O.o He'd tell me to scrap everything and start over!
The triggers are a bit messy, and I know that they could be optimized more. But this is technically my first map, right? ;) I can make 1 periodic trigger than runs the other ones with the same period duration. Don't know if that would help, but it might :D
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Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
lol. Right before I saw you post that, I was looking through the sound files for stuff like that. That I could make NPC's yell at you. But there aren't any :(
I always love how in brotherhood, the people you try to blend in with don't notice at all. Imagine your hanging out with your 3 friends, and this assassin just walks up next to you and starts talking... and then the guards don't notice the guy with the swords and crossbows attached to his back, because he's standing next to a monk...just...lol
edit- I think I got it. I can do the chase feature via data instead of triggers. Run a periodic behavior that looks for units with the sprint behavior on them.
annnnd now my editor crashed and I lost my cool data work. great. :(
Just finished the chase system. I'm glad that's in there; I was afraid it wouldn't work ;)
Now, if you run towards your target too quickly, they will become aware of you. When this "awareness" bar is full, a chase starts. Basically, this means that both players get an alert telling them they are in a chase, and the chasing player gets a bug ugly "THIS GUY WANTS TO KILLZ U" over his head. If the victim player is not killed within 15 seconds, he gets away and the chasing player gets a different target. If the chasing player manages to kill the target during the chase, he is awarded some points. But still less than normal. So it's much better to avoid running when your target is nearby.
I'll try to get another dev diary up that shows the new features. Maybe I can get somebody to do a trailer since I'm stuck with windows movie maker :(
I'm hoping to do a closed beta in a few hours. If your in the US and your interested (and you did not already receive an invitation message) then send me a PM.
Big thanks to all the testers, I really appreciate it. I've got a big bucket of bugs I need to squash, features that need to be added, and lag that needs to be eliminated. Hopefully I can get a patch up by Monday.
Plans for Patch 1.3
Several bugs were found and will be squashed
Lag will hopefully be improved via a trigger cleanup and some camera settings (and less people with terrible lag...You know who you are ;) ). I will be moving some trigger actions over to data, hopefully to reduce lag.
Replay feature, so you don't have to re-start the map
Bigger penalty for incorrect kills
Removing the "press any key to continue" because I never want to wait 20 minutes in a load screen again.
After all basic gameplay elements are done terrain is a must, things like town center, park, maybe market, I got fear that without immersive city this map won't be good enough.
Second, I would like to know how much are you attached to idea of having models of all units roaming around the city? Maybe it would be much more immersive to have only terran characters? Could throw in some protoss too (and add protoss district) but I don't think that zerg have a place in any civilized city. You could still use them for random events as hostile monsters. Also, as you earlier mentioned: scripted events! Make a lot of them (example: meteor crashed in the middle of the city and there were some zerg on it! Or armored convoy being attacked by robbers.) Maybe player could resolve some of citys troubles for additional points (it would be interesting to get assassinated while fending off zerg infestation). Just something to make every game different.
Also, better dialogs xD.. As you guessed I'm more of aesthetics guy :P
Though, I admit, basic functions come first. Alright, enough of this, this is just a beta so I should stop nitpicking. But you now know what I would like to see this grow into. xD
By the way, can't really comment on abilities, what do testers think about them?
I run all the other maps fine... and plenty of people have worse computers then me, so if I can't run it you have a problem.
@DuckyTheDuck: Go
I think the game feels pretty good, I don't think events are necessary and I think having zerg is fine. The main problem is that everyone kills every player they see, rather then only kill their target, (at least that's what I did, because half the time they would try to kill me, and they can't kill me if the're dead!)
Well if you do keep zerg and protoss don't just randomly mix them up. Segregating them isn't the right way to go either. That would make a terran assassin seem out of place generally if all protoss units were in one area. Mix it up but right now it's just chaos. Needs more flow to it, you know.
On the other hand, random events might be a hindrance to gameplay. It depends on where zelda will take this. Either way, whatever becomes of this, it would be nice to see a living breathing city engulf players.
I do have "districts". But, to avoid the exact problem you described (the one Terran guy would seem out of place in the Protoss district) all player units can move freely between them. Again, the terrain is very basic right now. But I havve the main city, which is Terran. North of the city, the Zerg are infesting colonies and pushing closer to the city. That area is still blocked off right now, but once it's playable I will open that. To the east of the city, there's the ruins of a xelnaga temple. I do plan on having events like you said. But I feel that making the basics are more important right now (like making the game actually playable & fun). I just need to fix the lag :)
@grenegg: Go
I am aware of that ;) I'm going to take a look at the triggers and try to convert some stuff over to data & clean up some triggers. Hopefully that will help. I ran the map with 1 other person and there was no lag at all. I'm hoping that somebody just had a bad connection, which made the lag much worse. Anyways... I'll be working on it. It's the constant need to update the compass, ability cooldowns, and order the civilians around.
