The Return of the Zeph!

[Misery]

Making boss bullets immune to stuff is a bad idea.

Only a certain special boss is going to have that ability.

The only exception is Labyrinth's chaser shot.

[Pepisolo]

Making boss bullets immune to stuff is a bad idea.

Only a certain special boss is going to have that ability.

The only exception is Labyrinth's chaser shot.

Yeah, probably. It's only the Labyrinth shot that has it currently, eh? For some reason I thought more had it. Any bullets that do should probably have something special about them, so the player knows...this ain't no ordinary bullet.

[Draco18s]

I said the same thing about Wallmaster's blue shooty mcshooty and Misery shot that idea down.

[Misery]

Yep.

I don't want to reduce the effectiveness and utility of the missiles in the game, as they're a major mechanic.  If the player figures out that they can knock out a "source" bullet like the ones Wallmaster uses by hitting that core with a missile, they should gain a bigger benefit than hitting normal bullets, as source bullets often aren't as easy to deal with (since they fire more shots that are likely to get hit instead, or some have to be approached at odd angles).   Makes the missiles that much more valuable.

[Pepisolo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hRFKGxLt2k

Episode 43: Trifroze

SPOILERS



Zeph's going with the Indigo Dipole here, and for the first time seems to be discovering how useful the Repulsive Hornet Mines are -- although in versions prior to the latest one, the mines would do friendly-fire, which was making them a bit less useful. With no friendly-fire, they are a lot nicer to use. Technical problem, the game freezes upon killing the last Tri, which is annoying. Like, really annoying as I don't know what to do with crashes like this. I guess we need the error logs and hopefully the problem will have showed up in there. Presumably Zeph will read this, if so, can you attach the RuntimeData/ArcenDebugLog file from your Starward Rogue folder to a forum post, please, so we can maybe track down the error. We might also need the UnhandledErrors file too. Actually, Ptarth, can you confirm that these are the useful log files needed? I'm never 100% sure which are necessary.

Anyway, back to the run. Rapid Pelt Pistol makes an appearance, which Zeph seems to like, favouring it over the BAB200. BAB200 is a pretty tricky weapon to use, I think. Most useful against enemies with a big size to maximize damage output, plus the recoil can be hard to deal with. Maybe needs a few usability tweaks so it's a little less tricksy to use. This seems like a fairly fast run, bosses are taken on straight away, but defeated pretty easily so far. The Sacrifice Item, Battery Harvester, that gives you 50 energy per kill was taken, so the Repulsive Hornet Mines are being used quite freely. Seems quite powerful that. It also even gives you a bit of a boost on bosses with muliple phases because it triggers on each boss transformation. Which seems fine to me, although maybe a bit unexpected. What I'm most interested now is how easy the run becomes due to that seemingly powerful combination.

[Misery]

Perhaps boosting it by a full 50 is a bit too much with that item?  Maybe 25 instead?  I've found it to be maybe a bit much with some other ammo weapons as well.

As for the Tri thing, I've had that happen once before.   Only once, but still, there must be a bug there somewhere.

[Pepisolo]

Perhaps boosting it by a full 50 is a bit too much with that item?  Maybe 25 instead?  I've found it to be maybe a bit much with some other ammo weapons as well.

As for the Tri thing, I've had that happen once before.   Only once, but still, there must be a bug there somewhere.

Just checking, but did that freeze happen on Tri for you too? Just so that we're clear that it seems to affect Tri specifically (which is I presume what you meant, but just to be sure).

[Misery]

Yep.

[ptarth]

re: logs
I think those are the ones. Just grab all of the ones with the newest timestamp.

re:tri
I'm not sure what's up. Last WZ run I noticed the main miniboss had been killed before the last assistant was. Not sure how that can happen. Possibly related to the enemy category of the assistant tris? I don't know.

[Pepisolo]

re:tri
I'm not sure what's up. Last WZ run I noticed the main miniboss had been killed before the last assistant was. Not sure how that can happen. Possibly related to the enemy category of the assistant tris? I don't know.

Actually, this is intentional. I'm using on_master_death_transforms_into so that the subordinates more aggressively come after the player when the leader is destroyed. Presumably one of the latest additions to Tri is causing the problem, although mechanically everything seems to working as expected.

