How appealing to controller market worked out for Egosoft?

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Post by Snafu_X3 » Fri, 11. Mar 16, 19:08

I just watched that entire video & can't see any place where Bernd says the game was designed for a controller..
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Post by Graaf » Fri, 11. Mar 16, 20:24

"its controllable with a gamepad because it was designed for people playing other action games"

Hell, the entire video is about the game being controllable by the gamepad. Stopped waiting for that mentioned video for the M&K controllability.

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Post by Snafu_X3 » Fri, 11. Mar 16, 20:32

That doesn't imply that the X:R game was designed for a gamepad, simply that it was designed to take into account the fact that controllers now exist..
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Post by Nanook » Fri, 11. Mar 16, 20:39

I think it does. And looking at the initial controls in 1.0, I'd have to say that's exactly what happened. Those controls were not keyboard/mouse friendly and downright hostile to joysticks. Perhaps your recollection of the early releases has faded over time. :wink:
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Post by GCU Grey Area » Fri, 11. Mar 16, 21:16

Nanook wrote:I think it does. And looking at the initial controls in 1.0, I'd have to say that's exactly what happened. Those controls were not keyboard/mouse friendly and downright hostile to joysticks. Perhaps your recollection of the early releases has faded over time. :wink:
Can't comment on mouse friendliness (barely use one for XR), however game worked fine for me with joystick & keyboard from day 1. Only things missing (compared to my usual setup for flight sims) were targeting controls & looking around the cockpit with the hat, but back then no one had those, regardless of what control device they were using.

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Post by BigBANGtheory » Sat, 12. Mar 16, 00:30

Nanook wrote:I think it does. And looking at the initial controls in 1.0, I'd have to say that's exactly what happened. Those controls were not keyboard/mouse friendly and downright hostile to joysticks. Perhaps your recollection of the early releases has faded over time. :wink:
Agreed. XR was gamepad controller from the ground up and still struggles with Kybrd & Mouse and HOTAS though it has improved over time.

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Post by strude » Sat, 12. Mar 16, 05:43

Ezarkal wrote:
JudoHedgehog wrote:It makes rebirth play really well with steam link and a Dual Shock 4 plugged into it. It may have been broken early on but playing rebirth while chilling on the couch owns.
I can second that statement!
That was useful. We obviously see eye to eye about many things. We can take this further you know
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Post by Killjaeden » Sun, 13. Mar 16, 18:16

We have big screens right in front of us and the resolution to display alot of information... and yet you have to click through hoops and loops of menues to see that one info you need, or to access that one functionality, as if there was not enough space to display all of it - almost like on a mobile device.

XR is in no way better in that regard then X3, it has the same "too many nested menu screens"-problem. In fact, it's worse - because not only have you the same nested menues, but also alot less information beeing displayed at once on the screen due to beeing very large. You alway lose the information and functionality of your current menu, if you go "deeper" into the nested architecture. THAT is the problem why XR and X3 menues are unwieldy and complicated to understand and sometimes downright infuriating. You have to memorize how you can access a particular functionality and where you are currently to know how to get to another menu.

I would blame that on the "play on couch" idea, as you have to make menu's bigger then you would have to for a regular PC user. Just look at the freaking map: 1080p Rebirth vs. X3AP It's ridiculous. Beyond 12 objects in the sector you already have to scroll to see the rest of the information in the list. I find this unacceptable for the nieche feature to play on a couch.

The only other reason for unnecessarily complicated UI in XR would be incompetence... so it has to be the play on couch thing, right?

Also, trying to integrate the menu into the ship cockpit doesn't help either... it just takes up valuable screen estate and adds delays that get annoying over time.
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Post by birdtable » Sun, 13. Mar 16, 18:44

In defence of Ego I can understand the decision to appeal to the casual gamer (not the console player) at the time the decision was made Space Flight Sim's was not quite de regueur as it is today ... It is only with hindsight that these judgements can be called .... Although I do find it strange that micro management at the cellular level could go hand in hand with casual game play.

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Post by Killjaeden » Tue, 22. Mar 16, 21:57

Casual gaming has little to do with sitting on a couch to me. You can play casually at a PC, you can play "hardcore" on a couch.

Management games are really bad in general for "casual play" anyway. If you don't play for a week or two, you will have forgotten your strategy you wanted to follow, the things you needed to do in order to execute it and all the operations you needed to do to keep everything up and running. I'm sure i'm not the only one who loaded a savegame after a hiatus of 2 weeks or more and made a face after seeing the property menu like a caveman would. But i digress.

The gigantic, low information menu's actually make it more complex and laborous to understand and play the game then necessary. This is not because of casual gaming and only barely because of controller functionality. This trade off is mostly just to be able to play on a couch. Very bad deal. very bad.
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Post by Graaf » Tue, 22. Mar 16, 23:03

I don't want to stir here but isn't "playing on the couch" mostly a console feature?

