Arcen Games

General Category => The Last Federation => Topic started by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 12:49:07 pm

Title: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 12:49:07 pm
Original: http://arcengames.com/about-the-recent-schedule-and-tlf-updates/

A really great question from a recent post:
Hi Chris – Is the last federation pretty much the final product now? Unless I’ve missed something the last update was June 6th to 1.24 -25
Before that you were changing every two or three days. Thanks

I've posted a few notes about this in the Off Topic section of our forums, and I think some bits on the TLF forum as well, but not everybody sees every post, and I didn't ever collect everything in one place.  So here we go!

What's Been Going On Lately?

The Last Federation is not the final product any more than AI War is, in the sense that those games are intended to evolve over years.  Others like Skyward Collapse and Bionic Dues are the final product, but these two -- AI War and TLF -- are currently ones that we consider in active long-term development.
The lack of updates on TLF has been due to a number of factors lately.

Some have just been scheduling things with trying to make sure that our other projects don't languish -- for instance, there's not enough art for TLF to be working on, so I have to get design stuff in place well enough for Blue to be working on art for Spectral Empire, even though I'm not going to be doing heavy design there for a little while, and Keith won't be starting coding there until early July.  Since right now I'm the sole programmer on TLF, that means that sometimes I have to set that aside to help manage things with the other projects, since I'm also the designer and producer on all of them.

Another issue was some personal stuff that came up and impacted me for a week and a half or so there in a major way, so that set me back in general.

Another factor has been the website redesign, as well as the (still in progress) work on redoing our site store.  That takes an amazing amount of time, but it's been something we've sorely needed for a couple of years now.  Now was finally a time where I felt like I had enough breathing room to do it (there's always other stuff to be done with games, but if I never set aside time to work on these other side things then they simply never get done -- I've been really wanting to do this site redesign since something like 2012, because Joomla really wasn't working out for us).

Another factor is that I've been trying to work on better steamworks integration for our games, particularly for linux.  TLF's steam achievements don't work on linux, and I also want to get steam cloud support on our steam games in general.  Once I get that working, then I want to get Valley 1 and 2, Skyward Collapse, and Shattered Haven all ported to linux.  Tidalis will remain PC and Mac only, and AI War's linux port will come after 8.0 comes out in August.  So that one will be more delayed.

Yet another factor is that I'm trying to plan an easier way to install expansion packs for our games, without requiring an actual installer.  "Just unzip into your main game folder" works for windows machines, but on OSX and possibly linux there is not a merge-folders-when-unzipping natural behavior.  Instead it just blows away entire folders, which is, ah, a big problem.   It's not remotely insurmountable, though, as our normal in-game updater already solves that.  So I just want to make a form of expansion-unpacker that more or less does the same thing.  This will be important for our non-steam non-windows customers coming up when with the TLF expansion, as well as with our other games that have existing expansions when we do updated packages for them that include other OSes, etc.

And lastly, when it comes to the actual updates to TLF itself, the time that I do have for that has been temporarily spent on the expansion.  Some of that actually has gone to other changes to the base game, but there are substantial changes to underlying systems there, and so I want to make sure and get all of that in at once, and then do those as a beta update rather than an official update so that we can have a set runthrough of testing all at once rather than having to go back and forth between beta and official updates a lot, or stay in beta versions for a long time.

What Will The TLF Update Schedule Be Like In The Future?

As with AI War, that's really going to vary depending on the time period.  There were some periods in the history of AI War where we went 6+ months without an update because it was in good shape and we were working on other things.  Then we came back into periods with updates every 2-3 days for a month or two.  And then many other extended periods with a release every 1-1.5 weeks or so.  That's the current expectation for TLF from our end, given the level of interest the game has had.

When the TLF expansion comes out into its beta form, which should be within 2 weeks (I said that before, I know, but some other stuff came up as you note above -- apologies, that usually does not happen), then expect a flurry of updates every 2-3 days again for a while.  Focusing both on tweaking and balancing the expansion content, as well as making generalized improvements to the base game.  When the expansion launches officially, most likely in August, then the base game will be considered 2.0 alongside the new expansion's release version.

