Hi peeps.

Im thinking of buying this game now, being a bit of a domination addict in my time...

The only trouble is when i downloaded the demo a few months ago, i had to wait for the loading/unloading animations to complete before i could move the units, and this was especially annoying with transport helicoptors.

I am writing to ask if that has been sorted out, as it is so annoying it will stop me from buying the game!

Xcomcommander.

Hi xcomcommander,

Since no one has responded to your post yet, I'll just say:

(1) The short answer is "No, the slow animations have not been fixed yet."

(2) I bought Domination and consider it money well spent because I love the concept wargaming.net is developing with the MA series, despite aspects of the game that could use improvement. Still, to be honest, I've stopped playing Domination for now and have gone back to MAN for several reasons. One of them is the slow animations problem.

Possible solution: Create a "Gameplay option" to "turn off transport animations." Rather than constantly waiting for units to shrink and zip into the turning transport or waiting for a PL helicopter pick-up, this option would make units instantly "clunk" instant transports MA/MAN style. This would solve 90% of the slow animations problem, and I think would probably be rather simple to implement.

The other animation that really needs to be made much faster is the helicopter movement animation. I think this animation has been improved, but it is still too slow.

What say you, devs? I know there's probably a lot of work being done on Domination Network now, and I'd appreciate it if you'd consider the above suggestions.

we will try to make this feature at the next patch. (current patch will available to download in one or two week I hope)

First of all, I must say that logical and physical unit movements are separated in MA games. It sounds weird and may freak you out.

Let me show you what I mean.

When you click to shoot to enemy unit, the latter gets dead immediately. Even if the rocket has not flown out yet the enemy unit has been dead already and you may check that just move cursor to the unit: its hitpoints have been reduced.

When you make something in the game a logical command is generated and it is executed immediately while the graphics engine shows rockets, explosions etc. and it takes some time. The engine has no idea of hitpoints.

Hence, when you click to an empty hex to move your transport to, the unit gets there instantly logically (move cursor in the still empty hex - I'm right) while physically it just starts moving to that hex.

And you don't have to wait, just click to the destination hex, load and unload units, fire - do what ever you want. It works!

I hope you understood 'cause it's much easier for me to explain that in my native language

Thank you for the heads up! i did as you suggested, and some of the time it works. I have now come to see that it is the graphics that are slowing it down, and i suspect the underlying code has not been optimized, as before the unit's graphics start to operate, even at the lowest graphical settings, there is a pause of about 1/2 a second.

I have 512meg of ddr and an athlon 1700 mhz with not much else running in the background.

Of course, domination should be a simple "upgrade" of MAN, but i find it to be if not unplayable, unpleasent, because of the slowness of the game. "jerkyness" of the game, as opposed to MAN which is sweet to play.

*note, my only experience of it is with the demo, which may well be a few patches behind. If that is so, i would suggest upgrading the demo to the new version, so i and others can rate the demo in fairness. Im sure it is putting some people off at present.

Must dash, ive just recieved a MAN turn on emerald

Thanks, Vadim. I'll be looking forward to the next patch, then.

Also, I understand what artmax says about the movements being separated. The animations being slow doesn't technically prevent anyone from clicking ahead of them, but of course it is easier to know what you're doing when everything keeps up.

Placid, I've added the distance meter. To activate it, one must just move cursor to the start point and press ALT key, then move cursor to a destination point. The distance in hexes is shown next to cursor. Release ALT key - distance numbers will disappear.

As for units shrinking... You can correct the situation yourself! Just find folder data and scripts inside. I mean <MA folder>\data\scripts folder.

There you can a lot of files with extension lua. You need the file unitsUtilityFunctions.lua. It's text file, you can edit it.

Find there
function units_unload_growth(unit)
function units_load_shrink(unit)

and replace them by


function units_unload_growth(unit)
--[[ if(unit:getScale() < 0.8) then
local load_effect = unit:addSimpleEffect(ENET_EFFECT_PS_STRANSPORT_LIGHTING)
load_effect:delayedDestroy(2.7)
load_effect:setTransformOwner()
interpolator = createInterpolator()
interpolator:addKey(0.0,units_minLoadSize(unit))
interpolator:addKey(0.2,1.0)
interpolator:finalize(false)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_X),true)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_Y),true)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_Z),true)
pause(0.2)
load_effect:suspendedDestroy(2.5)
end
]]--
end

function units_load_shrink(unit)
--[[ if(unit:getScale() > 0.8) then
local load_effect = unit:addSimpleEffect(ENET_EFFECT_PS_STRANSPORT_LIGHTING)
load_effect:delayedDestroy(2.7)
load_effect:setTransformOwner()
interpolator = createInterpolator()
interpolator:addKey(0.0,1.0)
interpolator:addKey(0.2,units_minLoadSize(unit))
interpolator:finalize(false)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_X),true)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_Y),true)
unit:addInterpolator(interpolator,getFieldOffset(EN_FIELD_SCALE_Z),true)
pause(0.2)
load_effect:suspendedDestroy(2.5)
end
]]--
end


Voila!