Maybe I can just the civilians a wander ability. That would remove like 50% of the trigger lag...lol Then I can just control the groups with triggers, instead of all of them. Running the trigger debugger has revealed that about half of the triggers being run is the one that orders civilians around. This would probably help a lot, just on its own.
edit- Did that, but I need a way to make a minimum distance. I set the distance to like 100, but I think that's MAX distance. These civilians just take 3 steps and then take a coffee break...lol
I'll try to do another closed beta test once I fix these...see how badly the map lags then. So again, if anybody is interested (that has not already been invited) then let me know.
Patch 1.3 Is done, hopefully I can get another test done soon-ish
Fixed a bug that took points from the victim of a chase if he died
Civilian movement transfered to data; lag should be reduced as a result
Fixed a bug where the text shown during a chase never went away
Fixed a bug that allowed a chase to continue if you kill the wrong target
Fixed a bug that allowed players to highlight units and see if they were owned by a player
Replay Feature Added [May not work 100% yet]
Having some issues with the movement being in data. It's much less realistic. I'll work on it though... :( Also added an ability called "group morph".
Do you even need a 3rd person view? Just wondering but couldn't you do this in a normal rts view? It's be a little more micro heavy but lag would be less from wsad
I tried that but.... How does one sneak up on you if you can see everything a mile around you? It's not the WASD that causes the lag. It's the trigger that updates the compass & orders the civilian around. I got rid of the civilians and moved them to data, but now they act stupid O.o
Closed Beta #2
I will be setting up some debug triggers to test which triggers of the map are laggy and which are not. If you are interested in testing and you are on the US server (but you did not already get an invitation PM), send me a PM.
make a camera that is a top-down view, and make it follow the player's unit. then make sure the unit is always at the bottom of the screen and the camera turns to always match the facing angle of the unit. that way the player would be unable to see 'behind' his unit. could be a bit sick inducing though depending on the turn speed lol
make the camera any view you want and follow or not, but add an invisible 'cone' that comes out from the units facing angle. anything in the cone becomes visible to the player, anything out of it, invisible to the player, you could even add 'Peripheral vision' by creating larger cones with transparency levels
I'm gunna try to hang on to 3rd person WASD for now. I don't think that's causing the lag.
Some improvements are being made for lag right now. In addition to some other bug fixing goodness. First of all, I was running a WASD script constantly to handle movement for all 15 players, when 10 is the max number of players =/ So now it only runs for actual players. And I will probably end up capping the players at 7, instead of 10 as originally planned. Both for lag and gameplay reasons. So overall that's half of the triggers getting run before. Should help a lot. Also added an ability that morphs civilians around you to have the same model as you. Good for blending in or revealing opponents.
Also, here's a picture so generously made my grenegg: (Thought I'd share it due to lack of real screenshots)
Alright, If I cant fix this lag soon this project is going in my trash can. >.< Everything else is working well. I think the lag is coming from the compass triggers. I could get rid of the compass and replace it with some other way to find your target. So it won't lag. Dunno.
Ideas? I'm trying to think of a way I can emulate compass behavior but without any periodic triggers. I was thinking about making the compass a unit that points to the target, but that would still require periodic triggers. >.<
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Feel free to Send me a PM if you have any questions/concerns!
@zeldarules28: Go
Can you describe your compass system?
If you aren't doing horrible things, it shouldn't lag. Make sure you disable the debug window because that can lag like hell.
That runs each second, for each player in the game. It's not too big of a deal, but people have told me that all the lag spikes tend to be the same time the compass image changes. It's not from the image, because I preload all the images at the start of the map. The WASD script can't be causing the lag, because it's the same one bounty uses and his map does not lag at all (we played it with the same testers I used). The civilian movement is not a big deal, either. It just orders a civilian to move somewhere else (and leaves 7 waypoints after that) when a civilian becomes idle. I'm preety sure its the compass. While running the debug tool, the only triggers that appear to repeat themselves every few seconds are the compass, civilian orders, and one other trigger that lowers the cooldowns on your abilities each second.
Does it lagg single player? If it does. Just disable one trigger at a time and seen if it laggs. I bet the wasd is also part of the lagg since if you add lagg + lagg = more lagg...
I have no idea if that trigger would cause the lagg, but maybe you could try to use unit facing angle as the angle to set the compass.
When I was working with start drivers and yaw, and pitch angles. The FPS view caused huge lagg...with TPS it was much less (dunno if this is for mouse rotation control only).
