News from the skies - (News interface proposal)

[krilain]

Hi there,

For the moment I can only use 2 hours, 4 at max per day so I'm not abble to deal at all with the deep mechanisms of the game. In one other hand I can deal with the surface elements. First of all I must underline that I'm very seduced by the today interface, but if it is very fonctionnal it could be enriched to support (easily I think) more content. You will understand it with the example I give in this topic.

One other of my general goal here as a poster on this forum is to participate (modestly) on making emerge a more clear vision of the design background, storyline and so on. I dont know if I'm doing this well, but I'm trying. The sure thing is that I never played Xcom, and come so like a perfect ignorant of many presupposed. Moreover I'm new here, so I didn't read yet all the interrogations, and for repeating eventually solved issues I apologize. Feel free to tell me when I'm going to already discussed things, and please just tell me in few words the conclusion

Ok that's enough for the biography. The topic content I will show is cross-sections, that's about the story background enrichment, a new artwork framework, and some element of interface. I propose to double the today mail system which is a mail-box style, with a breaking news stlyle one.

Today, we have 2 news systems in geoscape, if I dont mistake :
a - The event little icon at top left of screen - doubed with a list openable at top of screen
b - The mail box

They are not supposed to be melted and that's a good idea because the mail part contains some graphics. But all of this is "news" (announcements). Some are short, some are long. I propose an intermediary interface where the 2 news types can be displayed at a intermediary level that may reflect more the living world beyond the geoscape (which is of course not a live picture of earth).

I won't go further in the general overview, I'm not fluent enought in english, so let's look at these 2 scratch samples I made (in attachment below).

You can see here a newspaper named "News from the skies" in the paper version, and that gives a view on what happen in some parts of the world - mostly aliens destructions. I think that with this sample we could add earth people protection exeptations. Here they will ask for missile defence for instance, there for a radar... I don't know, the possibilities are endless.

Last remark, if such a frame can be added, it could be a place for various background enrichments and artworks, tiny disasters videos for instance. That really adds something in my opinion in the general fear feeling we should have about the alien invasion. It makes it concrete.

Oh I forgot to tell some words about the interface. I think that every news should appear in the short icon+tittle element, and then it is up to the player to open the news window by draging the icon on some news-viewer icon. The double-click is already used, that's why I'm thinking about a drag action.

 

[geever]

The news feed is a completely useless feature which would add heavy work on the team on creating news articles that makes sense.

-geever

[ShipIt]

The pics look (meeeh) to me, but I do not think such a feature would be completely useless. I could imagine those news popping up in case the player misses an alien mission in some way. This would explain e. g. why a certain nations happyness all of a sudden drops down. Or some glorious victory in an epic battle going through the worlds media. Right now we still have the problem the game giving not much information and/or feedback to the player.

But geever is right, it would be a huge amount of work to assemble the messages needed and connect them to geoscape events codewise.

[Anarch Cassius]

Meet halfway?

It would be cool to have more info about world events you might have missed. Turning it in to a newsfeed would be a cool setting thing like the Mail client itself.

It would be a lot of text. Particularly if you expect them to be interesting and unique. But that part isn't truly nessicary.

There was some talk of a records hall for seeing dead soldiers and such. Right now news feed seems to go back to the start of the game but navigating it is a pain.

It seems like making the news more navigable and detailed is a good stepping stone towards actually articles if somebody ever feels really ambitious.

[krilain]

The news feed is a completely useless feature which would add heavy work on the team on creating news articles that makes sense.

-geever

You are right if you mean that it should be a part from a whole mission/campain editor.

But geever is right, it would be a huge amount of work to assemble the messages needed and connect them to geoscape events codewise.

It points the need of a mission editor.
But for special world events spawnig times to times in the campain it could be a mechanism. 

There was some talk of a records hall for seeing dead soldiers and such. Right now news feed seems to go back to the start of the game but navigating it is a pain.

I read about it. A good idea, it helps the player to remember the work he achieved. A chart is less romantics.

About the text question. I would just say that text is not the only possible content. Why not to put pictures or even little videos with sound or not?

[geever]

You are right if you mean that it should be a part from a whole mission/campain editor

I mean we're a small team, developing in our free time, we should not spend (waste) time on writing enough news articles so they won't get repetitive, boring and implementing a system has no real advantage in the gameplay. It may gives you more the feeling that you're part of the story, but I most players won't care imho. Especially if we fail to make news feed variable enough which would likely happen.

