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Off Topic / Endless Space

« on: May 06, 2012, 10:07:27 PM »

So Endless Space was (sort of) released a few days back. Actually it's a pre-release alpha that you can get access to right now if you buy it. I figure there are probably at least a few people kicking around here that will like it though. It's very much 4X. Turn based, and all that. Has a unique sort of combat system that's almost entirely cinematic, your input is only to select actions for different phases of combat and then watch them play out automatically. I'm not sure if I entirely like that or not, but it also has an auto resolve option that is, as far as I can tell, pretty standard, the stronger will just kill more of the weaker fleet than the weaker will of theirs.

It also has some sort of crowdsourced development thing going on. I'm not too sure how all that works. So far all I've seen is that you get to vote on which ship design or race symbol you want, and the winner ends up in the game. Cute, but not exactly what I would class as really helping to develop the game. Of course maybe I'm just spoiled by spending too much time with Arcen games.

It is very much an alpha right now though. Oddly, the graphics and UI are exceedingly slick looking. Some of the gameplay balance is off and there are plenty of annoying bugs to go around. Kind of wish they'd prioritized the one over the other. They are working in Unity, so they're running in to a lot of the same old bugs that should be familiar to folks around here. Amusingly, I knew it was Unity not because I read up on the game, but because I tabbed out for a minute and came back to find that my view had shifted down and to the right. A little light went on, because I'd seen that behavior from AI War about a million times.

Anyway, the site is here and the game right now is 20 bucks and change, which is actually a little high for me, especially when pre-purchasing access to an alpha for a game I know little about. But everyone who had tried it kept going on about how great it is, and I will admit that it is a whole lot of fun when it's working right and rage inducing bugs aren't keeping you from playing correctly. Definitely one to watch.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Green Amoeba Health?

« on: March 25, 2012, 08:08:56 PM »

Ok -- I really don't think my changes would have affected the green amobas or fairies, as they already were supposed to use the tier buff and it's just one method -- so unless they were wrongly being excluded before, that would be the only way it would be changed. That said, it just becomes a question of desire balance; and with energy pulse being 3x lighter but 3x faster, that does make a difference.

In relation to high health amoeba spawn, I just noticed something when fighting one. The tiny spawned green amoebas show their max HP as 1275.9. But they all seem to spawn with an HP of 16 or 14 or 32 or some low number. I believe the ones that I found that seemed incredibly tough were spawning with their HP bars filled. Why that happened, I'm not sure. But then, why do they have a max HP number that's so high in the first place?

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542922987948442670/3466CEA704ACDCC983D1D2D4351A4634E434637A/

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / NPC Rescue Missions

« on: February 29, 2012, 11:05:08 PM »

I've had the random 'luck' to run across several secret NPC rescue missions in a row while playing tonight, and I'm starting to wonder about the balance on these. I'm curious how other people feel about them. It's always possible that I'm just bad at games. I'm starting to feel like they're a little too difficult, but not in the 'challenging and interesting tactics' sort of difficult. More in the 'oh another unavoidable failure' sort of difficult.

Thus far tonight I've had one NPC die because I ran too far ahead of him just as all the monsters spawned behind me. (Which prompted me to post a mantis issue suggesting that the NPCs should probably spawn a little faster so they're ahead of you, rather than behind you) OK, I think, so I should slow down and let them stay close. Lesson learned, game!

So the next one I plod along slowly dragging my little floating NPC behind me. This doesn't seem to help either. I'm still going so slow that I'm allowing NPCs to pile up behind me and eventually they execute a pincer maneuver, killing my hapless little buddy. So the next time I decide I'll be clever and kill every monster spawner that I pass. Surely now I won't lose from a flank attack! Well, no. But the spawners have such high health, and between whacking on them and waiting for mana to regen, by the time I'm only 1/3rd or so back to the exit I'm looking at a room full of about 8 fire bats ahead of me and trying to decide how to deal with it when two slip past and eat my NPC again.

