MrWhite -first impressions-

MrWhite · Post by **MrWhite** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 7:53 am

First of all, thanks for the beta invitation.

If you are new to the beta we are interested to hear your feedback in the following areas:

- First impressions. What were your impression after 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 15 minutes and an hour. If you could write these down and post them to the forum it would be very useful.

30 seconds, damm how should I start from the menue , or must I buy these advertised other game ?

5 min hmm, looks nice but why is the controlpanekl on the right so small ? In the original PG there were more "clearness" but ok it´s a beta

15 min why can´t I buy units in the tutorial as mentioned ? Why does my core units not rebuild between the scenarios ? The SDkfz 222 looks a little bit oversized ...

1 h it´s a nice thing so far, but a lot of things to do :

- Performance. Is the game too slow on your PC? If yes, what problems exactly you experience, and what system configuration do you have?

Game runs smooth

- Map graphics: the terrain map and the units. What did you like or not like. What could be improved?

- Unit graphics are sometimes oversized, sometimes undersized, no animations, hey we are in 2011 and not in 1994, if you want a good sales success there should a little bit of eyecandy, like movement and battleanimations
- The map graphics could use a little bit more love from your graphicsdesigners, e.g. the roads only a few roads were tarred back in 1939, now the roads look like grey lines

- Usability and UI of the main screen. Is it intuitively clear how to control the game? Is the UI convenient? Do you like the existing mouse interface, or would you prefer a different one? What useful information do you miss in the UI sidebar or the main map view?

- Sidepanel GUI, too small icons and a little bit confusing for me, I am missing for exapmle a little barometer or something as weather forecast
- Battle Calculator, a little bit confusing, why don´t you name the opposing forces e.g. as attacker and defender so everyone knows whats going on or rember the battle animations in the original game ? Ok, many people turned them of but I liked them

- Game rules. Please note that at this point game rules are not final. We are still thinking about some aspects, and we'll change and tweak some things as we test the game. However, any opinions on what you see in the game now, and what could be improved, are very much welcome.

- rebuilding of coreunits between scenarios - I think a must have or there should be a lot more credits to earn
- what about leaders and elite units, I don´t mean to overstrenght units but to chose special units like WSS, or Brandenburger which are very expansive and only avaible if a unit reaches a very high level of experience

- Tutorial campaign. The first beta includes the six tutorial scenarios from the tutorial campaign. Currently they have no real tutorial help but are just there to show the difficulty. It would be good if we knew which areas of the game needed the most helpers and prompts so can you tell us which parts you did not understand so we can focus on explaining those.

So far, ok, but in the briefing of the second mission it says you can buy additional units, It doesn´t work in my game

Again, thanks for the invitation and sorry for my bad english

MrWhite

uran21 · Post by **uran21** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 3:09 pm

Thanks for your first impressions. Not being able to buy units in tutorial is a bug that slipped trough.

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 4:38 am

I agree with Mr. White's comment about more eye candy.

If you want to attract a larger audience you need to compete with the quality of real-time strategy games. I'm a turn-based gamer because I like my decisions to matter in the outcome. But even though I hate the frantic nature of RTS games because the action is happening too fast for me to make decisions that matter (it's a click-fest), they sure are pretty to look at.

Panzer Corps should be a rousing success with the beer and pretzels wargamer crowd.
The key to the success of this game with a larger audience is:
1) Great graphics
2) Gameplay that is easy to understand and get into
3) Stickiness: There has to be a sense of "Just one more turn"
To accomplish this, the game needs lots of new things for the player to discover, and lots of positive feedback for success:
* unit upgrades, but also medals, promotions, glory for the player's avatar/general. Have you guys considered a meta-game? It could be an avatar/general that would allow the player to be rewarded for victories. It could also include a 'war-room' where the player could see the grand strategic map and what areas were conquered...and were he could make strategic decisions about unit builds and where to attack next...

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:10 pm

Unit graphics are sometimes oversized, sometimes undersized

>>> Units are rescaled according to their historical sizes, so a Tiger 1 will be a lot bigger than a PzkW 1 and a ME 109 will be smaller next to a Junker.

no animations, hey we are in 2011 and not in 1994,

Good to know.

We are still looking what animations and effects would be nice and add something to the overall gameplay experience, sometimes an animation can help, but seeing the same thing over and over again can get also very annoying.

gdrover · Post by **gdrover** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:17 pm

Animated cut scenes are usually pretty annoying, and players almost invariably turn them off.

However, unit animations for firing, retreating, explosions, and perhaps damage are essential to bringing the battlefield to life and making the game more appealing.

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:22 pm

Animated cut scenes are usually pretty annoying, and players almost invariably turn them off.

>>> I agree, it is fun the first time, than it gets annoying.

However, unit animations for firing, retreating, explosions, and perhaps damage are essential to bringing the battlefield to life and making the game more appealing.

>>> Well here you can have the same effect as above, you have so much explosions going on as you hit so many times with units in a scenario. So we have to make sure when we add explosions or damage effects the variation is big enough.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:50 am

Unless this game gets some serious graphic upgrades and animations, I'm predicting that will be the #1 gripe you hear from people who play this game. Anything to the effect of "It's 2011 not 1994" with regards to the (lack of) graphics. Honestly, I don't understand how there are 3D images for your units, as seen
http://panzer-corps.com/wp-content/uplo ... ptArt4.jpg
and
http://panzer-corps.com/wp-content/uplo ... ptArt3.jpg
and
http://panzer-corps.com/wp-content/uplo ... ptArt5.jpg
But the units only actually exist in the game in profile facing left or right.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 9:43 am

To make many different unit facings we would need to make the units much smaller than they are now, and they would look much worse. Also, under some angles units do not look good and are more difficult to recognize. That is the reason why we decided to go with the look we have now.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:26 am

Be that as it may, I hope there are enough visuals and effects to compensate for that. Otherwise I worry what kind of appeal PzC will have with modern gamers.

lordzimoa · Post by **lordzimoa** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:33 am

Unless this game gets some serious graphic upgrades and animations, I'm predicting that will be the #1 gripe you hear from people who play this game. Anything to the effect of "It's 2011 not 1994" with regards to the (lack of) graphics.

