Hey :) Yea, I understand now what you mean now, but I don't think that will be viable - Stats get larger with levels, base power of moves doesn't (Well, it does a bit, low level starmon don't immediately get access to the most powerful moves, but somewhere between levels 20-40, in addition to TMs the decently powered moves start being learned and it doesn't get much higher (More powerful moves that get learned later on have drawbacks that make the previous moves better, like Hyper Beam and Solar Beam taking up two turns), which means multiplication would end up catastrophic. Early levels you could get powers of 20-80 or so, but then later on when stuff gets stats going past 100 you'll practically be firing hundreds of hyperbeams in one go :p
Also, the bottom number is always 1 or gotten how? Because if its constant, we can just skip the fractions part and straight up multiply defense by that number. Sorry if I'm being dumb again, been tired the entire day >.>
But back to the multiplication point: Division is what's needed if you want to compare stats in any way. There are already moves that compare for example the speed of both starmon, and depending on the % difference a set amount of power is chosen, something similar could easily be done for defense stats. Or altering the damage calculation formula to use different stats (There's already an attack that use Special Attack as the offensive stat, but regular Defense as the defensive stat for example.)
Another issue: How am I going to clearly explain it to the player? Having cool and interesting formulas is nice and all, but apart from Zelda and me no one is going to see them (Unless we post them publicly somewhere), and I don't have enough tooltip space to explain how math works to players.
Let's take the move where speeds are compared for example, its a super simple calculation, which makes it easy to explain in the tooltip: "The faster the user is than the target, the greater the damage." (That's the actual tooltip, or at least the part of it concerning power/damage)
For outfits:
I want people to be able to freely switch between many outfits. How I'm gonna do that I'm still figuring out, but I don't mean that I don't know how, but that I don't know what method I want to pick - It'll definitely work. Right now trainers are by default wearing a fancy tuxedo, but we also have some more traveller/hiker/ranger looking outfits as well as a thief. I'm gonna add more, I just have to get around to actually doing it. Creating an outfit unlocked by beating the game shouldn't be too hard I think.
For NPCs levelling as they beat your starmon:
As I said, it takes quite a good chunk of XP for a starmon to level. It seems fast for you because you can do multiple battles in a row. But if you're only going to see a trainer a single time, you're most likely going to have to sacrifice your entire party to get the trainer to have his starmon level up, which may be somewhat hard to do without actually knocking out the enemy starmon. And even if you manage it, you're most likely screwed already anyway and it won't matter. Yea, it's a cool addition, but it would take a good chunk of time to implement and would be used so damn rarely I just really don't think it's worth the trouble. If I could just flip a switch and it'd magically work immediately, I'd do it, but unfortunately that won't happen :( NPC Starmon are set up a different way, they use different variables to store their stats, etc. EXP isn't something that's stored for them because it wasn't necessary, therefore EXP calculation is not run when an AI starmon knocks out a player starmon, which means the EXP calculation/reward system itself doesn't currently have any way of handling AI starmon, and neither does the levelup system, which means the move learning system doesn't either, and the list goes on. Zelda would have to run through a lot of old functions just to add the EXP gain for AIs which will not be noticed about 99,99% of the time. It's just not worth the time.
If you meant NPCs keeping up with your team in levels, but not levelling directly in battle, that's already in. Trainer levels are calculated based on your parties average level and clamped between two values based on the zone and possibly some other things (So zone X won't go higher than level Y, but Y will always be pretty high (First zone is by default levels 3-6 for wilds. Trainers will be able to scale up to level 20 or so, if not higher, as your own party reaches those levels). Trainers are completely randomized: We've got some preset lists of starmon they can have, the chances for them and such things, and even three tiers of lists for them, which list the starmon are taken from is dependent on the trainer level. The trainers themselves also don't always spawn in the first place, and not always in the same amounts. The forest can have between 4 and 7 trainers I think atm and will have about 15-20 possible spawn locations.
TL;DR: You'll never have a problem finding a trainer whose levels match that of your party, and if your starmon are high enough levels that it actually does become a problem, the arena will still be able to give some fairly randomized trainers to fight for all levels, and who knows what else we'll add.
An issue with trainers advancing as you play through the game is that vast majority of trainers are 100% random.
Making recurring preset trainers is a good idea. Already planned this for the Rival, and you'll have a rematch with all the milestone trainers near the end of the arena ladder (Where they use their actual high level team instead of their low level teams - It never made sense that Gym trainers had such weak pokemon, so here there's an explanation: They're milestone trainers, they're a sort of checkpoint you have to pass to be able to advance further in the arena, some sort of "quality control". They maintain low level teams for milestone challenges, while still having a powerful team with which they keep their actual arena rank)
We can surely have additional trainers relevant to the story progress over time. We could make one or more of the practically irrelevant Cipher grunts an actual preset trainer that has a party that keeps progressing (And his lines would indicate that he remembers you. But being just one of the many random guys you have to fight your way through, chances are you won't remember him, so it'd be a sort of easter egg :p ) It shouldn't really be that hard to add, we just have to keep in mind our recurring trainers.
For trainers levelling in battle: I don't think it's necessary, and more importantly, not worth the time: You need to lose quite a few high level starmon to actually give the enemy enough XP to level up... This happening would be so rare, we might as well just roll a number from 1-100 every time your starmon faints and have the enemy level up if it rolls a 100 (And no, I don't think we're gonna do this either...)
As for the moves, I'm not so sure about them. first of all I already made pretty much all moves we need and am not actively working on them anymore (Recently added a Dark Special Lifesteal move cause I felt like it, that's pretty much it since baton pass). The calculations may be messy to add into triggers, would need Zelda's input into this, but it might not be easy to explain (Tbh, I think I missed something in your explanation, 20/1 is for all practical purposes just 20, changing it to a fraction doesn't really change much. Did you want to divide defense by defense or what? In that case it could be more easily explained as a move that uses the Defense stat instead of Attack. Srry, I might just have missed something entirely. Slept little the last two days cause I'm busy moving so I'm kinda tired...)
We haven't posted in a while, mostly because we barely did anything.
But that has changed ;) Lots of progress! Not done yet though, and Zelda doesn't wanna reveal it til he's completely done with it (Or at least has come far enough to make him sure he won't scrap it due to not working). It seems to have reached that point, but he isn't online at the moment so I can't ask him :(
But there will be a new video soon. Two if Zelda's thing is presentable.
But Maity, does that mean that the first video is something completely different from Zelda's thing?