So, there are a few problems here. The NPC is very weak. I've been playing on 'Hero' difficulty, so one step over the default. Does the NPC HP scale up per difficulty level? I suppose the argument could be made that this is the challenge that I asked for, but I really only cranked it up because on the default difficulty I could pretty much just walk up to every monster and mash attack and completely ignore dodging projectiles and still be assured of coming out of every fight at 100% HP. Also, does the NPC HP scale per Civ Tier? That could be another contributing factor.

Second, almost every enemy projectile attack pierces. You can't take the hits for your buddy, because they just go right on through you. There's also no body blocking physical enemies, so bats can flutter past you and chomp your companion as well.

Third, the NPC is sloooow. They're floating, can't I just tie a string around their ankle and drag them along like a balloon? Not only does this mean that you have to be careful not to run out of range of them (lest you leave them in the dark behind you, and they are eaten by a grue), but that the normal tactic for damage avoidance, dodging, is very hard for them to do. They emulate your movements to an extent, but their reactions are delayed and they don't move as quickly or as far. So if I just barely jump over a shot, they're still going to eat it.

And fourth, the respawning monsters. This leaves you with the dilemma of destroying spawners, which takes forever and allows monsters to queue in the halls ahead of you, or leaving them standing, opening yourself up for the inevitable back door surprise (a phrase that rarely refers to anything good).

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Fall damage poll

« on: February 28, 2012, 10:14:45 PM »

In relation to some discussion on this mantis issue, I thought I'd take Chris's suggestion and throw up a poll about this. The background is that before this version, falling calculated damage based on your base health. So a 100% damage fall would only kill you if you'd not applied any upgrade stone health buffs. This was an artifact of the previous upgrade system, where losing 100% health meant losing a 'health tank'. The newest beta version now changes this to calculate fall damage from your total health, so a 100% fall is just that, a killing fall.

So the question is whether this is what people want. Should fall damage max out at instant death, or should it be more forgiving?

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Q&A About New Warp Mechanics.

« on: February 10, 2012, 09:34:52 PM »

I know it's not out yet, but I've already got questions about this:

New Warp Mechanics

    All Warp Potions have been removed from the game.

    There are now stationary "Warp Stones" seeded at various places in the world. While standing near one you can warp to another warp stone in the same region (if a dungeon map node has a purple dot in the lower-right corner, it has a warp stone), assuming you've visited that chunk before, using the same warp controls as before.

    Also, there are now one-way teleporters in each stash room (that is further than 3 links away from the exit) in a building, to help cut down on backtracking a bit more without having actual warp stones in so many rooms.

Will these warp stones still allow you to select your warp destination or are they automatically taking you somewhere? I ask because I can see uses for both warping back to the start of a building when you want to keep exploring the next building over (and you may be a few maze rooms in), and warping back to the entrance chunk when you're done with that whole area and ready to leave back to the world map.

Edit: Slight edit to remove a response to a post in the last thread that didn't make sense at the top of this post now.

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AVWW Technical Support / No launch rock spell

« on: February 03, 2012, 12:55:04 AM »

I figure here is more appropriate for this than Mantis since as far as I know I'm the only one with this problem. I've got the 'launch rock' spell in my inventory, but the game insists that I don't know it on this continent. This is a game that I started with the first open beta, so no doubt I'm being silly by trying to keep it working. I've attached the world.dat and region.dat and the folder for just the home settlement. If I recall correctly, that's all you need to look at it, yes?

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Off Topic / New game sale site with shades of humble bundle

« on: October 26, 2011, 08:13:08 PM »

This site: http://www.indieroyale.com/ was just pointed out to me recently, and I kind of like the idea. It's a pay-what-you-want scheme, but with a minimum payment floor. They start with a low minimum price, and as more copies are bought the price goes up. However, someone can push the price back down by spending above a certain price. Really I'm just curious to see if the idea works, or if it will end up falling flat. They seem to be doing okay so far, closing in on 3000 15,000 (wow, my script blocker messed that up badly) copies sold of their first bundle, which launched just today if I'm reading it right. Once this thing gets some publicity I could see it taking off.

