Arcen Games

General Category => Starward Rogue => : Pepisolo May 08, 2016, 11:21:18 PM

: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 08, 2016, 11:21:18 PM
Just a heads up for fans of the long-running Starward Rogue Let's Play series by Windless Zephyr, which has been on hiatus for a while -- it's now back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P5wpo8ZS4U

Episode 36: Firelord.

Looks like a crazy run so far. Taking the Creator usually ensures this. :)

Bit of a weird issue with the Flamethrower there, it should be possible to swap those weapons around but it seems something went wrong. Looking at the stats, the Flamethrower is weaker than the Flame Tank starting weapon, but it does do some burning DOT, so there is that.

I'm super looking forward to any more videos, which are also going provide some really interesting feedback. Flame on!


: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 09, 2016, 01:52:09 AM
.....took Creator right away?

Well, that should get.... interesting.  I'm not even sure what happens with increased spawns when floors 6 and 7 comes into play with their much more dangerous enemy patterns.   I take no responsibility for undodgable nonsense in that case.  For once it's probably not my fault.

Well, he better hope to find some darn good weapons if that's the case though.  At least now there ARE good weapons.... with the build he played last there sure wasn't too much reason to ever switch guns.

I really need to try that on Hard mode though, that Creator item.

: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pumpkin May 09, 2016, 01:57:47 AM
For once it's probably not my fault.

ALWAYS blame Misery.

This shoudl ba an achievment.
"Blame Misery
Die XX times"

I already love this meme.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 09, 2016, 02:23:32 AM
For once it's probably not my fault.

ALWAYS blame Misery.

This shoudl ba an achievment.
"Blame Misery
Die XX times"

I already love this meme.


The funny thing is, it's not applicable to JUST this game; there's things in a couple of other Arcen games that you can blame me for.   Just not nearly as much in each, mostly a single difficulty mode in a couple of them and the Obscura enemy patterns in TLF.

A Creator run though...  That's like holding a sword by the blade and expecting to not get cut up at least somewhat.  Especially later on.... I mean, double Sideshots would be problem enough, but things like double Flak Cannons....?  Good luck with that one.  All I'll do is laugh in that case, if the player proves to not be ready for it!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Draco18s May 09, 2016, 02:29:02 AM
I know you can blame me for AI War's transport out-of-supply attrition-on-warp.

I haven't won a game since. ;_;
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 09, 2016, 02:34:14 AM
I'm not entirely sure what that means, but okay, I'll make sure to blame you for that.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Draco18s May 09, 2016, 03:31:51 AM
You know how transports have a 35% attrition?
That was added mere days after I posted on the forums about using 15+ transports to smuggle units 7 hops deep in AI territory, took a planet just to repair back up, then hopped another 7 systems out.

My (and my friend's) territory was defended via one entrance with two player caps worth of fortresses, turrets, and other miscellaneous units, including a super-fort and mark 4 heavy bean canon.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 09, 2016, 08:45:44 PM
Next episode is up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38QrmG52TQ

SPOILERS


... and the run's over! The Creator 1, WZ 0. :)

To be fair, that was actually a pretty good run from WZ considering The Creator was picked up early. It looked like he was going to make it to The Warden. I'm very interested to see how WZ does on a less crazy run. A run right through to floors 6 and 7 should be interesting, especially given some of the feedback that Atlar gave in one of the other threads, regarding the game possibly becoming easier post Warden.

One more thing: Chompers....maybe these guys need some slight tweaks? Maybe slow the chomping speed so you actually have a chance to react and run through the jaws if necessary?
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 09, 2016, 10:06:49 PM
Next episode is up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O38QrmG52TQ

SPOILERS


... and the run's over! The Creator 1, WZ 0. :)

To be fair, that was actually a pretty good run from WZ considering The Creator was picked up early. It looked like he was going to make it to The Warden. I'm very interested to see how WZ does on a less crazy run. A run right through to floors 6 and 7 should be interesting, especially given some of the feedback that Atlar gave in one of the other threads, regarding the game possibly becoming easier post Warden.

One more thing: Chompers....maybe these guys need some slight tweaks? Maybe slow the chomping speed so you actually have a chance to react and run through the jaws if necessary?

I do intend on giving the Chompers a couple of tweaks, yes.  They're going to certainly remain dangerous though.  They're not super common so I'd like to keep their threat level relatively high.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: windlesszephyr May 10, 2016, 01:51:43 AM
I'm very interested to see how WZ does on a less crazy run. A run right through to floors 6 and 7 should be interesting, especially given some of the feedback that Atlar gave in one of the other threads, regarding the game possibly becoming easier post Warden.

The next run is considerably more successful, and while I don't think things got super easy post-Warden, it's kinda hard to tell given the build I was running and how I was playing.

I do intend on giving the Chompers a couple of tweaks, yes.

Far as I'm concerned, at the very least the range at which they can bite is what drives me nuts and I feel could be modified, but at the same time since they're very rare (and I had creator during this run) I suppose my frustration with them might be a little unfounded. Subjective might be a better term there, but you know what I mean.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 10, 2016, 03:15:10 AM
Nah, it's well-founded frustration, honestly.  I see problems with their pattern design but simply haven't DONE anything about them; too much time needed to be spent fixing rooms, bah.  One issue is that it's actually possible for the "chomp" to appear on you if you are at the wrong angle (for example, due to dodging something else).

I'll figure something out for them.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 10, 2016, 01:20:43 PM
The next run is considerably more successful, and while I don't think things got super easy post-Warden, it's kinda hard to tell given the build I was running and how I was playing.

Cool. The game shouldn't be as easy it was in the old version, but maybe floors 6 and 7 might need to be made a little harder. Although it's probably still too early to tell.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 10, 2016, 08:55:08 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB9NNsCLvUg

Next episode: Set to Stun

This is an interesting episode as there is a point in it where I was thinking that the run was becoming a little OP, as runs would usually do in the old version, but in this version Dark Abberration still provided some challenge at least, especially considering that the double damage consumable was used. However, FTL module was swapped out for Corrosive module on that floor which may have made a difference, although I'm not that familiar with the relative strengths of each module.

