Current difficulty balance?

[Frumple]

... before I forget, actually, if it wasn't already noticed/fixed. There's that one room inundated with... eggs, I think someone called them? The lingering flame mine things. Don't have the game computer on to check the name of the room. All over the place, and you're intended to blow them up to clear the room of the similarly massive amount of missile-breakable blocks.

There's a small problem with, at least, the potential upper right side entrance, or however rotation or whathaveyou works. It (one of the doors, anyway) has an egg close enough to the door a cryofreeze or incinerator module can pop it pretty much the instant you walk in... and also close enough the explosion/flames can hit the player, and is rather likely to. Probably could stand to be moved a square or two away, to keep people from being greeted with an immediate explosion and close to unavoidable damage just because they happened to be using those modules.

E: Woke up and poked around a bit. If I'm interpreting what the room editor and room's text file is saying correctly, then it's probably quadssee/zmc_terraforming and either the leftmost egg on line 28 or rightmost on line 8. If the edge number highlight whatsits in the editor means that's a potential entrance, one or both has an egg closer to the entrance than there probably should be an egg.

[Draco18s]

Probably both of those are a problem.
Should be an easy enough fix just to move them up-diagonally about one tile (the one at 8,27 would move to 9,26 and the one at 30,7 would move to 28,6)

[z99-_]

I actually noticed that room as one in need of fixing too, but for a different reason. Some/all of the room entrances are blocked by missile breakable blocks; but they're also close to eggs, so no problem, right? But because the eggs disappear without exploding once all enemies are killed, it is possible to wind up in a situation where part of the map is inaccessible (assuming no special code has been put in to avoid this). The one time I encountered this room, I was fortunate in that I had some spare missiles and the blocked door led to a section that I could access another way, but I could easily see that not being the case. Maybe redesigning it so there's thin corridors connecting all of the doors, but there are !!fun!! block ignoring mobs like blaze cannons in the middle of the missile block/egg sections to 'strongly encourage' players to destroy everything.

Also, I wanted to say +1 to Misery's comments about reverting the health pickups to double again being unnecessary. Attrition is one of the best ways of dying, because the downward spiral is slow enough that you usually have a few chances to pull out of it; if you manage to live, you get a feeling of accomplishment, while if you end up dying you sort of feel like you deserve it. They can be a bit annoying when compounded by Rooms of Uber-Death (great band name, by the way), but since those are going to be fixed anyways, I don't see a problem.

[Draco18s]

I actually noticed that room as one in need of fixing too, but for a different reason. Some/all of the room entrances are blocked by missile breakable blocks; but they're also close to eggs, so no problem, right? But because the eggs disappear without exploding once all enemies are killed, it is possible to wind up in a situation where part of the map is inaccessible (assuming no special code has been put in to avoid this). The one time I encountered this room, I was fortunate in that I had some spare missiles and the blocked door led to a section that I could access another way, but I could easily see that not being the case. Maybe redesigning it so there's thin corridors connecting all of the doors, but there are !!fun!! block ignoring mobs like blaze cannons in the middle of the missile block/egg sections to 'strongly encourage' players to destroy everything.

I think this was previously mentioned and the "more better" idea was to make the eggs pop (spawning their projectiles) when the room clears, or not disappearing at all.

[Frumple]

... though re: health pickups, a quick thought might be including more "risky" ones -- stuff like the rooms with credits/health/missiles in the middle of those trap spiral path things. Toss a few in those spinning turret into hole rooms you normally just run through, stuff like that. Keep the easily accessible amount of pickups roughly the same, but add some degree more of not so easily accessible ones. Then you'd be able to make it so the attrition doesn't have to be as bad (or possibly even be able to be outright negated), but only if the player's willing to risk a negative return on investment, ehehe.

Also on that particular note, have y'all ever considered missile launching turrets? Or ones with knockback bullets or somethin'. Stuff fancier than just sometimes-reactive plain shots. Might be able to do somethin' with that. Be really neat if there was a no-damage knockback one (or similar for mines or whatev', like malicious pinball bumpers) you could force the player to bounce themselves off of to get through specific parts of an optional trap maze, or something along those lines. _{And I'm not just asking that because pinball themed levels/rooms/etc. in roguelike style/influenced stuff fascinates me but no one ever seems to indulge ;_;}

[eruanion]

I just had a Toxic Reaper fight on normal that took quite a long time (long for a mini-boss, anyway). This with the flame tank (pretty good damage out of the box). My damage boosts were tiny damage boost and divine purpose.

I also saw the boss Invader for the first time in a long time. I'm guessing Misery has been beefing it up? It seemed too tanky, especially for a boss that has so many minions protecting it. And in the last phase the minions (running around like snakes and leaving trails that block the way to the boss) were getting so thick I rarely got any chance to damage the boss itself.

I've seen Loco and Paragon a lot on Floor 1 on normal on 1.506 (especially Loco). IMO they are too tough that early.

