Feargus speaks the bad talk again

Silver · Post by **Silver** » Mon Mar 03, 2003 2:56 am

Mad Max RW wrote:I say let EvoG make the game he wants. You might end up with something new for a change. Because once you start demanding a feature from one game and a feature from another, all you have is the same old shit. If you don't like controlling a camera then play Fallout a few hundred more times. Project Phoenix sure as hell isn't gonna be Fallout, so stop thinking it is.

Well he could fail and end up bankrupt. Perhaps listening alittle to the little people?

Mad Max RW · Post by **Mad Max RW** » Mon Mar 03, 2003 3:02 am

He'd have to do something incredibly stupid to go bankrupt. Delaying a game by several years and removing half of the features the day before release is a good way.

Bulldog · Post by **Bulldog** » Mon Mar 03, 2003 3:07 am

DarkUnderlord wrote:[GRRRR!
See, that's not always the way.

http://rpgvaultarchive.ign.com/features ... oore.shtml

Wow, you might want to learn the difference between an exception and an industry wide norm.

Post by **DarkUnderlord** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 1:43 am

Actually, it's a common practice within the industry for small to medium design houses.

Doyle · Post by **Doyle** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 2:18 am

How many small development houses take on a project like Fallout?

Red · Post by **Red** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 3:34 am

Just wanted to point out the addiction rate to five mouse button w/ scroll wheels are... I always thought it was something totally useless until I got one from my father at chrismas...

Admitably I barely use the 4th (or 5th depending on how you look at it) button though as I don't go "forward" all that often, so a 4 button mouse would probably do me just fine, although for games that support recostomization of buttons it comes in quite handy.

requiem_for_a_starfury · Tue Mar 04, 2003 3:57 am

2 buttons, 3 buttons, 5 buttons doesn't matter they're still a mouse and mice = ugh! Give me a thumb controlled trackball anyday, even if it only has 3 buttons and the wheel hardly ever works in game.

Post by **DarkUnderlord** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 4:13 am

I'm just waiting for my customised one of a kind optical mouse with wheel with Phoenix's real name and logo on it. :) I think it'd fit in nicely with my Battlezone mouse mat.

4too · Post by **4too** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 12:30 pm

The hidden costs of doing buisness.

I will say this, if you do have the money surplus above employee costs, I'd argue in favor of a nice office space because that naturally attracts the better talent and makes the work environment pleasant. So it just all boils down to managment...managing your wants vs. needs.

EvoG touches a point of our "modern age"..... "'nice office space'".

Why do some biz's stay Downtown in the highrises? Maybe it's beyond
the % of vacancies means a cheap lease.

There, maybe two or more electric (AND stable) power feeds. The land lines could be wide enough to cover your copper wire needs and there may be a reliable cable/DSL provider. Maybe the fiber optic run is right out on the street, down that man hole over there....

Established infrastructure.

MAYBE the old scrooges that manage commercal structures have conformed to the latest building codes, if the accountants confirm it's in the contract........

Maybe the building's switch gear and power distribution system can handle the power requirements of modern electronics, or the original equipment was oversized enough to handle the stress of load harmonics. The monitor is a big capacitor, expect to see that in hot neutrals, and hotter tranformers.

Is the heat load of equipment anticipated?

Oh, and the state of the art of heating and cooling design dictates that AC, and, or heating will be sacrificed for fake marble slabs out front "for curb" appeal". THEY GO TO THE SAME SCHOOLS: THIS ALL BY DESIGN,so bet that some spot will ALWAYS be hot or cold. Hot means fans, most circuits can handle a fan, and the premptive use of mini blinds as a bandaid to solar gain. Energy flow programs have been around since fortran and the first oil shock, AND few glass box buildings can handle solar gain. "Modern" architecture as art, WE suffer for this ART, the architect takes his money and runs. Carpet baggers........

And cold means 1500 watt space heaters, and your 20 amp breaker actually trips at 19. If the space heater don't do it, the coffee maker will.

Maybe where you all are now works fine, except when there's an ice storm to the south or east. Or a tornado to the west. (There goes Dorthy and To To!!!)

That's great, but even "new" office parks suffer from short sighted planning. One utility cuts the other when they dig.
In one week you could lose the electric, the phones, the gas, AND THE WATER. Been there. And when it rains real hard that shiney new suburb
with the CHEAP sewer system dumps shit into the river, just like the old 'hoods. Engineered nostalgia? (Miss the floaters in the basement sump?)
Expect to pay for this via property taxes, or if you are down stream, by boiling your tap water. We all have filters, ready for the fertilizer run off
from the agriBIZ up the drain basin, and expect water quality warnings in the spring.

SO, it's all about location, and getting what you pay for..

4too

Mad Max RW · Post by **Mad Max RW** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 1:38 pm

Why do I picture Maya Angelou?

axelgreese · Post by **axelgreese** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 6:50 pm

Mad Max RW wrote:Why do I picture Maya Angelou?

fapping?

