YAFI (Yet Another First Impressions)

[eskimo68]

I know some of these have been posted and there is a probably an upcoming features list somewhere but I'm doing a "first impressions post" so this time I'm just
listing whatever popped into mind.

Downloaded 28.04, Windows 7, 8G, quadcore, ATI Radeon HD 4800, 1920x1200. No problems whatsoever in the first 2h.


Installer: giving the serial is nasty considering the installer can only be closed, not minimized. Luckily Windows has "show the desktop".

Liked the music.

Hate the "New game" etc font. Could be simply chnaging the colour to black, dark grey would make it visible enough.

Someone else already said the first thing they look for is options. Me too

The New game Play button will probably become a large and easy to find one some day.

Aaah, loved the old style black turn 1 window. But got disappointed there was no newspaper . Ok, it's there in other scenarios but I would like to have a "fun" one
in the tutorial as well.

One thing I always hated about PG is that once you click away from the unit after moving it, that's it. Could we please change it to something a bit more user
friendly? If you click on the unit you moved last it will "reactivate" so that you still can undo the movement. In old PG I tended to do 5 saves per turn to have
something to fall back on in case I did a misclick. That's just a nuisance.

It would be nice if the strategic map had owner coloring.

The action buttons (replacement etc) are a bit dull. And the last one doesn't give a popup

Doubleclicking on a city could open up "purchase a unit".

Purchasing units has the goold old horrible "once you click on a truck you cannot click again to unselect it from the purchase" flaw.

Doubleclicking on an unit should give stats (artillery range etc). Or then show both unit stats when planning an attack down to the right as we are used to.

The red line across a units factor makes the value unreadable.

Could not figure out how to disband a unit (i.e. not inituitive - or maybe it does not exist yet .

Scenario does not autoend when all units are killed or all objectives are taken.

Love being able to zoom out and get a better view of things. But scalable would be nicer. At least more than just two possibilities.


Would it be possible to get a copy of the old xxx generals? I kinda like to compare things. Then again, I think I gave up on getting Fantasy general to work on
any newer Windows maybe 10 years ago. Perhaps this would just be too much of a chore.

[eskimo68]

The installer created a Panzer Corps directory beneath where I wanted to install. Which was g:\panzer corps. So I ended up with g:\panzer corps\panzer corps. Please don't do the installer this way, it's sooooo annoying. At least some minilogic that if the directory is the same it would do another subdirectory would be nice.

The scenario editor isn't even remotely inviting you to create scenarios (yet). Nice to have one though.

[eskimo68]

Lots of people have posted in dirrerent threads. Lots of similar things though. Should we make a Wiki page where people could go in and change things, i.e. improving the content little by little?

Something like this:


There is no xxxx. Yes, I miss that too.
Rudan: coming in the May 10th version.

The end button is in a weird place.
Rudan: any suggestions where to put it?
Down below (eskimo68, mr x, miss y)
Middle (no votes)
Good wehere it is now (Mr y)

[Rudankort]

Hey Peter! Welcome to the forum!

I'm afraid that a beta wiki is not really a possibility for two reasons. On one hand, it is a lot of work to do it, and on the other hand, many people will have problems figuring out its structure and where to post what. I'm happy when feedback gets posted at all, it is my task to structurize and prioritize it. Also, when the same issue is mentioned many times, it helps to determine that it is really important and must be solved. So, feel free to post your thoughts in this thread, or in any other threads - it will be very useful.

Some question on your points so far.

Hate the "New game" etc font. Could be simply chnaging the colour to black, dark grey would make it visible enough.

So, the issue was with the color, correct? Can you post a screenshot of how main menu looks for you? Depending on screen resolution, the menu items can jump to different places, relative to background, so perhaps this is a problem we are not aware about?

Someone else already said the first thing they look for is options. Me too

I think, you have seen the options screen already, so what do you think - will it really be useful to invoke it from main menu? Most options are related to map view, and so it is hard to decide what you need to adjust without seeing that first...

The New game Play button will probably become a large and easy to find one some day.

