Zero-K v1.4.12.15

Aquanim continues to balance sea and the codebase has received many background cleanups and small fixes. The new UI is now the default and in terms of land balance Dominatrix may be OP.

Default UI Enforcement Opt-Out

The UI rework has reached the point where it is enabled by default. To switch to it select "New UI Minimap Right" in "Settings/HUD Presets". It is incomplete but it does as least as much as the previous default. It looks like this:


As always, the default only applies to clean installs. However, this policy has ended up painting us into a corner. The UI used by most players tends to be a snapshot of whatever the default UI was when they first installed ZK. At worst this UI is broken and at best it is not something I want to fully support. The situation I imagine is someone with an eight month old default suddenly having a window overlap issue due to more recent changes. Players with experience modifying their UI can simply remove the widget or move the window. Players that barely modify their UI should not be expect to be able to solve these problems themselves.

I would like to apply the new default UI to anyone who is using an old default. Especially since the new window position handler is able to reset the UI to default upon detecting a screen resolution change. Clearly if you have modified your UI this is not something you want. To solve this I implemented an opt-out for default UI updates.

Important: there is now an option "Stay up to date" in "Settings/HUD Presets" and it is enabled by default. Currently, this option does nothing. In February this option will set the UI Preset to the default window layout, whatever that may be by February. Other things may be changed as required. If you want to keep your custom UI then you have by February to disable the option.

Balance

Siren:

• Cost 560 -> 600
• HP 4200 -> 4000
• Missile reload time 10s -> 16s (40 -> 25 DPS)

Ronin:

• Projectile speed 330 -> 400 elmo/s

Mistral:

• Speed 2.5 -> 2.3 (75 -> 69 elmo/s)
• Slasher missile weapon replaced with Recluse-Rogue: a burst of four wobbly Rogue missiles with 8s reload.

Dominatrix:

• Capture decay now applies 5s after taking capture damage instead of instantly. This means that one Dominatrix can capture anything if it waits for long enough.

This behaviour was always the intention, however, it was not (probably never) functional. This is mainly a buff against large units because removing their 4% capture decay while actively being captured is a larger change for expensive units. This change is in a good direction because Dominatrix is meant to be anti-heavy.

Screamer now explodes like a Annihilator instead of a Defender.

Removed Surfboard. Something like Surfboard can be re-added but the current implementation was too broken.

Unit AI

Wolverine tactical AI is now better at staying out of Grizzly range. It is still not great at this though, since Wolverine has a large turning circle.

Improved Raven overkill prevention. Now it removes its attack order immediately upon realizing that its first target is doomed.

Global build command:

• Added an auto-retreat option.
• Added worker update rate option (for poor CPU/internet).
• Fixed some performance and stuck unit issues.

Fixed Scorchers not diving Windgens and Mexes.

Interface/Graphics

• Added "Stay up to date" option to "Settings/HUD Presets".
• Set "minimapRight" as the default HUD panel layout.
• Vote widget remembers its position.
• Moved vote widget to the left side of the screen for the new default UI layout.
• Moved chicken panel default position to the top right of the screen (previously bottom right).
• Powerplant descriptions are more descriptive.
• Improved Strike Commander animation. Fixed Guardian Commander and Dante animation.
• Improved capture controller visuals.
• Improved Djinn Lamp placement. Placement is now cancellable and has better command queue interaction.
• Mex placement now works with command insert.
• Mex placement now works (consistently) with persistent build height.
• Persistent build height now works with command insert.
• Mex placement now works with both persistent build height and command insert at the same time.
• Terraform construction updates more smoothly (technically, this affects balance).

Dante animation comparison:

Fixes

• Added good start boxes for LLTACompleteV2.
• Fixed unit reclaiming issue, it is now exactly as hard to area reclaim your own units as it should be.
• Melee chicken attacks are no longer blocked by wrecks.
• Fixed Gauss ambient occlusion.
• Fixed Raven overkill prevention bug which caused them to occasionally not fire at static targets.
• Fix Pyro aiming, they now know that they have a spherical weapon.
• Fixed Lamp destruction bug.
• Removed some deprecated modoptions.
• Lots of definition file cleanup.

New Ronin seems way too accurate for my liking. It reliably hits most other ships - including some gunships!

quote: Regarding the new defaults, setting minimap right has already overwritten everyone's custom UI. It lead to a few exited games and early quits, but I do like the layout. As everything is already "messed up" I don't understand why you would want to wait until February.

Ah, that was an oversight that I think I have fixed with a new version. Changing defaults while maintaining the old ones requires some loopy logic in widget settings.

I expect I'll actually be using the defaults after this, though I do prefer the minimap on the left, it would probably work on the right just fine. At least I can finally make my casts without being so far off the defaults that they end up totally different from the tutorial videos (which also need to be redone, I'll look into it next week).

quote: A small remark: there was a green cross to move windows , now it's ctrl-f11, not very instinctive.

I believe this is intentional, in order to hide the behaviour from newer players (who shouldn't need it and may be confused by it).

quote: How is customisation confusing?

Name one non-Spring RTS where customizing the main UI is an in-game option that gives you direct, mouse-driven control over the position of every chunk of the UI. I can't think of any where you even have much of an UI customiation option at all (say, a set of check boxes or drop-down menus), let alone a full and freeform one.

Shadowfury333 put forward a bad reason. Here is a good reason: everything on the screen incurs a cost and has to justify its existence.

When playing ZK you often have two things:

• A short term goal (eg. move your units, set priority, look at part of the map).
• A picture on your screen.

In general, you use information in the picture on your screen to achieve your goal. Most of the things on the screen are irrelevant to any given goal but still take time to process. Experienced users barely notice this processing because they learn what to ignore. The main cost of screen-things is to new users. Things on the screen justify their existence by being useful for some goals. Personally, the only goal in which the tweakmode button is relevant is if I want to access tweakmode and my keyboard is broken. This has never come up.

The tweakmode button also has some additional costs:

• Upon clicking it you are suddenly unable to interact with the UI in the usual way. This looks broken to the uninformed.
• It is not sufficiently obvious how to leave tweak mode since the buttons becomes unclickable.
• If you accidentally move your UI windows it takes work to restore them to their perfectly aligned configuration.

What are the benefits of the tweakmode button?

• Discoverability. The button will make users discover tweakmode earlier than they otherwise would. A proportion of them will derive a benefit from this discovery. Statistics about the number of people who use UI customisation imply that this proportion is low.
• People that don't like hotkeys are more likely to tweakmode.
• It is easier to enter tweakmode when your keyboard is broken (there is a button in the menu itself though).

To get any benefit from moving around your UI elements you will need to disable the coherent skinning of the UI (or it will look wrong) as well as disable the UI Preset.

"Anyone familliar with any computer OS know how click and drag window works."

I loled.

GF you say there's a button in the menu? I did not notice. Then that's OK.