bvanevery
09-03-2007, 08:47 PM
I tried the demo of Caesar IV. I'm rather experienced at Zeus (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/zeusmasterofolympus/index.html), and game mechanically, Caesar IV looks just like Zeus with aquaducts. So it's not like I needed to learn much about what was going on or what to do.
Zeus used a 2D isometric interface, and Caesar IV uses a 3D freelook interface. I found Caesar IV's UI gratuitously difficult and slow to manipulate. There isn't really a snap-to grid. By default, you're zoomed far enough out that it's easy to make placement mistakes. Also the stupid UI seemed to think I wanted to rotate my building placement all the time, requiring 2 clicks to slam down a building instead of just 1. I didn't see an easy way to rotate the scene so I could see the backside of buildings and place them better. I could use the freelook rotation, but that typically rotated me waaaay away from what I wanted to look at, or required extra time and precision to get the view adjusted right. In Zeus I just hit the 90 degree rotate button and kept right on plunking. Roads would try to intelligently wrap themselves around extant buildings. That's fine when you've already put down your buildings. It sucks when you're trying to lay out a main road so that you can put down some buildings, and the road keeps bending around extant buildings.
The final insult was periodically, it would "snow" or "fog" or something. The whole screen would go grey, I could hardly see a damn thing unless I zoomed in pretty close. Which meant I had to drop what I was doing and go fiddle the zoom. Who comes up with this crap? Or was it not really supposed to make it difficult to see, and it's really a 3d driver problem? In that case, be careful how you implement fog effects. They're a historic weak spot in 3d drivers.
I uninstalled the demo and thought I'd grouse here. Also I'm wondering if any modern 3d city builder games "got it right" with the UI?
Zeus used a 2D isometric interface, and Caesar IV uses a 3D freelook interface. I found Caesar IV's UI gratuitously difficult and slow to manipulate. There isn't really a snap-to grid. By default, you're zoomed far enough out that it's easy to make placement mistakes. Also the stupid UI seemed to think I wanted to rotate my building placement all the time, requiring 2 clicks to slam down a building instead of just 1. I didn't see an easy way to rotate the scene so I could see the backside of buildings and place them better. I could use the freelook rotation, but that typically rotated me waaaay away from what I wanted to look at, or required extra time and precision to get the view adjusted right. In Zeus I just hit the 90 degree rotate button and kept right on plunking. Roads would try to intelligently wrap themselves around extant buildings. That's fine when you've already put down your buildings. It sucks when you're trying to lay out a main road so that you can put down some buildings, and the road keeps bending around extant buildings.
The final insult was periodically, it would "snow" or "fog" or something. The whole screen would go grey, I could hardly see a damn thing unless I zoomed in pretty close. Which meant I had to drop what I was doing and go fiddle the zoom. Who comes up with this crap? Or was it not really supposed to make it difficult to see, and it's really a 3d driver problem? In that case, be careful how you implement fog effects. They're a historic weak spot in 3d drivers.
I uninstalled the demo and thought I'd grouse here. Also I'm wondering if any modern 3d city builder games "got it right" with the UI?