Imhothar Xarodit
Minmatar
Wolverine Solutions
Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate
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Posted - 2007.06.22 19:49:00 -
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Edited by: Imhothar Xarodit on 22/06/2007 19:57:13
I fully agree on the chat focus and chaning input randomly.
For example: Ia m typing something in corp chat, a gang invite pops up (notice that "No" is now the default option if you hit enter accidentally), I accept and continue typing. However, it will take a while till I really get into the gang and suddenly, the game stalls, the chat windows appear, and I continue writing in gang chat without even noticing.
Generally, EVE has to get rid of all the modal dialogs. Why on earth can't the undocking happen in the background while anything that can be used either docked or not stil is usable? Why do we need a modal progress bar when installing a schience/industry job? Why? Why is the "accept quote" on installing jobs a modal dialog? Why is selecting installations for jobs a modal dialog? Seriously get rid of modal dialogs, especially those you wouldn't except to be and maybe hinder you in actuall gameplay!
It is very bad UI design to have modal dialogs where they truely interfere with the main task of the application. Modal dialogs should only be used in emergency situations where they require your FULL attention and are crucial! A job installment can continue in the background, as technically it is simply waiting for server response. Same goes for undocking and jumping.
Everybody who has played World of Warcraft has to admit that the way they handle the game threading is great.
Example: You fly into a very crowded city with a hundred players in there. Maybe your game will stall a few times for a second, but that is because it has to load the terrain and textures (and since you can travel on a whole continent without loaing screens it cannot be avoided) BUT these stalls are dependant on your harddrive's speed and if you have a fast one there are NO stalls at all.
Why is this so? Because the WoW engine does not wait for server packets, it is simply reading what is coming in!
So you enter the city, and you see some shadows appear which slowly build up to complete characters as you get more details about them and load their models/textures. The game does not wait till the whole city population is loaded, it just adds people to your environment while the server is feeding you with data.
THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is really the perfect solution.
Move the concept to EVE:
All server income is buffered in a seperat thread, sorted in priority queues and does not mess up your actual gameplay.
1) You open the market window, and it keeps "loading" in the background without stalling the game. Once tha data is complete it is displayed on the window.
2) You enter a gang and your client does not freeze until the whole gang list is loaded. Instead the game slowly adds member after member while your client is receiving the list.
3) You open "show info" on a person/corp/alliance, click on relationship and the game slowly adds entry after entry while it is receiving the list without stalling your game.
4) You jump into a new system and the gate there is crowded. The first and most important things to laod is overview and local. But instead of freezing the game until the loads are complete, let your overview and local list slowly fill with entries while your client receives the information. Heck, you have a whole 30 seconds of invulnerability (this contdown could be trggered after you are finished loading). Heck, this could even solve the black screen of death while undocking in crowded systems.
etc. etc.
There are tons of improvements just by moving the server comminucation to a seperate priority queue instead of having windows to wait for the data and interrupting the main game loop!!!
Once you had this implemented, you could also very easily add the feature of pre-loading a grid while you are warping there as the client would already have the technique to buffer inputs until they are needed.
If I was a dev, this would be a high priority item as it would greatly improve almost everything in the game!!
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