Messages

31

AI War / Re: AI War: Ancient Shadows OST (Preview & Info)

« on: August 22, 2012, 05:21:42 PM »

Might I inquire about the tools you use to make the music?

I'm not an expert, but I'm fairly certain he crafts them out of lightning and raw virility.

32

Off Topic / Re: Galaxy On Fire 2

« on: August 22, 2012, 09:58:58 AM »

I'd really like a good freelancer-like, which is what this looks like. But a decade of experience has taught me that anything I hope will be like freelancer is instead going to be some kind of overly complicated boredom simulator. But I still hold out hope...

You mean like the X series?

If by that you mean to refer to the 'overly complicated boredom simulator', then yes. 

Everyone likes to say it's like freelancer, but it isn't. For one thing, you can fly a ship in freelancer in about 30 seconds of looking at the controls. I've had some X games for a year now, and I still can't remember how the controls work. Sometimes I just want to jump in and blow up pirates and explore galactic sectors that don't all look the same except for a different skybox, and I want to do it without a phone book sized manual or a 30 hour long youtube tutorial series. Anyway, I'm ranting. They're not bad games, I'm just not a kid with hours of free time to spend getting to the good parts of a game. I rather expect the good parts to come to me quickly if a game wants my attention.

33

Off Topic / Re: Galaxy On Fire 2

« on: August 22, 2012, 12:36:21 AM »

This is also on iOS and it features a freemium setup, despite costing $9.99 just to get the game, so that's why I have not gotten it. I refuse to support this kind of business model. So it may be the best thing on earth, and I wouldn't know.

The steam version doesn't have any dlc... yet. If they start selling a lot of post-release dlc for a single player space shooty game, that would be kind of depressing. Although I guess Saints Row 3 got away with that sort of thing for a single player (sometimes) game, somewhat. They actually did add more maps and missions as dlc, but most of it was just silly clothes and guns or cars or whatever. I usually just wait until that sort of dlc gets packaged up and goes on sale for 2 bucks for the lot, if I have any interest in it.

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Off Topic / Re: Galaxy On Fire 2

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:28:10 PM »

I'd really like a good freelancer-like, which is what this looks like. But a decade of experience has taught me that anything I hope will be like freelancer is instead going to be some kind of overly complicated boredom simulator. But I still hold out hope...

35

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Auto-Updater borked

« on: August 21, 2012, 12:27:12 PM »

My updater always hangs just when it should be finishing, but killing the task and then starting the game always results in it working anyway. Not sure if that's related or a different issue. It started with AVWW and now sometimes happens in AIW as well. And the problem has followed me from win XP when I upgraded to win 7. Very odd, but it hasn't caused any issues so I don't really worry about it.

36

AI War / Re: Is there a way to wake all ships on a planet on purpose?

« on: August 21, 2012, 12:06:48 PM »

In all my hours of playtime I've never used the redirectors. They seem interesting, but too fiddly to ever bother with. Probably just my laziness.

37

Off Topic / Re: "Cold Days" book 14 of The Dresden Files release date announced!

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:53:51 AM »

I should really be more into audio books but at three times the price, I imagine if I were, most of mine would be downloaded.

My local library rents audiobooks. If I'm quick I can listen to them within the rental period. If I'm not, I may time shift them slightly through alternative media, but don't tell the lawyers.

38

Off Topic / Re: Improving Mobas for a solo experience

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:51:54 AM »

It's true, FPS is probably the best descriptive abbreviation, and even that gets stretched to encompass non-shooty games like portal (although I've heard first-person puzzler for that one, but I doubt the term is going to catch on) or even 3rd person shooters. But RPG does at least have some history behind it. Before there were final fantasies and baldur's gates there were nerds in basements rolling dice. So RPG meant something before it became a video game term. MOBA, as far as I can tell, was just made up out of the ether.

39

AI War / Re: Is there a way to wake all ships on a planet on purpose?

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:08:06 AM »

High enough firepower should do it. Usually bringing a golem into a planet, even by itself, will wake everything up.

40

Off Topic / Re: Improving Mobas for a solo experience

« on: August 21, 2012, 09:05:31 AM »

I mean really, multiplayer online battle arena? That could describe anything from quake ctf to a co-op game of AI War (if you stretch arena to encompass a whole galaxy

Sounds like you haven't played any MOBA games. Quake doesn't have lanes, champions/heroes, creeps, turrets, shop nor nexus. Neither does AI War. Well AI War kinda does have Nexus...

EDIT:

I've never even tried, outside of vague fooling around with bots.

Ah there.. Ok.

No, the abbreviation silly. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena. That literally encompasses 95% of online games. They're multiplayer, they're online, you battle, and you're in a pre-defined space i.e. an arena. I know how dota works, and that's not what I'm talking about.

41

Off Topic / Re: Improving Mobas for a solo experience

« on: August 20, 2012, 08:45:33 PM »

What I find a bit interesting about that in Awesomenauts is some footage I've seen, a player will die and a teammate will actually pick up that guy's money so that it stays within the team rather than feeding the enemy. For money drops to work it seems like a mix of range and melee combat is necessary. Otherwise, like you said with Super MNC, you end up picking up a lot of your money... which seems a lot like getting rewarded for your allies dying.