>>> That may be your personal opinion, but we disagree.

It was a very deliberate choice, not to use 3D models in the game. The unit cards do not represent individual units, it is no tactical wargame.

We really looked at the original PG and what made it such an addictive game, and we believe the simple board game approach is one of those elements.

At the same time, our top priority is to preserve the “spirit” of PG. This is something even PG sequels did not quite manage, and a lot of players have missed it ever since. So, we really want to bring back some “PG feeling” in a modern game. To achieve that, we check all design decisions against a list of basic principles which, in our opinion, made PG so great.

Especially for Panzer Corps we kept faitfull to a few principles:

- Do not fix something when it is not broken.
- And the KISS (keep it simple stupid) principle.

We could easily have done 3D units all shiny with animations, smoke, turning, firing... but that has been tried before and although it looks nice, you rip apart the principle of the game being an addictive strategic board game, not a 3D tactical war game.

The great attraction on PG was that it plays like a simple hex based strategic boardgame and the art should support that, not the other way around. Almost every game now focusses on shiny 3D graphics, while we believe the format should support the game design and not just make it 3D because, yeah it is 2011, and we can do it.

So we decided to stick to classic 2D unit cards, however we gave the 2D unit cards a modern approach by using 2011 3D technology behind it.

The units are 3D rendered images, shown from the side in a slight angle, so more a classic look, but with 3D technology behind it. In our view it allows the best of two worlds, very good looking unit icons that you can recognize easily on the screen in a classic setting.

Meaning we modelled and textured all units in 3D with great detail than render them and choose the correct camera angle, shadows etc... than take a picture to create a 2D icon of a real 3D object.

We created around 350 unique 3D units in detail, the picture below shows exactly the detail and the 3D model you see here is a perfect example of how all models look. It takes about 4-5 days to model, texture, render and photoshop (if needed at all) one unit icon. The bigger models like ships and planes sometimes a week. Add to that the research, finding accurate blueprints, correcting mistakes or oversights. Every unit went through this process.

It may sound like overkill, but when you see them in game, it is worth all the trouble, the units icons are very good looking, sharp and very accurate.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 7:11 pm

You're right it's only my opinion, but on this topic I remain unconvinced so we'll just have to agree to disagree if your minds are made up.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:10 pm

Kerensky wrote:You're right it's only my opinion, but on this topic I remain unconvinced so we'll just have to agree to disagree if your minds are made up.

I know that there two camps with different view on this issue, and even when more "modern" PG2 came out, some people eagerly embraced its pseudo-3D look, while others preferred crisp, crystal-clear unit icons from PG1 and considered PG2 a step back.

So indeed, there is no point to argue about it, we'll try to use the "classical" approach in PzC and we'll see where this brings us. In the end we may decide to provide 2 alternative switchable graphics engines to satisfy everybody, but not in the first release, maybe in an expansion or sequel.

MrWhite · Post by **MrWhite** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:32 pm

lordzimoa wrote:
Unit graphics are sometimes oversized, sometimes undersized
>>> Units are rescaled according to their historical sizes, so a Tiger 1 will be a lot bigger than a PzkW 1 and a ME 109 will be smaller next to a Junker.

Just don´t miss understand me I just wanted to say that some units lock very oversized e.g. the recon car sdkfz 223 in the tutorial.

And for the missing "eyecandy" it´s ok, if it´s not possible to implement, I know how expensive a good designer is and so for such a small independent project the graphics are ok, harcore strategy gamers would also be pleased if there were only tactical symbols like modern nato symbols and not to forget you don´t have much time until the sheduled release date

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 8:38 pm

MrWhite wrote: Just don´t miss understand me I just wanted to say that some units lock very oversized e.g. the recon car sdkfz 223 in the tutorial.

It would be very useful if you could list all specific units which are disproportionally large or small, ideally with a reference to some hard data. Our references might be wrong in some cases, so one more pair of eyes would really help a lot.

adherbal · Post by **adherbal** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:56 pm

According to wikipedia Sdkfz 222 is 4.8 meters, same as a Pzkw II. Pzkw III is 6.4m but looks substantially bigger in the game. Provided these specs are correct those units should be ok.

Note that small units are proportionally bigger than big units, to avoid them looking too tiny. They will never be bigger than a bigger unit, just less small than they really were in reality.

Kerensky · Post by **Kerensky** » Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:29 pm

I'm withholding my opinions on this topic until we see the full range of units. If a something like a King Tiger is not distinctive from the size of a Panzer IV or recon car, then there will be words.

Out of curiosity though, I assume naval vessels are representative of singular units, right?

uran21 · Post by **uran21** » Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:31 pm

Out of curiosity though, I assume naval vessels are representative of singular units, right?

You can look at it either way you want especially because maps are too small to represent every vessel that participated in some operation.
But I think the most logical approach to it is that its true for capital ships an carriers but not so true for destroyers and submarines.