Topics

16

Design / News from the skies - (News interface proposal)

« on: December 05, 2012, 11:53:03 am »

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.

 

17

Design / What is the general "2084 life on earth" model lying under UFOAI?

« on: December 04, 2012, 03:54:37 pm »

Hi, this is a redo from start of my first subject. It is not a crucial topic, anyway I hope you'll find this cleaned version more useful than the last expeditious one.

   The game as far as it takes place in the future, is also a representation of our earth in the future, and will be read as it by many of us (the scifi passionated people mostly).

   In my opinion, thru the maps, the geosphere, and some choosen elements of the story telling, we can only implement a 2084- model that postulates that in the future (lets say since 2050), the earthling choosed the way of the moderation in everything. Let's follow my explanation below in (A).

(A)  Let us imagine that we choosed another postulate, which differes from the "moderation" postulate. Now let's apply this to the global amount of the earth population. This hypothesis can be realized into a very concrete implementation thru the game system (geosphere, maps.etc..).  That done, the player will certainly encounter a game-world organized around very big cities. Those cities will contain a very big amount of civilians by square unit. We would also meet poor people (flooding poor quarters of sad appearance) whereas at the same moment, rich boys and girls would be walking around the nice quarters and over heavily guarded private zones. But, that obviously doesn't fit the way the game is actually going. This "unmoderate" description is more the classic extrapolation of our world that is so often implemented into many other futuristic games (let's say Fallout for instance).

   So, in the way the game is designed today, the earthling occupate the earth peacefully (until the alien event came on...). Let's read the 2 arguments listed below.

• 1- Each nation seems to have its own dedicated  space, with no more conflict at the borders.
  
• 2- The UNO rules as the main global force, and apparently the single still maintened correctly in order to face a global threat. Anyway, this last point should be slightly changed in the future : some national policemen or soldiers should give of themselves living signs at some occasions...

   
   So, and to conclude partly, the UFOAI world assumes the way of the moderation. But that doesn't mean that this would be credible to pretend that the earth from today to 2084 had never encountered some concrete evolutions, in the interlude. The earthling have just found the way of the moderation, at last. But the story taking place between today and 2084 is certainly worth to be told.

   I made a draft list-like description of possibilities for a 2084 humanity history that I put at the end of this introduction. In fact it is a summary of what was described in a book named "2100, récit du prochain siècle - Payot 1993" or in english "2100, history of the next century".

   About this book the great thing for my purpose is that it postulates that between 2020 and 2060 the world is overruled by private organistations based on capital. As consequence comes a lot of limitation of freedom and peace is rare. I wont go into an extensive picture, it is sufficient to say that if you launch a nuclear attack in this world you will obtain a "mad max"-like universe.

   But there were no bomb, so came the after-2060's where the people decided to get their peace and freedom back.

   So, the 2020-2060 world postulated and predicted here, is exactly the world that we encounter in postnuclear stories. The fact is that in our case the bomb was not released and the survivors had not to inherit of the well known futuristic violent and autoritary scheme. Assuming that until 2084 the nuclear disaster was avoided, there were all the reasons for human people to choose not only a freedom and peace order, but also a low populated model for cities and some illuminated return to nature... A choice that apparently intrigated enough the aliens to make them have a close look at earth! 
 
   You can go to http://www.worldwatch.org/ to get other examples of possible earth for our next century.

Visions of 2084 - Draft
Population :
               1- explosion
               2- stabilized low/hi
               3- decreasing (controled)

Governements models :
               1-nations like
               2-capitalistic-based - Consortiums


Artificial living forms (...)
New architecture like ocean cities

Language : optimized pictograms  rather than national idioms          

Art of making gardens, thru the grounds and oceans.
Ocean Cities
Grounds over the sea( ...)

Recycling pushed very far.
Light material generalized (useful consideration for setting a weight system)

Implantation of artificial organs. (can explain a resolute turn into the evolution of the amount of population at the favour of a decrease).

And so on

18

Feature Requests / Groups and Formations for the battlescape

« on: December 03, 2012, 03:28:58 pm »

Hello,

I would like to post here a feature proposal. But I don't doubt that it will necessarily be pushed on in his time, if it hadn't already been. So let's considere that as a reminder. For this reason I made some effort to expose the thing clearly with the help of pictures.

So what is it about? Let's begin by a concrete case. We all know this urban map where the alien ship stands on the top of a some streets slope. I dont express to well so I will suppose you see what I mean... So, generally in this map you have to move your soldiers one by one until you reach the alien ship entrance because aliens wont come at your encouter. This leads into successive boring turns, boring in the sense that you have to drive each soldier one by one where you would prefere to lead the whole team in few actions.

