And it reminded me of the Civilopedia from Civilization. Basically, a little button in the corner of the screen which opens up an in-game browser where you can look up various characters, nations, units, abilities... it's basically a wiki on everything you could need to look up for the game.
But the Civilopedia doesn't just provide stats and abilities for all of your units in an easy-to-read dictionary/encyclopedia style format, it also provides background story. When was this unit first used, who invented that unit first, and so on and so forth. This is stuff normally contained within the manual, but since nobody's reading the manual while playing, that's not terribly useful.
So I was thinking... the SupCom2 universe would be much more flavorful (because you could actually read up on the flavor), and it would be much easier for newbies to learn what each unit does (and, I bet, a couple vets would find out one or two things they didn't know before...) if there was a centralized, in-game way to look up whatever unit/ability/leader/whatever you needed to.
Just a thought. Possibly a feature to consider looking into adding, since it's not even a terribly extensive feature: basically just a text file reader in-game, accessing a text database + showing unit icons (which are already loaded into RAM for the actual game).
Personally, I wouldn't mind it for instances where, say, I forget that the Power Detonate on a Cybran factory does 5,000 damage and need to quickly look it up before that enemy experimental walks past my factories... or something. Or looking up whether a Mass Extractor is volatile or not.
(of course... if they would just tag volatile units with a little "Volatile!" thing when you mouseover, that'd be handy too)|||Yeah! I like the idea! How implement it? I dont know, start to dig into the files! Form an idea and post the progress in the mod forum?
"+1"
:)|||with supcom1, I remember having a bonus CD with background info. Only for UEF though =(|||To add to this, I think what we're missing is the tooltips.
I remember in SC1 that the tooltip would give a little background about the battleship having "dual GALAXAR cannons" for the story-ish effect, and it would also include total health with numbers (I don't like that they removed that from your enemy), and the functions of a unit. Engineer, volatile, AA, etc. I was sad when they removed the awesome descriptions in FA, but what they gave was decent enough to give you the idea of what the unit does, and the functions were still listed. This is something that I strongly feel is completely necessary in KnC.
A Supremopedia :) would also be a good addition as well, although I like the way AoE 3 went about it. With AoE 3, you get the whole story/description in a seperate menu from the main menu, and you also get actual damage and multipliers in the tool-tips. This sounds a little crowded, but it could be made convenient. Actually, a pop up book would be just as great for more in depth strategic analysis, not only giving you attack and defense, but total HP, blast radius, and a description of each function listed. Maybe even units that it is strong and weak against.
KnC should definitely implement this. I think an out of game menu would be great for story and strategic thinking, while an in-depth tool-tip and battlepedia would be great alongside for quick-thinking analysis.|||I always like games with ingame libraries, especially if theyre well written. System Shock 2 and Freespace 2 come to mind.|||I agree with post.
The closest thing we have now is those loading screen hints, which are starting to show their age rather a lot.|||The problem is that something like that would take a lot of work, and all the gameplay assets and designs would have to be finalised before hand. This couldn't have happened with Sup2 because SE was running a fairly tight schedule - the game was RTM months before release so that discs and packages could be mass produced (engineer assisting would have helped a lot, but I didn't decide to cut it. lol), and many things weren't finished. That was why we had such a large Day 0 patch.|||Well, a forward thinking game would just have a built in webbrowser and the library would be online (and downloadable as well I guess.)
And yes, it would probably require resources beyond GPGs current capability. Then again if they ditched the forums and got a wiki instead it might be more efficient use of their manpower ;)|||In-built browser wouldn't be a bad idea at all.|||You mean, shift-tab and open the browser in the steam overlay?|||No, we mean an in-game database that is served behind the scenes with a http connection. That way the 'pedia can be updated as things change, can be built and maintained after RTM, and doesn't need to be included (and delayed by) patches.
Sure the overlay could work, but that's not an ideal solution.|||One of the things I very much miss from SupCom is the tool-tips and information.
+1|||I agree, the lack of information this game provides is frustrating. Why do all that work making each unit individual and cool and then not share the details with us?|||Every time someone comes up with an interesting idea that's somewhat unorthodox, someone says this: "That would take a lot of work though, I think the time and resources would be spent on balance and gameplay."
Well, if we only focused on balance and gameplay we might not have gotten strategic zoom!
I personally like this idea quite a bit. Since this game won't nearly have as much content as Civ V (it's hard to have a game with that much content) I don't think it will be that huge of a deal.
Though I could very well be wrong...
*edit* What bullet said.|||Quote:|||No, I think the comparison IS valid.
At least, if you look at it in the sense that I looked at it. You see, when I said "balance and gameplay" I was trying (though unsuccessfully) to imply things which are "low risk" features that are essentially "in every RTS ever". So in that sense, we might not have ever gotten strategic zoom because it was "not traditional" and gamers might dismiss it as "completely stupid and blasphemous" or something. However, the opposite took place and people love strategic zoom. What I'm trying to say, is that always taking the safe road means it's unlikely to make a big difference earlier rather than later with some "high risk" situations. Even though high risk does imply a higher chance of failure, our lives today would have been nothing like it would be today if people didn't take risks. Where would computers be today? Where would flight be today? Where would our understanding of space be? Where would our country be? Where would columbus have been? Something like this would be a huge help in not only balancing the factions, but also allowing other people to understand the game better.
Though I must also say that your argument does make sense...
...I just don't think strategic zoom has anything to do with faction balance.
Gameplay yes, but not faction balance. A lot of other games without strat zoom do just fine without it in the area of balance.|||I see your point. There has to be innovation at some point. But there are those who dislike strategic zoom. I was saying how people aren't saying that those ideas would be too complex/expensive because they don't want things to change or anything, just that those big things must be planned for from the beginning.|||You don't need a whole encyclopedia like civilization has, but a bit more information could be VERY helpfull..The answer has been there since 1992.. but maybe the required effort is blocking such additions to the game. In 1992 there was the RTS called Dune II. The game had a fantastic intro, some decent cutscenes and a mentor that was telling you interesting things about new units and structures, and hence giving some more depth to the story and history. All combined this created a fantastic SF experience.. but Dune II already had a great story to build on, and that may be unfair because the supcom universe had to be created (and yes that takes effort, and no it is not easy to do decent SF storytelling).
|||You forget that often introducing units to the player substituted for story in those early RTSes :)Many of the before-mission cutscenes were like, "Go blow up this thing. Oh, and here is a new cool thing, let me tell you all about it..." :)
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