OF COURSE if there are good ways to keep the split screen it's a wonderful additional feature.. but I still don't think it should be a limit for the rest of the design
if you see also other games, 10/15years ago the majority of them had split screen enabled, right now they are almost disappearing against lan games...
Btw I don't see the problem : one use wasd layout + mouse under the keyboard, one use numpad + mouse right o the keyboard... where is the problem?
it is far superior when travelling for instance. Or sitting at school on the break. Then you just need a laptop and then you can let the time fly by with a good game of clonk with a friend. This is impossible without splitscreen.
The amount of games that supports split screen is decreasing yes. That is not a good thing IMO. Imagine yourself sitting somewhere with a computer and a friend. The amount of games you can play together arent that many nowadays. I think that split screen is a feature that is good to keep.
Playing two players with one mouse each will feel very crowded in your way. Most peoples computer desks has no surface under the keyboard. The keyboard is often at the edge of the table with the screen above it, so it will indeed get crowded. Also, more than two players would be insane.
I don't think being without the mouse limits the design too much. There are examples of games that has fast paced 2D action without the mouse and you can still quite easy aim 360 degrees. Check out Cortex Command. Exactly what will the mouse enable in the gameplay that the keyboard/gamepad cannot?
apart from that if I find myself somewhere in travel with a pc and a friend usually I just ejnoy the travel with my friend, not play computer games :p stupid point I know, but it is just to say that clonk (at least is not ported on very portable devices like nintendo ds or psp) is not really a "travel game" : it has usually very long gameplay, you need at least 15/20mins of play through to do something useful, and its not a game that could be enjoyed so much if you have to stop every 3mins and pause it.
Cortex command uses quite a lot the mouse controls... I didnt' even know you can play without it, I think it would be unnatural to me like playing an fps without the mouse...
...come on you can't say that aiming smoothly and fastly in 360 degrees is the same with or without mouse...
for splitscreen major than 2 players... gamepads? also because really, do you have keyboards that handle more than 4/5 buttons pressed at the same time?
I think that clonk definitely is a travel game. Long rounds can easily be saved or paused and resumed, Or maybe you can quickly play a fast round of battle magi or something. Many maps don't exceed 5 mins of gameplay even. Clonk is that flexible that it can be played anywhere in any way instant or in long rounds at home that lasts for 60 hours. I think that flexibility is worth keeping, and a big part of it is the split screen. It really aids that you can play the game almost everywhere.
"Cortex command uses quite a lot the mouse controls... " Naaw, not that much. Only aiming, navigating the menu and firing. Firing and navigating the menu is done as easily with the keyboard, and aiming is a bit slower yes, but the reward for that is that you can play several players on one computer. That is really worth it. Especially when you still can play with the mouse and when there is no online multiplayer. If these clonk controls worked like cortex command in the manner that they are able to replicate almost the same with keyboard controls, then I see no problem with it, Then it wont kill splitscreen. It is just when the mouse player gets a big advantage the problem arises.
"for splitscreen major than 2 players... gamepads? also because really, do you have keyboards that handle more than 4/5 buttons pressed at the same time? "
Sorry, I didn't get the first part of that quote. :/
You don't really need that many buttons at the same time when you have classic controls instead of JnR. ;)
This discussion is turning into something that is really only taste that differs between people, but my main point is that clonk should try to keep its flexibility so that it do not become a game that is only playable at home with one computer each etcetc. I like the way clonk rage solves it by letting the players choose between Jnr/classic, mouse/not mouse, split screen/lan/online or any combination in between That is just great. To limit clonk in just one of these combinations will always exclude some people from playing it, may it be you, may it be me or anyone and that is not good.
> O.o Since when did split screen slow the performance?
in all the games where split screen has literally a "split screen", that is more screens to render. Maybe clonk is not really affected because it is not "over the edge" in graphics technology, but if you take a lot of modern games you will have that fps are lower if used in split screen (and that's a bit logical since you have two render 2,3,4 different views). But this point is a bit OT
btw: I really agree with you that a system that could allow every preferred setting could be the best one to follow, but it's also one of the toughest to implement since you have to implement, test and support all the different styles at the same time.