After that... right now it's too early to say, but I'm expecting that we'll likely be in a period of releases every 1-1.5 weeks for a while, as we'll be working on Spectral Empire in the main.  Assuming interest remains high in TLF, then at some point we'll work on a second expansion for TLF, and during a month or so period there we'd see heavy development again with tons of updates to both the base game and then of course work on the expansion.  If you look back at the history of AI War updates, you can see that's more or less how it works out.

Completely as an aside, we tried the approach of not doing expansions and just doing tons of free updates to the base game with Valley 1.  Valley 1 sold very well at the start, but partly because of our persistent post-release work without any sort of paid additions, we're still very much in the negative for having made that game (aka, it cost us a hundred-ish thousand dollars more to make than we have made selling it).  With AI War, we've been able to balance things out more, having it be very profitable on an ongoing basis (5 years now!) partly thanks to the expansions, while at the same time using that to help fund updates to the base game, free for everyone, all through that time.  And frankly that covered the losses we took on other titles that were not financial successes -- it let us have a bit more freedom to experiment.  Some of which led to great results, and some of which led to results that the market at least deemed not as great.

Anyway, so that's our update model and the reasoning behind it, which is all super familiar to long-time followers of AI War.  Any questions, always feel free to ask!
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 01:59:24 pm
Thanks for the writeup Chris! I was starting to ask myself what is going on ;).

If you don't mind another question: Is there any reason that you have not commented on the (as i see it) well-grounded criticisms uttered in various threads regarding the TLF base game (e.g. Unrecoverably volatile RCI values, the always working "recipe" to win the game found by GC13, serious bugs (e.g. Ship upgrades no longer unlocking, for more see e.g. my signature) etc.)?

Always seemed like the stuff you usually adressed more sooner than later in the past - especially with regards to the "arms-race" between you guys and players having "solved" the game...

Any news on when/if we might see some fixes/improvements to these issues?
Some of these are in dire need of attention imho...

And nice new website BTW :D.
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 02:13:02 pm
To be honest, I have not yet read the threads.  Not because I don't intend to, but because my head only has so much "RAM," so to speak. ;)

Pretty much all the stuff that I am aware of is either reasonably niche or is something that is going to take more extended testing.

1. I've not read the recipe for winning yet, but it's something that only people who have found that know, so it's not something that I feel like is drop-everything, though I do want to get to that soon.
2. With the volatile RCI values, that's going to take some general testing and back and forth, and to some extent that is kind of intended.  Not as extreme as it sounds like is happening sometimes, but that's going to take some hunting.
3. With the extra ships not unlocking, that's annoying, but there are so many ships at the start that it's not a major blocker.  It is on my list for looking at for the next patch, though.
4. The Evucks thing is another unusual case (them being the last race is not always a given), and is something I do need to look at the numbers for.
5. And the auto-pause thing is something that is going to be a mild chore to add, and something I'm not likely to do until the new expansion is in beta.  It seems like enough people are interested in it that it's worth doing, but still.  Actually, I just now finally thought of a less-intensive way to do that on the coding side.  I had kind of been waiting for an epiphany on that front, actually.

Anyway, right now there are a LOT of under-the-hood changes in the next version that relate largely to the expansion, and the above sort of things I judged to be of low enough significance that I don't want to inflict the issues that may arise from those other underlying expansion changes on everyone in order to rush out a fix there.

That's the one downside of working on a large feature when that happens: you lose the ability to do quick patches for other stuff, unless you push out the large feature half-finished.  Since nobody has the expansion yet, the half-finished bit doesn't matter, but as with any large injection of code we wind up with the potential for collateral damage, hence my desire to do a beta branch temporarily instead of going straight to official with the next build to come.

Hope that makes sense. :)
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
Thanks for the reply :).

