as a lesson learned for the future).

And I think that someone posting "after two attempts" is actually the perfect time. Such a player will always suffer from some misconceptions, but you get a much more clear picture of how intuitive your interface is from such a player than you do from someone who is more experienced and has already accepted and adjusted to the game's flow. From a more practical standpoint, I can tell you that many reviewers will have essentially this same level of experience when they make pronouncements on the game's value. For a lot of reasons, this is the type of feedback that I would want as a developer.

The point about there not being a consistent manner for exiting a dialog is an excellent observation. Over time, players do adjust and get accustomed to a game's quirks, but this is one of those things that doesn't add anything to the game while making it more difficult for newbies. And it is also one of those things that a more experienced player just adjusts to and will often not think to mention.

The point about not having visual cues as to what action impact a single nation or an entire alliance is also useful in my mind. Again, this is one of those things that players will grow accustomed to, but that a little more forethought in UI design (such as subtle application of color or capitalization) could make clearer without having any negative consequences.

The request for additional context information such as highlighting selected units and better indicating barrage orders again are valid in my mind and apply to both new and experienced users. Again, not a deal breaker but a useful comment.

Finally, as has been discussed in other threads, the screen real estate of "the large grey box" likely could have been put to better use. It doesn't make the game bad that it wasn't - rather it might have been better had this element of the interface been further considered.

I don't mean for my or pellen's comments to be taken as overly negative for this game. With many independent developers who have no budget for UI design and testing, it would be surprising if Matrix consistently released games with great UIs. But Frank is a power house in the industry and I think he might benefit from some constructive feedback and it might help make his future titles even better. Or perhaps some of this will help other developers who just happen to be reading the news regarding other titles. Perhaps some of the items might even be easy to address and might be improved in a patch for this game. For any of those cases though, it is useful to have a candid discussion of what might have been done better. And that is the unemotional conversation I am hoping to have here. Not because I am disappointed that this game isn't perfect - that's too high of an expectation for anyone to meet. But rather, because we all continue to improve by looking for opportunities to do so.

(in reply to SMK-at-work)

Post #: 43

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 3:50:24 AM

SMK-at-work

Posts: 3396
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From: New Zealand
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Yes I know the UI isn't perfect.......even I can see areas where improvements could be made...although I've no idea how easily.....

But it really does irk me that people will charge straight on in after only minimal experience of the game when the UI is generally adequate....pellen isn't the first....so my apologies if it seems I gave you the sharp end of the stick a bit....

The UI DOES give you info - you click on a unit and it tells you what you can do. Sure having "esc" as a standard escape from dialogue windows would be more conventient.....but that doesnt' make it uniintuitive or inadequate.

(in reply to jchastain)

Post #: 44

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 3:58:45 AM

pat.casey

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Ignorant users are going to give you your *best* UI feedback though. It's why professionals will go to ridiculous lengths to put new users in front of a UI to see how they react.

The idea behind a good UI isn't that a reasonably smart user with access to the manual can figure it out. The idea is that he shouldn't have to.

(in reply to SMK-at-work)

Post #: 45

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 4:04:38 AM

SMK-at-work

Posts: 3396
Joined: 8/28/2000
From: New Zealand
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no one here is ignorant - pellen was able to work the system and get results.

IMO if you're not going to RTFM then that's all you're goign to get out of any game...some results that seem confusing because you don't know what they represent or how you got them.

Almost all wargames are complex and require you to RTFM - I've been gaming for longer than I care to recall, and I've never seen a game of any kind (board, computer, miniatures) that you can pick up and play competantly without either having someone there to hold your hand or RTFM.

< Message edited by SMK-at-work -- 9/17/2007 4:05:57 AM >

(in reply to pat.casey)

Post #: 46

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 4:19:55 AM

pelle75

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Thank you, Frank!

Somehow the total number of small things just reached a level where I felt happier spending time on writing very long posts here than playing the game. I must however admit that I couldn't resist playing the game again after writing my last comment here...

(in reply to pat.casey)

Post #: 47

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/17/2007 7:49:23 AM

ColinWright

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This is very trivial -- but also very easy to fix.

I was just looking at the screenshots -- probably wouldn't have bought the game anyway. However, it didn't help that 'dreadnought' is misspelled in those screenshots. It's pretty pathetic when the ads for a commercial product contain misspellings.

