Suggestions

[Andrew Lonon]

View Controls Update

I have several updates to the view controls and want to let everyone here know how it’s going. I’ll be updating the Demo soon – but for now my Beta testers are playing with the new features. They should be able to help me get the functions right.

New ‘Hot’ Key functions:

R Returns to the last saved view and then the previous – on down the line
T Saves a view location. (T picked because it’s right next to R – no other reason)
Up Arrow Zooms in on Selected Ship in fixed steps.
Down Arrow Zooms out from Selected Ship in fixed steps.
< Moves display to the ‘left’
> Moves display to the ‘right’
/ Automatically selects the next ship that can move, or has not moved
\ Automatically selects the next ship that has a target it can shoot at.

(It just occurred to me that I the ‘<’ and ‘>’ keys may not be consistent!!! I’ll look into it…)

[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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

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!).

[lh]

I have been playing Salvo! demo for the past several days. The games is somewhat sluggish/unresponsive. An example when changing the cannon loading takes a second or so.

Then I was playing the 3rd Tutorial for about 5 hrs and the game quit just when I was about the finish off the French. Gad what frustration. I was having problems direction individual ships, many clicks to set the course and slow response moving from squadron to squadron.

Using Mac G4/1.25 Ghz, OS 10.3.9, 832MB memory.

I am now downloading the latest Demo. I ordered the game and looking forward to playing.

[Charlie_Mote]

Great implementation of changes suggested here Andrew - it's so much easier to navigate and control with the new features. Looking forward to more great work from you!

Charlie Mote

[Andrew Lonon]

Lh:

Sorry about the frustration! Uh – was there an error message? Anything?

<Below is wild speculation!!!>
If the performance seemed to diminish as the game progressed, then there may be a problem with one of the variables storing more and more data and becoming too cumbersome, or there could have been a memory leak. In either case, the best thing to do would be to save the game, close Salvo and then restart, and reload the game. See if that helps, and if not – Please – save the tutorial and let me know. I’ll give you an email address to send the file to so I can check it out and fix the problem – if it is within my means.

[Andrew Lonon]

Charlie:

Thanks for the good word!!