About cortex command: in my opinion aiming with the keyboard in a game where u have to aim 360° will always be slower than aiming with the mouse, and require also a lot of workarounds, like clonk hazard system that doesn't allow to aim while moving (killing a lot of the gameplay imho). And aiming is a MAJOR point in the game, not a minor one...
I still like the idea of support split screen with many players, but I just want the general gameplay design to take more priority. that's all. if you can find a good way to implement split screen inside the chosen design, it is just wonderful. But i don't think you should take a worse system just to allow a feature. And still i think that :
aim with mouse= faster, more precise, more natural, allows other actions while doing it, all keyboard buttons are free to be used
aim with keyboard = slower, unnatural, unprecise, unadapted for fast commands (like shooting a weapon, casting a spell, etc), focus all the attention of the player on the aiming, instead of allowing him to do other stuff while doing it.
that's the only reason why i think mouse is very important. if split screen can be studied to anyway be supported, I would be the first one to be happy :)
Yeah, aiming with keyboard is definitely slower. But it works in cortex command, and clonk is a game where aiming is ALOT less required than CC. It is mostly the hazard pack witch would gain alot with mouse aim. Otherwise it would'n be so required.
However I think we can come to the conclusion that we both are on the same side, wanting to expand the game as much as possible, it is only that we prioritize different things. ^^ At First I thought that you entirely wanted to scrap those other things completely. I think the game will develop to something good if we keep both parts of the discussion in mind. =)
>I think the game will develop to something good if we keep both parts of the discussion in mind. =)
agreed, and I also think that this is the spirit that will make the game the best :)
>It is mostly the hazard pack witch would gain alot with mouse aim. Otherwise it would'n be so required.
in my opinion also fantasy, knights, western pack just to say some would improve a lot... and also normal packs allowing better control and aiming of flints and objects (but yes, here is less strong improvement than in the other packs)
> in around 5 years almost every student will have a personal laptop, its almost sure...
I would not bet on this. There are now families that can not afford a computer for every child and in the future there will be families that can not afford a notebook for every child. And a fast internet connection won't be there for free either.
> if you see also other games, 10/15years ago the majority of them had split screen enabled, right now they are almost disappearing against lan games...
Think about the success of the Wii, which has a splitscreen in many games. And like many Wii-games in my opinion Clonk is meant to be played with a bunch of players. So called family game consoles became very popular.
And today used laptops that can run clonk can be bought for under a 100E. Sorry to sound cynic but if you won't have the money to buy one in the next five years I don't think that playing or not playing clonk would be your first issue in life... otherwise we should think about developing clonk even for african people that doesn't even have a pc... what if they want to play? heh?
the wii is a big success but I don't think at all splitscreen is one of the major causes.
New controllers, new market, big marketing campaign are major keys of its success. Many games like wii fit, super mario galaxy and so on are single player games. Many ppl by the wii to play online. Yes indeed it has wonderful split screen games and its cool they have, but they are mostly short-time game where people can play together for 10 minutes and have fun (mario kart, super smash brawl, guitar hero, etc). Apart that the later one alone costs like an used laptop able to run clonk, you have also to think that clonk maps can lasts hours... it is just completely another think from wii
I mean, you are making out points that would limit openclonk design possibilities just because of a very special feature (splitscreen with more than 2 players) that I don't think is nearly as common as normal play or 2 player spliscreen.
For 2 player split screen I really don't see the point introducing the mouse. "you dont have room below the keyboard!!!". If you had room before to stay in 2 or 3 in front of the pc, believe me, it will possible to find a room for 2 ppl with mouse. It won't be as comfortable as 1-player game, but split screen is never comfortable like that anyway , especially for the visual divided at least in 2.
For more, if you really want, you can solve it with gamepads.
so where is the problem in using the mouse? if you say "you have to use 2 hands!" do you realize how weak is the argumentation or not?
In exactly what ways and what ideas are limited in openclonk by trying to make it as possible to play without mouse as with mouse?
