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Dev App 1.3.7 (392)

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Queso:

--- Quote from: Watchmaker on July 17, 2014, 10:59:17 am ---- Tar Barrel is now click-to-activate on a 3-second cooldown; damage lasts for 3 seconds after each use.

--- End quote ---
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.

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