Messages

31

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: AVWW #9 Preview: Characters, Monsters, and Weather (Video Coming Later)

« on: April 12, 2011, 02:29:08 PM »

Excellent, excited to see the changes in motion 

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AI War / Re: AI War Beta 5.009, "Desync II: The Resyncing," Released!

« on: April 08, 2011, 01:26:03 PM »

A new AI plot. . . Poison dev!

Get well soon Keith

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Next update coming up on monday (April 11th).

« on: April 08, 2011, 01:23:30 PM »

Thanks, look forward to it

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AI War / Re: Move-then-attack order?

« on: April 05, 2011, 06:52:17 AM »

You actually can do this now, using queued move orders.

1. Just right-click some location (standard move order).
2. Hold shift and x and right-click (queued attack-move order).
3. Fin.

Admittedly this can be achieve using G+Click, then Shift+X+Click, but that's almost too much micro for my petty, non Starcraft attuned mind and seems kind of inelegant. Plus if this was a move mode itself it could have it's own outline colour for the ships doing it so that you can see who is in that mode. . .

But I guess you're right. . . There's probably not reason for a separate move mode just to get rid of a couple of clicks. Ah wells gave me something to do!

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AI War / Move-then-attack order?

« on: April 04, 2011, 11:49:43 PM »

Hi All! Witness my predicament: it's 5.30am here in the UK and I've given up trying to sleep between bouts of horrible d&v (if you don't know, you don't want to), as I keep having weird waking nightmares about murderous accountants and cricket players when I try. So, having gone off-topic before there is a topic, do I have something productive and non-self-pitying to say? Well yes, as you ask:

I haven't posted this to mantis as I'm still fairly new and thus may be missing some ingenious mechanic or nuance that makes this unnecessary, but would people value (and would it be possible to implement) a new move type that works as follows:

- Combine-able with group move and wormhole move, but not FRD or normal attack move.
- Once given, ships move to the specified destination as they would with a standard move.
- Once each ship arrives, it then enters attack move mode.
- Fin.

Numerous times, I find myself wanting to cluster all my ships into a 'blob' as quickly as possible, but then for them to be under attack move conditions at their new destination. Admittedly this can be achieve using G+Click, then Shift+X+Click, but that's almost too much micro for my petty, non Starcraft attuned mind and seems kind of inelegant. Plus if this was a move mode itself it could have it's own outline colour for the ships doing it so that you can see who is in that mode. . .

As I said, please feel free to point out if this is unnecessary or impossible to implement, and to poke fun at my inferior mind device and currently malfunctioning fleshy form if it pleases you. However,if this has some support, I'd ask if you'd allow me to post it to mantis as it would be my first report there 

Back to the toilet!

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Something I'd love to see in AVWW

« on: April 01, 2011, 05:45:58 PM »

Would also love this. It shouldn't add anything to the game, but I love to look back at the number enemies killed, times died, pointless fireballs cast (maybe not that) etc. . .

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: First Public Version of A Valley Without Wind To Be Beta, Not Alpha

« on: March 31, 2011, 03:31:55 PM »

Minor disappointment at having to wait longer aside, I think you've made the right choice. It takes smarts to be that forward thinking and humility to openly change your mind and give such an honest explanation. I'm also encouraged by the fact that you feel your finances are strong enough to continue development without such a quick first public release 

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: "Perma-death"

« on: March 30, 2011, 04:39:37 PM »

In terms of settlements you create, we intend for those not to be too dense, but most of our decision making on the settlements will be something we work on during alpha, and the completion of that, hopes, and deeds will mark the move to beta, most likely.

The various settlements will be distinct from one another in many ways, even down to including the types of people in it.  Different nationalities at times, as well as finding other races like a settlement of neutral skelebots, etc.

In terms of families, births, etc... we haven't really got there yet, conceptually.  A lot of that will be stuff for either very late alpha, possibly beta, or possibly post-1.0.  But I imagine that's the general sort of direction we'll be thinking in, if it sounds fun to players that are familiar with the game, and if we think it will be fun at that time, too.

Thanks for the info. . . Sounds very cool, especially the bits I've quoted.

I guess find people in non-settlement world tiles will be part of the exploration stuff, should be fun

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: "Perma-death"

« on: March 30, 2011, 03:05:10 PM »

so basically the same as dwarf fortress adventure mode, except your gear stays at your corpse instead of getting hoovered by bandits

That and it's an entirely different genre of game, yes

Did they get around to making the DF adventure mode fully featured like the fortress mode? Might have to revisit that game. . .

The mechanics sound cool, thanks for fleshing that out a little more. . .

Random questions: How frequent on the world map will friendly settlements be (ones you've built and ones you haven't)? Aprox how many NPCs in each? Will they be quite distinct from each other? Do new NPCs at existing settlements get 'born' (and are there plans, presumably post release, for 'families', 'children' or 'friendships' in whatever form they might take)? I guess much of this isn't finalised and it's fair enough if you don't want to share 

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #8 -- New Lighting Test

« on: March 30, 2011, 01:41:31 PM »

Excellent! Not 'realistic', but creepy, atmospheric and in keeping with the rest of the art, which is a very good thing. Well done for plugging away and finding a method that worked (with thanks to eRe4s3r too I think). Maybe some fine tuning on the fade time and how much it pulses (I think it would be even creepier if it pulsed slower), but it seems you've got the model sorted 

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #7 -- Lighting, Lava, Deserts, and Interiors

« on: March 29, 2011, 01:58:52 PM »

Sorry to double post: perhaps you could ask Jim Rossignol (man I've missed his writing, why did no one tell me he's gone there ) just to make it a touch clearer how early these vids are? Better still though I just wouldn't read the comments. . . Comment threads for news posts seem to be universally filled with hate and flames, even on sites I love. I'm not advising you to try and insulate yourself from everything negative (just yesterday I was making constructive criticism right here) but there's no point reading posts by people who know very very little about and your game and have nothing invested in trying to be constructive and improve it.


