Official KaM Remake Ideas topic

[Jeronimo]

These ideas came from watching statistics screen.

1) Timeline bar for Statistics Section, which shows the progress of statistics according the minute from game.
Similar to when you are watching a replay and cut it at the half... you see different statistics values according the part where you closed it.
This tool is great for comparing players stats, by just watching how numbers slowly go up (indicating growth speed and battle mastery).

2) Different organization for Resources Section. Current display of "detailed economics" is a disaster.
My proposal is to switch columns information, so you can click on the ware/weapon you want, and see at the right part the values produced by players.
Visually neat, there won't be more than 8 graphical lines, and even more important, the numeric scales will fit better the ware/weapon you are interested in.
For example: Horses would show a scale 0-10-20-30... while Stones a typical scale 0-100-200-300...

[dicsoupcan]

I have 2 other ideas that you could implement if you are bored enough.

1. A detailed army statistics screento see what units and how many units someone has made exactly. (i renembered this one thanks to jero:P)

2. a slider on the timeline for replays, this way you can fastforward and rewind back to an exact time instead of having to fastforward the replay untill a certain time and restart the replay if you wnt to go back in time a bit.

[Jeronimo]

Thumbs up for you too my dear Dixo...
You also remembered me that I wanted to able to rewind back sometimes, specially on those +2 hours games.

But yes, these are good propositions... just not a priority tough.

[Kridge]

I had an idea the other day. It concerns a multiplayer gamemode: How about an instructional gamemode?
I will explain how I envision this.

- One (or maybe more) player is the "teacher".
- The rest of the players is learning, and are all allies (also with teacher).
- AI as enemy.

Now, you say what would be the improvement over just all teaming up and setting one slot to AI?
Well, I was thinking, *since shared control is being planned*, you could make the instructor have control over the other players towns as well, so he can help and point things out.

I came with this idea when I tried to introduce the game on a LAN-party, where no one had ever seen the game before and you want to get playing quick. So you could show them in this manner how to play, some tips and tricks etc. Also, for new players in general this could be great.

*as far as I know.

EDIT: It doesnt have to be a whole new gamemode, but if this could be possible with the shared control feature, it would be great imo. Amazing combined with TeamSpeak.

[sado1]

If Kridge's idea is too complicated or something, then at least a spectator mode would be nice.

[Ben]

But yes, these are good propositions... just not a priority tough.

If you are referring to rewinding during a replay, then this is impossible. The amount of memory it would take for all the replays would be crazy.

Also, the bad thing about a specator mode is that people could exploit it rather easily to cheat.

[sado1]

Also, the bad thing about a specator mode is that people could exploit it rather easily to cheat.

Well, I guess that there should be an option to include a "team spectator" which would see only 1 team. But "all-seeing spectator" also should be possible, for example to make live shoutcasts/streams a reality.

edit: on a second thought... live streams might be a really stupid idea, since it would make cheating even easier.

[Lewin]

We are planning to allow skipping forwards and backwards in replays eventually by storing a snapshot of the game every 10 minutes or so (as the game gets longer these snapshots will become less often, e.g. after 2 hours it might only store them every half hour). The snapshots would make the replay files a bit larger, but with some built-in compression hopefully it won't be too bad. You can then jump to any of these snapshots and watch from there. True rewinding is not possible because replays are re-simulating the game, and we don't have a way to simulate the game backwards.

Spectator mode is planned. The spectators would appear in the players list but select "spectator" as their "location". We'll need a scrolling/expandable players list to make this work (but we'll also need this if we want to allow more than 8 players). Eventually we might let spectators join part way through a game if the host (or maybe all players) agree to it. Team spectator sounds like a good idea too.

@sado: Most livestreams of games use a delay so the stream is 10-30 minutes behind the actual game. I think twitch.tv's software even has this as a built in feature. I agree that livestreams would be awesome if someone was willing to commentate them

[sado1]

Spectator mode is planned. The spectators would appear in the players list but select "spectator" as their "location". We'll need a scrolling/expandable players list to make this work (but we'll also need this if we want to allow more than 8 players). Eventually we might let spectators join part way through a game if the host (or maybe all players) agree to it. Team spectator sounds like a good idea too.

