It is fun, but has a number of ongoing little issues

Well, first impressions are that it is good fun, with some interesting units and special abilities that improve how combat works and makes it more interesting.

There do seem to be a number of smaller issues which have plagued the Elemental games for a long long time, however, which continue. And some that are new to Sorcerer King

 

UI:

  • Selecting things is buggy near terrain of different heights. Sometimes one clicks in a square or on a unit, and have selected somewhere else on a nearby mountain.
  • Combat special abilities confusingly use the opposite mouse button to normal move and attack. If right click is normally move, and attack, why is it suddenly cancel when one is using a special ability?
  • Alerts are not doing a good job of getting my attention; 'There is a monster in my territory' is something that can go on for most of the game quite safely. 'You can build on some resource' is also not taking into account conditions such as how much logistics are available.
  • It's not obvious from the display at the side which settlements and units have acted, or not acted.
  • Sometimes cities seem paralysed - you cannot change their production. This happens when there is a city level up in the queue of things on the end turn button. It would make sense to have level up choices available from just looking at the city or unit, as well as on the end turn button area.
  • It would be useful to be able to get directly from the city screen looking at a building or unit, to the help system for that building or unit.
  • It would be useful to be able to go from looking at a units equipment screen, to be forging equipment.
  • When one selects the hero in an army, or possibly the first unit in the army, then one can cycle to all the other units in that army. If one selects any of the other units in the army, however, the arrows for cycling to the other units in the army do not appear.
  • Some spells give -10 to the doomsday counter which is a bad thing - they should say +10, or actually do -10. Some quests give -10 to the doomsday counter, which is a good thing. Please use + and - consistently.

Gameplay

  • Using multiple amulets of haste seems like a very strong (possibly broken) strategy. Possibly one should be restricted to not use duplicate items, or to one amulet/two rings/one of most other misc items.
  • Initiative being used for number of actions rather than just initial order of actions is very exploitable.
  • It would be nice to be able to see resources on tiles even without having a pioneer selected. It makes it a lot harder to plan, if one has to make a pioneer before even being able to tell if an area is nice or not.
  • The spells need some (possibly lots of) attention. Ideally, when looking at the spells to research, I should be spoilt with choice because they all look efficient and interesting to cast. At the moment, I'm looking at a list of things that cost too much for almost no effect, and selecting the one that researches fastest in the hope that something interesting joins the queue later.
8,636 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top

Great feedback.

A few comments:

  1. I've been punching up the potence of the spells (and adding lots of new ones). Hopefully this will keep getting better.
  2. Intiative is supposed to be exploitable in the sense that it determines how fast your units are.
  3. The resources on a tile show up whether you have a pioneer or not selected. (your unit selection doesn't have any affecT)
  4. A couple of the UI issues you mentioend have been fixed internally.
  5. I really like your UI suggestions.

 

Reply #2 Top

Glad to see you are reading the feedback.

 

Another little thing that is irritating me at the moment, is that sometimes the mouse cursor gets stuck on a cursor that is intended to represent something other than a pointer, when messages are coming up at the start of the turn.

 

It would be very useful if the cursors all changed back, when there is interactive UI such as messages on the screen.

It would also be sensible if all of the cursors had a bit that showed where the pointing pixel in the top left is - possibly a small triangle, as well as the main icon for the cursor.

 

And (probably a lot harder), it might be nice to not have all of the beginning of turn actions all happening immediately one after another without letting one interact with anything in between. A number of games recently have had a bunch of animated icons down the right hand side that one needs to click on to get the relevant UI related to the event - it might be preferable to having them appear in the sort of rushed way that one can get them in the Elemental games' engine.

Reply #3 Top

Another little thing that is irritating me at the moment, is that sometimes the mouse cursor gets stuck on a cursor that is intended to represent something other than a pointer, when messages are coming up at the start of the turn.

Yes. This is fairly high on the list.  This is caused by the dialogs not being able to control what cursor is in. We just have to add that funcitonality in.


Reply #4 Top

BTW, is the highDPI UI in the public build?

This is what it looks like at 2560x1440:

 

http://screencast.com/t/bmxZVQQbbkp 

Reply #5 Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 4

BTW, is the highDPI UI in the public build?

This is what it looks like at 2560x1440:

 

http://screencast.com/t/bmxZVQQbbkp 

It seems to be in, playing at 2560x1440 too, and everything is larger!

http://www.screencast.com/t/F1v2mBwrH

http://www.screencast.com/t/OYsF9UXbF

Also these glitches are all over the place:

http://www.screencast.com/t/HpXrzWJj

 

I like it a lot to have an easier time spotting things and reading now :D Now let me freely move the windows in the game and I´m happy :D