-You should save the state of the compass and only change the pictures, if it needs to be changed.
-I'm not sure, but the distance should be the direct distance (no pathing), correct? If it's the pathing distance, it costs a lot more calculation time.
-With the trigger debugger's execution times, you should get an impression where the lag is coming from (average time and total time).
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@Keyeszx: Go
O.o He'd tell me to scrap everything and start over!
The triggers are a bit messy, and I know that they could be optimized more. But this is technically my first map, right? ;) I can make 1 periodic trigger than runs the other ones with the same period duration. Don't know if that would help, but it might :D
Since this map is based on Assassin's Creed, is there going to be NPCs that yell "INFIDEL DIE" and "ASSASSINO!" every three seconds? =P
@Mozared: Go
lol. Right before I saw you post that, I was looking through the sound files for stuff like that. That I could make NPC's yell at you. But there aren't any :(
I always love how in brotherhood, the people you try to blend in with don't notice at all. Imagine your hanging out with your 3 friends, and this assassin just walks up next to you and starts talking... and then the guards don't notice the guy with the swords and crossbows attached to his back, because he's standing next to a monk...just...lol
edit- I think I got it. I can do the chase feature via data instead of triggers. Run a periodic behavior that looks for units with the sprint behavior on them.
annnnd now my editor crashed and I lost my cool data work. great. :(
Just finished the chase system. I'm glad that's in there; I was afraid it wouldn't work ;)
Now, if you run towards your target too quickly, they will become aware of you. When this "awareness" bar is full, a chase starts. Basically, this means that both players get an alert telling them they are in a chase, and the chasing player gets a bug ugly "THIS GUY WANTS TO KILLZ U" over his head. If the victim player is not killed within 15 seconds, he gets away and the chasing player gets a different target. If the chasing player manages to kill the target during the chase, he is awarded some points. But still less than normal. So it's much better to avoid running when your target is nearby.
I'll try to get another dev diary up that shows the new features. Maybe I can get somebody to do a trailer since I'm stuck with windows movie maker :(
Today's progress [July 15th]:
Today's progress [July 14th]:
Closed Beta Starting
I'm hoping to do a closed beta in a few hours. If your in the US and your interested (and you did not already receive an invitation message) then send me a PM.
Dev Diary #2
Beta Invites Closed
Results were very.....informative. ;)
Big thanks to all the testers, I really appreciate it. I've got a big bucket of bugs I need to squash, features that need to be added, and lag that needs to be eliminated. Hopefully I can get a patch up by Monday.
Plans for Patch 1.3
After all basic gameplay elements are done terrain is a must, things like town center, park, maybe market, I got fear that without immersive city this map won't be good enough.
Second, I would like to know how much are you attached to idea of having models of all units roaming around the city? Maybe it would be much more immersive to have only terran characters? Could throw in some protoss too (and add protoss district) but I don't think that zerg have a place in any civilized city. You could still use them for random events as hostile monsters. Also, as you earlier mentioned: scripted events! Make a lot of them (example: meteor crashed in the middle of the city and there were some zerg on it! Or armored convoy being attacked by robbers.) Maybe player could resolve some of citys troubles for additional points (it would be interesting to get assassinated while fending off zerg infestation). Just something to make every game different.
Also, better dialogs xD.. As you guessed I'm more of aesthetics guy :P
Though, I admit, basic functions come first. Alright, enough of this, this is just a beta so I should stop nitpicking. But you now know what I would like to see this grow into. xD
By the way, can't really comment on abilities, what do testers think about them?
I run all the other maps fine... and plenty of people have worse computers then me, so if I can't run it you have a problem.
@DuckyTheDuck: Go I think the game feels pretty good, I don't think events are necessary and I think having zerg is fine. The main problem is that everyone kills every player they see, rather then only kill their target, (at least that's what I did, because half the time they would try to kill me, and they can't kill me if the're dead!)
Well if you do keep zerg and protoss don't just randomly mix them up. Segregating them isn't the right way to go either. That would make a terran assassin seem out of place generally if all protoss units were in one area. Mix it up but right now it's just chaos. Needs more flow to it, you know.
@grenegg: Go
I couldn't kill you because of the lag :P
On the other hand, random events might be a hindrance to gameplay. It depends on where zelda will take this. Either way, whatever becomes of this, it would be nice to see a living breathing city engulf players.
