Arcen Games
General Category => Starward Rogue => Starward Rogue Mods & Modding => Topic started by: PokerChen on January 14, 2016, 08:52:41 am
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I'm working on a small set of additional enemies.
1) Are there plenty of enemy graphics waiting for entities, so I can submit ones with just placeholder graphics?
2) Can I make a normal enemy stop only when it's firing? None of the existing enemies do this.
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I'm working on a small set of additional enemies.
1) Are there plenty of enemy graphics waiting for entities, so I can submit ones with just placeholder graphics?
2) Can I make a normal enemy stop only when it's firing? None of the existing enemies do this.
Yes, there's *alot* of graphics available. I'll probably assign them myself (Chris is hyper-busy right now) after I've had a look at them. So just use art that's already there, that's fine.
As for enemy movement, it's nearly uncontrollable right now. It's all run by pre-set AI, so one way or another, you have to just deal with what's there. Yeah, I know, it's kinda annoying. A better way to do this may be coming later, but not in time for release. The closest you can come right now is with the attacker behavior, but that sets them to stop moving based on distance, not attacking, and they'll begin movement again the moment the player moves further away.
Whenever you've got some that are ready, go ahead and just send them to me. I'd rather Chris and the others not have to use up their time on something I can easily handle myself. I may make small tweaks to the things before fully uploading them.
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2) Can I make a normal enemy stop only when it's firing? None of the existing enemies do this.
You actually can do this in the current engine. What you need is a OnUse modifier. Something like this:
<modifier target="OnUse_ParentEntity" type="MovementSpeed" math="set" magnitude="0" duration="1"/>
If you put this on a system to trigger OnUse, the parent entity will have its movement set to 0. Then just specify a duration.
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2) Can I make a normal enemy stop only when it's firing? None of the existing enemies do this.
You actually can do this in the current engine. What you need is a OnUse modifier. Something like this:
<modifier target="OnUse_ParentEntity" type="MovementSpeed" math="set" magnitude="0" duration="1"/>
If you put this on a system to trigger OnUse, the parent entity will have its movement set to 0. Then just specify a duration.
I swear, that XML documentation is a freaking labyrinth.
This has been in there the entire time and I never noticed? Ugh.
I mean, not that it's surprising that I didn't notice something, but still, it's a maze in there.
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I swear, that XML documentation is a freaking labyrinth.
This has been in there the entire time and I never noticed? Ugh.
I mean, not that it's surprising that I didn't notice something, but still, it's a maze in there.
Yeah, there's some interesting stuff in there. A lot of time I learn stuff just by copying what others have done, heh. Just learnt about the attach system to shots thing, by looking at your testthing stuff, for example. Lots of untapped potential in the engine. Some movement stuff was added recently, but I haven't had the chance to test it, yet.
From Keith:
"*movement_driving_pattern (bullet_pattern)
**when this mode starts, the entity switches to using the first bullet node of this pattern as its driving movement pattern; you probably don't want a "die" node, and you may want to put it in a loop with -1 (infinite) iterations
**when this mode ends, if that pattern is still the driving movement pattern it will be cleared
**this allows fairly precise control of the entity's rotation and movement"
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I swear, that XML documentation is a freaking labyrinth.
This has been in there the entire time and I never noticed? Ugh.
I mean, not that it's surprising that I didn't notice something, but still, it's a maze in there.
Yeah, there's some interesting stuff in there. A lot of time I learn stuff just by copying what others have done, heh. Just learnt about the attach system to shots thing, by looking at your testthing stuff, for example. Lots of untapped potential in the engine. Some movement stuff was added recently, but I haven't had the chance to test it, yet.
From Keith:
"*movement_driving_pattern (bullet_pattern)
**when this mode starts, the entity switches to using the first bullet node of this pattern as its driving movement pattern; you probably don't want a "die" node, and you may want to put it in a loop with -1 (infinite) iterations
**when this mode ends, if that pattern is still the driving movement pattern it will be cleared
**this allows fairly precise control of the entity's rotation and movement"
Yeah, I know about that one. I used it for the Warden's minefield pattern. That's about it though... the precision still isnt there. And even for that one, it's just using the Persistence movement; just to give it a different type of "following" action. But even that has issues and there's no way to link the movements to the attacks, which for my design style is basically the entire reason why most of the bosses do not move; that and a lack of being able to send the thing to precise points without warping or other things. It worked with that ONE pattern from the Warden, but it's probably not going to be used again. And even that one pattern is likely to run into problems on the higher difficulties.