The Rapid Pelt Pistol makes a brief appearance early on, although the Phase Gun is preferred. Other notes, Invader first form can be mostly cheesed with the Phase Gun....which is...yeah, okay, we can maybe let the player enjoy that sneaky tactic. :)

For the next video I'm most interested in seeing whether the next bosses get stomped, or put up a fight. Phase Gun is pretty strong on normal enemies, but the power is pretty low, I think, so the bosses should still provide a challenge.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 11, 2016, 01:47:59 AM
The next run is considerably more successful, and while I don't think things got super easy post-Warden, it's kinda hard to tell given the build I was running and how I was playing.

Cool. The game shouldn't be as easy it was in the old version, but maybe floors 6 and 7 might need to be made a little harder. Although it's probably still too early to tell.

I am pretty certain at this point that floor 6/7 HP is off in many cases.  Not just from this one comment but once I actually had a real look at the general HP of enemies appearing at that point, well... yeah, it's a bit off. And also from my own testing, patterns were about where I wanted them but some enemies were too prone to melting while others absolutely weren't.  But it's not just that, but those floors still use a whole pile of enemies that appeared much earlier in the game too; their HP doesn't change though so they die too fast later on.  I have an idea to fix that though and will be experimenting with it.   Yay, !!SCIENCE!!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 11, 2016, 10:43:01 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgTbbOM3S60

Next Episode: Sleep Drunk

SPOILERS



Thoughts from this video. Warden tankiness seems about right. The build was pretty strong, but Warden still put up a decent fight. Generally, the enemies on floors 6 and 7 seemed to get wasted a little too easily, although not nearly as bad as in the old version. Wallmaster V2 proved to be an absolute joke, though, needs a big HP boost from the looks of it. Defender Drone was in action, seeming reasonable. Maybe a touch too powerful although I don't think it's far off. Fusion drone made too brief an appearance to draw anything from. There was a pretty cool, very scary, fight with Arcoris X4 -- man, that was a close one.  Those Arcoris can pose a lot of problems unless you know the "secret technique". :) Terminus.....well, better than before, but yeah needs more HP definitely. The first and second stage versions especially. I barely got to see the first form.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 11, 2016, 11:45:43 PM
Bah, just how bloated do I need to make that damn boss?  Alright, I've changed him.  He now has way more HP than anything else in the game.  Like, a lot more.  Good luck taking it down quickly now... I buffed his two guardians too.  It's possible I may have gone overboard.

Anyway I've been working on the enemy HP, I'll have something sent in within the next few days here, in time for Chris to be able to send it out when he's available. 

Some enemies were a little... off, yes.  I found one that had 15 HP.   15!  And it was a local guard, too.  I'd like to say "it probably made sense at the time" but.... no, it probably didn't.

On the note of defensive drones, they do need a couple of changes.  Granted, it's a problem with any defensive item in this game, really.  It's very difficult to actually get the things right as balance goes.  I'm going to actually test a few ideas on my end, with those.  But just looking at that fight in the video, there's no way Terminus could have put up all that much of a fight with those in place, even if he'd lasted a lot longer and regardless of stat balance.  It's pattern would have to be absolutely berserk to pierce that defense, not much I can do without going overboard.

Well, no.... technically there's one other thing I could do for that boss but I've been reluctant to do that.  But we'll see.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 12, 2016, 08:57:37 AM
Regarding Terminus, I actually may have mislead a bit. It's the two guardians that seemed to really need the HP boost, although a bit of a boost to Terminus itself is fine, too. The first guardian, especially, hardly needed to have its attacks dodged because it went down so fast.

As for the Defender Drones, really, balancing those is probably just a matter of altering the fire rate of their bursts. The design itself seems fine. Currently the bursts are every 20 seconds. Basically, how long does the player need to fend for themselves before they get a shot clearing burst? 20 seconds seems fairly reasonable, but maybe you could push that out to 30 seconds.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 12, 2016, 04:35:08 PM
Regarding Terminus, I actually may have mislead a bit. It's the two guardians that seemed to really need the HP boost, although a bit of a boost to Terminus itself is fine, too. The first guardian, especially, hardly needed to have its attacks dodged because it went down so fast.

As for the Defender Drones, really, balancing those is probably just a matter of altering the fire rate of their bursts. The design itself seems fine. Currently the bursts are every 20 seconds. Basically, how long does the player need to fend for themselves before they get a shot clearing burst? 20 seconds seems fairly reasonable, but maybe you could push that out to 30 seconds.

With Terminus I just boosted everything; The guardians HP was low, yes, really low, but when I went and looked at the main boss itself, well... it wasn't very high either, but the bosses before it, on floor 6, were.  They were much higher!  As opposed to say, the Warden VS bosses before it. 

The guardians didn't get THAT much of a boost (basically, enough to equal a boss on floor 6, though guardian #2 got less of one); one way or another each one is just one pattern, and they're not what I call "attrition" patterns; they're not made difficult by spending large amounts of time in them.  But the patterns used by the main boss are, as that's how they were made from the start.  Kinda like the Warden's 5th phase (which has a lot more HP than it's other phases).  Like the Warden the fight overall just plain needed to be longer, as Altar said in the other topic.

And yes, those drones, they mostly need to fire slower.   Those and the slowdown drones though should only appear once though; frankly, MOST items in the game should only be appearing once, but specifically for those two, it doesn't help to have more than one.  The slowdown one can cause problems with some patterns as it is (creating walls, slowing down bullets isn't always the best defensive move, heh) and as mentioned elsewhere the drone with the defensive flare is useless when you already have one, so there's no reason to throw another in the player's face.  I do think the price on that one needs to go up, it's good enough even if slowed down, to be a "buy every time" sort of item.

