Messages

91

Off Topic / Re: Drox Operative

« on: December 03, 2012, 10:43:59 AM »

I wanted to pull the Shadow into my alliance, and I saw they were willing to send a gift to one of the races in my alliance so I delivered it hoping to help relations somewhat.

Turns out it was weapons for a rebellion, and it immediately caused civil unrest.

I then moved my ship and ran into a nearby mine, I survived but some ship offering a contract was caught in the blast and destroyed. As soon as that ship was destroyed, the civil unrest immediately turned into civil war.
"WTF DID I JUST DO???!!!"   


This game is fun. 

92

Off Topic / Re: The Dark Mod, a Thief inspired total conversion mod.

« on: October 24, 2012, 09:29:43 AM »

Something not mentioned, which I'm curious how it affects this mod. I've heard (not confirmed myself) that doom 3 isn't available in online stores anymore and its been swapped out for doom 3 bfg edition. Is the mod compatible with this new version, or will it require basically pirating doom 3 if you want to play it?

Disclaimer that I'm not likely to get either doom game or test out this mod, I'm just curious as it's kind of sad the "update" to doom screwed over modders.

The Dark Mod is not compatible with the BFG edition, and the BFG edition isn't compatible with any mods for the original Doom 3 for that matter.

If you don't have Doom 3 you'll have to get a boxed copy or wait for The Dark Mod to become standalone.

93

Off Topic / The Dark Mod, a Thief inspired total conversion mod.

« on: October 24, 2012, 09:15:57 AM »

http://www.thedarkmod.com/

The Dark Mod is single-player a total conversion mod for Doom 3 inspired by the Looking Glass Studios stealth games Thief: The Dark Project and Thief 2: The Metal Age. It's designed to mimic the gameplay of those games as well as feature a number improvements to the design.
If you liked the first two Thief games you owe it to yourself to play this, as The Dark Mod probably the closest thing to a modern equivalent of the earlier Thief series there is.

Some missions I recommend:
-Knighton Manor
-Tears of St. Lucia
-Return to the City
-Glenham Tower
-William Steele: In The North (difficult)
-A Score to Settle (difficult)
-The Heart of Lone Salvation (difficult)

Some missions recommended for beginners are The Crown of Penitence, The Outpost, The Parcel, and Too Late. I suggest playing at least one of those missions first even if you've played the original Thief games, as The Dark Mod is often considerably more difficult than Thief.

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3v1YupBC3Y&hd=1

A Let's Play of "William Steele: In The North" I recorded recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_NdVr8ulU&hd=1

A video of the mission "Too Late" by someone else without narration, in case you find my voice too annoying.   :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFUnbXFvrgM&hd=1

94

Off Topic / Re: Drox Operative

« on: October 02, 2012, 08:30:30 AM »

I took the plunge and got into the beta a while ago and have been enjoying it a lot so far.

I posted this on the Soldak forum and thought some of you would find it amusing as well:
http://www.soldak.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8856

95

AI War / Re: Discussion: How to make "blobbing" a less viable tactic?

« on: September 01, 2012, 09:02:15 PM »

The biggest difference to milsims is that your units in AI War are usually disposable. Even a total wipe on the offense just means you need to wait a bit until your full force is rebuilt.

It is true that units are more disposable in this game, but unless you expend resources building up a lot of production facilities everywhere (which may very well be true), your capabilities are generally limited by what you have in the area right then and there, at least in the short term. (again, some play-styles won't be as affected by this)

That's why I think that the game would benefit from AI responses that take advantage of openings at a smaller scale and faster moving tactical level. More significant, faster, and harder hitting retaliation from the AI for certain attacks would help a lot with this.

I guess to propose something more specific that would address this more directly, there does exist the notion that if you destroy a LOT of your opponent's "stuff", then he probably doesn't have much "stuff" left, at least not that he can bring in right away.
I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for the AI to notice that it just killed a lot of your ships and infer that the amount of forces you have nearby has been significantly reduced in the short term.
Perhaps there should be a threshold where if the AI kills enough of your ships in a short period of time to make it reasonable to assume most of your fleet just got wiped, then it quickly gather units and send immediate attack of significant size, something big enough to cause some pain and maybe knock over a planet or two.