Rosh · Post by **Rosh** » Tue Mar 04, 2003 8:49 pm

EvoG wrote: ...Rosh, I 'think' I understand your point...which would make sense, but I have no idea where you got your information. The way the controls in Phoenix work in regards to the camera is this : hold down middle mouse button and move mouse to pitch and yaw camera. You can look straight down or pitch to an angle of about 60', and you can yaw 360' obviously. Zoom is completely on the wheel. I don't see a problem. Honestly, how in the world is that shitty design? Both left and right buttons are free for world interaction and menu selection. You almost never even have to use the keyboard if you don't want to.

Now you're running against smoothness of interface design, which is not a good thing, and I had guessed your design was like the above yet I had covered all bases. On some mouse/trackball models, the wheel and the central mouse button are separate. This can lead to trying to hold and fiddle with three things in different directions with one hand, and STILL runs into the "repeat run" problem of trying to look around. Even if the mouse move speed is increased, there will be times where they will want to yaw around in a 180 degree or more angle, which may require holding the button down while you move the mouse, then releasing it when you hit the edge of the pad, moving back over to the other side, hold it back down, rinse and repeat. That is still not a good thing, compared to holding down a keyboard key and picking up the mouse and running it over in a direction a few times. It is still comparatively convoluted in having to yaw/pitch and zoom at the same time.

Now, with one button held on the keyboard (preferably near either scroll or quick-function keys), you can do the mouse movement and zoom, making fucking with the camera not too hard (which should take as little time as possible to reduce the time away from PLAYING the game). When your interface gets in the way of playing the game, that is a bad thing, the less it does, the better.

See, there's the flow of design. You have another hand available, and it makes it less complicated, much quicker to use, less cumbersome, and more smooth to work with like how a number of FPS games have their controls (where intuitivity/speed is essential). It's also why a lot prefer using a trackball in FPS games, is because using the thumb-ball and wheel allow for unobstructive play a bit better than a mouse.

I can't believe we're having a discussion about my controls when I haven't even really talked about them nor have you used them. Plus, this isn't a terribly original design element...its been used on other games before just fine...

Oh, I agree. I know completely nothing on the subject. :roll:

....oh and my comment was hardly a dodge...you were derisive, so I replied in like. You passed judgement on something(my controls) you know nothing about, and as if you were in some position of authority(interface designer) on the matter.

Oh, I agree. I know completely nothing on the subject. :roll:

You gave a clear description of key remapping...so my reply stands...not all people share the same desire of choice of keys, so they're are free to move them whereever they like. A key remapping option is NOT a poor design cure, its actually a desired feature...for those who NEED to change the keys for whatever reason.

Nice display of half-ass reading. Now, if you had bothered to read, you might have noticed that I had said if a good number of people had to rebind to overcome a poor initial placement, that is poor design. You don't start off cumbersome for some and okay for the rest, you try to make it as easy to use for the maximum number of people as possible while remembering that what might be okay for you may not be the norm.

Now here's a brilliant thought. Have both done by default and cover everyone and add in some zoom keys for those without a scrollwheel. There's the answer you should have considered and given, as it would have been the intent and purpose of intuitive design to provide thorough and supportive controls. It doesn't take too much, as you've already said that it can be mostly played by the mouse. It benefits both you and the player by being more approachable by a wider amount of people and also wouldn't require rebinding by anyone at all, leading to a shorter preparation time before the player can enjoy the game and/'or less breaks in the gameplay to fiddle with interface issues.

But, again, what do I know as you claim I'm not an "Interface Designer"?

Whoops, just looked like your pants got whipped off your ass, again.
That was far too easy to set up.

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 1:25 am

Rosh wrote:Oh, I agree. I know completely nothing on the subject. :roll:

How could you? You don't.

Rosh wrote:Oh, I agree. I know completely nothing on the subject. :roll:

How could you? You don't.

Rosh wrote:But, again, what do I know as you claim I'm not an "Interface Designer"?

No claim...you're not.

Rosh wrote:Whoops, just looked like your pants got whipped off your ass, again.
That was far too easy to set up.

I think you're a little too caught up in this alledged spanking you think you're doing. I hardly feel 'spanked' in any way. My controls are based on a standard control setup...as I'm not going to cater to every whim of the minority and make my job more difficult. The majority of the people use 3 or 5 button wheel mice, as do I (people, please don't bother replying on how YOU may have an unorthodox control setup). Arguably, this is a similar situation to console machines, which have the one controller that is standard for that machine and its games.

I've been using my control scheme and many many others in my iterations of the tech demo and it simply works. There is no merit to your argument, other that you use a trackball or think you'll be picking up the mouse over and over again to spin the world around ( btw, you can rotate around the whole world effortlessly with just a motion of the wrist without having to lift your mouse...just as much as you can move your windows cursor from one side of your desktop to the other without lifting your mouse ). Hell, if I just misread what you wrote then I have no fucking clue what your problem is. I just don't see what you're saying is a problem, probably because there IS NONE.

