Messages

16

Mapping / Re: City street grid

« on: March 24, 2010, 02:37:43 am »

Really looks nice.
I dont know much about tiling, but I suppose building blocks tiles have ground arround them.
Wouldnt have a building tile added to streets with large sidewalks gives *very* large sidewalk ? Pardon me if im wrong. 

17

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Online

« on: March 24, 2010, 02:31:54 am »

If i got it right, what you're suggesting is a generic MMO, UFO:AI flavor ? each getting levels to go to RvR ?
Theres already *tons* of games like that (and I dislike this game genre).

I suppose it would be using guns icons instead of magical spells icons ?
You're still basing your concept on fighting an alien army - if aliens are a 'player' side too, that means soldiers of one side have to wait for soldiers of the enemy side to be willing to do a match.

Or maybe you'll want to keep the turn-by-turn system ? But a 8v8 game would mean a player would play 1/16th of the time, and under the command of a leader. Hmm ... who would want to play the role of a pawn ? I doubt a pre-made mmo engine would be fit for turn-by-turn anyways.

The most common system of MMORPG is have players being heroes, fighting lots of small creatures, gaining level, and maybe going on PvP or RvR. I believe (I didnt check honestly) that the engine you're talking about is oriented toward that. And i really dont see how it would fit a tactical squad mission-based turn-by-turn game.

18

Coding / Re: Improved 3D Geoscape Rendering [was: Nightime city lights in 3D geoscape]

« on: March 23, 2010, 11:53:51 pm »

I really dont know much about graphical optimisation, but cant the lights picture be divided in sub parts for continents (also you dont need light texture for the oceans) ? It would allow higher res - which is quite needed to keep the 'crisp' feeling of light souces (the blur does not really fit).

Also, since its just white light, maybe there some way somewhere to optimise the file/process by reducing the palette ? Once again I dont know much in that domain.

19

Design / Re: Defending downed DROPSHIPs?

« on: March 23, 2010, 11:48:06 pm »

Without any consideration for the storyline or militaristic realism and just thinking about the game fun, I really like the idea of having to keep your soldiers alive for a set number of rounds, against an infinite wave of enemies.

I think this could be 'quite' easily possible to do. The only real need in ressources is the crashed dropships.

An evacuation point to reach on one of the borders of the map could also be added ?

Side note : Aliens from crashed ufo do receive damage on the crash. Yup, they have a great 15% chance of being hurt a little, and more percent of being more-easily stunnable. Imo they should be lucky to still be alive (a crash a 880kmh ?!), and so far I feel like attacking a landed or crashed ufo does not really make any difference, if it isnt for the ufo look.

20

Discussion / Re: UFO:AI Online

« on: March 23, 2010, 11:34:23 pm »

"Making the good game a MMORPG" is the second idea that usually comes to mind to gamers, right after "add driveable vehicule, especially a tank !".

Well this does not necessarily means its a bad idea, but it is quite naïve. Well unless proven otherwise.
What would the game be like ? Everyone being a commander ? or a soldier ? How would mission be set up ? How would one chose to play a mission ? Is eveyone against aliens, or can you choose side ? People wont be able to change the time scale in the geoscape since everyone must play on the same virtual time - which has to be at least credible in regard to the battlescape time - wich itself isnt based on real time but time units ?

And most importantly : what would be the interest of it ?

Im pretty sure you can come up with a viable answer to that, and solutions to make a game design for the whole thing to work as an mmorpg, but just adding "-mmorpg" to a game name is not enough to call it a project.

And a last note :

I have a server, I have a game engine, so all I need are the resources

You seem to forget that you also need code. As mmorpg would imply almost total game rewrite, and at least 20 times the ammount of the code already existing for network games.

21

Design / Re: Storyline - Research/XVI Census: No sense at all

« on: March 23, 2010, 11:22:38 pm »

Mister Legendman3, I beg your pardon for beind a total douche, but since its not the first occurence of such problem, I think it was worth a note.

You might be interested in the existence of some 'special characters' that you can use to define a clear structure in your sentence, making it easily understandable to people - which, imho, could include you, as im not absolutely positive you have a clear grasp of what you are trying to say.

Unfortunately, without those 'special characters', your messages cant work unless the end-user spend time debugging them.

...

That said, i tend to agree that the feasibility of checking the whole world population seems not credible, even in a sci-fi game.

22

Coding / Re: [SUGGESTION] Reaction fire automatic weapons behavior

« on: March 23, 2010, 01:27:29 am »

Aha, yes, the typos, sometimes the urge to correct them is too big 

1. Thanks for the compliment ! 
2. Side effects is what I fear, I did had to use some thing I didnt understand fully, and while coding I was never really sure where was the line between server and client ...
3. Ill be waiting for instructions on what/if a part is to be kept, to clean it up and give the patch.

