ClonesGame.com Forums

[CCX]

Ha, for once an issues thread not started by Simon.

I noticed with v1.28 that playbacks are now played back with "Auto Orient" always in effect, regardless of the actual setting in the user's Options. (Auto-Orient means the screen automatically rotates with the gravity of the currently selected clone.)

Auto-Orient is nice even sometimes essential while playing, but it can be a bit dizzying for watching playbacks especially on any levels that have different orientations or orientation changes. Any chance you can change it so that either the playbacks respect the actual user settings, or add some handy button in the playback screen to enable/disable it?

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Well, that's all for now from me. I'll leave it to Simon to add a (lot?) more to the list as usual.

[Simon]

:-]

#2. There is no way to exit from the introduction to a singleplayer level. This is especially bad in the introduction to Quantum levels, as the usual sign for quitting (large red bent arrow towards the left) erases the replay for groups. It's common to restart a Quantum level before exiting, noticed this for both geoo and me.

#3. Quantum puzzle replays aren't proper action replays, where you can jump in at any time and continue from there. Morphs after a certain time aren't cancelled currently, neither after a click nor even after a skill assignment. The only useful way to do something is to always erase a group before selecting it.

#4. Loading of savestates in Quantum puzzles eats away skills from the skillset sometimes. More testing on this is required.

(I pulled back #5. It claimed that [CTRL] + Mousewheel doesn't zoom anymore. This isn't an issue; I confused the controls, zoom is done by RMB + Mousewheel, which works just as nice as ever.)

#6. The level title sign at the top of the lobby comes down and overlaps an older instance of itself each time a level config is selected. This is true at least for the host or admin.

#7. Fullscreen hotkey [\] is not remappable. geoo has to switch layouts from German to English all the time to use it at all. The normal German [AltGr]-combo doesn't work for the hotkey.

#8. The option "no screen rumble" must be activated to turn rumble off. Make it so that the option is labelled "screen rumble" and must be turned off to have rumble off. It's much easier to scan the options screen for activated specialities that way. :-)

-- Simon

[CCX]

#3. Quantum puzzle replays aren't proper action replays, where you can jump in at any time and continue from there.<snip>

I didn't know it was even possible to ever "jump in at any time" in a quantum-loop replay. It would be helpful though I agree. It can be annoying to have to replay all the moves for a group from the beginning when you just need to fix something in the middle.

#4. Loading of savestates in Quantum puzzles eats away skills from the skillset sometimes. More testing on this is required.

One thing to note about savestates in QL levels is that they currently don't truly save the full state of all the groups, only the group that was active. In other words, say you have groups red, blue, and white, and you made a savestate while playing white. If you then replay red and/or blue, and then restore the savestate, it will restore the saved moves for white but combine it with the new moves you did for red/blue after the savestate was created. Not sure if that explains anything in your case, but it is something to keep in mind when using savestates for QL levels.

[Simon]

#9. Maybe have the example exit require 0 clones instead of 1 in the editor. Most people new to level making don't reset this when making a multiplayer level.

CCX: Yep, thanks for the pointers. As I said I should investigate further; I basically felt cheated on by the game several times during state loading. (IMO the Quantumloop mode requires much more thoughts and revampings than this, but I will start another political topic soon about that.)

#10. Don't center the screen on light clones! Don't. It's annoying. Don't do it. geoo curses his butt off already because of it. Don't. It's not good. Don't center.

-- Simon

[rt]

I noticed with v1.28 that playbacks are now played back with "Auto Orient" always in effect

Fixed in 1.29, good job finding this one.

[CCX]

#10. Don't center the screen on light clones! Don't. It's annoying. Don't do it. geoo curses his butt off already because of it. Don't. It's not good. Don't center.

I think for me the biggest pet peeve with light clones is that when one is selected, its "auto-center" behavior prevents you from even scrolling the screen if it would cause the light clone to go off-screen. I think the desired behavior would be to only have the auto-center kick in when either the light clone changes position, or perhaps even less aggressively, only when the user is explicitly moving the light clone. I'm undecided on whether to auto-center at the moment of selecting the light clone.

But it seems some form of auto-center/auto-scrolling behavior is desirable while moving a light clone, otherwise you'll have to constantly scroll the screen yourself. And the center of the screen is the fairest place to be in order to see adequately in all 4 directions, the computer not smart enough to know exactly where you are heading next. So I'm curious what exactly about the auto-center has wreaked havoc on you and geoo, and what alternatives you would propose?

[rt]

I think for me the biggest pet peeve with light clones is that when one is selected, its "auto-center" behavior prevents you from even scrolling the screen

I think at one point we had it so that when a light clone is selected you could right-click and drag to look around, but once you release the right-click then the view snaps back to the light clone. It's not doing that now, though. This might help in the case you mention.

[geoo]

I think for me the biggest pet peeve with light clones is that when one is selected, its "auto-center" behavior prevents you from even scrolling the screen if it would cause the light clone to go off-screen. I think the desired behavior would be to only have the auto-center kick in when either the light clone changes position, or perhaps even less aggressively, only when the user is explicitly moving the light clone. I'm undecided on whether to auto-center at the moment of selecting the light clone.

This is exactly the issue I'm having with that. When I want to select a different clone that is offscreen, I intuitively don't unselect the light clone first, and then the scrolling back is annoying. For the record, I almost exclusively use the right-click scrolling.
The solution you're proposing (i.e. only scrolling when you're actively moving the clone) would solve this issue, as having the screen move when you're moving the clone around is useful.

#11. Noticed another issue with the QLoop playback: when involving light clones (like in Jumpman), and you take over by pressing a directional key, in my instance the clone then was continuously moving to the left (when pressing nothing), unless I pressed a different selection, which overwrote that default movement then, until I released that key again.

[rt]

#3. Quantum puzzle replays aren't proper action replays, where you can jump in at any time and continue from there. Morphs after a certain time aren't cancelled currently, neither after a click nor even after a skill assignment. The only useful way to do something is to always erase a group before selecting it.

We recently changed the way the previous morphs are played back. Previously, you had to play each group once and if you wanted to tweak a group you had to play that group over again. Now when you play as a group it won't automatically erase your previous use of that group allowing you to add to the morphs, which permits you to create solutions in which two groups may depend on each other so that you have to play one, the other, one, the other, etc. to get the timing right. Note that none of the puzzles in the game require this, but it allows for the possibility.

Do you think it was better with the old method where it auto-erased a groups playback when you play the same group?

[CCX]

Finally got a chance to test this out, now that it turns out to be new behavior specific to v1.28. I think I like the option of not having the auto-clear, but I think what is missing is the ability to clear the morphs after a certain point in time when replaying a group, which I think is Simon's point #3. I think it is probably somewhat rare that you would merely add new morphs without needing to adjust the timing/positioning of some morphs already recorded. One idea for example would be something like an in-game button that, when clicked on, will clear all future morphs that has not been carried out yet, and then you can basically take over completely and not worry about being disturbed by some old morph that is no longer helpful.