Build 37

[rob]

Hi all,

It's been two weeks since the last build. Due to illness we don't really have two weeks of work to present, but this is what we got done:

* Add Mustang triggers: double shotgun, disarm, main turret boost, instant flank shield refill & repair
* Add Trailblazer triggers: cloak, long blink, speed boost, shield regen start
* Add Phantom triggers: graviton implosion, immobilization blast, invincibility, instant shield refill
* Bring Predator's speed and rotation into line with other tanks
* Halve Corsair front shield delay
* Remove speed boost from default overdrive trigger
* Add new fortress: Bore Auger, and flying patrol minions
* Make enemy icon shapes match difficulty level
* Divide enemies into "circle" and "square" types; make icons match
* Generate per-region enemy fortress maps
* Show enemy icons on frontier fortresses
* Fix what appeared to be damage when receiving a hit point bonus
* Turn on pixel hinting for more precise small curves

We are continuing to build out the trigger sets, and we expect that this work will continue for a while. We'd appreciate feedback on these triggers and ideas for future sets.

I'm moving the strategic game toward a more region-based approach. The idea is to require that a certain number of regions be fully conquered before victory is awarded. Each region will have a different mix of enemy fortresses in it. Some regions may be harder than others. You'll be able to build facilities in the towns that will help you conquer regions, but you'll want to choose facilities based on what types of enemies are present.

I'm imagining something like this: scouts enter a new region and find a town. A path is cleared to the town. From there, scouts search for other towns in the region and reveal some of the enemy makeup in the region. The region looks promising (several towns, enemies not too difficult), so more scouting occurs, and some of the other towns are connected. Before large scale clearing begins, facilities go up -- those that will be most effective on the most common enemy types in the region. Soon the region is fully scouted, but a problem is discovered -- a Class X Titanic enemy fortress that will be impossible to destroy. However, a couple of the region's cities have a decent facility combo available, and with enough investment, the fortress can be debuffed and this region can be conquered. As conquest nears, no new facilities are built in the region; instead, gridshards acquired from the region are used to jumpstart the next region's infrastructure.

This build represents a first step down this road, with new enemy icons and a region-wide enemy generator. I'm hoping to get facility construction working next.

As always, thanks so much for playing our game. We really value your opinions.

Rob & Tim

[linkshot]

Not sure if Disarm is working. There's no visual trigger on use and the enemies still seem to bombard me after.
Loot bags light back up if you go offscreen and then return.
Pressed the wrong button (A) when trying to port back, died, game froze old-style: Whatever I last had up gets pasted into the flash window.

[rob]

Mustang's disarm is a single target (the closest), fairly short range, in the frontal 180-degree arc. None of this is shown onscreen. This needs some work, I agree.

Loot bag bug is confirmed.

[linkshot]

I want more labels. Label quadrants by their relativity to Origin (consider that 0,0), label zoom levels, add a minimap with a far zoom, but still discernible shapes.

[tarbomb]

Add Mustang triggers: double shotgun, disarm, main turret boost, instant flank shield refill & repair

Disarm is practically useless right now, though, since any enemy I'd want to disarm (with the single exception of the watchtower) is large and surrounded by minions, and since distance is measured to the center of the enemy rather than the border, the ability always hits a minion instead. Don't even think about hitting a drill with this thing. The other abilities are pretty useful, though.

Add Trailblazer triggers: cloak, long blink, speed boost, shield regen start

Comlink recall is now the only thing affecting the trailblazer's range. As it stands right now I could take the trailblazer to an indefinite distance if not for the auto-teleport feature. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good idea - scouting should have some challenge to it.

Add Phantom triggers: graviton implosion, immobilization blast, invincibility, instant shield refill

Excellent triggers. The immobilization blast is a little less useful than the rest (the enemies are frozen - sure, but the graviton blast would have killed them all instead. The only thing it's good for is grid control towers, which have really tough, fast minions that like to distract my guns) but I can see it becoming useful when larger, nastier minions and moving enemies come into the picture.

Bring Predator's speed and rotation into line with other tanks

Well, I'll take the pred out a little more now. I rarely played the predator in the past, though, so I'm not really qualified to say whether it'll make a difference or not.

Remove speed boost from default overdrive trigger

Not really noticeable, since I mostly use the boost when moving fairly slowly in the middle of a melee. The generic triggers seem to be going away in any case, so I don't think this is going to affect gameplay in the long run.

Add new fortress: Bore Auger, and flying patrol minions

Saw a few while scouting, but haven't managed to fight any of these things yet. They don't seem to be very common.

Make enemy icon shapes match difficulty level

It would be helpful if I had a minimap. Right now, though, the only way to see the info is to zoom out and take my eyes off the battlefield, and the only time I can do that is when I'm safely outside a battle - a time that I wouldn't need the information anyway.

Divide enemies into "circle" and "square" types; make icons match

How does the division work, and what's the point? Difficulty I can understand, but this seems like a fairly arbitrary categorization to me.

Fix what appeared to be damage when receiving a hit point bonus

Pet peeve fixed. Thanks!

