Planned Development Games

[Cadynum]

One thing I really miss with the new marauder is the ability to bounce around on walls properly.
I don't know if it's related to that jump bug, and it probably doesn't affect balance in any big noticeable way.
However it just makes the new mara.. boring.

[Nux]

Survive after taking damage and killing someone

That's your standard fight right there.

Survive after killing someone

Woot! Go you! Was the enemy AFK?

Survive after taking or dealing damage

WIMP! What you stop fighting for? Unless both of you are pulp shaped I want you to go back for a second helping.

Survive

What experience are they getting from JUST surviving? If they're a builder it's not exactly impressive that they weren't hurt.

Survive after dying

Now THAT'S impressive.

EDIT:

One thing I really miss with the new marauder is the ability to bounce around on walls properly.
I don't know if it's related to that jump bug, and it probably doesn't affect balance in any big noticeable way.
However it just makes the new mara.. boring.

QFT

[Norfenstein]

wrap up gameplay changes so we can actually have some kind of release of 1.2.

Let it be finished when it is finished.

Finished according to whom?

Also, please make tube damage go where the acid goes.

Could you elaborate on why you want that?

EDIT:

One thing I really miss with the new marauder is the ability to bounce around on walls properly.
I don't know if it's related to that jump bug, and it probably doesn't affect balance in any big noticeable way.
However it just makes the new mara.. boring.

QFT

Yea, while "properly" has no meaning, I would assume you're just missing the greater air speed. I do really want that bug fixed, but if I had to choose I'd personally I'd rather have the improved walljumping over faster movement.

[Knowitall66]

Also, please make tube damage go where the acid goes.

Could you elaborate on why you want that?

I'd assume his requesting the particle system for the acid be larger, so it actually looks like the acid is coming in contact with you when you take damage from the tube.

[{7}wrath]

I thought it would be neat to try it out. Noobs have trouble figuring out that acid tubes do perimiter damage.

[David]

I thought he meant that roof-tubes should hurt people on the floor, like the anim suggests.
EG make the particles into projectiles that do the damage.

[{7}wrath]

Bingo.
Currently acid tubes do damage in a radius around themselves, and the acid effect falls to the floor.

I want to try making the tubes do damage based on where the acid goes.

[gimhael]

The acid spray is only a particle effect, which means that the locations of the acid blobs are different on each client.

[{7}wrath]

Well, I assume it goes in roughly the same direction on ever client, so have the server calculate it and use that on every client?

[borsuk]

It works like this
Survive
Survive after taking or dealing damage
Survive after killing someone
Survive after taking damage and killing someone

The game checks your state every 45-90 seconds I think.

You get more experience based on the condition.  After a certain amount of experience, the easier ways don't reward as much.  It is actually the hardest form of experience to get and usually goes to people that really kick ass.  Just a FYI

...and I only mentioned "survive after taking damage", because other kinds could have no effect on gameplay (for example survive after killing - humans would be rewarded for sitting on turrets). They are good mechanics, but I don't think all of them fit Tremulous. I think "survive after taking damage" is strictly better than 1.1 "survive" camper evos which are still awarded for turret humping. The most "highly abusable" behaviour my proposal would encourage would be encouraing aliens to run up to turrets, take damage, retreat. And if coming out of hiding is bad...
Without something like camper evos, how are aliens going to deal with situation like in my previous post (Reactor in middle building door on ATCS at S1) ?

Norfenstein:
Are you aware of the reactor-firing-through-walls bug ? It's easy to notice on Nano map. It doesn't actually deal damage, but the zap going through walls looks silly. More importantly it betrays the position of reactor. I use default client from Debian repositories.

I agree that getting 1.2 out of door is more important than fixing jetpack right now. It will provide more feedback and many changes will just result in better gameplay. There are still not enough dodging players on development servers. And players complaining about changes are usually bad players - those who can't adapt, and don't like to be creative. Those who are happy with bad design, tell others to STFU, and initiate votes to kick newbie builders.

[David]

The acid spray is only a particle effect, which means that the locations of the acid blobs are different on each client.

Which is why I said change it to projectiles.
I doubt it'd be all that easy in practice, I'm pretty sure it's doable.

The other option is to not touch the mechanics (which is probably never going to happen for 1.2 anyway) and instead "fix" the animation.
Make it so the blobs go in all directions instead of all going up, and explode after a short time, so the damage area is full of a cloud of exploding acid like flack etc.

