AVWW Post-Release 1.027-1.029 "Lieutenants In Freefall" Released!

[yllamana]

3. Mines: I must say, it was really surreal dodging special forces guard posts on the way down. Actually, that might not be a bad idea to make them more of a factor in games.

I knew I wasn't the only one who thought "oh god I'm under attack by special forces guard posts".

I couldn't see very far below me at all during the mission. I'd say my character was about a quarter of the way up from the bottom of the screen, if that. I'm using the mouse following display if that has anything to do with it. I liked the mission type, though. i think it could do with being brighter; the effect of the darkness was to make me chuck those little flare things downwards the whole way, and I don't think it particularly added to the gameplay experience.

I like the update though, very neat! The little purple missiles in battlefield missions (the land speeder ones) aren't hitting other characters or boxes anymore (I used to blow them up by dropping boxes on them). Love the lieutenant tower change.

I took a "fix anachronisms in cave" mission in an abandoned town, and wow! It was the most obnoxious thing ever! I ended up with a gigantic cloud of those urban sniper balloons and crude defense things floating around and knocking me around in the sky. I did manage to win eventually, but geez!

I also had another anachronism mission that didn't seem possible to complete. I did lap after lap around all the monsters displayed on the map and couldn't find the last one, and it was pretty much just lightning espers and dust devils so there wasn't much room for ambiguity. No idea if I did just miss one. There was one of those trap statues in the mission, and I did kill an anachronistic enemy and a real one at the same time. Maybe I just made a mistake!

[yllamana]

Ok, I noticed one bug pretty quickly,

All types of "seeker" projectiles dont seem to actually be registering collisions with the character.   They do no damage at all and just tend to stick to the character.   Small fairies which usually pop upon contact with a shield dont do that either.   I can hit them all with projectiles just fine though.

EDIT:  Some of them are like ALMOST colliding but then bugging out, like the purple.... er..... whatever those are that the landspeeder fires, or the shots from the Gazebos, they sorta spaz out upon contact with the character and jerk off to the side, and then continue moving.

Oh, I wanted to comment on this. I'm not sure what's causing it, but it's happening with a whole range of creatures. It's intermittent and seems to just turn off their collision damage entirely - they aren't breaking through boxes, for example. I was able to stand on the Overlord's head with no ill effects.

And it is fantastic. It makes a stellar difference to the game to not have to deal with stuff like brushing a skelebot and going flying across the screen, and taking a bazillion damage and it brings the benefit of being close to an enemy more in line with the benefit of being far away, which is a great change as far as I'm concerned.

Obviously something is actually broken here, but I'd love if this could be investigated as an avenue for improving the game in general. It just makes such a great difference.

[Dizzard]

Just had a play with the latest update.

I absolutely love the freefall missions, it really pulled me in when I was playing it. So tense.

Definitely one of my favourite missions now.

[TechSY730]

Ok, I noticed one bug pretty quickly,

All types of "seeker" projectiles dont seem to actually be registering collisions with the character.   They do no damage at all and just tend to stick to the character.   Small fairies which usually pop upon contact with a shield dont do that either.   I can hit them all with projectiles just fine though.

EDIT:  Some of them are like ALMOST colliding but then bugging out, like the purple.... er..... whatever those are that the landspeeder fires, or the shots from the Gazebos, they sorta spaz out upon contact with the character and jerk off to the side, and then continue moving.

Oh, I wanted to comment on this. I'm not sure what's causing it, but it's happening with a whole range of creatures. It's intermittent and seems to just turn off their collision damage entirely - they aren't breaking through boxes, for example. I was able to stand on the Overlord's head with no ill effects.

And it is fantastic. It makes a stellar difference to the game to not have to deal with stuff like brushing a skelebot and going flying across the screen, and taking a bazillion damage and it brings the benefit of being close to an enemy more in line with the benefit of being far away, which is a great change as far as I'm concerned.

Obviously something is actually broken here, but I'd love if this could be investigated as an avenue for improving the game in general. It just makes such a great difference.

I agree. Reviewing what should and shouldn't have a passive melee on contact (as opposed to an explicit, active melee attack) could most certainly use massive reviewing.

Stuff that you would expect to hurt by merely touching it should have a passive melee (like balls of fire or balls of lightning or stuff like that). However, this is the minority of enemies. Most enemies would logically have an active melee. Like take for example, a skelebot or a rhino. Would merely touching a skelebot or a rhino that isn't trying to melee you logically hurt you? No, their damage comes from them trying to stab/whack/whatever you. Thus, it stands to reason that they shouldn't get "free" melee, but rather have to do something to do it (which implies an animation, which may imply a delay, and most certainly implies a hitbox (like instead of all around, only their hand or their front or something can deal melee) which means you can "sneak behind it" and get some hits before they get a chance to turn around and then melee you, and finally implies that their "global cooldown" is hit (no meleeing and firing a projectile on the same frame, just like players can't))
As a counter example, what about an explosion esper (that ball of fire) that is not actively trying to ram into you, would touching it logically hurt? Yes. As a general rule, fire hurts when you touch it, whether that flame is actively "out to get you" or not. Thus, it makes sense that they get a "free", passive melee attack.

