I know its a game and it is cross platform but please just make CMD+Q do the right thing on the Mac - That means without jumping through hoops and presenting inane dialogs asking the user what to do - just save the damn game in an extra slot and autoresume the game next launch automatically - kinda obvious what the right defaults are is it not?
some things should not be sacrificed, breaking standard platform idioms (like CMD+Q = QUIT) without an incredibly good reason is one of them.
This type of thing is exactly what is wrong with flash and non native apps/port jobs. Given the big things, all the little things are what matter - that is why we have Macs and iPhone OS devices - details matter.
CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
-
ihateregistering
- Initiate
- Posts: 11
- Joined: May 27th, 2010, 1:30 am
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
Hmmm... Interesting idea, the default save, but how do you deal with diseases in the game (you know, the rule that prevent you from saving)?
Plus, I really think dialog boxes when you "accidentally" quit is the right thing to do (even if it's a optional behavior that could be disabled in options).
Last, as you say, it's a multi-platform game, so that means BW should take care of Alt+F4, Cmd+Q, Ctrl+Q, Alt+X, ... depending on the OS/Desktop Environment, user habits, etc.
Plus, I really think dialog boxes when you "accidentally" quit is the right thing to do (even if it's a optional behavior that could be disabled in options).
Last, as you say, it's a multi-platform game, so that means BW should take care of Alt+F4, Cmd+Q, Ctrl+Q, Alt+X, ... depending on the OS/Desktop Environment, user habits, etc.
-
ihateregistering
- Initiate
- Posts: 11
- Joined: May 27th, 2010, 1:30 am
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
since the game in progress auto loads on your next launch - this really does not effect the lame "can't save when xyz is or is not happening" optional ruleset - its not like you can load a different save game without taking out of game measures, and big deal if a player wants to "cheat" or whatever let them - its their game they are going to play it however the f they want to anyway.
side rant:
Part of being a good citizen/developer on the Mac (or iPhone OS) is to fit in to the platform whenever and wherever it makes sense to do so - the "justification" of omissions and non standard behavior is that it is harder for the programmer to do the right thing for each platform - this is never valid it is just an excuse/expediency we programmers take at our customers expense - the customer is not wrong for thinking your app should behave in the standard way all his other apps do, you are - period. This is for several reasons, the customer is almost never in the wrong when they have a problem with your software [for more elaborations on this theme see some of the NSConference 2010 video sessions - very good overall and with the presenters being able to be a bit more open with their opinions than what you get from Apple's necessarily more corporate WWDC sessions.]
I realize end users often see sequences of one or more lame "do you want to save before you quit?" dialogs in applications but have you ever stopped to think WhyTF is craptastic app 3.7.4.34 build 17b asking me a series of stupid questions instead of just doing the right thing and nondestructively saving and restoring my work + environment? Seriously what percentage of the time are you not going to want to save your work/progress? - all that is needed is a way to revert/undo to an earlier save point -- all modern apps, be they games or productivity apps, document based or library/database based apps should strive to have the property whereby the user finds it almost impossible to shoot themselves in the foot even if they try to (most of the time rarely used/needed destructive ops can be made undoable or designed out or purposely be made asymmetrically harder to invoke - it is insanity for a contacts app to have equal importance side by side +/- buttons for adding and deleting contacts - yes you see it done all the time - yes it is incredibly bad design - basically no thought used just i know i'll add a standard +/- button controls to this list because you know you often need to delete a contact and that is something you really want to do as easily as adding new ones...). The user should not have to make extra or unnecessary choices to keep the vendors software happy - sure it is a little more work to design the grunt work out for the end user, but this is exactly the kind of elegance and ease of use end users love. You can tell when an app is done right because it is a pleasure to use and you have way less WTF moments per unit time spent using said software.
Don't get me wrong, the game is great so far (I've only played it for an hour or so now), gets most of the big things right, its all the little things that make the difference between merely good software and truly great software.
side rant:
Part of being a good citizen/developer on the Mac (or iPhone OS) is to fit in to the platform whenever and wherever it makes sense to do so - the "justification" of omissions and non standard behavior is that it is harder for the programmer to do the right thing for each platform - this is never valid it is just an excuse/expediency we programmers take at our customers expense - the customer is not wrong for thinking your app should behave in the standard way all his other apps do, you are - period. This is for several reasons, the customer is almost never in the wrong when they have a problem with your software [for more elaborations on this theme see some of the NSConference 2010 video sessions - very good overall and with the presenters being able to be a bit more open with their opinions than what you get from Apple's necessarily more corporate WWDC sessions.]
