Vigilantes > Suggestions & Feedback

Game Pacing

(1/6) > >>

Daithi:
Thread for your thoughts on pacing.

Nomad:
I have a suggestion for speeding up battles, but it should really be an option the player can select (if it can be done at all).

This is the amount of time battles take, rather than the number of hits to kill.

One of the things I've noticed on higher danger level maps is the number of enemies causes a massive wait between player turns.

If possible... I propose a (player selectable) option where the enemy doesn't wait between moves. Have the NPC calculate its move and as soon as it knows where it's going the next NPC calculates and moves while the previous one is moving. Visually it will look like most of them are all moving at once (there'd be a small delay between each one starting to move).

It would have to be a player selectable option, because like the option to have the camera follow the enemy, some players like to see what each enemy does.
Having the enemy seemingly all move at once would speed up turns immensely.

... if it can be done without too much hassle (if at all).
(and yes I do realise that, visually, it may lead to some enemies seeming to run through each other)

ushas:
Although this isn't I-go-you-go of teams I suppose it's always good to do re-considering how things can be pre-calculated. Your proposal for a group of enemies between turns of two player's units is neat but really depends on the workings under the hood. It would require that all actions and results for the first unit were already calculated (including results of attacks of opportunity) and the status of the whole battlefield updated at the time the next unit starts with its calculations, and so forth. Hm, I initially thought it's done this way and calculations for the next one are started while we are still watching animations of the first, but then why there is so long delay at the start of the next unit in a row?


Other options for (not only) speeding up battles overall:

* Slider in settings to adjust speed of camera actions (scrolling, rotation, zooming, centering) -> at least it can considerably speed up player's turn, but perhaps also when camera follows actions of hostile units.


* Two sliders for running speed (only movement action) - for player controlled and for AI controlled units separately -> usual setup is having own units to run faster and for enemy slower.


* Slider for a tooltip delay.


* Possible re-considerations when camera follow is on:
* camera doesn't need to fully center on the character when his turn is due. I usually find myself scrolling back to the original camera position. Especially not in the case it would bring us partially out of the map.

* don't zoom lower than was zoom level the player ended his turn.


* Let us give orders during animation. Perhaps a bug (quite obvious when CC): right now if I right-click to attack but an animation of the previous action wasn't done yet, the game doesn't remember nor subsequently execute the order. Typical example: If you right-click on your character to heal while he is still changing hands it won't remember and you need to order again. I think, sometimes even "End Turn" isn't obeyed while an animation ongoing. It will become even more obvious with a keyboard support, as we will be much faster at ordering. In case this is done because an action can be changed, then let's consider execute order (right-click) as locking the previous action into finishing without interruption.


* For any unit doing the same attacks (actions) in a row it would be interesting if can be somehow chained without idle in the middle. For enemy units I guess knowing if needs do more attacks is no problem when it's all pre-rolled. But player sees results with delay, there would need to be some deadline for the next attack order to be counted into chaining.
uff, to be continued?

Nomad:
lol.... and I'm pretty sure none of our suggestions so far are relevant to what you were originally wanting discussion on.  =)
Sorry about that.

Daithi:
It's good to get ideas - how do you feel about pacing in general?

Your idea for precalculating is good, but it's also going to be very (very) hard to implement. I noticed X-Com 2 does this (and moves enemies at same time) when you alert aliens, but it's for simple stuff, like taking cover after being spotted.

Some of what you suggested will be looked at ushas. CC animation speed can't really be touched, but move speed can. Accepting orders while animation is playing out would be work intensive. Camera movement speed slider is a good call, very doable.

Some thoughts: AP systems (rather than the 2 action system in more modern games) generally results in slower pacing. There are now limits on the number of enemies that can be spawned at once, capped at around 13 for higher danger levels with a full party vs church. The remainder will spawn as reinforcements. An area that could be worked on is rebalancing the stat system (which would like to do for multiple reasons) and further reducing the number of enemies active at once.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page