Author Topic: The Return of the Zeph!  (Read 35434 times)

Offline Misery

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #60 on: September 20, 2016, 02:19:09 am »
Hah, yes, that was pretty entertaining.

It's kinda like what happens when I'm testing a new boss; I don't submit the thing until it's been beaten with a perfect, to make bloody sure that it's possible to do so.  Which is quite the process when dealing with higher-tier patterns... everything's going fine, going fine, going fiiii- *splat*   and then I have to try to not punch the monitor.   So I can understand the frustration.

On a side note:  Boss health bar glitch.  If you watch during the test-mode practicing, the health bar starts off not filled all the way.  As best I can tell the amount of HP the thing actually has isn't different, it looks like it's just the bar itself acting up.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #61 on: September 21, 2016, 09:14:16 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxu190iJETw

Episode 55: All in for the Rams

SPOILERS



As you can tell from the title, this turns into a bit of a Ram Launcher run...but forget about that for the moment. That blasted R6025 crash seems to make an appearance at around the 16 minute mark. It occurs inside a sacrifice room (as it usually does). We've been failing to track down that problem for months. The good news is that Chris has put one change in for the latest build which might fix the issue, but we can't be sure since we're not able to reliably reproduce the error. So, fingers crossed on that, I guess. Now, back to the run. Looks to be shaping up into an interesting one, super slow fire rate, plus powerful rams. Note to Zeph, check out the new Incineration Module, it's quite different in 1.5.

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On a side note:  Boss health bar glitch.  If you watch during the test-mode practicing, the health bar starts off not filled all the way.  As best I can tell the amount of HP the thing actually has isn't different, it looks like it's just the bar itself acting up.

I'll take a look at that, can't imagine what the problem would be, though.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #62 on: September 22, 2016, 10:13:33 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAaSWNmUKo

Episode 56: Wimpy

SPOILERS



Continuation of the Ram Launcher run. This episode highlights a bit of a nasty problem regarding those spawners. Unless the spawnees are set to self destruct, they can build up in large quantities causing massive slowdown. Yikes! Ideally we'd want to be able to set a limit on how many can spawn at any one time, but that would require engine work, so I'll probably just make sure they all self destruct in a timely manner. Either that or it might be possible to put a limit on how many can spawn in total. Back to the run, Zeph is struggling in terms of DPS but then hits a run of damage boosts and looks like he'll probably now be overpowered for the rest of the run. That's my guess, anyway. The damage boosts are out of control! Also, congrats to Zeph on that excellent defensive missile usage on The Warden! :)

Offline Misery

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #63 on: September 23, 2016, 01:38:35 am »
I'm about halfway through 55.   He's right, those Rams are pretty fun... particularly since they became better after a certain update.   A very "fire and forget" sort of thing.  Dive into a dangerous area, drop a few, dive out, get some free damage with no risk to soften things up.  Cant go wrong with that.  I take that particular energy weapon fairly often.  I haven't seen what happens with too many of them though... I don't get performance issues on my machine with most games.  But having a max-rams-at-once limit isn't a bad idea at all.  Would just need to make sure that the weapon isn't gobbling energy on failed attempts to launch more. 

There's an item that causes the player to spawn a ram when hit... how about giving that thing a big damage boost?  The player isn't going to be dropping those at a rapid rate, after all, and they become a good defensive item if their damage is pretty darn high.  That's a sacrifice item, too, so giving it lots of power isn't a bad move, I think.

Having some more items based on this concept could be fun.  If we get some debuffs added, having Rams that inflict that could be very useful.

EDIT:  Oh.  It's not the rams doing the lag, it's the spawners.  Right, I knew that....
« Last Edit: September 23, 2016, 02:26:02 am by Misery »

Offline ptarth

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #64 on: September 23, 2016, 01:43:25 pm »
I had the same problem with the Snakes and Pedes on Invader Stage 2.
Props to Pepisolo for the Ram upgrade btw. I hadn't seen the new effect and its nice.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #65 on: September 23, 2016, 01:52:34 pm »
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There's an item that causes the player to spawn a ram when hit... how about giving that thing a big damage boost?  The player isn't going to be dropping those at a rapid rate, after all, and they become a good defensive item if their damage is pretty darn high.  That's a sacrifice item, too, so giving it lots of power isn't a bad move, I think.

Good call, I've just added a new ram variant for the Revenge Rams item. Spawns a bigger ram with double damage and AOE. I've also changed the targeting logic so that it doesn't do that weird back and forth buggy motion.

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Oh.  It's not the rams doing the lag, it's the spawners.  Right, I knew that....

Yeah, I've just massively increased the efficiency of those Zombots. It turns out that I coded them in a pretty boneheaded way before, heh. I've also added a 100 ammo limit to the spawners, just so that the game can't get theoretically bogged down by massive spawn amounts. It seems unlikely that a player would ever get into this situation, but just in case, there's a cap now.

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Props to Pepisolo for the Ram upgrade btw. I hadn't seen the new effect and its nice.

That was Goldenwolf actually. If you notice any nice aesthetic improvements, it's probably his doing. They do look much nicer now, yeah.