You spend too much time being a smart ass, trying to strengthen your arguments with inflammatory and antagonistic comments, such as how I don't know what I'm doing, that it doesn't lead to fruitful conversations. I have no idea where you have gathered such disdain for me or my control scheme or my game, that you feel the need to be so derogatory and superior in your comments. I think you might have issues, seriously, because I'm actually just a really nice guy making a fun game for you, and any fan of rpg's or any fan of Fallout.

In fact, thats the glorious bottom line...I'm in the enviable position to create video games for a living, and a game I know for a fact that you'll want to play and that you'll love.

We can be done with the control scheme dialog now...

Cheers

Doyle · Post by **Doyle** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 1:32 am

You spend too much time being a smart ass, trying to strengthen your arguments with inflammatory and antagonistic comments, such as how I don't know what I'm doing, that it doesn't lead to fruitful conversations. I have no idea where you have gathered such disdain for me or my control scheme or my game, that you feel the need to be so derogatory and superior in your comments. I think you might have issues, seriously, because I'm actually just a really nice guy making a fun game for you, and any fan of rpg's or any fan of Fallout.

Don't take it personally, EvoG, that's Rosh in a nutshell. Hell, that's a significant portion of the Fallout community in a nutshell.

axelgreese · Post by **axelgreese** » Wed Mar 05, 2003 2:42 am

EvoG wrote: You spend too much time being a smart ass, trying to strengthen your arguments with inflammatory and antagonistic comments, such as how I don't know what I'm doing, that it doesn't lead to fruitful conversations. I have no idea where you have gathered such disdain for me or my control scheme or my game, that you feel the need to be so derogatory and superior in your comments. I think you might have issues, seriously, because I'm actually just a really nice guy making a fun game for you, and any fan of rpg's or any fan of Fallout.

That's just the way we do things here.

In fact, thats the glorious bottom line...I'm in the enviable position to create video games for a living, and a game I know for a fact that you'll want to play and that you'll love.

Oh we'll see.

Oh by the way, i was wondering just how you knew what Rosh did/does for a living, or the subjects that he may have studied or have experiance with? Did he just tell you that he never had any experiance with design or any studies with it? I mean hell I've studied that, albiet we only touched on it briefly and didn't go very far in depth, but even with that little bit you couldn't claim that i have no idea what I'm talking about if I were to talk about that subject. You'd be able to claim I wasn't well informed or didn't have suficent grasp of the subject but not so far as no idea...

Red · Post by **Red** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 12:39 am

There is still an issue about default assigned keys... Some people get used to a specific convention and get quite ticked when the "default" convention doesn't match their own... I know I get VERY annoyed when I can't reconfigure the default keys though...

I don't think you can find a perfect solution to default key bindings, and seeing as most people ARE using a mouse rather then a trackball I don't think it's so far fetched to deafult something more intuitive to mousers then trackball users...

Of course if you can find a solution which would match all types of controls better you should use it, and using a keyboard key for special controls on the mouse is perfectly fine (and is perfectly normal to anyone who ever toyed with a Mac...)

The only thing you KNOW the end user will have for sure is a keyboard (and even then some people could have funky setups that don't require one but that's getting a bit too specific).

Maybe the game could have several key presets like "Phoenix keys", "Quake keys", "Trackball user" (in addition to user-savable keysets) for them to choose (possibly even during installation instead of when running the game).

Post by **DarkUnderlord** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 12:55 am

Red wrote:The only thing you KNOW the end user will have for sure is a keyboard.

A keyboard? What is this "keyboard" that you speak of? What is a "keyboard"?

Red wrote:Maybe the game could have several key presets like "Phoenix keys", "Quake keys", "Trackball user" (in addition to user-savable keysets) for them to choose (possibly even during installation instead of when running the game).

Theif I tried that. It never seemed to work... I think they rooted their saving/loading of key bindings. Would've been a good idea if it did work... Well, not that I'd actually use it, but still...

Red · Post by **Red** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 1:00 am

One of the Descents had a "profile" selction where people would log in and thus have their own keys set...

Course when Quake and the like came on every other game had a "configuration file" so it was trivial to run around with your key bindings and install them on any other game (course then came the problem that people would overwrite other's bindings).

Anyhow I think it's essential to be able to configure them, though saving a set of them isn't necessary albeit handy if you have several people playing the game on the same computer...

Mad Max RW · Post by **Mad Max RW** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 1:01 am

Red wrote: The only thing you KNOW the end user will have for sure is a keyboard (and even then some people could have funky setups that don't require one but that's getting a bit too specific).

What? Are you saying I have to play this god damn game with a piece of shit keyboard? I only use telepathy and nothing else. Get with the fucking times, people! LOL0LOL 1337!!! :PPPP ::PPPP :roll: :roll: deof2f2tf24445221

Red · Post by **Red** » Thu Mar 06, 2003 1:09 am

Well, the idea is that you use a computer as you entertainment system... plug video card with proper tv/out, a 6.1 soundcard, a DVD player, a remote control and a joystick...

Course I wouldn't enjoy games on such a system but some people do... You also require a special interface but that exists - point being you can't please everyone with the default interface.

Duck and Cover

Feargus speaks the bad talk again

Power Factor....