A few bugs and a couple/few/pile o' suggestions.

Friendliest · 01-10-2012, 08:33 AM

Bugs, if I may presume to say so:

Audio alert jingles don't play sometimes, possibly exacerbated by speed mode being engaged. This is a killer, literally! ...Like "surprise, while you were trapping that lava cave, WATER!"
When a digger directly follows another digger down a path, the lead digger will sometimes not dig a mineral tile at the end of the path. They both get "stuck", I would tend to assume until player intervenes. I do so ASAP so I really don't know what would happen if I left them alone. (not sure if it happens on non-mineral tiles but I don't think so.)
If you have dynamite mode selected, and you restart your game, you will still be in dynamite mode. It's up for debate, I guess, whether this is a bug or not, but, traditionally a "new game" resets the playing field to default status. I'll tell u this much, tho: it sure sux to grab your first digger to path him and blow him up instead!

And the suggestions:

In general, whatever mechanisms -- flashing, colors, sounds (e.g. continuous pinging), animations, send electrical shock to player's chair, etc. -- to make critical alerts more visible and less able to be overlooked would be welcome. Right now the red and orange color scheme for the alert "halos" is not all that distinguishable from the earth-toned general color palette which the game uses.

...But one specific idea to immediately improve the state of affairs would be to add a hotkey to "jump to event" like many other RTS games have, to immediately move your view to where the alert occurred. Ideally, there would be a queue of the last several events, and pressing the key repeatedly would cycle your view to the various locations.
Regarding zoom in/out: perhaps some user-definable setting for zoom sensitivity, or an "acceleration" option, to better facilitate zooming in/out VERY quickly with mousewheel. Right now, using the max zoom out limit (10x, right?), it can take 2-3 rolls of the mousewheel to fully zoom out. It would help during intense moments if it could somehow be just one quick "zip" of the wheel.

For that matter, a hotkey to "zoom out max" might be at least a step in the right direction, and not subject to the implementation hassles of ensure the above suggestion worked great with all mice/setups/etc.
This might not be viable, as perhaps this is intended to be part of the challenge of the game, but it would be nice if there was some way you could quickly draw solid walls, diagonally, optimally.

i.e. if it was somehow smart enough to interpret the clumsy human actions that result in
Code:
```
..##
.##L
##LL
```
and realize you didn't mean to waste 100% more gold than necessary, and really meant
Code:
```
...#
..#L
.#LL
```
but drew fast instead of taking time to click each individual square.

(Legend: . = empty space, or dirt, or whatever; # = solid wall drawn by player; L = Lava or other hazard, or whatever)

It's probably non-trivial to come up with an "intelligent" algorithm that would just let the user quickly drag to draw, as they do now, and somehow magically know which squares constitute the "optimal" or "intended" wall, so I'll let you worry about that!

But my best relevant idea of the moment is to give user the ability to build walls by specifying a start and end point instead of clicking each individual square. (but maybe this would make things too easy? if so, maybe player could pay an additional cost per wall tile or per use of this feature?)

For that matter, not that I'd use it, but I brainstormed the idea of "quicktrap" where you would just click one magic button, and the computer would build the solid walls to trap the cave instantly and optimally, for a price of, say, a 50% penalty to points you earn for that trapping. (I envision the player still being responsible for the dynamite/pit aspect.) Just throwing it out there. Like I said, I probably wouldn't use it; I want my points! But in a particularly intense moment, I might change my outlook.

And, BTW, regarding how these suggestions might relate to "challenge": I think the pricing of solid walls makes them quite challenging already, at least on the higher skill levels!
Would be nice if the "enter your name" for highscore box would remember the last name you entered, so you could just press "enter" instead of typing it every time
And while we're on the "would be nice" category: would be nice if there was a way to skip or at least drastically speed up the end-game tile count-up. (Yes, can you tell I've been playing Speed-Dwarfs!? ... The Quest for Optimization!)

Thanks for reading, and again, thanks for all the hard work!

P.S. just think how long this post would be if I had done anything more than dabble in Base Defense mode!

Dudler · 01-11-2012, 01:19 AM

we enjoy all feedback we get and consider it all for future updates.

Friendliest · 01-12-2012, 07:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dudler

we enjoy all feedback we get and consider it all for future updates.

