Drox Operative

[keith.lamothe]

Gameplay > Graphics.

For fun value, certainly.  But financially the "% of people who bounce straight off your steam store page" appears to primarily depend on your trailer and/or screenshots (and if you have no trailer it's quite likely a bounce regardless).

Once you get past that, then it's a matter of "does the idea sound interesting?" and such.

To think how the game would have looked without some people complaining... hehe

And we greatly appreciate your complaining.  You're an olympic art complainer, in my book

My frustration is with the hordes of people who will accept no accountability for their comments but just blast whatever visual style we do. 

In your case, if we pursue the issue you'll actually have a conversation with us about it (albeit sometimes with a hammer in hand).  This is often helpful to us, or at least amusing.

With the numeric majority of the art-bashers I've seen personally it's just recreational abuse and they would derive at least as much personal pleasure from our failure as they would from our success.

[KDR_11k]

There are a lot of games out there and screenshots are the first thing people see of them, often acting as a quick vetting process because in most cases the graphics and gameplay quality are roughly equal. There are a few outliers in either direction but they're far lower than the number of games that follow this rule (if you can't think of many bad, ugly games try browsing XBLIG) because often all parts of the game receive roughly equal amounts of effort and skill.

Anyway, I had a sector in Drox where I was fighting for one race or another and suddenly the Shadow showed up. I don't know if their colonies were cloaked or something but suddenly they're everywhere, have like 10x as many ships as the other races and keep gaining ground. Fortunately I managed an econ victory shortly after that. In another sector I was fighting the Drakk and they had a lot of high level defensive techs so killing them was a sloooooooow, arduous process and when I killed one colony another sprung up elsewhere. The constant nuking of colonies drove my fear rating up and so I won the Fear victory before making any real inroads against the enemy.

[eRe4s3r]

Speaking of what bounces people of steam pages, I think AI War is one of these games that will never look good on a screenshot or in motion, no offense. But even if all the graphical suggestions were put in (I am talking engine trails, in-sector nebula areas, smooth lightning done with localized glow sprites, in-sector ambient "drift" of debris and particles and color mapping per sector, localized de-saturation and over-saturation filter) then the game would still not look good on a screenshot that's zoomed out even partially. Though it'd look neat in motion up-close. In the end, it would be fluff only but it'd potentially look neat.

In the end, if you ever are bored and want to improve graphics in AI War, there are still things you could do. Localized dynamic glow sprites to simulate light cast by objects (maybe even a blend mode that works differently to normla additive) and fog/nebula that drifts through sectors. Some nicer color filters (tint) and shaders (localized Distortion or Blur) or maybe even full blown engine trails that drift off depending on which direction the space weather blows... hehe

Point is, there is never a lack of ideas for improving AI War in terms of graphics.

[keith.lamothe]

I'd like to improve AI War's graphics, but I'm actually really weak on graphics programming.  Chris is pretty strong at it, so it works out, but you'd probably get frustrated trying to work with me on that because I'd be saying things like "amblu-collu-shad-what- what does that mean?" and "Chris, why can we not draw 200 rectangles 60 times a second in 2013?"

[Wingflier]

I don't mind the UI of Drox as much as the graphics and "effects" themselves.  I mean, okay great, I understand you can't get a full-time artist and GFX designer blah blah blah, but can't you AT LEAST put things into scale?

For Heaven's sake, the ships are often bigger than the planets.  The missiles are often bigger than the ships.  It's really wonky and it just rips the beams out from under the 4th wall.

I swear to God, the concept is great, and the execution is even well-done.  If this exact game (in terms of coding) was made with Corporate production values, it would be a commercial success.

Unfortunately, with corporate production values, also comes corporate decision-making, and it would probably ruin what makes the game good in the process so...It's a tradeoff I suppose.  I just wish he had the money to hire better artists and graphics designers.

Off-Topic question:  I see sometimes that I unlock technologies which I can trade with other races in a barter.  I remember one time I opened up a menu that allowed me to see which research objects I had unlocked.  Does anyone know how I did that?

[eRe4s3r]

I'd like to improve AI War's graphics, but I'm actually really weak on graphics programming.  Chris is pretty strong at it, so it works out, but you'd probably get frustrated trying to work with me on that because I'd be saying things like "amblu-collu-shad-what- what does that mean?" and "Chris, why can we not draw 200 rectangles 60 times a second in 2013?"