To be solved this issue calls one or two related features :
1- a possibility to group your soldiers into one team, or a few sub-teams.
2- a possibilty to move your (sub-)team in one click. This leads to the concept of formation. You know what I mean, many military games provide this feature and triangle formations, circle ones, and so on...

Once we said that, lets picture it. Imagine we are in the "top-street-alien-ship-urban-map" I said before. 


A/ Begining : initial position
As usual we begin the battlescape mission aboard the Phallanx vessel (Firebird for instance). Then we are exepted to move out.


B/ Moving : today system, each soldier has to be moved independantly
You recognize for the moment the classical configuration. The soldiers are spread off one by one. Of course that is a good option for many cases, but not in the top-street map, and many others. The player may want another option. Here it is.


C/ New option : grouping
I supposed here the possibility to make 2 sub-groups. I except to be able to make 1 whole team group or 2 sub-groups. For me there is no need for more. It is only for moving purposes.
Note that I represented the grouping action by a squared fillet. But that's not necessary. A "shift+soldier" to add in a team and "ctrl+soldier" to remove is also an option.
The only sure thing thing is that making a team, composing it, and disbanding it will need a proper interface. Just remember it will be necessary to make a keyboard access as well than a mouse one. After making a group, we should be able to set some style of grouping, what I called a "formation".


C/ Formation : Set of constraints between soldiers
Just to make a standard example, I supposed here that the important criterion is the range of distances between the soldiers. It could be an internal setting, or given to the players choice. Whatever it should be always the best fit and not an absolute constraint, that's why a preview is needed, just as the path preview we have for a lonely soldier move.

That would lead in possible variants.


D/ Group moving : variant 1


E/ Moving : variant 2

To conclude, before you give me any feedback, I would say one more thing. The aliens behaviour should win something if a similar system was built for coordinating small groups movements. Today we often can feel the alien as being a collection of unrelated people Ok, not often, but sometimes and this for one good reason : close aliens will detect the same things and react accordingly as one man.

For the developpers, I will say that I know that there is some prerequesite before any feature can be added, and I'm conscious that I dont have any idea of what are here the prerequesites. I admit so that this suggestion can stay pure theory, at least for today. So let's take it for a comfort proposal, not a top priority one. It is all about keeping it in mind as an orientation for the future.

19

Feature Requests / Make selected soldier sighting line top & vertical automatically

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:12:52 pm »

Hello.

As I was invited to, I tried to make a ticket on the forge site but failed for any reason. So I'll post this little feature proposal here. A detailed discussion was made in the forum before so I will be brief.

Today when you select any soldier the view is not really optimized for having at each turn tactical fast analyse and so decision. For that the best would be to get the same view always set for the soldiers (at least the choice of this standard view should be fast activated at any moment) - I joined a pic. Align automatically the soldier sight with vertical and top of map seems good. Why so ?
For 2 reasons :
1 - that's the best way in most cases to evaluate soldier position if we considere obstacles (can we fire? are we hidden well enough?) or if we want to ensure we aren't uncovered in our back. With the position I suggest, the back is just in bottom side, that's simple. Simple also comes the thinking about the need of rotating our soldier to avoid undiscovered part of map. The point is to make each turn, each soldiers decisions faster and efficient.
2 - the second thing is that automation for map rotation may avoid manual rotation, less accurate, and slow for some computers. In this case we would just have to translate the view in most cases. Here again we save time by saving not necessary manual rotations. 



I hope I had been clear. And hope I dont ask for anything hard to make. I think about a button toggle to set this constraint to on or off. Thanks for reading

20

Discussion / Psi, poison, bacter, and gameplay going further

« on: November 14, 2012, 12:08:15 pm »

Edit : finally making of all of that a digest affair...

I would collect and sort all the ideas collected in this discussion as soon as I will get some  time. There is a coherent and well argumented set of ideas, and models /
...interesting to think about how to show an idea in the game by any thin touch that recalls of the good old job.

21

Discussion / Button to autoturn the view in the direction of the selected soldier sight

« on: November 11, 2012, 12:10:58 pm »

Hello here,

I'm playing since some times now at this excellent remake of UFO. First I would like to thank the developpers team for the good job made.
Then i would like to make a suggestion in order to improve the ease in playing the battlescapes, what i already did in the title of this topic. The reason why I ask for this little improvment is 2 things. One, I have a little computer and no graphic power, so turning the map manually is some slow and not accurate. And second thing, when you have a poor soldier team, the more precisely you place and aim before shoot the best are your chance facing strong aliens. So it would be very helpfull to put automatically the view in the direction of the soldier actual sight. More precision, less disapppointement due to loss of TUs for positionning.

Would all that possible to be implemented a future day ?