It might be a predictable behavior if this happened every single time, but this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. If it happened every time, it could become a predictable consequence of major fleet loss and create an incentive to not lose too many ships in a short amount of time, which and make a lot of other balancing techniques work.

96

AI War / Re: Discussion: How to make "blobbing" a less viable tactic?

« on: September 01, 2012, 12:58:00 PM »

In some way, the new Special Forces are exactly such a thing. Wipe out the planet before the blob of SFs arrive

Something like that, though that's a bit more "macro" than I was thinking.


Something else that comes to mind that would cause a commander to "split the blobs" is when there are multiple places or things you do not want the enemy to reach, such as when you need to protect multiple positions or objects.

This is something AI War doesn't have much of within systems currently. Right now maybe you try to keep AI units away from certain easy to kill starships and maybe the wormhole you came through if you didn't build any defenses on the other side yet, but that's usually it. Creating more situations where the player would be encouraged to get more slow moving "soft friendlies" from point A to point B within an AI controlled system would help with this.

97

AI War / Re: Discussion: How to make "blobbing" a less viable tactic?

« on: September 01, 2012, 12:20:41 PM »

Professor Paul your idea of time sensitive ideas is interesting:

However there are only two time sensitive ideas I can think of:

1) Human Colony Rebellions. The player base not to long ago voted them among the worst things in the game, so their cost for failure dropped significantly.
2) Advanced Hybrids with Dyson sphere on: Players clamored to make this easier.

I bring this to illustrate that the core of AI wars to allow you to decide how far you want to press time. The base game has the option of setting adding aip over time, and these minor factions have the option of being turned on  as well. Few players take advantage them in a significant way, meaning the players for whatever reason don't want the time restraints in their current form. Slapping on additional time restraints won't change tactics if the player simply can turn them off unless perhaps there is a carrot as well.

To be a bit clearer, I don't necessarily mean time sensitive in that they are timed from the start of the game, I mean time sensitive in the context of tactical combat. I guess to be more accurate, I'm talking about things that would be time sensitive because they affect each other.

A lot of operations in mil-sims and real life often involve things that once they get started, a lot of other things have to happen in a relatively short period of time in order to succeed.
It's rather common to have situations where you need to accomplish A, B, and C, but you generally have a lot of room to prepare and wait before you get started on A. The catch is that B and C have to happen pretty fast once you decide to commit and get started on A.

Take having numerous important soft targets combined with threat of reinforcement/retaliation. The player is not in a hurry in the sense that the player decides when to attack and take out those targets. However, the time sensitive nature of this would come in when the player decides to commit to the attack, as the player would be encouraged to kill all of those targets quickly and regroup before reinforcements arrive in response. The player still decides when to commit to the action.

The hypothetical groups or emplacements that do a lot of damage unless being attacked also works this way. The player decides when to commit to the attack and send their blob through the gate, but once they're through they're pressured to send something to fire on those units and suppress them before they do too much damage. Again the player decides when to start, but once things get going they have to follow through.

As you probably notice, a lot of this would involve strengthening how the AI responds to what the player does. Player does decides to do something, but when they do the AI responds, and the player is pressured into doing something to respond to the AI's response.
Basically it would involve encouraging more situations that for a short moment temporarily take tempo away from the player while they run their course.


Some of this does exist in the game, destroying command posts frees all of the units for example, and some guard posts that cause retaliation when destroyed do exist.
What I'm proposing is to have more such action at a more tactical level, where the AI responds to something the player does things to more significantly affect smaller scale situations, like when the player attempts to take the planet.

98

AI War / Re: Discussion: How to make "blobbing" a less viable tactic?

