[Danukem]

oasiz, on 29 April 2018 - 11:29 AM, said:

But we already do that

The fundamental point here is that when players go to "keyboard setup", they will expect to see listed all the functions you can do with the keyboard. All the messages in the world in other places aren't going to remedy that. Even having the function key ones grayed out but still listed would be an improvement.

[oasiz]

Oh definitely, I agree there. I think the main issue is that those keys are hardcoded I believe. So it's simply an oversight on not having them there as by logic, non-bindable screen shouldn't be there.

[Zaxx]

oasiz, on 29 April 2018 - 11:29 AM, said:

But we already do that

Yeah but if you're playing the game on a nice big monitor the top left corner won't really be part of your peripheral vision so you will miss the message and from the looks of it a lot of people do not read the help page. Personally I find that super wierd since I loved reading those story bits back in the day but in a lot of reviews I see issues that come from the reviewer not reading the help screen. For example DWTerminator has no idea how headshots work because he didn't read the fuckin' help screen:

So I think the message should be a bit more intrusive, it should be flashing and it should be centered. Hell, maybe you could even do what Serious Sam 3 does if you've not been using the quick save feature for while:

[Danukem]

I'm pretty sure the devs are trying to avoid that kind of modern hand-holding, which is why they still don't have a message about pressing the use key to open vents, even though most players who haven't read this thread will shoot vents (e.g. Yahtzee does that too in the video).

So I'm just going to repeat myself and say that the non-editable keyboard controls could be listed in the keyboard setup as grayed out. Also, my more general complaints about the keyboard setup screen that I posted in this thread after the initial release still stand.

[Micky C]

Trooper Dan, on 29 April 2018 - 03:07 PM, said:

non-editable keyboard controls could be listed in the keyboard setup as grayed out.

I was also going to suggest something like this after hearing about the problem. I'd give a 'vote' to this.

[Zaxx]

Trooper Dan, on 29 April 2018 - 03:07 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure the devs are trying to avoid that kind of modern hand-holding

Telling you about the game's controls and basic features is not hand-holding though.

[necroslut]

There's only so much you can do when it comes to protecting people from their own stupidity and laziness without interfering with the experience of the rest. I can see it being a problem with streamers/reviewers though, when their stupidity influences others opinions.

[MusicallyInspired]

Trooper Dan, on 29 April 2018 - 11:02 AM, said:

I just started watching and already I noticed something that VP should take note of. Yahtzee wants to quick save, and immediately he looks for a quick save option in the keyboard setup. When it's not there, he concludes that the game has no quick save function. This is understandable and it's something that has bothered me before about Eduke32 but never mentioned. The same applies to any of the function key commands that are not configurable from the menu.

So there IS a quicksave in Ion Maiden? I thought it was weird that it wasn't there when it is in EDuke32.

[Loke]

MusicallyInspired, on 30 April 2018 - 06:09 AM, said:

So there IS a quicksave in Ion Maiden? I thought it was weird that it wasn't there when it is in EDuke32.

Yeah, you just need to pick a save slot first. Press F6 for quicksave.

[Zaxx]

necroslut, on 30 April 2018 - 06:09 AM, said:

There's only so much you can do when it comes to protecting people from their own stupidity and laziness without interfering with the experience of the rest. I can see it being a problem with streamers/reviewers though, when their stupidity influences others opinions.

It's easy to write this off as reviewers being stupid but I remember how I played FPS when I was a kid: I was not a tech savvy child and my parents never had the slightest idea about computers so I learned about PCs absolutely by myself as the years went on and I've been playing FPS for years before I discovered the magic of quick saving (this guy completed Serious Sam with manual saves as a kid! ). So stuff like this might be obvious for us these days but remember: there are people who grew up on consoles and only started flocking to PC these days thanks to Steam and hardware becoming more powerful and easier to handle than ever. To people like them pressing F1 or F6 might not be obvious since they grew up with a mindset governed by controllers and fixed save positions.

[MrFlibble]

What about an optional tutorial? That would help explain all the controls, including non-obvious stuff like pressing use on vents, in a non-intrusive way that does not disrupt actual gameplay.

That, or encourage users to compile, read and pass around unofficial FAQs, like in the good old days

[Perro Seco]

If the game has a save game menu, then I don't understand why there should be a quick save option or autosaves. It makes dying more like a joke, but I guess there's not much to do to avoid frustration on today's lazy kids.

[Sanek]

That's amazing how you can talk with eduke guys like this and get away with it...I guess my case is not as bad as I thought.

