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Sleuth Admin
Sleuth Admin
Tale Spinner

Apr-25-2015 00:35

Our Friend YetiFace has been hard at work again improving Sleuth.

He's moved the icon toolbar around on the map page. More importantly, townie locations relevant to solving cases are now linked to each other with their own toolbar. So you shouldn't have to jump back to the map screen as often.

Yeti's working on a few other similar improvements that should help take a lot of the tedium out of Sleuth, and reduce the opportunities to make silly mistakes while you navigate.

Tell us what you think!

Replies

Yeti Face
Yeti Face
Pinball Amateur

Apr-26-2015 11:57

The final change, which I wanted to start work on soon, involved listing the suspects below the map in a number of columns, for example how they're listed in the case file. The suspect information would read something like this:

Brendan Chluffle
Alibi: Butcher (REAL)
Right Handed Note
Straight Hair
Hair
RULE OUT SUSPECT

Only the physical evidence they could potentially match will be listed underneath them (so no right handed notes listed under a left handed person). When you've checked a piece of evidence against them, or else identified a piece of evidence as matching another, it'll be crossed out from the list. A form of this page will also appear when one visits a townie to check a piece of evidence.

RULE OUT SUSPECT will be a check box or a button which will tell Sleuth you've written that suspect out of the running as murderer. They will then no longer appear as an option when trying to seek witness evidence.

I hope this post alleviates some players fears and even leads to some level of excitement, though I know it's not a content update. That's coming up after this one, I promise. If anyone would like me to go into more detail about anything in this post, has any suggestions to add, or even hates everything in it, please let Ben and I know so we can do something about it before this hits the game proper. :)


Ebony Villanueva
Ebony Villanueva
Nomad

Apr-27-2015 01:04

I'm all for the permanent map toolbar on suspect pages. :)

Bela Talbot III
Bela Talbot III
Con Artist

Apr-27-2015 03:09

The second and third changes sound great, and if there is any way to prevent a question being re-asked (it happens a lot on a slow-ish connections), that'd be great! Also, I thought suspects who didn't match a certain piece of PE wouldn't figure in the list at all, but crossing them out is a lot better.

I don't know if we really need the first change; it might be a god-send when the game's slow, but it'd take a lot of time to get used to the rearrangement. That is the only thing I have against it, and if we really need it, I'm sure we'll get used to it.

I'm all for making the game mobile-friendly; the more the merrier :)

In response to Ben's question, if these other changes Yeti's mentioned are made, we wouldn't really need the Helper (the only thing missing would be the colours, I think? I can't believe I'm saying this, but I can live without the colour). I'd like the in-game changes to be made.

And Yeti, would the suspect list on the (column-changed) map look completely different from the way it does now? Like,

Suspect #1 (being a link to him) Suspect #2 (link to #2)
Alibi: Butcher (REAL) Alibi:
Right Handed Note PE
Straight Hair PE
Hair PE
RULE OUT SUSPECT RULE OUT SUSPECT

Suspect #3... Suspect #4...

Could we have something (eventually, if not in this immediate batch of changes) that could record the twist during a VH? If not all twists, could we have a section called "Notes" in the case file where the significant twists at least might be recorded? The ones that affect faction standings are the only ones we find out about during the case now.

Notes:
You were offered a bribe to quit this case.
Scarf-y tried to kill you (this type can be skipped - it doesn't really affect the case).

Bela Talbot III
Bela Talbot III
Con Artist

Apr-27-2015 03:18

Jeez, the "suspect..." thing was supposed to be in four separate tiles...I hope you guys have better luck with the formatting :D

The "Larry the Toe" twist, and any other important one that I'm not thinking of could be included too. It'd be best if all the twists could be recorded - if you were a real detective, you might care a little about the knives thrown at you.

Oh, and the ship with all the appropriate twists is looking good; I'm going to poke around a little more :) Thank you ,Yeti and Ben for all the good work, and keep it up! :D

Yeti Face
Yeti Face
Pinball Amateur

Apr-27-2015 04:20

I'm glad you're liking the work so far and you're very welcome to it. :)

The current suspect list to the right of the map would remain, as well as the more detailed information below the map, as I feel that when you're first collecting the suspects and alibis having all that detailed information would get in the way when you just want to visit them for an interview. However I did want to include a link to visit the suspect in the more detailed information as well. With regards to the colours, I can design it so when you rule out a suspect it'll list "Ruled Out" in bold red in their information, to make it immediately clear whilst glancing at the list that you've decided they couldn't have done it. (The ability to "un-rule out" a suspect will of course be an option, as mistakes happen.)

I appreciate that the navigation bar changing position is a little weird at first, I found that when I first implemented the change in my development environment I'd find myself automatically dragging the cursor to where the bar used to be, rather than where I'd placed it. However after a few days of this I found myself dragging the cursor to where the bar was in my development environment when I did cases in the actual game! I know it's a bit disorientating at first, but it really does help with solving cases, and it doesn't take long at all to adjust to it.

Finally listing the important twists in the case files can definitely be done. I'm not sure if it'll make it into this update, but I've made a note of it with all the other ideas I have for the game (with credit given to you) so it should find its way in eventually. Asking a question twice tends to happen when players click a link twice by mistake or by impatience. I understand it's the same problem that causes the locker ghost to rear it's ugly head. I'm very, very keen to deal with it, but unfortunately it's out of the scope for the next update. It's quite a biggie, and will probably require an update all by itself.

Daenerys Targaryen
Daenerys Targaryen
Bibliophile

Apr-27-2015 08:05

The ship's got the twists? And the townies/shippies' descriptions? Thank you, Sleuth gods, old and new, I've been waiting for this for ages! I'll even try to adapt to your Flying Carpet toolbar as an offering :D.

Seriously, you are doing a great job, Yeti, and even if you hear a grumble from a member of the old guard (possibly me) now and then, don't let that discourage you.

Yeti Face
Yeti Face
Pinball Amateur

Apr-27-2015 08:27

I think there's been some misinformation sowed, as I don't believe the ship's townies and twists have been updated yet, all I've done there so far is updated the lock picking so you don't go through the suspects' homes, and changed surveillance so you follow suspects through the ship rather than through the streets. Thank you for your kind words though Daenerys. :)

Yeti Face
Yeti Face
Pinball Amateur

Apr-27-2015 13:13

I've done some work on the third change I mentioned. There's still a fair bit to do to complete this, but here's a first glance at how it'll look for detectives during a case:

http://s4.postimg.org/8preyg3vh/below_map_case_file.png

I can upload more images as the process goes on, but please let me know what you think at the moment.


Secret_Squirrel
Secret_Squirrel
Safety Officer

Apr-27-2015 19:11

Nice.

Aife
Aife
Old Shoe

Apr-28-2015 07:33

Looks great so far :-)

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