Build 41

[Duco]

Stupid people asking for invite code -.-

[pfiffel]

Weird glitch that happend yesterday: every enemy disappeared.


As I TP'd to Anna Colony to clear the surroundings, the enemies didn't load. At first I thought it was me lagging, but none appeared. I was expecting to DC too, but nothing happened and I was still able to use my triggers.


I drove deeper in, where gridpoints weren't uncovered yet, it took a while, but then everything suddenly appeared and I had to TP out.

Another weird glitch that happened earlier today: suddenly Wildfire's plasma generator targeted unlimited enemies (it's supposed to be limited to 3).


Happened out of nowhere. I was trying to figure out if every hit actually did damage, or if it was only a client-side bug, but it seemed like they did. After I refreshed, it was back to normal.


(I ate a Hurricane!)

The new strategic goals are awesome, but I miss the reward for conquering gridpoints - it used to be very satisfying to connect areas.

Tech trees at the minute are still a bit rough, it seems like it's not really worth it going for more than tier 5. Because of their exponential nature, upgrading a tier 5 city to tier 6 is more expensive than building an entire city up to tier 5 from scratch. But the latter still results in more bonuses (especially the very desirable Gridshard drop increasing ones).

While it caused drastic performance issues on my end, it was a lot of fun finally playing with some more people! Looking forward to the codes.

[fsm]

A button that would let you switch your targeting priority would be awesome. Theres a lot of times that I really want to target a structure, but my tank keeps targeting the minions.

[slakrex]

This game is looking batter abd better

[sven]

I found a few bugs.

-Stucked Movement/ Rotation/ Zoom
Hold "W" to move forward while clicking on either Augments, Tank Menu, or Craft Crystal.
Which causes the tank to move non-stop, the only way to prevent further movement is to refresh.
Also works with "A,S,D" and Q/E zoom.

-Imminent Freeze
After tempting to go off the border countless of times, I try to manage to beat the comlink teleportation by teleport back to town by at least a second or two before the sequence took action. Succeeding the timing with the message still up it delays the teleport back where I was last teleported. Somehow, the screen froze on me. I did try to replicate it, no luck. Still a possibility. i.imgur.com/1QbFQZT.png

-Litter
A fitting term than dung, since the removal of "poop bomb of Build 39". Is there any limitation of how many can this mine tosses appears from same tank? With trigger refills from town, it's a curiosity of how many mines can track all over the area before disappearing.
i.imgur.com/vfcrwkM.png

[cryophile]

I ventured out too far, got recalled, and everything disappeared for me.

• I could still see markers on the map, but towns had no nodes, fortresses wouldn't show up, and I could still move and explore. Screenshot
  
• I wasn't able to teleport between towns. Not sure about players.
  
• Exploring new area would not show new fortresses on the map (unsure about towns) Screenshot
  
• New regions CAN be discovered with this method.
  
• While in this state, 'Comlink recall' seems to be a really far distance out or something. I made it to the end of this region before I was recalled. Nearest town is 3 full regions away. Screenshot
  
• Refreshing set everything back to normal, but for some reason one of the regions disappeared? Screenshot
  

Screenshots at cryophile.imgur.com/

[cryophile]

Mar 7, 2013 19:37:40 GMT -5 fsm said:

A button that would let you switch your targeting priority would be awesome. Theres a lot of times that I really want to target a structure, but my tank keeps targeting the minions.

I feel this would be a bit too powerful, especially in a game where you are only indirectly controlling the weaponry. Perhaps a trigger on a couple tanks, instead? It would be awesome for siege tanks. Boost+Siege trigger while someone else has a multi-target tank... mmmmm, teamwork.

[mcfarvo]

I'd love to test again, but I seem to have lost my login info and I guess I need an invite code now.

[cryophile]

My issue above happened again, and this time it wasn't after a recall. I just joined the game, teleported to a town, and everything disappears. I'm not even able to change tanks. I can still explore other regions, though, and the explored regions will stay after a refresh.

[sven]

Details on FPS Jump. (Opposite of cryophile's action)

Done by manipulating fps, my way of replicating though not the same as cryophile.

