Unused images (or: What Bionic Dues could have been)

[Histidine]

Digging in Bionic_Dues/RuntimeData/Images turns up some interesting stuff. Specifically, some fascinating hints of what Keith was talking about here:

Though that was back when our inspirations were way more rainbow-six-like.

(click to embiggen)

EntitySystems

Propulsion is presumably just the basic moving around? Jammer and Scramble's precise mechanics are unspecified but you can make a guess from the names. The real interesting one is Overwatch, though - was this game once more like Space Hulk, with planning several moves ahead, carefully set up fields of fire, contingencies for things like weapon jams and running out of ammo?

ExoParts

Some far out stuff here. Picking off specific bot parts! Submunitions! Stasis generators! Laser splitter arrays! Warp cores!

Misc

The Warp Cores show up again. Wonder what exactly they do?

WorldMapTiles

Apparently doors could be double-length at one point. _{never mind, double length doors are still in the game} Oh, and the blast doors - more Space Hulk inspiration? (This is one of the things that could go in the current game without affecting the design, actually).
Note the warp core repair bay as well, indicating that it was something that could be damaged or depleted. Perhaps if you got your warp core shot out, you wouldn't be able to extract and had to abandon the exo? Terrifying!

Now, the BD we actually got in the end is great, of course. That said, I'd also be very interested in playing a hardcore turn-based tactical game by Arcen, like what we're getting glimpses of here. Perhaps in the future?

[Elcs]

Some of those ideas look inspired and very tasty indeed.

I am sort of surprised that there isn't a multiple tile sized bot (Has me thinking a lot about the Dreadnaught in Gremlin's 1993'ish Space Crusade, based off Space Hulk board game). Something like an Epic-boss, perhaps multiple bot/boss traits with the ability to loose multiple attacks each turn.

Hopefully BD will turn out to be successful enough to bring in some tasty new graphics options, more epic music and more stuff to abuse

[keith.lamothe]

At one point in the design you had all four exos out at once and it was basically a tactics game with some roguelike elements.  Overwatch was part of it then.  But the game was way less fun with four guys to order around, etc.  Took too long.

After that, there was a point where there was no cost at all to switching exos and this posed various problems (like "we should really make sensors a global stat, because there's nothing to keep you from switching _constantly_....") so we added a "warp core" mechanic which basically let you swap 10 times per mission.  There were warp-core-recharging-stations (like the stealth-recharging-stations) and gear effects that could make the warp-swap cost less, etc.  But eventually we realized that we would never use the swaps due to the cost, and that it was fine to just have switching cost a turn like Wait.

Maneuvering Jets were a propulsion part that gave you a % evasion chance depending on how your maneuvering level compared to the enemy bot's level (or whatever check).

Scanners/Jammers were at one point a resisted vision/stealth thing.  And at some point (earlier or later, I don't remember) were a sort of resisted %-evasion/%-to-hit thing.  And later Jammers were sort of a point-blank-aoe "all affected enemies cannot shoot for X turns" thing.  There was also a scrambler that was like a Jammer except it was "all affected enemies go enemy-to-all for X turns".

Many of those things were never implemented, so I saw "were" and "was" in the sense of design, etc.

The maneuvering jets, jammers, and scramblers may well make it into an expansion.  Though I'm not too keen on the rng-based %-evasion, etc, as in the high levels of this game there's rather a huge difference between getting hit and not getting hit.

@Elcs: no multi-tile bots/exos, ever   Makes pathfinding way too complicated.  Multi-tile stationary things are fine (and already in the game).

[Necro_Man_Ser]

I like the idea of jammers. Just don't make it rng based, I agree that would be very bad for mentioned reasons, making the game a lottery. I`m sure you would have good ideas how to balance jammers right Oh and not only wpn jammers, maybe radar jammers or something, which decreases awareness range of bots permanently (as opposed to temporary with stealth). I'm thinking aboiut something that makes it easier to navigate through parts of the map without fighting, something more reliable than limited stealth. Maybe something that makes you invisible to any bot which is farther away than x number of tiles, and you can't fire a weapon while it's active AND the enemy gets a free shot once you deactivate it, IF in range. Because there are scenarios where your only hope is to find the objective/way out undetected since a fight would just end deadly either way.

[Elcs]

@Elcs: no multi-tile bots/exos, ever   Makes pathfinding way too complicated.  Multi-tile stationary things are fine (and already in the game).

[shattered]     Dreams     [/shattered]

[keith.lamothe]

[shattered]     Dreams     [/shattered]

My work is done here

[Histidine]

Evasion could be a %-based damage reduction, but that would be probably be stepping all over damage resistance's toes.

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't think there are any dice rolls in the game as it stands, correct? (outside of hacking terminals for the first time, I suppose) I think that's a good thing, since it makes even the worst situation you get yourself into like a puzzle to solve. That's one of the biggest strengths, that it plays like chess. Every move is knowable and you can sit and ponder your options. Adding RNG dice rolls on top of that makes it no longer a pure puzzle, and it would lose something with that.

