NaW Digital Feature Requests

[David Heath]

NaW Digital Feature Request List - If you have an idea for a feature for our development team to consider please post it here with as much detail as possible and why you feel it would benefit the game and its players.

 

[Wiggum]

Hotseat mode please.
Currently we can only play against the AI on the same computer, hotseat would be great.

Please add a terrain info window. Maybe via mouse over to see what bonus a terrain gives...like the TEC in the boardgame

Option to keep the results displayed as long as I want to see them, should only go away with a click. Good to learn the game.

Add module rules into the game just like the core manual.

Option to disable weather effects like snow. It's distracting.

Please remove the candle from the table, looks silly.

Option to disable the blinking victory hex...just make it static. Makes my head hurt to have stuff blinking all the time.

 

[Thomasew]

Hi,

I'd like to see an option .. e.g. a slider .. to control the speed of the Automatic camera/animation. Things tend to zip around the screen quite rapidly, .. which can be tricky on the eyes at times, .. also, this rapid movement often results in screen tearing etc., which is odd considering I have a GSync monitor running at 120 Hz. I've tried with VSync on and off, with no discernible difference.

For now, .. I've turned the Automatic camera off, .. but, I would really like the camera to be panning to the action, .. but, .. slower ..

Edit: Actually, I'm making the assumption that the camera speed and the animation speed are kinda tied together, .. that may be totally incorrect. If so, .. we probably needs 2 sliders ..

Thanks

Cheers
Tom

 

[Chris Merchant]

please allow us to mod the game sounds

 

[song]

Will add the cavalry units in the future?

 

[High Krausen]

Second this:
"Option to keep the results displayed as long as I want to see them, should only go away with a click. Good to learn the game.

also (and apologies if it is in and I have missed it) Fog of War option.

 

[Daniel Karsai]

The game was not developed with hot seat in mind but I'll be looking into the possiblity of it since many players have requested it.

Terrain info is available via the ingame manual pages 57 and 60. More information may be added in the future in the form of tooltips and such.
Module rules are between pages 45 and 46 (indexed as b4,b5,b6 & b7 since they are sourced from a different booklet). You can just jump to page 45 and hit the next page button.

An option to wait for confirmation on dice results could become a feature somewhat soon but I only see it happening in the single player mode.

Wiggum, could you specify what you mean exactly by "victory hex"? Is it the outline for scenario objectives, or the one that follows the mouse cursor?

Camera speed setting is a good feature recommendation, I'll add it soon after things settle down with the technical issues.

Game sound modding is a bit of a tricky one, our engine does not allow easy injection of assets so this would have to be a long term addition if there is some traction for it. If you have the know-how, you could try replacing the files in the /lib/assets.jar file, it is essentially a zipped archive. Filenames and extensions have to be an exact match and it's likely that the steam client will undo your changes with each upcoming update.

Fog of war is a highly requested feature, unfortuantely we are not ready to deliver it short term but will be keeping it in mind for future updates. Can't promise anything just yet.

 

[Wiggum]

Daniel, could you please add a way to undo unit placement during setup? Currently one mistake and you have to restart the mission. Also, when i accidentally click on "Fate Move" i cant cancel it. This somewhat can ruin the game since you need to be super careful not to do a wrong click.

Also, please let us inspect our own and the enemy stacks (at least in SP) during the setup phase.

Wiggum, could you specify what you mean exactly by "victory hex"? Is it the outline for scenario objectives, or the one that follows the mouse cursor?

Yes, the outlines are "pulsing" the whole time which is distracting in my opinion.

 

[Daniel Karsai]

I'll be looking into adding an undo function to the setup, others have requested it as well. Same goes for inspecting stacks in general.
Also thinking of a better way to allow spending fate on movement to avoid accidental clicks. You can actually remove the fate step using the timeline panel at the bottom, click the icon of the fate step twice, that will reset the operations plan to that point without clearing the whole thing. Hope that helps a little for now.

