Yeah, it's created dynamically when attaching a cable. It's actually quite simple if you think about it. ;)
Find the midpoint and angle between the buildings
Spawn the cable unit at that point in that angle
Set Y scale of the cable actor to adjust its length
I also use different variations of the cable model for different length ranges so that I don't need to change the scale too much.
I knew the scale part, after all, how else would you have that *wonky* angle for the flamer's cable?
It hasn't been that long since I even started the project (about two months). I've been busy for a month or so with other things (one of them being Skyrim, but I'm done with that now... took an arrow in the knee if you know what I mean), but as soon as I have time to continue mapping, it will be with this project.
It hasn't been that long since I even started the project (about two months). I've been busy for a month or so with other things (one of them being Skyrim, but I'm done with that now... took an arrow in the knee if you know what I mean), but as soon as I have time to continue mapping, it will be with this project.
So, basically, Hes restin', Or, possibly, Pinin' for the fiords...
I was afraid this would happen, but I have once again started a project that would take too long to even become properly playable. The way I have it planned at the moment is a progressive story-like gameplay where you move further and further into the map. What might still save the project is turning it more towards sandbox gameplay, so that I could release the first playable version much sooner than what the current plan would allow, and get motivated by playing it with others.
What I mean by sandbox is that the map wouldn't have any straightforward goal, and the gameplay would be very random at times. If done well, it might even turn out more interesting than semi-linear progression. I should've gone for that from the beginning, so now I need a big overhaul to get back on the right track.
Edit: I just opened the editor. I have an idea... :3
Alright, so I continued mapping again and got a bit closer towards a playable map. There's one issue which makes designing quite difficult: I'm not sure how many structures I can allow the players to have up at one time. I'd need a 8 player stress test with resource cheats to figure that out, and I'd probably need to get lucky to get something like that organized.
Furthermore, even after I know the structure limit, I still need to figure out how to actually keep the players within that limit. I don't want to just block them from building structures when they reach it, but make the actual gameplay work so that it's difficult to get even close to that limit. What currently allows this is the fact that structures need to be repaired, and if there are a lot of structures, it'll take a lot of time to run around the whole base and keep their health up... but that's also rather annoying.
One possible solution is that at some point, the players will be required to start digging... deep. That'll decrease the amount of time they can spend repairing their base, so I could let them upgrade the base enough to keep the baddies at bay for long periods of time. There already is one gameplay element that is supposed to do this: Destroying zerg hatcheries will decrease the number of enemies that spawn (and it then continues increasing over time as usual), and getting to the hatcheries through the rocks takes time. I guess I'll try to balance the gameplay to work with the current features, and then start adding more interesting things in.
I've also implemented the Warp Cargo ability. It needs to be researched at the Research Lab first, and then crafted by each player. It allows you to warp your cargo directly to the Command Center once every 2 minutes (might change the cooldown). Its cost includes a bunch of Rare Elements, which is a new resource I added. It can be found with a very small chance from common rocks, but there are also some red mineral crystal fields around the map that give a bit more of them when mined.
The biggest thing that's still missing is structure upgrades, but it shouldn't take too long to get a couple of them done.
Or...you could increase the cost of the specific structure each time it is built depending on the structure. A power generator or a defense structure might increase by like 25-50% each time, while a structure that shouldn't be produced nearly as many times should increase in 100-200% in cost. That's the best way you can limit structures without actually saying you have this # limit. I'd go with that plan.
@yukaboy: Go
That seems unintuitive, and there's no way to modify ability tooltips on-the-fly, which prevents me from changing cost displays during the game (unless I'd make a separate tooltip for every possible variation of them). A downside of having an entirely trigger-based resource system...
There's no reason to make the structure limit look like a structure limit. It can just be the fact that there are too many enemy attacks going on to be able to maintain that many structures, which is how it's currently implemented. I just need to find a good balance for how much time the players need to spend repairing their structures.
Once I get some production upgrades done, it'll also be more cost-efficient to upgrade a structure instead of building another one.
Sorry for the unclear and confusing explanations, I haven't gotten much sleep during the past week. :P
@yukaboy: Go That seems unintuitive, and there's no way to modify ability tooltips on-the-fly, which prevents me from changing cost displays during the game (unless I'd make a separate tooltip for every possible variation of them). A downside of having an entirely trigger-based resource system...
There's no reason to make the structure limit look like a structure limit. It can just be the fact that there are too many enemy attacks going on to be able to maintain that many structures, which is how it's currently implemented. I just need to find a good balance for how much time the players need to spend repairing their structures.
Once I get some production upgrades done, it'll also be more cost-efficient to upgrade a structure instead of building another one.
