Anybody think contextual dialogue would be a good idea to have?
The idea is to improve the portrait dialogue system to provide more atmosphere/etc, provide the player with better situational awareness, and most importantly to be a better tool as a uniquely unobtrusive tutorial method for combat.
By contextual I mean dialogue that references things going on in the environment relating to actions or other ships, for example:
--
"The [last ship to destroy our weapon modules] killed our [weapon module name] , we're no use here!"
"The [Enemy ship with any torpedoes or < 2 heavy cannons] looks deadly, I wouldn't want to fly parallel to them"
"The [Enemy ship trying to board us] is preparing a boarding party against us!"
"It looks like The [undermanned enemy ship] is nearly out of crew, I bet we could get away with boarding them!"
"The [Enemy destroying armour rapidly] is tearing through our fleet's light armour! I don't know how much longer they will last!"
--
I'm sure this is not going to be a thing since it would probably require a type of tagging system for bullets to figure out what ship shot what (which would be time consuming even if it didn't require redoing chunks of the current dialogue system which I bet it would) but do you guys think this would be a useful feature?
--
Also, does anybody know about the GSB crew shout system? (top middle, also it's a link because it's a big image)
Theirs works similar to Airships but does it in a compact way that allows for much more dialogue to be said at a faster, almost real-time pace.
It basically looks like a texting app with each shout displacing the last one at the bottom, which is very clean looking.
Doing that would affect play balance. Because players wouldn't have to figure out
the tactical situation for themselves.
But seriously (?), just ditch the dialogue completely (at least in multiplayer) it mucks up my beautiful victory screenshots....
But seriously seriously, if you think its worth doing, you should draw up a spreadsheet of a hundred good shouts and the appropriate game conditions (your ship, enemy ship, other factors) under which each should appear. Then present that to the dev.
Replacing* the crew texts with symbols (fire, bullet, body, etc.).
Maybe add an X to the dialog, sometimes it blocks navigation.
Move all "worded" dialog to the new imagery system.
...eventually...
Adopt a Starcraft Portrait System, in such a way who is speaking appears in a pre-defined box.
Next to said box, put all the former text reactions of the crew.
Then your reading lines of scrolling text with realtime image popups. Otherwise said box will have your heraldry. Then, if/when captains or "smarter crew" are speaking, you're more attracted to the notification. Otherwise it's just sailors complaining about stuff - worth overlooking.
Honestly - standard RTS. The idea isn't original.
Add a scroll bar. Then in multiplayer if another player speaks, their heraldry will pop up. Color & Symbol the text, etc. so on.
Personally I find the current system distracting. The box that pops up has often gotten in the way, and the current crew text/reactions have made it more difficult to assess situations on larger craft. Works fine in singleplayer - hard to work with in multiplayer.
Well I can see that a lot of people would like the speech bubbles, I am just in a minority and would prefer the option to disable them.
Actually the other day I was looking at a pile of wreckage with twenty red X's splattered over it because 20 non-functioning airship sections and it occurred to me:
that maybe a green symbol on the functioning wreckage/parts might look better than a red x on the non-functioning ones (because there are usually a lot more of the latter).
or that it might just be simpler if wreckage under a certain size (5 cells?) was automatically non-functioning.
or that a section without gunnery might automatically become non-functioning (as its crew abandon it as they are unable to influence the battle any longer).
A better solution just might be to make useless debris (is debris/meets red X qualification) automatically take damage until destroyed.
It'd also look cool.
I'm not really for the popup text boxes either because of the clutter, but I think it's outweighed by the fact that it's tactically useful and adds a lot to the game atmospherically.
So keeping that in mind: Has anybody played SPAZ 2? The voice acting in that game is computer synthesized right off the internet but still retains a pretty consistent and human tone for the characters. It's not overly noticeable or distracting that the voices are actually robots.
What if that was a thing in Airships? It's basically free voice acting and it removes the need for cluttery text boxes which makes it an improvement by all standards.
...And for april fools day, all the normal crew shouts could also have synthesized voices.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Anybody think contextual dialogue would be a good idea to have?
The idea is to improve the portrait dialogue system to provide more atmosphere/etc, provide the player with better situational awareness, and most importantly to be a better tool as a uniquely unobtrusive tutorial method for combat.