Well Super MNC uses both XP and cash, although picking up cash also gives you a bit of XP. But yes, there is a bit of rewards for your own creeps dying. On the other hand, if they are dying you're probably facing off against an enemy player on the other end and you're shooting their bots at the same time. So you really do sort of both end up getting the same amount of coin that you would be getting if you were picking up the coins that came from the bots that you killed... so it pretty much evens out. If your bots aren't dying, then you're probably pushing the lane forwards, so you do get the enemy bot coin drops. It's different, but it works.

And yeah, like you said with Awesomenauts it's mostly close up fighting so you can grab the coins that drop for your teammate's death and deny them to the enemy if you're there as well. It uses no leveling at all (although characters do show a level, that's just total coin gathered divided by 100 so it's really just an at-a-glance power indicator) purely upgrades bought from the cash drops, so controlling those is a big part of the strategy.

The point being that last hit gets the gold is simply one possible way of doing this, and there's a lot of room for experimentation within the genre. If you start out with one idea and balance around it, anything could work. You could have everyone in range get xp and gold for a kill. You could have the entire team get rewarded, no matter where they are on the map. You could make enemy creep kills reward the enemy team instead of your team (that sounds insane, but both sides would have to do it or just let creeps constantly batter their towers). There's a lot of ways to experiment with the formula, and a whole lot of things besides just how you gain power to consider, and I don't think we've seen the best possible version yet by a long shot.

I'm just glad the experimentation is finally coming along. I don't know who's going to be the first MOBA version of what Half Life was for the FPS genre, suddenly making everyone realize that the formula can be twisted in all sorts of unexpected directions and become something brilliant. Or who will have the first big success with something that really bucks the trend. I was kind of hoping it would be Valve, but it appears that they plan to follow the original DOTA formula to the letter. Maybe once that's finally released they will experiment with different game modes. I can see why they're doing it standard first though, I mean Gabe could always fill a few more Olympic sized pools with money.

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Off Topic / Re: Improving Mobas for a solo experience

« on: August 20, 2012, 05:46:03 PM »

Maybe I shouldn't have been so specific in my complaints. It's not just last hitting, that just stands out as the most obvious odd thing that entire game strategies have been built around. I don't expect the originals to change now, that's part of their foundation. I'm just interested in the evolution of the genre. A new game setting out to be dota-ish without the old mechanics is free to innovate without making their fans collective heads implode. Awesomenauts and Super MNC just have gold drop where the creeps die. You either pick it up or you don't. The enemy can even pick it up. In fact since most encounters in Super MNC are at range, you end up collecting more coins from your dead bots than the enemy bots.

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Off Topic / Re: Improving Mobas for a solo experience

« on: August 20, 2012, 02:39:59 PM »

Well the title was interesting, but this seemed to quickly devolve into technicalities that don't make any sense to me as a non lolhondota player. My MOBA (that's a pretty bad term for the genre (I mean really, multiplayer online battle arena? That could describe anything from quake ctf to a co-op game of AI War (if you stretch arena to encompass a whole galaxy)) but it seems we're stuck with it... at least it's better than dota-like) experience is mostly limited to the newer games that take some things from the formula and leave others out, like Super MNC or Awesomenauts. You'll likely never get me playing a true dota-style MOBA as long as it keeps clinging to ridiculous outdated game mechanics that only exist because they were part of the original WC3 map. Like last hitting. I mean really, why is that even a thing? What does it add? I just don't get it.

I like the general idea of escorting your forces as a hero and trying to push your way through to the enemy's base. I like getting xp or picking up cash for upgrading characters (although I like the more casual model of just going for a fun build and not being punished for it rather than the more obsessive formula where you have to have a specific upgrade order and everything is all math-ed out ahead of time lest you lose horribly) I don't mind that the game encourages conservative play by my character dying providing a bonus to the enemy, although perhaps it should be lowered since that seems to be one of the main things that causes rage. It's a kind of a positive feedback loop in that one death makes the other team stronger making it more likely that you'll die more, making them even stronger, and so on. Anyway, I'm getting off the point.

I don't know how you make it friendlier for the solo player, I only know that you probably couldn't pay me to play a game of honloldota online. I've never even tried, outside of vague fooling around with bots. I've heard too many horror stories to ever want to bother, and as far as I can tell, the community wouldn't want me anyway. They seem to hate the very idea of new players, and they only want players who come into the game fully experienced and qualified to play the game with any character at a moment's notice. If I have to point out to you what's wrong with this, I would be worried.

But I do remain interested to see where the genre goes from here. The new games coming out that take a bit of the formula and throw out the rest are pretty interesting. And I can't be the only one who's noticed that after TF2's MvM update that all they need to do is mirror the map and make a few other tweaks and they would have a functional MOBA in TF2. That could be quite enjoyable.

44

AI War / Re: Is the in game irc coming this expansion?

« on: August 20, 2012, 09:12:57 AM »

I look forward to having this feature someday as well, by in the meantime the Steam overlay works ok.

Barely. The whole point would be a chat room that you are automatically dropped in to unless you opt out. Thus furthering a sense of community, getting a place you can easily look for coop partners, or ask strategy questions, or just shoot the bull with some people when you're playing solo so it's not such a lonely experience. A shift+tab to a steam chatroom that only contains people you've invited is not the same thing by miles.

45

Off Topic / Re: Auralux - Abstract RTS

« on: August 18, 2012, 04:17:32 AM »

Looks a lot like galcon fusion. Although that game definitely does reward quick reflexes, because the start is basically 'send ships to as many planets as you can as quickly as possible' since you gain more unit production for each planet that you have. That's probably the main downfall of that game for me, in fact. This one claims to reward strategy and not quick reaction, so I'm curious how they change the formula.