Yeah but it is just 2d effects, so it wouldn't be an ambient occlusion shader. But I couldn't explain how to properly implement it either. Since AI War runs on Unity 3 where I am a bit at a loss how the engine renders specific things and how you do internal stuff like how to tell the game where a shot hit or where the front or back of an ship is. Or how specifically you do the modules on ships. (It would be an idea how to do glow effects as light simulation just.. different) ;p

And then there is the question "Does it improve gameplay" which mostly would be a NO

But I could think of a lot of cool stuff you could still do with AI War, especially a sort of "day / night" system except only the concept is like that, it won't actually get darker, just foggy/nebula'ish units activate lights and specific search lights would need to be used to spot ships. But all this just as an localized random dynamic weather effect not a full blown sector wide thing.

Also some kind of general glow effect for explosions that spawns on top of them (and the ships around) but blends slightly different to additive, so it appears as if a larger area is illuminated, sort of like a area based expanding and shrinking tint+20% brighter filter maybe.. mhh)

Well, needless to say, it would all be complicated to do...

[Hearteater]

Amusingly, you could remove the ability to zoom in past icons and it wouldn't change the game for me at all.  All that matters are the icons and the UI in AIW.  The icons are great IMO.  The UI could use tweaking, and the control scheme a rather extensive rework.  But I'm really a UI guy so I tend to notice UI stuff a lot.

[Wingflier]

Amusingly, you could remove the ability to zoom in past icons and it wouldn't change the game for me at all.  All that matters are the icons and the UI in AIW.  The icons are great IMO.  The UI could use tweaking, and the control scheme a rather extensive rework.  But I'm really a UI guy so I tend to notice UI stuff a lot.

Ironically my greatest change to AI War would not be to the graphics, but the logic.  From what I understand, each individual unit makes its own decisions on where to be and what to do.  Then there's an "squad" level decision making, and a "global" decision making.  If I understand it correctly.

This is all really cool in theory, but in practice you have 1,000 Fighters all having to think for themselves, and who all basically come to the same conclusion, meanwhile obliterating your processing power for no reason.  I think this is why when you get about ~700 ships on a single planet the whole game starts to lag, even on great computers.  Each unit has its own decision-making process, and this is completely unnecessary.  Most of the time it makes no difference at all whether 1 Fighter or 1,000 Fighters decide to do.  In the end they'll probably all attack the same target or general area.  I think we could just remove the "individual decision making" mechanic, and replace it with a more squad-based approach.  For a game with such "humble" graphics, AI War should not lag AT ALL imo.

[keith.lamothe]

There's not really any squad AI.  Even the global level is basically nonexistent from the perspective of those fighters.

And ships of the same type (FighterI, for example) controlled by the same player within a certain range of one another literally share targeting data so it doesn't have to do the full scan and sort of potential targets.  We added that in early 2010 and it made a pretty huge difference.

Much of the remaining "normal time" processing (leaving aside spikes like 200 photon lances doing hit checks against 1000 enemy targets once every frame) is simply from doing the movement/everything-else-that-happens-every-frame checks for each individual unit, as well as the less-frequent-but-still-frequent stuff like checking what it's protected by, etc.

To get that down, and as far as removing individual decision making entirely, we basically already have that option: lower cap scales.  On the lowest setting it's basically like every fighter is really 8 fighters, but simulated as one ship.

[Professor Paul1290]

Anyway, I had a sector in Drox where I was fighting for one race or another and suddenly the Shadow showed up. I don't know if their colonies were cloaked or something but suddenly they're everywhere, have like 10x as many ships as the other races and keep gaining ground. Fortunately I managed an econ victory shortly after that. In another sector I was fighting the Drakk and they had a lot of high level defensive techs so killing them was a sloooooooow, arduous process and when I killed one colony another sprung up elsewhere. The constant nuking of colonies drove my fear rating up and so I won the Fear victory before making any real inroads against the enemy.