EDIT:
With all due respect: you should.
There is some pretty disconcerting stuff in these threads that might surprise you - especially with regard to how deep and replayable the game actually is :-/...

Don't want to do too much typing since I am on vacation and chained to my phone for Internet access, but:
- the general theme of the RCI criticisms seems to that the impact of current events makes deliberate manipulation a chore due to some differences in order of magnitude for what events cause and for how long the player has to dispatch to change them
-- also the ability to hurt the RCI values of a planet is missed by some
-- General opaqueness is another issue
- aside from that too many games still play out too samey (see the "is the solar system a boring place?" thread). The missing ship unlocks add their part by significantly reducing combat variety
-please reduce the Evuck chrystal City multiplier - it hurts too much :)

More once i am back home - good to know you will be back at the game soon!
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 02:37:35 pm
All makes sense, thanks.  Hope you are enjoying vacation -- France, I think it was?
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:40:41 pm
Quote from: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 02:37:35 pm
All makes sense, thanks.  Hope you are enjoying vacation -- France, I think it was?
The french riviera, yes :D.

Not to push you or anything: but please make sure to read my edit in my last post.
Now i will stop whining - promise ;).
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
We are allowed to ask questions? Yay!

I'm bit confused about some changes that you guys have made based on feed back ._. Mainly the ones based on giving player more options

I mean, for example, anti federation alliances. In original version they were something you have to get rid of, but now you can attempt to dissolve them without wiping out races. But, umm... Why?  Weren't they supposed to be a challenge?

The "If members hate each other, the alliance shatters" does make sense and I'm always up for changes that make sense, but it makes them really toothless. Hell, I'm pretty sure enemies can be alliance with each other as long they hate third party more. Alliance of independent states isn't even much of alliance, its group of races who want to remain independent who ally with each other to remain independent. So do they even need to like each other much? Though, in case of solar axis pact it makes sense that it won't be born if both races hate each other as it is pretty much bad guy alliance,(and game becomes really darn hard if two war like races join the pact, so its fair they won't create axis pact if they want to kill each other) but it doesn't make sense with some of other alliances.

I thought fear empire was supposed to be the "evil" alliance. I mean, its pretty much always formed by evil race that has wiped out 3 other races. So umm, why does it dissolve on final planet now? I mean, by time you get rid of four planets, fear empire hates hydrals and federation members so much that you probably can't recruit them anyway, and why would you want them to join, they genocided 3 other species. Plus its nicer narrative, the federation vs the evil empire, but it just dissolves on final planet so.. Yeah, I guess it does make sense that if empire become too weak they break up, but if you really want to allow player to recruit fear empire race... I dunno, maybe something like, if fear empire is down to one planet and has lost homeworld, they dissolve and have special condition that allows you to make them join federation regardless of how much everyone dislikes them?*shrugs*

Thoraxian protectorate is also completely useless now since everyone hates thoraxians easily so it always dissolves upon being born. Which again doesn't make much sense, thoarixan protectorate already has dissolving condition of Thoraxians being eliminated, so why does it need another condition for that? Besides, protectorate is about races being afraid of federation and submitting to thoraxians for protection so why would they dissolve immediately after joining?

Besides, if fear empire can be dissolved, why can't smuggler empire be dissolved? .-. I don't get it. Though I guess it does add something unique to alliances besides their birth conditions. I mean, currently only fear empire has unique feature it, that being that non federation members start to hate federation over the time due to being weary of war, but other alliances are pretty much same and don't have much flavor to them.