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Hmmm... ...is there a way to tell a system to shoot only when it has a direct line of sight to the player?
I seems to have invented a nastier pattern to force the players towards the guard bot (that requires the shots themselves to ignore terrain), but don't want it to unfairly trigger if the player cannot actually get close enough to avoid the pattern. The player can also dodge back out if they're relatively quick, but several rooms are also built for close quarters.
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requires_line_of_sight_of_player_to_fire (bool, optional)
this system has to be able to see the player (not going through obstacles) to be able to fire
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Hmmm... ...is there a way to tell a system to shoot only when it has a direct line of sight to the player?
I seems to have invented a nastier pattern to force the players towards the guard bot (that requires the shots themselves to ignore terrain), but don't want it to unfairly trigger if the player cannot actually get close enough to avoid the pattern. The player can also dodge back out if they're relatively quick, but several rooms are also built for close quarters.
Huh, interesting concept. I can sorta imagine how something like that might work, though the last 2 times I attempted to do that same idea, something else ended up being the result. One of which is, uh, Staccato I think, and the other is the mass of confusion called Centrifuge, which is the one boss that I made where I dont entirely understand how the hell the pattern forms. This makes as little sense as it sounds like it does.
Overall though, with terrain-crossing bullets, as long as you're not going totally overboard with them (and a line-of-sight requirement is a good way to keep them under control) it sounds usable.
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Oh, there's no need to imagine... The zipped version is one where I doubled the bullet pattern (on my way to figuring out how to trigger them randomly or one at a time). This 2x version is a bit much, I think. (P.S. the testing room name need to be altered, as it's not in the zip file)
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The Anklebiter is pretty cool. You might want to increase the range, right now you can just snipe him out of his range. Also, with the next version, the player's default weapon is getting another 200 units of max range.
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I've increase them a little, but don't want to go overboard. These aren't meant to be a threat by themselves. :P
Misery, can you look over these when you have a bit of time - it's not possible to send an attachment by private message, so I attach it here. Unzip in Configurations. These will be the submissions before release, as far as I can forecast free time.
I've done some preliminary balancing and information on floor spawns, there's three enemy varieties and 1 "familiar" with placeholder graphics. I'm hoping for a circular bullet image for the familiar, but we'll see.
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I've increase them a little, but don't want to go overboard. These aren't meant to be a threat by themselves. :P
Misery, can you look over these when you have a bit of time - it's not possible to send an attachment by private message, so I attach it here. Unzip in Configurations. These will be the submissions before release, as far as I can forecast free time.
I've done some preliminary balancing and information on floor spawns, there's three enemy varieties and 1 "familiar" with placeholder graphics. I'm hoping for a circular bullet image for the familiar, but we'll see.
Sure, I'll go have a look at it as soon as I start work on this today, which I'm probably going to do in about 20 minutes or so as of this post. I'll mention any issues I might have with it, and I might make a couple of tweaks, but it sounds like you've put alot of thought into these, so I'm rather doubting that that'll be necessary. Mostly, I just need to make sure things are categorized right, which is the hard part. That and choosing ship art. Seriously, there's SO much of that available right now.
I'll probably stick the things into the game immediately, so likely they'll be up and ready to go for the next build that everyone gets.
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Feel free to make the changes you need. The current categorisations are:
Javlineer - 3x3 wanderer. Could be a sniper, but is intended as a source of mobile, long-range pressure.
Ankle Biter - 1x1 local guard. A little beast who wants to hug you with teeth. The dead-zone in-front is actually quite large, so I was considering adding a short-ranged death explosion, especially if its weapon range is increased further. Tweak range by either by adding more bullets (more work), or tweaking the speed and angle settings (less work).
Cold Mage (name change?) - 5x5 Attacker. Meant to be a top tier 5x5, like the 7x7 Flak launcher, but with introductory forms on lower floors that are far more manageable. Has its three attacks, one of which is its signature spell borrowed from Diablo 2. I've noticed that the category of the Frozen Orb (EnemyFamiliar) can spawn health drops at a very low probability, so this is a potential exploit. Note sure how to fix.