Though the main thing that was more of an actual "problem" since I assume it wasn't supposed to be like this was the part where the last couple of floors are only selling those two drones and the flame trail one... 
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: windlesszephyr May 13, 2016, 05:26:17 AM
I just finished recording the next run, and a thought occurred to me that I feel I need to ask whether or not my commentary is actually helpful or entertaining. I mean, I found myself talking a lot about criticisms I have of the game and of things that I think need changed, even though I'm not sure I have the right to be so... critical, I guess. Finding little things so often to gripe about feels like nitpicking, which doesn't necessarily feel good to do, and I imagine it's probably annoying to listen to.

...dunno where I'm going with this, it's just late and I feel contemplative about things. I guess I just want to know if I'm actually doing things right by you guys, even though I keep asking for things to be altered more or less on a whim while I'm talking. Commentary is hard, yo.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 13, 2016, 08:18:45 AM
Haha, feel free to nitpick as much as you want.  If there's something that seems annoying for whatever reason, feel free to say so.   That doesn't necessarily mean that thing in question will actually get a change mind you, but it's easiest to find problems by listening to honest feedback.  Keyword there being "honest", I for one don't want someone telling me something is good when it's actually not.  I'm betting that Chris would also have similar thoughts on this.  When something is off, it's best to hear about it.

And really you'd be surprised at how complainy I get about the game myself.  Well, okay, maybe it's not actually surprising.  But I can get REALLY negative about it.  So I've no trouble with some negative comments from others.  And yes I absolutely will get irked by things I made myself. 

There are certain issues I'm definitely aware of and will be fixing but just haven't done yet (for example, the chompers with the extra long range) so some things you mention may already be in the "going to do something about it" category.

Anyway, you're not annoying to listen to.  I don't know about the others, but I don't bother watching videos from someone on YouTube if I find that person's commentary to be at all annoying ;)


Though, if you have any particularly major complaints, if some enemy/boss seems like a bloody disaster or if some item or other is OP or useless or... anything really...  the best thing to do with THOSE is to post them on the forums here.  It's one thing to hear about them in the video, but for me at least my memory is very bad.  The others might not have that issue, but I sure do, so having it down in writing here on the forums helps ALOT.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 13, 2016, 09:16:58 AM
Basically, what Misery said. :)

I think our perspective as Freaking Volunteers is a little different in that we find feedback and criticism of the game pretty useful, so we maybe like these types of videos more than your average viewer. Personally, I'm always entertained by your videos, aside from maybe when you were getting super-frustrated with the game before the latest patch. Constructive criticism is always helpful, even if it's a bit nitpicky, although as Misery says we can't guarantee that every piece of feedback will bring about changes.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth May 13, 2016, 03:47:48 PM
It depends on how you want to style your content and develop your Youtube Career, and I don't know enough about your plans to provide much direction. Youtube commentators have a wide range of roles, personalities, and areas of expertise. The simplest way might be to identify which current Youtubers you think you want to be like and then consider how you are different (or not) and what steps you feel like taking in response to that. As an illustration consider the differences between PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, and The Yogscast. Each of them are very popular, but their content and their on camera attitudes are all very different (and all of them are very scripted as well, even if it doesn't seem like it to the casual users). Once you have an idea on what you want to do, then the rest should follow. One caveat is to also consider the impact that success and their adopted personalities had upon their own lifestyles and health. It may not seem important now, but changing your style midcareer causes it own issues.

: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: windlesszephyr May 14, 2016, 03:55:29 AM
Okay, this is good to hear on all counts, thanks guys. I'm happy knowing that I'm doing something right at least, and I suppose if I encounter anything that's super jarring I'll point it out here instead of moaning about it in my videos. If it's something tiny though, welllllllll... I may just rag on it for comedic effect ;D

And ptarth, I appreciate the advice. Believe me, I've spent a lot of time researching professional gaming on youtube, and while I may not be where I want to be yet I know full well what I'm getting myself into. I'm kinda modeling what I do after Northernlion, Bisnap, and Sleepcycles (all of whom would probably love Starward Rogue, come to think of it), since their styles are based less on heavy editing and personas and more on commentary and gameplay. Ideally, I'd stream more often than I do, but since youtube has to contend with my job, I don't often find the time I'd like to devote; yt is a lot more resource management friendly, insofar as time is a resource of which I have a limited amount.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 14, 2016, 08:24:40 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssrxA5UWVkc

Next Episode: True Sniper

SPOILERS


This episode has a very interesting build. Redshift Mech, so Precision Railgun, and the Sky Hammer is picked up early, so.....Dual Snipers! Throw in Magnetic Offense and Two Shield Drones and you're looking at a very strong build. Criticism from Zeph: Magnetic Offense appears too often. Anangu Boomerangs apparently can't be destroyed, not sure if this is good or bad. Looks like this is going to be a pretty successful run, although Zeph is having to concentrate rather than just decimating everything without thought. A question, Limiter Removal...this kind of sucks and needs an overhaul?
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge May 14, 2016, 08:42:56 PM
Anangu Boomerangs apparently can't be destroyed, not sure if this is good or bad.
I haven't seen the episode yet, but the boomerangs can definitely be destroyed if you cancel their core.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 14, 2016, 08:51:20 PM
Let's see....

I've no idea about Magnetic offense.  Sounds like RNG.  MANY items though, should be set to only appear once.  Most aren't.  That should be changed, to force the game to keep variety going throughout (which is the exact reason why many games of this type do that; nobody likes that feeling of "What?  But this appeared earlier and I didn't want it then either!  That's disappointing!"). Only certain items should be able to appear more than once.   I might set a bunch of these myself so don't be surprised if I suddenly send in something like that.

Anangu boomerangs will receive no changes for now.

Shield drones, bah.

And Limiter Removal.... terrible.  There's no reason to ever use it.  I cant think of a possible way to make it NOT suck, it's one of those occaisional items that maybe made some sense early on in development (when a totally different style of enemy attacks was planned, though I never figured out why anyone thought that'd happen with me being on the project...) but makes no sense whatsoever now.  It should be replaced, honestly.


