Upgrade Structure Overhaul

Ideas about the main menu, the menu structur, upgrades part visuality or how they work and so on.
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Rotholz
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Joined: Tue Nov 19, 2019 6:43 pm

Upgrade Structure Overhaul

Post by Rotholz »

I think the current upgrade columns are quite badly designed, and there's a couple reasons for it. I think the worst aspect is that the upgrades aren't revealed, and although it gives the player a sense of mystery, it also leaves him quite confused. With the "roman" upgrade columns as an example the most important building(the one producing roman troops) is hidden behind a mercenary. And since you don't see the building, and you may not want the sellsword, you don't know where this decisive building is. The spellsword also needs a money courier, which is also hidden behind a different set of upgrades. That happened to me, personally. I think they should be revealed to avoid things like that.
Another thing I suggest is that every column only has troops from a specific country. So the asiatic troops from the dojo(Samurai, ninja, etc.) are in one column, and the christians in another. So it's a bit nicer when wanting only specific troops without having a mish-mash from 3 different cultures. Units that don't have a specific region they're from, or if they're too few should just be available to buy seperately without them being in a column.
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godOfKings
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Re: Upgrade Structure Overhaul

Post by godOfKings »

the problem is how they appear on upgrade list depends on their shop id, and every time a new unit is added, id is increased by 1, so for example it could b that roman garrison has id 2019 and legionary id 2020 so roman garrison is in last row of previous column and legionary is first row of next column so player sees legionary first (this is the problem with cannoneer and cannon tower) to organise upgrade list one needs to change shop id according to its position in in-game upgrade list and i have no idea wat other things need to b changed
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Endru1241
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Re: Upgrade Structure Overhaul

Post by Endru1241 »

It's actually one of the things noticed after coming back.
I already wrote something about that in Newbie's hardships.

Now thinking back on it I'm still set on categorisation.
But knowing game structure a little better I know think, that shopConfigItems should use new proposed parameters.
In that way shopConfigItems would have two additional fields: trnCategories and trnRequires. columnNr could be deprecated.
trnCategories could use normal category logic. Additionally some extra field like isDocAndOrder (maybe isShopCategoryNr) could be added to constants loader to look up only few categories and order them in the list. trnRequires would be used for things that really need other upgrades, e.g. Archery Lv2 needs Archery Lv1, which needs Blacksmith.
Screen could be like classic unit listing (build, unit list in help, map editor), but instead of units shopitems would be viewed and instead of turn cost - gem cost. Well one additional thing would be needed - rather than making bought upgrades disappear from list, some sort of visual indicator could be used - colored border, background or font.
It would take some work and time to properly categorize shop upgrades, but it can be moved to design leaders. I think in other variants apart from AoS the first categories to make would be races/nations.
To make implementation fluent on the start all upgrades can be listed or columnNr can be used as temporary categories

Of course tiers/levels could be used additionally to make game feel like something progressing. For example additional parameter in shop items "gems needed" or tier nr and gems needed for tiers defined somewhere else. But It is separate thing. Maybe be split for later in case of implementation.
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Morningwarrior
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Re: Upgrade Structure Overhaul

Post by Morningwarrior »

Another thing I think is that as I said in the topic, and the fact that units, spells, builds and upgrades are together and in fact a little disorganized and it got in my way to get other units could have a unit bar one of buildings one of upgrades and so on To be more specific, the units bar right after clicking looks like 4 more melee, distance, mounted and naval fleet bars.
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