the Lix user feedback thread

[Simon]

Priority inversion (hold RMB) allows to queue builders even in a bunch. Default is to assign to non-building workers, then to walkers, then to builders.

If people feel it should prefer builders without priority inversion, I'll add an option. But remember that options clutter the menu if too few people use it.

The skill order in the panel can be a can of worms. Clones has always the same 12 skills and thus no problem with ordering. I've talked about this with geoo once, and we both felt we should keep the nice large skill buttons in Lix for new players.

-- Simon

[Clam]

Interesting point about the skill icon ordering. I like to put mine in a consistent order, loosely based on the original 8 setup and more or less logical:


Yes, that black background is pretty sweet, ain't it? (:

Exceptions are when the order of skill usages required is obvious, and anything else would only annoy the player, for example my level The Turnaround Compendium. Similarly, in any level with a death-drop start (IIRC there aren't any of these in my set), the first skill should of course be floater

[mobius]

If you try to select a skill that’s run out, it automatically goes to the next one. This is nice, but it should play a sound or flashing lights or something to let you know. When you run out of the skill, a sound playing would be good too.

Yes I know ‘I should be watching my skill pallet’ but if I was perfect I would also be a millionaire. If you look at other games, any game with any kind of “ammo” a sound often plays when you run out. Half-Life for example; a game that has a much simpler arrangement; you have one tool and one number that counts down. Yet, the game designers still added in that feature to let you know when you run out.

----------------

I still really don’t care for the skill pallet set up. However, I’ve been thinking about a way around it;
an option that allows you to have a pre-arrangement for yourself, a ‘mask’ that the skills can fit into when you open a new level. That way everybody can have the arrangement they want. Obviously Idk if this is possible but I’m trying to think of anything better.

Hotkeys solve the issue of pressing the buttons, but not looking at your skills to see what you have and how many.
I’ve gotten much better at picking the correct skill, but still get frustrated when I look down to see what skill I have and nothing is where I expect it to be.

Even if you’ve played a level before, taking some time to look at the skills pallet to see what you have, having to take extra time because the skills are arranged in a different order is a waste of time. When a newcomer comes into a game and on every level the basic tools of the level, something that is generally a constant in most games, confuses them every time, they’ll get frustrated quickly. It’s a major distraction and annoyance really because in MP time is money. I know that sounds harsh, but I’m saying what I’ve specifically read in Game Informer already. People don’t like that.
In any program, the toolbar is something you arrange for yourself and it’s always the same, or always the way you want. Imagine if every time you opened up Photoshop, all the tools; paintbrush, eraser etc. were all in a different order and you had to spend a little time searching for them.

The gamer that plays constantly probably won’t have trouble with this, but it could deter regular’s or casual gamers immensely.
[This is only an issue with MP really. I don't find much problem with it in Single but that's me]

I’m rambling on a lot, but I’m just trying to contribute in making it the best way possible. I really think a lot of people won’t like that feature. And then I could be completely wrong.
Lix is a very complex game and a lot of care should be taken into deciding exactly how these issues are dealt with. (<that’s me trying to sound professional right there  ).

[ccexplore]

Hotkeys solve the issue of pressing the buttons, but not looking at your skills to see what you have and how many.
I’ve gotten much better at picking the correct skill, but still get frustrated when I look down to see what skill I have and nothing is where I expect it to be.

That's a fair point.  Only that since there are only 12 slots but 15 skills, it is not possible to guarantee that a skill will always be placed at the exact same location of the toolbar on every single level.  However if there is a user-defined order, the game can at least try to honor it to its best abilities and make the skills appear mostly around the same few buttons from level to level, instead of having it possibly all the way on the left on one level and all the way on the right on another.  Is that good enough, or does it still sound like there's still room for confusion?  And what about levels with fewer than 12 skills (some much fewer):  are gaps in the toolbar good or bad?  if no gaps, then is it okay that the skills can wind up quite far away from its "ideal" position?  (eg. say you want digger as far to the right as possible and climber as far to the left as possible.  Then in a level with only climber and digger, either they each stay on their end of the toolbar [gaps], or else one must come visit the other [no gaps]).

Warning player of low number of skills is not a bad idea, if not already done in some manner.  I'm not 100% convinced that letting you know when the skill hit 0 is all that useful (isn't it just a little late by then?), but I guess it's easy enough to do programming-wise.

[Simon]

This is an issue indeed. Ideas so far:

• Use smaller skill buttons. Allows for >= 15 skills in fixed order, but visually less appealing, and bad for non-hotkeyers (among which are all newbies).
  
• Fix an order or let the user specify one, and reorder the skills. This needs an algorithm for the gaps. Very few drawbacks otherwise, as just a few maps need specifically ordered skills.
  
• Write the number of the current skill below the mouse cursor, always visible. To check the amount left of any skill, hit its key.
  
