Build 26

[rob]

Hi Testers,

We had a short week due to a hurricane! But build 26 is out. Changes include:

* Add Predator class
* Add some new minion tanks
* Extend pane highlighting behind player tanks
* New teleport animation
* Change victory condition to 100 total city levels
* Remove decay from buildings and towns
* Make enemy fortress respawn time depend on the number of times it's been killed (10 mins + 2 mins * killcount)
* Remove range resonator sockets from new cities
* Remove resonator range buff from display
* Shotgun damage falls off to 0 at max range
* Fix poof half-sliding bug
* Double avenger turret turn rate
* Trade one set of player-position-interpolation bugs for another (sorry bout that)
* Boot players that don't talk or move for 5 minutes

Our hope with the rule changes in this build is that people will discover and build up many towns, not just Origin. We are thinking that the area around Origin will eventually get "mined out" and people will move on to farm other towns.

Thanks for playing! We really appreciate all the work you put in to testing the game. Please comment about this build below.

Rob

[linkshot]

"Idle connection closed" well that's a very halloween colour. Would like a "wait, I'm right here!" button to start off where I got idled out.

[tarbomb]

First noticeable thing is the tank spawn/change animation It's slick and it looks nice, although the increasing use of particle effects has me concerned that in the long run this may cause client lag problems like the ones on Realm. An option to turn this off would be immensely helpful.

New shotgun mechanics are perfectly balanced and very enjoyable to use. Sitting "on" a DS blasting it in the face has always been really fun, and now it's rewarding.

Not sure how the lack of range buffs changes gameplay, since the old resonators are still there and their effect remains. We'll have to win and reset the map to see the effects first.

New minion tanks make buildings more interesting. Still, the sheer number of minions (especially around grid control towers - not many minions, but obscenely fast and hard to destroy ones that screw up the autoaim) make single-target tanks, including the new Predator, much less useful than ones that can handle multiple ones. I'd like to see a random number of minions spawn with each main enemy, rather than the full number, so we'd have a mix of enemies with zero minions (which would spawn more when a player came), enemies with full minion armies, and enemies in between.

Turret rotation buff makes avenger a much more useful tank. Perhaps Valkyrie deserves one as well.

New predator class is decent, but I think the frontal shield should be made a bit wider. With the removal of range buffs, charging head-on into an enemy is going to be a much less viable strategy, and the narrow arc of the frontal shield makes it a rather poor choice for circling attacks.

"Idle connection closed" - there should be a reconnect button; right now I have to refresh. Chat still appears to work on the client after connection is closed, but it doesn't show up. By that I mean that when I punch something into an idle-booted client chat, it shows up in the bottom-left when I hit enter, but other people don't see it.

Performance - Flash standalone performance is still much worse than browser.

I was fighting a watchtower earlier today and a blaster (not sure what the "official" term is, but I'm referring to the black holes that explode continuously) spawned right under it. The only indication that it was there was the fact that I was losing HP, and a particle effect which was pretty difficult to see emanating from the watchtower. IMHO this shouldn't happen - blasters should be visible and obvious to players, not hidden and waiting to explode without warning.

For scatterguns, targeting range seems to be less than weapon range. By this I mean that when my scattergun shoots at a closeby tank, I'll also see targets further away getting damaged, but when the closeby tank is destroyed, my tank will stop shooting at the targets far away, even though those targets are still in weapon range. Not sure if this is intentional or not.

Also, two bugs can be seen in this image:



First: hit detection is not consistent with projectile images. The section of the drill wall closest to me, as you can see if you closely examine the particles, is not taking any damage at all, despite appearing to be in the arc of the scattergun.

Second: sending U+000A into the chat still causes odd chat glitches.

The terrain instantly reclaimed glitch is still there. In this particular case everything seemed normal until I grabbed the loot, and then the terrain changed all at once. In the image you can see the terrain completely reclaimed even though the lootbag is still there.

[amitp]

So … you nerf the Hurricane, and Sandy comes after you? ;-)

From the previous build, I found the local resonator buff system confusing. Previously, updating from 0 to 1 was the same as 1 to 2 (0.1% increase); now they do different things.

