Different unit designs

I want spikes on my tanks.

Things that look the same should be the same and things that look different should do different things.

Hmmmm...
What if this was implemented somewhat like skins in CS:GO, TF2, or Dota2

At least in those aforementioned games the skins lead to a drastic increase in player base and a continuing optional source of income after the initial game is bought. Yes something like this would likely take additional time, and it really shouldn't be considered for work until the game is stable and at least somewhat polished, but it could potentially provide an additional source of income for Uber.

Honestly, if you wanted that, you could have just opened your post with something like this.

That said, I've talked about having unit texture packs a few times in the past when people ask for multiple factions, it's really one of those things. I totally support it, but it'll have to be a community thing because the devs don't really have time to add this.

The fact that units being visually different doesn't really apply with WYSIWYG because people have to activate a texture pack in order to change the units, so they already know they're going to have different visuals. WYSIWYG is more visual to mechanical in a vanilla standpoint. Most texture packs already stray from this, and there's no reason to assume you'd get it.

Also, WYSIWYG has nothing to do with strategic icons, never did. Most of TA used this, and every strategic icon was a similar dot. Oh noes, I can't tell what unit is what! How will I ever play the game! Makes me laugh sometimes. xD

wait im lost. dafuq is WYSIQYG? I thought it would be "what you see is ___ you get" maybe?



and about what op wants- mods could do this. It woudln't work two way but you could pretend it did.

BUT THE COUNCIL JUST GAVE ME A PERMIT TO BUILD A CHURCH!

It's this :


something that can mean everything and nothing at all because it wipes your brain clean.

People should stop using this term or we'll all end up brainwashed.

I can see:
Big main guns, smaller cannons (Possible AA) and like communication towers, it's big and so probably slow, but also looks like it's tanky.

Thus that's all the unit should be able to do. Thats WYSIWYG, I can see it's stats without seeing the stats.

When stuff isn't wyuwgibib or whatever, it's when a unit dopes something that you can see from it's model, animations and the like.

Like this battleship could teleport right? But I don't see a chronosphere on it.
Or it has like, a lightning gun as well..........but where is that? I don't see a tesla coil.

Then it wouldn't be WGIWGGWidgvibxfhsbviyogerswfhbbbqomfgilovutatsujbandsquishyurgreat

It would be kinda wrong.

Like dox who don't like like they can swim, that's kinda wrong

WYSIWYG means "What You See Is What You Get". It may seem to be a very dumb thing to talk about but it is fundamental if we want people to learn an interface easily (I took a full course on that last semester )

It is actually so fundamental that many fail to understand the extent of the idea.
It means that if something looks like it can do something but can not, (or inversely looks like it cant do bomething but can) it is gonna drive users mad because they will not understand what they can do or what they can not.
For example if you make a game where the players character has no weapons, they will feel unarmed and never try to fight even if they actually can shoot bullets at the enemies.
On the contrary, in PA dox dont look like they can go in water and a couple friend didnt notice they could / thought it was a bug. They were confused.

Of course people can cope with a certain amount of unwysiwygness (swallow this one well before carrying on ) e.g. my mates were fine after i told them the dox were OK. But sometimes it is too much, for example a coworker built a find&replace utility where you had to write the text to find and the text to replace it with in a single textbox separated with chevrons. Nobody figured out how to used it, because it was so wrong.

Actually, "race" skins (implying each commander has his own "race") does not break WYSIWYG, because units can still look like what they should regardless of the artstyle. For example CIV IV does that (except for some civ specific units) because each race had its own ways but the corresponding units were made equal for the gameplay's simplicity's sake. Also, as a slightly less good example, but better known, Starcraft II all races look a lot different than the other, yet every unit repects pretty well WYSIWYG.

Thaks for reading. I hope you learned stuff. I'm also practising my english because I'm doing the TOEFL in a couple weeks

oh people can definitely deal with having no WYSIWYG at all

Initially I was going to say that having to recognise many models as the same unit would make it hard to learn to understand the battlefield at a glance; but as someone pointed out the unit icons are the same, so it makes little difference.

Nowadays, software that you must use with a cheatsheet taped under your monitor and struggle with for years before getting the crap out of it is considered bad software.
In the last decade, great software design teams have taught us that anything can be made simple. Compare Microsoft Word to emacs XD (I'm dont want to argue on emacs pls kill me) Or even the Minitel compared to Web browsers

this battleship is WYSIWYG? this must mean WYSIWYG is another word for gorgeous! *navy battles lover* anyone else notice the nazi logo? x'D

Huh......... never saw it before.

xD

There's at least two different layers/levels to WYSIWYG. You've described the "affordance" layer, which is closer to WYSIHIA - "What you see is how it acts" - the visual design indicates the affordances (traits) of the unit. To be honest, you can get away with heaps here (as in, not visually indicating traits), as long as you don't do any contradictions, and especially if it's elsewhere on the UI (such as a description or icon). This type of WYSIWYG doesn't need to be religiously followed, and Uber haven't subscribed to this AFAIK - instead, they subscribed to the next layer.

The other layer of WYSIWYG is continuity - WYSIWYAG - "What you see is what you always get", and is the kind that was often spoke about by Uber and is, strictly speaking, a sub-set of WYSIHIA. If you've seen one Dox, you've seen them all; there's no hidden upgrades that add armor or otherwise make one unit act different to another, without a change in visuals.

All games in the TA/Sup Com/PA genre break WYSIHIA repeatedly:

• Large structures having tiny health, and vice versa (Sup Com especially)
• Weapon effects not being consistent with comparative splash/damage values.
• Amphibiousness (none of the games visualize this ability)
• The inability of weapons that can plainly reach the aircraft layer being unable to fire upon aircraft, or any other combination of layer restriction
• Wreckage size not matching metal content
• Probably many more, if I spent a bit of time thinking about it.

TA followed WYSIWYAG to the letter. Sup Com broke it a bit with commander upgrades, but was mostly sound. Sup Com 2 threw it out the Window. PA has followed it to the letter also.

Why hello background #877.

It's the Bismarck.

Unit descriptions should really be updated though, in his defense.

I am tired of hearing about WYSIWYG. Basically ever game does this anyways except for maybe SC.

even that is false. that's just being picky.

what it does is in plain sight. it's in the tooltip when you hover your mouse over the unit

no seriously though. how does any other game qualify but not SC? (you are referring to the first, right?)

because in some rare cases more damage is dealt for the same projectile to one unit type then another?

it's not like those differences where ever exacerbated. they just made sense in a role-play (and sometimes realism) kinda way.