@DuckyTheDuck: Go
I do have "districts". But, to avoid the exact problem you described (the one Terran guy would seem out of place in the Protoss district) all player units can move freely between them. Again, the terrain is very basic right now. But I havve the main city, which is Terran. North of the city, the Zerg are infesting colonies and pushing closer to the city. That area is still blocked off right now, but once it's playable I will open that. To the east of the city, there's the ruins of a xelnaga temple. I do plan on having events like you said. But I feel that making the basics are more important right now (like making the game actually playable & fun). I just need to fix the lag :)
@grenegg: Go I am aware of that ;) I'm going to take a look at the triggers and try to convert some stuff over to data & clean up some triggers. Hopefully that will help. I ran the map with 1 other person and there was no lag at all. I'm hoping that somebody just had a bad connection, which made the lag much worse. Anyways... I'll be working on it. It's the constant need to update the compass, ability cooldowns, and order the civilians around.
Maybe I can just the civilians a wander ability. That would remove like 50% of the trigger lag...lol Then I can just control the groups with triggers, instead of all of them. Running the trigger debugger has revealed that about half of the triggers being run is the one that orders civilians around. This would probably help a lot, just on its own.
edit- Did that, but I need a way to make a minimum distance. I set the distance to like 100, but I think that's MAX distance. These civilians just take 3 steps and then take a coffee break...lol
I'll try to do another closed beta test once I fix these...see how badly the map lags then. So again, if anybody is interested (that has not already been invited) then let me know.
Patch 1.3 Is done, hopefully I can get another test done soon-ish
Having some issues with the movement being in data. It's much less realistic. I'll work on it though... :( Also added an ability called "group morph".
Do you even need a 3rd person view? Just wondering but couldn't you do this in a normal rts view? It's be a little more micro heavy but lag would be less from wsad
@Keyeszx: Go
I tried that but.... How does one sneak up on you if you can see everything a mile around you? It's not the WASD that causes the lag. It's the trigger that updates the compass & orders the civilian around. I got rid of the civilians and moved them to data, but now they act stupid O.o
Closed Beta #2
I will be setting up some debug triggers to test which triggers of the map are laggy and which are not. If you are interested in testing and you are on the US server (but you did not already get an invitation PM), send me a PM.
here's a couple of ideas for non-wads for you:
hope that helps =)
@xil_theMINISTER: Go
I'm gunna try to hang on to 3rd person WASD for now. I don't think that's causing the lag.
Some improvements are being made for lag right now. In addition to some other bug fixing goodness. First of all, I was running a WASD script constantly to handle movement for all 15 players, when 10 is the max number of players =/ So now it only runs for actual players. And I will probably end up capping the players at 7, instead of 10 as originally planned. Both for lag and gameplay reasons. So overall that's half of the triggers getting run before. Should help a lot. Also added an ability that morphs civilians around you to have the same model as you. Good for blending in or revealing opponents.
Also, here's a picture so generously made my grenegg: (Thought I'd share it due to lack of real screenshots)
@zeldarules28: Go
Alright, If I cant fix this lag soon this project is going in my trash can. >.< Everything else is working well. I think the lag is coming from the compass triggers. I could get rid of the compass and replace it with some other way to find your target. So it won't lag. Dunno.
Ideas? I'm trying to think of a way I can emulate compass behavior but without any periodic triggers. I was thinking about making the compass a unit that points to the target, but that would still require periodic triggers. >.<
@zeldarules28: Go Can you describe your compass system? If you aren't doing horrible things, it shouldn't lag. Make sure you disable the debug window because that can lag like hell.
@Ahli634: Go
Basically, something like this runs. I've summarized it a bit, but this is preety much what gets run.
That runs each second, for each player in the game. It's not too big of a deal, but people have told me that all the lag spikes tend to be the same time the compass image changes. It's not from the image, because I preload all the images at the start of the map. The WASD script can't be causing the lag, because it's the same one bounty uses and his map does not lag at all (we played it with the same testers I used). The civilian movement is not a big deal, either. It just orders a civilian to move somewhere else (and leaves 7 waypoints after that) when a civilian becomes idle. I'm preety sure its the compass. While running the debug tool, the only triggers that appear to repeat themselves every few seconds are the compass, civilian orders, and one other trigger that lowers the cooldowns on your abilities each second.
Does it lagg single player? If it does. Just disable one trigger at a time and seen if it laggs. I bet the wasd is also part of the lagg since if you add lagg + lagg = more lagg...
I have no idea if that trigger would cause the lagg, but maybe you could try to use unit facing angle as the angle to set the compass.
When I was working with start drivers and yaw, and pitch angles. The FPS view caused huge lagg...with TPS it was much less (dunno if this is for mouse rotation control only).
Im not sure if I made any sense, but GL
-You should save the state of the compass and only change the pictures, if it needs to be changed. -I'm not sure, but the distance should be the direct distance (no pathing), correct? If it's the pathing distance, it costs a lot more calculation time. -With the trigger debugger's execution times, you should get an impression where the lag is coming from (average time and total time).