Sorry for the unclear and confusing explanations, I haven't gotten much sleep during the past week. :P
Can you not use upgrades? Can you not use a tooltip reference? Does that update automatically?
I'm not sure what you mean. My resources are trigger variables, and I can't really upgrade those. Maybe if I'd store the values in some arbitrary data objects, like hidden units, and read and write them from those... but either way, I don't want to make the costs of structures change during the game. The whole idea is unintuitive, would just add confusion, and there wouldn't really be any explanation that'd make sense why a structure's cost would increase if there already was another structure of that type.
I just had a 1.5 hour test with 2 players and it seems it's more difficult to build *enough* structures than build too many of them, hehe. I think it will be just fine, just needs a lot of balance testing.
it may be a tall order but if you could get even a beta version of the map up by tomorrow night's map night then you would have a good amount of players able to actually test it and if your involved as well then the resource cheats you mentioned could be told in chat
i understand if you can't do this but it would probably be very helpful
Well, there's plenty of playable content already (about an hour if all goes well), but I haven't tested the map with more than 4 players ever, so jumping straight to 8 might be a bad experience... but it needs to be tested one way or another. If it looks bad, I might decrease the maximum to 6.
Today's progress report:
I've made a "blueflame throwers" upgrade for turrets, just couldn't get the actual model changed because the hellion's flamethrower just looks bad on the turret even when scaled to fit the area. The upgrade increases their damage by 50%, but needs to be first researched at the lab, and then upgraded individually for each turret.
Another ability I added is Repair Drones, which can be activated remotely every 1-2 min per player (depending on number of players). They rapidly heal a structure over 10 seconds, using the fire suppression bot model.
I made the "Power Relay" structures invulnerable because they were pretty useless otherwise, as they just kept dying if there was no turret nearby to protect it... and if there was, the turret could've been used as a relay just as well. All structures have a small area around them that is always passable, so it's not possible to block any routes with them.
I've also tweaked balance a lot, so hopefully the next playtest will be even more fun than the previous one (which was rather fun even though it was still very unbalanced).
try with 8, you will get more different playstyles and strategies than with 4 and if its 7 noobs + you then you also get an idea of how user friendly it is
I've made a "blueflame throwers" upgrade for turrets, just couldn't get the actual model changed because the hellion's flamethrower just looks bad on the turret even when scaled to fit the area. The upgrade increases their damage by 50%, but needs to be first researched at the lab, and then upgraded individually for each turret.
Can you tint the normal flames? Or does that look really bad?
I made the "Power Relay" structures invulnerable because they were pretty useless otherwise, as they just kept dying if there was no turret nearby to protect it... and if there was, the turret could've been used as a relay just as well. All structures have a small area around them that is always passable, so it's not possible to block any routes with them.
Don't they have far longer connection range than turrets?
Also, you could make power transfers one-way when powering turrets & similar.
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Yeah, it's created dynamically when attaching a cable. It's actually quite simple if you think about it. ;)
I also use different variations of the cable model for different length ranges so that I don't need to change the scale too much.
I knew the scale part, after all, how else would you have that *wonky* angle for the flamer's cable?
THIS IS SO AWESOME!! Shame that the game won't be published on the SEA server :( .
Is it dead or alive ? Would be awesome to know, coz this concept looked great.
It hasn't been that long since I even started the project (about two months). I've been busy for a month or so with other things (one of them being Skyrim, but I'm done with that now... took an arrow in the knee if you know what I mean), but as soon as I have time to continue mapping, it will be with this project.
Great.
Thanks for info.
is this still being worked on? it looked awesome
So, basically, Hes restin', Or, possibly, Pinin' for the fiords...
I was afraid this would happen, but I have once again started a project that would take too long to even become properly playable. The way I have it planned at the moment is a progressive story-like gameplay where you move further and further into the map. What might still save the project is turning it more towards sandbox gameplay, so that I could release the first playable version much sooner than what the current plan would allow, and get motivated by playing it with others.
What I mean by sandbox is that the map wouldn't have any straightforward goal, and the gameplay would be very random at times. If done well, it might even turn out more interesting than semi-linear progression. I should've gone for that from the beginning, so now I need a big overhaul to get back on the right track.
Edit: I just opened the editor. I have an idea... :3
Alright, so I continued mapping again and got a bit closer towards a playable map. There's one issue which makes designing quite difficult: I'm not sure how many structures I can allow the players to have up at one time. I'd need a 8 player stress test with resource cheats to figure that out, and I'd probably need to get lucky to get something like that organized.
