Why don't the devs...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jack SinAssist, Apr 19, 2019.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

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    My girlfriend Viola and I have been playing "No Man's Sky" and she suddenly exclaimed (not exaggerating, exclaimed) "It's so easy to read!"

    She's hasn't had a lot of gaming experience other than Shroud, so "hard to read" was the experience she expected up until that point.
     
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  2. Vladamir Begemot

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  3. Barugon

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    Yes please.
     
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  4. g04tn4d0

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    Oh, my!
     
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  5. Feeyo

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    Unity 2019.1 ! yes please!
     
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  6. Barugon

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    Sure, that too.
     
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  7. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    Unity new versions does not make games better, devs working hard and trying to understand how their game works (equal to play more time) makes them better.
     
  8. Vladamir Begemot

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    New versions do too, once they work right. They often come with speed, power, and features!
     
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  9. Anpu

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    They should all spend an hour making scrolls from scratch.

    And then do some scrapping....

    And then....
     
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  10. Jason_M

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    And then refine cooking materials :mad:
     
  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    and then read us the story? I dare them. Start at the start and play through the story, reading it aloud as you go.
     
  12. kl4nk

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    seem like everyone wants the dev to play there own game to see whats wrong with it? reading this post does look like alot is "wrong"
     
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  13. Bow Vale

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    Its understandable that the main developers don't have much time to play the game but in order to make a functioning and enjoyable game, play knowledge is a necessity. I was delighted when they employed Kor as i had hoped they would utilise his experience and get the best insight into what was needed in the game. He should have been milked for all his knowledge and listened to in how the game should progress. A massive opportunity for them, the game and us lost i feel.
     
  14. Jason_M

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    It would be fairer to say that a lot is improving and this is the best way to help the developers understand what best needs fixed.

    What worked well for the one developer who made something may not work for everyone, and a good way to understand that is to have several different developers take a crack at it.

    It reminds me a lot of curriculum design in teaching: Curriculum designers need to demo their lessons and materials with several different participating instructors before releasing it to their department. What works well for one teacher won't for others and measures need to be taken to bridge the gap.

    A curriculum designer that has spent very little time in the classroom is an administrator, not a teacher, and, unless your student profile is comprised entirely of bureaucrats, their lesson plans will be problematic regardless of their understanding of the theory or their long past experiences.

    I believe there is a strong and clear parallel between being a game master and being a classroom teacher.

    Lots of suspension of disbelief for starters ;):D
     
    Last edited: Apr 21, 2019
  15. Elwyn

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    SQUIRREL!

    It's easy to say a UI sucks, it's medium to come up with a few tweaks, but it's hard to come up with something that truly doesn't suck.

    My pet peeve is how events (keyboard, mouse, etc.) are handled, only one event is processed per frame, with time and modifier key information NOT stored with the event. Slow processing (caused by low FPS) can cause janky response that is hard to describe without in-person demonstration or taking hours to make videos. But I think this is probably some deep Unity stuff that Port can't do anything about. This is a fundamental concept of proper GUI implementation that I have understood since the late '80s with the classic Mac OS.

    I do wish they would remove the right-click-drag from the chat window. Not only is it not a thing anywhere else I am aware of, and simply not useful since we've had scroll wheels for years, its also another thing to eat up clicks when you're trying to use right-click-drag camera control. There have been bugs with it in the past (haven't seen it in months) where the drag mode would get stuck on, and I would have to restart the game to fix it. At least removing a mis-feature is easy to suggest. I sure hope this isn't buried inside Unity somewhere.

    Yeah, I could probably suggest a few things, except that I have been suggesting them since almost four years ago, and I'm just tired that most of them go into a black hole. (A few things did get implemented though, such as keyboard support in the scene entrance chooser.) They don't have the dev bandwidth at current staffing levels anyhow to do much other than change border colors and other deck-chair-rearrangement which doesn't do much to fix usability, other than maybe contrast.

    It's not the only game that does that. (or right-click-drag camera that can get interfered with by UI elements) But one I've seen at least has a search box (pinned to the top) that lets you filter by the names of the settings and key maps.

    I've been playing some LOTRO lately (strictly free play mode so far) and it's much worse trying to read things. 100% red text (especially on 100% blue background) at a tiny font size? Check! Dark purple text for nameplates that are literally impossible to read even at larger point sizes? Check! Instances that have you play an NPC that ignore all your UI settings (holy crap the default font is tiny on 1080p) check! Bonus: The NPC is a class you've probably never played before, enjoy guessing what all these little icons do! Chat window only has the old-fashioned corner grow box instead of being able to grab the edges to resize? (try it in the lower left corner of the screen) Check!

    It's good to have some perspective to realize how much worse things could be.

    Keeping up with Unity versions may not make the game better, but if they don't, they'll get stuck with an old version. It's hard and painful to upgrade 2 or 3 times a year, it's apparently much harder and more painful if you don't upgrade for more than a year.
     
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  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    Tabs for movement, combat, deco, targeting would make it a lot easier to find things.

    Thanks for the info on LOTR. I don't want worse, I won't be playing that now.
     
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  17. redfish

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    It just takes someone who knows how to do UI, IMO...

    For some reason a lot of projects think they need a professional artist, and a professional coder, but they don't need a professional UI/UX designer. If you had the coder do the art, or the artist do the coding, it would be hard for them, too. Making good UI is its own talent.
     
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  18. Vladamir Begemot

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    Same with sound. There are probably 1 million posts about how important it is to have a real sound designer, most companies ignore it.

    Edit: Professional articles on gamasutra or other dev sites, I should say.
     
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  19. Sentinel2

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    How about Scotty reading it :)

    I think it would be interesting. And a best seller!
     
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  20. Sentinel2

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    I don't think it's unreasonable for them to play 30 minutes a week (or more). Without interruption.

    Just read an article that Nintendo requires this of their devs. I believe it said quarterly they were required to play so many hours. I'd have to re-read it again.

    This way when they say it's working as expected, it REALLY is working as expected :)

    How many times has Chris mentioned in recent livestreams that something sucked or was horrible (his words).

    When devs are saying the same things we are, I think it means there is a problem :)
     
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