[Pepisolo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21W-itGsBBA

Episode 44: Scalp......?

SPOILERS



This turned into a pretty powerful run, with a pretty straightforward barnstorming charge through each boss and to Terminus. A few powerful mains were swapped around, SplinterCannon to TurboBlaster to HornetNest. All did a good job of trouncing the enemy. Repulsive Hornet Mine continued to be strong, although I didn't really get to see how strong since enemies were melting pretty fast, making reliance on the mines not that necessary. Battery Harvester seems very strong for the 3 health cost, should probably be tweaked down a little bit. Note to self: take a look at the HotRod Particle and tweak for performance. The same drones in the shop "bug" is a thing, although I think that maybe it's just a result of the current tier structure. Probably needs shaking up. I'm not that against having just a wild pool for the familiars myself, so anything could spawn anywhere. The biggest downside to this is that you could find drones on the early floors that you have no way of purchasing, so it's a bit tricksy. Getting the correct structure for the familiar pools has proven a bit awkward so far.

[Misery]

I would say the idea of a wild pool is actually a good one; it'd prevent the screwy issues that are there now, and could be undone a bit once more drones are added to the game (maybe).  I mean, a big part of the problem is that there still aren't all that many in that pool. 

And there's nothing all that wrong about sometimes having an item appear that's a bit too pricey for the player.  I've never seen a game of this genre avoid that one.  And even in this game, every now and then, the player can get lucky and find a way to buy an expensive thing super early ANYWAY.  For example, getting that item that lets you buy something in the shop for free.  There's a certain satisfaction when that sort of thing happens, too.

And it's sure better than having the shops be so homogenous, and having the same items show up in every single run, which isn't supposed to happen in this genre.

The trick is making more familiars that do interesting things.  Do we have any ideas for some that do things other than attack/defend?  It'd be nice to have some special "utility" drones, particularly as there aren't that many utility items in the game (in comparison to other things), at least not that many that I can think of.

[Logorouge]

The trick is making more familiars that do interesting things.  Do we have any ideas for some that do things other than attack/defend?  It'd be nice to have some special "utility" drones, particularly as there aren't that many utility items in the game (in comparison to other things), at least not that many that I can think of.

Oh, oh! Can I list a bunch of them?

[Pepisolo]

The trick is making more familiars that do interesting things.  Do we have any ideas for some that do things other than attack/defend?  It'd be nice to have some special "utility" drones, particularly as there aren't that many utility items in the game (in comparison to other things), at least not that many that I can think of.

Oh, oh! Can I list a bunch of them?

Absolutely! We're always looking for more interesting ideas. Either comment here or create a new familiar brainstorming thread if you want.

I would say the idea of a wild pool is actually a good one; it'd prevent the screwy issues that are there now, and could be undone a bit once more drones are added to the game (maybe).  I mean, a big part of the problem is that there still aren't all that many in that pool.

And there's nothing all that wrong about sometimes having an item appear that's a bit too pricey for the player.  I've never seen a game of this genre avoid that one.  And even in this game, every now and then, the player can get lucky and find a way to buy an expensive thing super early ANYWAY.  For example, getting that item that lets you buy something in the shop for free.  There's a certain satisfaction when that sort of thing happens, too.

And it's sure better than having the shops be so homogenous, and having the same items show up in every single run, which isn't supposed to happen in this genre.

The trick is making more familiars that do interesting things.  Do we have any ideas for some that do things other than attack/defend?  It'd be nice to have some special "utility" drones, particularly as there aren't that many utility items in the game (in comparison to other things), at least not that many that I can think of.

Yeah, fitting the familiars into the existing pool structure always seemed problematic. Using the same structure designed around a pool of 100+ (?) items for a different pool of 10 items is probably just never going to work. Even if we were to double the amount of familiars, that's still only a 20ish pool, even that would get fairly repetitive. A wild pool seems like the best option to me, and as you say there are always rare circumstances in which the player can afford things much earlier than they otherwise would be able to, due to good RNG. There's a mysterious circuit that gives you 20 credits as another example.

[Logorouge]

Absolutely! We're always looking for more interesting ideas. Either comment here or create a new familiar brainstorming thread if you want.

I'll create a new thread so this one stays mostly about Wind's episodes.