An aside: the Flame Tank Incinerator is pretty useless in narrow corridors - it's range gets cut way down to 2 or 3 times the length of the mech. Is that supposed to happen? Maze-type rooms with solid barricades are hard with this mech, especially since the enemies often found in them (called Guard Fleas? I can't remember for sure) are better at blocking shots than they used to be. You have to get up close to them to hit anything in a narrow corridor.

[Misery]

Invader, actually, isnt my fault; it's the one boss I didn't make.  You can blame Ptarth for that one, heh.  All I did was alter it's field attack later on (to make it possible to approach it).  It hasnt received any stat changes as far as I know.

Also yes, Loco might need to be toned down a bit.  Also not my fault. 

[Pepisolo]

Also on that particular note, have y'all ever considered missile launching turrets? Or ones with knockback bullets or somethin'. Stuff fancier than just sometimes-reactive plain shots. Might be able to do somethin' with that. Be really neat if there was a no-damage knockback one (or similar for mines or whatev', like malicious pinball bumpers) you could force the player to bounce themselves off of to get through specific parts of an optional trap maze, or something along those lines. And I'm not just asking that because pinball themed levels/rooms/etc. in roguelike style/influenced stuff fascinates me but no one ever seems to indulge ;_;

Interesting ideas, thanks. Missile launching turrets might be cool, yeah. I believe that Ptarth had been working on some kind of pinball room at one point. I'm not sure on its current status, though.

[ptarth]

I am working on a pinball room. It's harder than you think. Angles of reflection are really complicated to work with given the system limitations. Plus making the flippers behave well.

[Frumple]

Godspeed, then.

... kinda' do know how hard it is, though, ehehe. At least in regards to anything precise and/or consistent. Is why generally my thought process stops at "make everything in the room bounce off everything else then watch the fireworks". They're great fireworks, but for whatever reason you don't see 'em very often :V

Will say, if nothing else the engine definitely can handle some impressive amount of knockback. Think I mentioned vis a vis that tk module getting slammed across a screen or two, once. It would have been entirely instead of just mostly amazing if it hadn't also shanked my health bar

[ptarth]

In previous versions strong enough knockback could move the player through walls. That was funny and unexpected. I put it on a missile launcher.

[Frumple]

Ah... that reminds me, you can still walk through on diagonal ones, for what it's worth/if it wasn't already known.* Don't know if it's a redshift+extra speed specific (or maybe slight lag/chug/etc.?) thing or not, but it's a thing that's doable. Can also use those respawning blocks to phase through other blocks, ehehe. Neat stuff, probably engine quirks and known ones, but just in case, etc., etc.

Code: [Select]

*Like, if there's something like
_#
#_
where the _ is empty and the # is blocks (those black indestructable ones, missile breakable, it seems to be just kinda' whatever), you can push your way from one _ to the other. Some (most?) weapons can get shots through those non-spaces, too, heh, if you angle it right or shove your face into it, first. Balance wise it's actually somewhat of an issue for a few rooms (iirc, those ones with... blocked in rectangles split by the debris blocks, with each wing filled with lots of those little ships? That's on both the top and bottom sides of the room. As an example.), since you can sidle up to a corner and just kinda' murder everything on the other side from more or less absolute safety, heh.

[carldong]

Ah... that reminds me, you can still walk through on diagonal ones, for what it's worth/if it wasn't already known.* Don't know if it's a redshift+extra speed specific (or maybe slight lag/chug/etc.?) thing or not, but it's a thing that's doable. Can also use those respawning blocks to phase through other blocks, ehehe. Neat stuff, probably engine quirks and known ones, but just in case, etc., etc.

Code: [Select]

*Like, if there's something like
_#
#_
where the _ is empty and the # is blocks (those black indestructable ones, missile breakable, it seems to be just kinda' whatever), you can push your way from one _ to the other. Some (most?) weapons can get shots through those non-spaces, too, heh, if you angle it right or shove your face into it, first. Balance wise it's actually somewhat of an issue for a few rooms (iirc, those ones with... blocked in rectangles split by the debris blocks, with each wing filled with lots of those little ships? That's on both the top and bottom sides of the room. As an example.), since you can sidle up to a corner and just kinda' murder everything on the other side from more or less absolute safety, heh.

On the other hand, if you stand too close to wall, sometimes your weapon will just hit the wall despite shooting forward. Maybe another sort of hitbox problem

[Draco18s]

On the other hand, if you stand too close to wall, sometimes your weapon will just hit the wall despite shooting forward. Maybe another sort of hitbox problem

Especially annoying when it happens with missiles.

[Cinth]

On the other hand, if you stand too close to wall, sometimes your weapon will just hit the wall despite shooting forward. Maybe another sort of hitbox problem

Especially annoying when it happens with missiles.

Probably has to do with how all weapons systems are actually offset form the center of the mech and collision detection.  Just speculation on my part though.