Dev App 1.3.7 (392)

[Queso]

- Tar Barrel is now click-to-activate on a 3-second cooldown; damage lasts for 3 seconds after each use.

Gotta use primary fire now.

I'll see what can be done about making that point more obvious. The way pilot tools work currently (and always have worked) is a pretty terrible paradigm for certain use cases. This tar barrel change is both to bring it back into a useful state, and to experiment on a larger scale the viability of changing up the current messy state pilot tools have been in. The biggest issues with the current workings is the ability to cause massive damage to your own ship simply by brushing a scroll wheel for forgetting to switch tools. Click to activate abilities have the potential to clean up those issues, as well as provide a more accurate interface for the pilot tools. We figured tar barrel would make the best test case because it was broken to a state where nobody used it, so if didn't work, no harm done. Additionally creating a tar cloud is a fairly obvious case for a discrete action that item switching can't provide without a minimum of 3 button presses for every time you wanted to use it.

Now is this a perfect solution for all use cases, of course not. Already it's obvious that we are going to have to do a bit more to educate users on how it works. Additionally having it follow the new model for only one item creates a very obvious break in uniformity. We're very much looking for feedback and thoughts on this interface change, as well as the balance of tar barrel as a result.

[Milevan Faent]

I had originally expected it to work like 90% of all games, where it's "use it, it does it's thing, cooldown happens". Like, hit 3 (with tar in slot 3), it uses tar, you switch back to your previous (or no) tool immediately after it's done automatically. In this sense, it would be intuitive. Most tools are toggles, some are activate and forgets.

[Queso]

The thing about most games played in a first person perspective is that you usually have to switch to a piece of a equipment before you can use it. Having something happen simply because you switched to it is fairly different from how most games handle it. The other major ways games handle it are having simply pressing the button does something once, and then you return to a neutral state. Something like a granade button in an fps game. It throws a grenade. It doesn't keep throwing grenades until you press the stop throwing grenades button. If that's a direction we want to go, it's also possible. Another direction is more of a MOBA like route. You press a button to prep an ability and then you click to activate it, and then you return to a neutral state. The closes thing to how it works now is a toggle ability in a MOBA, where you press a button to turn on a skill, and then you have to press that same button to turn it off. Almost no game forces you to press a cancel all abilities button. Maybe what we have in game already is the best solution, but we'd like to explore other avenues that give us a bit more freedom of design in creating pilot tools and ease of use for new players who are coming from games of various genres.

[Omniraptor]

My preferred UI for pilot tools would be- press number key to activate, release number key to deactivate. Almost the same as your model, except it only requires one hand and makes it much easier to switch between tools (no fumbling with mouse buttons).

In an FPS, I would want to keep throwing grenades (even if they are limited) as long as I hold down the 'throw grenade' button.

[Queso]

Certainly a possibility, although I think flying would be difficult with say, a finger on the 2 button.

[Omniraptor]

oh, forgot about that... I use mouse buttons for altitude and throttle, only steer with ring and index finger (A/D).

With the new system, I would bind tools to the keys (3), (W), and (S), the column between A/D. So, that would leave my middle finger dedicated to tools, and pinky (SHIFT) for voice chat. Woo hoo, all five fingers have a clear job to do in combat!

p.s. speaking of which, GOI's default keyboard bindings are a thing of cosmic horror. Seriously, for example how am I supposed to change altitude (S) and chat (X) and turns left (D) all at the same time? It's a pretty common combination that is horribly inconvenient to do.

[Milevan Faent]

oh, forgot about that... I use mouse buttons for altitude and throttle, only steer with ring and index finger (A/D).

With the new system, I would bind tools to the keys (3), (W), and (S), the column between A/D. So, that would leave my middle finger dedicated to tools, and pinky (SHIFT) for voice chat. Woo hoo, all five fingers have a clear job to do in combat!

p.s. speaking of which, GOI's default keyboard bindings are a thing of cosmic horror. Seriously, for example how am I supposed to change altitude (S) and chat (X) and turns left (D) all at the same time? It's a pretty common combination that is horribly inconvenient to do.

First thing I did when I got into game was say "nope" to the default controls and immediately change W/S to throttle controls, then put altitude as R/F. As my fingers naturally rest on WASD from sheer habit, this is a pretty easy position for my fingers, but W is "forward" in my mind, while S is back. They do not equal up and down. I basically had no choice but to change that right away. I've never had a problem using X+A+R though to talk while ascending and turning left, though I don't usually use 3 keys at once anyway.

[Queso]

I moved voice chat over to my mouse thumb buttons and switched ascend to s and descend to w. For some reason that made the most sense for my fingers.

[Dementio]

It took me a while to get used to the default settings, but I never changed them. The only things I did change was I disabled the ability to switch tools with the mouse wheel and switch the party voice chat button, because I have a QWERTZ keyboard and I can't press Z like this.

[Richard LeMoon]

As a person that primarily uses scroll wheel for helm tools, click/hold to activate is welcome.

[Velvet]

would agree that there's already enough buttons a pilot has to hold down at any given moment anyway. I could live with scroll /keyboardto select and click to activate but I think that needs to have some good interface change to make the functionality clear.

that said I think you'd make certain situations more difficult under such a system. for example if you want to activate multiple tools in quick succession (moonshine+impact bumpers for a ram, or maybe hydro+moonshine for a fun ram or an escape) the additional button presses slow down the process and add an additional window to make critical mistakes (eg. selecting impact bumpers then switching to moonshine before you remembered to click).
with that in mind, I say remove the scroll wheel and go for the MOBA system of having toggled and activated abilities with keyboard hotkeys. with no scroll wheel there's really no need for the additional confirmation of a left click.
There's a few abilities (hydrogen and chute vent) that really would make more sense as activated abilities rather than toggles.

activated abilities would also add the possibility of cooldowns, which might allow for some more powerful and exciting tools that may be conceivably balanced in skirmish mode but would definitely be a nice addition to coop. eg. massive short duration damage reduction with a 90s cooldown.

[redria]

Tick-box option. As an advocate for click-to-tar, I like it, but now I'm wondering how it would work for me. I have my tools set to key bindings, not scroll wheel. So now I have to hit a button and click to use my tools, which is not much but I'd prefer not to. So the option to choose either would be cool if we could go that route.

[Queso]

Really great feedback so far. I think quick activate with keyboard keys or scroll and click for mouse would be a really cool paradigm because currently mouse wheel is basically impossible unless you are super careful. Tar is still going to ship click to activate just so it's useful again, and we'll look at feedback from there.

[Richard LeMoon]

I see DevApp has just updated to build 380. What changes should we be watching for/testing?

[Watchmaker]

This is a handful of small fixes as we eliminate possible causes of the performance issues so many people are seeing.  In particular, this one contains a fix to a memory leak that was causing extra effects objects to build up from match to match.