« on: September 01, 2012, 11:03:43 AM »

I agree with Wing's idea of buffing guardians.
If I remember correctly, guardians were pretty powerful and achieved a similar effect at some point in the past, but it seems to be rather suppressed in the current game.

I would also like to chime in with some other suggestions to help the blob situation.


I used to play a lot of mil-sim games and still do occasionally. If you happen to be playing a CO in those games, to make a long story short the units you command often act as "blobs" of sorts in that they're groups of mixed units that don't separate from each other most of the time.
Despite this, there are a number of things in such games that can cause a CO to use more complex strategies and separate his "blob", some which might also be applicable to AI War.

Sometimes you have terrain which creates the need to use more complex tactics, but we don't have much terrain in AI War since we're in space, so that's out for the most part.

Sometimes you need to deal with things that are particularly deadly to your "blob". This can include weapons like artillery, some weapons mounted armor and aircraft, and other such things.
Guardians in AI War can fulfill this role somewhat if they were significantly buffed. Weapon emplacements could do this as well with some adjustments (Ion cannons come to mind).

There are also times where you have multiple targets or objectives that are time sensitive for whatever reason. This is something I think can be improved on a lot in AI War. While in real life and in mil-sims these situations tend to arise on their own and they don't come as easily in this AI War, I think there are some more game-ish ways you can encourage similar situations.


With the latter in mind, what could help a lot is to have more targets that, while vulnerable to the usual fighter-bomber-frigate blob, are not practical to engage one at a time.
-You could have emplacements or groups that can do a lot of damage from very far away, but cannot attack if they are being shot at, creating the need to separate off groups to attack them to reduce their effectiveness.  (somewhat like the idea of suppressing fire, but expressed differently here)
-There can be a greater threat of the AI sending large groups of reinforcements combined with larger number of softer targets, introducing some degree of time pressure to attack more than one target that is easily destroyed and regrouping to repel the counter-attack.
-Perhaps you can also have certain units that are vastly more powerful when grouped together, and that are more easily destroyed when attacked individually while they are separated.

Essentially, you might be able to encourage more tactical use of units that make up a blob after it comes through the gate. You can create situations that already assume the "blob" to be the default, but then use it as a starting point where more varied tactics jump off from.

99

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: The case for slowing down.

« on: July 03, 2012, 11:41:33 PM »

I was going to mention that the game seems to work far better at higher difficulty, but I kind of forgot partway through. 

That was actually what got me wondering about this to begin with. On higher difficulties, the game seems less repetitious to me despite things being the same otherwise because I'm not blasting through everything before it has a chance to do much.
You don't really get to "notice" the enemies and obstacles much when you're eating them like popcorn.

100

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: The case for slowing down.

« on: July 03, 2012, 01:05:47 PM »

Here's the thing about slowing down, though: instead of going "I'm going to see this 10 times in the next hour", you instead see something annoying for the second time and go "I'm going to have to spend ten minutes dealing with this tedious bit"; the latter is far more annoying, to my mind. In addition, even with a higher award the longer everything takes the less you feel you're actually achieving.

I think the latter would be easier to fix than the former.

Going through so much content so quickly does make annoying bits not hang around too long, but it doesn't let anything hang around too long, not even the fun bits. Everything ends up blending together and becomes rather homogenous because it's all mixed together so much.
This is hard to fix because it comes as a consequence of going through so many situations in rapid succession. Anything that gets added tends to get blended in a way where it has a hard time standing out.

Spending more time with certain enemy, room, and trap combinations does make annoying bits stick around, but it allows everything to stick around longer including the fun bits.
Stuff that is not fun can be better narrowed down and isolated from other stuff. Players get to become more familiar with specific enemies and traps, allowing for more complex enemies and traps without throwing things off. The game becomes less homogeneous and gets more contrasting highs and lows.

Many other good side-scrolling adventure games have "10 minute tedious bits", but they also get "10 minute awesome bits".
AVWW currently doesn't have that much of either, at least not with wandering around. Exploration outside of missions is mixed and blended together so much that it stays fairly neutral most of the time, which I think is a problem in itself.