I realize end users often see sequences of one or more lame "do you want to save before you quit?" dialogs in applications but have you ever stopped to think WhyTF is craptastic app 3.7.4.34 build 17b asking me a series of stupid questions instead of just doing the right thing and nondestructively saving and restoring my work + environment? Seriously what percentage of the time are you not going to want to save your work/progress? - all that is needed is a way to revert/undo to an earlier save point -- all modern apps, be they games or productivity apps, document based or library/database based apps should strive to have the property whereby the user finds it almost impossible to shoot themselves in the foot even if they try to (most of the time rarely used/needed destructive ops can be made undoable or designed out or purposely be made asymmetrically harder to invoke - it is insanity for a contacts app to have equal importance side by side +/- buttons for adding and deleting contacts - yes you see it done all the time - yes it is incredibly bad design - basically no thought used just i know i'll add a standard +/- button controls to this list because you know you often need to delete a contact and that is something you really want to do as easily as adding new ones...). The user should not have to make extra or unnecessary choices to keep the vendors software happy - sure it is a little more work to design the grunt work out for the end user, but this is exactly the kind of elegance and ease of use end users love. You can tell when an app is done right because it is a pleasure to use and you have way less WTF moments per unit time spent using said software.
Don't get me wrong, the game is great so far (I've only played it for an hour or so now), gets most of the big things right, its all the little things that make the difference between merely good software and truly great software.
-
Dragonlady
- Illustrious
- Posts: 1466
- Joined: August 29th, 2006, 2:38 pm
- Location: CA, USA or Knumythia
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
ihateregistering, do you have anger management problems? Seems every one of your posts so far your mad about something. Give things a bit of time, see if anyone else has mentioned whats upsetting you. Enjoy the game if you can and then make comments. Remember, this is not a gaming company that has tons of people working for it and can catch every annoying thing you think should have been done. Some things have to be set aside or left a certain way so most folks can have a bit of fun without waiting years and years for a game to come out.
Elder lecture over.
Elder lecture over.
Sometimes the dragon wins...
Help save the earth. It's the only planet with CHOCOLATE!
Help save the earth. It's the only planet with CHOCOLATE!
-
ihateregistering
- Initiate
- Posts: 11
- Joined: May 27th, 2010, 1:30 am
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
hey Lady, sorry to drag on so to speak, but if no one gives any timely initial feedback or bug reports its going to take a lot longer (most likely never in the case of subtle things) for things to get improved and/or fixed. I'm all for seeing software get shipped into the real world but I'm also all for iterative and generational improvement and making best practice user experience centric design choices a priority, hence my 2 cents...
For instance, another user was mentioning how application switching (CMD+Tab) is also broken in full screen mode - I noticed this also but for technical reasons this is not always easy to implement properly for full screen apps so I let it slide since there is a window mode and other issues are more pressing and easier to fix.
Similarly, ideally the game would not be fixed to 1024x768 (especially since it uses OpenGL) but similarly I let that slide as that also becomes very problematic to do properly without overtaxing the GPU or requiring higher resolution art etc...
On the other hand having the game basically execute in an obvious wrapper like it does such that you get extra steps to startup or quit is something that easily can and should have been designed out.
In general simple things and common use cases should be optimized, and complex or rare but necessary things should be possible and discoverable, and everything else should be eliminated entirely.
I am only mentioning these things because I keep running into them and I find it frustrating that things that I take for granted as needing to take zero or one steps to accomplish are either not possible (no cut and paste and also no autoregistration URL in the registration email which would by the way avoid any and all copy+paste, typing, errors, or other registration code friction) or repeatedly take several steps for no good reason. For instance, launch a registered copy and get a dialog every launch asking you how you want to run the game, then you get an animated splash screen unless you actively click through it for the nth time, ok now you've got a menu whereby you can proceed to manually choose and load your last saved game... seeing a problem with this yet? Ok how about quitting - CMD+Q = Quests -- brilliant, ok lets forgets 25+ years of mac know how, ESC, Main Menu, ARE YOU SURE DIALOG!!!, YES I AM SURE - EXIT, great now I am at the main menu (music and effects come back because you know you want that at the main menu...), guess what I still want to quit, so EXIT again, wow another 2 seconds to fade out and quit. Now I ask you is that sane? Go ahead try pushing something up to the App store that makes people jump through those kinds of hoops and see how it sells and reviews... thats actually one of the best things about iPhone OS software almost everyone now persists the users application state across launches and end users are used to and _expect_ it now, you do not generally have to explicitly load or save anything or wait for apps to take several seconds to quit (they get hard terminated by the OS if they take too long for starters...)
I don't know how everyone else plays single player RPG's, but assuming I'm not *completely special* I imagine most people play them just like me when it comes to saving and loading -- I start a new game, play it for awhile saving one or more times as I progress, then sooner or later I need to quit so I save and quit. I come back to play some more, I load my latest save position (after manually figuring out which one it is for some unknown reason...grrr) and continue as before. I generally play the game all the way through until the end without creating any other new games (ie generally I only have one specific game on the go at a time, although I rarely may bother to go back a save or two if I feel I screwed something up badly enough). Given this or any other remotely sane playing pattern as the typical use case why would you not just autosave and autoresume so the player spends more time playing the game rather than being played by the game?