I mention it here because I'm sure a lot of other people here like good deals on indie games as much as I do, and also because I figure Arcen might want to get in touch with them as another possible marketing avenue.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Spell Gem List Added to Wiki

« on: October 08, 2011, 12:47:18 PM »

Since I'm sure some others will want a quick field reference as much as I did, I just added a wiki page with a list of Spell Gems, what they make, and where to find each type. I know that this probably means that all the spell gems will be changed completely in a patch tomorrow, but such is life. At least for today, I can stop warping back to my home settlement every few minutes when I forget what I was out searching for! Any one else with wiki access, feel free to pretty it up or add anything else you feel it needs.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: Thoughts on profession books?

« on: October 06, 2011, 12:57:00 PM »

First, boo for locking the topic while I was in the middle of a 10 minute diatribe! And the forum just eats the post if that happens, with no warning. Just 'sorry topic locked' and no way to recover the text. Quality design! Grumble grumble grumble...

Any way, let me condense what I said since I just spent a whole bunch of time thinking through it:

Drop the profession books, but hopefully find some better method of spell delivery rather than just flat out handing spells to players. The problems with this are:

1 - New player overload. Giving people 20 spells right off the bat will just confuse people, they won't know what to aim for.
2 - Following on that, too much content is wasted content. If I get a new spell every half hour, I'll play with each one, at least a bit. If I get all of them at once, some of them are bound to be ignored.
3 - Gating content is important for retaining player interest in the game. New spell unlocks should be a carrot that keeps you interested in progressing, not something you get for starting a new game.

Probably something else that I forget. I hope it's not a faux pas to start a new topic just to reply to a locked topic!

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Overworld map travel, too easy?

« on: September 30, 2011, 01:08:59 PM »

At the moment, the game basically allows you to travel to any tile (sans ocean, which I'll get to momentarily) as long as its level is less than or equal to your civ level plus 10. Is this, perhaps, too forgiving? From a 'realism' perspective, how can I float magically over these monster infested lands? I know previously the game had windstorms that would automatically drop you into platformer view after you took a certain number of steps, unless you ended on a wind shelter. That was removed, I think rightly so, because it doesn't sound like it adds much to the game. But I think the game is too far in the other direction now, allowing you to go anywhere you want within your level limits.

The only variety (that I know of so far) is the ocean tiles, which will always pull you in as soon as you stand on them. That makes them dangerous, and something to be avoided at all costs currently. I'm thinking there might be something to this danger that could be added to normal travel. One idea would be to use an RPG-esque random encounter system, where you might have a small percentage chance to be dropped into an area when traveling over it, if it is above your level. As the level variations go higher, the chance could increase to the point where you couldn't move forward any further. Before I just toss that up on mantis, I wanted to see if that was even an interesting idea to anyone else, or if people like completely free movement on the world map as it stands right now, or if there were any other ideas to make world map travel more interesting.

Right now the overworld part of the game doesn't have much gameplay, it's just a way of getting from point A to point B. Easy and simple, but without some risk or challenge there's not much room for fun either. The Zelda II overworld, for example, had the random wandering monsters that could appear in your path, and that simple addition made that map more than just an exercise in walking.

There might be more planned for this part of the game and simply not yet implemented, so maybe I'm jumping the gun here by even suggesting changes. If so, oh well, at least it's something to chat about!

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AI War Strategy Discussion / Early game metal starvation

« on: August 15, 2011, 12:27:06 PM »

I've noticed a trend in my games of never having enough metal in the early game. I'm curious if this is just me, or if this is typical. I always seem to have plenty of crystal, though. Is the game just designed to work out that way, or is there some sort of more balanced build style I could be going for that could make better use of both resources? In general, early game, I'm just building a lot of basic triangle ships and standard cheaper turrets. If there's some way I could be playing smarter, I'm always happy to learn about it.

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AI War / Allied ships freeing AI Ships?

« on: July 25, 2011, 08:06:14 PM »

I can't find the topic now, but I seem to recall when the changes to allies was made (so that they would patrol to nearby worlds) one of the points made was that they shouldn't be freeing ships and causing them to attack my planets. Well I just watched some human resistance fighters go into a nearby world and blow up a carrier, and then a bunch of AI ships came over into my world and started wrecking my tea party. Is this a bug somewhere, perhaps related to the carrier? Just lost a Mark IV Ion cannon to it.