Anyway, my point was that some of player feedback and response to give them more options kinda makes things too easy or makes some of features lose their flavor. Anti federation alliances aren't much of threat now since usually they are formed by war like races and those races easily dislike each other due to attacking each other. And speaking of flavor, now that evucs don't do igniting gas giant until they are on final planet, they never do it since they don't always have gas giant being their final planet. I guess it might help if they would always start on gas giant, but well, they don't. Anyway, I don't know why the rule was changed, but previously there was hurry to make evucs stop whenever countdown started which gave nice alarming feeling of "Shit got real". Besides, they usually got their planet conquered before blowing it up(I've only once seen them blowing it up on game where I let them and that was on old version where ground combat took forever due to ships being in orbit forever) so I'm not really sure if there was any harm to it. I kinda forgot what I wanted to ask about though, sorry about that got sidetracked by my wondering about changes to anti federation alliances and I kinda forgot what was the thing about player feedback I wanted to ask about ^_^;

...Oh, I do have another question though:

How are we supposed to do androns only alive achievement since androns never conquer planets? Use acutian planetcracker on everything combined with evuc gas giant igniting?

Oh and umm, since you guys talked about rci values... Why does rci value federation joining condition require races to like you? I mean, its already up to luck which of four values(if any of them) get down to -2000, but since they have to like you as well, you can't influence rci values or they hate you for sabotaging them.

...Ah, sorry for long post ^_^; And sorry if its... Annoying, there are things that have bugged me in my few previous playthroughs when I finally completed game on all first race options
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 25, 2014, 05:12:39 pm
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 08:18:20 pm
Quote from: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
EDIT:
With all due respect: you should.
There is some pretty disconcerting stuff in these threads that might surprise you - especially with regard to how deep and replayable the game actually is :-/...

- the general theme of the RCI criticisms seems to that the impact of current events makes deliberate manipulation a chore due to some differences in order of magnitude for what events cause and for how long the player has to dispatch to change them

I'm strongly tempted to take away the ability to dispatch to change them, frankly.  These were never really intended to be something you could just sit there and dispatch to manipulate.  We added that belatedly as an option, thinking "more options are good," but intentionally made it a really underpowered thing because being too powerful would really negate the whole impact of RCI.

I'm not jumping right on making changes here because a solution is not really obvious to me.

Quote from: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
-- also the ability to hurt the RCI values of a planet is missed by some

Which options are being referred to that are not there?  Maybe I am just having a blank, but I don't recall taking away any options there.

Quote from: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
-- General opaqueness is another issue

That's one of those things that is just a gradual thing that is going to have to be worked on over time, too.  Frankly SimCity was my model, and so having perfect visibility into everything wasn't my goal for players.  In other words, I don't really want players to know the formulas to try to divine perfect results or something.  But at the same time, having enough detail to actually make decisions is also important.  I think that we are largely in that ballpark in the most important areas, except where the super hardcore grognards are going to kind of disagree with the philosophy in general.

Not to say that there aren't things to make more clear, because there are.  But I wouldn't call it an endemic problem at this point -- once that was the case, because we erred too much on the SimCity side I guess.

Quote from: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
- aside from that too many games still play out too samey (see the "is the solar system a boring place?" thread). The missing ship unlocks add their part by significantly reducing combat variety

The ship unlocks will be quick, but in terms of the rest that's again something I'm mulling.  Measure twice, cut once.

It's not obvious to me what to do to encourage variety beyond a lot of what is already going on.  Typically variety is achieved by restricting or adding options in some ways.  Right now your flexibility is so extreme that even though the situations of the planets can vary hugely, you can massage it back into a semblance of what you want.  The Ark and The Mire were intended to add an extra element of randomness, and so were a number of other things dating way back from the start.

The problem with reducing options is that generally people freak out about that sort of thing, so I can't just make that a generalized change.  It would probably need to be some sort of Advanced Start option to start with a more complex situation that restricts you more.  Basically that sort of mode would be a "take the kid gloves off, and punish me please" sort of mode, where advanced players get into that once they start feeling like the base game is too samey.

