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Behold the flux of time-space!
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Poll Result
  Wouldn't scaled structures look cool?  
 
Yes, I'm tired of the 6m building producing the 22m units.
26%
 26%  [ 8 ]
Well, the entire population fitting in a building that's the same size as a single person is a bit odd.
6%
 6%  [ 2 ]
It's acceptable that units are always drawn on a larger scale than buildings.
10%
 10%  [ 3 ]
It's a function of parabolic space-time. The buildings are really 400 times larger on the inside than the exterior! Get in gear with the rest of us in non-euclidian reality.
23%
 23%  [ 7 ]
Scale is irrelevant. Quit whining.
23%
 23%  [ 7 ]
I never liked buildings anyway. Can we just have magical ice cream cones that point off the map, in the general direction the cities would be, instead?
10%
 10%  [ 3 ]
 
  Total Votes : 30  

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Message
Poo Bear
Pod Team
Pod Team


Joined: 14 Oct 2002
Posts: 4121
Location: Sheffield, UK



PostPosted: Wed Apr 21, 2004 8:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

StreetZ wrote:

I like how Hegemonia handled unit selection and organization.


It does sound good, but I must comment on this game...

I downloaded the demo for this and was initially very impressed by the visuals and especially the music (very good). Then I looked for the tutorial and found there wasn't one. Oh well, maybe it is all explained as you go or just obvious - NO. I had no idea what was going on and no clue was given. Spinning a camera around in space searching for units while desperately trying to work out what anything does is NOT fun.

I wondered if the full game remedied this problem, so I checked out some reviews. There is no tutorial in the game at all, just numerous references to a 70 page manual. It seemed to get mediocre reviews and just dissapear in a puff of low sales. Shame, because it looks great and was (in theory) a great idea.

I wonder if the same thing will happen with Perimeter, another very pretty RTS (demo available). Again, no tutorial.
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StreetZ



Joined: 28 Jun 2003
Posts: 4
Location: Kansas City, Missouri



PostPosted: Thu Apr 22, 2004 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If I remember correctly, the tutorial is basically the first set of single player missions in the full game. I figured it out fairly quickly and it is a great game. The effects are beautiful, especially when you take out a battleship and it breaks into peices. It's a shame that no body bought it. However, I heard rumors about a Hegemonia 2.

I downloaded the Perimeter Demo and I was really dissapointed. It's got a good idea but I just couldn't see any use for the units. I played the game for about 3 hours straight, and I couldn't get my units passed even a marginally defended base. The base defenses seem too powerfull and units seem too weak.
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callmeminyme



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 150
Location: Kamloops



PostPosted: Fri Apr 23, 2004 8:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i was viewing over this and i was thinking of a possible solution to this whole scale thing, the game Hegolmania really did solve that problem by using icons. let me explain...

sord you want to keep your scale, and i want you to keep ur scale, and the general gaming population wants to keep your scale (to much?)

but if you zoom out to view the battlefield you'll be surpised to find that you no longer can see thoes tiny little solders, the solution of course is to add icons, pictures that display over a unit of... er units when the game detects they would be to small to see, so if you have a unit of tanks, as you zoom out that unit would be replaced by a tank icon with a number under it...

alas, only a sujestion and its likely to late for that...*sigh* oh btw i decided to revisit moonpod, im on a liero Xtreme rave right now! AND IM SMOKIN (im getting into the best clan there is after defeateing both there leaders... i feal special)
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The DataBeaver



Joined: 24 Apr 2004
Posts: 24



PostPosted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 1:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have you ever played Total Annihilation? Despite being seven years old, it's still the greatest RTS I've seen. Far better (as a whole) than any Command & Conquer. I should check out Homeworld 2 though, from what I've read, it could be a great game too.

In TA, you can actually see the unit being constucted in the factory. It starts out as a crude wireframe, but soon nanobots fill the facets and finally give it texture. When the unit is ready, it just walks / drives / floats / flies out of the factory to give way for the next project.

