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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: [0.65.2a] ICE Faction  (Read 134051 times)

Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #105 on: August 27, 2014, 10:31:56 PM »

MesoTroniK

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #106 on: August 27, 2014, 10:41:03 PM »

Watches the video, is slightly confused for a moment...

Then realizes how bat****insane that new phase system is. Sundog you did it again, hope I can blow them up soon :)

Sabaton

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #107 on: August 28, 2014, 12:16:22 AM »

WOw, looks like mods are becoming more and more exotic as time passes on. I'm curious what custom station graphics will bring for these guys and other mods.
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Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #108 on: August 28, 2014, 05:49:22 PM »

@MesoTroniK
I'm glad you called it a phase system! I tried to make it look like one for the sake of the theme, but really it's more of a temporary teleport with maneuvering jets thrown in.
With any luck they'll be prepared for demolition soon  :)

@Sabaton
I'm planning to make one custom station for this mod, but I haven't decided how it should look.

Uomoz

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #109 on: August 28, 2014, 05:58:46 PM »

Is it just me or this particular system reminds of Dota2's weaver ultimate? Neat! :D
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kazi

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #110 on: August 29, 2014, 02:28:33 AM »

That curvy beam (moebius ray?) is the stuff of nightmares. :-X
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Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #111 on: August 29, 2014, 02:10:13 PM »

@Uomoz
Haven't played Dota 2, but I just googled Weavers ultimate and you're right, that is pretty similar (even graphically). In fact, this new system IS inspired by an ability from a fantasy game; the thief's Shadowstep from Guild Wars 2. The only real difference is that Shadowstep allows you to return, while Phase Jaunt requires you to. I wanted to give the Abraxas a powerful flanking ability on par with teleportation without increasing it's travel speed. Honestly I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get it working right at first.

@kazi
Yep! It will be even more deadly once I iron out the bug that makes it shoot off in random directions  :)
Pretty sure I'm going to reduce it's turning radius to make it easier for the AI to deal with though.
Shield circumvention weapons are becoming a staple of ICE. I'm determined to make them into a vanilla balanced faction that utterly wrecks Nitrino Corp. If FF won't balance them, I WILL!  :D

etherealblade

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #112 on: September 01, 2014, 08:59:01 PM »

GAWD that was awesome. I've been eyeballing this thread since the day you posted it. I'm glad to see it's coming along. That coding for the teleport prolly took a lot of testing. I love the way you take a cool Idea and take up to 11. Thankyou!
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Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #113 on: September 02, 2014, 05:07:37 PM »

Thanks etherealblade :)
Yeah, the teleport took a lot of trial and error to get right. The AI was surprisingly easy though, since I didn't need to fight the default AI much.

kazi

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #114 on: September 02, 2014, 09:08:36 PM »

@Uomoz
 In fact, this new system IS inspired by an ability from a fantasy game; the thief's Shadowstep from Guild Wars 2.

Ugh, you play thief? lameeeee..... (I main mesmer). Which server are you on anyhow (NSP?)?

Being actually on topic, I actually rather like the "random directions" bug. It's a bit of a visual bonus that REALLY adds to the weapon's "feel."
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Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #115 on: September 05, 2014, 08:57:31 PM »

Yeah, I played thief on Meguma (or something like that) until level 50 or so shortly after release. I haven't played GW2 in a long time though. It's a cool game in a lot of ways, but I've never been able to stick with an MMO for long. Is WvW fun yet?

Pretty sure we're talking about different bugs. If you're talking about they way the projectiles scatter in random directions when they hit missiles, fighters, or an exegency repulsor field, then I agree. I was talking about a somewhat rare bug in the autofire code that makes the stream aim for random points in space and is considerably less cute  :)

Wyvern

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #116 on: September 09, 2014, 10:31:28 AM »

The ribbon shaped capital near the center (the one that doesn't look like a beach ball) is the Apocrypha class command ship. It has two main selling points:
1. It regenerates command points.
2. It has the ability to teleport friendly ships to it (like the Arbiter's Recall from StarCraft). Or, at least, it will once I figure out how I want that ability to work. The problem is that there's no graceful way for the player to designate which ships to teleport. Right now I'm leaning toward a weapon with a minute long cooldown that, when activated, will automatically choose which ships to recall in order to bring them closer to their respective assignments. I'm hoping that will give the player plenty of control over who gets recalled by using the command interface. What do you guys think? Suggestions?
Probably a bit late to the party here, but I'd suggest something very simple: it recalls all ships that are currently assigned to it as escorts - and immediately generates one command point - effectively refunding the one you just used to specify which ships you wanted recalled.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #117 on: September 10, 2014, 03:43:39 PM »

That's not a bad idea Wyvern. That would be a lot easier to describe to the player, and it would give them more direct control over which ships get recalled than what I currently have in mind. There are a few situations in which I don't think it would work very well, but you might have already thought of solutions. If so, please let me know.
  • Player has to recreate assignments after recall - Any time the player designates which ships to recall, those ships would lose their current assignments, defaulting them to 'search and destroy' assuming the player remembers to cancel the escort command. It would be possible to remedy that by automatically reassigning their previous commands, but that would be very awkward to script and pretty counter intuitive considering that kind of thing never happens anywhere else.
  • Escort command already in use - The Apocrypha may already have escorts assigned to it, in which case you would need to designate which ships to recall using the escort assignment, activate the recall weapon, open up the command screen again to cancel the escort assignment, and then reassign the actual escorts to the command ship.
  • AI activates recall - Any time the AI decides to use recall it would need to decide which ships to teleport as well, and no matter how good it is at making that choice the AI will frequently disagree with the player. The current method of designation (as I described in the post you quoted) has the same problem, and I think the solution is the same either way; the AI chooses when and who to recall based on the assignments made by the player. In this case, that would mean the AI would try to use recall whenever the player assigns escorts to an Apocrypha (the AI would have to work differently for the enemy, of course).
  • Player can't figure out how to use it - While using the escort assignment to directly designate which ships to teleport is much easier to explain, it needs to be explained in order for the player to be able to use it at all. If they never read the recall weapon's description, they'll probably never realize how to use it. I'm not above making a message pop up saying 'Assign escorts to this ship in order to recall them,' but I'd prefer to avoid that kind of thing if at all possible.
Designating which ships to recall based on all the assignments on the map has it's own issues of course (namely that it could be difficult for a player to figure out why ships teleport when they do), but overall I think it will work out better. If that doesn't pan out, though, I'll give the escort method a shot.

Sundog

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #118 on: September 14, 2014, 04:43:23 PM »

Heh. Bugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBW3zUh9Hz4

Luckily this was one of the bugs that are super easy to find and fix.

etherealblade

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Re: ICE Faction (WIP)
« Reply #119 on: September 20, 2014, 07:57:57 PM »

That was a rather epic bug...in a way..your ships get recalled...but at an absolute sacrifice....LOL. Seriously, you should put this video into your lore section as an a prototype module test gone wrong. LOL....When you get it right though that will be a game changer.
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