Saving groups

[Hadamard]

Muti selection is great, but it sadly misses one great feature present in virtually every RTS-like game ever: the ability to save and restore groups (think ctrl-N to save selection, N to select saved group). It would be extremely useful in situations like advancing on creeper with blasters - when you constantly need to move weapons from back to front, but not all at once so double-click is not really an option. Currently the only way to do that is to move them one by one (unless I'm missing something?) and it requires a lot of clicking. So, on behalf of our poor mice I submit this feature request :)

[Fisherck]

You can hold down shift and every unit you select will become part of the group. I think this is what you are looking for... ;)

[Hadamard]

Yes, shift-click works, but...
1) You have to re-select every blaster after every move (times the number of moves equals... a lot);
2) Shift-clicking becomes painfully slow after more and more objects appear on the gamefield. Late in the game the lag between clicking and selection box appearing can exceed one second (or more), and that's really frustrating.

[Grauniad]

Muti selection is great, but it sadly misses one great feature present in virtually every RTS-like game ever:

Not saying I don't believe you, but please give me the names of a few RTS games that have this feature?

[Hadamard]

Not saying I don't believe you, but please give me the names of a few RTS games that have this feature?

Are you kidding me? :D
Warcraft (since II), Starcraft(both), Command and Conquer(all) ,Sacrifice, Age of Empires(all), Populous, even Settlers! (since III); and that's just from the top of my head. Esentially freaking every one of them :D
If there is one feature that unifies every RTS game ever, then that's it - pressing ctrl-N and N always does the same thing.
Well, except in CW...

[knucracker]

The lag while holding shift to group select is caused by the keyboard repeat and the events that get generated.  It happens on some systems and not others.  I've never been able to affect it or understand why some systems don't have this issue.

Group tagging is something I can probably support fairly easily.  In CW1 units are only individually moved.  I originally planned the same thing for CW2.  But, during alpha/beta testing it because clear that the scale of CW2 was just over that line and required group management.  So the ability to multi-select came late in the dev cycle.

Assigning shortcuts to selected units is something I will put on the list and try to add in an update.  In games with large units scale (total annihilation, supreme commander) you pretty much have to have this feature.  CW2 can certainly do very well without it, but if it turns out to be easy to add they I don't see why not add it.

[Hadamard]

the scale of CW2 was just over that line

CW2 has many more, but weaker units than CW1. It just begs for proper "group management".

the ability to multi-select came late in the dev cycle.

As the local saying goes: "your appetite grows while eating" (>>Apetyt rośnie w miarę jedzenia<< :) ). Since you have implemented grouping at all, it creates a feeling that it's either fully done, or failed. And right now it comes a little bit short of "done".

Group tagging is something I can probably support fairly easily.

That's why I suggested it. I assume you have some kind of a list or object collection (or whatever object grouping Flash supports :) ) . Then saving the IDs of current selection + iterating through the list and selecting them again seems trivial.
Easy to implement and a popular demand - the best kind of "feature" :) .


PS. It's 5 A.M. here, so see you all "tomorrow" :)