When you acquire an enemy hero (either by dealing damage or clicking on it) it will show up on the right hand side in it's own area of the UI, which is not shown in the video - above the inventory, a little bit like the boss bar that Blizzard wrote for Starcraft II, but with a few added features. The UI is actually pretty customizable as it stands in this beta stage, over time I will add more functionality to allow people to customize it further to suit their playing styles - ie moving things and resizing things, but its one of those things that will come much later down the road, as I do not see the need for it at this moment.
Starcraft II's engine is not the best for this type of game, because of how the AI reacquires targets, and unselects your hero after specific commands are issued. To over come this we have enabled a work around, which is turned on by default but can be disabled via hotkeys or the menu, which will automatically reacquire an enemy hero, and automatically reselects your hero every game loop - which is why you never saw us selecting an enemy hero.
It is not an ideal system, but the action is so fast paced in a heat a battle, it is very very easy to loose control of your hero, hence why the above were implemented. But as with nearly everything else we have done, we are giving players the option to turn these features on and off.
Starcraft II's engine is not the best for this type of game, because of how the AI reacquires targets, and unselects your hero after specific commands are issued. To over come this we have enabled a work around, which is turned on by default but can be disabled via hotkeys or the menu, which will automatically reacquire an enemy hero, and automatically reselects your hero every game loop - which is why you never saw us selecting an enemy hero.
To extend on that a little bit,
When you use an ability, any ability that is not transient, which doesnt work well at all for most abilities, it interrupts the casting units standing attack order, in other words it clears your current target. So if you are near other units, creep, heroes, pets etc... Your weapon may not re-acquire the same target so you could end up attacking someone or something else nearby, which is annoying. I am sure most of us have experienced this in one game or antoher where units with weapons and abilities target hop requiring you to re-issue an attack command on your target after each ability used. Well in TMA you can turn on auto-reacquire, and any enemy you use an ability on that requires you to have a specific target will also issue the attack command eliminating the target bouncing of using abilities and losing your target.
Also sometimes when using abilities that you activate, then choose a target for, you end up selecting the target instead because you didnt push the button down all the way, or it was just a hair from being off cooldown but was still cooling down, any number of reasons, for this we implemented Auto-Reselect, whereby anytime your hero is deselected within the time frame of one game loop it is reselected for you, this is of course can be turned on and off. And at any time you can hit [Tab] to instantly select your hero and center the camera on them.
Haters will be haters. I personally am shocked by how awesome that looks and I would love to be part of the beta test if there are any spots available. Hope I see a PM soon!
Thanks a lot. Thats pretty much what I expected, but I just was curious how you guys were handling it, in a sense creating a "focus" frame, with your actual selection being on your hero in order to facilitate orders. Pretty awesome. Look forward to watching this project grow.
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When you acquire an enemy hero (either by dealing damage or clicking on it) it will show up on the right hand side in it's own area of the UI, which is not shown in the video - above the inventory, a little bit like the boss bar that Blizzard wrote for Starcraft II, but with a few added features. The UI is actually pretty customizable as it stands in this beta stage, over time I will add more functionality to allow people to customize it further to suit their playing styles - ie moving things and resizing things, but its one of those things that will come much later down the road, as I do not see the need for it at this moment.
Starcraft II's engine is not the best for this type of game, because of how the AI reacquires targets, and unselects your hero after specific commands are issued. To over come this we have enabled a work around, which is turned on by default but can be disabled via hotkeys or the menu, which will automatically reacquire an enemy hero, and automatically reselects your hero every game loop - which is why you never saw us selecting an enemy hero.
It is not an ideal system, but the action is so fast paced in a heat a battle, it is very very easy to loose control of your hero, hence why the above were implemented. But as with nearly everything else we have done, we are giving players the option to turn these features on and off.
To extend on that a little bit,
When you use an ability, any ability that is not transient, which doesnt work well at all for most abilities, it interrupts the casting units standing attack order, in other words it clears your current target. So if you are near other units, creep, heroes, pets etc... Your weapon may not re-acquire the same target so you could end up attacking someone or something else nearby, which is annoying. I am sure most of us have experienced this in one game or antoher where units with weapons and abilities target hop requiring you to re-issue an attack command on your target after each ability used. Well in TMA you can turn on auto-reacquire, and any enemy you use an ability on that requires you to have a specific target will also issue the attack command eliminating the target bouncing of using abilities and losing your target.
Also sometimes when using abilities that you activate, then choose a target for, you end up selecting the target instead because you didnt push the button down all the way, or it was just a hair from being off cooldown but was still cooling down, any number of reasons, for this we implemented Auto-Reselect, whereby anytime your hero is deselected within the time frame of one game loop it is reselected for you, this is of course can be turned on and off. And at any time you can hit [Tab] to instantly select your hero and center the camera on them.
@Dryeyece: Go
On another note, the game lacks sharks. Can't play it
Haters will be haters. I personally am shocked by how awesome that looks and I would love to be part of the beta test if there are any spots available. Hope I see a PM soon!
@DogmaiSEA: Go
Thanks a lot. Thats pretty much what I expected, but I just was curious how you guys were handling it, in a sense creating a "focus" frame, with your actual selection being on your hero in order to facilitate orders. Pretty awesome. Look forward to watching this project grow.