Yes, indeed.

Aaah, loved the old style black turn 1 window. But got disappointed there was no newspaper . Ok, it's there in other scenarios but I would like to have a "fun" one
in the tutorial as well.

Emm... what newspaper are you talking about? I don't remember adding one to any of the scens.

One thing I always hated about PG is that once you click away from the unit after moving it, that's it. Could we please change it to something a bit more user
friendly? If you click on the unit you moved last it will "reactivate" so that you still can undo the movement. In old PG I tended to do 5 saves per turn to have
something to fall back on in case I did a misclick. That's just a nuisance.

Maybe just provide a more "paranoid" autosaves? I'm afraid that we cannot really protect the user from all possible "misclicks". We already separated selection button from action button, and you still have undo, so these are already two levels of protection against accident movement. Do we really need a third layer?

Doubleclicking on a city could open up "purchase a unit".

Interesting idea. But I always thought that you need only two means to invoke a command: discoverable one (a button in the UI), and a quick one for advanced users (in case of PzC it is a hotkey). How will it hep to have one more way to do the same?

Purchasing units has the goold old horrible "once you click on a truck you cannot click again to unselect it from the purchase" flaw.

Agreed, will fix. What I plan for this is just one more icon in the transport list - "no transport". So you can just choose that instead of an actual transport if you want.

Doubleclicking on an unit should give stats (artillery range etc). Or then show both unit stats when planning an attack down to the right as we are used to.

What about the stats panel (opened with "i" button)? Doesn't it show exactly what you need?

Could not figure out how to disband a unit (i.e. not inituitive - or maybe it does not exist yet .

Right, a button will be added later, in unit info screen. For now, the only option is to use D hotkey, but, as you said, it is not discoverable.

Love being able to zoom out and get a better view of things. But scalable would be nicer. At least more than just two possibilities.

The problem is with scaling tiles by a fractional number - they fit each other poorly if you do. If I find a way to make this work, I'll of course be happy to provide intermediate zoom levels.

Would it be possible to get a copy of the old xxx generals? I kinda like to compare things. Then again, I think I gave up on getting Fantasy general to work on
any newer Windows maybe 10 years ago. Perhaps this would just be too much of a chore.

I'm afraid, I don't have an answer to this one. Although I would expect DOSBOX to help with running FG, I think it worked for me in the past.

And finally...

The scenario editor isn't even remotely inviting you to create scenarios (yet). Nice to have one though.

Could you please be more specific on this? What exactly prevents you from creating scenarios? Is it the lack of documentation, or there are some problems with the editor itself?

[IainMcNeil]

The installer has to crate a subfolder in case people do something silly like install to desktop. Sorry its just a requirement for windows!

[eskimo68]

Hate the "New game" etc font. Could be simply chnaging the colour to black, dark grey would make it visible enough.

So, the issue was with the color, correct? Can you post a screenshot of how main menu looks for you? Depending on screen resolution, the menu items can jump to different places, relative to background, so perhaps this is a problem we are not aware about?

Nono, just the font type which is supposed to be a bit broken (emulating being stamped or whatever). Since the sand/dirt is fairly light and the font is light I just didn't like it (at all).

I think, you have seen the options screen already, so what do you think - will it really be useful to invoke it from main menu? Most options are related to map view, and so it is hard to decide what you need to adjust without seeing that first...

At this point, no. If you ever get the scalable maps, maybe. Maybe when you start to add "real" optional stuff (left/right click, single vs multiplayer defaults in fog of war).

Aaah, loved the old style black turn 1 window. But got disappointed there was no newspaper . Ok, it's there in other scenarios but I would like to have a "fun" one
in the tutorial as well.

Emm... what newspaper are you talking about? I don't remember adding one to any of the scens.

The campaign "newspaper". Definitely have those in the scens as well.

