Build 27

[rob]

Hi all,

Build 27 is now live. Changes include:

* Don't play the same sound effect more than once per frame
* Add Pegasus class, with healing gun
* Fix bug where AoE attacks affected the wrong shields
* Add 'f' key to toggle pane fade in/out
* Add craftable power crystals
* Disallow certain problematic characters in chats

Some people have been reporting freezes on teleporting. We can't reproduce this, but we're wondering if it's related to pane fade in/out. If you are noticing the problem, see if turning off fade fixes it, and let us know.

As always, thanks for playing!

Rob & the Grid 12 team

[linkshot]

Getting some really crazy tile flickering here. Using same settings as before.
Pegasus's offensive gun seems to have quite a bit of range. Maybe it's just my prisms.

I want to be able to click outside the crafting window to close the options.

[fenrir]

Yay, no more horrible lag for me .

Being able to see your own and others' hp without the tooltip would be convenient, with the new crystals and Pegasus.

Also, does healing scale with damage buffs? It should, if it doesn't already, or else it'd quickly get outpaced.

[linkshot]

Turning off fade in makes my roomba run...slower? Okay.

[tarbomb]

Don't play the same sound effect more than once per frame

Can't comment on this - I play muted.

Add Pegasus class, with healing gun

I like this tank. Its inability to heal itself complements its decent offensive power well. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to test exactly how effective the heal is yet. Giving us data on how fast the heal works in-game would be nice.

I have yet to try this, but putting two Pegasi next to each other mutually healing would make for one hell of a scouting team. Also: does this tank (and power crystals) heal shields, or is it internal only?

Fix bug where AoE attacks affected the wrong shields

Nice bugfix.

Add 'f' key to toggle pane fade in/out

A useful option for older machines I suppose, but since I'm on a pretty fast machine I can't really speak as to the performance difference. Still, it's a nice option to have.

Add craftable power crystals

It's nice to see some kind of use for the splinters, but to be honest I was hoping for something more than HP pots. HP regeneration is only really useful when you're scouting, and especially in early game collecting all five types of crystal splinters gets a bit annoying. I'd like to see two or three "common" splinters to be required to craft basic restoratives, with two or three more rare ones for more powerful potions (stat boosts? temporary invuln?).

Also, the new significance of numbers (heals 100hp/250hp/500hp) brings me back to a point I stated earlier - there has to be some form of numerical HP/shielding indication for self, allies, and friends. Clicking on a potion to restore 100 HP when I'm not even sure how much (in numbers) HP I have left leaves me feeling hanging, and worse yet driving around in a healing tank trying to keep track of my allies' HP is a pain (rollover needs an overhaul - it's a pain to use for both allies and enemies). A Realm-style side panel would solve this, as would adding hp bars directly over allies and major enemies.

Disallow certain problematic characters in chats

Aw... no more pretty multicolor chat?

Much needed fix, but I think the filter might be a bit overkill - it rejects even simple characters like ™. Still though, aside from saying swag™ I can't figure out any use for special characters, so I guess I'll just live with it. ;)

[remm]

My thoughts at the moment

I am still waiting on the new socket mechanism to save me time there.

I like the changes made to the Drill Station regarding quantities of grid shards. Difficulty and reward are much more balanced now.

I would like the watchtower to 'attack' me. I don't like sitting at the edge of it and it not hitting me. Maybe add a 20% chance that when a bomb tile moves, it will move to somewhere within the 9 tiles nearby to you.

Why do Enemy Cross Towers heal themselves?

Regarding the new power crystals, this is the first time I have been able to get an indication of how many hitpoints I have. Is it acceptable for the player to not know how strong they are?

Can we get a bigger display from the game when we get a bigger gridshard haul? It seems silly that the 15000 from a Drill come out at the same size as a 100 from a tank.

Can we get some sort of indication in game of which enemy tanks are solid? (Which ones can you drive through?). I get surprised when there's no collision, or when I get a collision and I'm expecting none. It's critical to know if you're going to get trapped when driving inside the walls of a Drill.

Reiterating what Linkshot said, I want to be able to click outside the crafting window to close the options.

At the start of the game, the priority we have had is to build up resonators in one or two towns. That makes that town zone a more efficient place to collect shards from, and only then do the labs and extractors get the level up.