By contextual I mean dialogue that references things going on in the environment relating to actions or other ships, for example:
--
"The [last ship to destroy our weapon modules] killed our [weapon module name] , we're no use here!"
"The [Enemy ship with any torpedoes or < 2 heavy cannons] looks deadly, I wouldn't want to fly parallel to them"
"The [Enemy ship trying to board us] is preparing a boarding party against us!"
"It looks like The [undermanned enemy ship] is nearly out of crew, I bet we could get away with boarding them!"
"The [Enemy destroying armour rapidly] is tearing through our fleet's light armour! I don't know how much longer they will last!"
--
I'm sure this is not going to be a thing since it would probably require a type of tagging system for bullets to figure out what ship shot what (which would be time consuming even if it didn't require redoing chunks of the current dialogue system which I bet it would) but do you guys think this would be a useful feature?
--
Also, does anybody know about the GSB crew shout system? (top middle, also it's a link because it's a big image)
Theirs works similar to Airships but does it in a compact way that allows for much more dialogue to be said at a faster, almost real-time pace.
It basically looks like a texting app with each shout displacing the last one at the bottom, which is very clean looking.
Commander
Doing that would affect play balance. Because players wouldn't have to figure out the tactical situation for themselves.
But seriously (?), just ditch the dialogue completely (at least in multiplayer) it mucks up my beautiful victory screenshots....
But seriously seriously, if you think its worth doing, you should draw up a spreadsheet of a hundred good shouts and the appropriate game conditions (your ship, enemy ship, other factors) under which each should appear. Then present that to the dev.
Commodore
Always been for:
...eventually...
Then your reading lines of scrolling text with realtime image popups. Otherwise said box will have your heraldry. Then, if/when captains or "smarter crew" are speaking, you're more attracted to the notification. Otherwise it's just sailors complaining about stuff - worth overlooking.
Honestly - standard RTS. The idea isn't original.
Add a scroll bar. Then in multiplayer if another player speaks, their heraldry will pop up. Color & Symbol the text, etc. so on.
Personally I find the current system distracting. The box that pops up has often gotten in the way, and the current crew text/reactions have made it more difficult to assess situations on larger craft. Works fine in singleplayer - hard to work with in multiplayer.
Commander
Well I can see that a lot of people would like the speech bubbles, I am just in a minority and would prefer the option to disable them.
Actually the other day I was looking at a pile of wreckage with twenty red X's splattered over it because 20 non-functioning airship sections and it occurred to me:
that maybe a green symbol on the functioning wreckage/parts might look better than a red x on the non-functioning ones (because there are usually a lot more of the latter).
or that it might just be simpler if wreckage under a certain size (5 cells?) was automatically non-functioning.
or that a section without gunnery might automatically become non-functioning (as its crew abandon it as they are unable to influence the battle any longer).
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
A better solution just might be to make useless debris (is debris/meets red X qualification) automatically take damage until destroyed.
It'd also look cool.
I'm not really for the popup text boxes either because of the clutter, but I think it's outweighed by the fact that it's tactically useful and adds a lot to the game atmospherically.
So keeping that in mind: Has anybody played SPAZ 2? The voice acting in that game is computer synthesized right off the internet but still retains a pretty consistent and human tone for the characters. It's not overly noticeable or distracting that the voices are actually robots.
What if that was a thing in Airships? It's basically free voice acting and it removes the need for cluttery text boxes which makes it an improvement by all standards.
...And for april fools day, all the normal crew shouts could also have synthesized voices.
Aerial Emperor
That is indeed the main intent behind the portrait messages! Right now, they get triggered in some situations, such as:
I like your ideas for additional ones and will see what I can put in.
Straker - you can hit F2 to hide all GUI elements including the floating crew shouts, for pretty screenshotting purposes.
Commodore
(and maybe you could add that gunner-pilot talk i suggested a couple weeks ago as well?)
Commander
Wow, how come I did not know that?
Commodore
@StuChris
That's a neat idea for SinglePlayer & Mission Triggers.
IF both craft are still alive, get a B-B-B-BONUS MESSAGE.
@Firebird11
Yea, that makes sense. Cool visual idea. Although, less advantage if said chunk falls on another craft.