Improvement area: when selecting a campaign, if you select options and quit to main menu you still have to look at the entire first round (43 campaign, west is a good example) before the exit actually happens. Quit/End and answering yes to are you sure means *quit now*

One thing I always hated about PG is that once you click away from the unit after moving it, that's it. Could we please change it to something a bit more user
friendly? If you click on the unit you moved last it will "reactivate" so that you still can undo the movement. In old PG I tended to do 5 saves per turn to have
something to fall back on in case I did a misclick. That's just a nuisance.

Maybe just provide a more "paranoid" autosaves? I'm afraid that we cannot really protect the user from all possible "misclicks". We already separated selection button from action button, and you still have undo, so these are already two levels of protection against accident movement. Do we really need a third layer?

I did consider an every turn autosave but naah. This is just the user inteface being broken and forcing a player to be overly careful. Someone else mentioned the same thing in another thread. One possible fix is a really simple one. Once a unit goes out of scope (i.e. you click somewhere else), selecting that unit again will allowe you to continue commanding it as if you had never exited it (undo movement and all). AS LONG AS no other action has been performed to another unit. Simply clicking on another unit still has the previous unit as the selected "exit focus one". Moving, firing, upgrading etc, the unit those actions are performed on becomes the new active unit.
Basically one variable . Ok, you have to think a bit if you get any side effects with buttons like "next unit" but I don't think it will affect almost anything.

Doubleclicking on a city could open up "purchase a unit".

Interesting idea. But I always thought that you need only two means to invoke a command: discoverable one (a button in the UI), and a quick one for advanced users (in case of PzC it is a hotkey). How will it hep to have one more way to do the same?

Agree on it being unnecessary. But for a newcomer to the PG series it might be a very inituitive way (used in some other well selling series IIRC) so it wouldn't hurt either.

Doubleclicking on an unit should give stats (artillery range etc). Or then show both unit stats when planning an attack down to the right as we are used to.

What about the stats panel (opened with "i" button)? Doesn't it show exactly what you need?

Ugly long (high) list. PGF-style please. Showing the current selected unit and the unit under the mouse next to each other so you can compare attack/defense values etc with one glance. And using plain english please like "ground defense" and not just some icon. This might be one of those things in options (use plain english instead of icons whenever possible).

The problem is with scaling tiles by a fractional number - they fit each other poorly if you do. If I find a way to make this work, I'll of course be happy to provide intermediate zoom levels.

3 or 4 levels might already be plenty (guessing the biggest scenarios might require more but then it might get too small anyway).

The scenario editor isn't even remotely inviting you to create scenarios (yet). Nice to have one though.

Could you please be more specific on this? What exactly prevents you from creating scenarios? Is it the lack of documentation, or there are some problems with the editor itself?

It's quite ugly .
One of the first things I tried to find was some sort of preview to be able to see if like adding two lakes next to each other would show up as one big lake on the "real" map.
Can't exactly say it's inituitive.
OK, I admit, if I could live with the super simple map editor in Brass Hats for a few years I'm probably just spoilt rotten.
Then again, one of my first thoughts were, now, if I had access to the game drawing functions and enough documentation about the scenario format... coding a better one certainly would be possible . Nono, I'm not signing up, lol (although doing a scenario editor and unofficial scenarios would be tempting).

[/quote]

[Kerensky]

One thing I always hated about PG is that once you click away from the unit after moving it, that's it. Could we please change it to something a bit more user
friendly? If you click on the unit you moved last it will "reactivate" so that you still can undo the movement. In old PG I tended to do 5 saves per turn to have
something to fall back on in case I did a misclick. That's just a nuisance.

Maybe just provide a more "paranoid" autosaves? I'm afraid that we cannot really protect the user from all possible "misclicks". We already separated selection button from action button, and you still have undo, so these are already two levels of protection against accident movement. Do we really need a third layer?

I did consider an every turn autosave but naah. This is just the user inteface being broken and forcing a player to be overly careful. Someone else mentioned the same thing in another thread. One possible fix is a really simple one. Once a unit goes out of scope (i.e. you click somewhere else), selecting that unit again will allowe you to continue commanding it as if you had never exited it (undo movement and all). AS LONG AS no other action has been performed to another unit. Simply clicking on another unit still has the previous unit as the selected "exit focus one". Moving, firing, upgrading etc, the unit those actions are performed on becomes the new active unit.
Basically one variable . Ok, you have to think a bit if you get any side effects with buttons like "next unit" but I don't think it will affect almost anything.