I think its about time I said something in this discussion :p Sorry, I've had a really lazy week >.>
I'll try not to go into too much detail because its pretty late and I wanna head off to bed, and writing huge posts takes time...
200% Health: Yes, this might not fix the problem completely, but I'm sure it'll fix it partially and make bruisers/tanks more valuable. Tanks getting a huge buff might be an issue, if that buff is too huge. But here's the thing: Energy! Glass cannons don't have to worry about it - Their job is to do it quickly. They won't run out, because if they do, they've been doing their job wrong. Tanks on the other hand... All I have to do is identify the most used moves by that class of starmon and up the energy costs, and BAM I've got them in a spot where they aren't the best class anymore. Throw in ghosts with energy manipulation moves and shit's gonna hit the fan for tanks.
Another possible nerf to tanks could be a buff to damage over time: Those are also % health based, which means they do more damage than in the original games. Upping the % damage will make burn and poison moves even more dangerous against tanks. If that isn't enough, we can have poison function similary to ignite in league of legends: In addition to being a good damage over time source, it would also halve healing, making it a good counter to sustain tanks (Synthesis/Ingrain/Giga Drain or other lifesteal movesets)
So yeah, I agree that messing with the health formula may upset the delicate balance the pokemon games already had, but together with the energy system I think we're able to create a more varied and balanced metagame. And there's only about 170 moves currently in Starmon, I'll expand on those as necessary, add moves that will shake up dominant strategies and so on. I agree completely that the map may be severely unbalanced at the start, but it'll need testing and it will be fixed - We can just move the bonus health % to a better point, even if its just barely enough to prevent starmon from 1HKO'ing glass cannons. The important part is that balance is possible, but achieving it will be a challenge :)
Multibattles:
I want 2v2s in the game, Zelda does too. It just takes time, a lot of it. The entire combat system is currently structured around 1v1. Zelda has kept in mind 2v2s though and he can probably reuse large amounts of code, making things a bit easier. Still, planning out the entire trigger architecture and so on is an issue, and I will have to do some minor modifications to moves that hit multiple targets (Visuals...). We'll work on that when we can. Who knows, we might have it useable by release, we might not. (Considering just how many missions/quests/random events we want to add, release may actually be far away enough that 2v2s will be included)
But there won't be 3v3s. I think that's the point where things just get too messy, and chances are 3v3s will have a completely different metagame than 1v1s and 2v2s (Which will surely have differences as well) due to focus firing becoming even more effective - I'm guessing it'll be a game of either who has the most AoE, most glass cannons or most tanks/bruisers, and that everything else will be ignored. Balancing both 2v2s and 1v1s while making as little as possible changes to moves between the two will already be an issue, but I think 3v3s will just end up too different to be able to balance all three match types.
Match types that are based on 1v1s and 2v2s but with specific rule sets may be an option though (Like, for example, no swapouts whatsoever, shared health between all starmon, shared energy, swapouts being forced into party order, forced swapout after each turn, each player gets to pick one of the opposing starmon and they are swapped between the players, any combination of these, etc.), but Zelda is the one who knows how much of an issue that would be so it's up to him. If we do something like that, it'd probably be low priority.
Also, about the alpha test: With me being lazy, and Zelda's school preparing for hell month (exams), I don't think we'll get anything out anytime soon. We need more terrain from Mozared, we need me to get off my lazy ass, and Zelda has some bugs to fix (And probably a whole lot more once we do a private test to see whether multiplayer works at all) in addition to anything new I may need him to make and any quests we want to have.
Just to avoid going too off-topic I believe sc2 melee and plenty of other RTSs are broken. IMHO no strategy game deserves that title (strategy) if you can programme an AI to win under all (but fair) circumstances. Since there's no limit on reactions or multi-tasking, and computers always beat humans at this at their best, where's the strategy? It's far easier to win by mechanical aggression on the keyboard. Why should players be punished for trying to be more smart and clever? You guys are making a strategy game right? :P.
A large amount of strategy in some game types like TCGs and pokemon games comes before you actually even have an opponent. We can, and probably will, program an AI to play the most effective way possible (Not really that hard to program, as opposed to an RTS AI), but that AI will still be limited to a specific set of 6 starmon with four moves each. If the set is too generalized, some more specialized setups can probably easily overpower it. If its a specialized set up, its very likely strong against another specialized setup but also weak against some. Same thing goes for players - The strategy is not only in how you handle the battle, but how you prepare for it. A player having a team full offensive starmon might end up getting screwed over by a tank that uses reflect/light screen + 6x Calm Mind/Bulk Up and then Baton Passes out to a fast offensive starmon and proceeds to oneshot the entire glass-cannon team. A player focusing more on holding out and playing defensively will get screwed over if the enemy has Toxic (or any other %health based DoTs, which is almost all of them) and can play just as defensively. A stat-mod spammer gets screwed over by the move that swaps all stat stages between the two active starmon. Some people will want to take the big risk of having a very specialized team that might absolutely get wrecked by another strategy, while others will try and minimize their weaknesses at the cost of losing a specific strength (Like throwing out your ghost starmon that is really good at messing with your opponents energy and statuses for a psychic starmon that still has the great offensive stats but can also learn some defensive moves)
That said, I will try to keep a good amount of more "advanced" moves that have less straightforward uses (Like Baton Pass - Most players will probably ignore it, some will see it's actually really useful and use it. Same goes for most other status moves - People will instinctively just want the hardest hitting thing they can get without thinking about how effective it really is compared to moves that don't deal direct damage), and if a certain strategy becomes dominant, I'll either nerf it (If it really is too strong), or there most likely will already be a good counter to it and I'll just have to make people aware of it and get them to use it.
Also, the fact that complicated strategies can exist doesn't mean simple ones can't. There honestly probably will be a lot more simple ones than complicated ones, like for example just simply having a set of 6 starmon, one of which is always going to be strong against a certain type, without paying too much attention to synergy between moves and such things. It won't be a flawless strategy, but it will probably be the starting point for all strategies - People will deviate from a standard, safe setup to something more specific that they prefer. If a player doesn't like getting poisoned, he'll add a steel or poison starmon to his lineup (They're immune to poison) or get some other form of immunity/curing. Others will start number crunching instead of going by personal preference and try to discover powerful strategies instead of "comfortable" ones. I want to make sure there's options for both kinds of people.