Okay, this is good to hear on all counts, thanks guys. I'm happy knowing that I'm doing something right at least, and I suppose if I encounter anything that's super jarring I'll point it out here instead of moaning about it in my videos. If it's something tiny though, welllllllll... I may just rag on it for comedic effect ;D

And ptarth, I appreciate the advice. Believe me, I've spent a lot of time researching professional gaming on youtube, and while I may not be where I want to be yet I know full well what I'm getting myself into. I'm kinda modeling what I do after Northernlion, Bisnap, and Sleepcycles (all of whom would probably love Starward Rogue, come to think of it), since their styles are based less on heavy editing and personas and more on commentary and gameplay. Ideally, I'd stream more often than I do, but since youtube has to contend with my job, I don't often find the time I'd like to devote; yt is a lot more resource management friendly, insofar as time is a resource of which I have a limited amount.

Yeah, I agree with that style of commentary and such.  I subscribe to all 3 of those guys, and their style keeps me coming back.  I particularly like that they actually stay on the bloody topic.  When I've watched certain other popular ones, such as Game Grumps, well... ugh.  I just cant watch those guys.  They'll be playing the game, on topic for like 2 minutes, and then one of them will start to tell some loooong and supposedly funny story about something that happened to some friend at a McDonalds are something.  A lot of Youtubers do this, it just... bugs me.  I mean going off topic a little bit every now and then is okay, certainly NorthernLion and Sleepcycles do that (and Sleepcycles can get hilariously nonsensical with that) but they get back to the actual game commentary quickly.   I mean, if I wanted to watch people just yap about whatever the whole damn time, there's other videos I could go to, surely.

And yeah, those 3 possibly might like Starward.  All 3 of them were contacted, but nothing came of it.  Though, to be fair, they only have so much room on their plates for so many games, each can only really concentrate on a very few at a time since they're focused on putting out LOTS of videos.  And I cant see them going for anything that doesn't have a quite large fanbase already (risky time investment, regardless of what they may think personally).
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Draco18s May 14, 2016, 11:17:49 PM
nobody likes that feeling of "What?  But this appeared earlier and I didn't want it then either!  That's disappointing!"

OTOH there's "I don't have the money and I want it, why did it have to show up on Floor 1?" or "It was in a room I couldn't get into because I didn't have any keys."

If it was possible to shove items back into the to_seed collection if they're never even viewed, that would be rather handy.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 15, 2016, 09:27:21 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuDqNk1vDT8

Episode 41: Flow

SPOILERS


This seems like one of the first low DPS runs. Zeph is running a very strong defensive build.  Redshift Mech, The One, Sky Hammer, Double Shield Drones, +1 Max Shields, and that's about it. Even though some DPS boosting items have been taken, the Warden still took 7 minutes to take down. Even Wallmaster V2 seemed fairly tanky with this build. (Wallmaster V2 note from Zeph, maybe give the guy some different, harder patterns to V1).  The lack of offense is mostly due to running only a Tier 1 main, having no offensive familiars, and also having no offensive modules.  Zeph seems to be really feeling the lack of DPS, but will this still apply to floors 6 and 7? It probably should unless some more offensive upgrades are taken, or this will be further evidence that floors 6 and 7 are a bit off. Also, there was a nice compliment about the game that Misery should appreciate, along the lines of Starward Rogue making Zeph interested in possibly trying out a proper Touhou game (something I should do myself actually, I have no experience of those games).

I haven't seen the episode yet, but the boomerangs can definitely be destroyed if you cancel their core.

Ah, good to know, thanks.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth May 15, 2016, 09:45:34 PM
His DPS isn't actually that low. The Sniper Rifle is a Tier 1 weapon, but he has been picking up + damage items. He would get about double damage switching to a Tier 3 weapon. The confusion comes from his massive collection of fire rate increasers, which keeps DPS constant, but increases his fire rate (at the cost of damage). He is mostly talking about his damage PER shot being low, which it is. The other half of this is because of the building of fire rate, the building of raw damage has also suffered. As the the use of the weapon, The Sniper Rifle depends on critical hit chance and piercing to do extra damage, which requires lining up enemies, and continuing to improve critical hit range further. He noted in the video that his damage went up (1 shot kills again), but it was actually a string of critical hits doing the work.

And interesting preference question is: Is Redshift better with fast fire rate weapons or slow ones. WZ is of the opinion that slow fire rate weapons are best (i.e., sniper rifle, but then he spends his credits building fire rate). I think that the fast fire rate weapons are better, but to be honest this is a gut feeling and I haven't checked any math on it.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 16, 2016, 08:53:37 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQliKsX7NAo

Episode 42: Noncommittal

SPOILERS


Note to self: the consumable that blasts fire is bugged and seems to produce a second laser sight.

Floor 6 did seem to provide some challenge, although the lack of DPS wasn't as noticeable as pre-Warden. A few damage boosting choices were made, though. Contaminated ammo was taken. Aggressor seemed to be taken down very quickly. Much more easily than the Warden. Zeph rushed straight to Terminus on floor 7. One of the phases of Terminus seemed to be largely cheesed by using the Shield Drones to clear the spawning bullet.  Terminus did pose some threat, though, even with the 2 Shield Drones for protection., and the run could have been in danger of being a loss (assuming that Zeph didn't realize he had Nanite Leeches). 2 Shield Drones...yeah, very strong, but not super broken, at least. There are possibly a few more boss bullets that need to be made immune to interception, though.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 16, 2016, 10:01:57 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 16, 2016, 10:10:03 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Draco18s May 16, 2016, 11:37:17 PM
I said the same thing about Wallmaster's blue shooty mcshooty and Misery shot that idea down. :P
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 16, 2016, 11:52:00 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 20, 2016, 09:22:31 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 20, 2016, 10:04:54 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 20, 2016, 10:52:11 PM
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).
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 20, 2016, 11:13:12 PM
Yep.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth May 20, 2016, 11:52:44 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 21, 2016, 09:37:02 AM

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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 21, 2016, 08:58:22 PM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 22, 2016, 12:44:25 AM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge May 22, 2016, 09:48:52 AM
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?
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 22, 2016, 10:40:42 AM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge May 22, 2016, 11:41:13 AM
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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Draco18s May 22, 2016, 02:15:55 PM
As long as only 1 "wild pool" item shows up at any given time, I'd be happy with it.
Already I ignore robot shops on Floor 1 as it is, due to the very low amount of currency.  Even post balance tweaks I probably won't hit a robot shop until I've got about 40-45 credits, as most drones are a minimum of 30 and I'd rather be able to go "oh sweet, I have enough for that one!" than get stuck with a less than stellar 30 credit familiar.