As for the pulsating outlines, people are requesting a visual tone-down option in general so i will try to include the objective outlines in that when it comes.

 

[High Krausen]

I don't know if the earlier request for hotseat would cover it...but it would be great to have asynchronous play. I've got 3 kids, one of whom is homeschooling for the rest of the school year, a job (working from home), and a wife (with a job, working from home). I just can't string together free time to play synchronously...so some sort of PBEM would be great for me....just sayin'

 

[Cap'n Darwin]

One suggestion for the scenario briefings is to add to the map images the setup/reinforcement zones for both sides, highlight objective hexes if present, and also show exits if in the scenario. This would help show what I might be facing and how the scenario looks when trying to choose what I want to play.

 

[Cap'n Darwin]

The only real gameplay issue I have with the UI is the chit draw mechanics and how they show in-game. It is hard to see those draw chits, there is no visual indication of leaving an EOT marker out if a side does not get an activation. I have seen a couple of cases of turns flashing by and not getting to activate in a turn after not getting to in a previous turn. It would be great to see bigger markers at the bottom or top of the screen showing the activations and then leaving the EOTs on screen in the next turn if a side does not go.

Thanks.

 

[unstoppableCarl]

I am not an expert hex/counter gamer, more of a miniature wargamer but this game is much more appealing given that it is automated. Really enjoying the game so far. As a software engineer with a lot of UI experience, I have a lot of feedback.

Feature Requests

• Option to toggle snow effect (the effect is nice but will be troublesome for those with less than perfect vision)
• Add keyboard shortcuts for all button clicks like: finish activation, confirm, reset, perform operations, etc.
• When selecting units/locations to perform opportunity fire, if there is only one unit eligible to perform OP fire it should be automatically selected.
• Ability to open rules as a pdf (primarily because you can do a text search) I guess you could implement text search in-game but probably easier to just open a pdf
• It would be nice if you could drag a tile across the hexes you want to move through instead of having to click each one

UI Feedback

• Some of the camera movements appear to have movement tween easing and some do not (maybe just me). Camera movement seems smooth sometimes and rough others.
• The table background image is of much lower quality than the map image. It is a little distracting. I would stick with a simpler background that does not compete/contrast with the map. Maps look great.
• Some of the hexes at the edge of the map are clipped off and units hang off the edge of the map
• Much of the text is not as sharp as I would like (I am on a MacBook pro not sure if it has to do with double density displays). The text on the counters when they are at the bottom of the screen when deploying them seems to be perfectly sharp, all other text is a little fuzzy. Also the text has letters overlapping each other in some places. I feel like I see a lot of poor text formatting in java applications/games. I am not familiar with java so I don't know why.
• Objectives text needs a tiny bit of padding, it is right at the edge of the rectangle it is contained in (much of the UI has this problem)
• The spinning red marks for selecting overwatch stand out as not matching the rest of the UI. It moves too fast and is kind of a strange shape. Why not the square rounded corners that show when selecting the overwatch unit but in red?
• The yellow triangle dashed outline for LOS is not very clear and does not seem to match the rest of the UI
• Determining if a unit is a stack is not as easy as it could be. Something like a corner line that looks like this _| offset from the bottom right of the tile would work.
• Drop shadow of the tiles would give better contrast to the edge if it was centered instead of off to the bottom right (a little shadow all the way around the tile)
• It is not clear what I am supposed to do after clicking "Indirect mortar fire". I see that some hexes light up but nothing happens when I click them.
• The tile movement animation should be one smooth tween instead of jerking and stopping at each hex
• The "ops complete" marker does not need to be so large. It also obscures if a tile is a stack or not
• When deploying an ARM INF unit that can be deployed in vehicle or not, it would be nice if the 2 options buttons were below the counter so that you could select it immediately instead of selecting the unit then which one of the 2.
• When displaying dice rolls, I would like to see the target number and any modifiers
• Attachment counters like the HMG should tween with the unit when moving. They blink on and off each hex.
• When selecting a stack of tiles, each selectable tile should have a number (1,2,3, .etc) that keyboard key should select it
• Why do you need to click "finish activation"? There does not appear to be any further options for the player

 

[Sergio Benazzi]

I would like a window (or another way), which shows the modifiers that have been applied after an attack and defense dice roll.

