How would it work? You'd get to a menu screen from where you can select your faction, color and basic stuff, you could also invite a friend. The point of this would be of being able to play in the maps without any enemies with options to pick from such as: - instant build rate - unlimited credits - some fun cheats You could also change your faction instantly in the game or spawn buildings from that faction. Mostly to test stuff, you could even spawn some basic AI enemies wich just shoot at you or pursue your units. Another thing would be being able to test mods faster, such as custom made units. Another feature would be to have a menu from where you can easily load another map, custom, random or etc.
Honestly, this sounds like two different feature requests... 1) A map/scenario editor (which I agree, should be in the game) 2) Cheats (which I expect to be present...) In the "good old days", you would just load a small skirmish map in TA and then just build the new units yourself and playtest them that way... I dont think a dedicated sandbox gamemode is necessary. (Now... a security sandbox for scripting is something I've been asking for...)
I agree it sounds like 2 different request, but I see some different; 1] Cheats No reason these wouldn't be present, what most players call cheats are really just Dev Tools to make testing easier. Like in SupCom:FA I'd liek to see an option to enable them. Sometimes they are a bit tempting xD 2] Sandbox Mode It was one of the game types in FA but all it did was remove the Win/Lose Conditions. Handy if you wanted to test something with Commanders as the game wouldn't end if they died. I don't see why this couldn't be a game mode considering it's been done before. Mike
As in special cheats I mean even silly stuff such as Goldeneye had, I mean who wouldn't love party hats on those robots plus paintball projectiles?
Erh, personally, I'd rather people do that in their own mods... rather than have the devs code in any easter-egg cheats. I mean, I'm sure a few easter eggs won't cut into dev time that much, but really, I don't think that it's something I would consider either desirable or necessary... Yeah, I back having cheats.. both for testing as well as for screwing around. Why not just change the game mode to 'annihilation' or whatever it was that involved having to kill all enemy units in order to win?
Because Annihilation still has a win condition. I'll admit for basic testing Annihilation is enough but there are cases where an "endless" game is desirable. Also its a lot harder to accidentally win/lose when you can't win/lose to begin with ;p Mike
Fair enough! That said, I agree with you on those types of 'cheats' being more suitably implemented as mods.
Definitely need the "instant build" cheat. It's the most crucial time-saver when you're trying to test units, and I don't recall that ever being in Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander.
Sandbox as it is in Total Annihilation would be a great way to start, that was definitely such a fun gametype! But yes, I agree that having some fun cheats/mod/mutators to add onto that would be great as well.
I think the devs will make things like these naturally... They need to test things themselves as well of course, cheats are great for testing features, as well as bugs. probably they would just be able to add this debugging as a feature in the "final" build.