Offline ptarth

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #66 on: September 23, 2016, 01:59:16 pm »
I would counter suggest that you balance on number that exist at one time. The current limit is max number spawned across all time, which does curtail the eventual production, but not the concurrent production.  So if 20 on screen is the max, and each lives for 10 seconds, then 2 spawns per second should be the limit. Which translates as the reload time of 0.5.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #67 on: September 24, 2016, 10:44:11 am »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ePO0BvN2eM

Episode 57: Meet the Family

SPOILERS



I watched this late last night, so might be forgetting some specific stuff. Rams all the way. Seemed a fairly competitive run late game, not a complete steamrollering. Another interesting one for Misery, as there's a Terminus fight that Zeph isn't super OP on. The minion phases seem to go down super easily (Palisade etc), but I think Misery was already aware of this problem. Also, the Condemned rooms ideally probably need a bit of work, both in terms of bullet patterns and aesthetics, I think.

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I would counter suggest that you balance on number that exist at one time. The current limit is max number spawned across all time, which does curtail the eventual production, but not the concurrent production.  So if 20 on screen is the max, and each lives for 10 seconds, then 2 spawns per second should be the limit. Which translates as the reload time of 0.5.

I think ideally we'd want some way to tell the engine, only a max of x number of this type of spawn at any one time. Making all the spawnees self destruct is kind of similar, but does limit the enemies a bit more. Also, there's not much flexibility there in that we can't set different spawnees to spawn at different rates, which would be nice. If only SR had sold a bit better.....drat!
« Last Edit: September 24, 2016, 10:51:44 am by Pepisolo »

Offline ptarth

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #68 on: September 25, 2016, 02:45:11 am »
Count existing units of type X functionality doesn't exist. It would be nice if it did, but...
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Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #69 on: September 25, 2016, 08:28:00 pm »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzAquWfOqAE

Episode 58: Ninja.

SPOILERS



Interesting Humble Mech run so far (thanks for doing the run, Zeph!). Zeph seems to be playing in a rather unusual way, hardly ever using the Contrishooter...so much so, in fact, that Zeph actually destroys it in exchange for more HP and Energy. Things noticed: Humble Mech starting main gun seems a bit too powerful. Currently at 90DPS-ish, whereas the other starting mechs are nearer 60, I think. Also, A Phasing Grace makes you invisible to enemies, I never noticed that before! Bit of a steamrollering run so far, but will that continue?

Idea from Zeph: perks that modify consumables in some way. Seems like a good idea, but there's probably not much we can use in the current engine to affect consumables in an interesting way. A good one would be extra consumable duration, maybe. Or, a super cool one would be a perk to allow you to take 2 consumables instead of 1. Or use consumables twice before they are spent. Not currently possible in the engine, though, I don't think. Anybody got any other consumable perk ideas? You never know, maybe one of them can be implemented.
« Last Edit: September 25, 2016, 08:29:43 pm by Pepisolo »

Offline ptarth

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #70 on: September 25, 2016, 09:10:30 pm »
In all the runs with the Humble Mech that I've seen WZ do, he virtually always avoids using the contrishooter.
Humble Mech DPS has always been crazy. There were various justifications for it at some time. Part of it is to counter the value loss in avoiding using the contrishooter.
Consumable perks could include: more consumables, longer durations of consumables would be... complicated, special consumables unique to mech?.
Note: This post contains content that is meant to be whimsical. Any belittlement or trivialization of complex issues is only intended to lighten the mood and does not reflect upon the merit of those positions.

Offline Misery

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #71 on: September 25, 2016, 09:25:27 pm »
Hm, the Humble mech often does seem a bit too strong at times.  It gets worse though once it has the perks that lower it's credit usage for that screwy sub-weapon. 

I don't know what to suggest though.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #72 on: September 27, 2016, 10:33:18 am »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzJnf-2OrA

Episode 59: Swept Away (or sweeping away the brooms)

SPOILERS



Turning into a bit of steamrollering run this (so what's new!) especially considering Zeph doesn't even have an energy weapon. 100% damage boost plus extra shots on the Destruction Module? Yeah, it's a bit much. The good news is that the perk overhaul is tying in a lot of balance changes, too, which should get us a lot closer to having a more well balanced game. Gotta get Ptarth to take a look at the math of it at some point, though. Note to self: that energy reduction item seems to be borked, giving the player extra credits and keys for some reason. It seems weird that we wouldn't have noticed this before if true, unless the bug is due to some weird interaction.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #73 on: September 28, 2016, 09:39:15 am »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijK257fZbTQ

Episode 60: Beam

SPOILERS



Yep, a bit steamrollery this. This ends with probably one of the most crazy OP damage outputs I've seen (don't watch the Terminus fight Misery!). Lots of familiars, powerful weapons, insane fire rate, damage boosts. There are so many bullets and Zeph's fire rate is so high that the engine can barely handle it. Crazy! So, yeah, those fire rate boosters need toning down, a lot. Note to self: something weird is going on with that Needler Probe thing, which keeps respawning each time you buy an item.

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: The Return of the Zeph!
« Reply #74 on: October 07, 2016, 11:39:24 am »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJdaX5wFY8M

Episode 61: Sacrificial

SPOILERS



This is a good episode if you want all the latest channel schedule news, plus Zeph's thoughts on the upcoming perk overhaul changes. As for the run, gambling on taking the Scourge Spread, and running a very fragile build for a while seems to be paying off handsomely. A few HP pickups near the end of the episode seems to have put Zeph in a pretty solid position for the rest of the run. Note to self: on those maze condemned rooms you seem to be able to just spam teleport and avoid any consequences of not finding the safe spot. Not sure what to do about that. I've never been a fan of the maze condemned rooms myself.

 

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