I have noticed the Shadow will either really sink or really fly in my games. A lot of times they get picked on by most of the other races and get killed off early, but every now and then they pull off a very devastating win like the one you describe.
I also notice they're sometimes a bit tricky to keep in your alliance when you're going for bigger diplomatic wins, as they sometimes flip out and suddenly decide they want one of your member races dead. If I'm going for diplomatic win with a lot of races I often try to pull the Shadow in last if I'm going to at all.

I have run into similar situations going against races with high defense or higher techs in general. It often helps to get more races hostile with them (the more the better) to wear them down somewhat.
Another thing that also helps is espionage. If a race has better tech than everyone else then sometimes you can get a lot of nice tech out of them by going in, quickly stealing it via espionage, getting out, then selling them to friendly races to even the odds a bit. Also, if their advantage is mostly defensive and you can get your allies more even with them on that then the friendly ships will be able to hostile ships occupied longer, so if they're still hard to crack afterwards then you can follow up with some sabotage to soften them.

Of course, occasionally a bunch of ships from a "high tech" race get destroyed and you get lucky and:
http://i.imgur.com/oQqFzEq.jpg
"It's Christmas!"   

[Wingflier]

Man, I really like this game.  The more I play it, the more I love it.  The higher level you go, the more intense things get.

The concept is just so unbelievably genius, and the execution is VERY well-done.

Just imagine if you took Drox Operative's concepts and mechanics, and gave them Starsector's graphics and battle system.  HOLY CRAP.  It would be the best game of the decade.

I swear, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would buy out Soldak and Fractalsoftworks and merge them together.  I would force them to make this game.

[Lancefighter]

I uh, dont actually see that depth going into drox.

Like I feel the game has huge issues. Its design seems all over the place. Also, missiles are useful until like level 2, at which point lasers have a minor window of useful. Somewhere around level 40? you hit the point again where beams are the only viable weapon type.

IT seems the only way to actually run a sustainable tank is to pump shield recharge consumables. (and for a while, until I got items to fix this, I had to run energy recharge consumables to shoot anything for any amount of time)

Also, how ships that arent drakk manage to keep their ship running baffles me.

[LordSloth]

Playing 1.06: I restarted and I've been using missiles till level 9ish, as the Utopian (computer) ship. They've also tweaked balance, might be worth retrying, Lancefighter.

Without going out of your way, you always have a 95% tohit chance, and if you don't, the booster will take care of that, so missiles always hit if they don't run into a missile swarm first. Angle seems key for taking down certain enemies.

I've been running as the smallest ship class for most of the entire first sector, thanks to a lack of engines and thrusters. My general setup was:
Heavy: Drive, Power Plant (or Armor if not available very early on), best missile I could find
Medium: Deflectors, Medium Armor (critically useful), Manual Ram Accelerator/Battery Bank (when energy costs for missiles go up to 30/shot)c
Light: Battery Recharger, maybe one other green module, crew.

Keep your speed up, talk to planets for the recharge, and you can do a decent job of clearing things out. It also might just be RNG, but the "small" maps may be easier than the tiny, with less of a level jump for adjacent systems.

I do need to keep another weapon on hand for when a "200% explosion resistance" boss comes up.

My main complaint is that the bigger maps are, the smaller they feel. Basically, exploring feels like punishment rather than reward thanks to excessive fog of war. After you've seen them, derelicts, storage, pocket dimensions, ancient recharge stations should be marked on the map until they no longer exist. When you're in a new system, you should at least be able to see the locations of the planets on the full map screen, even if you can't fill in the details. Detailed exploration should be encouraged not required. Even if you're allied with a race, you cannot actually help defend their planets until you stumble around in the fog to find them.

I can see this getting more interesting later on, but the constant exploration with no shortcuts makes me perfer Space Rangers 1/2 atm.

[Mánagarmr]

Wingflier: As far as unit scales goes = Representative gameplay. You didn't seem to complain about, say, Space Empires IV where every ship is the size of a planet and you can stack an infinite number of them on the same square.

It's not intended to look exactly like "real life", because then every system would be impractically HUGE. Imagine the size of a star, compared to your spaceship. Now imagine how fun it would be to find a single ship in a system that large.

[Cyborg]

I can see this getting more interesting later on, but the constant exploration with no shortcuts makes me perfer Space Rangers 1/2 atm.

This was actually my complaint. It felt like lawnmowing. There needs to be a way to reveal the map or parts of it at least.