If I had not been having issues with the sounds I undoubtedly would not been quitting and launching the app near so often but alas one problem is making the other more pronounced...
PS: the game itself is great once you get to the actual gameplay (ok great aside from the tediousness of attempting to walk through or fully map forests - same navigation/control problems as book I had in that situation).
For instance, another user was mentioning how application switching (CMD+Tab) is also broken in full screen mode - I noticed this also but for technical reasons this is not always easy to implement properly for full screen apps so I let it slide since there is a window mode and other issues are more pressing and easier to fix.
Similarly, ideally the game would not be fixed to 1024x768 (especially since it uses OpenGL) but similarly I let that slide as that also becomes very problematic to do properly without overtaxing the GPU or requiring higher resolution art etc...
On the other hand having the game basically execute in an obvious wrapper like it does such that you get extra steps to startup or quit is something that easily can and should have been designed out.
In general simple things and common use cases should be optimized, and complex or rare but necessary things should be possible and discoverable, and everything else should be eliminated entirely.
I am only mentioning these things because I keep running into them and I find it frustrating that things that I take for granted as needing to take zero or one steps to accomplish are either not possible (no cut and paste and also no autoregistration URL in the registration email which would by the way avoid any and all copy+paste, typing, errors, or other registration code friction) or repeatedly take several steps for no good reason. For instance, launch a registered copy and get a dialog every launch asking you how you want to run the game, then you get an animated splash screen unless you actively click through it for the nth time, ok now you've got a menu whereby you can proceed to manually choose and load your last saved game... seeing a problem with this yet? Ok how about quitting - CMD+Q = Quests -- brilliant, ok lets forgets 25+ years of mac know how, ESC, Main Menu, ARE YOU SURE DIALOG!!!, YES I AM SURE - EXIT, great now I am at the main menu (music and effects come back because you know you want that at the main menu...), guess what I still want to quit, so EXIT again, wow another 2 seconds to fade out and quit. Now I ask you is that sane? Go ahead try pushing something up to the App store that makes people jump through those kinds of hoops and see how it sells and reviews... thats actually one of the best things about iPhone OS software almost everyone now persists the users application state across launches and end users are used to and _expect_ it now, you do not generally have to explicitly load or save anything or wait for apps to take several seconds to quit (they get hard terminated by the OS if they take too long for starters...)
I don't know how everyone else plays single player RPG's, but assuming I'm not *completely special* I imagine most people play them just like me when it comes to saving and loading -- I start a new game, play it for awhile saving one or more times as I progress, then sooner or later I need to quit so I save and quit. I come back to play some more, I load my latest save position (after manually figuring out which one it is for some unknown reason...grrr) and continue as before. I generally play the game all the way through until the end without creating any other new games (ie generally I only have one specific game on the go at a time, although I rarely may bother to go back a save or two if I feel I screwed something up badly enough). Given this or any other remotely sane playing pattern as the typical use case why would you not just autosave and autoresume so the player spends more time playing the game rather than being played by the game?
If I had not been having issues with the sounds I undoubtedly would not been quitting and launching the app near so often but alas one problem is making the other more pronounced...
PS: the game itself is great once you get to the actual gameplay (ok great aside from the tediousness of attempting to walk through or fully map forests - same navigation/control problems as book I had in that situation).
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
Sounds to me like you are trying to play at work and want to be able to quickly hide it from the boss.
PS- You can hold Shift when you launch the game and avoid the startup screens.
PS- You can hold Shift when you launch the game and avoid the startup screens.
Re: CMD+Q should always equal QUIT on the Mac
You don't imagine well. The key point explaining why I'm totally disagree with you is that lost 2s for each hour of play is the worthy price to pay to keep full control on save and quit features.ihateregistering wrote: I imagine most people play them just like me when it comes to saving and loading
A save is critical for any game and I like have the total control when it is saved or not. What you suggest is totally weird for me, because a wrong key hit and the game save and quit without asking me... That's awful crap.
For the auto load the problem is when you play two characters in parallel, or when you don't want load the last save. Then the game take the time to load something you don't want that's quite irritating.
Some games implement an intermediate choice letting you the control and I would prefer. There's a "continue" button and a "load" button and a "new" button. Now if a Shift+Launch the application auto load last save, it's fine for me, I'll just never bother remind the shortcut or remind do it.
For the quit in two phases I agree games should have a real quit shortcut and a close current game bringing you to a main menu. But for me the real quit shortcut and the close current game should ask you to save or not before quitting to desktop. The point is if an accident happen I'm happy to have an insurance and to pay 1s each time I quit or close the game.