I have room for 2-3 people in front of my pc, but not a mouse below of the keyboard. There is air below the keyboard. people can sit in air. A mouse cannot lie on air. I cannot move back the keyboard even an inch, because a fat CRT screen is behind it and I cannot move back the CRT screen because a wall of solid concrete is behind it. And I cannot really use the space at the sides of the keyboard because at the right side, the first mouse is and on the left side, there is more air. The spaces to the left and right of the CRT-screen cannot be used either, because two fat speakers are blocking the otherwise empty spaces. (This is not meant to sound mean, only humorous =) )
But this really doesn't have to do with anything, becuase this situation is so specific and personal. When making games, one cannot go down specifically to players like this. A general way of thinking is better. And I think there is people out there (like me) which has problems with adding a second mouse and play with it. May it be due to lack of mice or space or whatever.
How do you control the mouse with a gamepad? :S
"so where is the problem in using the mouse? if you say "you have to use 2 hands!" do you realize how weak is the argumentation or not? "
There is no problems in using the mouse. Only limiting the gaming to ONLY use the mouse. A game being developed should be about expanding, not limiting, and as I said before, one of clonks greatest strength has always been its incredible flexibility in both game scenarios and way of playing. The more you limit these, the more one-wayed clonk will become.
And also, the "you have to use 2 hands" is really a good argument. There is many ways to play clonk ranging from chilly to intensive. Forcing people to use two hands makes it only intensive. There are many people in the clonk community who likes the slacking way of playing. Where you can do other stuff meanwhile. I can easily control a mining outpost while playing guitar, send sms, speak in phone, go away and make tea, eat, pet cats, whatever. This is also a matter of taste, and I think both ways should be kept.
You are talking about that the controls shouldn't limit the way the game would develop, but I have seen none concrete example of how keeping this flexibility would limit that in any way.
>aim with mouse= faster, more precise, more natural, allows other actions while doing it, all keyboard buttons are free to be used
>aim with keyboard = slower, unnatural, unprecise, unadapted for fast commands (like shooting a weapon, casting a spell, etc), focus all the attention of the player on the >aiming, instead of allowing him to do other stuff while doing it.
>that's the only reason why i think mouse is very important. if split screen can be studied to anyway be supported, I would be the first one to be happy :)
for gamepads= new gamepads has one or two analog sticks, and a lot of games uses it to support mouse-like movements, like first person shooter games in console. It's not the bestestest solution ever, but it can be done.. and maybe other better ways can be done for clonk as well :)
You have to setup the network. Of course that's not very difficult. But if someone does not understand digging in Clonk he might not know how to handle that.
I don't have total numbers about games using splitscreen, but at least there are some popular games having this feature (ghostbusters, halo 2, overlord). And these games will take you to play a couple of hours.
Maybe it's just me, but if I play clonk the short rounds prevail.
I guess we keep drifting apart from the topic...
btw, I was talking about laptops, and that's just because I have seen mostly 50% of my friends that even never cared about PCs buying one in the last couple of years, and I guess the number is just going to rise and rise in the next 5 years. But this is another discussion...
anyway OF COURSE split screen is more comfortable than moving to a friend's house to play... but really, are you still thinking that having an internet connection is an issue anymore for a computer user? or that it will be in a couple of years?
anyway has said before, I am not against splitscreen, as far as it doesn't influence the general design of the game :)
then let's go back in topic and let's think about good ways to preserve it without altering it :)
> but really, are you still thinking that having an internet connection is an issue anymore for a computer user? or that it will be in a couple of years?
I was just thinking of the lags that happen quite often at the moment. You need a quite good connection for Clonk. But let's hope that there are improvements to the speed of internet games.
Ok, last one on this... :-)
I'm starting to think over a cool new system that everyone will love.
>I'm starting to think over a cool new system that everyone will love.
looking forward to news then :)
I think a lot of players initially found Clonk because they were bored, hanging around with friends, and were looking for a computer game that has a multiplayer feature... and then they found Clonk! The perfect solution \o/
Even now, me and my friends are able to play Clonk with a lot of people, up to 10 with just ~6 computers, because some of us have big screens, it'd be a waste to let a single person play with it :P
I am not saying that we should "keep this 'thankless' (how dare you!) feature" - let's invent it in a new, even better way \o/
>I think a lot of players initially found Clonk because they were bored, hanging around with friends, and were looking for a computer game that has a multiplayer >feature... and then they found Clonk!
That was exactly the way we found clonk.
> Remember that split screen might include more than 2 people
There are already issues with key rollover due to the J&R style controls. Unless you have a high-quality keyboard, you probably won't be able to comfortably use J&R with more than two players (at most; diagonal digging can be a problem with just two players) anyway.