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Well, I've put the things in now, sent them in, with full images and everything.
For the most part, I didn't see the need to make many changes. Minor stat alterations, that's about it.
It's possible their categories may need changing later; I *think* they're fine but that's the hardest bit to be sure of. The Ice things in particular may need to be Chaos instead of Wander, but for now I've left them as they are to see what happens. Since they only attack on line of sight they'll likely be fine.
Anyway, they should be in the game with the next update!
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It seems like your chihuahua is the first enemy (I've run into) to be able to break the one way arrows on the ground with it's weapon. Dunno if that's a good thing or not.
Otherwise nice additions!
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Well, if it bites through every known obstacle, it seems like a fair call to me. :P
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It doesn't bite through a flamethrower >D
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Considering that a simple guard flea does bite through flamethrowers, running into a flea-infested canine in a narrow alley could seriously ruin your stroll.
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Great additions! Only encountered Ankle Biter and Javlineer so far, but both seem super cool. Just gotta track down that Cold Mage.
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Great additions! Only encountered Ankle Biter and Javlineer so far, but both seem super cool. Just gotta track down that Cold Mage.
Some of the "chaos" ones like that are still a bit too rare right now; still need more rooms where chaos 3x3 and 5x5 appear.
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The Cold Mage is currently classified as a 5x5 Wander (its behaviour is an attacker, however). There aren't many 5x5 rooms at the moment.
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The Cold Mage is currently classified as a 5x5 Wander (its behaviour is an attacker, however). There aren't many 5x5 rooms at the moment.
Oh, right.
Bah, I cant keep track of all these damn things. But I guess that's another rare-ish category.
I COMMAND THAT MORE SUCH ROOMS BE MADE but there isnt anyone listening so that doesnt accomplish much.
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I can do that.
Big rooms for 5x5? Anything else?
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That's the main sort that's missing right now, far as I can tell. Most of the other categories are pretty well represented right now. I think.
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*chuckle* I don't suppose the Arcen devs have a script that sums up the letters found in the room files, and converts that into a census of the number and type of enemies per room category?
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Probably not. But it is simple to do.
What demographics do you want?
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Probably not. But it is simple to do.
What demographics do you want?
Well, if I wasn't working in windows which has a heart attack when faced with UTF-8 encoding when working with R.
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I was thinking of actually verifying that the various 5x5s are relatively rare. It doesn't really matter at the moment, since launch is in two days.
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I'd argue that it is the most important time to be doing checking of this nature.
Here are the counts. They are based on my install which has a few extra nonstandard rooms in it.
Symbol Freq Type
1 # 260 1x1 Local Guard
2 $ 138 3x3 Local AOE
3 % 219 1x1 Jumpscare
4 ~ 76 3x3 Sniper
5 1 626 1x1 Pursuer
6 3 221 3x3 Wander
7 5 42 5x5 Wanderer
8 7 25 7x7 Fearsome
9 A 125 3x3 Attacker
10 d 30 1x1 Deadly Pursuer
11 h 85 3x3 Chaos-Adder
12 k 35 5x5 Chaos-Adder
13 L 28 5x5 Attacker
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Are there any more 1x1 Attackers and 1x1 Wanders in the works? I have some defined for some of the bosses I've been attempting and they seem to swamp the spawn pool. Chris said he was going to have Gumbas, so where did they go?
Alternatively, should I just throw the Gumbas I have at Misery and get him to add them?
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Need a 1x1 Fodder class :D
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I'd argue that it is the most important time to be doing checking of this nature.
Here are the counts. They are based on my install which has a few extra nonstandard rooms in it.
Symbol Freq Type
1 # 260 1x1 Local Guard
2 $ 138 3x3 Local AOE
3 % 219 1x1 Jumpscare
4 ~ 76 3x3 Sniper
5 1 626 1x1 Pursuer
6 3 221 3x3 Wander
7 5 42 5x5 Wanderer
8 7 25 7x7 Fearsome
9 A 125 3x3 Attacker
10 d 30 1x1 Deadly Pursuer
11 h 85 3x3 Chaos-Adder
12 k 35 5x5 Chaos-Adder
13 L 28 5x5 Attacker
Yeah, now's the time to be doing this. Particularly since patching and such is likely to continue for awhile after release. I still will have the entire Misery difficulty to do, myself. Even Hard mode is going to just BARELY squeak by..... probably.
