Author Topic: 0.905 out now.  (Read 4797 times)

Offline x4000

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0.905 out now.
« on: September 10, 2013, 01:39:08 pm »
I'm going to start going ahead and doing these posts even for the alpha.  So here are the release notes: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Bionic_Dues_Alpha_Release_Notes#Alpha_0.905

There are a LOT of changes in here, and I think the game suddenly feels much better.  The notable stuff worth commenting on:

1. Tutorial popup stuff!  If there's anything I am missing here, please do let me know.  That's one of the main barriers before we let in the new alpha players, so if the existing alpha players will provide some good feedback on this I'm sure all will appreciate it. ;)

2. The game now uses a pessimistic line of sight rather than a permissive one.  The details of that are in the release notes, but the short of it is: you can't see as much when you are in tight spaces, particularly around corners.  But you also can't shoot through walls, and neither can bots.  I was very skeptical of this at first for a variety of reasons, but as Misery pointed out I think that people will just keep complaining about the old method as a bug.  The new method, the more I've played with it during testing today, really does feel very good, too.  So I'll be very interested in feedback on this one.

3. Enemy alert logic has been really updated and should make way more sense (and intuitive sense) now.  It also shows you the alert state of enemies in FOW now, which is also important.

4. The enemy pathfinding is waaay better now.  I thought it was still using the battle-tested Skyward pathfinding, but as it turns out that got (ahem) switched at one point to A* instead, which I'm not as keen on and which was not working entirely properly in this case.  Now it does, and crowds of enemies are way more effective at approaching you.  The whole thing with enemies having too short of a range to really get you often is becoming a bit more moot here, as with the crowds you have to watch out for them flanking you despite their short range.

5. There is now an explicit mission exit tile in each level, rather like the exit stairs in most roguelikes.  This lets you keep playing after the mission is won, in order to get more loot or whatever.

6. The bug with the auto-win or auto-lose for missions after a certain point is now fixed.  That plus a number of other bugs.  Not sentry turrets yet, though, I've not had time quite yet.

7. Ammo on all of the middle-capacity ammo weapons and large-capacity ammo weapon has been reduced quite a bit.  The reasoning for this is in the wiki, and it's actually getting back to the design as we had it a week or so ago (well, the equivalent -- we shrunk the mission sizes but forgot to shrink the weapon ammo accordingly).  Feedback on this is very welcome, as the idea here is to make you feel ammo pleasure in a fun and tense way, not a frustrating rage-quitting sort of way. ;)  Also there may be some changes needed to the efficacy of ammo-increasing parts, but I wanted to take this one step at a time.


I think those are all the big points, although there are certainly a lot more things actually in the release notes.

Enjoy!
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Offline mrhanman

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2013, 01:45:47 pm »
Looks great!  Can't wait for steam to update!

Offline orzelek

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #2 on: September 10, 2013, 01:51:31 pm »
Off to play around with it.
LOS seemed a bit strange before.

Ammo cuts seem quite harsh. Considering amount of enemies you meet it might be problematic. I was already using up quite a lot of ammo from all 4 exos.
And I don't see how game can be playable without aoe so less rockets will hurt badly.

Offline x4000

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #3 on: September 10, 2013, 01:51:51 pm »
Looks great!  Can't wait for steam to update!

To force an update, just quit and restart and it is instantly there. :)
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Offline x4000

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #4 on: September 10, 2013, 01:55:09 pm »
Off to play around with it.
LOS seemed a bit strange before.

It's a common algorithm for roguelikes (it's called shadowcasting), but most of them don't have ranged weapons much, or if they do it tends to be magic.  So, yeah.

Ammo cuts seem quite harsh. Considering amount of enemies you meet it might be problematic. I was already using up quite a lot of ammo from all 4 exos.
And I don't see how game can be playable without aoe so less rockets will hurt badly.