_____________________________

I am not Charlie Hebdo

(in reply to pelle75)

Post #: 48

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/18/2007 1:35:24 PM

ravinhood

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quote:

IMO if you're not going to RTFM then that's all you're goign to get out of any game...some results that seem confusing because you don't know what they represent or how you got them.

QFT exactly. Too many IGMO's expect to be able to play the game an understand the UI from just opening up the box and loading it on their machine. Lava calls it the "Big Mac" syndrome. I call it "Consoleitus" syndrome. The lazy boys game box, plug it in and play, no thought required. lol

< Message edited by ravinhood -- 9/18/2007 1:36:49 PM >

(in reply to ColinWright)

Post #: 49

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/20/2007 7:51:18 PM

offbase

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quote:

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

I started the game in 1997, worked on it for about 18 months and then switched to working on my 1806 game instead.� Then I worked on it for a few more months before switching to work on 1809.� Then for another year, maybe a little more, after 1809 was done.� It was then that I made some changes to the design and rewrote the AI and did some playtesting.� Then I was tied up with another game for a long time and finally came back to finishing GoA over the last 18 months.� So all in all it took me about 4 years.

I think the fact that the game was begun in 1997 says a lot; probably the interface was conceptualized in the early phases, and the developer preferred to stick with it, rather than restart from scratch? This sounds like a great game but I don't think I would like using the interface. Maybe at some point the interface could be modernized in order to make it a real winner.

(in reply to FrankHunter)

Post #: 50

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/20/2007 8:43:58 PM

FrankHunter

Posts: 2111
Joined: 3/26/2004
Status: offline

I wish I could say that was the case but really its just that I'm not great at writing interfaces.

(in reply to offbase)

Post #: 51

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/20/2007 11:27:59 PM

therockyfroggy

Posts: 57
Joined: 7/26/2007
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: offbase
I think the fact that the game was begun in 1997 says a lot; probably the interface was conceptualized in the early phases, and the developer preferred to stick with it, rather than restart from scratch? This sounds like a great game but I don't think I would like using the interface. Maybe at some point the interface could be modernized in order to make it a real winner.

Again, the UI is fine...it's modern...there are just a few things which would make it nicer..the only thing I would like is edge scrolling. It IS a great game. The interface is simple after you play for a bit......don't let that deter you.

(in reply to offbase)

Post #: 52

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/20/2007 11:34:53 PM

James Ward

Posts: 1183
Joined: 5/9/2000
From: Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: therockyfroggy

quote:

ORIGINAL: offbase
I think the fact that the game was begun in 1997 says a lot; probably the interface was conceptualized in the early phases, and the developer preferred to stick with it, rather than restart from scratch? This sounds like a great game but I don't think I would like using the interface. Maybe at some point the interface could be modernized in order to make it a real winner.

Again, the UI is fine...it's modern...there are just a few things which would make it nicer..the only thing I would like is edge scrolling. It IS a great game. The interface is simple after you play for a bit......don't let that deter you.

It's not a bad UI you just need to play the game for a few turns and you get the hang of it.
Like you I find the scrolling a bit odd but it's not like the map is huge. You can scroll arcoss the whole thing in about a second or two.

(in reply to therockyfroggy)

Post #: 53

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/21/2007 4:48:11 AM

Joel Rauber

Posts: 195
Joined: 10/4/2000
From: Brookings, SD, USA
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: James Ward

quote:

ORIGINAL: therockyfroggy

. . .

Again, the UI is fine...it's modern...there are just a few things which would make it nicer..the only thing I would like is edge scrolling. It IS a great game. The interface is simple after you play for a bit......don't let that deter you.

It's not a bad UI you just need to play the game for a few turns and you get the hang of it.
Like you I find the scrolling a bit odd but it's not like the map is huge. You can scroll arcoss the whole thing in about a second or two.

I find myself using the jump map for the most part.

_____________________________

Any relationship between what I say and reality is purely coincidental.

Joel Rauber

(in reply to James Ward)

Post #: 54

RE: First 24 hours -- First Impressions, Bugs, Etc - 9/21/2007 1:17:33 PM

pelle75

Posts: 97
Joined: 7/14/2006
Status: offline

Keyboard scrolling is no big issue to me, or none at all actually.

Regarding my long list of ui whining above I have figured out how to shuffle stacks and move the unit I intend to move while deploying now. It just wasn't obvious to me, but I do it correctly now most of the time. It is probably in the manual somewhere as well.

... and even thought I wrote I could not play it without some ui patches, I have not been able to resist playing the game anyway.