Or, if you want me to put it another way, I love this guy's games and he doesn't even read his forums:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/01/three-reasons-creators-should-never.html

I know that's not your style of game or style of development, but I have enormous respect for Jeff's opinions, even when I disagree with them, and there's something to be said for that blog.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #7 -- Lighting, Lava, Deserts, and Interiors

« on: March 29, 2011, 01:48:34 PM »

I think it's telling that they are looking at incredibly downsampled images.  We've been through this same cycle in past weeks, and when people see our actual screens or watch the video at HD resolution, the reaction is really quite good overall.

I think part of it is also just the risk you run when you put pre-alpha footage out there in a public setting like you have elected to do.  A disturbing number of people in the comments appear to think this footage is intended to be a preview of the game in a more advanced level of development (completely ignoring the bit in the intro about being pre-alpha), and so they treat the whole game as a simplistic top-down action game, since that's all we have footage of up to this point.  If they haven't paid a scrap of attention to the game, they will see a video of you running around a lava wasteland slinging spells at six identical enemies that are chasing you.  That gives no idea of the true intended nature and scope of the game as a procedurally generated world in ruin with survivors, settlements, shelters, and what-not.

Doing video releases like these can be very much a double-edged sword when RPS is going to put them on the front page for all to see.  It's great for people like us who long for more info on the game, but it can be detrimental to the first impressions of those who have never heard of the game before now.  While I do have my reservations about the way the game looks right now (animations in particular), I definitely recognize that the dev time on this game so far is a mere fraction of the final figure and can adjust my perceptions accordingly.  Unfortunately, the body public of the internet is not always so attentive or forgiving.

I was going to post pretty much this. I don't think reading the reactionary comments of people who don't know much about where in development the game is that productive. . . I mean if you don't know what stage things are at and you see that bit with the empty room and a single dude plonking down rough-edged lights, yeah it looks terrible! But if you know that you only just implemented rooms and lighting and there's 100x more variety and tons of changes to come, then it's exciting.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #7 -- Lighting, Lava, Deserts, and Interiors

« on: March 29, 2011, 01:34:44 PM »

Heh, you just tease us by saying it's not possible so we're happy when it is 

I really didn't think it would be feasible in either of those two cases.  Shows what I know!

We're learning every day of our lives, even those who already know lots!

And yes, if that's the same John Walker writing the crisis article that writes for PC Gamer UK, then he's definitely doing a parody. He's my favorite gaming journalist ever and is very infrequently completely serious (though he's awesome whether he's being serious or not).

Oh, very cool!

Hah, I've just had a look through that site and it seems to be made up of all the best ex-PC Gamer UK staff. . . I wondered where they'd gone off to!

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #7 -- Lighting, Lava, Deserts, and Interiors

« on: March 29, 2011, 01:21:40 PM »

For those interested, I've actually put together a new lighting model that looks awesome, using just image techniques.  It's sort of vaguely inspired by the stuff eRe4s3r was talking about.  It's a little heavier on the CPU/GPU, but not all that much really, and it's like night and day the difference.  I'm putting this in as the default, but making it so that either the new method or the older z buffer ones can be used, depending on player preference and the capabilities of their machine.  And the z buffer stuff is still being used to great effect to keep shadows behaving, too.

More details and a video later today.

Heh, you just tease us by saying it's not possible so we're happy when it is  

And yes, if that's the same John Walker writing the crisis article that writes for PC Gamer UK, then he's definitely doing a parody. He's my favorite gaming journalist ever and is very infrequently completely serious (though he's awesome whether he's being serious or not). EDIT: Just read the whole thing, was chuckling the whole time, that's brilliant, especially the bit with the cardboard boxes and where he compares the jungle and city screenshots. Easy to get the wrong end of the stick if you only skim read, or you really don't get British humour (with an -our!)

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: A Valley Without Wind Pre-Alpha #7 -- Lighting, Lava, Deserts, and Interiors

« on: March 28, 2011, 01:55:54 PM »

Yep, I need to update the art assets on that page, for sure.

In terms of the antialiasing, it doesn't really work like that -- this is the z buffer, not a polygon, and so AA isn't a feature there. 

Thinking about this more, its possible that in the future I might be able to do two versions of lighting, one based on the z buffer for older cards and giant screens, and another version that uses render textures or something along those lines for newer cards with reasonable monitor sizes.  Right now it's just going to be the z buffer version, though.

Sounds sensible to me, get the thing working for alpha then see what people think and hopefully get this in for beta or 1.0. . .

I'd also note that we have no stationary light sources in the game -- even those that are sitting still have a "pulsing" effect, such that every light source is always moving its borders at least somewhat.

Hah, thought you might call me up on that. OK replace stationery with not-rapidly-moving (or with-a-stationery-source-object)