[A Spork]

That would be nice, show the n00bs better where the dmg goes.

[benmachine]

particle spamming hurts your FPS, though. I think appropriate explanation in the manual and/or buildable infopane should suffice.

[mooseberry]

particle spamming hurts your FPS, though. I think appropriate explanation in the manual and/or buildable infopane should suffice.

And how many n00bs read the manual?

[David]

I still think all buildings should get big rings drawn around them when being built, so I guess that would help show the range a bit.

[kevlarman]

Well, I assume it goes in roughly the same direction on ever client, so have the server calculate it and use that on every client?

that's probably not feasible due to the amount of bandwidth it would use.

[{7}wrath]

I'm sorry, I was unclear. I meant let every client calculate its own effect, but have the server calculate the damage area and pass that along to the clients.

[David]

Well, I assume it goes in roughly the same direction on ever client, so have the server calculate it and use that on every client?

that's probably not feasible due to the amount of bandwidth it would use.

Surely you only need to share the random seed when it starts firing?

[kevlarman]

it's the same thing as turrets firing, only a lot more of them. it also means clients can't use cg_bounceparticles 0 (since the projectile could bounce and hit them)

[amz181]

one thing i would like to see.

Is a new damage graphic.

The current red, and green border thing just isnt stand out enough, and most of the time you dont know your taking damage. If you had the time to invest (which i daresay you do, seeing as you havent said a date for release) is to have a changing graphic, that is seen with most current fps's. Ya know, the red kind of vainy thing, which expands towards the middle of the screen the closer you are to death. Like in COD and similar fps's.

[Knowitall66]

And this is why you read the manual.

[Norfenstein]

I want to try making the tubes do damage based on where the acid goes.

I understood that, I just wanted to hear a convincing argument. Unfortunately I don't consider us to currently be in a "neat-to-try-things-out" phase -- and I think it would be neat to try out! -- but we could be stuck making changing like that forever. I want to wrap up a release. Maybe somebody could make a particle effect that better reflects the damage area, as David suggested.

The most "highly abusable" behaviour my proposal would encourage would be encouraing aliens to run up to turrets, take damage, retreat.

Or: shoot aliens, jump off a ledge to take falling damage, repeat. But I hadn't even thought of aliens-on-turrets; that sounds extremely abusable. Suddenly milking turrets becomes a viable way get to frags? I'm averse to any complimentary funds system that can be gamed by altering how you'd normally play.

Without something like camper evos, how are aliens going to deal with situation like in my previous post

The situation you described is one in which the human team stops playing the game. Does that happen often enough to warrant changing the game around people that don't actually play? I know Tremulous has some fundamental flaws that let's things like this come up, but I'm not in favor of band-aid solutions that don't really solve the root problem.

However I realize that some things can't really be changed without making Tremulous an entirely different game, which (believe it or not) I've been trying not to do that. So I'm not completely opposed to having some kind of complimentary fund mechanism if we really need it, I'd just want it to be straightforward and stay out of the way. Like the old system but changed to not cancel your timer every time you die.

Are you aware of the reactor-firing-through-walls bug ?

Sounds like something for bugzilla...

[borsuk]

Norfenstein:
Enemy Territory has safeguards against things as obvious as that. You don't get Battle Sense xp if you took self-damage, falling damage, or damage from teammate.

Do I have to  create an account to post on Bugzilla ?

By the way, about marauder ceiling bouncing - I agree it could be awkward at times. So how about putting it under 'crouch' key ? It would be intuitive, crouch key is unused for aliens too. Even better - rather than just having crouch key bounce from ceiling, make it bounce down key. Overall marauders would have two keys:
- jump/bounce up from walls
- bounce down from ceiling/walls
-------

What's your stance regarding new alien classes ? I have a couple of ideas, or rather variations of existing aliens. Yes I know it's not suitable for 1.2, but perhaps later. A sample idea:

Female Basilisk
S2, upgraded from regular basilisk. Basilisk can be upgraded either to adv. basilisk or female basilisk. Female basilisk doesn't have breath attack, but can lay eggs instead. If it gets a killing blow on human, it eats the human and can lay an egg. It would be a one-time spawn for alien team. First player to choose Basilisk from Dretch-Granger-Basilisk menu would spawn as basilisk for free. Basilisk egg would completely bypass spawn queue. Another advantage is that one alien player would effectively get +1 evo, and would spawn away from base. These advantages would ensure female basilisks are useful even in late game. Of course, the egg would be easy to destroy, something like 50 hp.
As for appearance, female basilisk would look just like regular basilisk, but with lipstick.

