@pisketch, on Dec 13 2006, 12:27 AM, said in Suggestions for 1.0.1:

Purely useless, cosmetic change: Make the exhaust "flames" change color to match your weapon color? I just think it would be kinda nice. Utterly useless and a waste of time, but nice.

Nah, the lack of different colours would make it look more boring.

Just a couple of interface suggestions. I don't know if this has been suggested, but in some of the interface windows, there are buttons are not placed in the most natural location. For example, when you are in the window used for setting up a 2 player local game, you have the Play and the Back buttons placed in an unnatural position. I find myself clicking Back, when I really mean clicking Play. From a logical interface point of view, the Play button should be in the most prominent position, which is taken now by the Back button. Also, please make the different options on the menus be accesible via keyboard. I love the mouse, but I hate being a slave to it.

Okay, I still can't play, but I've been following the high scores and best times and such, and I'd like to be better able to sort the high scores. For example, I'd like to be able to, on the high score website, view, say, the best times on hard difficultly with 100% completion, or the highest scores on the Wasteland level, and so forth.

This post has been edited by Freq245 : 22 December 2006 - 02:49 PM
Reason for edit: I (Freq245) moved this post from the "Congratulations to Edwards, AGDenton, simX, and Edwards again!" topic to this one

Someone mentioned difficulty of navigating the list of saved games. Well sure it would be great if pageup/down/home/end worked but I think the dialog could also stand to be a bit bigger. There's enough vertical to room to display a couple more save slots and enough horizontal room to spread it out so the area name and time can be displayed in separate columns, freeing up more space vertically.

And here's my list of nit-picks/wishes for the Editor.
- The OS X colour pick can optionally allow for alpha picking as well so there wouldn't need to be a separate alpha slider if this was used.
- Can't undo placement of sprites (you can delete them but can't 'undo') and only one level of undo available in Select/Edit mode.
- Script menu could be easier to navigate if it was divided up into sub menus.
- Find 5 Stars?? Where's Find 'x' Stars? Or perhaps just Find All Stars?
- Perhaps it would be better if you had to specify the map size (and could adjust the margins later if necessary). This would allow for scroll bars and scroll wheels and make navigating much easier. (If this is not implemented then it would be nice if the scroll wheel could be used to rotate sprites directly rather than having it work by clicking the wheel and moving the mouse).
- If the above was implemented it might also be possible to have automatically generated mini-maps. This would be visible both in-game (like the pre-rendered maps currently used for the main story) and in the editor where you could also use it to navigate. I don't know how such maps are automatically generated in other games, maybe the way SketchFighter maps work mean it wouldn't really be possible but this is just one of my wishes.
- Following on from the above, it might require that large maps be split into multiple pieces (like in the main story) to prevent the mini-map becoming too small to be useful. Then you'd have to have an automatically generated, erm, galaxy map (the Editor would allow you to lay out the smaller pieces on the 'galaxy').

Well that's all for the moment. I know those last points are fairly major but I believe the ability to create great scenarios with all the features of the main one is important, especially as the main one is relatively small (for a game). Obviously it'll require working save points but that has already been mentioned more than once. Custom sprites and all that come next

This post has been edited by Guy : 26 December 2006 - 08:35 PM

Unfortunately, mini-maps are not automatically generated, just check out Spritemap9.

Ya I know, I was suggesting that it might be possible to make them automatically generated.

- Some way to speed up the ending by clicking or pressing return or something (woohoo, I'm on the top 40!).

Stop the ######ing forest boss from spawning beetles right on it's weak spot...

@theloser, on Dec 31 2006, 09:56 PM, said in Suggestions for 1.0.1:

Stop the ######ing forest boss from spawning beetles right on it's weak spot...

Well, you can easily get around that problem by shooting the forest boss from an angle rather than from straight on. Then nothing would have to be "fixed."

No, they literally spawned on the weak spot, there was no way to shoot the weak spot with out killing them first, and by the time your done killing the first one it's spawned another.

Hmm...I will have someone check into that...I might be checking that.

I thought of something. It would be nice if there was a way to play custom sounds, such as the Zelda jingle when you open a secret door.