As for supplies, X-Fighter's idea sounds best so far. It's pretty realistic but still doesn't have too negative impact on gameplay. (Or at least I suppose so)

Here's a list of good and bad sides of various RTS games I've played recently. For some aspects, such as random maps, I've only noted the positive side. Some others, like unit diversity, are only noted for the extreme cases

Total Annihilation:
+ A whole lot of units (150 in the basic version)
+ Total of six branches of technology (vehicles, robots, planes, hovers, ships, subs) with up to three tech levels per branch
+ Highly moddable (UTASP brings the total number of units up to 510!)
+ AI is pretty competent (especially with 3rd party add-ons)
+ True 3D maps with real elevations (the graphic is a bitmap though)
+ Really large maps
- Just a bit outdated (made in 1997, as mentioned earlier)
- Factories sometimes get stuck with the swarm of units, requiring player intervention to clean up the mess
- Pathfinding is a bit buggy sometimes

The Settlers IV:
+ Resource management (30 or so different resources, from wood and ore to tools and weapons)
+ Seamless zoom (watch your settlers up close or get a general view of your empire)
+ Trade
+ Many different game modes (conflict, free settle, economic, settlefest)
+ Four sides with unique graphics and spells
+ Multiplayer is saveable
+ Random maps
+ Very high unit limit
- Multiplayer code sucks (basically unplayable with AI players because of desyncs)
- The AI is either too easy or too hard (only two levels selectable)
- Very few units (4 soldiers plus a war machine and a few ships per side)

Command & Conquer Generals:
+ Buildings are freely rotatable
+ Free camera allows you to take a look behind the buildings
- Too similar to the previous C&C games
I haven't played this one very much.

Dungeon Keeper 2:
+ Unique idea
- Multiplayer code is somewhat unstable (not as bad as Settlers IV though)
It's rather hard to compare this game to any other RTS due to it's extreme level of uniqueness.

Well, that's quite a list. There was yet something in my mind but it escaped while writing all that...
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OvermindDL1



Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 138



PostPosted: Mon Apr 26, 2004 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually in terms of 'supply', Conquest: Frontier Wars had a nice system, the game did not do well, but I enjoyed it. Basically you had an HQ type building that had a supply radius around it, any of your ships in that radius (marked by a circle when the HQ was selected) would be resupplied (to be healed they had to dock somewhere). You could also build supply platforms that had the only purpose to supply, and supply ships, to resupply an army that they were following. Supply ran weapons, special weapons used a ton of supply, it was quite a good concept. You should be able to find the game for $10 or something, it is worth more then that in my opinion.
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The DataBeaver



Joined: 24 Apr 2004
Posts: 24



PostPosted: Thu Apr 29, 2004 11:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some more things:

Total Annihilation:
+ Unlimited production queue

Settlers IV:
+ Production queues are global
- Can't specify production order (items are produced in a round-robin fashion)

Homeworld 2:
+ Unlimited and editable production queue
+ All units and resources are retained between missions
- Only one resource
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01d55



Joined: 12 Mar 2004
Posts: 79



PostPosted: Fri Apr 30, 2004 4:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I voted for icecream. Icecream is yummy!

Besides, I was under the impression that unit construction and deployment would take place seperately from actual combat, which is much more realistic in any case. It's generally a good idea to have production as far removed from combat as possible, so they don't get damaged and slow down production. Also, it's hard to train when enemy snipers are covering boot camp.
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jollyreaper



Joined: 20 Jun 2003
Posts: 181



PostPosted: Sun May 30, 2004 3:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Poo Bear wrote:
Making ammo run out sounds like a good idea in theory but in practice it is very irritating, sometimes realism has to be sacrificed to keep it fun. A nice compromise that I'm implementing is to have supply bonuses on all units.


That's the golden rule of game design, don't add anything that's more of an irritation than an aid. Too many features get added because they sound neat but they just don't work in practice. *grumble* Homeworld Cataclysm having two ships merge into super unit *grumble* manually having to upgrade systems on every ship in your fleet *grumble*
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