Pursuers are WAY too frequent here. 5x5 and 7x7 are really needing more.
Damn bloody stupid modify button!
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So, I still haven't gotten it, what are you guys doing that you keep clicking on the modify button? I'll send those Goombas off after I finish another level or two.
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So, I still haven't gotten it, what are you guys doing that you keep clicking on the modify button?
It's not that I keep accidentally modifying my own posts, it's that I keep accidentally clicking it on everyone ELSE'S posts.
I havent been a moderator for long and the "modify" button is in the exact spot where the "quote" button normally is so I sometimes automatically click it and then only realize halfway into typing that there's no "quote" brackets. Clearly this is a devious plan by whoever designs the forum thing or whatever it is. Very devious indeed.
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In the mean time, it would help if we know how many ships are currently in each category in the release branch (SVN). This would actually help us determine if certain categories need more enemies than others.
I mean, pursuers are essentially 1x1 Fodder, but there's only a couple of those so people see it ALL the time (boring factor x N)...
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Hey guys, looking to jump into making some enemies when I'm done with my super special current project, but I wanted to ask before I jump in: can enemies be made to inflict status effects on the player? I've noticed ingame items mention poison and I know damage-over-time is a thing for player weapons, but is there anything beyond that?
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Short Answer: Yes.
Longer Answer:
Systems can effect:
- Self
- MyShots
- MyParentEntity
- EntitiesMyShotsHit
- OnUse_ParentEntity
- OnUse_ParentEntityFutureShots
- MyParentEntityMainGunShots
- NearbyEntities
- EntitiesHitByMyParentEntityMainGunShots
Things you can do are:
https://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Starward_Rogue:XML_-_Enum_Reference#EntityModifierType (https://www.arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Starward_Rogue:XML_-_Enum_Reference#EntityModifierType)
Side Note: I tried to get NearbyEntities to work, but it wasn't having it. I'm not sure if it works or not. Keith thinks it does, but I haven't seen anyone use it correctly yet.
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New room demographics
Rooms Count: ~460 (I have some extras laying around)
Boss_Giant Boss_Large Boss_Rectangle Boss_RectEdged Boss_Square Boss_TallFromSouth
1 7 2 2 3 1
CheapItemShop Condemned ConsumablesShop DefensiveShop FatHorizontal FatVertical
4 15 1 1 19 27
HealthUpgrade Item Miniboss MinibossLarge MinibossMedium MonsterFree
3 18 11 5 1 35
Quad QuadEE QuadNN QuadNNWW QuadSS QuadSSEE
42 8 7 6 8 7
QuadWW RobotShop SecretFreeLoot SecretHealthForItems SmallEW SmallNS
10 4 4 2 12 7
Square SquareNE SquareSW Standard StandardEW StandardNS
28 22 19 20 26 28
Starting StartingForFirstFloor TestOnlyQuad TunnelTall TunnelWide WeaponsShop
14 5 4 13 12 2
Enemy Spawn Demographics
Symbol Freq Type
1 # 261 1x1 Local Guard
2 $ 159 3x3 Local AOE
3 % 230 1x1 Jumpscare
4 ~ 79 3x3 Sniper
5 1 652 1x1 Pursuer
6 3 228 3x3 Wander
7 5 44 5x5 Wanderer
8 7 33 7x7 Fearsome
9 A 133 3x3 Attacker
10 d 32 1x1 Deadly Pursuer
11 h 98 3x3 Chaos-Adder
12 k 48 5x5 Chaos-Adder
13 L 31 5x5 Attacker
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Misery: if you're looking at this, I've updated my ships, code simplification and also implemented a suggestion by ptarth. There's a 4th type adding to the 3x3 attackers, which will always come in a pair for hopefully twice the drops. (They should only seed from floor 2 onwards, so there are only two varieties.)
ptarth: I'm thinking a damage multiplier of 0.5 would be more consistent than 0.0, players will then only be damaged for 1, not 2 when leaping over the white bullets.