As for concentrate: You're trading one turn of time on your way to max out your attack stat for the fact that you don't get to keep that buff. If it is effective, it will probably be because it is overpowered and will plain simply deal too much damage too fast, giving your opponent less time for counter play, and what I think is the more likely scenario: It will be useless and, more importantly, a noob trap. It all comes down to "Is this effective?", and you're trading three turns for something that's not permanent, so to be effective it has to be incredibly powerful, which would pretty much mean it has to be straight up OP to be effective at all. If it isn't worth trading that one turn for having the buff be permanent, but the move exists, it's a noob trap - People will think "Oh, it's good", but it isn't - It should not exist at all in that case.
And, probably the biggest flaw - Whether strong or weak, I can't fix it. It's mechanic is that its buff gets stronger with consecutive uses, but the buff is capped (and that cap can't be removed). If I make it take longer to reach the cap, it becomes useless as it just simply ends up matching the speed or being slower than other moves. if it's too weak... Well, nothing I can really do at all. The only way to make it faster is to make it one turn, which kind of completely removes its core mechanic.
I like the idea of the move, but I don't think I'll be adding it, because if I do it will require a good amount of testing simply to answer the question of "Do I keep it or scrap it?". The way that stat mods in pokemon/starmon work just simply doesn't allow something like this to be effective.
There was however something similar in the pokemon games that I actually wanted to add but completely forgot: Fury Cutter
the DBZ reference totally passed by me, I know what it is but I dont watch any DBZ... so yeah...
For making the vitamins cheaper: probably a no, will see. Overall I think we'll end up with just having higher money rewards and/or other things that will sort of making money worth less than in the pokemon games (Quest rewards, random items being generated in zones every time you start the map, karma perks, randomized discount merchants, etc.) The reason for that is that we will have more money sinks like the genetics lab, teleporters, and we'll have each and every TM available in a shop as well - Chances are people are going to be short on money, and to fix that we probably shouldn't reduce prices but up overall cash flow (Unless cash shortage comes from a specific issue). For now we'll stick to the original prices - I don't want to preemptively "fix" prices before knowing whether there actually is an issue.
First of all, if its about something I'm interested in (Like, for example, my own map), I like walls of text ;) It was more of an issue of me having lazy day and just not wanting to answer (Yet), and then seeing a new post in the thread just as I was about to go to sleep, and SoulFilcher just asked an incredibly simple question that I could answer quickly, so I wrote up that paragraph, and was about to hit "reply" and then thought "Trieve wrote a wall of text, would be unfair to ignore him if I'm already writing a post..." so I ended up just rushing it :p4
Repel might cost money, but not really much. I never had an issue, I'd just buy 10-20 at a time and those would get me through a couple of hours of game time, by the end of which I would've earned a crapton of money again. It's potions that get expensive, but you when you buy 10-20 they last for a good amount of time as well. Honestly, I don't think we need to make anything cheaper, but maybe more expensive so that money actually matters and you don't just end up buying 99 of everything and then still hitting 999,999 money :p Imo needing to think about where you spend your money (without being severely penalized for making the wrong choice, which in this case isn't possible since items are more a "get out of jail free card" thing than a vital part of combat) is a good thing. Chances are we won't get the numbers right on the first try and we'll need to balance the costs of many items, so if the price of repels really becomes an issue we'll make them cheaper (Or something else cheaper if its not actually the repels cost that is the issue)
Plain recolors don't look good if I do em and would overlap with shinies (atm all shinies use alternative textures which are basically recolours, some of them have some minor detail tweaks. (WoW models almost always come with texture variations. They also look better than anything I'd do). Only shinies that don't use alternative textures are Odoron / Overstank (Overlord and Overseer model) since they are almost entirely covered in team color, so I just changed that :p ) I might be able to find some WoW models that could support a temporary transform, some demons perhaps (Imp -> Dreadlord?)
Concentrate is definitely a good idea, but 2-4 ups will definitely be too strong. The thing is, I don't know whether that move is balanceable at all :/ Having +6 stages on any stat is an insane boost to damage/defense. Something like that would most likely be used on a glass cannon (Tons of damage, practically nonexistant defense) kind of starmon, and those would just tear apart enemies with +6 to their offensive stats, having it for just one turn is already enough to do fatal damage or get someone low enough to take them out in the next turn without the bonus. Imagine someone using 2x concentrate for +6 and following it up with either a 1-shot-kill fire blast/hyperbeam/whatever, or just using U-Turn/Volt Switch to immediately
Soon. Neither of us worked particularly much on the map. What I did work on is part of the thing we don't want to reveal pre-alpha, and something else that I will reveal as soon as its finished (Needs minor tweaks to look good). I guess I still have to implement your doodads and decorate the beach a little, maybe set up the out-of-city starcenters with the wall doodads you made us, can make screenshots of those :)
Trainer Levels: No plans on them affecting much yet, they're more of a thing that allows you to compare yourself to other players. You'll get points for the levels your starmon are at, for stardex and quest completion, random events, etc. We can probably tie some singleplayer perks to it though, and we haven't decided yet on how the genetics lab will be unlocked (Stardex completion was my first idea, but could tie it to player levels). I guess some other things will subtly affected by player levels (Unlocking higher level generic items like Ultra balls, higher level quests, etc.)
For avoiding wild battles: There was the "Repel" item in the pokemon games, and its definitely making a comeback here. To avoid trainers... well, try not to get spotted.
Battle Items: I'll think about it. Probably singleplayer and non-arena only though if we're gonna make em particularly strong.
That concentrate move sounds interesting, I can try adding that if I make a starmon on which it fits thematically (We don't have anything like meditite yet :/ ) It would still cost energy though - not going to make any moves free (in addition to just not wanting that, it would also screw up the struggle/out of energy mechanic), not sure what I would put the cost at though.
Transforms: Fitting 3D models and animations would be necessary, highly doubt we're gonna get em :( Interesting idea though
Basically what I was trying to say was that stats-per-levelup weren't predefined, as they in a technical sense aren't "stats per levelup". You've got base stats and your level, + IV and EVs which get added on top, and then the nature multiplier, it practically is stats per levelup, but that could be considered an intentional "coincidence".
Right now the game doesn't add the EVs to your actual EVs until you level up, they are stored seperately (Unless you have a level 100 starmon that didn't max out EVs yet, in which case stats get recalculated after each battle (If they dont yet, they will be as soon as Zelda gets around to it)). These aren't stored after leaving the game though, so if you leave the game while there are still "loose" EVs around, they will be added onto your EVs and if there were enough of em you might notice having a stat or two a bit higher the next time you log in
TL;DR: No predefined stat bonuses per level, stats get recalculated at the start of each battle. New EV changes however are not taken into consideration before leveling, unless you restart the map or play around in the genetics lab. (IV or nature rerolling/EV cutting)
3v3s: As Dafunk said, 2v2s are already unlikely to be added at the start (But definitely will be added later on) since a lot of work would have to be put into getting it all to work right. I'm not sure whether I like 3v3s myself, they do add more option, but chances are it'll just end up chaotic, and strategies like mass heal and support may end up useless since with 3 starmon you can probably just instantly take out one enemy. If adding 2v2s won't be too much of a problem, we'll start thinking about 3v3s and whether we really want them.