Pretty lengthy thread here, but this was one point I wanted to weigh in on. I disagree with being able to reactivate units, specifically the part of the quote that I made bold. This could be easily abused, only promotes carelessness, and devalues intelligence(as in recon spotting not thinking capacity).

All three of these problems exist in this example:
Player has a front line of units near the enemy and a reserve of even more units some distance behind the front.

A player will do whatever he wants with his rear reserve, moving them all in a Northeast direction. None of these units have revealed or engaged enemies units, so by your modification, they would all still be allowed to undo their move.
On the front line, the player then moves units on his 'front' forward is a Southwest direction and now encounters seriously entrenched infantry units.
They will go now back to their already moved 'reserve' forces, undo X amount of unit moves, and shift all those forces Southwest instead now.

Currently, the player is, as you yourself said 'forced to be overly careful'. An overly careful player knows that once he commits his 'reserve' in a certain direction, those forces are committed. So he must use his front lines units to more effectively scout and engage the enemy before making his decision of where to shift his reserve, or even just part of his reserve.

Recon and intelligence gathering is proactive, it should not be reactive.
You need to be proactive and go out and find out where you need to shift your fresh reserves to BEFORE you commit your reserves. Once you have gathered some intelligence, you need to make a decision on how much of your forces to commit.
If you're able to react after stumbling upon new intelligence, the player simply gains too much flexibility.

Scout your enemy, gauge the strength, layout, and composition of their forces, commit an appropriate force to overcome it.
Not:
Throw your reserves wherever you want, knowing full well that you can peal off pieces at will and at any time you need to.

[eskimo68]

Pretty lengthy thread here, but this was one point I wanted to weigh in on. I disagree with being able to reactivate units, specifically the part of the quote that I made bold. This could be easily abused, only promotes carelessness, and devalues intelligence(as in recon spotting not thinking capacity).

All three of these problems exist in this example:
Player has a front line of units near the enemy and a reserve of even more units some distance behind the front.

A player will do whatever he wants with his rear reserve, moving them all in a Northeast direction. None of these units have revealed or engaged enemies units, so by your modification, they would all still be allowed to undo their move.

Hell no, I wasn't talking about cheat capability. Going into fog territory obviously counts as an action, thus invalidates any undo possibilities.

I'm simply so fed up with clicking somewhere with an unit, seeing it move, clicking somewhere else because I'm in "speed mode" and ups, my info click turned into movement. No enemy stuff, just one of my units ending up in the wrong place. And being a perfectionist, that hurts. Sometimes enough to make me restart the entire scenario. Even if moving one tank 3 hexes wrong would have made no difference whatsoever.

There exist at least four reasons for this (some not so admiring):

- this is a design flaw (few games in the last 20+ years are this harsh, but yes, the best ones sometimes are)
- when you play lots of games the left/right click changing will sometimes make you misclick (especially when you switch play strat/1st person/gambling/casual/....)
- after playing through all campaigns in most of the PG series games at least twice or even four times *I* still misclick (seldom, granted, but I still feel like an idiot when I do it)
- playing a campaign for the 3rd time sure is a good place for doing it with a beer or two, misclicks sure go up


The level of commitment/testing I like to do can be shown by an example in PGF. I think I spent 6 weeks trying to figure out the best way to do Kharkow '43 (very likely this one) as the Russians in the campaign. Maybe I didn't have the optimal setup. Maybe I was hellbent on getting a major (*and* getting all cities *and* killing all units on max level). Maybe I consider using (especially overstrength) airbornes a bit of cheating in old PG and tried to avoid them in PGF.

[Rudankort]

Nono, just the font type which is supposed to be a bit broken (emulating being stamped or whatever). Since the sand/dirt is fairly light and the font is light I just didn't like it (at all).

So, did I understand correctly that you would prefer plain Arial font used for the main menu items?

