Suggestions

[Andrew Lonon]

Muzien:

“quite late in the development cycle” << I have been thinking of funny (and not so funny) remarks to make about that statement. (Maybe even going as far as to copy boastful quotes from my own previous posts.)

The response to your observations about the Selection and view (Camera?) handling has been clear indication that you are right on target, and that something should be done. I think the Beta group and myself included have gotten used to display system – so your fresh contact has seen things clearer.

Regarding the speed, - I would be interested in knowing if you have upgraded to Tiger. One of my testers upgraded during the testing, and he reported a dramatic speed increase.

[PDF]

Andrew,
Those improvements look very good. Still can I remind you that not everyone in the world use US keyboards ?
On mine (French), no problem with R, still neighbor to T, nor with < and > (same key, with Shift), but \ is gotten via AltGr-8, very far from / ...

[Andrew Lonon]

PDF-

Thanks for the Reminder of the variation of keyboards and languages. This is a very valid point and deserves the correct treatment. However, I’m not sure what the best approach is, and Salvo is probably going to ship with the keys setup as descried in the previous note. The situation can be fixed later on with…

a) User Customization. Change the hotkeys for various functions, and your configuration will be saved with your settings. (This is probably the easiest option from the development standpoint.)

b) Keyboard Variation. If the game becomes profitable enough, then supporting several languages and keyboard formats will be essential.

c) Command Duplication. A lot of what is currently covered by keystrokes in Salvo is only accessible by keystrokes. This is not the best form for a program. All the functions should also be available through a menu or some visual (clickable) element of the UI.

d) Organization and Duplication. Alternately, there may be a way to use a better and more coherently developed hot key organization to alleviate the problem of various keyboard layouts. This would take some coordination of various formats, but may be worth looking into…

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Thanks again for complicating my life. I’ll do my best to take this into account in the next few updates. It would be interesting to know how many international users there are for Salvo, they seem failry well represented here on the forums. <G>

[Muzein]

Those camera updates sound great, Andrew. Can't wait to try out the updated demo (and the full game!).