Stat stuff: I think EVs and IVs do a good job of adding stat customizability (And you can change IVs without mass-breeding starmon, it'll just cost you a bit to re-roll em). We can add more ways to get bonus EVs so that "customizing" them doesn't rely completely on battles, and since they already have a limit we don't have to worry about people maxing out all stats or that people who don't like one way of gaining them will end up overall weaker. (If one person likes simple battles but not digimon style training, why punish him for it?)
The apprenticeship thingy sounds interesting, but implementing it in a way that makes sense might be awkward. The original games had items that when held doubled the EV gain for one stat (And I think they reduced speed), could probably implement those and have certain trainers give em to you.
As for the speed thing, adding something would definitely be interesting and good, but I don't think multi-turn is a good idea, it just flat out makes speed the best stat (Have enough speed over your enemy and you essentially gain double attack and special attack). I'll rather make it moves, abilities and items - For example, Electro Ball already has inreased power based on how much faster your starmon is compared to the enemy (Caps at 150 base power, same as Hyper Beam), could add more moves like that, maybe an item or ability that increases your base power or crit chance based on speed difference, etc.
As for trainer passives, I wouldnt mind adding them (as long as they dont affect multiplayer), would probably tie some into the karma system once we make it.
Hope I answered everything :)
EDIT: Trieve posted while I was writing and I didnt notice my post didnt go through for an entire hour xD
Also, starmon don't get stats on level up. Their stats are merely recalculated on each level up, and since level is one of the factors it means they increase. We don't save actual stats or have a table on how many stats it gets each level, just IVs and EVs and run everything everything through stat calculation whenever necessary.
Public release / public beta will probably take quite a while after that. Alpha won't include much, just a few early zones and low level stuff for testing purposes. And about who can join, we'll see - It'll mostly depend on whether all of you in this thread manage to show up ;)
Haven't personally added too much to the map in the past few days, and what I did add is part of a certain thing we're gonna keep quiet until we're ready for alpha testing (Sort of story related :p A certain "mechanic" unique to certain Cipher trainers). I'm going to try and pick up the pace, add a lot more stuff, finally get SoulFilchers new doodads implemented, slap Mozared around with them until he makes something amazing with them, then slap him some more because he spent too much time ogling the new doodads when he should've been making new zones, then give him a cookie.
Talking about the Alpha Test, Zolden is currently working on the 3D model of the dark doll-girl creature and it looks pretty good :) I should have some screenshots to show soon(TM) :) Can't wait to see it finished! What does this have to do with the alpha-test? Well, I think we haven't discussed it yet, but I'm sure Zelda will agree that the guys we're gonna invite to the alpha test (Hint: not you. Hint: that was a lie) deserve to get this starmon ;)
How close are we to an Alpha test? There are some bugs we need killing and other things that need to be smoothened out, Mozared will ideally add in another 2-3 zones before then if he gets the time (If he doesn't get the time, I'll just set up a debug zone where various starmon can be caught), and then there's the matter of quests and player models, which is pretty much the biggest thing we need to do. But if we put our minds to it, we can grind through that pretty quickly I think. So... Sometime next month probably.
The static cam is the one used for the screenshots I made of moves (The new camera system was added after I made most the screenshots), its very similar to the original games, except that the UI is flipped (your stats are on the left instead of the right, vice versa for enemies. Trainers are flipped as well - Right for you, left for enemy)
not entirely sure what you mean :/ The trainers face the direction they're throwing the pokeball, so it flies straight. If you mean the ghost/nova model not throwing it properly, she's just a placeholder anyway.
Not much has happened this week, but I got another video. Just a simple battle, without FPS issues. Some moves may be buggy and we're fixing em.
Thanks for the feedback Kueken :) I'm too used to the camera system to notice such things >.> And even if the battle cam is still something you dont want to play with after more polish, there'll be the option to replace it with a static camera.
On another note, lots of really good fixes today!
First one thanks to Mozared bugging me about Ember hitting the floor - I had only one idea on how to fix it, and it miraculously worked! What does that mean? There won't be any issues with projectile impacts anymore, which have been bugging me for a while!
Second fix is to Psychic. I really like how I made the move, but it didnt turn out the way I wanted it to (It was supposed to be 3 rings spinning around each other, the spinning part didn't work perfectly), but I finally fixed that and it looks amazing :)
Third fix is an unimportant one to Shadowball - The projectile was invisible :( Fixed that.
Last, but most important fix - My videos were cut shot due to lag. Apparently Region Actors don't auto-destroy themselves. I dont know why I expected them to, but that's beside the point - The game will no longer create 1248 actors per minute per player without destroying them. (If anyone wants the log file where I found out what the problem was, ask ;) It listed all actors currently existing in the map (Among some other debug stuff I made it spit out). Lines 50,000-197,000 consisted of almost only of the actor that was supposed to check for grass around the trainer to scale/animate it :) That's about 140,000 unnecessary actors.
TL;DR: Lag fixed. Map Super Smooth now. No more laggy videos.
Unfortunately, the video below this was made BEFORE those fixes. I'll have a not laggy one up some other time ;) Also, this and the next one will only be a battle vid. Don't know what else to show off.
Apart from that, I didn't do anything that I could show off unfortunately :( I created the arena doodad phasing system, which still needs triggers and actual doodads, but my data part is done, I put glowing rotating balls everywhere, and I painted a lot of (no-)pathing over Mozareds terrain (Cant have people walking through trees, can we?), and fixed the visuals on Static Field and Fire Wall (The attacker now gets hit by electricty/fire if he uses a contact move)
But hey, at least I did something! I'm done with HotS, time to map again!
Oh, alright, don't be that way. Here you go, have an . Happy now?