@sado: Most livestreams of games use a delay so the stream is 10-30 minutes behind the actual game. I think twitch.tv's software even has this as a built in feature. I agree that livestreams would be awesome if someone was willing to commentate them

Yeah a bit later I got the idea to delay the stream, that solves the problem. (How convenient. I suppose this also makes the streams lagging a lot less...) I can already see To or Matt giving a try at live commentary, would love to see them both do that at once. I've got some questions:
-how important is spectator feature on the TODO list?
-how much effort is needed to implement it?
-if you implement spectator mode, will the spectator amount be limited by players number? In other words, if there are 8 players available, will adding a spectator require deleting 1 player?

[Lewin]

-how important is spectator feature on the TODO list?

We don't use priorities much, we work on stuff we feel like doing mostly or what seems important at the time.

-how much effort is needed to implement it?

Not much, we just need to allow dummy net players who do not have any game assets but are still sent all of the commands relating to the game. Currently game commands are broadcast to everyone in the room so there's really no change needed on the network side of things.

-if you implement spectator mode, will the spectator amount be limited by players number? In other words, if there are 8 players available, will adding a spectator require deleting 1 player?

By far the hardest part is figuring out to fit it into the lobby. No we don't want to limit it to the player count, since spectators won't add any additional load on the game/players (just a tiny extra amount of bandwidth for the server) there's no reason why we should strictly limit it. However you need to see all of the players spectating the match in the player list (both in the game and the lobby) and I'm not sure how we'll fit that. We could make it have scrollbars but that's not great in the lobby, it's much better to see everybody at once. This will also be a problem if we increase the player limit to 10 or 12 or something in the future, we need a way to show more players in the player list. I'd be interested to hear any ideas regarding this.

[sado1]

Yeah. There's some place (horizontal and vertical) that can be gained by doing stuff like:
-changing "Starting location" to "Location" and changing "Location X" to "X", therefore shortening the combo box
-shortening the combo box for "Free/Computer/Locked" - I believe it takes ~40 pixels too much (when the nickname can have 16 chars), unless there's some language that has a very long word for one of these terms
-moving "Host configures players" over peacetime slider
-removing margins at top and bottom, moving the OpenGL info somewhere else (if it really has to stay visible in menus for all the time - if not the case, just move it into the Options - then make it visible only on the start screen, where it doesn't make unnecessary clutter)
-maybe moving "Exit" and "Start" buttons below the PT slider as well?

This way, I think there'll be enough place to include ~4 additional players on the list. I think it'd be good to make 2 spectators use 1 player line - spectator needs to display only his flag, nickname, team, maybe some little thing to change the type from "spectator" back to "player", maybe "ready" as well. So it's possible to fit 2 spectators in 1 line I think. (I assume pings don't matter since your implementation of spec mode will not require specs to be synchronized?)

[Lewin]

-changing "Starting location" to "Location" and changing "Location X" to "X", therefore shortening the combo box

That sounds like a pretty good idea, although if you load a save you select the player from the save who you wish to control, which means it needs to be able to show most of a player's name there. I think that's the reason why I kept it long when I last redesigned the lobby (and because horizontal space wasn't a big issue).

-shortening the combo box for "Free/Computer/Locked" - I believe it takes ~40 pixels too much (when the nickname can have 16 chars), unless there's some language that has a very long word for one of these terms

Depends what your nickname is "WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW" only fits about half of it in the current space. Even "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP" doesn't quite fit. Given that we don't really need any more horizontal space at the moment I think I'll leave it as is.

-moving "Host configures players" over peacetime slider

I see no problem with that It was placed above the players because it relates to them (and we had enough vertical space with only 8 players) but it would gain us an extra few lines if we move it.

-removing margins at top and bottom, moving the OpenGL info somewhere else (if it really has to stay visible in menus for all the time - if not the case, just move it into the Options - then make it visible only on the start screen, where it doesn't make unnecessary clutter)

The margin on the bottom could be made a bit smaller, but I really think we should keep some margin otherwise it looks quite odd (and some monitors cut off a few pixels top/bottom).
The "OpenGL info" is actually the version of the game (with the OpenGL version displayed at the end as well). I want to leave that because it's very useful to immediately see what version someone was using when he sends us a screenshot. It doesn't take up much usable space.