IME, here's my personnal tought of that experimentation so far :
- I like having my soldiers efficiently covers each other. Altough AI cant set AimAt points, they are also more efficient with reaction fire. I end up paying far more attention to covering, line of sight, and planning strategic moves, and I like it. But it might not please other players.:
- Soldiers sometimes fainting when hit hard : kinda like it - the "pheww, he's not dead" feeling. A chance to keep your precious ones.
- Critical : Im not sure. On one side, I dont think it changes anything on the combat, on the other side, it adds little unexpected things, that can slightly reduce monotony (especially the weapon loss and other special effects - plus I like the idea that once you buy/produce a weapon, its not 'immortal' anymore). Could be more focused on this 'unexpected' part than 'critical damage' maybe.
- RF on your own turn : some might say disturbing for some, id rather say surprising (once again, a little less monotonous). To me it feels like the soldiers have some initiative of their own, making you feel less 'alone' in the fight.
- bullet-per-bullet burst reaction fire system : I definitely prefer the song "Singing In the Rain" to "someone suddendly thrown a bucket of water at me".

I hope project game designers will be interested in this, as I have quite a few other tweaks in my mind.

23

Discussion / Re: I'd love to be able to play this game, but...

« on: March 22, 2010, 10:24:24 pm »

Yes yes yes, lets all get out every night, have some alcohol, party & stuff all the time. Wait, someone is actually supposed to spent time working for open source free games to happen ?! Who would have tought that ?!

*enough sarcasm*

After this ... interesting person ... I noticed another one just posted a similar message on the forum (about the saving issue, not the "oh you're so no-life" thing, fortunately).

TBH I think a battlescape save system would really be a plus.
Sure you can save/load whenever something goes wrong ... and sure some player would abuse that (theres already retry abuse anyway), but i think its better to have more active in ufo:ai players than try to avoid people cheating in single player mode. Seriously, why should we care if someone wants to play with cheat in single player ?

Affraid people would give in to temptation ?
I think we can make something :
"Hardcore mode" option, if you choose to start a 'hardcore' campaign, you cant save during missions nor retry on defeat.
The option cant be changed if you have loaded a 'hardcore' game, so you cant change your mind when things turns bad.
Of course, you can save your game on a specific slot only - no "time backup".
Its a little masochistic, but I think I would actually play it. You'll sure take care of what you do with your soldiers !

Maybe still possible to save in battlescape while in hardcore mode : save the game after every action / event, so you can still load if you had to stop playing or had a crash, but cannot go back in time ?

24

Coding / Re: How to find battlescape map information ?

« on: March 22, 2010, 10:04:48 pm »

For the pathing tables, I suppose I can let actor spawn, then teleport them to new positions ?

Im not confortable with the idea of tracing to check if theres a wall here because geometry can be complex. Maybe just checking if traveling works between this node and at least one adjacent node could be sufficient ?

Ill check that CM_LoadMap function.

Thanks to you two

25

Coding / Re: [SUGGESTION] Reaction fire automatic weapons behavior

« on: March 22, 2010, 09:57:32 pm »

Yes, it does need a visual clue that your soldier is watching a point. Adding visuals on the battlefield should be one of the next things ill explore.

26

User modifications / New Reaction Fire system and other game tweaks (.diff file)

« on: March 22, 2010, 09:05:01 pm »

Hello.

I tought its worth mentioning here : ive made an experimental patch for ufoAI, involving a new reaction fire system, changes how burst are handled, adds a critical hit system, and a few others tweaks.

All the details, the warnings and the .diff file are available here : http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/index.php?topic=4564.msg35244#msg35244

27

Coding / Re: [SUGGESTION] Reaction fire automatic weapons behavior

« on: March 22, 2010, 09:02:37 pm »

Here's the .diff file.

But first, some reading :

Context notes :
- I started editing UFO AI source to test personnal gameplay ideas and tweaks a few things to my taste. So the modifications arent limited to a new Reaction Fire mode (see below).
- Im not familiar with the project structure and some modifications might be out of place.
- The modifications could break game balance (not sure if really sensible), and probably differs from UFO:AI creator's vision.
- The modifications most certainly arent compatible with multiplayer games (stuning does not apply to aliens, mobility for multiplayer weapons are not set, im pretty sure some network code is missing).
- I like well enclosed things. i will use { } for even the simplest "if", and over parenthesis maths things.
- Ive added "(yatta)" in most comments so if something breaks arrounds those comments, you know you can blame me.
- I used lots of "gi.BroadcastPrintf(PRINT_CONSOLE ..." for debugging, so you'll find quite a few, commented out.
- Novice coding errors or complexity is to be expected.
- No difference between the two RF modes.