• "Exploring new area would not show new fortresses on the map (unsure about towns)", I set my fps to low that way I can travel without ever being detected thus leaving the screen processor stuck in one screen where the tank's movement continues forward. As for the town's discovery, it can be a hit or miss depending on the sensitivity of the mechanic. So it's possible.
  
• By being undetected, enemies won't appear on unexplored areas and I still be able to travel. Until fps regain focus on screen the icons are shown. Screen1, Screen2
  
• Regions are more sensitive than discovering towns!
  

_____________________________________________________________________________________

After trying out those status infliction triggers, such as disarm or immobilize. Are there going to be alternative indication than particle bursts? It causes a slight lag in the performance and those boost or effects looks as if the particles are going to blow up into debris visually.

[sven]

I've finally replicated it without tampering the FPS... Even though some details are differ from cryophile describe it to be. Really I stumble on it by chance, nothing to relate to recall on my perspective.

• I've lagged out of nowhere, the screen display was peculiar disable with the terrain not shown but the enemies giving me damage til I died. Sample1
  
• I could see markers on the map, but towns with no nodes, enemy icons are visible to those that are already explored, I'm able to move around. Sample2
  
• Once again died, with slight of the interface shown along with the cursor. Sample3
  
• I can't explain what has happen here in this screen while drifting through the lag takes me to. Sample4
  
• Before I left the server, I always wonder what would happen if I were to use /leave at this odd state. With this, I pull off half of the interface button on the screen with being froze in the process but the FPS still functioning. Sample5
  

Returning back for different results by refreshing the browser, the game-play performance got laggy for me. I resort to restarting the computer to restore back usual flash plugin-in to prevent further crashing. Flash did not crash on me by giving G12 a go but other sites have. Very rare occurrence it was, I didn't run any tabs at the time.

I wonder if the "Aether" was the right word for this. Whatever happening it takes all form of odd distortion.

[remm]

I'd like to talk about tanks.
I was playing the Pegasus today with Sven, and to put it in one word, I felt impotent. I am assuming that Pegasus is designed to be a healing tank as its primary function. I am also aware that triggers have not been made for it yet. But those weren't the problems.

Rather, the whole concept of healing another player needs to be looked at. Its existence in the game indicates your desire for players to be able to use alternate classes and help other people. I am going to use the Medic in TF2 and the Rotmg Priest as a comparison for what a good healing class should be able to do.

Firstly, you need to easily be able to see who needs to be healed. In TF2, you point your cursor at a friend and there is a small graphic health display to let you decide what to do. Players can also call for a Medic by a hotkey. The existence of the "MEDIC!" hotkey by default on the prestigious E key is enough to validate the Medic class for new players. In Rotmg, again it is an instant display upon mouseover of the players in the list in the lower right of screen, but also you can numerically see friends taking damage and be able to heal them based upon a guess of how much health they have.
In Grid 12, you have to hold your cursor over your friend for one second in order to see how much health they have. The downside here is that if you are using your mouse to navigate, then you have to lose control of your tank in order to see if someone needs health, and perhaps more importantly you have to lose control of your tank for at least one second for every person you have to check. It is highly awkward, and leaves you unsure about who needs healing or even if it's worth checking if people need healing. Even though healing is automatic, I would still like the ability to drive over to a friend and heal them. The current healing and health display setup does not make that easy for me.

Secondly, you need something to occupy yourself with when you do not have friends that need healing. In TF2, the Medic can overheal team mates by 50%, which is an incentive to keep healing a player even after they are fully overhealed (because the overheal wears off). Healing team mates also slowly powers up an Ubercharge that grants yourself and your healing target a temporary invulnerability. So it is beneficial to keep healing. In Rotmg, the Priest has a selection of tomes that ensure it can be ready for pretty much any situation. For example, an armoured Priest can sit very deep in dangerous places, allowing it to accomplish things in a way that other classes would not be able to. So if you don't need to heal people, you can attack.
In Grid 12, there is nothing. If nobody needs healing then you are left wandering around with less damage output than the first tank. You cannot heal yourself, so cannot go into dangerous situations. Quite simply, you cannot be relied upon to do anything. Some of that can be fixed with triggers though, and I expect some amount of thought will go into designing them to make the Pegasus useful. Why not make it able to fix shields too?