I'm having FPS issues in general, as you see the videos start off fine but at some point my FPS just drops permanently, no matter what is onscreen, and the only way to fix that is to restart the map >.> And it's not an issue with anything we put into the map - It appears regardless of what's happening, and we made sure there are no leftover triggers eating performance or actor leaks :(
@BladeOfAiur: Go
Hey :) Yea, I understand now what you mean now, but I don't think that will be viable - Stats get larger with levels, base power of moves doesn't (Well, it does a bit, low level starmon don't immediately get access to the most powerful moves, but somewhere between levels 20-40, in addition to TMs the decently powered moves start being learned and it doesn't get much higher (More powerful moves that get learned later on have drawbacks that make the previous moves better, like Hyper Beam and Solar Beam taking up two turns), which means multiplication would end up catastrophic. Early levels you could get powers of 20-80 or so, but then later on when stuff gets stats going past 100 you'll practically be firing hundreds of hyperbeams in one go :p
Also, the bottom number is always 1 or gotten how? Because if its constant, we can just skip the fractions part and straight up multiply defense by that number. Sorry if I'm being dumb again, been tired the entire day >.>
But back to the multiplication point: Division is what's needed if you want to compare stats in any way. There are already moves that compare for example the speed of both starmon, and depending on the % difference a set amount of power is chosen, something similar could easily be done for defense stats. Or altering the damage calculation formula to use different stats (There's already an attack that use Special Attack as the offensive stat, but regular Defense as the defensive stat for example.)
Another issue: How am I going to clearly explain it to the player? Having cool and interesting formulas is nice and all, but apart from Zelda and me no one is going to see them (Unless we post them publicly somewhere), and I don't have enough tooltip space to explain how math works to players.
Let's take the move where speeds are compared for example, its a super simple calculation, which makes it easy to explain in the tooltip: "The faster the user is than the target, the greater the damage." (That's the actual tooltip, or at least the part of it concerning power/damage)
For outfits:
I want people to be able to freely switch between many outfits. How I'm gonna do that I'm still figuring out, but I don't mean that I don't know how, but that I don't know what method I want to pick - It'll definitely work. Right now trainers are by default wearing a fancy tuxedo, but we also have some more traveller/hiker/ranger looking outfits as well as a thief. I'm gonna add more, I just have to get around to actually doing it. Creating an outfit unlocked by beating the game shouldn't be too hard I think.
For NPCs levelling as they beat your starmon:
As I said, it takes quite a good chunk of XP for a starmon to level. It seems fast for you because you can do multiple battles in a row. But if you're only going to see a trainer a single time, you're most likely going to have to sacrifice your entire party to get the trainer to have his starmon level up, which may be somewhat hard to do without actually knocking out the enemy starmon. And even if you manage it, you're most likely screwed already anyway and it won't matter. Yea, it's a cool addition, but it would take a good chunk of time to implement and would be used so damn rarely I just really don't think it's worth the trouble. If I could just flip a switch and it'd magically work immediately, I'd do it, but unfortunately that won't happen :( NPC Starmon are set up a different way, they use different variables to store their stats, etc. EXP isn't something that's stored for them because it wasn't necessary, therefore EXP calculation is not run when an AI starmon knocks out a player starmon, which means the EXP calculation/reward system itself doesn't currently have any way of handling AI starmon, and neither does the levelup system, which means the move learning system doesn't either, and the list goes on. Zelda would have to run through a lot of old functions just to add the EXP gain for AIs which will not be noticed about 99,99% of the time. It's just not worth the time.
If you meant NPCs keeping up with your team in levels, but not levelling directly in battle, that's already in. Trainer levels are calculated based on your parties average level and clamped between two values based on the zone and possibly some other things (So zone X won't go higher than level Y, but Y will always be pretty high (First zone is by default levels 3-6 for wilds. Trainers will be able to scale up to level 20 or so, if not higher, as your own party reaches those levels). Trainers are completely randomized: We've got some preset lists of starmon they can have, the chances for them and such things, and even three tiers of lists for them, which list the starmon are taken from is dependent on the trainer level. The trainers themselves also don't always spawn in the first place, and not always in the same amounts. The forest can have between 4 and 7 trainers I think atm and will have about 15-20 possible spawn locations.
TL;DR: You'll never have a problem finding a trainer whose levels match that of your party, and if your starmon are high enough levels that it actually does become a problem, the arena will still be able to give some fairly randomized trainers to fight for all levels, and who knows what else we'll add.
An issue with trainers advancing as you play through the game is that vast majority of trainers are 100% random.
Making recurring preset trainers is a good idea. Already planned this for the Rival, and you'll have a rematch with all the milestone trainers near the end of the arena ladder (Where they use their actual high level team instead of their low level teams - It never made sense that Gym trainers had such weak pokemon, so here there's an explanation: They're milestone trainers, they're a sort of checkpoint you have to pass to be able to advance further in the arena, some sort of "quality control". They maintain low level teams for milestone challenges, while still having a powerful team with which they keep their actual arena rank)
We can surely have additional trainers relevant to the story progress over time. We could make one or more of the practically irrelevant Cipher grunts an actual preset trainer that has a party that keeps progressing (And his lines would indicate that he remembers you. But being just one of the many random guys you have to fight your way through, chances are you won't remember him, so it'd be a sort of easter egg :p ) It shouldn't really be that hard to add, we just have to keep in mind our recurring trainers.
For trainers levelling in battle: I don't think it's necessary, and more importantly, not worth the time: You need to lose quite a few high level starmon to actually give the enemy enough XP to level up... This happening would be so rare, we might as well just roll a number from 1-100 every time your starmon faints and have the enemy level up if it rolls a 100 (And no, I don't think we're gonna do this either...)
@BladeOfAiur: Go
Nice to hear from you again :)
As for the moves, I'm not so sure about them. first of all I already made pretty much all moves we need and am not actively working on them anymore (Recently added a Dark Special Lifesteal move cause I felt like it, that's pretty much it since baton pass). The calculations may be messy to add into triggers, would need Zelda's input into this, but it might not be easy to explain (Tbh, I think I missed something in your explanation, 20/1 is for all practical purposes just 20, changing it to a fraction doesn't really change much. Did you want to divide defense by defense or what? In that case it could be more easily explained as a move that uses the Defense stat instead of Attack. Srry, I might just have missed something entirely. Slept little the last two days cause I'm busy moving so I'm kinda tired...)
We haven't posted in a while, mostly because we barely did anything.
But that has changed ;) Lots of progress! Not done yet though, and Zelda doesn't wanna reveal it til he's completely done with it (Or at least has come far enough to make him sure he won't scrap it due to not working). It seems to have reached that point, but he isn't online at the moment so I can't ask him :(
But there will be a new video soon. Two if Zelda's thing is presentable.
But Maity, does that mean that the first video is something completely different from Zelda's thing?
Yes!
What could it be?