That isn't to say that I wouldn't pick up a 10-cost drone, just that the current selection of cheap drones tends to be very lackluster for the price (I'd rather save up 15 more credits for next time than spend 30 now).
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: windlesszephyr May 23, 2016, 02:59:14 AM
Sorry for not existing here lately, folks. Been caught in a work/sleep cycle since the last run went live and haven't had a chance to check back in here for more than a few moments at a time. So, I've done one other run since the one with the Tri crash thing, so I'll link the relevant files, far as I can tell, and just hope that they're still useful. The ones there are the only files I found that have a timestamp matching the date of the run. Also, in the run I did between that one and now, there was another crash that might be in those logs somewhere, where the game froze on a black screen just after I hit the start run button. I'll have that one live tomorrow in its entirety, since it was mostly just for fun, so if y'all want to see what happened it'll be there at the usual time.

Anything else you need from me?

Also also, if there were a cheap drone or two available early on, I would probably invest in them pretty often; I'm a fan of drones after all.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth May 23, 2016, 11:09:44 AM
Error logs don't show anything beyond noting there was a crash.

Floor 1 items are priced so, on average, you should be able to buy 1 good (not cheap shop) item  on Floor 1.

Drone shop populations are messed up for some reason. I haven't had a chance to look into that. I'll try to do that today.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo May 23, 2016, 08:31:49 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUPqs0uwgrA

Episode 45: Purchase

SPOILERS



Interesting, Zeph does a Very Easy run in order to get  the don't buy anything from shops achievement. The run only lasts 20 minutes. To preserve a slight air of mystery I won't say whether the run ends in success or failure... Couple of problems I noticed, certain bosses don't have any knockback resistance, Periphery and Metal Legion. I was about to add these changes myself, but then I thought I'd better leave it to Misery, just in case I put resistance on a wrong entity or something. There was one entity called Chain which I wasn't sure about. It's possible a few of the other bosses might also have this problem, too. WZ also hit on some kind of problem with the math of certain power ups. For example, Conductive Hull is supposed to reduce your health by 2, but because of some multiplicaton weirdness due to being on Very Easy, your health is actually reduced by 6 on this mode.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery May 23, 2016, 09:52:19 PM
Bah, I thought the stupid knockback thing had been taken care of already... feh.  I'll set those two. 

Chain is inactive.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 15, 2016, 08:00:15 PM
Just thought I'd necro this thread in honour of the Zeph's re-return to Starward Rogue! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NgEIFAI0xw

Episode 52: Oxidized

SPOILERS



Humble Mech run that seemed to be going pretty well, but Zeph seems to really like sacrifice shop items, taking Battery Harvester, Grin and Bear It, and Repo Van which is really going to bring your HP down a bit. Zeph also traded 1 Shield for 6HP thinking that it was pretty much free HP given that the Humble Mech doesn't start with shields -- which apparently it isn't! I wasn't sure how this actually worked, but it looks like if you grab Shield Transfer while you have no shields, your shield count gets set to -1, so if you then try to grab an extra shield from perks then the game effectively treats that as you repaying what you owe, setting the count to 0 again. Reasonable behaviour? Given the unexpected lack of a shield, and the low health due to all those sacrifice shop purchases, survival proved difficult. A nice warm up run, though. Welcome back Zeph!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery September 16, 2016, 12:50:04 AM
Just thought I'd necro this thread in honour of the Zeph's re-return to Starward Rogue! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NgEIFAI0xw

Episode 52: Oxidized

SPOILERS



Humble Mech run that seemed to be going pretty well, but Zeph seems to really like sacrifice shop items, taking Battery Harvester, Grin and Bear It, and Repo Van which is really going to bring your HP down a bit. Zeph also traded 1 Shield for 6HP thinking that it was pretty much free HP given that the Humble Mech doesn't start with shields -- which apparently it isn't! I wasn't sure how this actually worked, but it looks like if you grab Shield Transfer while you have no shields, your shield count gets set to -1, so if you then try to grab an extra shield from perks then the game effectively treats that as you repaying what you owe, setting the count to 0 again. Reasonable behaviour? Given the unexpected lack of a shield, and the low health due to all those sacrifice shop purchases, survival proved difficult. A nice warm up run, though. Welcome back Zeph!


Huh.... I didn't know that item did that. 

It sounds a little glitchy, but not actually a bad thing... feel free to change it if you'd like, but it's fine if you'd prefer to keep it as it is.

On a side note, a potential upcoming problem suddenly occurs to me... the Popcorn enemies are about ready to go, and will be appearing in large groups (often very large) while being easy to kill; they have a tendancy to clump up if allowed to chase you long enough, and a single missile or two is likely to be enough to flatten all/most of them at once.  So, with the Humble missiles, well... yeah, you can probably see the problem there.   Not sure what might be done about that.   One thing I did do though is set them to not give any EXP.  They aren't a super frequent enemy though, only so many rooms have these guys in them.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth September 16, 2016, 01:44:33 AM
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Chthon September 16, 2016, 07:55:40 AM
Shield behavior mimics Max HP behavior if you pick up the incredibilities that "drop you to 1 hp" One of them gives you -50 max hp, the other gives -25 max hp. I suppose that if you somehow managed to get enough max HP back you would have more than 1 hp after that.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 16, 2016, 08:58:22 AM
Don't remember offhand, but did we make it so the humble missile launcher doesn't do the mining effect? If so, making them debris should work out.

