View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0006791 | AI War 1 / Classic | Suggestion - New Features | Mar 23, 2012 2:03 am | Mar 23, 2012 12:52 pm | |
| Reporter | beyond.wudge | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | not fixable | ||
| Product Version | 5.000 | ||||
| Summary | 0006791: Borderless Windowed Mode (Like SC2, SWTOR & ME3) | ||||
| Description | Like Starcraft 2, SWTOR or Mass Effect 3 AI War should have a true borderless windowed mode for AI war. This is a window capable of fullscreen-like presentation with no taskbar visible or 'border' with options for closing/minimizing the window. Playing in a normal window just doesn't feel right. This is the perfect game to be grinding some nights to but the transition to desktop isn't seamless and takes too long (roughly 10 seconds each way). Even in very intense games checking on certain online resources (AI war wiki, AI war forums) for info and solutions is affected by the lack of a true borderless windowed function. Also, when using youtube for music it makes the transition in and out every 3-4min much more noticeably clunk. It would _measurably_ and _significantly_ improve the practicality and importance of the gaming experience and the hours I would sink into this game if I could seamlessly transition into the background without sacrificing 'presentation.' | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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In our old game engine for ai war, we did this. Unfortunately, the unity 3d engine does not support it. That was the main thing we had to give up when we made the switch... |
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Makes me really sad. :( |
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You, me, and a lot of people! Hopefully unity 3d will add support for "faux fullscreen" sometime in the future. |
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Was the unity 3d engine really worth it? In the thread I made they say there was important functionality added? Was this mainly under the hood or are some of the new game features reliant on the new engine? I used to play back in 1.0-2.0 so I am curious as to what couldn't be done on the old engine. |
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It was vastly important, and basically changed everything we could do. The biggest points were: 1. Cross-platform compatibility 2. No prerequisites to installing. 3. Various new technology stuff that we wanted/needed. |
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And you went from a 2d only system to a 3d capable one yeah? Do you have any plans on making use of this 3d capability, even if in the form of top down/menu-only art? |
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Nope, we were in a 3D system in both cases, and we already make use of it in terms of making a 2D game that runs lightning fast on modern hardware (compared to what it would be using software draw methods or something ancient like DirectDraw, which went away with DirectX7). We have no plans to ever make games that use actual 3D models, though; it's just not what we're about: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2010/04/quick-guide-how-to-recognize-arcen.html |
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Haha I've read a lot of your stuff actually. Having a future interest in getting into indy game design (starting with tabletop though, learning to program!) it was very interesting hearing about how things worked and what hurdles you had to sort your way through. I'm quite into 2d gaming. I think it has a lot of potential as an uncomplicated medium. Star Control II is an all time classic in that respect and Masters of Orion 2 effectively was as well. This is probably what has kept the RTS genre effectively 2d for so long. Apart from the Total Annihilation physics coolness (tall buildings blocking shots, mountains & LOS) and a few other things most of the time a true 3d element adds very little. I also think co-op is seriously underdeveloped as well. It's what drew me to AI war in the first place. I agree with you about the whole FPS thing. The production values and what actually matters to that market makes it hard to get your game out there. I pretty much have figured on (despite being a massive FPS player, even competitive clanner) leaving that genre alone in a selling sense. I might make FPS games but they'd be free. They'd be more hardcore titles that go back to the characterful days of Star Wars: Dark Forces, Wolfenstein, etc. Y'know, simple levels, straightforward goals, played hard and fast with a lot of things like 'aiming' taking a backseat to the strategy of beating an oldschool FPS level quickly. It's amazing how much space is freed up in a player's mind when they don't have to get the crosshair on the actual guy. They start to think and play the game every differently and their expectations are also very different. They'd be games I'd enjoy playing myself and would probably get a lot of broader RPG elements that would connect missions and in-mission objectives together. Probably being a 2d or 3d w/ 2dish graphics style game the level of investment required to get out new content (as I've noticed you have with AI war) would probably be quite low. The hard part would be making those enemies, levels, weapons, etc feel right. Have that real character often lost in more 'realistic' presentations. But really, my dream game is something along the lines of a multiplayer-possible Moo2. 4x Hybrid-TBS where you simulate real time with very short turns strung together. A 'game turn' would be 10 shorter turns followed by a 'pause' of whatever length suites (2 minutes, unlimited, etc). Unlike other TBS games you'd still be able to issue orders and units could interact more dynamically because they wouldn't collide with each other in a single short turn. Player's would have (lets say a short turn takes 5 seconds) sometimes ten the fifteen seconds to respond to an approaching attack or an ambush for instance without needing actual real time. It makes multiplayer much more accessible yet doesn't abandon the good simple gameplay turn-based systems often have. And if in multiplayer it's always two playable factions fighting each other (say 2 human sides or 1 human side vs an AI) you can have all the players involved in every battle, or at least watching with some real investment on the outcome. Your game, due to it's pacing, has actually given me a lot of food for thought on some of these issues. I still don't know why I can't select units across multiple planets though or give them all orders when they are on different ends of a wormhole but my recent forays into SDL and the like have given me new respect for how much more complicated that stuff can be when you see what how code underneath actually works, how what you see on screen can be such an illusion at best of what actually goes on inside the case. :D |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 23, 2012 2:03 am | beyond.wudge | New Issue | |
| Mar 23, 2012 2:18 am | beyond.wudge | Description Updated | |
| Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0021188 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Mar 23, 2012 8:02 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => not fixable |
| Mar 23, 2012 10:57 am | beyond.wudge | Note Added: 0021193 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 10:58 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0021194 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 10:58 am | beyond.wudge | Note Added: 0021195 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 11:05 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0021196 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 11:14 am | beyond.wudge | Note Added: 0021197 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 11:19 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0021198 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 12:52 pm | beyond.wudge | Note Added: 0021200 | |
| Mar 23, 2012 3:45 pm | beyond.wudge | Note Edited: 0021200 |