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Off Topic / Frozen Synapse - It's like Chess with Guns

« on: May 28, 2011, 05:20:15 PM »

Obligatory links:

Developer page: http://www.frozensynapse.com/index.html
Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/
TotalBiscuit's review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jJrUY27O0Y
The RPS article (well, one of them): http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/04/19/preview-frozen-synapse/

I'm betting this game will appeal to AIW fans. It's a turn based strategy game. I'm told it's kind of like the planning stage of the old Rainbow 6 games, but I never really played those, so I can't back that up. You have a small squad of something like 3-6 guys on a highly stylized tron-esque map, and your job is to give them the orders that they will carry out over the next 5 seconds. (In the game's fiction, your troops are vat-grown clone-like lifeforms with no real higher order thinking, only capable of executing the orders that you send to them) And these orders are in depth. Through a fairly simple and straightforward mouse driven system, you can tell a unit "Turn this way, run to this cover, duck and wait for 1.5 seconds, stand up and shoot to your left, run towards this wall while ignoring the enemy that you'll see, then aim to your right once behind cover." Not all strings of orders are going to be that long of course, but that's an idea.

While you're doing this, your opponent is also setting up their turn. All that either side knows is what the units are doing right at this frozen instant. Once both sides have delivered all their orders and confirmed them, then and only then does the action play out, and you get to find out if you cleverly aimed in the right direction to take out the enemy sniper, or if you completely missed a shotgun-toting baddie who run up to ventilate your cranium from behind. Maybe so, but now you get another round to try and even the odds. It's entirely possible for someone to take out all but one of the opposing team in one good round, only to have the single remaining unit pull a rambo and win the round all on his own. There's nothing really randomized about the combat, so you almost always know that units behind cover will take out units in the open, units that are aiming win over those that are snap firing, units that are stationary win over those that are moving and so on and so on. You can also test out scenarios by giving orders to the opposing units, and then play them out to see what might happen. Of course you might guess completely wrong, so it's better to try out multiple scenarios and then cross your fingers.

There's no time pressure on the games, so you can literally start a game, make your first round of moves, and then leave all day and come back to find out what happened. Multiplayer is unusual in this game, in that you might be playing 5 or 10 games at a time. You just make your moves in a game and confirm them and go on to the next game. Then later you come back around and see if your game has progressed to the next round.

There's also an extensive single player campaign with a pretty good cyber-punk backstory. I'm playing through that right now, because the multiplayer servers are currently crumbling under the weight of all the people who just bought this on Steam. The devs weren't really expecting this many people to jump on board. That is one slight black mark on the game right now, but I'm completely confident that they'll get that cleared up in a few days. Another odd thing about it is that you can't purchase a single copy of the game. The way they spin it is that you buy one copy and get one free, although I feel that's just sort of clever wording. It is 20 bucks currently (on a sale price) which is just a tiny bit high for your average indie game, at least on Steam. But that 20 bucks nets you two copies. Kind of a clever way to build their player base, really.

Any way, I've gone on long enough. I'm sure anyone with an interest in this type of game is probably already mashing the 'buy' button by now.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Stealth?

« on: March 10, 2011, 01:09:57 PM »

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, so, what about stealth?

I'm ambivalent about it, because it seems to be a very binary feature in games. Almost always, if the game is focused on stealth, it's great. But if it's not focused on stealth, but it's just thrown in as an optional feature, it's terrible. I have more faith in you guys than to think that you'd put in some crummy half-working version of stealth. But the oft cited Zelda or Crystalis style games really have nothing of a stealth or sneaking element. If a monster's on the screen it's running at you, or it's just running around its own automatic little loop and ignoring you. So I don't know if it's applicable for the style of game you're going for anyway.

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AI War / Auto Scout Picket question

« on: March 08, 2011, 02:24:30 PM »

From here: http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=2854

I should probably wait to try it in game, but I'm curious. Is this going to sort the scouts instantly and send them out grouped up, or is this going to fire them out such that you have one scout going through a wormhole per second or something similar? Mainly I'm wanting to make sure that the scouts' cloaking booster is still useful for this and my scouts aren't being fired off one at a time to get decloaked and shot down at every wormhole. Or does this design just assume that you are going to go kill the tach guardians first in order to get any use out of it?