I did sit down and try to find a solution, but couldn't find one. I'll probably take another look but if not, then I'm not sure how to fix the issue. For better flexibility with stuff like this we probably need some way in the engine to exclude certain categories from triggering the EntitiesMyShotsHit modifier. Might be useful to have this feature if it's easy enough to implement. Something worth asking Keith about? I think this would have add a decent amount of flexibility. We could then create the asteroid mining item quite easily, for example. So, something like affects_entity_category="AntigravitateBlock" and doesn't_affect_entity_category="Popcorn".

Shield behavior mimics Max HP behavior if you pick up the incredibilities that "drop you to 1 hp" One of them gives you -50 max hp, the other gives -25 max hp. I suppose that if you somehow managed to get enough max HP back you would have more than 1 hp after that.

Yeah, overall I think the Shield Transfer behaviour seems fine, although maybe we could clarify how it works in the description a bit more.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 17, 2016, 09:42:38 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ic84Y92OPM

Episode 53: Retrain

SPOILERS


Not feeling confident after how the last run went, this time Zeph goes for a run on Easy to get back into the swing of things. Predictably, Zeph steamrollers this run with the Flame Tank, stacking DPS and grabbing a few good power ups along the way. Misery, you probably shouldn't watch the Terminus "fight" as it might make you sad, heh. Bit of a chill run this, with Zeph not really being tested. Note to self: remove the friendly fire from the Gravity Cannon.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Dominus Arbitrationis September 17, 2016, 09:47:05 PM
SPOILERS


Not feeling confident after how the last run went, this time Zeph goes for a run on Easy to get back into the swing of things. Predictably, Zeph steamrollers this run with the Flame Tank, stacking DPS and grabbing a few good power ups along the way. Misery, you probably shouldn't watch the Terminus "fight" as it might make you sad, heh. Bit of a chill run this, with Zeph not really being tested. Note to self: remove the friendly fire from the Gravity Cannon.

You know there is a spoilers tag right? :P
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery September 17, 2016, 09:54:49 PM
SPOILERS


Not feeling confident after how the last run went, this time Zeph goes for a run on Easy to get back into the swing of things. Predictably, Zeph steamrollers this run with the Flame Tank, stacking DPS and grabbing a few good power ups along the way. Misery, you probably shouldn't watch the Terminus "fight" as it might make you sad, heh. Bit of a chill run this, with Zeph not really being tested. Note to self: remove the friendly fire from the Gravity Cannon.

You know there is a spoilers tag right? :P

That takes effort though. :P  I dunno about everyone else, but I always say that effort is the enemy.

There, I've added my sarcasm to all this, you're all welcome.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 17, 2016, 09:59:21 PM
SPOILERS


Not feeling confident after how the last run went, this time Zeph goes for a run on Easy to get back into the swing of things. Predictably, Zeph steamrollers this run with the Flame Tank, stacking DPS and grabbing a few good power ups along the way. Misery, you probably shouldn't watch the Terminus "fight" as it might make you sad, heh. Bit of a chill run this, with Zeph not really being tested. Note to self: remove the friendly fire from the Gravity Cannon.

You know there is a spoilers tag right? :P

Yeah, I think that's too strong, though, heh. This is my version of a very very soft spoiler warning.......or something! (Hey, it kind of makes sense in my brain, at least!) :)
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 19, 2016, 09:10:38 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10noVzT8nw

Episode 54: Sunder

SPOILERS



Quite an interesting, but unusual episode this. Choosing a random mech results in a Red Shift run. Ram Launcher is taken as the preferred early energy weapon, which I haven't seen used very often. There are a few tense moments on the road to Sunder. Then the episode becomes all about Sunder as Zeph struggles with the boss, and so wanting more practise decides to hit the test chamber for while, going for a perfect. Misery should enjoy watching this video for all the Sunder feedback. I'll leave you guys to find out if Zeph gets the perfect or not. Bug note: there's a mysterious circuit that kind of reveals itself before using it due to the text description referencing its energy usage...we'll have to look into that to see if we can fix it.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.

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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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! :)
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery 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....
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo September 23, 2016, 01:52:34 PM
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.

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.

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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.

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!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth 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...
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth 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?.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo 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.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 08, 2016, 10:54:10 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuseMcH1LPE

Episode 62: Ring of Fire

SPOILERS



As you can probably guess from the title the Incineration Module is taken....but then swapped out pretty quickly. Zeph didn't seem to like it, at least not for this build. Zeph hasn't received too many damage boosts on this run, so things are a bit more competitive, and not so steamrollery. It's going to be interesting to see how long Terminus lasts if Zeph isn't able to grab another Beast Mode, or other crazy damage boost. A mistake may have been made -- Zeph grabbed The Creator again. Gonna be an interesting last couple of floors.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 09, 2016, 08:35:11 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYN2pj8L3GI

Episode 63: Zero to Hero

SPOILERS



Congratulations to Zeph on a successful Creator run! Floor 6 of this run was one of the best I've seen in a while. Very exciting, also very well played. A real fight for survival this, although things do turn around on floor 7, surprisingly resulting in another Terminus obliteration. I thought the guy would survive a lot longer this time, but I guess not.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery October 09, 2016, 09:20:17 PM
I think Terminus isn't going to do much surviving until that overhaul is ready to go.  Just aint in the cards right now, it seems...
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 15, 2016, 02:27:28 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJuNHeezgys

Episode 64: Build Shifting

SPOILERS



This episode was a bit overshadowed by that R6025 crash rearing it's ugly head. Super frustrating bug that. It doesn't generate error messages and we aren't able to reproduce it. This crash happened on entering a Miniboss room, not a Sacrifice room, and the fix Chris put in for the next build is targeted more at the Sacrifice rooms, so I'm not sure if the fix is going to work, to be honest. Dagnabit!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: ptarth October 15, 2016, 05:08:45 PM
The fix has nothing to do with the type of room, it is a low level Unity change, so it should apply.
I am 'excited' about the non-special room break. I've never gotten data on that happening before. I hope WZ sent us stuff on it.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 15, 2016, 06:17:00 PM
The fix has nothing to do with the type of room, it is a low level Unity change, so it should apply.