[Cadynum]

You can never make a good implementation of battle-sense or any other system that rewards you credits for a certain playing style.
This is because you can never ever measure how much a player contributes to the team.
Any attempt is doomed to fail, be exploited and possibly make the game less fun.

It's a bit the same with the new score system, however it doesn't directly interact with the game so it doesn't matter too much.

[Nux]

Maybe somebody could make a particle effect that better reflects the damage area, as David suggested.

Like a puff of acidic vapour? Not sure if this is the most dire case in need for changing. I maintain that those damn barricades need to better reflect what they're blocking.


The little splat is where I shot and hit the thing. [mgdev euro server]

Considering the fuss that was made about dretches hitboxes I'd have thought that the problem would be more significant with a building whose purpose is to block.

[David]

For camper evo's:  How about the old system, but only if you are poor?
That way newb's / builders get a bit of cash to get them going, but you still have to go get kills to get anything decent.  Maybe cap it at 2/400?

[Norfenstein]

Do I have to  create an account to post on Bugzilla ?

It would be best, but if you really don't want to you can write up the steps to reproduce it (in a private message) and I can submit it for you. If there's any chance you'll have more bugs to report I'd rather you did it yourself though.

... Overall marauders would have two keys:
- jump/bounce up from walls
- bounce down from ceiling/walls

It'd be simpler and more flexible to just have them bounce in the direction aimed. Kevlarman had wanted to try this (correct me if I'm wrong) but we never got around to doing it. At this point I'd rather not do it for 1.2 though.

What's your stance regarding new alien classes ?

My personal stance is I'd rather redesign Tremulous from the ground up than try to tack on new classes to the existing game.

This is because you can never ever measure how much a player contributes to the team.
Any attempt is doomed to fail, be exploited and possibly make the game less fun.

It's a bit the same with the new score system, however it doesn't directly interact with the game so it doesn't matter too much.

Exactly.

I maintain that those damn barricades need to better reflect what they're blocking.

The dretch change was simple. We can scale the barricade's model the same way, but it'll get very tall before it gets wide enough to cover the width of the hitbox. I wouldn't mind scaling it up a little bit, but it still wouldn't be totally accurate unless the model was changed.

For camper evo's:  How about the old system, but only if you are poor?
That way newb's / builders get a bit of cash to get them going, but you still have to go get kills to get anything decent.  Maybe cap it at 2/400?

I had the same thought actually, specifically so that human builders could get jetpacks at stage 2 without having to fight, but I'm slightly uncomfortable about having an arbitrary cap. One frag and the equivalent in human credits would have been fine for builders, but it wouldn't do much for aliens stuck with a human team that won't fight. Still not sure what to do about this.

[janev]

Would something like a timer for getting free armour work? Leave the free credits out of it all together and just get armour for free(cant be sold). Would maybe be based on stage and capped so you can not get battlesuits? That would mean you can only camp for a while and still get some use out of it and will not be stuck as a naked human forever. For aliens you could get a free evolve to basilisk? Based on how balanced it is you could adjust the timer for both teams to make it more fair.... You could make the timer stop when  you die but that might encourage camping ( we do not want that) so it might work just as well to have a timer that does not stop.  
Example:
Humans

s1 free light armour after 3 minutes
s2 free armour after 1 minute, free helmet after 4 minutes free jetpack after 5 minutes
s3 same as s2 but faster timer

Aliens

s1 free basilisk after 4 minutes
s2 free basilisk after 3 minutes
s3 free basilisk after 2 minutes  free adv basilisk after 4 minutes

Times would need tweaking for balance which means loads more testing for dev team This was just one of my random brainfarts so take it with a grain of salt...

*Edit: alternatively you could make the free stuff based on class
- ckits get free armour, helmet, jetpack that will disappear when you sell off the ckit.

[David]

I like, that last idea, maybe an S3 Adv Adv (Ckit/Granger) that comes with a ton more armour / maneuverability.

[Archangel]

ckit spawns with free helm/larmour in s3, which is removed when he sells the ckit. granger has 125 (100?) hp. seems a little better.