I did consider an every turn autosave but naah. This is just the user inteface being broken and forcing a player to be overly careful. Someone else mentioned the same thing in another thread. One possible fix is a really simple one. Once a unit goes out of scope (i.e. you click somewhere else), selecting that unit again will allowe you to continue commanding it as if you had never exited it (undo movement and all). AS LONG AS no other action has been performed to another unit. Simply clicking on another unit still has the previous unit as the selected "exit focus one". Moving, firing, upgrading etc, the unit those actions are performed on becomes the new active unit.
Basically one variable . Ok, you have to think a bit if you get any side effects with buttons like "next unit" but I don't think it will affect almost anything.

Well, if this interface is broken, we have to admit that in majority of other games it is broken even more. Click to select - click to move. It is simple and straightforward scheme, and is used everywhere. But only few games even give an option to undo!

I don't like your suggestion for two reasons. On one hand, it is quite obscure, many players will not even guess that they can return to a unit and undo the last action, even if they fuck something up. On the other hand, it is not universal. It helps you to undo, but it does not help if you reveal an enemy unit with your move, or if you accidentally attack, or disembark etc. Autosave, on the other hand, would help in all of these cases. So, if you think that this problem is really that important, what is the problem with "paranoid" autosave? It is dead simple, reliable, all people will understand it instantly and, no matter what you mess up, it will help you to correct the error.

Ugly long (high) list. PGF-style please. Showing the current selected unit and the unit under the mouse next to each other so you can compare attack/defense values etc with one glance. And using plain english please like "ground defense" and not just some icon. This might be one of those things in options (use plain english instead of icons whenever possible).

Well, text vs. icons is a never-ending debate and ultimately a matter of taste. However, now that we are settled on icons, it is not that easy to provide an "option" to show text instead, because this would effect the layout of many screens - no only main UI, but also Purchase screen, upcoming unit info etc. So, I don't think that the effort required to implement this is worth the benefit. I think, most of our icons are clear, and if not, please feel free to join the discussion how to improve them. We are really very very very interested in good ideas on this from beta testers.

But about the rest, the side panel shows exactly what you have in PGF: "Showing the current selected unit and the unit under the mouse next to each other so you can compare attack/defense values etc with one glance." Am I missing anything here?

3 or 4 levels might already be plenty (guessing the biggest scenarios might require more but then it might get too small anyway).

Yeah, 3-4 levels would be nice. As I said, if I find a good way to do that, I'll provide them.

Could you please be more specific on this? What exactly prevents you from creating scenarios? Is it the lack of documentation, or there are some problems with the editor itself?

It's quite ugly .
One of the first things I tried to find was some sort of preview to be able to see if like adding two lakes next to each other would show up as one big lake on the "real" map.
Can't exactly say it's inituitive.
OK, I admit, if I could live with the super simple map editor in Brass Hats for a few years I'm probably just spoilt rotten.
Then again, one of my first thoughts were, now, if I had access to the game drawing functions and enough documentation about the scenario format... coding a better one certainly would be possible . Nono, I'm not signing up, lol (although doing a scenario editor and unofficial scenarios would be tempting).

Well, as we know, the easiest work is always the one you don't do. Isn't it? In any case, the editor is done like this not because I didn't have enough time in my hands. It's just that the concept might be different from what you expect.

I'll try to explain our approach. In a PzC map you have two independent data layers: terrain and tiles. Terrain is what effects the gameplay. Tiles is what you see. I did not want to mix one and the other, because somebody may want to make a completely different tileset for the game, with a different number of tiles, different number of layers etc. So, what you do is this: you specify terrain first, and then the editor generates tiles for you (Tools->Generate tiles command). Some people would generate tiles only once, after all terrain is already set. Other people would want to invoke it many times, after each minor change. The choice is yours, but the editor supports both approaches.

As for the "ugly" comment, I don't know. The UI is pretty much standard Windows stuff, so this should be perfectly ok for a tool. Can you give me an example of a "beautiful" editor in a game? Really wonder what it looks like.