Fair enough -- I may wind up reverting it completely, or going somewhere in-between.  Please nobody get all mad about this!  It's not worth it, because I am literally looking for feedback and will respond based on that.  So just tell me what you think. ;)

Keith and I both tend to optimize things of this sort -- balance, I mean -- by going as extreme as we think we can one way and then the other, and then gradually get closer to the correct balance based on that.  It leads to overall fewer steps in the balance process if we can identify the outer acceptable bounds sooner.  This reduction may have pushed it beyond the lower bounds of acceptability, and if that's the case I will have a patch out within a few hours of commentary on it.  But suggestions on appropriate values is needed first. :)
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Offline orzelek

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #5 on: September 10, 2013, 02:03:44 pm »
I'm mainly concerned about rockets. But I forgot that grenades are repaired now so it might compensate for that.
I also noticed that some weapons received a range increase.

Offline mrhanman

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #6 on: September 10, 2013, 02:15:36 pm »
I was pretty pessimistic about the LoS changes, but they seem pretty good so far!

Ammo changes might have been a bit harsh.  I barely made it out of the last mission alive, and it was only because I stumbled over the exit fairly early.  Maybe split the difference?

The exit tiles are perfect and give me control over when the mission ends.  That's exactly what I was hoping for!

Offline orzelek

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #7 on: September 10, 2013, 02:19:10 pm »
There is a bit annoying new bug so I'll drop it here.
In bot stats window on customization screen when you have mines it shows tool-tip instead of Mines:
And then it gets a bit confused about which tool-tip goes to which line.

Offline x4000

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #8 on: September 10, 2013, 02:34:04 pm »
In terms of the ammo, I've put out .906 now to address that -- I think the new numbers make me less nervous, too. ;)

Re: new bugs, can you please put those on mantis so I can get to them in the priority chain?

Thanks!
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Offline mrhanman

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #9 on: September 10, 2013, 02:53:01 pm »
Thanks for the ClawBot nerf!  I was finding my encounters with them hopeless. 

Offline x4000

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #10 on: September 10, 2013, 03:23:22 pm »
My pleasure! That was totally an accidental insanity with them in general, heh.
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Offline nas1m

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #11 on: September 10, 2013, 05:00:24 pm »
This build looks great!
Just started a fresh game and I must say it is all coming together rather nicely. I just played a single mission as I really took my time with the new picker, but I had a blast!
  • The new LoS: Much better
  • The new ammo distribution (as of .906): Okay so far
  • The range buff for the laser rifle: Feels good
  • The new part picker: Great!
  • The animated/lighted bots: Much better in terms of clarity (and looking nice!)
  • The improved bot behavior: At least I did not see them do anything really dumb ;)

I logged a couple of issues nonetheless. Mainly polish, UI issues and clarification stuff, though. This game is really quite solid at the moment. Really like where this is going!

EDIT: The overlay we discussed would be nice nonetheless, though ;D.
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Offline x4000

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #12 on: September 10, 2013, 05:07:44 pm »
Cool stuff!

Go ahead and log the overlay, if you will.  I'm sure that will be something I can do in the next couple of weeks, as it is relatively quick.  It's kind of like Cyborg's weapon toggling keybinds in terms of difficulty.  I just need to get through some more higher-priority stuff first and then I'll be settling into a lot of that stuff.
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Offline nas1m

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #13 on: September 10, 2013, 05:12:13 pm »
Cool stuff!

Go ahead and log the overlay, if you will.  I'm sure that will be something I can do in the next couple of weeks, as it is relatively quick.  It's kind of like Cyborg's weapon toggling keybinds in terms of difficulty.  I just need to get through some more higher-priority stuff first and then I'll be settling into a lot of that stuff.
Done :D.
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Offline orzelek

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Re: 0.905 out now.
« Reply #14 on: September 10, 2013, 05:16:11 pm »
Silly question - what is the "vicinity" for EMP bot?
It seems that it's at least range of 5 which sounds more like large area around it not vicinity.

 

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