Steam project status?

Achievements?

One thing I think people agreed on was updating the look of the ugly lobby

ZK Lobby currently looks worse than weblobby used to do and when evo did steam release, I think the biggest complaint was "this looks like a piece of shit" but it looks 100x better now with dark themed skin that anarchid made, which is what zkl needs tbh

It seems like steam playerbase is more dumb than the usual players spring seems to attract and the first thing they judge is the lobby, they think it's part of the game, though tbh I know I'd probably be instantly turned off too if I downloaded ZK for first time again

I'm just gonna throw this out there too - if a player sets high graphics it should turn the outline and xrayshader widgets on. Devs always say "widgets is not something newbies should have to fiddle with" but I think it's so wasteful that these widgets are off by default just because they cause fps drop, ZK isn't a particularly taxing game anyway and these widgets make such a huge improvement to the way things look

Top things to do in order of importance:

• Create a legal entity to interact with Steam. Without this nothing can be done.
• Integrate steam accounts. Launching ZKL with steam should automatically register a hidden stupid name and display the user's steam name.
• Fix lobby usability. It is currently a mess of tabs and confusing features. The start tab should have a good menu which gives clear options (tutorial, campaign, singpleplayer, settings, matchmaker, custom games etc..)
• Organize and implement maps and missions to be bundled in the steam install. This puts most of the download work on their end allows them to play many things with no internet connection.
• Make campaigns and missions, this seems to be coming along well but I don't know much.
• Improve tutorials and manuals, other methods of teaching like short youtube videos.
• Make the lobby pretty. The 'biggest problem' according to [Fx]Drone.
• Finish ZK UI (use new rez bar, fix some chat problems, replace playerlist widget, tooltip delay etc..)
• Get the dev engine working and move to it.
• Improve AI.
• Balance.

Bu...i like it...

There are a few text clipping issues around and backchat does not always line up correctly. The whitelist is a bit wrong.

The playerlist should be replaced with something which is smaller with a higher density of useful information. Some button could be pressed to temporarily display all information.

quote: * Integrate steam accounts. Launching ZKL with steam should automatically register a hidden stupid name and display the user's steam name.

Stupid name -> Steam Unique User ID
Examples:
76561198034380788 = Skasi
76561197988094846 - Shadowfury333

Why generate a stupid name when you can have steam generate a stupid name FOR you? Looking up a steam unique id should be pretty simple (i got it from looking up skasi's and shadowfury's profiles in steam).

Suggestion #2:
Users who have a preexisting account should have an option to register their name to their steam account upon successful login. This prevents squatters from stealing names and such. If an account is already here, display that name instead of steam username.

Suggestion #3:
Wipe the zk database at some point, use steam unique user id as the lobby account id. username = steam username. Users will have an opertunity before hand to migrate an account.

Also nice: could block unverified accounts from registering names.

Don't u dare to remove my trollcoms BC dome steam shit

Well, if someone's taking suggestions for how to popularize this game I'd say ranked matchmaking would be key. Currently there's typically one or two large team-games, one chicken game, and one 1v1 queue with two people playing and the rest watching.

Ideally there should be multiple ranked 1v1 games going on at the same time. This is what made supcom so great back in the day; you'd just log on and search for a game and be matched apropriatly. Yes, there is a critical player mass needed for matchmaking to work properly, but you can't expect to get there if it isn't there in the first place. The current manual matching also have hosts of potential problems in regards to selecting your own opponents, possibilities for collusion, newbs not wanting to play while being watched etc.

Oh you aren't going to be working on that? I was under the assumption you were.. oh well, whoever might work on it might stumble across this message and get ideas or something. Probably not tho.

Supcom FA forever lobby is based /inspired by ZK lobby - same for FA planetwars thing..