• Play a warning sound whenever no nonempty skill is available for the pressed key.
  

If a skill is empty and you press its hotkey, the next skill will be selected only when you've assigned the key to multiple skills. Multiple skills per key isn't perfect right now, because the number of key hits depends on the content of the skill bar. The workaround is to refrain from multiple skills per key as much as possible right now.

-- Simon

[Clam]

• Fix an order or let the user specify one, and reorder the skills. This needs an algorithm for the gaps. Very few drawbacks otherwise, as just a few maps need specifically ordered skills.

I like this idea very much. There could also be an option to gather the skill icons on the left (so all gaps are at the right), right, or in the middle with gaps on both sides. I've noticed different level designers have different preferences here (eg. I prefer middle, geoo seems to favour left).

• Play a warning sound whenever no nonempty skill is available for the pressed key.

In addition to this, you could play a different sound on assignment when you have few or no uses of the selected skill after the assignment. For example, you could do the following:

- Select a skill you have less than 5 of -> warning sound
- Use a skill and have less than 5 after assignment -> assignment sound + warning sound
- Attempt to select a skill you have none of -> empty sound
- Use the last instance of a skill -> assignment sound + empty sound

The empty sounds would work for SP too (warnings maybe not so much, that could get tiresome )

[Proxima]

I know I've been off Lix for a while, but I could've sworn what you said have been mentioned before somewhere here (or possibly in IRC).

I brought it up on the first page of this topic

Priority inversion (hold RMB) allows to queue builders even in a bunch. Default is to assign to non-building workers, then to walkers, then to builders.

If people feel it should prefer builders without priority inversion, I'll add an option. But remember that options clutter the menu if too few people use it.

I feel that would make more sense; by far the most common need for priority inversion is when you have (at least one) walker and a worker under the cursor, so one is likely to think of it as an "assign skill to walker" feature -- especially for players coming from L1, in which the RMB does exactly that. So it feels off that in this one instance, its functionality is switched.

Talking of options, I discovered the reason I was doing so badly at "Ghetto Wars". Lix has an option "Never assign batter to exploders", and this is on by default. I'm sure the pros have a need for this option, but it's likely to bewilder newcomers, so I'd suggest making it off by default.

[Proxima]

Partly finished conversion of Insane Steve's "Diagonal Part 2" to the new terrain. Note that the steel block under hatch 3 appears behind the overlapping terrain piece; pressing G (bring forward) does not fix this. This happens near coordinates (0,0) on wraparound levels.

(Easy to fix in this case -- I just moved the entire level 16px left -- but I still thought it worth noting that this bug exists.)

[Proxima]

V (hotkey for "add pieces to selection" mode) does not work; when pressed, the button is momentarily highlighted, as though this mode had been entered and immediately exited. Also, when you press A (duplicate) while in "add pieces to selection" mode, 99 times out of 100 the next thing you want to do is move the duplicated terrain, so it would be most useful if pressing A automatically exited this mode.

[mobius]

I personally don’t mind gaps in the skill bar (e.i. a gap where a skill would normally be that isn’t present in that particular level) I actually think it helps stress that this skill is missing. The skills don’t have to be necessarily in an exact position, but I feel they should have some order. The major problem I was running into is I’d look down for a blocker and the blockers were all the way over to the right and at first I thought there were no blockers.

I like option 2 best. Your right about the size of the skill icons is good now. Plus, having all 15 skills present in any level might be too much really. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that most people can handle up to 10 tasks or remember 10 things at a time or something like that. Personally, the 8 skills are simple to remember and access and even levels with ~10, having platformers or walkers or a few extra is okay for me. But a lot more just seems too much to handle.

I'm trying to think of other games that have something like this. What I'm thinking about (I don't know if it's exactly what you had in mind) is that in the options menu you order the skills for yourself; however you want. Then upon playing someone's level no matter what order their skills are in they get arranged to your arrangement.

--------
on the sound issue,

number below the cursor sounds nice, however, I’d worry about that getting in the way or being distracting. Of course, I’d have to see it first to decide that.

If a skill is empty and you press its hotkey, the next skill will be selected only when you've assigned the key to multiple skills. Multiple skills per key isn't perfect right now, because the number of key hits depends on the content of the skill bar. The workaround is to refrain from multiple skills per key as much as possible right now.

That’s strange, I don’t have any keys assigned to multiple skills at all. I must have simply been pressing the wrong key then, so forget that argument.
Anyway, a warning sound when you select the empty skill would probably be more useful than when it runs out, if you would only do one or the other.

Something else; to add to what Clam said, something that Pokemon did; the color of the numbers changes to yellow, orange and red when it gets low.