A minor addition/clarification on the subject of the alerts: would be great if the "dwarf is about to do something disastrous" (dig into known lava/water) alerts simply played a distinctive sound in addition to the visual alert.

Thanks for reading!

01-10-2012, 08:33 AM	#1
Friendliest Join Date: Jan 2010 Reputation: 721 Posts: 3,738	A few bugs and a couple/few/pile o' suggestions. Bugs, if I may presume to say so: Audio alert jingles don't play sometimes, possibly exacerbated by speed mode being engaged. This is a killer, literally! ...Like "surprise, while you were trapping that lava cave, WATER!" When a digger directly follows another digger down a path, the lead digger will sometimes not dig a mineral tile at the end of the path. They both get "stuck", I would tend to assume until player intervenes. I do so ASAP so I really don't know what would happen if I left them alone. (not sure if it happens on non-mineral tiles but I don't think so.) If you have dynamite mode selected, and you restart your game, you will still be in dynamite mode. It's up for debate, I guess, whether this is a bug or not, but, traditionally a "new game" resets the playing field to default status. I'll tell u this much, tho: it sure sux to grab your first digger to path him and blow him up instead! And the suggestions: In general, whatever mechanisms -- flashing, colors, sounds (e.g. continuous pinging), animations, send electrical shock to player's chair, etc. -- to make critical alerts more visible and less able to be overlooked would be welcome. Right now the red and orange color scheme for the alert "halos" is not all that distinguishable from the earth-toned general color palette which the game uses. ...But one specific idea to immediately improve the state of affairs would be to add a hotkey to "jump to event" like many other RTS games have, to immediately move your view to where the alert occurred. Ideally, there would be a queue of the last several events, and pressing the key repeatedly would cycle your view to the various locations. Regarding zoom in/out: perhaps some user-definable setting for zoom sensitivity, or an "acceleration" option, to better facilitate zooming in/out VERY quickly with mousewheel. Right now, using the max zoom out limit (10x, right?), it can take 2-3 rolls of the mousewheel to fully zoom out. It would help during intense moments if it could somehow be just one quick "zip" of the wheel. For that matter, a hotkey to "zoom out max" might be at least a step in the right direction, and not subject to the implementation hassles of ensure the above suggestion worked great with all mice/setups/etc. This might not be viable, as perhaps this is intended to be part of the challenge of the game, but it would be nice if there was some way you could quickly draw solid walls, diagonally, optimally. i.e. if it was somehow smart enough to interpret the clumsy human actions that result in Code: ..## .##L ##LL and realize you didn't mean to waste 100% more gold than necessary, and really meant Code: ...# ..#L .#LL but drew fast instead of taking time to click each individual square. (Legend: . = empty space, or dirt, or whatever; # = solid wall drawn by player; L = Lava or other hazard, or whatever) It's probably non-trivial to come up with an "intelligent" algorithm that would just let the user quickly drag to draw, as they do now, and somehow magically know which squares constitute the "optimal" or "intended" wall, so I'll let you worry about that! But my best relevant idea of the moment is to give user the ability to build walls by specifying a start and end point instead of clicking each individual square. (but maybe this would make things too easy? if so, maybe player could pay an additional cost per wall tile or per use of this feature?) For that matter, not that I'd use it, but I brainstormed the idea of "quicktrap" where you would just click one magic button, and the computer would build the solid walls to trap the cave instantly and optimally, for a price of, say, a 50% penalty to points you earn for that trapping. (I envision the player still being responsible for the dynamite/pit aspect.) Just throwing it out there. Like I said, I probably wouldn't use it; I want my points! But in a particularly intense moment, I might change my outlook. And, BTW, regarding how these suggestions might relate to "challenge": I think the pricing of solid walls makes them quite challenging already, at least on the higher skill levels! Would be nice if the "enter your name" for highscore box would remember the last name you entered, so you could just press "enter" instead of typing it every time And while we're on the "would be nice" category: would be nice if there was a way to skip or at least drastically speed up the end-game tile count-up. (Yes, can you tell I've been playing Speed-Dwarfs!? ... The Quest for Optimization!) Thanks for reading, and again, thanks for all the hard work! P.S. just think how long this post would be if I had done anything more than dabble in Base Defense mode!

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01-11-2012, 01:19 AM	#2
Dudler Power of Two Join Date: May 2011 Reputation: 72 Posts: 287	we enjoy all feedback we get and consider it all for future updates.