Suggestions for End Match/Selection Screen

[Tarvin]

First, I want to thank the team at Totem Arts and everyone else involved in making this game. It has now become a nightly routine. There is no better way to end the day than to defeat Nod ... Or I suppose play as them and win. Winning is always good.

Anyway, I, and I believe a lot of other players, are frustrated by always seeming to end up on the same maps over and over again. I imagine some of this is just familiarity rather than choosing a map that may be too large for the number of players.

My suggestion is to add two columns to the right of the map vote section. The first would display the map size, whether S (small), M (medium), L (large), or V (Very Large).

The second column would indicate what level of defenses are on the map. F (full), P (Partial), or N (none). Possibly also MO (manned only).

A possible third column could show the recommended range of players for each map.

I think that these additions would make people more likely to try new maps and help to keep, especially newer players, more interested in the game. Also, there seems to be enough room for these features on the existing end match screen to take the columns and a small legend for the symbols without reworking the entire screen.

One final suggestion is that the vote screen could be tweaked so that any map with a minimum recommended number of players 10 or more over the current number of players be shifted to the bottom of the vote list.

 

*note, could a mod please shift this topic to the feedback forum? Just realized I overlooked the existence of that subforum but am unable to delete this topic for reposting there.

Edited August 28, 2021 by Tarvin
accidentally posted in wrong subforum

[roweboat]

moved. interesting suggestions. thanks for the input =D

[Tarvin]

You're welcome. I'm working on hashing out some other subtle UI suggestions that could improve gameplay without cluttering how things look. Nothing concrete I'm ready to put into text yet though.

Guess I'm getting to put some of my background as former game designer to use after all.

 

Edit: Those suggestions are now posted.

Edited August 29, 2021 by Tarvin

[Handepsilon]

Text box would have to be shrunk to accomodate the columns. Other than that, I'll have to see how the inner ActionScript structure goes, but theoretically it shouldn't be too hard

Those variables are strings tho, so anything other than the mentioned is probably just going to have "???" instead

[Tarvin]

Could you translate please? I was a designer, not a programmer.

[roweboat]

he means what your asking for, might sound simple, but would actually need a whole re-work of the current set up

[Tarvin]

lol. I got that much. When I was a designer we used Unity, which, even at the time, was more advanced than what Renegade X was made in.

I just don't quite follow why it would require changing the size of the text box when there is open space to work with if the building icons were shifted up a bit ... Then again, I'm basing my experience off of Unity that had drag and drop menu utilities that could be put into games among other development aids.

[Handepsilon]

That'll break the box form unless the scoreboard is resized as well,  and that's even more work because the scoreboard is an image. 

Also,  iirc, the width is already near-maximum. It can be rather deceiving ingame, because the UI is resized so it fits the screen

PS : The UI is made via Adobe Flash

[Tarvin]

Wow. So despite the polished look, some real dated programs went into making RenX.

[Handepsilon]

RenX was made in a REALLY dated engine by today's standard (2006-2007 was about when UE3 was made, maybe earlier), so real dated programs are to be expected.

[Tarvin]

Are there any plans to port RenX to a more modern platform in the future? If so, I would suggest checking out the features of Unity. When we were working with it, I found all sorts of things from free AI for FPS, free menu utilities, and much more that would help speed development.