Really, that's the crux of the issue to me: the first few times you play through the game are fine, in my opinion, which is why I'm not rushing around more.  But once players want to start digging more and more into the details, then things can get murkier.  With AI War, we sacrificed any semblance of approachability by catering only to the super hardcore crowd.  That is fine to a point, because that serves that game really well.  But that would be fundamentally changing the nature of this game.  Which, again, is fine so long as it is an OPTION that people can graduate to once they get used to the more vanilla approaches.  Kind of like all the various minor factions and whatnot in AI War, where new players typically don't turn all those on unless they are feeling suicidal.

Anyway, none of those things are what I'd call 2-3 day fixes, and I'm loathe to run at it with a series of small bandaids at this point, because I believe the first aim of the game -- being fun for several playthroughs, in particular the first -- would be severely hampered by that.  The second aim of the game, of providing AI War levels of replayability, is something that deserves a lot of attention as well, but it's the sort of issue that can only really even be approached once you have sufficient numbers of players with dozens of hours in it.  We're hitting that point now, and the feedback there is really useful, but it's something I have to kind of sift through and try to come up with a good solution for rather than doing like we did in Valley 1 and just chewing through attempt after attempt.

Quote from: nas1m on June 25, 2014, 02:31:52 pm
-please reduce the Evuck chrystal City multiplier - it hurts too much :)

Yeah, that is understood. :)


Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
We are allowed to ask questions? Yay!

Always!  I apologize for not always being active in every thread or being able to answer everything, but you guys outnumber us about 25,000 to 1.  Not on the forums, thankfully -- here it's more like 500:1. ;)

Anyway, if there are particular questions that a lot of people all want to know the answer to and that I am simply missing for whatever reason, then potentially a thread could be made where I weekly answer the top 10 questions from the community or something.  Not that that's the only time I'll answer questions or anything, but that would be one thing that would help make it so that if in the normal course of things I don't miss anything too critical in that regard.

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
I'm bit confused about some changes that you guys have made based on feed back ._. Mainly the ones based on giving player more options

I mean, for example, anti federation alliances. In original version they were something you have to get rid of, but now you can attempt to dissolve them without wiping out races. But, umm... Why?  Weren't they supposed to be a challenge?

The "If members hate each other, the alliance shatters" does make sense and I'm always up for changes that make sense, but it makes them really toothless. Hell, I'm pretty sure enemies can be alliance with each other as long they hate third party more. Alliance of independent states isn't even much of alliance, its group of races who want to remain independent who ally with each other to remain independent. So do they even need to like each other much? Though, in case of solar axis pact it makes sense that it won't be born if both races hate each other as it is pretty much bad guy alliance,(and game becomes really darn hard if two war like races join the pact, so its fair they won't create axis pact if they want to kill each other) but it doesn't make sense with some of other alliances.

I thought fear empire was supposed to be the "evil" alliance. I mean, its pretty much always formed by evil race that has wiped out 3 other races. So umm, why does it dissolve on final planet now? I mean, by time you get rid of four planets, fear empire hates hydrals and federation members so much that you probably can't recruit them anyway, and why would you want them to join, they genocided 3 other species. Plus its nicer narrative, the federation vs the evil empire, but it just dissolves on final planet so.. Yeah, I guess it does make sense that if empire become too weak they break up, but if you really want to allow player to recruit fear empire race... I dunno, maybe something like, if fear empire is down to one planet and has lost homeworld, they dissolve and have special condition that allows you to make them join federation regardless of how much everyone dislikes them?*shrugs*

Thoraxian protectorate is also completely useless now since everyone hates thoraxians easily so it always dissolves upon being born. Which again doesn't make much sense, thoarixan protectorate already has dissolving condition of Thoraxians being eliminated, so why does it need another condition for that? Besides, protectorate is about races being afraid of federation and submitting to thoraxians for protection so why would they dissolve immediately after joining?

Besides, if fear empire can be dissolved, why can't smuggler empire be dissolved? .-. I don't get it. Though I guess it does add something unique to alliances besides their birth conditions. I mean, currently only fear empire has unique feature it, that being that non federation members start to hate federation over the time due to being weary of war, but other alliances are pretty much same and don't have much flavor to them.

