Defense project (was Battleship project)

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Re: A battleships project

Post by Vetraeus »

Ricky, After me & my army of Guinea pigs (horde of testers that follow me) finish balancing WW2 Diplo, we would like a shot at your Battleships.
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Re: A battleships project

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

At the rate I am going, it's likely to still take quite a while honestly.

A big factor to if I manage to do it is if I manage to get all the core features I really want/need done. I guess I am hellish slow since I am double/triple/quad-rethinking my decisions and it feels whatever path I pick is a big landslide (based on my W&M's experience).
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Re: A battleships project

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

About Overcharge progress

While not complete, I finally poked the hardest part of the Overcharge idea thus ensuring it gets into the map. The biggest part was trying to ensure somehow the auto-cast Overcharge ability don't go below X specific energy. This is to ensure if you auto-cast overcharge, your energy don't drop below your highest costing ability.

Nothing would make it more worthless than having 300% Overcharge but being unable to use Yamato Gun due to being 100 energy short.

However, you can manually still click on Overcharge if you want to charge it further while ignoring the "safety" minimum for it (ex : if it's for another less-costing ability). Also with the way I made it, I can probably add some mini-interface to allow you to set the minimum for auto-cast by yourself.

I still didn't made the final part to truly apply the concrete Overcharge effect to whatever spells you want to "boost-cast" but it's the part I am not worried about. Maybe also add some toggle to prevent using Overcharge on the next spell if you prefer to keep it for the 2nd or 3rd, etc.

Other progress

Made some skeleton triggers/variables on how to keep upgrades on a player ship basis along with some basic ideas on how to reapply the right upgrades for a ship switch and such.

Additional minor ideas - Private Game Parameters

Similar to W&M, I intend to allow private games to modify some parameters to make the game somewhat different.

Thus here's the parameters so far :

Starting Empire Level
For both teams, allows to start with a lower or higher Empire Level.

Higher Empire Levels means :
- Players have access to more upgrades, more special upgrades per ship.
- Stronger AI ships off the bat.
- If added, super AI ships are likely to pop up faster if not plain off the start.
- etc.

In other words, you can set the game into the end-game off the start. Some might prefer the "hardcore" feeling of it, some might want even shorter games, etc.

Empire Research rate
Allows both team's Empire to gain Empire Levels slower or faster. Thus reaching the end-game slower or faster.

Starting Overresearch
All players starts with more Overresearch (instead of 0 for normal games). Basically more "delayed seconds" to quickly upgrade your starting ships into high-level ships off the start.

Overresearch rate
By default, you expand 9 "delayed seconds" to achieve 10 seconds worth of ship upgrading per second. Can be modified so you can expand 4 "delayed secs" for 5 secs, 14 DS for 15 S, 19 DS for 20 S, etc. etc.

Allows Unique ships
Allows unique ships on/off.

Allows Traders
Allows the Trader ship and its related Trader Special Upgrades on/off.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Random Defense Project

And so, I pretty much gave up on the battleship project in favor back to the random defense project (intended to heavily use banks initially).

While I don't expect banks to be truly fixed anytime soon, I still prefer that random defense project that I already spoke in other threads. I am initially going the "random" route where foes would be very randomized in various ways in addition of allowing players to customize their units "on the spot".

Unlike the bships project, I don't intend to write too much since it takes time and ultimately I might as well spend it on the map.

So I only have an attached screenshot and some related explanation.

Specifics about the interface :
1) Its primarily use is to quickly see randomized enemy units' stats. Second being allowing easy upgrading.
2) If the unit is owned by yours (or potentially a left/dropped player's), you can click a related image to buff (ex : click HP image to buff unit's HP, click weapon's damage image to buff weapon damage, etc.)
3) Upgrade points are on a unit-basis (not global). I intend to also allow buildings to upgradable but on a much lesser capacity (ex : only specific abilities such as +Loading space for bunkers, etc.)
4) All images have tooltips. In particular it gives you detailed info on a specific ability/buff/handicap.
5) Even if you have enough upgrade points, there are various caps to prevent things to be downright lame. For example, you cannot have 0.0625 cooldown on all of your units' weapons.

Data shown on the interface :

*Unit Name
*Category : The relative unit category they are (ex : Generic, Siege, Suicider ,Nuker, Mothership)
*Upgrades Points for said unit

*HP, Shield Points, Energy Points
*HP Regen, SP Regen, EP Regen (implies 0 delay unless due to buffs, etc.)
*Life Armor, Shield Armor

*Weapon Name
*Base Damage, Cooldown, Range
*Bonus Damage or specials.

*Standard colored icons = Abilities
*Green colored icons = Buffs
*Red color icons = Handicaps (Yes, enemies can have random handicaps).
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

A little more :

***Special Weapons***'

Done :
Blink Gun : Victim blinks 5 space away at a random angle.
Armor-Piercing Gun : Ignores 25% damage.

Others ideas :
- One that could do deal additional special damage to all units loaded into a bunker or transport.
- One that could push foes away.
- Possibly a weapon that allows to fully ignore armor reduction and deals more based on enemy armor (ex : +10 damage instead of -10 damage vs 10 armor).

***Buffs/Handicaps***

Handicaps tend to be only for enemy foes. Player units MIGHT have a random permanent handicap in favor of getting bonus upgrade points.

Done :
Last Stand (Buff) : On death, unit survives X extra seconds before meeting their true death.
Chaos Weapon : Unit's Weapons randomly do -50% to +50% damage.
Unreliable Shields (Handicap) : Unit's Shields turns off randomly for 3 seconds then turn back on with previous shields points.
Frail Shields (Handicap) : If the Unit with shields receives more than X damage (on a single hit), shields can be turned off for 3 seconds then turn back on with previous shields points.
+Damage from (Weapon Type) : Unit receives +25%/50%/75%/100% from Melee or Ranged or Splash or Spell damage.