What can be done to ameliorate the situation? Imagine that gems cannot be randomly found in any cave in any appropriate region. Instead, I use some scanning magic back at the settlement to locate the gems. The magic finds one instance of gems in one specific cave. The pathway to that gem now becomes critical. Everything on the way to the gem is important, and is something I need to pay careful attention to. Similarly, stashes could be extremely rare. A rumor could direct me to a particular region that has a stash, and only one building would have one (and it could be appropriately protected).

I do like the idea of having some semi-unique items you may have to go to a specific place to find. Something that would be more focused than free exploration but a bit more spontaneous than missions.

101

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / The case for slowing down.

« on: July 03, 2012, 09:33:41 AM »

This might turn out to be a somewhat unpopular suggestion, but I feel I should put it out there.

Right now there are a lot of complaints about enemies, traps, certain room features being "tedious" or "annoying" and there have been several micro arguments over the fine tuning of such features. However, I think there is something that can be done to address these complaints in a more general way.

I propose changing the game's balance to significantly reduce the average speed at which the player passes enemies and obstacles.

* Professor Paul1290 ducks head for incoming "BOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Wait I'm not crazy (maybe) don't lynch me yet!


The reason I believe this will help is because I feel that the pace of the game is such that players are burning through enemies, traps, and rooms quickly enough that it is unnecessarily increasing the occurrence of repeating room, enemy, and obstacle combinations and creating a need for repetition.

Lets say you have a room full of traps and enemies that the player needs to take a significant amount of time to navigate through. If hypothetically you were to look at such a room by itself out of context, these would seem like valid obstacles that the player should have fun navigating. However, I don't think this holds up as well in the game itself.
I think this is because when the player is playing the game, they have built up the expectation that anything they do will have to be done many more times within a given trip or playing session.

Everything the player would have done by the time they encounter a new obstacle would strongly suggests that any obstacles they traverse will have to be done many more times before they reach their immediate goal. Every enemy, trap, or other obstacle in the game is seen in this context. Because of that it is very easy for such obstacles to feel "annoying" or "tedious".

Compared to other side-scrolling that have similar enemies and obstacles, in AVWW player encounter such obstacles very fast and very frequently. There are some games that are exceptions where this happens even more quickly and frequently, but they tend to be much shorter or have a significant advantage in content density.
Imagine if you took a traditional side-scrolling adventure game and gave it twice as many rooms, but made it so you could pass through them in half the time. You'd be going through similar content within the same amount of time, but it would probably feel more repetitious and everything would feel rather diluted.

To sum up the above, everything can seem "annoying", "tedious", or "repetitive", if you know that you will probably do it ten more times within the next hour.

AVWW is inevitably going to repeat things until the player finally feels like they've had enough of the game. However, I think the sense of repetition can be reduced if the number of reps per span of time was reduced.


What I'm suggesting is re-balancing the enemies, obstacles, rooms, and other elements of the game so that the average speed at which the player gets to their immediate goals is much lower. At the same time, because the player is moving slower, you would be able to safely multiply the amount of reward given at the player's various "destinations" so that they don't have to reach for said "destinations" nearly as many times.
By doing this you could reduce the occurrence of repeating combinations within a given span of time, reduce the number of trips in the same area before the player moves to a different area, and open up more opportunities to apply more complex traps and enemies more effectively.


Imagine if on your way to anything in AVWW you spent twice as much time in each room, but only had to go through half as many rooms to get something. Do you think the game would feel better?

102

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Unlimited rage at those goddamn spiky things

« on: June 29, 2012, 11:58:20 AM »

* Professor Paul1290 imagines a random spike morphing into The Oni and chasing you...

Oh god no WHY???!!!! 


Also, yea maybe the spikes shouldn't block your shots.

