Readability of units.

Did anyone else have some trouble seeing what the units were among the explosions and such? i almost found it easier to identify what they were by the projectiles they fired.

Besides that, AMAZING work Uber. Absolutely stunning progress on the game.

(i do realize that this is in PRE-alpha, and that i cant really criticize something so early)

Yup, I'm sure this is one thing that will be tweaked over time, but the smoke effects were kind of intense and covered everything.

Funnily enough, this is what people wanted. hey wanted effects with some meat on them, not the slightly underwhelming and unobtrusive SupCom effects.

If you ask me this is a prime case of "Be careful what you wish for"

Mike

Uber don't take anything I have to say as negative. I am really excited about what you have. I think this is a legitimate thread to help get you feedback.

First off, I love the way both Supreme Commander and Supreme Commander 2 look. I also like that Nuetrino said there will be Star Wars lasers... like in TA. That's part of what is missing from the pitch video. Many of the units did not have lighting, and to be honest the night fighting when we haven't seen daylight fighting was mostly confusing. I think more lighting on units can help. SupCom2 had some really cool and simple lighting effects on units. The units in the combat video need a lot more lighting if we want to be able to see them visually for what they are. On top of this, the units were shown from a zoomed out planet view most of the time making it even harder to know whether awesomeness is truly occurring. Obviously we are going to spend a lot of the game like that, but for our first viewing not so much. I am perfectly fine with the art direction of the pitch video especially when you throw in the improvements we see in the Delta Commander. I know, I know, it's a pre-alpha and there will be improvements, but team needs feedback.

Thoughts on showing combat:
1. Always show off units in combat in sunlight first (at least most of the time)
2. Try to show units doing their job (maybe you haven't figured out what a units job is yet - we can help if you want :twisted: but expect a lot of divergent opinions) In general units are not going to be clumps of almost everything in competitive play. I am not saying you need Neph and FunkOff to make a combat video, but you really should pretend that you are and do. Also, I am 99% sure they are following the forum and would help with this.
3. Need more cool projectiles obviously. I really want to see plasma semi-spheres if that's do-able. Think fiery hot glowing molten melta glob. Otherwise, the lobbing isn't going to look right. What is that truck and what does it do? Right now everything looks the same.
4. I think aiming for better unit turn rates is important. FA had units that didn't have trouble lining up their barrels or their treads. Lets aim for that. Zero-K does this right too.
5. If you are going to use symbols for units that look like the units they should show facing. Otherwise, you might want to simplify it like FA did. I semi don't think these will survive to market, but I could be mistaken.

Wierdness: A lot of the tanks and bots fired bullets with trails. That's a no no, unless the team is going for 40K bolter rounds which technically are mini missiles which should travel in a straight line. I would much rather see some red hot plasma semi-spheres arching across the battle field and lasers shooting more true. In general though, I like how the projectiles are trying to communicate TA. It just needs more visual work and more diversity. Direct fire stuff should be no nonsense. This is where I agree with Mike.

Maybe a little bit much on the smoke.

In general, I would love it if Steve (does Steve have a forum name?) and Scathis would spend a little more time with us, especially in the backer forum, because it's a great way to get feed back. Projectiles and explosions are really important to the feel of the game. Lets blow things up with Uber.

In general if Steve can create super short videos of each unit driving around and firing its weapons at targets, he will be creating website content (usually these things go on the website) and getting our feedback at the same time.

If Scathis wants to post a first brush of unit stats like health, range and dps or better yet a design direction for expectations in engagements. That would be righteous. In general, now that we have combat we want to know how it works.

Maybe I am getting ahead of where we need to go.

As far as next video you might show off navy and air, or talk about satellites if you plan on satellites being in the alpha launch.

Bast

I wouldn't complain about the trail of the shots I thought they looked pretty nice, as well as the projectiles themselves. I just had trouble actually seeing what the units were.

faster dissipation of the smoke would probably abate any concerns ppl have

Full screen resolution with no compression artifacts probably go a long long way toward making units a lot more readable.

We haven't even tried to tweak any of the stuff in this mentioned in this thread yet. Raw stuff is... raw.

Don't worry i know its not even close to finished or polished, its just hard to believe that seeing how amazing the game already looks. I just felt like i should mention it.

Could be cool if the UI could let you easily identify units through effects, possibly with an outline.

This. Although tweaking strategic icons is clearly something you want to do after you've implemented all the units you intend to implement. They should be exactly as complex as is needed for each unit's icon to be unique, which isn't something you can do until you've decided how many units you need. I expect the icons could be a little simpler regardless of what happens during alpha though.

I'm thinking everything will be easier to spot and interpret if units were spaced just a tiny bit further apart. At a few points, the selection boxes where overlapping to the point where they'd encompass the feet of neighbouring units.

A circle or hexagon would probably work better for a selection graphic. A hexagon would be especially nice as it would bring up nostolgic rememberences of wargaming/roleplaying.

A square is nostalgic for TA players.

A lot of the projectiles in supcom just simply were not visible though, and that's not desirable.

Who cares about projectiles? Units are what is important. Also Projectiles were quite visible when zoomed out, thanks to icons they got. It was pretty good imho.

Who doesn't care about projectiles? I want to see where units are shooting. When the tiny useless yellow strat icon is more visible than the projectile itself then there is a problem.

useless? That icon directly shows you were units are shooting at. You could remove the whole units and projectiles and only play with the icons. I would not call that useless.

++

Don't be obtuse with me. You know well it's not good enough.

Strat icons are only useful at a distance, they're an abstraction for units that have become too small to otherwise read.

Not here to look at icons, here to look at units.