Bugs/Annoyances.
It's still possible to be on a town square and not have access to the town options, like tank switching. Standing on the corners of the outer tiles is how to do that. Those tiles can also support buildings, so I would regard them as being part of a town.

The tooltip box for the average building is annoying, because it gets in the way of the useful tooltip for the socket that tells me how many more gridshards I need to deposit. Move your cursor over the building to bring up the tooltip, then move your cursor over the socket. The building tooltip still shows.

Regarding collisions between players and enemy tanks. Why are the enemy tanks 'stronger'? If one of their tanks drives into you, you get shunted aside to let them through. If you drive full speed into the side of an enemy tank, the opposite will happen. You stop (but keep momentum) and the enemy tank is completely unaffected. This makes collisions with lots of tanks frustrating, because the only thing you can do is drive for an opening. If I can be shunted by them, I want to be able to shunt them back.

[fry]

Nov 7, 2012 14:18:22 GMT -5 rob said:

Hi all,

Build 27 is now live. Changes include:

* Don't play the same sound effect more than once per frame
* Add Pegasus class, with healing gun
* Fix bug where AoE attacks affected the wrong shields
* Add 'f' key to toggle pane fade in/out
* Add craftable power crystals
* Disallow certain problematic characters in chats

Some people have been reporting freezes on teleporting. We can't reproduce this, but we're wondering if it's related to pane fade in/out. If you are noticing the problem, see if turning off fade fixes it, and let us know.

As always, thanks for playing!

Rob & the Grid 12 team

Hey Rob

I really enjoy the game! Keep on the great work.

I would love to use play from different computers and therefore miss a login possibility to save my achievements. Also sometimes my browser does not save my user setup and wants me to start from scratch with the tutorial. A login would also heal this problem.

Do you have any outlook for implementing a user login?

Best,
fry

[sven]

Since the build release, I haven't run into any freezes yet but the performance did improved when I set the pane effect off. Pegasus is another lovely addition (Offense: Front & Back, Support: Sides), I wonder if an Alchemist on the go could be possibly be next on distant future installments...

Bug Report/ Thoughts:

• I couldn't craft power crystals due to building tooltip overlapping the interface.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• If I'm outside of the town, I shouldn't have to endure this popup (after clicking, message should respond) whatsoever when I must be within a town to craft. i.imgur.com/rm28A.png
  Minor Typo: Space between Repair & Crystal.
  
  I would say the same for changing class away from town.
  
  i.imgur.com/hpOO5.png
  
  
• After constructing a repair crystal can Tooltip be directive instead of vague? :\
  
  
  
  
  
  I got so curious on how it can be used and just a click I used it up by accident...
  
  Honestly, I don't see the benefits of using these crystals if I can just teleport to a town and change class from there. This effect would fully recover my health and shield without ever using craft materiaal. If there's shield recovery for repair crystals I may have to reconsider.
  
  
• Any last squares from the town perimeters are inaccessible to changing class and crafting which contradicts the fact that player can perform these actions while being within a town. (Town pane pattern circular, Build 24, doesn't illuminate town functions as it seems.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Will there be an alternative method for numbered health indication instead of using help from a user?
  
  
  
  
  
  It could prove resourceful and convenient when it par up with the feature for crafting power crystals.
  

[rob]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the feedback. It's really helpful to hear your comments and complaints, because it lets us know which areas of the game are ok and which are not working.

One big thing that we think is not working is the overall "strategic" part of the game. We have a number of ideas on how to overhaul it. Most of these involve getting rid of resonators. The problem that we're seeing is that resonators allow player power to fluctuate too much. Yes, it's awesome to have a ton of power, but that power always gets taken away, either at game end (when resonators affect the whole map) or when you drive too far from a built-up city (when resonators affect only the local area). We'd prefer that players have PERMANENT power upgrades (loot, unlocks, upgrades, etc). We are not sure what the future holds here, but we've been putting a lot of thought into it recently.

We are also feeling that city building isn't as fun as we'd hoped it would be. We're not sure how we want to evolve it. Maybe we'll replace it.

We feel your pain on logins. Other things we really hate right now include the animation of other players' position, facing, turrets and lasers -- these are really buggy.