Yes, definitely they were supposed to be a challenge, and they still are in my view, although there are loopholes as you noted.  It's a tricky balancing act, because before it was a sort of hammer that could hit you in the face without warning, and then if you were trying to have lots of races in the federation, you were just plain plum out of luck.  It may be that there should be an advanced option to make them never dissolve or something, I'm not sure.

For the fear empire, I believe that those always dissolved the way that they do now, but I wouldn't swear to it.  My reasoning from way back was that a 1-planet empire is really not much of an empire.  Although... come to think of it, I guess maybe that did change, so that you could eventually attempt to get them into the federation.  I think that wrapping that into another option for tougher hostile alliances, along with the possibility of having multiple fear empires, is something that would be good there.

Basically the changes that I made were to make it so that for players still learning the game, it was not such a slap in the face that they could not anticipate.  That comes back to the opaqueness question.  I do NOT want to be giving players warnings of what might happen with hostile alliances, because having them pop up surprisingly is way more fun and more in character of the universe.  That said, having your strategy be irrecoverably messed over by that is not a fun thing for a lot of people.

Then again, for people who already know how it works, or just prefer things to frankly be harder... well, the sort of harder mode that aligns with what you are talking about seems like an imminently reasonable option to add, and it would not be hard for me, either.  That one has a much more obvious solution to me compared to a lot of the things that have been discussed here.  Basically I think it's good for the "vanilla mode," but the advanced players really would probably prefer that option to have it be more hardcore.

Incidentally, having the Advanced Start screen become as complex and flexible as the general lobby in AI War is something I am TOTALLY okay with, and expect to happen over time.  We're never all going to agree on the preferred way to play, and the Quick Start option is intended to give people a good time on their first time or two of playing.  The Advanced Start is where the longevity is intended to come in.

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
Anyway, my point was that some of player feedback and response to give them more options kinda makes things too easy or makes some of features lose their flavor.

Yeah, in some of those cases, I really regret that.  The ability to dispatch for RCI is the main one I regret even in the base game experience (options aside).  I may need to make that an option that you have to turn ON in order to have.  Somebody is bound to scream bloody murder if I just take that feature away entirely, so I can't do that.  But making it an optional thing that is default off is probably the wisest course.

If a planet is in a bad place or a good place, your ability to impact that is SUPPOSED to be very limited, and you have to work around that one way or the other.  Not in a Skyward Collapse "things are flailing like crazy" way, but rather in a sense of "this solar system is huge and a complex network of peoples, and I am just one four-headed dude."

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
And speaking of flavor, now that evucs don't do igniting gas giant until they are on final planet, they never do it since they don't always have gas giant being their final planet. I guess it might help if they would always start on gas giant, but well, they don't. Anyway, I don't know why the rule was changed, but previously there was hurry to make evucs stop whenever countdown started which gave nice alarming feeling of "Shit got real". Besides, they usually got their planet conquered before blowing it up(I've only once seen them blowing it up on game where I let them and that was on old version where ground combat took forever due to ships being in orbit forever) so I'm not really sure if there was any harm to it. I kinda forgot what I wanted to ask about though, sorry about that got sidetracked by my wondering about changes to anti federation alliances and I kinda forgot what was the thing about player feedback I wanted to ask about ^_^;

With the planetcrackers and the gas giant ignitions, originally my concept (pre-alpha) for those that these would be incredibly rare actions that are just "holy crap what is happening, this is nuts!" that people would run into.  So part of the deal with them not always having a gas giant was to aid in that.  But the rarity of them being able to actually pull it off is indeed troubling.  At one point they were threatening it WAY too often and then failing to do it, and I hated that.

Here again, this is an area where kicking new players in the teeth is not something I think is cool, and I think it's more cool when it comes up only rarely for some people most of the time.  With stuff that happens more rarely, that gets to that sense of the game being different every time -- if something happens too often, then that's where it gets boring and samey, you know?  So this was another attempt of mine to help make the game play out more differently between playthroughs.