I'll answer with a small screenshot :)
I think its about time I said something in this discussion :p Sorry, I've had a really lazy week >.>
I'll try not to go into too much detail because its pretty late and I wanna head off to bed, and writing huge posts takes time...
200% Health: Yes, this might not fix the problem completely, but I'm sure it'll fix it partially and make bruisers/tanks more valuable. Tanks getting a huge buff might be an issue, if that buff is too huge. But here's the thing: Energy! Glass cannons don't have to worry about it - Their job is to do it quickly. They won't run out, because if they do, they've been doing their job wrong. Tanks on the other hand... All I have to do is identify the most used moves by that class of starmon and up the energy costs, and BAM I've got them in a spot where they aren't the best class anymore. Throw in ghosts with energy manipulation moves and shit's gonna hit the fan for tanks.
Another possible nerf to tanks could be a buff to damage over time: Those are also % health based, which means they do more damage than in the original games. Upping the % damage will make burn and poison moves even more dangerous against tanks. If that isn't enough, we can have poison function similary to ignite in league of legends: In addition to being a good damage over time source, it would also halve healing, making it a good counter to sustain tanks (Synthesis/Ingrain/Giga Drain or other lifesteal movesets)
So yeah, I agree that messing with the health formula may upset the delicate balance the pokemon games already had, but together with the energy system I think we're able to create a more varied and balanced metagame. And there's only about 170 moves currently in Starmon, I'll expand on those as necessary, add moves that will shake up dominant strategies and so on. I agree completely that the map may be severely unbalanced at the start, but it'll need testing and it will be fixed - We can just move the bonus health % to a better point, even if its just barely enough to prevent starmon from 1HKO'ing glass cannons. The important part is that balance is possible, but achieving it will be a challenge :)
Multibattles:
I want 2v2s in the game, Zelda does too. It just takes time, a lot of it. The entire combat system is currently structured around 1v1. Zelda has kept in mind 2v2s though and he can probably reuse large amounts of code, making things a bit easier. Still, planning out the entire trigger architecture and so on is an issue, and I will have to do some minor modifications to moves that hit multiple targets (Visuals...). We'll work on that when we can. Who knows, we might have it useable by release, we might not. (Considering just how many missions/quests/random events we want to add, release may actually be far away enough that 2v2s will be included)
But there won't be 3v3s. I think that's the point where things just get too messy, and chances are 3v3s will have a completely different metagame than 1v1s and 2v2s (Which will surely have differences as well) due to focus firing becoming even more effective - I'm guessing it'll be a game of either who has the most AoE, most glass cannons or most tanks/bruisers, and that everything else will be ignored. Balancing both 2v2s and 1v1s while making as little as possible changes to moves between the two will already be an issue, but I think 3v3s will just end up too different to be able to balance all three match types.
Match types that are based on 1v1s and 2v2s but with specific rule sets may be an option though (Like, for example, no swapouts whatsoever, shared health between all starmon, shared energy, swapouts being forced into party order, forced swapout after each turn, each player gets to pick one of the opposing starmon and they are swapped between the players, any combination of these, etc.), but Zelda is the one who knows how much of an issue that would be so it's up to him. If we do something like that, it'd probably be low priority.
Also, about the alpha test: With me being lazy, and Zelda's school preparing for hell month (exams), I don't think we'll get anything out anytime soon. We need more terrain from Mozared, we need me to get off my lazy ass, and Zelda has some bugs to fix (And probably a whole lot more once we do a private test to see whether multiplayer works at all) in addition to anything new I may need him to make and any quests we want to have.
A large amount of strategy in some game types like TCGs and pokemon games comes before you actually even have an opponent. We can, and probably will, program an AI to play the most effective way possible (Not really that hard to program, as opposed to an RTS AI), but that AI will still be limited to a specific set of 6 starmon with four moves each. If the set is too generalized, some more specialized setups can probably easily overpower it. If its a specialized set up, its very likely strong against another specialized setup but also weak against some. Same thing goes for players - The strategy is not only in how you handle the battle, but how you prepare for it. A player having a team full offensive starmon might end up getting screwed over by a tank that uses reflect/light screen + 6x Calm Mind/Bulk Up and then Baton Passes out to a fast offensive starmon and proceeds to oneshot the entire glass-cannon team. A player focusing more on holding out and playing defensively will get screwed over if the enemy has Toxic (or any other %health based DoTs, which is almost all of them) and can play just as defensively. A stat-mod spammer gets screwed over by the move that swaps all stat stages between the two active starmon. Some people will want to take the big risk of having a very specialized team that might absolutely get wrecked by another strategy, while others will try and minimize their weaknesses at the cost of losing a specific strength (Like throwing out your ghost starmon that is really good at messing with your opponents energy and statuses for a psychic starmon that still has the great offensive stats but can also learn some defensive moves)
That said, I will try to keep a good amount of more "advanced" moves that have less straightforward uses (Like Baton Pass - Most players will probably ignore it, some will see it's actually really useful and use it. Same goes for most other status moves - People will instinctively just want the hardest hitting thing they can get without thinking about how effective it really is compared to moves that don't deal direct damage), and if a certain strategy becomes dominant, I'll either nerf it (If it really is too strong), or there most likely will already be a good counter to it and I'll just have to make people aware of it and get them to use it.
Also, the fact that complicated strategies can exist doesn't mean simple ones can't. There honestly probably will be a lot more simple ones than complicated ones, like for example just simply having a set of 6 starmon, one of which is always going to be strong against a certain type, without paying too much attention to synergy between moves and such things. It won't be a flawless strategy, but it will probably be the starting point for all strategies - People will deviate from a standard, safe setup to something more specific that they prefer. If a player doesn't like getting poisoned, he'll add a steel or poison starmon to his lineup (They're immune to poison) or get some other form of immunity/curing. Others will start number crunching instead of going by personal preference and try to discover powerful strategies instead of "comfortable" ones. I want to make sure there's options for both kinds of people.
As for concentrate: You're trading one turn of time on your way to max out your attack stat for the fact that you don't get to keep that buff. If it is effective, it will probably be because it is overpowered and will plain simply deal too much damage too fast, giving your opponent less time for counter play, and what I think is the more likely scenario: It will be useless and, more importantly, a noob trap. It all comes down to "Is this effective?", and you're trading three turns for something that's not permanent, so to be effective it has to be incredibly powerful, which would pretty much mean it has to be straight up OP to be effective at all. If it isn't worth trading that one turn for having the buff be permanent, but the move exists, it's a noob trap - People will think "Oh, it's good", but it isn't - It should not exist at all in that case.