Back to Ion Maiden...

Perro Seco, on 30 April 2018 - 11:46 AM, said:

If the game has a save game menu, then I don't understand why there should be a quick save option or autosaves. It makes dying more like a joke, but I guess there's not much to do to avoid frustration on today's lazy kids.

I don't think that "today's lazy kids" is a game's target audience, since no CoD-era punk will waste his time on a game with ancient graphics like this.
The ones who'll play the game is used to a 90s-era saving system, at least I don't bother to open the save game section to do the thing.
However, it will be nice to have some autosave system between the maps/locations. If this feature is not present already.

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't mind quicksaves. The agency is still on the player to make those saves which is my only gripe with checkpoints.

[necroslut]

Zaxx, on 30 April 2018 - 07:15 AM, said:

It's easy to write this off as reviewers being stupid but I remember how I played FPS when I was a kid: I was not a tech savvy child and my parents never had the slightest idea about computers so I learned about PCs absolutely by myself as the years went on and I've been playing FPS for years before I discovered the magic of quick saving (this guy completed Serious Sam with manual saves as a kid! ). So stuff like this might be obvious for us these days but remember: there are people who grew up on consoles and only started flocking to PC these days thanks to Steam and hardware becoming more powerful and easier to handle than ever. To people like them pressing F1 or F6 might not be obvious since they grew up with a mindset governed by controllers and fixed save positions.

That would be a valid point, except there's a help screen right where you start. If someone chooses not to read it then it's either because they though they didn't need it when they apparently did - stupidity - or because they couldn't be bothered to take a moment to glance it over - laziness. It's not like it's a 300 page manual; it's a single screen - most of which is backstory which can be skipped over if so desired. It takes like half a second to look it over its contents and see if there's anything of use to you.

If you're a professional reviewer it's even worse than stupidity and laziness - it's incompetence or negligence. Back in the day that would have gotten you chewed out by the boss, but the modern youtube reviewers don't have bosses to answer to.

MrFlibble, on 30 April 2018 - 08:34 AM, said:

What about an optional tutorial? That would help explain all the controls, including non-obvious stuff like pressing use on vents, in a non-intrusive way that does not disrupt actual gameplay.

That, or encourage users to compile, read and pass around unofficial FAQs, like in the good old days

The issue with tutorials is that
A) they take time and effort to make, which can be better spent elsewhere
people don't play optional tutorials anyway - they did when Half-Life came out but that was 20 years ago
C) non-optional tutorials are always intrusive



I also hope HTTKC comes out some day, in whatever form possible. Any attempt at a "definitive" release of Duke 3D would have to be based on EDuke32 for the sake of compability if nothing else.

[Zaxx]

necroslut, on 03 May 2018 - 02:47 AM, said:

That would be a valid point, except there's a help screen right where you start. If someone chooses not to read it then it's either because they though they didn't need it when they apparently did - stupidity - or because they couldn't be bothered to take a moment to glance it over - laziness.

I think it's more about a false sense of knowledge: "It's a shooter, I know how to play shooters".

As for reviewers, especially when it comes to the current "internet age" I think the main problem is the lack of time. When you have to produce content for Youtube or when you're writing a review for a website you have to work fast if you want to have people to watch / read your shit because if you take your time your review will be the last one out and at that point people will just stop caring. For example when I wrote a review of Doom 2016 for a website I basically had 2-3 days to do so because we never get review copies but in the case of Doom nobody got them before launch so it was a nice opportunity to get some traffic for the site (you know professional sites can't do it faster than you if there are no pre-release review copies). Now, in that short amount of time I had to complete the campaign on ultra violence (because I don't care about how the game plays on low difficulties), had to get into the multiplayer, had to have a look at SnapMap + I had to write the freakin' article. In that case it wasn't that tense (also my review was the first in my country and dare I say also the most accurate representation of the game), by the time I finished the review I was already halfway through the game on my nightmare difficulty playthrough too but you know, Doom is a relatively short game and at launch SnapMap was a big fat nothing so that made it possible. Now imagine doing the same with something like GTA or an RPG: it's impossible and if you try it your review will suck balls.

And let's also not forget that the consumption of "tutorials" changed a lot: back in the day you had a nice printed manual that was an experience in itself to read through, compared to that if you launch a game you want to play it instead of reading through text.

Quote

If you're a professional reviewer it's even worse than stupidity and laziness - it's incompetence or negligence. Back in the day that would have gotten you chewed out by the boss, but the modern youtube reviewers don't have bosses to answer to.