All that said, I do have some interesting ideas for gas giant ignitiions that would work for an advanced option here and that would be seriously hardcore.  Basically getting at all your complaints, and being thematically appropriate by getting the Evucks to flee to piracy instead of literally suiciding when they still have planets left (which was part of why I made that rule, because it made no sense to suicide when you have another perfectly good planet).

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
How are we supposed to do androns only alive achievement since androns never conquer planets? Use acutian planetcracker on everything combined with evuc gas giant igniting?

Yeah, that one is meant to be bloody hard. :)  It used to be easier to pull off, though, because of the gas giant thing being more likely to let happen.

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
Oh and umm, since you guys talked about rci values... Why does rci value federation joining condition require races to like you? I mean, its already up to luck which of four values(if any of them) get down to -2000, but since they have to like you as well, you can't influence rci values or they hate you for sabotaging them.

Well, that's kind of the thing, right?  If you are the League of Shadows and you're sabotaging the economy of Gotham City for decades, that doesn't really make them want to join the League of Shadows (even if that was an option).  But if you are Somalia and your economy is absolutely terrible, you'd be pretty interested in doing some mighty fine deals with the UN.

The "unusual ways to get into the federation" options are meant to be something that are super rarely able to be used, and where the circumstances have to be just right.  If you could just directly impact the RCI values and drive them into the floor without it mattering that the race hated you, not only would that be out of character for the game (in terms of it making any rational sense), but also you would have the problem of players kind of gaming the system and using that overly much.  These were always intended to be a "hey let's capitalize on this unusual situation where the stars align and we can get these guys in through nonstandard means.  Again a way to try to have more variety and options, without making those options actually be valid all the time.

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 25, 2014, 02:42:09 pm
...Ah, sorry for long post ^_^; And sorry if its... Annoying, there are things that have bugged me in my few previous playthroughs when I finally completed game on all first race options

Not a problem at all, no annoyance taken.  I think you're right on the money with a lot of your points, but I think that they only really apply to advanced players (which you kind of hint at, frankly, at the end there).  I think it's time to start really beefing out the Advanced Start screen with more ways to make the game hardcore while not obliterating the basic game experience and thus forcing out less-expert players from even getting started.

Quote from: ptarth on June 25, 2014, 05:12:39 pm
A word of note about the brevity of Arcen comments: It takes a long time to answer questions in an official manner. Nonofficial comments are faster, but are more prone to being misinterpreted (See recent GOG 'discussion'). That time that sometimes better spent on working.

Yep, I used to have basically a 1:1 ratio of my posts to everyone else in the forum, basically until the end of 2010.  Past a certain point you guys just outnumbered me so much, though, that those numbers have slipped and slipped and slipped.  I do try to respond as much as possible to the really important things, but I also do want this to be a place where you guys can freely discuss things without feeling like I'm looking over your shoulder constantly, too.  What I mean is, this is meant to be a place for not only for you guys to talk to us at Arcen and us to you, but for you guys to talk to each other.  As the community has grown, that last category has grown a lot.

As I have grown more used to this job, I've also been really trying to spend less time in the "panic mode" where somebody goes "X is broken and this is a criiiisis!"  It's usually a valid point, but a minority issue that only affects a subset of hardcore players.  And in a lot of cases in the past, I've really negatively affected the majority of players who are less hardcore by making a change too quickly.  It's also not healthy for me being in that panic mode constantly where I'm freaking out all the time.

That line from Men In Black is really appropriate: "There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"

Except in this case "these people" refers to Keith and I, not you guys.  And it's not important that we "not know about it," but it is important that we take things in a measured way rather than running around like crazy.  It's the difference between Kay trying to efficiently and calmly take care of the situation, versus Jay running like a madman and causing collateral damage in the streets, etc.  Which isn't to say Jay wasn't smart, he was just less experience and more knee-jerk reactive because of it.  I'm trying to be a little more in between those two, because Kay took some things a bit TOO much in stride. ;)

Anyway, a bit part of the problem was that I was literally working like 14 hour days for a long long time, and I was realizing like 4 hours of that was spent on email and forums.  That's just... not healthy.  I have a family, and I already work long hours as it is.  So I'm just trying in general to achieve a better work-life balance without letting the overall flow of things slow down.