Hmm, I think this is a good balance overhaul suggestion for mantis.

EDIT: Actually, this would be better as a new forum topic.
EDIT2: Done, http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10786.0.html

[x4000]

In terms of the passive melee argument -- I'm not much inclined to it.  It's pretty standard for metroidvania games and platformer games AND shumps that if you collide with any enemy you take damage.  There are exceptions with specific kinds of enemies you can jump on top of or ride on or similar (and that's true here also), but the general rule is that touching enemies = bad.  Does anyone have a single example of another game in these genres that doesn't use that rule?  I can't think of anything, from Megaman to Zelda II to Castlevania to Tyrian to Mario to Sonic.

[Misery]

In terms of the passive melee argument -- I'm not much inclined to it.  It's pretty standard for metroidvania games and platformer games AND shumps that if you collide with any enemy you take damage.  There are exceptions with specific kinds of enemies you can jump on top of or ride on or similar (and that's true here also), but the general rule is that touching enemies = bad.  Does anyone have a single example of another game in these genres that doesn't use that rule?  I can't think of anything, from Megaman to Zelda II to Castlevania to Tyrian to Mario to Sonic.

This is what I was thinking as well.

The game seems to take alot of inspiration from shmups in general.... which is a genre I'm familiar with..... and in THOSE, you just outright EXPLODE if something even touches you with a glancing blow.   And of course in something like the early Castlevania games you could die by running into a non-moving skeleton-tower, which would hilariously cause Simon to launch backwards off a cliff for no apparant reason.

It's just basic game logic for these.    At least the characters in this game dont violently detonate simply because a bat lightly smacked them on the head.

[Bluddy]

Well, this game is kinda a cross between a side-scroller and an ARPG, even if it leans far more towards side-scroller. In ARPGs, touching enemies doesn't hurt you unless the enemies specifically have touch damage. I find that it's more realistic that way. It also shifts the game much more towards melee being an alternative method of attack. This game has many more attack methods than just about any side-scroller ever, and as such, it needs to allow more variety in its attack patterns. One really cool method of attack is to jump on an enemy and hit it from up close, or to attach yourself to an enemy with some spell (that hasn't been added yet) and repeatedly melee said enemy.

Iji did things this way as well and that game rocked IMO. Also in Spelunky, while some (perhaps most) enemies damaged you if they touched you, other enemies had to punch you to hurt you.

Additionally, if you think about Mario, the whole game was about getting close to monsters and hitting them in a way that allowed you to touch them. Enemies hurt you if you weren't using your stomp attack, but the whole challenge was approaching them in a way that wouldn't hurt you and at the same time kill them. Sonic was the same -- run at enemies, and you can touch enemies with no threat to yourself.

[x4000]

Good points, but I'm not sure I'm sold.  At any rate, the larger urban mechanical enemies all have no melee attacks, so you can ride on them, etc.

I just think that the physical presence of enemies would be greatly reduced if you could simply run right through a gauntlet of many foes with little risk of damage if you time it right with their shot patterns.  I dunno.


I had hoped for a release tonight, but realistically it's not going to happen.  I just about have the new changes finished up, but I still have more balance to do and some bugfixes, and so it's best to do that stuff in the morning when you folks have a whole day to report issues.

The main thing wrong with the game at the moment is that lack of melee damage from enemies, which is really a bug in your favor so I've not been dropping everything to run after that one.  Anyhow, signing off for the night -- new releases of both AVWW and AI War sometime tomorrow morning hopefully.

[Bluddy]

Good points, but I'm not sure I'm sold.  At any rate, the larger urban mechanical enemies all have no melee attacks, so you can ride on them, etc.

I just think that the physical presence of enemies would be greatly reduced if you could simply run right through a gauntlet of many foes with little risk of damage if you time it right with their shot patterns.  I dunno.

I think that's a good point. This game allows you more mobility than just about every side-scroller I know. If enemies didn't hit you for damage when you touched them, it might become too easy.

Nevertheless, I think there is room to vary the melee patterns as in the case of mechanical enemies. It'd be really cool for instance if rhinos sped up the longer they ran -- initially they'd be really slow, and then they'd speed up until they reached their maximum speed. If they hit you at low velocity, they'd do relatively little damage, but at full speed they'd hit you for maximum damage and knock you back. You should be able to jump on rhinos' backs though.

[x4000]

Nevertheless, I think there is room to vary the melee patterns as in the case of mechanical enemies. It'd be really cool for instance if rhinos sped up the longer they ran -- initially they'd be really slow, and then they'd speed up until they reached their maximum speed. If they hit you at low velocity, they'd do relatively little damage, but at full speed they'd hit you for maximum damage and knock you back. You should be able to jump on rhinos' backs though.

The damage of the rhinos isn't based on this, but you do know that this is actually how they already run, right?

[x4000]

New one!  http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,10794.0.html