WTF ?!
This might be your reaction in some situations, where soldiers start shooting altough you didnt give them the order.
What happens is the following : you have soldiers ON RF. One of them moves, trigerring an alien RF, but as the alien start aiming/shooting, one of your other soldier, who had the alien well spotted already, start shooting too. Follows a quick gun fight for the burst duration. Yes two burst can be fired at the same time.



What it does :
- Changed Reaction Fire behavior. RF now depends on character's mind (mainly) and speed. Other factors included : target's speed, position and activity, weapon mobility ...
- Point survey : When you right-click with the mouse to make your soldier face a direction, you now also register an "Aim Point" : if an enemy enters that point, your soldier has a bonus to trigger its reaction fire. Very good to guard doors & building corners.
- Changed burst fire system. Your soldier wont discharge the full burst at one point when RF shooting at a moving enemy, but rather will shoot while the enemy move.
- Added critical hits : depending on the type of weapons, you can inflict more damage, or do special effect sur has making fall (well, sit), lose weapon, stun (except aliens), panic, ...
- Stun on hard hits : your soldiers might faint when badly hit. Bad : you have one less active soldier on the field. Good : he can be healed at the hospital. A little chance to keep good soldiers alive, and makes accepting combat losses easier.
- Tried to tweak camera travels during shoots to gain time and lose sickness. Not so successful.
- Dazed (flashbang grenade) now makes the actor start with half the TU on next round
- Actors loses a few TU when hit.



Precise changes in the files :

Code: [Select]

weapons ufo files : added 'mobility' parameter
cl_actor : added message writing PA_POINT when orienting a soldier with mouse
e_time : barbaricly tried to reduce camera travels delay
e_event_actormove : ActorDoMove returns on actor death
e_event_actorstartshoot : changed cameraroute to reduce camera travels in ActorStartShoot
scripts : added the mobility parameter for weapon defs
g_actor : RF modes reserves no TU, dazed unit start round with half TU, barbaric return on ActorInvMove to handle (in case of weapon drop/destruction by RF), changed how TU are handled at some points, added func g_ActorUseTU needed for RF
g_client : when reseting time units, reset a param for RF, modified how TU are used, added message PA_POINT handling (for aiming point)
g_combat : added critical hits & effects (can be turned off by setting the COMBAT_CRITICAL_FACTOR to 0, critical effects table depending on weapons damage type, stun chance on hard hits (for humans only to avoid easy capture of live alien), TU loss on hit, modified ShootSingle to add inaccuracy on RF, removed obsolete RF functions, modified ClientShoot to handle new RF and new management of bursts
g_local : added / removed stuff for new RF
g_main : remove of prototype of obsolete RF functions
g_match : made uncouncious-yet-alive soldiers have low health after a mission (so they HAVE to be healed before next mission
g_move : added a default AimAt point when moving soldiers, flag IsMoving for ents to manage RF accuracy
g_reaction : well ... mostly rewritten / changed
g_round : removed a call to an obsolete RF function
game_h : added an array to manage awareness of actors
inv_shared : added 'mobility' parameter
q_shared : added 'PA_POINT' message for AimAts


28

Coding / How to find battlescape map information ?

« on: March 22, 2010, 06:36:50 pm »

Yop.

I want to experiment with assigining spawn position for actors (i.e. not using predefined spawn points), so im looking for information.

Id like to know how to find the coordinates and size of the UFO tile, and dropship tile, and if theres a way to check if a coordinate is valid (is that position in a wall, in the air, ...).

With this, ill test some theory on spawning troops inside the dropship (I think having to manage the deployment is part of the fun, with the risk due to all your soldiers being in pack and very sensible to reaction fires & AoE), and spawning aliens at not-random points (once you're used to maps, you know where they'll spawn) depending on how quick Phalanx troops came to the place and other parameters.

29

Coding / Re: [SUGGESTION] Reaction fire automatic weapons behavior

« on: March 22, 2010, 01:14:41 pm »

Thanks to Duke, the crash is gone.
Im now working on correcting a TU bug, and tweaking a few things. A .diff should be made available in the next 10 hours.

30

Feature Requests / Re: Better Interface for the Transfer Screen

« on: March 22, 2010, 11:15:08 am »

Here's a suggestion, pretty self explanatory.

It allows to see at one glance what every base's stocks, and both send or call items.

Could be improved (but a little less straightforward), by allowing to send any item from any base to anybase : instead of adding/removing item to the main base, count them has "items to be dispatched" in a new column, then dispatch those item as you want between all the bases. A little tricky thing to do tough : automatic set up of convoys.