Furthermore, even after I know the structure limit, I still need to figure out how to actually keep the players within that limit. I don't want to just block them from building structures when they reach it, but make the actual gameplay work so that it's difficult to get even close to that limit. What currently allows this is the fact that structures need to be repaired, and if there are a lot of structures, it'll take a lot of time to run around the whole base and keep their health up... but that's also rather annoying.
One possible solution is that at some point, the players will be required to start digging... deep. That'll decrease the amount of time they can spend repairing their base, so I could let them upgrade the base enough to keep the baddies at bay for long periods of time. There already is one gameplay element that is supposed to do this: Destroying zerg hatcheries will decrease the number of enemies that spawn (and it then continues increasing over time as usual), and getting to the hatcheries through the rocks takes time. I guess I'll try to balance the gameplay to work with the current features, and then start adding more interesting things in.
I've also implemented the Warp Cargo ability. It needs to be researched at the Research Lab first, and then crafted by each player. It allows you to warp your cargo directly to the Command Center once every 2 minutes (might change the cooldown). Its cost includes a bunch of Rare Elements, which is a new resource I added. It can be found with a very small chance from common rocks, but there are also some red mineral crystal fields around the map that give a bit more of them when mined.
The biggest thing that's still missing is structure upgrades, but it shouldn't take too long to get a couple of them done.
@A1win: Go
Or...you could increase the cost of the specific structure each time it is built depending on the structure. A power generator or a defense structure might increase by like 25-50% each time, while a structure that shouldn't be produced nearly as many times should increase in 100-200% in cost. That's the best way you can limit structures without actually saying you have this # limit. I'd go with that plan.
@yukaboy: Go That seems unintuitive, and there's no way to modify ability tooltips on-the-fly, which prevents me from changing cost displays during the game (unless I'd make a separate tooltip for every possible variation of them). A downside of having an entirely trigger-based resource system...
There's no reason to make the structure limit look like a structure limit. It can just be the fact that there are too many enemy attacks going on to be able to maintain that many structures, which is how it's currently implemented. I just need to find a good balance for how much time the players need to spend repairing their structures.
Once I get some production upgrades done, it'll also be more cost-efficient to upgrade a structure instead of building another one.
Sorry for the unclear and confusing explanations, I haven't gotten much sleep during the past week. :P
Can you not use upgrades? Can you not use a tooltip reference? Does that update automatically?
I'm not sure what you mean. My resources are trigger variables, and I can't really upgrade those. Maybe if I'd store the values in some arbitrary data objects, like hidden units, and read and write them from those... but either way, I don't want to make the costs of structures change during the game. The whole idea is unintuitive, would just add confusion, and there wouldn't really be any explanation that'd make sense why a structure's cost would increase if there already was another structure of that type.
@A1win: Go
Ah, I see. I didnt realize that resources were triggered totally.
And yea, ofc its silly to make buildings cost more each time. It is just hard to find a way to limit this.
I just had a 1.5 hour test with 2 players and it seems it's more difficult to build *enough* structures than build too many of them, hehe. I think it will be just fine, just needs a lot of balance testing.
it may be a tall order but if you could get even a beta version of the map up by tomorrow night's map night then you would have a good amount of players able to actually test it and if your involved as well then the resource cheats you mentioned could be told in chat
i understand if you can't do this but it would probably be very helpful
Well, there's plenty of playable content already (about an hour if all goes well), but I haven't tested the map with more than 4 players ever, so jumping straight to 8 might be a bad experience... but it needs to be tested one way or another. If it looks bad, I might decrease the maximum to 6.
Today's progress report:
I've made a "blueflame throwers" upgrade for turrets, just couldn't get the actual model changed because the hellion's flamethrower just looks bad on the turret even when scaled to fit the area. The upgrade increases their damage by 50%, but needs to be first researched at the lab, and then upgraded individually for each turret.
Another ability I added is Repair Drones, which can be activated remotely every 1-2 min per player (depending on number of players). They rapidly heal a structure over 10 seconds, using the fire suppression bot model.
I made the "Power Relay" structures invulnerable because they were pretty useless otherwise, as they just kept dying if there was no turret nearby to protect it... and if there was, the turret could've been used as a relay just as well. All structures have a small area around them that is always passable, so it's not possible to block any routes with them.
I've also tweaked balance a lot, so hopefully the next playtest will be even more fun than the previous one (which was rather fun even though it was still very unbalanced).
@A1win: Go
try with 8, you will get more different playstyles and strategies than with 4 and if its 7 noobs + you then you also get an idea of how user friendly it is
Can you tint the normal flames? Or does that look really bad?
Don't they have far longer connection range than turrets? Also, you could make power transfers one-way when powering turrets & similar.