I feel like I'm suffering for Peter Molyneux's sins. (The gesture recognition system in Black&White, which was clearly Cool, and equally clearly Not A Good Idea. The Darwinia people seem to have learned half the lesson...)

The interface would be just as clear, and twice as usable, if the Task Manager came up with a row of buttons to start various programs. There's plenty of room for them. The whole reason gesture systems were invented was to add more interface options without requiring an extra mode button/key. In this game, you're using the Option key anyway.

I'm particularly annoyed because I have an old Mac ("only" 933 MHz G4, moderately wimpy 3D card). The Yard drops down to 8-10 fps... or 3-4 if I manage to take out an anthill and the CPU is temporarily occupied with hundreds of drifting souls.

I could play the game at 3-4 fps. It wouldn't be a pulse-pounder, but I could make progress. Except the gesture system chokes, and I simply can't create any new squads until all the souls have drifted away. I'd pay extra for a row of buttons, honest.

The gesture reognition task manager is half the challenge. There aren't meant to be any buttons. If you want to play the latest version of Generic RTS , go here.

And at least half the topics here have performance tips. Lower your sound and graphics quality, as well as the screen options, and quit every other application.

"The gesture reognition task manager is half the challenge."

I believe I just said that was a stupid design decision. I could say it some more.

Darwinia is a fun game. Making the UI harder to use makes it less fun, and adds nothing.

I have read the other threads. In other games, I can trade off graphics quality against frame rate. In this game, I can trade off graphics quality against not being able to create units. Design flaw. A correctable one, if the designers choose to listen.

The game would be incredibly easy if there was no gesture recognition system. Besides, would you really like to have to alt tab through all the programs to get to the last one? <evil grin>

Well, I'm using a laptop with no mouse. It takes me about 10 attempts to get the airstrike gesture right, or that zic-zac gesture in the beta (whatever it was). If I changed to airstrike or missile, I can never get grenades back, as it either gives me an engineer instead or just a syntax error.
Oh yes, it often happens that if I try to create a squad, I create an officer instead. I don't know how this is possible, the gestures are completely different. But it happens. Same goes for Armour, btw.
I bet when they made up that gesture nonsense, they never thought about trackpads and that it's a little more difficult to do such exact movements with it.

Agent_Vast, on Apr 5 2005, 05:21 AM, said:

The gesture reognition task manager is half the challenge. There aren't meant to be any buttons. If you want to play the latest version of Generic RTS , go here.

And at least half the topics here have performance tips. Lower your sound and graphics quality, as well as the screen options, and quit every other application.
View Post

Unfortunately, i get about 8-10 fps with the settings down on 2nd level... containment?

What a bummer. Cool game. I actually like the gesture idea, but a friend who works at E&S in the flight simulator industry makes a good point. For them it is an absolute must that they maintain 30 fps at all times. He always wonders why 3-D games have all these settings for everything. Why don't these type of games automatically reduce detail, sound fidelity, and internal whatever, to maintain a given frame rate?

The user could just choose the minimum frame rate they're willing to accept, and let it go. Or, if on a really fast machine, the game should just increase all the settings. If there's CPU power to spare once everything's maxed out and it's getting 30 fps, so be it.

Meh, its always the elitists that like to flame others on a flawed system. Please try and look at both sides of the argument and recognise that some people have really rubbish frame rates. How exactly does gesture drawing make it more fun? It just gets tedious and this is why it does not occur in any real-life programs.

CJM2, on Apr 6 2005, 08:45 AM, said:

Meh, its always the elitists that like to flame others on a flawed system. Please try and look at both sides of the argument and recognise that some people have really rubbish frame rates. How exactly does gesture drawing make it more fun? It just gets tedious and this is why it does not occur in any real-life programs.
View Post

Maybe you should recognize the fact that not every game needs to be playable on every system. Removing the gesture system would drastically alter the game, in an detrimental way. If you can't play it with the gesture system, tough luck. Get a better computer. And yes, I'm saying this even though my computer can barely keep up on the later levels (which is why I play it on my dad's dual-2Ghz G5 instead :D)

Whenever anyone says "Gesture recognition" I think of that moment in traffic where you're like "Hey.. that guy just flipped me off!"

