Low Priority Free play character menu randomized

[Levis]

When opening the game setup page a random character should be picked so not bbf is always first. This will make people understand easier you can pick one yourself. And it might trigger to have them experiment with others.

We might want to include an random option too for when you are feeling lucky.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

That sounds tricky. I kept BFF as default on purpose, as nod to @Jason Maffettone who got the ball rolling.
The storyline description does indicate there are other options available though.
Whether people actually read that though.................?

 

[Levis]

That sounds tricky. I kept BFF as default on purpose, as nod to @Jason Maffettone who got the ball rolling.
The storyline description does indicate there are other options available though.
Whether people actually read that though.................?

I took a quick look earlier and i think it will be very easy. When i have time i will take a look.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I don't actually have any objections. Would admittedly be nice to make the various options more visible.

 

[Grey Roger]

The other problem is that a newcomer to the game is liable to scroll through the various starts, of which there are quite a lot, and not notice that the freeplay screen is different - he'll just see yet another start option among the many he's already passed.

One possibility might be to replace the default character and ship with icons which are a plain background with text saying something like "Click here to choose your character". Make it blatantly obvious that you can customise it - in fact, you'd have to go to the character and ship selection screens to choose your setup before you could start a freeplay. You could keep the BBF character and ship as the initial defaults in the selection screens.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

True. We do have the text all indicating the options, but by now I'm very well aware of how much people pay attention to that.

I just tried to set no starting ship for Free Play, which worked, but definitely confused the interface.

Some options I can think of:
- Only disable the "Start New Game" button until after you've opened the Choose Character screen
- Create new "character" and "ship" entries that are the defaults with pictures that indicate you should choose something else
- Lock the "Start New Game" button until you've changed both to something valid