In addition to this, you could play a different sound on assignment when you have few or no uses of the selected skill after the assignment. For example, you could do the following:

- Select a skill you have less than 5 of -> warning sound
- Use a skill and have less than 5 after assignment -> assignment sound + warning sound
- Attempt to select a skill you have none of -> empty sound
- Use the last instance of a skill -> assignment sound + empty sound

The empty sounds would work for SP too (warnings maybe not so much, that could get tiresome )

yeah in SP that might get annoying. Your idea might be a little too noisy, but again we’d have to test it out before we judge. But sounds or something should definitely be included

[Proxima]

Replay showing climber/bomber problem I noted earlier.

[Prob Lem]

I hope that I'm posting this in the right place...

I encountered an apparent bug in the 32-bit Linux version of Lix, when trying to run it on Xubuntu 12.04, running on a netbook with an AMD C-60 APU for its guts (the Asus 1225B, to be specific, if that's useful information at all).

When starting in full-screen mode, the mouse pointer instantly hops to the upper-left corner of the screen, and, when moved, it seems to keep getting dragged most or all of the way back up there by some unknown force. It was nearly impossible (and took about ten minutes) to select the language that I wanted to use and then manage to exit the program, since there didn't seem to be any key combination that could be used to break out of it.

For some reason, it's fine if run in a window - a shame that that's not the default, but it's no big deal.

As an aside, will the sound issue for the 32-bit Linux build be addressed any time soon? I'd love to play it with audio, and I can't even run the Windows build under WINE to work around this (it just comes up with the loading screen, and then WINE throws an unhelpful error and nothing else happens).

[Simon]

I do some workarounds with Allegro's (the library I use for graphics and input) mouse code, to allow for infinite mouse movement. Next version (currently busy with real life) will have a switch to use the simplest possible mouse code, at the cost of right-click scrolling.

Plain ESC should quit the game during language selection and name entry, will note that down and add that. Currently, there is the combination Shift+ESC, which exits the game unconditionally from absolutely anywhere (including the editor, where you can lose data), but this is not explained in the game.

Sound issue on 32-bit Linux: I ssh onto a 32-bit text-only machine and compile the game there, and I can't test it anywhere. Should you happen to be a programmer, you can try to compile the game from source on your machine, you will probably get sound then.  doc/linux.txt has the build instructions. Maybe this will fix the mouse issue as well, but that seems a more prevalent problem, e.g. also on Win 7.

-- Simon

[Prob Lem]

I do some workarounds with Allegro's (the library I use for graphics and input) mouse code, to allow for infinite mouse movement. Next version (currently busy with real life) will have a switch to use the simplest possible mouse code, at the cost of right-click scrolling.

Aha. Thankyou muchly for the info.

Plain ESC should quit the game during language selection and name entry, will note that down and add that. Currently, there is the combination Shift+ESC, which exits the game unconditionally from absolutely anywhere (including the editor, where you can lose data), but this is not explained in the game.

That's interesting, and thanks for the info, again. It wouldn't respond to any keys at all, in my case, though I have no idea why.

Sound issue on 32-bit Linux: I ssh onto a 32-bit text-only machine and compile the game there, and I can't test it anywhere. Should you happen to be a programmer, you can try to compile the game from source on your machine, you will probably get sound then.  doc/linux.txt has the build instructions. Maybe this will fix the mouse issue as well, but that seems a more prevalent problem, e.g. also on Win 7.

I'm not a programmer (I use Linux, usually with Xfce, because it works much better for me, and because it suits my way of working much better than other OSes do ), but I have occasionally compiled things when necessary in similar situations before (it hasn't always *worked*, but I'm always happy enough to give it a try!). If I have the time, I might give that a shot. I'll let you know the results if I do.

EDIT: Ok, I compiled it myself, and it did indeed fix the audio issue! Thanks very much for that tip. I did have to also install libpng-dev and libtool, in addition to the libraries specified in the Linux build instructions, but it went nice and smoothly after that - it was the easiest and most hassle-free compilation I've ever done. Thankyou very much for writing clear instructions, and an evidently good makefile. The mouse issue was not fixed by this, but I wasn't expecting it to be - and I wanted to play it in a window anyway!

One last question: Is there currently any means to have the Lix window grab and release the mouse-pointer? I found that it kept going out of bounds while I was playing the game. If not, would it be audacious of me to request that feature? (With a redefinable hotkey for releasing the mouse-pointer, if possible.)

[Simon]

Thanks for accolade, I've striven to use as few nonstandard libs as possible to minimize hassle. ;-) Will add libpng and related libs to the instructions, they're fairly recent additions. The makefile usually grows from working ideas copied over from other makefiles, I wouldn't know how to write this exact makefile from scratch.

When I'll do the mouse workaround, I'll see whether the release key is still necessary. Maybe Alt+Tab or similar key combinations work in order to switch away from the window.

(Still really busy in real life. I'm also rarely on IRC.)

-- Simon