Sometimes I read old reviews from gaming magazines and I have to say you're wrong there: they can full of false information and a lead editor won't be able to correct that since he has his own job instead of playing through every single game the staff is reviewing. It's weird because in the case of monthly printed magazines a lack of time was not an issue at all but the lack of information was: nowadays you can just go online to look up the features of a game but back in the day you got a copy (sometimes even without a manual if it was a pre-release copy that may or may not be at 1.0... in some cases it wasn't and you were reviewing a beta or a release candidate).

[Shodanbot]

necroslut, on 03 May 2018 - 02:47 AM, said:

That would be a valid point, except there's a help screen right where you start. If someone chooses not to read it then it's either because they though they didn't need it when they apparently did - stupidity - or because they couldn't be bothered to take a moment to glance it over - laziness. It's not like it's a 300 page manual; it's a single screen - most of which is backstory which can be skipped over if so desired. It takes like half a second to look it over its contents and see if there's anything of use to you.

I disagree with you just a little bit. Stupidity? No. Laziness? Certainly. In my profession, I wouldn't be quick to call myself lazy. It wouldn't be of any benefit to be lazy. Stupid is relative, but I have been accused of it a few times. In games and other things of this sort, frivolous things, I can afford to be lazy or even stupid. And I completely ignored that info on my first playthrough and I'll tell you why.

First: If you want people to read input information don't EVER call your instructions "Read Me!" It doesn't matter how many exclamation points you put on it, I think the safe bet is to assume most players won't read it. Don't call it something dry like "Instructions" either. Making it a different colour from the rest of the options in the main menu would be a better way to catch the player's attention. Making it "flash" until the player clicks on it, while obnoxious, will get a player's attention immediately.

Second: Don't prominently display the blurb at the top of the screen with the input info in a diminutive font at the bottom. People read from the center-top down, despite the bad efforts of widescreen monitor, TV, and modern OS producers to change this. So maybe moving the blurb to the bottom and the important input info to the top would be a good way to get players to at least skim the input info first, before ignoring the flavour text at the bottom. Even better, move the blurb and tips to a second page and credits to a third page. They may have already read the blurb on the Steam/GoG store page, so why make that the first thing they see on these screens?

Quote

If you're a professional reviewer it's even worse than stupidity and laziness - it's incompetence or negligence. Back in the day that would have gotten you chewed out by the boss, but the modern youtube reviewers don't have bosses to answer to.

Third: Placing that input info with the rest of the key bind options screen might be the best thing to do. I didn't watch Yahtzee play the game, but I read here that he looked for the quicksave input key in the key binds screen and couldn't find it. I wouldn't call that lazy. He did one more step than me. That's a design failure to communicate input info where it ought be communicated.

[Micky C]

Any word on the latest Ion Maiden happenings?

[Lunick]

Micky C, on 13 May 2018 - 07:01 PM, said:

Any word on the latest Ion Maiden happenings?

It's in development

[DavoX]

[xMobilemux]

DavoX, on 18 May 2018 - 09:31 AM, said:

When and where can one get one of these?

[DavoX]

I'm sure more info will be available soon! I don't even know myself There's a high chance that it's at the same time the game releases on Steam but don't quote me on that.

[lamduck]

DavoX, on 18 May 2018 - 09:47 AM, said:

I'm sure more info will be available soon! I don't even know myself There's a high chance that it's at the same time the game releases on Steam but don't quote me on that.

Any impending release heads up you can give on this forum would be greatly appreciated. I would imagine they will go fast. Thank you for the video!

[NightFright]

It's so satisfying to see the 3DR logo on a retail game box once again. The good old times have returned!

[Doom64hunter]

I'm going to be so disappointed if the final version doesn't contain a cheat code called IMMEEN

[Tea Monster]

Wait, "IBM 3.5""?? How many floppies does it come on?

[NightFright]

One. With a USB stick integrated. It has been already announced and presented before.

[blizzart]

 Doom64hunter, on 18 May 2018 - 11:13 PM, said:

I'm going to be so disappointed if the final version doesn't contain a cheat code called IMMEEN

http://www.en.magicg...en-cheat-codes/

[stumppy84]

If this does well do you guys think more build games will be made?

[MrFlibble]

 Doom64hunter, on 18 May 2018 - 11:13 PM, said:

I'm going to be so disappointed if the final version doesn't contain a cheat code called IMMEEN

To help the players who got stuck in very scary and confusing places?