You could even add a pure puzzle mode to the game now that I think of it. Pre-place all the enemy bots, restrict the player to limited exos with pre-set gear, and have a goal of 'get to the exit' or 'blow up everything'. That could even be something people could design on their own if a simple editor interface was possible. Let people share them around, maybe on Steam workshop or something. Fun times. But I'm going off on random flights of fancy here.

Oh now that I think of it, I guess there is some randomness in some of the enemy bots that fire in random directions. But at least there's no % chance to hit, chance to dodge, etc. for your own bots. Still, that does sort of mess up my point about no RNG. Oh well, I typed it all the way up there, it would be a waste not to post this now.

[Elcs]

[shattered]     Dreams     [/shattered]

My work is done here

You are one extremely evil Admin/Staff Member.

I bet you designed Misery difficulty .

On a serious note, 4-tile robots would be epic, if only allowed in certain rare instances such as a certain map event, "Lion's Den"-esque thing with a small handful of lesser bots, maybe some bosses (no Claw Bots for heavens sake lol) and a singular behemoth. Make it available once or twice per city map, give it it's own specific set of map generation rules, multiple weapon systems and possible special abilities and you make something truly epic within this war.

I might be banging on a bit here and my suggestions falling on ears (or eyes) that have seen or heard them before but the whole idea of it is damn exciting.

Getting to the Dreadnaught in Space Crusade for the first time when I was about 8 or 9 years old was absolutely thrilling and scary at the same time. You're fighting off against reasonably hard opponents anyway, a mix of trash and elites, then suddenly you come across a high HP, high armour monster with multiple weapon systems that it can choose from and use 1 (or 2, can't remember) per turn depending on what it decides would be most effective. Nostalgia

[licker]

Though the game certainly is great as it is...

OMG!

I would so have loved a more tactical mechanic ala, XCOM:EU with all 4 bots on the screen at once and all the randomness of hitting and missing and all the extra goodies that allows.

Expansion maybe....

 

[Mick]

Though the game certainly is great as it is...

OMG!

I would so have loved a more tactical mechanic ala, XCOM:EU with all 4 bots on the screen at once and all the randomness of hitting and missing and all the extra goodies that allows.

Expansion maybe....

 

I dunno, at that point I'd figure "why not just play XCOM?" I like that Bionic does things a bit different.

[licker]

Though the game certainly is great as it is...

OMG!

I would so have loved a more tactical mechanic ala, XCOM:EU with all 4 bots on the screen at once and all the randomness of hitting and missing and all the extra goodies that allows.

Expansion maybe....

 

I dunno, at that point I'd figure "why not just play XCOM?" I like that Bionic does things a bit different.

I think there's enough room for more.  And I do play XCOM, but the biggest difference is still the loot system, which doesn't exist in XCOM.

[x4000]

Incidentally, I have thought of a way to have multi-tile bots and exos, Keith, which would be both easy to code and not break pathfinding.

1. Have an entity that draws itself around 3x wider and taller than normal, so that it takes up 5 tiles instead of 1.  Visually this is trivial, as you know.  However, in reality it still only exists on one tile.
2. When it is checking "can I move into a tile," it says "no" if there is not a ring of empty tiles around the tile being checked.  That would handle pathfinding right there.
3. For other enemies doing pathfinding, or the exos, when they check a tile to see if they can move into it, the answer is "no" if one of the larger entiteis is within 1 manhat of them.
4. For shots hitting things, explosions, etc, whenever they hit a tile they see if they are within manhat 1 of any large entities and then hit them.  Possibly with an added flag to say that a given large thing can only be hit once by a single attack, but maybe not.

In this way, the entity under the hood is really still one tile, but visually and in many ways functionally it is one tile.  Minimally invasive changes, relatively speaking, although certainly there would likely be a lot of related edge cases and bugs for a while.  It's an idea for an expansion at some point, though.

[nas1m]

Incidentally, I have thought of a way to have multi-tile bots and exos, Keith, which would be both easy to code and not break pathfinding.

1. Have an entity that draws itself around 3x wider and taller than normal, so that it takes up 5 tiles instead of 1.  Visually this is trivial, as you know.  However, in reality it still only exists on one tile.
2. When it is checking "can I move into a tile," it says "no" if there is not a ring of empty tiles around the tile being checked.  That would handle pathfinding right there.
3. For other enemies doing pathfinding, or the exos, when they check a tile to see if they can move into it, the answer is "no" if one of the larger entiteis is within 1 manhat of them.
4. For shots hitting things, explosions, etc, whenever they hit a tile they see if they are within manhat 1 of any large entities and then hit them.  Possibly with an added flag to say that a given large thing can only be hit once by a single attack, but maybe not.

In this way, the entity under the hood is really still one tile, but visually and in many ways functionally it is one tile.  Minimally invasive changes, relatively speaking, although certainly there would likely be a lot of related edge cases and bugs for a while.  It's an idea for an expansion at some point, though.

Now this sounds just great (back when i suggested something like this on mantis you said this would *never* happen - very cool you found a way to possibly allow this. Kudos!).

BTW: any news regarding my two questions from another thread (regarding the alpha stats for bionic and nick's Comic)?

[x4000]

Nick's comic is coming, but not ready yet.  Alpha stats are something that Josh will have to get put together, thanks for the reminder.