I would also like to be able to see the terrain type and modifier (ex. Rough/ Def.Bonus +1d6, Mov.Cost 1ST 2HT, Concealment=Yes) when the mouse arrow hovers over it.

 

[Daniel Karsai]

@High Krausen: Unfortunately asynchronous play isn't something we planned for. If/when hotseat mode is implemented, one possible workaround would be to save the game after each action taken, and share the save file every time. We'll try to think of ways to make the constant exchange of save files more convenient.

@Cap'n Darwin: Your suggestions have been added to the backlog, thanks

@unstoppableCarl: Thanks for the detailed observations!

• Some visual feature toggles are going to be added at some point.
• The camera has a basic tweening system but it does not respect previous momentum. In case of a very important event, the camera will sacrifice "elasticity" to save time (like responding to a dice roll that was originally off-screen). A camera speed slider is coming in the future which might make it less erratic at lower settings.
• The background was made lower resolution as some other assets are already demanding on VRAM (we wanted to support low-end hardware) and the game engine didn't come with a system for resolution presets. I could do some rearrangement to have the table graphic tiled though, allowing for higher pixel density (the overall image wasn't made by an artist anyway)
• Units hanging off the edge is a quirk we had to accept due to a point of confusion on clipping that couldn't be feasibly resolved this far into development.
• Blurry text and UI quirks in general are the offspring of the dated engine we started out with. The only two solutions at this point would be either to resort to dirty hacks (possibly braking other things) or hoping we can afford to switch to Unity alongside the next module's development.
• The yellow triangle dashed outline is actually the HE range of the unit(s) you are currently controlling. The LOS extends out to the highest attack range they have, the edges are color coded per-type (red for AP and blue for AA) and possess different basic shapes so that they can overlap without obscuring eachother.
• The stack indicator corner icon is a good idea, I'll see if i can add it at some point. I've taken note of your other suggestions too.
• Indirect mortar fire is a bit rough for now (UX-wise), I'll try to improve it soon as others have reported having trouble with it too
• Clicking "finish activation" is required on the off chance the player wants to take a moment to observe the playing field before passing on the turn. They also have a few special actions available to them (such as using fate points to move a unit by 1 hex) that is possible to do even after the unit is ops complete. Perhaps highlighting the button after all units are ops complete could be a small improvement.

@Sergio Benazzi: Thank you for the ideas

 

[unstoppableCarl]

@Daniel Karsai Thanks for the fast response to my feedback. It is nice to know someone is actually taking the time to read it

What is the engine NAW runs on? just curious.

For the outlines of different types of range, if there are 3 types (orange, blue, red) why not use a solid line for each but off set each type a little bit so they do not overlap?

Are keyboard shortcuts for buttons in the backlog? To be honest that is the one most important me.

 

[Daniel Karsai]

It's JMonkeyEngine 3.0.
To be honest I didn't think the current range lines were that jarring, and I wanted to give them a little bit of personality. Offsetting them could obscure information on counters too I guess (or make the lines harder to see underneath a stack if the draw order was reversed)
Keyboard shortcuts are indeed on the list but I want to do a full lineup before I add them and figure out a good consistent way to communicate their existence to the player. The return key is fairly usual for finishing actions so it may get added in advance.

 

[rax]

Option to disable snow and other weather effects could be really nice.
Those effects are making planning really difficult.

 

[Wiggum]

+1 want to be able to disable weather effects

 

[secu]

Is it possible to have a fate point use option with "yes" or "no" box, followed by the choice of how and how many points used, the game paused and waits for the answer in a combat or dice roll result ?
Currently the box choice isn't really precise to select and if you're disturbed for any reason you miss the choice.