Please unzip as before - this version is current as of 0.960.
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I tried to get NearbyEntities to work, but it wasn't having it. I'm not sure if it works or not. Keith thinks it does, but I haven't seen anyone use it correctly yet.
I also tried to use this a while back, but it didn't work.
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Misery: if you're looking at this, I've updated my ships, code simplification and also implemented a suggestion by ptarth. There's a 4th type adding to the 3x3 attackers, which will always come in a pair for hopefully twice the drops. (They should only seed from floor 2 onwards, so there are only two varieties.)
ptarth: I'm thinking a damage multiplier of 0.5 would be more consistent than 0.0, players will then only be damaged for 1, not 2 when leaping over the white bullets.
Please unzip as before - this version is current as of 0.960.
Okay, now that things have calmed the heck down, I've grabbed this and will be having a look at it shortly.
Expect to probably see it in-game tomorrow, I should think!
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Your stuff is in, Zharmad! I've sent this update to Chris just now. Would have done it earlier in the night, but there was a boss to fix that REALLY didn't want to do what I told it. And the Warden glitch. Ugh. Not a fun night as that stuff goes.
But these enemies are in. I saw no reason to make any changes right now, and have given them their own art. It sounds like Chris will be sending out another Steam update later today, so they should start showing up then!
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Thanks! I think there may be potential player problems when the twins seed in a narrow corridor, although the cooldown between the brother's shield should be long enough. Would other wish for a leashing function to keep them together.
With the way that Warden is treating you, one could think you're the one imprisoned within the hulk.
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Getting a reasonable mix of color variation in shots is important, you want to have roughly balanced quantities of shots of each color. To do it correctly, we'd need to measure for each color shot size*shot frequency*weapon use frequency*enemy frequency and so forth. And that's complicated. So I did the quick and ugly version and just counted the number of each color instance in the bulletpatterns and bulletpatternvars files.
- Red 490
- Blue 445
- Green 387
- Yellow 318
- Purple 227
- Gold 195
- White 173
- Pink 90
So in conclusion, I'm going to working on making Pink and White weapons for a while.
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Enemy Type & Frequency
<snip> See below for better formatting and more error checking.
[/s]
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Snipers_3x3 0
Hmmmmm.... >D
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Update Table
Symbol Freq Type Unique Ratio
1 # 261 1x1 Local Guard 13 20
2 $ 159 3x3 Local AOE 9 18
3 % 230 1x1 Jumpscare 6 38
4 ~ 79 3x3 Sniper 5 15.8
5 1 652 1x1 Pursuer 9 108
6 3 228 3x3 Wander 20 11.4
7 5 44 5x5 Wanderer 12 3.6
8 7 33 7x7 Fearsome 5 6.6
9 A 133 3x3 Attacker 16 8.31
10 d 32 1x1 Deadly Pursuer 6 5.6
11 h 98 3x3 Chaos-Adder 6 16.3
12 k 48 5x5 Chaos-Adder 11 4.3
13 L 31 5x5 Attacker 4 7.75
Frequencies of enemy types, room spawns and the ratio of the two. Higher indicates less variation. The worst offender isn't DeadyPursuer_1x1, it is Pursuer_1x1, which includes: Bulldog, Bullrush, Faceripper [color], Some Abmoogs. Then 1x1 Jumpscares, otherwise known as: [Color] Waiting Widow and Pearl [Color].
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I'm trying to make a couple of pursuer_1x1 now, but it's still turning into an attacker_3x3 (I might be able to fit it to a jumpscare). Maybe we should just level up the difficulty of pursuer_1x1 a bit. :P
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Adding another low-level jumpscare or two wouldnt be a bad idea either.
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I have a couple of ninja pursuers in Pepicola's cue of ptarth's really rough enemy code list.
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Made one new jumpscare (in need of graphic), where do I send it?
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https://arcengames.com/mantisbt/my_view_page.php
You'll need an account for that site also. Make sure you upload all the files needed (it's one at a time unless you zip them up).
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Anyone have a functional and reliable player knockback weapon? I'd like one to reset boss phases. I have one, but its.. unreliable.