I'm imagining something like this: scouts enter a new region and find a town. A path is cleared to the town. From there, scouts search for other towns in the region and reveal some of the enemy makeup in the region. The region looks promising (several towns, enemies not too difficult), so more scouting occurs, and some of the other towns are connected. Before large scale clearing begins, facilities go up -- those that will be most effective on the most common enemy types in the region. Soon the region is fully scouted, but a problem is discovered -- a Class X Titanic enemy fortress that will be impossible to destroy. However, a couple of the region's cities have a decent facility combo available, and with enough investment, the fortress can be debuffed and this region can be conquered. As conquest nears, no new facilities are built in the region; instead, gridshards acquired from the region are used to jumpstart the next region's infrastructure.


This idea makes me think: if regions are semi-independent like this, why not incorporate that into the multiple-server framework you mentioned in your earlier post? Essentially each region would be a separate "server", and the Class X Titanic enemy fortress would essentially be the boss. The "game-world", comprised of multiple regions, each of which could be separated onto different servers (like realms in RotMG), would be one gigantic never-ending battlefront between friendlies and enemies fighting a war over territory.

[pfiffel]

Yep. As of now, scouting is too easy and too rewarding. 50000 Gridshards are a lot and that they only go to one player makes it seem a bit unfair. I think not just one player should be rewarded. In the future, maybe the reward could go towards something else as well, like for example unlocking buildable facilities in the city's region or other things that help everyone's progress in the region.

Phantom:
I think the amount of defensive triggers is too high and the immobilization blast has really limited uses, so far crowd control is not really all that useful. It's good for escaping or keeping a few jumpy minions at bay (to then blast them with the implosion), but I think I'd rather have another offensive trigger instead.

Mustang:
As mentioned above, Disarm is kind of useless. One target not firing in most cases makes no difference. The other triggers are interesting and fun to use, but overall the tank still seems a bit weak.

Bore Auge (I like to call it "big immobilised Mustang"):
I think the main fortress needs a few more HP. The minions tend to wander off far enough to actually not protect their fortress, making destroying it a bit too easy, considering the pretty good loot it can drop. The minions themselves are quite durable and help other fortresses as a result of the distance, which is interesting.

Enemy icons are very useful, but I have yet to figure out what the difference in shapes means (is going to mean?). I feel like Extraction Facilities should be size two though.

I have noticed quite the decline in performance on my end since this build, heavily influencing gameplay. I am not sure if anyone else noticed the same (my machine is not the newest to be honest).

[rob]

The enemy icon shapes are indeed arbitrary at the moment. I want to divide the enemies into groups, so that various built facilities can affect different groups (debuff them, or give a bonus to damage vs them). I'm thinking that eventually, the rough shape of the enemy fortress can match the icon shape. For example, Drill Station and Bore Auger can get pentagonal icons, while Alpha and Beta Processors can have circular icons. But we need more fortresses first -- one of each of the three difficulties. Someday I'd like to do a similar thing with color -- red, orange and yellow icon colors can match roughly red, orange and yellow fortresses. But this is just an idea in my head at this point.

I'm sorry about the performance decrease. It may have to do with the immense amount of enemy icons. Perhaps they should only be shown for your current region?

[rob]

Feb 6, 2013 14:03:01 GMT -5 linkshot said:

add a minimap with a far zoom, but still discernible shapes.

One problem with defining a map view in Grid 12 is that there are several useful scales. You might want to see just your tank, to watch the recoil animations, or you might want to see just out to your weapon range, or to the edge of the pane-circle, or a few enemy fortresses away from the pane-circle, or to the nearest town, or to the next region, or you may want to see the whole of explored territory.

An idea we considered the other day was that while you are holding down the space bar, the map zooms to the level of the current region and the camera moves to the current region's center. Would this be useful?

[tarbomb]

Feb 7, 2013 8:48:50 GMT -5 rob said:

An idea we considered the other day was that while you are holding down the space bar, the map zooms to the level of the current region and the camera moves to the current region's center. Would this be useful?

A quick-zoom would be useful, but I'd rather have it focused on myself than on the town center, since when zooming out I'm more worried about my position relative to other tanks and towns in the area rather than a region-centric view.

[rob]

So "mini-map" is a completely separate map pane, say off in the corner like in RotMG, so that you can view close up and far away at the same time. Yes?

[tarbomb]

Feb 7, 2013 12:45:48 GMT -5 rob said:

So "mini-map" is a completely separate map pane, say off in the corner like in RotMG, so that you can view close up and far away at the same time. Yes?

Yes.

I'd love to have the ability to see both the battle and the strategic overview of the map at the same time.

[linkshot]

As you saw, Rob, it's easy to get lost when scouting, but I have to keep an eye on what I should be avoiding. Spacebar to quick-zoom sounds great in theory, but I fear Flash will make it poor in application.

[randomg]

Sorry, I've been away for a while! I need to reaqquaint(sp?), but hopefully I'll be able to lend 'fresh eyes' feedback on the next build or so.

One thing that has recently jumped out at me is enemy hitpoints. It takes quite a while to get them to show up on mouseover, and often by that time it's time for me to run away.

Maybe showing the closest 'big bad' monster's hit point bar or name/number box like mouseover? Alternately, clicking on one will pop that information up until it dies/you move out of range.

[linkshot]

Show the HP bar of any enemy that has taken damage within the last third of a second.

[amitp]

If you wanted to make Alex happy, you could make spacebar the “jump” key. Jump wayyyyyyyyyyy up, zooming out until you let go of space. That'd be your quick-zoom