-maybe moving "Exit" and "Start" buttons below the PT slider as well?

Unfortunately I don't think they'll fit there (remember we need to allow a bit of extra space because some languages have longer words for certain phrases)

This way, I think there'll be enough place to include ~4 additional players on the list. I think it'd be good to make 2 spectators use 1 player line - spectator needs to display only his flag, nickname, team, maybe some little thing to change the type from "spectator" back to "player", maybe "ready" as well. So it's possible to fit 2 spectators in 1 line I think. (I assume pings don't matter since your implementation of spec mode will not require specs to be synchronized?)

I think it would look pretty ugly with two spectators per line, it wouldn't line up with the other players and the second spectator would look like he was floating off in the middle of the screen.

Do you think the text "Post message:" at the bottom could go? Is it explanatory enough to have an empty box below chat where you type messages? (IMO it is)

IMO chat could be made smaller for the default resolution, but sadly we can't do that because the minimum vertical resolution already has chat as small as we can make it. We could have a scrolling player's list if your vertical resolution is less than 768, otherwise the player's list can just take up chat area. Or, for small resolutions we could have a separate tab for player's and for chat.

On another note, we have plans for more game options (e.g. mutators, starting resources, game speed before/after PT, etc.) so I think we'll end up with two tabs for the area on the right (Map and Game Options) unless somebody has a better idea.

[sado1]

Do you think the text "Post message:" at the bottom could go? Is it explanatory enough to have an empty box below chat where you type messages? (IMO it is)
(...)
On another note, we have plans for more game options (e.g. mutators, starting resources, game speed before/after PT, etc.) so I think we'll end up with two tabs for the area on the right (Map and Game Options) unless somebody has a better idea.

Yes, I think that Post Message is not really needed. If (in a very unlikely case) someone can't figure out what the textfield is for, then he'll surely deduce it when he sees people writing in chat

And about making tabs, it's a good idea. In fact, I think there would be no problem to leave the map preview visible on both tabs (so it looks like that: map preview at top, then maps list and map type - both on the tab). Another thing though, is now you can see all the options changed instantly, and with tabs it might not be possible. Some troll hosts can set pt 120, for example, when no one's looking (it's my favourite lobby joke ^^) or something like that, and other people won't even notice. I guess that if PT slider gets moved to the Options tab, then there's some place for "indicators" like:

  Code:

PT: 65 HOST: [X] SPD: 1,5x MUT1: [X] MUT2: [ ] MUT3: [X]

[Ben]

Just going to say this: I hope that we can block specific weapons off in the barracks in the next build.

[Nissarin]

New release of KaM brought in a lot of new players, unfortunately most of them have completely no idea how to play, either because they never played KaM or they are trying to utilize SP game style. This leads to players leaving the game, obviously that's not the only reason, some people are just dumb but nevertheless I think it's the main reasons.

There is no way to get rid of trolls but there is a way to help noobs, by educating them and in order to do that we need replays with voice commentary (working title ). The idea is to combine both strengths of ordinary replays with some commentary usually seen in casts. Normal replays provide good source of information but they can (and probably are) too overwhelming, you can see what's done but not why, and while we can add some pop up messages it's just pain in the ass - just lots of reading making it harder to focus on what's happening on the screen. On the other hand casts help you concentrate on whats happening but unfortunately they are not interactive, you can't click on some building/unit, check other player's base, etc. The idea is to combine both, you can watch it like normal replay but with sexy voice providing with some insight. There are some elements missing from current replay system which would enhance this experience:
- ability to turn on players "view"
- ability to draw some basic shapes like squares/arrows
- rewinding, jumping to some position, etc.

The way I see it, when someone clicks on the multiplayer game for the first time, he will get some basic info about the MP (PT and such) and also a nice shinny button pointing to such replays, covering some basic elements of the game/different build orders but nothing fancy: something like "small" base, leather centric/iron centric, combat. Just a few of those.

I realize this is a lot of work, someone have to provide some nice replays, someone has to cast it (what about other languages ?), obviously there is some coding involved but what do you think ?