So there is a lot of room for improvement for how healing is applied in this game. I feel it is an unfair criticism of the Pegasus class that it cannot heal friends as fast as other non healing classes (the instant heal of the Corsair springs to mind) because triggers have not yet been developed for the Pegasus.
Although it should definitely be mentioned here that the current Pegasus class is in fact unable to heal friends. I'm guessing that it is from some anti-cheat protection, but when I shot Sven with my healing laser, his health appeared increased for about 0.1 of a second before it returned to what it was previously. He also did not gain the usual health over time, because the game was telling him that his tank was being shot. Shot by me. With my healing gun.

-

Another class we both played at once was the Avenger. The triggers on the Avenger are all offensive (instant shield heal can and should be used offensively), and this meant that even just the two of us were able to destroy most things quite efficiently. A Grid Control Tower was demolished by freezing its minions in place on the other side of it, disabling it from firing at us, and both of us popping our damaging triggers. Two of us destroyed it in 5-7 seconds without planning, and it's meant to be a strong enemy? While the slow rotation of the main turret caused difficulties when fighting the massed tanks of the Drill Station, we still were able to take down most other things with little difficulty.

-

The triggers on the Corsair tank are a little mystifying. You're given a shield that lets you not take any damage at all through the front end for 95% of your fighting time, you can drop enemies' health by 1/3, which amounts to 1000HP on the high-end structures, and you can instantly fully heal yourself and friends. Some people would call that overpowered as fuck, but it just makes me wonder what the point of the other fist classes are, if new players are given that level of strength on just their first level up.

-

Finally, I feel like the tanks just aren't different enough. As they are, I don't see people making comments that they're glad they have a particular class fighting on their team. In Rotmg, classes can help in a battle in their own unique way, and there is a real difference in how you fight that based on what classes you are playing alongside. I think one key difference comes from having one ability with multiple uses versus four triggers with single instance uses. With each tank having four 'abilities', undoubtedly there's going to be some overlap and players doing the 'job' of other tanks. Thing is, at the moment I don't see each class developing their own personality and place in the battle. Some tanks might do particular things slightly better, but underneath they all feel the same, which simply leaves you fighting the same battles in a slightly different way.
I value how some tanks like the Hurricane and Spectre stand out from the rest, and that makes me want to use them. But do notice how I use the word 'rest' to refer to the other pile of tanks that there are too choose from. There are so many! Seriously, if it weren't for the triggers, then I would consider the Mustang, Wolverine, Valkyrie, Predator, Hornet, Wildfire and Viking to be all pretty much the same tank. My play style would be the same, and that's really not something that you want to encourage.

It's great that there are many unique tanks, but having autofire and 4 triggers for each leaves so many of them just feeling samey.

[sven]

______
Bugs
______

• Players firing wildly at invisible ghosts returns with heal beams! Where it aims at players while remaining still. Even when the users have full health. Screen1
  
• The particles for Avenger triggers are so thick while using it in crowded combat or another user using the same tank with the similar added more graphic particles causes the screen to freeze, unable to perform any action thus refreshing. At the time, I assume remm was affected as well. Screen2
  

[tarbomb]

It seems that if you escape at very low HP (0? Can't tell, but the bar looks empty to me), then you'll seemingly teleport to the town, but your game will then freeze seemingly indefintely (although the numbers on the perfstats indicator will still fluctuate); to other players it looks like you simply left the game. Upon refresh the tank will have one level less on all prisms, indicating that it was killed.



Essentially this is the same bug encountered here, minus the spontaneous HP refilling and teleporting onto a delta refinery (this time it was me sitting right between a despoiler and a drill. Between. Not on top of.)

[tarbomb]

Seems like the above bug is fairly easy to duplicate. Just head to a zone with intense lag (the easiest way is to get a hurricane into a triple drill juncture and start a targeting boost) and hit panic. Depending on the amount of lag the HP bar may or may not refill before the screen freezes. Video of the bug can be seen here: