Monday, January 31, 2011

Sunday, Jan 30th. More of the same.

So now that we have a working AI I've been redesigning the game so that the AI works properly. Now this isn't as easy as it sounds. The redesigning part I am enjoying, that I can not lie about. But one of the things that I've been asked to "fix" I'm finding impossible to do for some reason. That's the Resource Dropoff point.

Now the way the game code works is this. The Resource building "spawns" a drone, which is the beacon. This beacon lives for 5 seconds then it dies. When it dies it summons in the Madea to the place where it died which has a unit inside it. This unit drops and then kills itself, replacing itself with a structure that looks the exact same. Finally this structure has a 3 second lifespan, but 2 seconds in it uses the tiberium spire code to give the player 2000$. Can you see where my problem is?

The problem is that every time one of these units dies to spawn the next bit the games "audio information delivery system" lets you know that you've lost a unit that you didn't even know you had. It's retarded! So at the moment I'm trying to figure out how to get this to stop, but I'm not having much sucsess.

Another thing that we've been thinking about is how do we want the special powers to go. A lot of people have complained that they don't like that EF's powers are all just "summon gundams". They want more. One person's suggestion has lead me to try something, but again I'm not sure if I can pull it off. Basically, what it is is an area-of-effect ability that boosts the attack speed and health of the select units that are "caught" in this boost affect area. It's basically a "free" promotion to becoming an elite unit. I was going to do this for UC, but now am looking to use this idea for AW and call it "Trigger Newtype Abilities". So that means I still don't have any good ideas for UC's special powers. I may just make them "off screen attacks" like artillery bombardments and stuff, if I do anything at all.

Which brings me to something else that I'm finding interesting while doing all this recoding. We've been updating the buildings while doing all of this and one of the big issues that is still creeping up is "size vrs. ingame size". All I can say to this is please, just give it some time. Trial and error is the only way I'm going to get that stuff right.

But something that is comming up is the quality of the models. Since I'm already working on the new redesign I'm also redesigning the models. As people following the MODDB sight might have guessed by now, I go threw quite a few different attempts at making models before settling on one that will work "for now". I say "for now" because it keeps comming up. I do something, I like it, I put it in, it's fine for a month or 2, then I see a better idea that fits better and we restart all over again. :p So when it comes to the quality of the models, I guess all I can say is "Sorry, but they do progressivly get better right?" A good example will be the pics of the new Powerplant that I'm going to be posting up on MODDB later tonight.

So thats it for now, not much of an update but after getting the AI working there's not much going on other than me plugging away adding things back in and checking to make sure the new stuff works. Time to get back to it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

5 comments:

Live2Reap said...

All in all good stuff, hope you can figure everything out. As for the support powers though, I did like the idea of summoning different gundam time line squads onto the battlefield. White Dingo Team, 08th ms team, the drop squad sent after the kampfer in 0080(2 GM's 1 gm sniper and a GM-Command we could could just change the colors and the stats of the GMs a bit to match the later time line models before the GM-II and for 08th ms team you guys still have them models for the ground combat gundam you could just use that model for the drop only, and drop 2 with beam rifles or machine guns and one with a 180mm cannon)

I feel like the early time lines for EF need something to give them a more gundam feel and playstyle to it instead of just the mass spam gm's that everyone seems to do. The EF never mass spammed anything in their fights, except for a few of the later space battles where they spammed the space worthy GMs, but those suits didnt win the fight in the end, Amuro in gundam did most of the work cutting a hole in the zeon line.

azuza001 said...

Thats not a bad idea, simply add in the 8th MS team for 0079, add in White Dingo for 0080. It follows the other powers (which I did not mean to give the impression that they were being pulled) which are still going to be in the game. Remember the mobile suits from the original powers (gundam drops) will have the ships now firing on enemies as they fly in, so you could use the White Base for example to punch a hole in the enemy line then drop off it's gundam cargo to continue the havoc. Fun times!

Live2Reap said...

That sounds pretty sweet, if the ships can fire now I have a reason to not always drop them in the very back of my base.

And yeah 08th MS Team for 0079 and White Dingo for 0080 would be perfect actually

azuza001 said...

I'm working on the ships firing right now. The ship isn't actually firing at the moment, apparently I can't mix the code. So I'm trying to spawn a very tiny/invisible model that will be directly blow the ship when it flys around that will do the acutal shooting.

I've also set it up so that the ship gets an escort of airpower that does work, this I can at least confirm. So it's not a total loss and it does give the ships some needed additional use.

azuza001 said...

Actually, I just got the code to work right. I like the way it looks, and it seems to work right for now. There's still some issues, but it's nothing that I can do anything about. Its either this or nothing at all. God I hate it when it comes to that.