103

AI War Strategy Discussion / Re: Strategical Advice

« on: June 28, 2012, 10:28:58 AM »

I also use Raid Starships to kill outposts in order to eliminate AI Eyes.

If I'm in a hurry I also sometimes use specific groups of the appropriate ships (bombers, fighters, frigates) to hit them as well. As long as you stay under double the enemy number of ships you should be ok.

A trick that sometimes works, though it is really situational depending on how many enemy ships there are, is to send a group that can take a lot of punishment and use them as a distraction draw some of the AI ships off somewhere so that group you have taking out the outposts can do so without having to deal with as many other ships.

104

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: [FILLED] Looking for artist(s) to develop new style for A Valley Without Wind.

« on: June 28, 2012, 08:00:09 AM »

I'm going to have to share some of Professor Paul1290's concerns about publicity here.

It seems like soliciting money for a major refactoring of a major aspect of a product, that by many people's standards, should of been done right in the first place (or right enough such that a new "project fund" had to be created to "fix" it) isn't something that will inspire much confidence.
An art revamp of this magnitude (assuming an major art revamp is what is chosen) without declaring it a new product line I rarely see outside of free software projects, where that culture is much more willing to embrace the idea of art and the game engine being developed separately.
(EDIT: Note, this implies that this is in large part a problem of unrealistic expectations of many consumers of games, aka, a cultural problem, not a developer competency one)

Now, as a long time "lurker", and as someone who has seen this product evolve from its brainstorm phases, to its first public beta release, to where it is now, I know that the primary focus of the funds has been into R&D. The art, while by no means neglected, didn't get as much of a percentage of the funds as many people might expect in project, and that this new initiative is primarily here to help give the art the extra "oomph" to sort of "catch up" from that earlier decision. (BTW, I think focusing on the engine and gameplay first was the right decision, even if it lead to tricky issues like what we have now) (EDIT: And you guys did a great job with the art even as it is now. This whole initiative seems to be about fixing some inconsistencies and gaps in the current art, that due to both stylistic and unforeseeable technical reasons, will possibly turn out to be expensive to fix)
However, this would be VERY hard to communicate to someone who hasn't been seeing the history of this product as long in a convincing enough way to overcome that initial negative first impression.

(EDIT: Semi-ninja'd by Chris)

This is pretty much what I'm worried about.

At the risk of again sounding really negative, there's also the fact that most Kickstarters have a positive image or no image to start out with.


There's the fact AVWW's image outside of its fans just isn't very good at all. I would even go so far to say it's quite negative right now.

The opinion among most observers outside these forums is that "AVWW was a failed project and in a few months Arcen is going to whine that they've run out of money again".
That doesn't hold water in a lot of ways, but that's more or less what a lot of people think right now.

I can understand that rationally, a Kickstarter doesn't indicate anything like that. The problem is that the public isn't really rational and often can't be bothered to look into details. A Kickstarter may reinforce this negative image unless it's done really well.


I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, in fact I think this is something that should at least be given a try. I'm just saying you're going to have to be really careful with how this is going to be presented.

105

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: [FILLED] Looking for artist(s) to develop new style for A Valley Without Wind.

« on: June 26, 2012, 03:40:00 PM »

But if your enthusiasm is dropping like a stone when you contemplate the huge costs of each enemy added when it's all custom art that looks nice, that's pretty close to how I felt early into this project.  There was no way that was going to be sustainable on my budget, and so hence the stock art approach with myself doing all the lighting and post-work and such.

That pretty much hits the nail on the head about my concerns about the art costs.
I'm not surprised it costs as much as it does to add enemies, objects, and other assets and such. What really hits hard is the increase per asset this could represent.

The idea that this can quadruple the costs of adding stuff to the game is what I find particularly worrying. From my perspective this sounds almost "pipeline crippling", for lack of a better phrase.

Again, I'm not entirely familiar with your process or what sort of scale is involved, so I'm probably not seeing this in context.


Anyway, I'll admit I don't feel quite as nervous about this now that you've laid it out a bit more.