SE4, MOO3, and HOMM4

Baron Munchausen · #1 June 20th, 2003, 06:59 PM

Actually, I have made the leap to MOO 3 with the release of the patch. I've been playing constantly for about a week now. The game is actually pretty good. What sucks rocks is the UI, which is ironic because they made so much hype about the 'cutting edge' UI during the development phase. There are jillions of things missing that we SE IV Users take for granted -- like statistics on how many of each ship class are in service, designs of enemy ships encountered in combat, ability to select particular types of 'events' reports out of your huge pile of notices at the start of each turn, and more. There is no way to turn off the in-game music fer cryin out loud! You have to just turn the volume down to where you can't hear it, but your CD keeps on spinning and using up your MTBF. Now that's an unfinished program!

If you can find your way around all the jumping and swooping menu doodads to get at the game, it can be interesting. MOO 3 has it's own Version of 'neutrals' for example, called Magnate Races. Just like in SE IV, you can use other races to inhabit worlds your own race can't live on very comfortably. And when you build colony ships the colony will be of the same race as the dominant population on that world, so you can spread a particular race to particular worlds. Too bad there's no indication of what race dominates a planet on the main planet screen, so you have to go out of your way to a swooping dialog box and check before you queue up a colony ship.

Worlds are divided into 'regions' with differing characteristics instead of being one single homogenous zone. You can set what type of 'DEA' (economic zone) your regions have but everything else has to be done by the 'viceroy' AI. This gives planets a sort of 'SimCity Lite' feel. This is good, though.

Unfortunately the little box that lists your regions on a planet is a tiny fraction of the screen space and hard to use. And why does everything have to be double-spaced to make the tiny window show even less information?

The ship design window is a nightmare. I literally do not believe that they released a commercial game with a UI that primitive. It's literally worse than MOO 1. All the ship components are jumbled together in a single list with no set place for any of them. And they jump around as you add/remove things. The MOO 1 screen was better and the MOO 2 screen was vastly superior. Why didn't they look at it?

In spite of the god-awful UI you still get a sense of the vastness of the universe being simulated in the 'black box' workings of the game. I'm still struggling to finish one game, but I guess the main reason for that is my refusal to accept the (broken) judgement of the AI for ship building. It does stupid things like assign battleships to tiny worlds that will take 20 turns to build them, while assigning ground units, ONE AT A TIME, to your main industrial centers that could build the battleships in 4 or 5 turns... SO I have to check all the build queues every turn to prevent stupid attacks.

Well, as you can see in every single paragraph here, it's a real love-hate situation. I sure hope the next patch is a massive UI revision as well as bug fixes...

[ June 20, 2003, 18:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Loser · #2 June 20th, 2003, 07:36 PM

After reading about the new MoO3, I am very tempted to get the discs back out and give it another shot. But everyone describes it as something like love/hate...

I don't care for love/hate. I just might prefer to keep my broken heart and risk a lifetime of might-have-beens.

Yep, it's all over but the cryin'.

eddieballgame · #3 June 21st, 2003, 09:01 AM

[quote]There is no way to turn off the in-game music fer cryin out loud! You have to just turn the volume down to where you can't hear it, but your CD keeps on spinning and using up your MTBF.[quote]

Copy the MUSIC FOLDER from the CD to /Master of Orion/GameDataSets/Classic_01/GameAssets/Common folder. Will stop CD spinning.

As for the ship design screens being a "nightmare". I agree they were a pain to use at first, but after using them quite a bit, they have become much easier to use & for multiplay very quick to design once you "get the hang of it". Not perfect, but then I haven't played a "perfect" game on a PC!

[ June 21, 2003, 08:09: Message edited by: eddieballgame ]

Fyron · #4 June 22nd, 2003, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Copy the MUSIC FOLDER from the CD to /Master of Orion/GameDataSets/Classic_01/GameAssets/Common folder. Will stop CD spinning.

That is a really poor solution. A "no music" option in the game takes at most 2-3 minutes to code (if you are a slow coder).

Quote:

after using them quite a bit, they have become much easier to use

That would be a great indication of extremely poor UI design. It should not require quite a bit of time and work for them to become any easier to use.

[ June 22, 2003, 10:39: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Mephisto · #5 June 22nd, 2003, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That is a really poor solution. A "no music" option in the game takes at most 2-3 minutes to code (if you are a slow coder).

Ah, don't pick on him, he never said it was a great way.

eddieballgame · #6 June 22nd, 2003, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:
Copy the MUSIC FOLDER from the CD to /Master of Orion/GameDataSets/Classic_01/GameAssets/Common folder. Will stop CD spinning.

That is a really poor solution. A "no music" option in the game takes at most 2-3 minutes to code (if you are a slow coder).

Quote:

after using them quite a bit, they have become much easier to use

That would be a great indication of extremely poor UI design. It should not require quite a bit of time and work for them to become any easier to use.

You have made it very, very clear that you perceive MOO3 to be one of the worst games ever made for a pc. No one can argue against your perceptions.
I will agree, there has been a lot of complaints about MOO3, many of these complaints have been addressed. Despite the "extra effort" needed to play this game, I find MOO3 very deep challenging, & fun. Thanks to the forums aiding in understanding this game, as well as "it's" moddability, MOO3 will probably survive for quite sometime.

Fyron · #7 June 22nd, 2003, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mephisto:
Ah, don't pick on him, he never said it was a great way.

I wasn't picking on him, just MOO3 and QS.

Quote:

You have made it very, very clear that you perceive MOO3 to be one of the worst games ever made for a pc. No one can argue against your perceptions.

You have made it very, very clear that you are willing to summarily dismiss all of it's multitude of problems and still claim it is a great game, when it is not. No one can argue against your perceptions. It goes both ways, you know.

I am sure that a few dozen patches down the road, the game will be decent. But it is not there yet. Of course, I assumed the same with Civ 3, and that never panned out. There is always hope though.

[ June 22, 2003, 17:59: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]