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Post by Nanook » Tue, 22. Mar 16, 23:35

Killjaeden wrote:We have big screens right in front of us and the resolution to display alot of information....
Some do, some don't. Many people play on laptops with much smaller screens, and even though the resolution may be high, you'd need a magnifying glass to see some of the tiny print/icons if there was too much going on. Not everyone plays with a muscle machine and monster monitor, you know. :wink:
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Post by strude » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 01:37

Graaf wrote:I don't want to stir here but isn't "playing on the couch" mostly a console feature?
Why does it have to be pigeon holed into either console or PC? Why can't it be more about the players choice of where and how they want to play?

All this labelling is making the world crazy. As soon as you assign a label to something, you automatically create a "us vs them" scenario, which ultimately results in one side trying to win the argument. That then progresses to name calling and belittling others opinions, as for some zany reason, people feel they need to justify their particular stance on the topic.
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Post by TSM » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 01:39

Graaf wrote:I don't want to stir here but isn't "playing on the couch" mostly a console feature?
Depends on if you own a steam link :P
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Post by Sparky Sparkycorp » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 05:08

Nanook wrote:
Killjaeden wrote:We have big screens right in front of us and the resolution to display alot of information... and yet you have to click through hoops and loops of menues to see that one info you need, or to access that one functionality, as if there was not enough space to display all of it
Some do, some don't. Many people play on laptops with much smaller screens, and even though the resolution may be high, you'd need a magnifying glass to see some of the tiny print/icons if there was too much going on.
Killjaeden was talking about the size of menus. If people with smaller screens were playing Rebirth pre-4.0, then they wouldn't be adversely affected by increasing the amount of information in HUD menus after 4.0 because 4.0 made them bigger.

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Post by Killjaeden » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 05:27

Nanook wrote:Some do, some don't. Many people play on laptops with much smaller screens, and even though the resolution may be high, you'd need a magnifying glass to see some of the tiny print/icons if there was too much going on. Not everyone plays with a muscle machine and monster monitor, you know. :wink:
Well it obviously doesn't need to be microscopic. There is a balance you have to achieve, like with everything. But XR is definitely on the way-too-big scale for basically all PC use. I played X3R to AP on 15" for the most part and it worked fine. I also played it on a laptop with 15.4".

Scalable Option would be the best way of course, but you can't scale everything - with very large menus you have to resort to alot of nesting (like now). If they want to enable couch gaming - i'm entirely cool with that. But not when that means sacrifising usability and ease of use for all the rest of the players.
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Post by GCU Grey Area » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 10:01

Well I certainly appreciate the bigger info screens in 4.0. My eyesight isn't great these days & did have some difficulty with the smaller fonts used in earlier versions. As for the amount of info on them, I tend to approve. In many cases XR provides more info that previous games (e.g. station data) & trying to fit it all onto a single screen would IMO be worse than separating it into a nested hierarchy of general station info, info on specific production modules, info on storage modules, etc. Trying to cram all of that onto a single screen would mean a hell of a lot more scrolling and/or a really tiny font.

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Post by CommanderTM » Wed, 23. Mar 16, 11:31

I very much liked the Banished UI (did i already mentioned it on some other post). Very PC friendly - windows that you can drag anywhere and resize and hide the ones you do not want and open them back up with a keypress. You can have maximum info available to you when you want, minimal, if you want. Best of both worlds.

Rebirth and Banished are very different games but the style and idea of UI is what im trying to show here.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MvP8caMhH_E/U ... ished5.jpg
http://www.shiningrocksoftware.com/wp-c ... tDebug.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/XQr4Fwy.jpg

X rebirth could have done the same with modes - like we have station scan mode, only theres:

* explorer mode - highlights highways and displays their destination in a clearer way, shows zone and system map windows and shows object window when something is selected - it has zoomed in image of it, general info, have you discovered it, for station it also shows if you have trade agent installed. Also, it could highlight the highways that have not traveled yet. And constant pings of any unidentified objects (that could be lockboxes, enemy traps and stuff like that

* empire mode - could show multiple windows about financial logs (your balance changes), your manager action logs, problems with stations and station list (that can be filtered), your owned ship logs about threats and problems, missing crew and so on. Also, an economy review software that shows produced wares amounts per system or zone, shows overproduced and underproduced wares and other useful stuff. Imagine having to buy all that software with total cost of hundreds of millions (every software has at least 3 mk3 versions)

* fight mode. This one could show minimal info but with a quick access window that shows ongoing battles around you, highlighting ships attacking your property. Bulletin board window that can be closed and opened with one button. Obviously this would display the main info about your missles and guns and stuff, something most other modes do not need.

* Builder mode could show (have window of) the list of all your CV's, highlighting the ones that are currently building, any problems they have, any missing resources and actions you can do with them. Also, unfinished stations are highlighted. You could give more credits with 2 clicks. You could also queue order ships: 2 arawns, 2 construction vessels and the order goes to the shipyard you have selected. It should also notify you about missing resources that are needed for building your ships. Of course you should be able to assign them to stations or whatever while they are building. Order crew for them, paying big money for top ones and low for bad ones.

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