And, probably the biggest flaw - Whether strong or weak, I can't fix it. It's mechanic is that its buff gets stronger with consecutive uses, but the buff is capped (and that cap can't be removed). If I make it take longer to reach the cap, it becomes useless as it just simply ends up matching the speed or being slower than other moves. if it's too weak... Well, nothing I can really do at all. The only way to make it faster is to make it one turn, which kind of completely removes its core mechanic.
I like the idea of the move, but I don't think I'll be adding it, because if I do it will require a good amount of testing simply to answer the question of "Do I keep it or scrap it?". The way that stat mods in pokemon/starmon work just simply doesn't allow something like this to be effective.
There was however something similar in the pokemon games that I actually wanted to add but completely forgot: Fury Cutter
the DBZ reference totally passed by me, I know what it is but I dont watch any DBZ... so yeah...
For making the vitamins cheaper: probably a no, will see. Overall I think we'll end up with just having higher money rewards and/or other things that will sort of making money worth less than in the pokemon games (Quest rewards, random items being generated in zones every time you start the map, karma perks, randomized discount merchants, etc.) The reason for that is that we will have more money sinks like the genetics lab, teleporters, and we'll have each and every TM available in a shop as well - Chances are people are going to be short on money, and to fix that we probably shouldn't reduce prices but up overall cash flow (Unless cash shortage comes from a specific issue). For now we'll stick to the original prices - I don't want to preemptively "fix" prices before knowing whether there actually is an issue.
Hope I answered everything :)
First of all, if its about something I'm interested in (Like, for example, my own map), I like walls of text ;) It was more of an issue of me having lazy day and just not wanting to answer (Yet), and then seeing a new post in the thread just as I was about to go to sleep, and SoulFilcher just asked an incredibly simple question that I could answer quickly, so I wrote up that paragraph, and was about to hit "reply" and then thought "Trieve wrote a wall of text, would be unfair to ignore him if I'm already writing a post..." so I ended up just rushing it :p4
Repel might cost money, but not really much. I never had an issue, I'd just buy 10-20 at a time and those would get me through a couple of hours of game time, by the end of which I would've earned a crapton of money again. It's potions that get expensive, but you when you buy 10-20 they last for a good amount of time as well. Honestly, I don't think we need to make anything cheaper, but maybe more expensive so that money actually matters and you don't just end up buying 99 of everything and then still hitting 999,999 money :p Imo needing to think about where you spend your money (without being severely penalized for making the wrong choice, which in this case isn't possible since items are more a "get out of jail free card" thing than a vital part of combat) is a good thing. Chances are we won't get the numbers right on the first try and we'll need to balance the costs of many items, so if the price of repels really becomes an issue we'll make them cheaper (Or something else cheaper if its not actually the repels cost that is the issue)
Plain recolors don't look good if I do em and would overlap with shinies (atm all shinies use alternative textures which are basically recolours, some of them have some minor detail tweaks. (WoW models almost always come with texture variations. They also look better than anything I'd do). Only shinies that don't use alternative textures are Odoron / Overstank (Overlord and Overseer model) since they are almost entirely covered in team color, so I just changed that :p ) I might be able to find some WoW models that could support a temporary transform, some demons perhaps (Imp -> Dreadlord?)
Concentrate is definitely a good idea, but 2-4 ups will definitely be too strong. The thing is, I don't know whether that move is balanceable at all :/ Having +6 stages on any stat is an insane boost to damage/defense. Something like that would most likely be used on a glass cannon (Tons of damage, practically nonexistant defense) kind of starmon, and those would just tear apart enemies with +6 to their offensive stats, having it for just one turn is already enough to do fatal damage or get someone low enough to take them out in the next turn without the bonus. Imagine someone using 2x concentrate for +6 and following it up with either a 1-shot-kill fire blast/hyperbeam/whatever, or just using U-Turn/Volt Switch to immediately
@SoulFilcher: Go
Soon. Neither of us worked particularly much on the map. What I did work on is part of the thing we don't want to reveal pre-alpha, and something else that I will reveal as soon as its finished (Needs minor tweaks to look good). I guess I still have to implement your doodads and decorate the beach a little, maybe set up the out-of-city starcenters with the wall doodads you made us, can make screenshots of those :)
@Trieva: Go
I'll be keeping this short, sorry - Really tired.
Trainer Levels: No plans on them affecting much yet, they're more of a thing that allows you to compare yourself to other players. You'll get points for the levels your starmon are at, for stardex and quest completion, random events, etc. We can probably tie some singleplayer perks to it though, and we haven't decided yet on how the genetics lab will be unlocked (Stardex completion was my first idea, but could tie it to player levels). I guess some other things will subtly affected by player levels (Unlocking higher level generic items like Ultra balls, higher level quests, etc.)
For avoiding wild battles: There was the "Repel" item in the pokemon games, and its definitely making a comeback here. To avoid trainers... well, try not to get spotted.
Battle Items: I'll think about it. Probably singleplayer and non-arena only though if we're gonna make em particularly strong.
That concentrate move sounds interesting, I can try adding that if I make a starmon on which it fits thematically (We don't have anything like meditite yet :/ ) It would still cost energy though - not going to make any moves free (in addition to just not wanting that, it would also screw up the struggle/out of energy mechanic), not sure what I would put the cost at though.
Transforms: Fitting 3D models and animations would be necessary, highly doubt we're gonna get em :( Interesting idea though
@DaFunk86: Go
Basically what I was trying to say was that stats-per-levelup weren't predefined, as they in a technical sense aren't "stats per levelup". You've got base stats and your level, + IV and EVs which get added on top, and then the nature multiplier, it practically is stats per levelup, but that could be considered an intentional "coincidence".
Right now the game doesn't add the EVs to your actual EVs until you level up, they are stored seperately (Unless you have a level 100 starmon that didn't max out EVs yet, in which case stats get recalculated after each battle (If they dont yet, they will be as soon as Zelda gets around to it)). These aren't stored after leaving the game though, so if you leave the game while there are still "loose" EVs around, they will be added onto your EVs and if there were enough of em you might notice having a stat or two a bit higher the next time you log in
TL;DR: No predefined stat bonuses per level, stats get recalculated at the start of each battle. New EV changes however are not taken into consideration before leveling, unless you restart the map or play around in the genetics lab. (IV or nature rerolling/EV cutting)
3v3s: As Dafunk said, 2v2s are already unlikely to be added at the start (But definitely will be added later on) since a lot of work would have to be put into getting it all to work right. I'm not sure whether I like 3v3s myself, they do add more option, but chances are it'll just end up chaotic, and strategies like mass heal and support may end up useless since with 3 starmon you can probably just instantly take out one enemy. If adding 2v2s won't be too much of a problem, we'll start thinking about 3v3s and whether we really want them.
