Daily (or weekly) Challenges

[Mad Rubicant]

From the Kickstarter thread

Challenge Scenarios! Okay, so I don't know if this makes any sense really, but there's the various Lobby setup scripts, right?

I think ready made challenge scenarios would be a good idea. Perhaps it could be one of the stretch goals. (If the devs wanna do a kickstarter campaign)

The script things atm are too tedious. You have to actually go to the file and write the script. There could be a save as a challenge/script/whatever button in the game lobby. So the player would select the settings he wants and then press the button and it would save all the selected settings into a challenge/script/whatever. Then the player could upload it on the forums and other people could download it and copy paste the file into the challenge/script/whatever folder in the game directory and volá.

Perhaps this could be combined with some kind of a sandbox mode or a "map editor" (Galaxy Editor?) where the player could give/take planets/ships to/from the player/the AI and then save that as a scenario with the selected settings. (Well that was a mouthful)

This gave me an idea: Similar to how Binding of Isaac (and a bunch of other games) have premade challenges, or daily challenges with leaderboards, AIW2 could have them too. Stuff like starting with some number of bonus ship types and no unlocks during play, or having a core part of the player's fleet disabled ("Win without bombers!", "No turrets"). Actually, daily challenges are too often for how long games take. Weekly or every few days challenges and leaderboards are a better idea. For these, it would be a published seed and lobby settings, and players compete to get the best score, however that's calculated.

[Pumpkin]

Interesting. But that can be done by the community on the forum, as we did with the Outta Tracks series.

I would love to do something like that on the forum, actually. (I'm currently struggling at 9/9, which is far higher than my comfort zone, and I would love to play some easy games at 7/7 with funny settings. I have found memories of Outta Tracks.)

I mean, it's a good idea on its own, but I don't see how the game can technically support that kind of thing.

And, of course, yes, this can't be daily. Weekly might be interesting. For a more casual experience on the forum, monthly + AAR might be more appealing.

[Mad Rubicant]

I mean, it's a good idea on its own, but I don't see how the game can technically support that kind of thing.

What do you mean? You can just have a server push a seed and lobby options, and have an option in the main menu to start this week's challenge. You can even throw in an option to subscribe to user-run challenge servers, if you're so inclined (though that means you have to publish an API and follow it and ICK).

[Cinth]

I mean, it's a good idea on its own, but I don't see how the game can technically support that kind of thing.

What do you mean? You can just have a server push a seed and lobby options, and have an option in the main menu to start this week's challenge. You can even throw in an option to subscribe to user-run challenge servers, if you're so inclined (though that means you have to publish an API and follow it and ICK).

Meh.  Sounds like a lot of added costs there for something that can be run from the forums (here and steam) if your inclined to do so.

[x4000]

It's certainly a potentially interesting idea, but it would be a stretch goal at best.  The ability to have specific scenarios or seeds that we push from the server and then have leaderboards from is certainly possible.

[Mad Rubicant]

It's certainly a potentially interesting idea, but it would be a stretch goal at best.  The ability to have specific scenarios or seeds that we push from the server and then have leaderboards from is certainly possible.

That's fair. And I see that this got moved to the maybe later forum.
Something probably lower cost that would make doing this via forums much more easily is the idea of "map exchange strings"; Factorio has them and it lets you pass around a seed and lobby options, and people can use it with a simple copy+paste

[x4000]

Oooh!  That's a really cool thing, yeah.

People simply swapping saves to do succession games is also possible and something I really love, personally.  Boatmurdered inspires so much of my professional life.

[kasnavada]

Oooh!  That's a really cool thing, yeah.

People simply swapping saves to do succession games is also possible and something I really love, personally.  Boatmurdered inspires so much of my professional life.

Or you could also "steam workshop" "saved" initial maps as scenario prototypes.

[Squashyhex]

The problem with doing it through steam workshop only would be it would exclude users on GOG or other platforms.