Ideas :
Bravery (Buff) : Only for enemies, buffed unit is less likely to escape from battle (from start or mid-battle).
Cowardice (Handicap) : Unit is much more likely to escape from battle (from start or mid-battle).

***AI***

Ideas (with no guarantee) :
- Main enemy force actually waiting for other side AI to be finished.
- Main enemy force that can attempt to strike another side than the obvious one.
- Enemy Mothership having a Nuke-like warning while trying to recall some of YOUR units in an AoE into their main force.
- Some enemies that Drop-pod into your base.
- Nuking ghosts
- Harassing foes (ex : Reapers randomly with Attack-on-move going everywhere bombing your structures)
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So still poking on said defense map (the battleships one is just dead period).

The info below implies enemy randomization while having a stock of "points" to put into the various sections. I do try to ensure it avoids ridiculous overbuffs for the "defense level" players would have to face.

Many sections have hard caps to prevent retarded OP scenarios. For example, weapons cannot all have a cooldown of 0.06 and could instead have the weapon's cooldown between 0.80 and 1.60 depending on points put. Many of those rules will apply for player buffs on their own stats, weapons, abilities, etc.

Concrete stuff done :

-> Random Unit Name system (ex : An enemy unit having the name "Old Mailman of Legends")

-> Stat randomization of enemy units
****-> HP, SP, MP, HP regen, SP regen, MP regen, Life Armor, Shield Armor

-> Weapon randomization of enemy units
****-> Damage (+ other types such as vs Light), Range, Cooldown

-> (Almost) Ability randomization of enemy units
****-> Damage, Range, Cooldown

-> Visual-only dialog prototype for the propose to see a unit's stats/weapons/abilities + buff.

Not done yet :
-> Behavior (Positive and Negative) randomization of enemy units
-> Have more enemy unit type than the current "Newbie Generic Ranged" type (ex : should have Nukers, Medics, Motherships, etc.)
-> No AI triggers yet.
-> Lack of enemy abilities/behaviors.
-> No trigger integration of stat/upgrade dialog for players to see updated info on enemy units OR to buff their own units.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So extra stuff done :

- Randomization of enemy abilities
- Randomization of enemy behaviors
- Dialog : Show weapon damage, bonus damage, range and cooldown of selected unit (works for the vast majority of cases).
- Dialog : Side trigger work. To be used when a player updates a basic stat (HP, Energy regen, etc.) so it reflects the modification on all players' dialog if any player is selecting said unit-type. All with the intentions of minimal lag (rather than full lazy refreshes)

EDIT : Added screenshots.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Mostly stuff done towards use for updating the dialog when a player upgrades his unit in various ways.

Also the feature to rename your unit-type as you see fit. In addition, the middle sub-dialog updates the unit name to your next selected unit-type so you can easily mass rename your different unit-types.

It's possible that I might add some "censor vote" vs a player if the majority want relatively clean names and one is being overly lame about it. Thus it would reset said player's custom unit names to the default ones and lock him from re-editing them further.

Likely sub-dialog improvements for this one in particular :
- Reset unit to respend upgrade points.

Possible extra improvements :
- Model actor change for unit-type
- Censor vote (for offensive unit names) vs a specific player.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Poked :
- Most of the pre-work (dialog-related) towards updating player's weapons.
- Added "buttons" on the main dialog towards adding/removing weapons.
- Added a -rename command as a 2nd way to rename the selected unit if it's yours.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

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Poked :
- Pretty much all weapon-related stuff but adding new weapons for your own units.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So finally did the part to add weapons. I forgot about the part to add specific bonus damages (ex : + to "vs light") but that's a minor detail compared to the work I finished for adding weapons. The dialog also supports selecting another unit to easily add a weapon on it rather than closing/opening it on a new unit.

The dialog I did for adding weapons is intended to be reused to add abilities and behaviors as well. Obvious with categories differences and such. By the way, weapon categories aren't final but it's a start.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Well I will pretty much inevitability slow down the project's progress due to real life stuff. I won't be surprised if I end up finishing the map around patch 1.5 or somewhat after.

However, instead of screenshots, I have VOICE CLIPS.

I intend to voice the mad enemy commander (portrait : Battlecruiser Commander) that sends the enemy forces against you. Attached to this post, is a zip file containing 12 (out of 30 made or so) different voice clips.

Voice clip notes :
[PLAYER DEFEAT] & [PLAYER VICTORY] : Voice clip that can chosen if the human player group is defeated or victorious.
[STACK PLAN] : An allied spy can infiltrate the enemy base and might relay the commander's base AI for the unit stack.

EDIT : I do intend to add an opinion to mute the voice since it's not everyone that will want to hear it.
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So finally poked more on my map.

I neglected to do the dialog to buff the various bonus damage types of a weapon so here it is.

Odds I will use some similar small "side" dialog to improve abilities (damage, range, cooldown, etc.) and buffs (buff level or amount of same buffs).
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Re: Defense project (was Battleship project)

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

So repoked a bit on the map.

Mostly retested around for the interface. Then found a bug and smashed it.

After that, added the possibility to buff the movement speed of your units. Usually at +0.0625 per 1 point spent. The "supersonic" series of flying units (less durable but annoying "flying everywhere") is likely to allow +0.1875 or +0.25 per point spent.

Then repoking my interface for adding weapons so that it shows both tooltip-wise and icon color-wise which unit is currently using the weapon as two different unit types cannot use the same weapon for fairly obvious reasons.

It would be uncolored if nobody is using it, yellow if your current unit-type is using it, red if another unit-type is using it. Tooltips on said icons will say which unit is using it.
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