I know this thread has been buried for a while, and the feature set for 1.0.1 has almost certainly been locked for weeks, but after having played for a couple months now, I have a list of suggestions for some future version, mostly pertaining to the multiplayer functions:

1. Bounce the Dock icon when someone enters the multiplayer lobby, so that it will be more feasible to leave the game running in the background for long periods to make it likely that you'll meet other people in the lobby. As-is, the game does alert you when someone invites you, but that doesn't work if you've gone "idle" because the game has been in the background for 15 minutes, or if the person is polite and doesn't invite you without asking first. The quiet scritching sounds just aren't enough. (Case in point: As I was writing this very paragraph, I decided to switch into SketchFighter to make sure the lobby was empty, even though I hadn't heard anything. There was someone there, and they had just written a message, without my noticing.)

2. In the "aftermath" chat screen, it is quite annoying to be in the middle of typing a long sentence, and have the other person suddenly hit the "play again" button, drop you back into the level-select screen, thus deleting everything you've typed. I can see a few ways around this:
   a) Have the game remember what you had already typed when you jump between chat screens.
   b) Require both parties to agree before the "play again" button can be pressed, in a similar manner to the "Play" button in the level-select screen.
   c) Place a "the other person currently has unsent text typed" indicator on the screen, much like iChat's "thinking bubble" typing indicator.

3. In the main game lobby, save the currently-typed message but unsent message in the main lobby if you are invited, but refuse the invitation. Only delete that text when you accept an invitation (and even then, it might be reasonable to keep the text into the next chat screen).

4. Allow shift+arrow-key for text selection in the chat dialogs. It's nice that you included the (undocumented) select all feature if one hits the left arrow when the insertion point is at the far left, but shift-clicking is somewhat more standard.

5. Modify the Seed Pod AI so that it doesn't lock the sprite to the black color, even if it will make the Boss 5 seed pods green. Or, add a non-boss variant of the AI that doesn't lock the color.

6. Finally, the "highly improbable, but it would be a great addition to the game, so I'm including it anyway" idea:
   Ability to watch games between other people. It would be very nice when there are an uneven number of people on the tracker to allow the person who would be left out to at least watch the other two (and preferably chat with them between games), and I'm sure that there are quite a few people reading these forums who would love to have an over-the-shoulder look at some of the high-scoring games.

Edwards

I'd like the see the Ice Missile not turn blue when it fires. Can't it just stay whatever color it was when it was idle?

@gray-shirt-ninja, on Jan 25 2007, 04:50 PM, said in Suggestions for 1.0.1:

I'd like the see the Ice Missile not turn blue when it fires. Can't it just stay whatever color it was when it was idle?

Unfortunately, that falls under the same problem as the Seed Pod. When one sprite spawns another sprite, the spawned sprite has the same color as the sprite that spawned it. In order for sprites that are spawned by bosses, such as the Ice Missile and Seed Pod, to have their proper color, the AI they use must set them to use that color. Unfortunately, for efficiency's sake, and because it has (almost) no effect on the built-in levels, the creator of the game decided to use the same AI for both the spawned versions of those sprites and the placed versions.

Edwards

Actually, Edwards, some of those ideas sound really good. You might try PMing Lars with them.

The current multiplayer function is great but it does seem to be rather incomplete. I made a few comments on it myself in the etiquette thread. I thought it might be a bit much to mention things like 4 person multiplayer (without tethers).

@mackilroy, on Jan 26 2007, 07:16 PM, said in Suggestions for 1.0.1:

Actually, Edwards, some of those ideas sound really good. You might try PMing Lars with them.

Edward's suggestions were added in a mail on the beta list, but there won't be any new features in 1.0.1. A quote from Lars:

Lars said:

As you said there's always 1.0.2 (not to mention 1.1), and once we get 1.0.1 out there won't be as much pressure to get it finished.

I'd like the Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue colors on the header of the editor, plus keep the custum color thing on. It's kinda nonsence you have to manualy change the colors...also, game replay saving, sorta like on Redline, to see all those super-great games you played.

@firefalcon, on Feb 3 2007, 03:39 PM, said in Suggestions for 1.0.1:

I'd like the Yellow, Green, Red, and Blue colors on the header of the editor, plus keep the custum color thing on. It's kinda nonsence you have to manualy change the colors...

You can look at one of the sample colours in the first sample level in the "colour picker", click at the main colour field, hold, and move it to one of the small squares on the bottom of the picker window. It'll stay there even if you quit the editor or Mac OS. The next time you want to have one of those colours you just have to click at one of the small squares.

Edit: Every suggestion relating 1.0.2 should be postedhere.