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[Cruxador]

It actually looks like credible development now, so that's something at least. It's looking good enough that instead of saying "it'll never come out" now I'm mostly just noticing how incredibly opaque and complicated it seems to be. It seems like the sort of game that doesn't really take off until its got a 2 after the name.

[Xgamer4]

There's a lot of grumbling over getting pictures of maps and... well... I'm not sure that's completely fair. Not getting videos is a perfectly valid complaint - that I'll agree with.

But this is, and has always been, a grand strategy game in the vein of Paradox's games... the map is about the only thing you really *can* take screenshots of, because it's what you'll spend 98% of the game staring at.

And while it certainly looks complicated, I'd rather reserve judgment on opaque... At the very least, it's not looking any worse than Crusader Kings 2, and other games of its ilk. Not that that's a particularly high bar as far as "intuitive and clear UI" goes.

[Cruxador]

And while it certainly looks complicated, I'd rather reserve judgment on opaque... At the very least, it's not looking any worse than Crusader Kings 2, and other games of its ilk. Not that that's a particularly high bar as far as "intuitive and clear UI" goes.

What's on CK2's map? There's provinces, which are colored according to ownership - this much is intuitive to anyone who has seen a real map. There's shields that represent a province's owner, which is intuitive if you've seen a very specific type of old map, but if you haven't it'll still quickly make sense because shields are used all over the place, and you can click them to see what each specific one means. And the only other thing you've got is little soldiers walking about on the map, and arrows to show where they're going; that much is totally intuitive. You've got city sprawl which is purely aesthetic and little details like harbor models and a crown for the capital that are handy if you know them but aren't super important otherwise. And then there's your personal council, who stand on the map where you put them, making them entirely obvious.

Compare that to this, where each province is a circle with dots and icons all over it, and the map has all kinds of icons and dots on it as well, and even though he wrote a big thing explaining it I still don't know what they all are. This is definitely a game with a learning curve, at the very best.

[Xgamer4]

And while it certainly looks complicated, I'd rather reserve judgment on opaque... At the very least, it's not looking any worse than Crusader Kings 2, and other games of its ilk. Not that that's a particularly high bar as far as "intuitive and clear UI" goes.

What's on CK2's map?

(Sidenote: "Intuitive" in the context I'm using it is roughly "intuitive how to read and use the map in the course of gameplay" and not "it's clear what the map means".)

That's about half my point. CK2 does "clear" very well. You look at it, and you almost immediately know what you're looking at. Unfortunately, until you figure out how to dive through map modes and alternate screens, that doesn't do you any good at actually playing the game, so I wouldn't exactly give it "intuitive". That Which Sleeps seems to scratch out "clear" in favor of presenting all the information up-front (apparently spread across multiple zoom levels). The potential is there for everything to be front-and-center and intuitive... once you've beaten the learning curve and know what you're looking at.

As for that learning curve... I'm not too worried about it immediately. This genre is notorious for learning cliffs. That Which Sleeps certainly isn't indicating it'll be any easier to get into than others in its genre, but I'm not seeing any obvious indication it'll be worse either.

[Cruxador]

And while it certainly looks complicated, I'd rather reserve judgment on opaque... At the very least, it's not looking any worse than Crusader Kings 2, and other games of its ilk. Not that that's a particularly high bar as far as "intuitive and clear UI" goes.

What's on CK2's map?

(Sidenote: "Intuitive" in the context I'm using it is roughly "intuitive how to read and use the map in the course of gameplay" and not "it's clear what the map means".)

That's about half my point. CK2 does "clear" very well. You look at it, and you almost immediately know what you're looking at. Unfortunately, until you figure out how to dive through map modes and alternate screens, that doesn't do you any good at actually playing the game, so I wouldn't exactly give it "intuitive". That Which Sleeps seems to scratch out "clear" in favor of presenting all the information up-front (apparently spread across multiple zoom levels). The potential is there for everything to be front-and-center and intuitive... once you've beaten the learning curve and know what you're looking at.

Intuitive literally means "easy to intuit" and "intuit" means to discern something automatically. If you have to beat the learning curve, it's definitionally not intuitive. And you don't need alternate map modes to play CK2, they're just an added tool. But they too are pretty easy since you mousover the button for them and it tells you what they do. It might be that the information presented in these screenshots is similarly non-essential (we won't know until/unless we play it someday) but the fact that it's being put front and center like this makes it seems as though at the very least the developer thinks it should matter.

[ChairmanPoo]

Intuitive literally means "easy to intuit" and "intuit" means to discern something automatically. 

I thought the Intuit were the native tribes of the Artic Circle...

[Darkmere]

Intuitive literally means "easy to intuit" and "intuit" means to discern something automatically. 

I thought the Intuit were the native tribes of the Artic Circle...

That's Inuit. Also not to be confused with round tuits.

[nenjin]

Also Intuit makes Quickbooks.

[Cthulhu]

In a bizarre turn of events it turns out a guy on SomethingAwful by the name of Bobby Two Hands has been making his own game along the same lines of TWS and abruptly dropped it in our laps a couple weeks ago.  Kickstarter possibly incoming.

What a fucking ride this entire thing has been.

[Hanzoku]

Well now... a functional game (demo) even doing exactly what That Which Sleeps once promised.

Given that there's no sign TWS will ever be released, this sort of thing helps relegate it to the ashheap of history.

[Xantalos]

Well.

That was a thing.

[Majestic7]

Haha, I can't help but hope he is just trolling to incite the original dude to actually finish the project.

[Egan_BW]

If someone capable of finishing a game is taking up this concept, well, that makes me happy.

[Cthulhu]

Haha, I can't help but hope he is just trolling to incite the original dude to actually finish the project.

Why?  It's a good game and it exists and you can play it.   Fuck Josh's game.

[Isdar]

i cant even anymore