Another idea for local resonators: have a single range for all resonators. Make a new lab/extractor type building that sets the range. Make all resonator upgrades do the same thing — increase power (less than 10%!). Show this range on the map as “town influence”. That way it'd be more obvious, if I want to increase the power, I upgrade the resonator, and if I want to increase the range, I upgrade the new building. And a single range seems like it'd be less confusing when it comes time to show things on the map.

I'm looking forward to playing this new build, but first I have some algebra to solve…

[amitp]

Re: performance — tarbomb, would you run theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/_test/polygonperf_molehill.html and tell me what fps you get?

On my laptop (Mac, Intel 3000 graphics), I'm getting 23 in Chrome, 60 in Firefox, 60 in Opera, 60 in Safari, and 60 in Flash Player 11.1. It's 10,000 animated, rotating reasonably sized sprites, but it's admittedly a small canvas area. (I've also tried 800x600 and also was able to get 60fps)

I was rather surprised that Chrome is so much worse on my system.

[tarbomb]

I ran the test earlier today.

Amit and I discussed the results privately on the IRC; I'm posting this here for everyone else to see.

Essentially: FPS is around 55-60 and MS is around 15-20 on both platforms. The main difference: Chrome takes 20-25 memory; Flash only takes around 10.

Test hardware: 2012 rMBP, 2.6 quad, 16 GB RAM, OSX 10.8.2, Flash 11.4, Chrome 22

[sven]

* Add Predator class

- A hybrid of Corsair shield with duo fronts and laser effective on frontal assault while the secondary covers any aspect when detected. Will there be an alien involve fighting by sides together?

* Add some new minion tanks

- More the merrier.

I found myself being overwhelm by the diversity of enemies while battling Drill Station head on with Resonater buff between 10-25%. Of course soloing doesn't help when a person needs an ally by their side. From what I've observed, Enemy Fortress spawned with 10 minions around it's master. The total type of minions for the Fortress are ten. (8 new, 2 old)

As if they should be divided by 2 types of fortresses...

Also the designs for the drill minions are clever.

Gridigger = Jackhammer
Gridozer = Bulldozer
Gridrilller = Driller

* Extend pane highlighting behind player tanks

- Fade away naturally, I adore this welcomed feature.

* New teleport animation

- Yep, visual effects on teleportation with enemy spawning and class change. It would be interesting if class changing have a digitizing effect and enemy have their own respawn animation. Also despawn indication would be great.

I did tried dragging them near the town to see what happens, of course this is one of the actions what would a griefer can do. The enemy despawns with no animation. Glad there isn't no harm done.

* Boot players that don't talk or move for 5 minutes

- Disappointing, it doesn't send the user back to the title screen instead a message of idling render them useless until refreshing.

On a side note, thank you for nerfing the Hurricane! It really did helps, ha ha.

[tarbomb]

It seems that town can spawn directly on top of drill stations... or is it that drill stations can spawn directly on towns?

[sven]

I could've sworn Tombecka was clear of enemies when I first found it, it must be "that drill stations can spawn directly on towns" if not leveled.

[mike]

For the most part, the enemy minions behave all the same, and their stats are nearly identical.
- All minions (except the laser artillery) have between 80-120 hp.
- 2 minions have a single weak shield (marauder in back and gridozer in front)
- They all have roughly the same DPS except the missile launching enemies

I think that the fortress fights should all feel different, but with enough resonators, the minions go down in like 2 shots regardless.

[randomg]

I feel like at lower levels it's nearly impossible to attack the actual buildings - they constantly spawn minions that I simply cannot churn through on the basic tanks.

As a result, I cannot generate shards/cannot upgrade bases.

Could we have a clickable toggle for 'attack strongest target', so it becomes more a question of positioning to actually hit said target?

Perhaps different tanks could do this by default. I know the goal is to not have 'fire at mouse', but at this point going deep on a building just results in me firing backwards at minion tanks or not at all due to turret rotation.