I'm playing it on a slow machine with a track pad, and I have no problems. It seems that precision is MUCH less important that speed in drawing. As long as you get something sort of close, it will do what you want as long as you do it fast enough. The system is much more forgiving that the one in black and white. Even on the yard at ~4 fps I can still send squad after squad to their viral deaths. As a side note, it seems that the grenade icon is both the simplest and the hardest to draw.

As to if the gesture stuff adds anything to the game.. well kinda, but I'd rather they spent their programming time on more units or levels or something.

http://the_goldfish....m/abitrough.htm

Yeah, you need to be really accurate for the gesture recognition system.

I dunno. It might be hypocritical (as I'm one of the people who refuses to get Goo Ball until they fix the horrid camera movement) but I feel the gesture system adds to the challenge of the game. It feels like it would be too easy without it, and the frustration it causes is more along the lines of "Oh crap, they're coming! WORK!" than "Man, this game is annoying." Sort of ads a sense of realism to it, I think. Glitchy beta software.

I really like the concept - it worked fine on Garden for me. But it seems ropey in all other levels since that...

Ashtar, you said "It seems that precision is MUCH less important that speed in drawing." I wonder if this might be the key. For those of us having framerate problems, the visual feedback on the gesture lags quite badly, so it's not obvious, for example, where the system registered the mouse-down as the glowing line didn't start until halfway along the first "stroke" of the gesture. On the other hand if we press and hold, drawing slowly, so the glowing line can keep up, maybe the system picks up too many wobbles and can't analyse the result correctly.

Does that sound plausible to anyone?

I've had odd experiences with the gesture recognition. One time I was able to draw squad however I want, as long as it looks roughly like a triangle, but the engineers had to be incredibly accurate. Now it doesn't seem to give a damn how I draw them. Odd stuff

The gestures system really needs improvement. The grenade never seems to work. The only way ive gotten the engineer to work is to go up a lot over a little bit and down a little.

Well, the gesture system would be good if you did a gesture that may slightly resemble another (engineer vs. grenade, say) and if the system had a question, it would offer you two buttons from which to choose.

The airstrike gesture just seems horribly complex and silly. And my mouse occasionally goes a bit wonky, making bizarre movements on its own resulting in syntax errors.

It seems amazingly silly that such a sophisticated system would rely on crude movements to enable an action... but maybe that's because they are "flawed" computers?

For the grenade, see how they did it in the link I gave in my previous post. That always works for me.

Strange.
My framerate is pretty sorry, but the gesture system is one thing i haven't had much trouble with. Grenade sometimes gives me syntax errors, but i'll have to try the sharper shape.

I have found that you can also get 'nades by making a simple verticle line, starting at the bottom. Much the same way that you can get rockets by making a simple horizontal line. That seems to clear up most of the 'nade / engineeer confusion for me.

xander

Sometimes the camera glitches out on my and stays zoomed. Thats my only complaint.

grunadulater, on Apr 5 2005, 11:58 PM, said:

The game would be incredibly easy if there was no gesture recognition system. Besides, would you really like to have to alt tab through all the programs to get to the last one? <evil grin>
View Post

If I understand what you are saying, it is that the game is incredibly easy by itself, so they thought up a user-painful interface in order to compensate? And what do you mean about the alt-tab? Why not just have a row or two of icons next to the circle you get when you hit the ctrl key and allow the user to click on that? It would be simpler and more fun. Especiallyy for those of us who use 'Books. I do have a Kensington Trackball on my desk... but I am not always there and the trackpads are ... touchy... about the gestures.

Anyway, a game should not require a convoluted interface to make it 'fun' or 'challenging'. The game itself should do that.