Oh, cool, I thought the change was something to do with specifically the Sacrifice Room dark filters.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 16, 2016, 07:32:13 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK_WFiUQ-dQ

Episode 65: Trod

SPOILERS



Zeph is running a pretty defensive build in this -- which was kind of needed since it is a pretty low DPS run so far.  Super fast fire rate + Fusion Drone + Interceptor Drone seems pretty strong. Fire rates in the next build won't be so easy to get up to insane levels, though. In the current build they're a bit too easy to raise to the cap (well, effective cap meaning so fast that the engine struggles to keep up).
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Chthon October 16, 2016, 11:26:03 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK_WFiUQ-dQ

Episode 65: Trod

SPOILERS



Zeph is running a pretty defensive build in this -- which was kind of needed since it is a pretty low DPS run so far.  Super fast fire rate + Fusion Drone + Interceptor Drone seems pretty strong. Fire rates in the next build won't be so easy to get up to insane levels, though. In the current build they're a bit too easy to raise to the cap (well, effective cap meaning so fast that the engine struggles to keep up).
He does get +75% base damage and then +20% base damage right at the end. I'd like to see how that affects his damage with his x50% multiplier. It should effectively be +47.5% with a high fire rate.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo October 18, 2016, 02:36:08 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUMTJ55wIes

Episode 66: Brakes

SPOILERS



He does get +75% base damage and then +20% base damage right at the end. I'd like to see how that affects his damage with his x50% multiplier. It should effectively be +47.5% with a high fire rate.

Yeah, those couple of damage boosts really seemed to push the build into steamroller territory -- although not quite as bad as in some runs, Terminus at least puts up a bit of a fight. Those 50% fire rate boosts are a thing of the past in the latest build. Along with damage, fire rates have been toned down a fair bit. A bit of a divergence, but one thing that's been bugging me lately is the audio engine, it really really seems to struggle in a game like this with so much stuff flying around. If Arcen ever get into a better place, I might ask Chris if it's possible to port the more sophisticated engine from Raptor into Starward Rogue. Raptor seemed to have a better sound engine with automatic attenuation of sounds and stuff, so it'd be nice if some of that work could live on in SR....I doubt it, but you never know.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo February 04, 2017, 05:03:44 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm6T9ABSTVY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm6T9ABSTVY)

Episode 67: Fall In

A surprise re-return of the Zeph to Starward Rogue. Flame Tank run featuring the Solar Flaregun, Skeleton Keycard, Big Homing Launcher, and Magnetic Offense (briefly!). A bit of a chill run that seems to be going well until... something happens, heh. This episode doesn't mean that the series is returning, though. This was a bit of a one-off. It was good to see Zeph play on the latest build, though. Thanks, Zeph! :)
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: TheVampire100 February 04, 2017, 08:38:01 PM
Lol, that Homing Missile-Infinite missile Combo at floor 3.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge February 04, 2017, 11:56:15 PM
It was good to see Zeph play on the latest build, though. Thanks, Zeph! :)
Indeed. It was a nice surprise and, as always, quite entertaining.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo November 07, 2017, 05:36:15 PM
Episode 68 (part 1 and 2) : Hot Swap

https://youtu.be/MR-8_4zK5UQ

https://youtu.be/iWjZ7V1n32Q


Another nice surprise re-re-return of the Zeph to Starward Rogue! Unfortunately the first episode ends in a most unwelcome return of that blasted crashing bug...typical! Chris has some ideas on a fix for that which should be implemented for the next patch, which will hopefully sort that, but we can't really be sure because that bug has proven very elusive to track down so far.

As for the run, an interesting Energy Transfer run, which I don't think I've seen before on a Let's Play. Zeph looks to be trying to go through the whole run using the Smart Gun, although we'll see if that gets swapped out or not in the next video. I'm guessing that Zeph won't give up a homing weapon, though. I'm very interested to see how Terminus fares as this looks like a pretty powerful run so far. Lots of damage boosts. Welcome back Zeph! :)

Note to self: You can still cheese those one way tiles, I thought we fixed that long ago.  Drat!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo November 08, 2017, 05:24:49 PM
Episode 69: Slam Bang

https://youtu.be/rwi4X_V3tjI

I was quite interested to see how Terminus was going to hold up to Zeph's Energy Transfer Smart Gun ninja build and then Rocket Man happened. Just before the final fight...sorry, Misery! Ouch, Terminus. Up until then there had been a lot of DPS boosts, making the run a little steamrollery, although not too much. Zeph still had to concentrate to secure victory. A far cry from the olden days of yore when the damage boosts were way out of control. I would've thought that Terminus was going to put up a decent fight if that Rocket Man hadn't appeared.

It could be that Rocket Man shouldn't appear on final floors, although the amount of joy and glee that Zephyr seemed to get from that stroke of fortune makes it seem worthwhile keeping it there. It is quite a rare occurrence for that to appear, I think. Oh, I was also correct that Zeph wouldn't swap out the Smart Gun! :)

Note to self: stop Shield Tech from seeding on final floors.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo January 22, 2018, 09:23:57 PM
Another re-re-return of the Zeph to Starward Rogue! :D

Episode 70: Yes hi I am bad at this game

https://youtu.be/RQaoSEtLEJk

I don't really need to say much other than I'm 12 minutes in, it's a Alpha run, and Zeph already has 330 energy. That's insane!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge January 22, 2018, 10:23:28 PM
Yeah, Alpha does that sometimes. :P
But returning to the game using the two mechs with the lowest health I ever made, that's a pretty brutal welcome for Zephyr.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo January 23, 2018, 08:06:31 PM
Alpha Showcase Pt 1 and 2

https://youtu.be/Bqenv48C5EI
https://youtu.be/meFu8uTkL0w

An Alpha run on Easy mode with a very reckless Zephyr. Another run where Zephyr manages to pull some crazy stuff, of particular interest to Misery would be
the Terminus fight at the end of part 2
in which some crazy boss buddy stacking happens. Note to self: it's possible to walk through the caltrops!?
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery January 23, 2018, 10:32:11 PM
Had a look.  I don't think I can stop it from doing that.  Or at least, I don't know how.  The bullets themselves would need to be resistant to gravity effects.  It's actually quite a bit of a problem that they aren't since they can get stuck in that shield like that.