Stat stuff: I think EVs and IVs do a good job of adding stat customizability (And you can change IVs without mass-breeding starmon, it'll just cost you a bit to re-roll em). We can add more ways to get bonus EVs so that "customizing" them doesn't rely completely on battles, and since they already have a limit we don't have to worry about people maxing out all stats or that people who don't like one way of gaining them will end up overall weaker. (If one person likes simple battles but not digimon style training, why punish him for it?)
The apprenticeship thingy sounds interesting, but implementing it in a way that makes sense might be awkward. The original games had items that when held doubled the EV gain for one stat (And I think they reduced speed), could probably implement those and have certain trainers give em to you.
As for the speed thing, adding something would definitely be interesting and good, but I don't think multi-turn is a good idea, it just flat out makes speed the best stat (Have enough speed over your enemy and you essentially gain double attack and special attack). I'll rather make it moves, abilities and items - For example, Electro Ball already has inreased power based on how much faster your starmon is compared to the enemy (Caps at 150 base power, same as Hyper Beam), could add more moves like that, maybe an item or ability that increases your base power or crit chance based on speed difference, etc.
As for trainer passives, I wouldnt mind adding them (as long as they dont affect multiplayer), would probably tie some into the karma system once we make it.
Hope I answered everything :)
EDIT: Trieve posted while I was writing and I didnt notice my post didnt go through for an entire hour xD
Also, starmon don't get stats on level up. Their stats are merely recalculated on each level up, and since level is one of the factors it means they increase. We don't save actual stats or have a table on how many stats it gets each level, just IVs and EVs and run everything everything through stat calculation whenever necessary.
@DaFunk86: Go
Public release / public beta will probably take quite a while after that. Alpha won't include much, just a few early zones and low level stuff for testing purposes. And about who can join, we'll see - It'll mostly depend on whether all of you in this thread manage to show up ;)
THIS... IS... STARMON!
Haven't personally added too much to the map in the past few days, and what I did add is part of a certain thing we're gonna keep quiet until we're ready for alpha testing (Sort of story related :p A certain "mechanic" unique to certain Cipher trainers). I'm going to try and pick up the pace, add a lot more stuff, finally get SoulFilchers new doodads implemented, slap Mozared around with them until he makes something amazing with them, then slap him some more because he spent too much time ogling the new doodads when he should've been making new zones, then give him a cookie.
Talking about the Alpha Test, Zolden is currently working on the 3D model of the dark doll-girl creature and it looks pretty good :) I should have some screenshots to show soon(TM) :) Can't wait to see it finished! What does this have to do with the alpha-test? Well, I think we haven't discussed it yet, but I'm sure Zelda will agree that the guys we're gonna invite to the alpha test (Hint: not you. Hint: that was a lie) deserve to get this starmon ;)
How close are we to an Alpha test? There are some bugs we need killing and other things that need to be smoothened out, Mozared will ideally add in another 2-3 zones before then if he gets the time (If he doesn't get the time, I'll just set up a debug zone where various starmon can be caught), and then there's the matter of quests and player models, which is pretty much the biggest thing we need to do. But if we put our minds to it, we can grind through that pretty quickly I think. So... Sometime next month probably.
@LitePollution9: Go
Thanks for the link, I'll take a look at that and see what we can use :)
@JacktheArcher: Go
The static cam is the one used for the screenshots I made of moves (The new camera system was added after I made most the screenshots), its very similar to the original games, except that the UI is flipped (your stats are on the left instead of the right, vice versa for enemies. Trainers are flipped as well - Right for you, left for enemy)
Here's an old one:
@JacktheArcher: Go
not entirely sure what you mean :/ The trainers face the direction they're throwing the pokeball, so it flies straight. If you mean the ghost/nova model not throwing it properly, she's just a placeholder anyway.
Not much has happened this week, but I got another video. Just a simple battle, without FPS issues. Some moves may be buggy and we're fixing em.
Thanks for the feedback Kueken :) I'm too used to the camera system to notice such things >.> And even if the battle cam is still something you dont want to play with after more polish, there'll be the option to replace it with a static camera.
On another note, lots of really good fixes today!
First one thanks to Mozared bugging me about Ember hitting the floor - I had only one idea on how to fix it, and it miraculously worked! What does that mean? There won't be any issues with projectile impacts anymore, which have been bugging me for a while!
Second fix is to Psychic. I really like how I made the move, but it didnt turn out the way I wanted it to (It was supposed to be 3 rings spinning around each other, the spinning part didn't work perfectly), but I finally fixed that and it looks amazing :)
Third fix is an unimportant one to Shadowball - The projectile was invisible :( Fixed that.
Last, but most important fix - My videos were cut shot due to lag. Apparently Region Actors don't auto-destroy themselves. I dont know why I expected them to, but that's beside the point - The game will no longer create 1248 actors per minute per player without destroying them. (If anyone wants the log file where I found out what the problem was, ask ;) It listed all actors currently existing in the map (Among some other debug stuff I made it spit out). Lines 50,000-197,000 consisted of almost only of the actor that was supposed to check for grass around the trainer to scale/animate it :) That's about 140,000 unnecessary actors.
TL;DR: Lag fixed. Map Super Smooth now. No more laggy videos.
Unfortunately, the video below this was made BEFORE those fixes. I'll have a not laggy one up some other time ;) Also, this and the next one will only be a battle vid. Don't know what else to show off.
What is this? Could it be?
A... Video???
Apart from that, I didn't do anything that I could show off unfortunately :( I created the arena doodad phasing system, which still needs triggers and actual doodads, but my data part is done, I put glowing rotating balls everywhere, and I painted a lot of (no-)pathing over Mozareds terrain (Cant have people walking through trees, can we?), and fixed the visuals on Static Field and Fire Wall (The attacker now gets hit by electricty/fire if he uses a contact move)
But hey, at least I did something! I'm done with HotS, time to map again!
Oh, alright, don't be that way. Here you go, have an . Happy now?
I'm having FPS issues in general, as you see the videos start off fine but at some point my FPS just drops permanently, no matter what is onscreen, and the only way to fix that is to restart the map >.> And it's not an issue with anything we put into the map - It appears regardless of what's happening, and we made sure there are no leftover triggers eating performance or actor leaks :(