On the other hand, we are feeling ok about the control scheme. Do people feel that they have enough control?

Again, let me thank you for your feedback. You folks are awesome.

Rob

[linkshot]

I really liked the huge focus on powerups benefitting mostly everybody instead of a single user, so let my mind run a bit on this.

Global Loot

Having more extractors increases the quality of drops from enemies. Large local buff, medium global buff, small permanent user buff per level they add. Remember, loot is shared, so you can use some "luck" formula to take all factors (multiple people in looting range + server buff) to increase quality by some small 'vania-level amount.

Example: Global Extractor Level of 100. The rarest drop now has a 1% creep on the most common drop. Somebody with a Rank 100 Extractor level comes along and sits within looting range. The drop now has a 1.01% "creep". Somebody with Rank 50 sits nearby, making it some other extremely insignificant number higher.

Global Unlocks

The higher your lab level gets, the more potent the global buff from resonators gets. Same system as extractors: Users get a permanent quality buff per level they do, yet very small. Total buff of resonator quality will directly add all contributors' buffs to the server level, encouraging more people to invest in one building to increase its quality, as opposed to one person focusing on one section of a town for efficient building.

Example: Global Lab Level is 60. This makes global buffs from resonators 60% more efficient. Somebody with Rank 60 invests in a resonator, making that specific building 66% more efficient in global buffs. A Rank 100 then invests, changing it to 76% on that one building.

Global Upgrades

Add a Splinter Socket to Origin. Instead of using splinters to just focus on your own survival, you can dip a large number of total splinters into Origin to change how the map behaves briefly: Faster enemy respawn, wilderness gives no enemy buffs, nuke all active* drill stations, etc

* "Active" means currently within fighting range of somebody

[amitp]

Thoughts …

Power upgrades

Short term, I think permanent power upgrades are nicer. But long term, I don't know how it would work. Either you stop gaining power early on (or you gain it so slowly it's effectively zero), which makes me wonder, why have the power gains at all ; or you keep gaining power for a long time, which makes me think, can I still play with my friends? The temporary power gains that reset (either in space, as with local resonators or by making them not carry over from world to world, or in time, as with powerups or permadeaths) seem like the only solution. Do you have something in mind for this?

Abandoning the “you can always play with your friends” design principle is ok with me. It's a nice goal but it might come at a high price.

City building

City building isn't as much fun as I'd like it to be. In a city builder like SimCity one person gets to design the whole city, which is fun. There are lots of tradeoffs to make. In grid12 that's impractical. That's a good thing to experiment with. We don't know if it's feasible, but that's why you're an indie developer instead of a conservative AAA developer who doesn't want to try anything. Grid 12 has a voting scheme, where I can choose (1) which city to help, and (2) which building in the city to help.

I feel like step (1) can be nice. I look at the map and pick a city on the outskirts. I pick cities where I want to fight. However, it'd be much nicer if the map gave me a lot more information. Tell me where the frontier is. Tell me where enemies have attacked. Tell me what areas have seen combat in the past few hours. It's hard to feel like I made a good decision when I don't have the information I need to decide.

Step (2) is overwhelming. I can upgrade a city or I can upgrade a building. I can upgrade a lab or resonator or extractor. For extractors (but not labs?) I have to look at the resource level of the city vs. other cities. I have five different resonator types to choose from. I have to think about both range and power for each resonator type. In a medium sized city there are lots and lots of buildings to choose from. Making it worse, I can't even see them all at once, so it's hard for me to make a decision. I throw up my hands and just dump them in the closest building. I think step (2) would be nice if it were much simpler. For example: have only one building per type, all in the center of the city, where I can see them all.

Control scheme

I use double click mode. It seems like everyone has their own preference. I think it's fine right now but may not be if the gameplay changes. If position becomes more important (for example if there are places on the map I need to stand on in combat to activate special abilities) then I may consider using one of the other control schemes.

Tooltips really bug me though. Part of it is that they pop up in the middle of the screen, covering up things I want to see, instead of showing up at the edge, covering up the least important information. But part of it is that there's valuable information that's only shown in the tooltips, like enemy health. Admittedly tooltips are worse in double click mode.