This also showed me that there is a bug with Terminus's shield, that's an easy fix though.

The real question:  What killed him at the end?  I watched those last few seconds multiple times and I cant quite tell what happened.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: windlesszephyr January 24, 2018, 12:15:00 AM
The real question:  What killed him at the end?  I watched those last few seconds multiple times and I cant quite tell what happened.
Looking at it frame by frame, it looks like one of the purple star-shaped bullets teleported behind me somehow. Can't say how though, it appeared there over the course of one frame evidently.

Also, this thread continues to make me immensely happy with its existence. Just thought I'd throw that out there before the expansion drops.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery January 24, 2018, 02:39:11 AM
Ah, yeah, the gravity effects in the game can be a little weird.  Use with great caution, they can be so violent that they shove a bullet up your nose.

Anyway, I'll be interested to see what you think of the expansion.  Be warned, the difficulty will go up with this one due to the golden floors being harder than normal ones.  They have a unique set of enemies/bosses/minibosses, all generally nastier than those on normal floors.

If you run into anything abnormally frustrating or seemingly unfair, let us know here, and I'll look into it.  In particular there may be the occaisional broken room or something (where the room layout + certain enemies creates unavoidable damage).  Those, I want to fix ASAP when they show up.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge January 24, 2018, 08:05:53 AM
Looking at it frame by frame, it looks like one of the purple star-shaped bullets teleported behind me somehow. Can't say how though, it appeared there over the course of one frame evidently.
I rewatched that part at 0.25 speed and I understand what happened. The gravity effect of your cannon's shot could barely contain the purple stars, so when you used a second gravity shot it provoked some sort of violent slingshot effect between the two gravity wells. You were unfortunately right in the line of fire of this newly created star ballista. Even the built-in safety measure of the gravity cannon didn't save you (it does explain why the shot was sent behind you instead of directly in your face though).
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo January 24, 2018, 11:27:45 AM
Had a look.  I don't think I can stop it from doing that.  Or at least, I don't know how.  The bullets themselves would need to be resistant to gravity effects.  It's actually quite a bit of a problem that they aren't since they can get stuck in that shield like that.

Yeah, I can't think of a solution for that.

Ah, yeah, the gravity effects in the game can be a little weird.  Use with great caution, they can be so violent that they shove a bullet up your nose.

Yeah, the gravity effects can cause crazy to happen.

Episode 73: Penumbra Showcase

https://youtu.be/8-8hdt_OHpA

A Penumbra Showcase episode on Easy. A tip for Zeph, the Penumbra evasion dash is actually quite a powerful attack as well. Especially when combined with the perk First Blood (which gives double damage for your first hit on an enemy). If you're coasting through a run, you're probably not going to want to use it that much, but if things get tough and you need to take down some particularly fierce enemies quickly it can be quite useful, although you do need to learn how to use the unit effectively, as it can be quite risky. You can even use it on bosses if you use the sprint skill, but that's quite dangerous.

Oh, and yes, we should have put you in the credits, Zeph, sorry about that. You have been quite an important part of the Starward Rogue journey. In fact, I think I just plain forgot to update the credits list! I think I updated it once in November-ish, but not since, so it may actually be missing a few names. Apologies to those people who are not credited but should be. I'll make a note to update the credits properly when the next build goes out. Oh, if anybody is missing from the credits feel free to tell me about it and I'll get you added. Cheers!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo January 25, 2018, 07:08:01 PM
Episode 74: Stay Gold

https://youtu.be/jyskjf7kA7w

An AuGMENTED run by Zeph, also starring Zeph (the mech)! For those not aware, the Zephyr mech is actually inspired by Windless Zephyr, the name is not just a coincidence! Some tiny spoilers, Zeph encounters a gold floor on floor 2....plus 2 more gold floors later on, it's very much a goldrun! Note to self: the Kunai is appearing on gold floors, that thing seems to appear everywhere even though I thought I'd stopped that from happening... strange. If anybody wants to check out some gold floor action, this is the video to watch! Also, another note to self: stop using so many exclamation marks!.......doh!...I mean doh.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Logorouge January 25, 2018, 07:15:41 PM
So many golden floors, I love it.

One thing though: Zephyr, I think you should take a peek at the tutorial added for the expansion. It's pretty short but it will get you up to speed with all the new special tiles of Augmented.
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery January 25, 2018, 09:51:00 PM
So many golden floors, I love it.

One thing though: Zephyr, I think you should take a peek at the tutorial added for the expansion. It's pretty short but it will get you up to speed with all the new special tiles of Augmented.

Ya know, something occurred to me with this:  THe game doesn't make it too obvious that this even exists.  Heck, it took me awhile to start figuring out what the heck the new tiles do and I work on the bloody game.  Granted my memory is terrible and sometimes I cant remember what my own created enemies do, so maybe that doesn't say much, but still.

: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Pepisolo January 26, 2018, 09:52:50 PM
WZ Plays AuGMENTED, Episode 2: Infinite

https://youtu.be/ahtiSUhUnno

A nice conclusion of the run with more gold floor stuff, including a mini army of Crystal Beamers and a lot of Meteor Hammer hijinks. For Zeph, yeah, the Crystal Beamers all have various debuff effects on their attacks. There's a burning debuff, slow debuff, stun debuff, and an acid debuff. As is typical for Zeph, yet still almost unbelievably
the run ends with another missile super buff that shreds Terminus!
: Re: The Return of the Zeph!
: Misery January 27, 2018, 12:35:31 AM
Ah yes, I had a run that ended like that somewhat recently.

Was bloody satisfying, after too much time spent testing the thing's irritating alter-ego.  It had it coming.