-geever

[krilain]

I mean we're a small team, developing in our free time, we should not spend (waste) time on writing enough news articles so they won't get repetitive, boring and implementing a system has no real advantage in the gameplay. It may gives you more the feeling that you're part of the story, but I most players won't care imho. Especially if we fail to make news feed variable enough which would likely happen.

-geever

Sorry Geever for I have been really too fast at reacting. I neglicted to tell you that I was perfectly on your side from the coder and developper point of view. There is only risks on givnig a small team more work to do, further more when they do all the job in their free time. I want to tell you and the UFOAI team again, thanks for all the good job.

First, the stuff I'm proposing shouldn't be on your charge but, eventually, implementing a window interface. Eventually, but not necessarilly since there would be nothing to put inside today. My idea was a little variant, it says : "let's add a new interface that could attract people which would enjoy fill it with content step by step, and let's release it when and if only it reaches a sufficent level."

Because if such window-fillable-content doesn't exist, nobody will even try to do something in this way. Today for example, how could someone add content with no entering in the deep code? But some no-coders can be infographists or even writters. It's SciFi and people love it.

And please take note that I didn't put it in "Feature proposal" section, so to say, it is just to have some discussion to know better each other's ideas.

If you allow me, I would like to show you what exactly I mean by campain/mission editor. You might see that it could be a sub-project that intends to settle a more detalled further campain. It's my feeling but I'm still convinced that soon, the game will be balanced enought (you, UFOAI team, works well) and the crucial point will be the campain.

Here is a chart that describes a simple example of campain/mission project :

Campain begins                                      |                   ..................................................                   .               Mission 1                                                        .           ¤  Parameters such as :                              . max mission lifetime,                                                    . any difficulty parameter (=campain difficulty),                                        . tag for eventually dynamic changes depending on some player achievement (score up/down...)                    .             ¤  Geoscape description  (mission location, type, title, associated map)                   .             ¤  Battlescape event                                  .             ¤  Player achievement (score)                        ..................................................                              /        |         \                            /          |          \                   (branches depending on score and/or on chronology)                                       |                                       |                   ..................................................                   .                                                                  .                  Mission 2                                      .                                                                  ..................................................                              /        |        \                            /          |          \                         (...)        |         (...)                                       |                   ..................................................                   .                                                                  .                  Mission n                                        .                                                                  ..................................................                                     |                                     |                                   (...)                                     |                          End of campain

---------------------------------------------------------------> timeline --->
|Begining | O-                                       
|Mission 1|   »»»»»»»»»                                 
|Mission 2|      »»»»»»»»»»»»»»                                  
|Mission 3|         »»»»»»»»»                                 
|Mission 4|                  »»»»»»»                       
|               |                   (...)                 
|Mission n|                              »»»»»»         
|End        |                                           -X
---------------------------------------------------------------> timeline --->

You already made such a chart but you didn't make it editable since it is written in the code marble.

Here dear friend, when you see that stuff, you can understand why I said that given such an editable campain/mission chart (supposed really done), we should find that the amount of work necessary for what I called *Geoscape description* of a mission is only a small part 

So I repeat you still are right. As you see  I never exepted this affair to be ready in the minute.

[geever]

Here is a chart that describes a simple example of campain/mission project ...
You already made such a chart but you didn't make it editable since it is written in the code marble.

You probably mean Static Campaign, it is scripted, therefore editable by non programmers! Extract 0ufos.pk3 (zip) and modify staticcampaign.ufo.

-geever

[krilain]

You probably mean Static Campaign, it is scripted, therefore editable by non programmers! Extract 0ufos.pk3 (zip) and modify staticcampaign.ufo.

-geever

Thanks you 
I'll try to play with it in order to be abble to read the parameters.

[ShipIt]

Maybe you already found this. If not, there is some ongoing discussion about the scripted campaign here.

Also Mattn recently added a description of the scripting parameters. If you have questions, it might be a good idea to ask them on the discussion page there.

[krilain]

Maybe you already found this. If not, there is some ongoing discussion about the scripted campaign here.

No I missed it ! I'll read it, thanks a lot.

Also Mattn recently added a description of the scripting parameters. If you have questions, it might be a good idea to ask them on the discussion page there.

That's great, it will help