Another idea I had is to get rid of the fixed digging angles. One could change the direction continuous.
And what about digging upward with dirt falling down to get you back to the surface.
For all the friends I introduced to clonk, almost everybody chosed and preferred j&r. If you are USED to other controllers its obvious that they are better. I am working in france now and people here is used to azerty keyboard layout that it is just AWEFUL. But give them a qwerty keyboard and they won't even know how to type their name.
Getting used to something always makes it better for you, but it doesn't mean that it is better in general
"Getting used to something always makes it better for you, but it doesn't mean that it is better in general "
No, but the fact that you cannot hold many buttons simultaneously is a pretty big drawback for JnR. It limits the split screen cabability pretty much as stated previously.
JnR:
+Smoother learning for some people (probably most of them)
- Button simultaneously error limits complexity of controls
- Button simultaneously error kills split screen capability
It isn't worth switching to it IMO. But it would be nice to have it like in clonk rage when you have the ability to choose. Everybody wins. =)
I see three possibilities to keep the original gameplay on one computer
- Use gamepads in a console-like fashion as you mentioned with the WII
- Add two buttons to the revised controls for no-mouse control - for aiming/digging/using up and down. Will be slow but at least it works
- Keep the old non-JNR controls parallel with the new ones, selectable but deprecated somewhere in the options
as said, splitscreen is a good plus, and it is foundamental for some people. for many others (most of all when the project will become open source and so it should spread around internet) it is not that useful because it's easier for them to play on lan or on internet, as majority of games does. And for these players, to have the dafault control system being worse that it could be just to support a feature they won't use, it would be bad no?
if you can make both kind of people happy it would be better :)
anyway you have also to consider that most people here belongs to clonk historical community, so they are quite used to the way the game is now, the way you control the game now, and the features it supports. Many people here come from germany and scandinavia and for a small small community as clonk one, maybe split screen allows more multiplayer choices than in normal conditions.
But if you would make a test about a normal NEW internet community, with people from all the places, I think reactions would be way less "conservative"... and if hopefully clonk will spread to a bigger community, you will have to make also those new people happy..
Anyway, buttons for no-mouse-controls should be customizable even if the mouse were to become a requirement (which imo, it shouldn't because we should support gamepads). I could imagine them having the role of "hotkeys" you know from other games. In order to dig, a newbie would click on the shovel by mouse, then click the target position. Should be easy enough. An advanced player may have set the shovel to a hotkey.
Similar to how a newbie Warcraft player would click on units, then click on a spell on the command cart; but an expeirenced player would press the control group hotkey and press the spell hotkey afterwards. The hotkeys are hard to learn; but that's OK, because any idiot can play Warcraft using the mouse and progress from that.
I'm also a defendant of non-JnR, obviously, though I don't think we need to keep all of it. The digging process could be changed so a direction key will let you dig in that direction, just like in JnR. AutoContextMenu could also be activated for classic control style, if we allow hotkeys for fast access of options like buy, sell, etc. Dropping items may be a simple hotkey, which could also be set to the JnR "Down+Throw" method. So we would drop Down-Down-Throw, but allow single-key-drops if someone cannot or does not want to press two keys at the same time. We might also want to add a usable method to drop using the mouse, e.g. Alt+Click on your inventory.
In the end, the difference between JnR and classic would just be whether you keep the direction key pressed or not, which should be easy enough to maintain. The difference between mouse and no-mouse would be in how extensive you use your hotkeys.
and I don't see any way where J'nR can't have the same complexity of classic controls.. you need to press one butotn to move, but it doesn't block any action (yes, apart in splitscreen :p)
you have also to think that clonk controls where designed more than FIFTEEN years ago, where the ONLY way of playing multiplayer was split screen, where gamepads and similar were like 100E each, were complexity of gameplay was way less than today's clonk. You got used to them and after you adapt yourself to use them even today quite well, but if you start brand new I think that J'nR are WAYYYY easier and more natural (also because they are more similar to 99% of 2d games out there)
I got into clonk planet like 6-7 years ago, and then the gameplay was as complex as rages. I had no problems with the keys. But you are right, new players find it easier with JnR.
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