Incidentally, during the month of May where things were moving so fast with TLF, I had an excellent work-life balance, so that's an example of what can be done while not sacrificing family or health.  The month of June has been a mess in terms of progress on TLF for a lot of reasons completely unrelated to that (all the various notes above).

Quote from: ptarth on June 25, 2014, 05:12:39 pm
My perspective on anti-federation alliances - They are mostly working. Some small tweaks would help, but the ratio of how much it would improve the game versus how much time it would take to fix it is not favorable for it being addressed soon.

I think that this is the case for the baseline experience, as well.  And in terms of adding more Advanced Start options, I can probably do what is described above with about 30ish minutes of effort per option, more or less.  I think that's a pretty excellent use of time that should satisfy a lot of our growing population of hardcore players (who are the long-term lifeblood of any game's community, and usually the group I personally identify the most with given my own intense familiarity with the games we make).

Quote from: ptarth on June 25, 2014, 05:12:39 pm
Same is true for achievements.

Can you clarify what you're referring to with that one?  The Andors thing, or the linux thing?  With the Andors achievement, that one is meant to be super hard, so year.  Although, in invasion mode in the expansion, I think that one will implicitly become somewhat easier since the Obscura turn into a new way of obliterating other races.

In terms of the focus on making the steam achievements work on linux, that's something I have to do in order to properly support linux on steam, it's not really an option.  I can't favor one platform over another and still claim a feature for the game.  And I can't port all the other games to linux until I do that, too.  And for us, that's a major win in PR at very little effort once the stupid steamworks thing is resolved.  It's not a huge amount of income for us right off the bat (like 1% I think, maybe 2% at most), but with Steambox and so forth coming, I do want to be positioned to not be left behind there, and it also opens doors with Humble and other sites, too.

Plus, frankly, a lot of our core audience is really into linux, so making life easier for them is always something I'm happy to do.  A minority of our customers overall, but a substantial portion of our most-core players in the community.

Anyway, if there's something else with achievements, please do let me know what I'm missing, heh.
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: Gelatious Cube on June 25, 2014, 09:05:29 pm
Quote from: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 12:49:07 pm
Original: http://arcengames.com/about-the-recent-schedule-and-tlf-updates/


A really great question from a recent post (http://arcengames.com/updated-website-and-both-blogs-have-moved/):


Hi Chris – Is the last federation pretty much the final product now? Unless I’ve missed something the last update was June 6th to 1.24 -25


Before that you were changing every two or three days. Thanks



I've posted a few notes about this in the Off Topic section of our forums, and I think some bits on the TLF forum as well, but not everybody sees every post, and I didn't ever collect everything in one place.  So here we go!





<strong>What's Been Going On Lately?</strong>





The Last Federation is not the final product any more than AI War is, in the sense that those games are intended to evolve over years.  Others like Skyward Collapse and Bionic Dues are the final product, but these two -- AI War and TLF -- are currently ones that we consider in active long-term development.


The lack of updates on TLF has been due to a number of factors lately.





Some have just been scheduling things with trying to make sure that our other projects don't languish -- for instance, there's not enough art for TLF to be working on, so I have to get design stuff in place well enough for Blue to be working on art for Spectral Empire, even though I'm not going to be doing heavy design there for a little while, and Keith won't be starting coding there until early July.  Since right now I'm the sole programmer on TLF, that means that sometimes I have to set that aside to help manage things with the other projects, since I'm also the designer and producer on all of them.





Another issue was some personal stuff that came up and impacted me for a week and a half or so there in a major way, so that set me back in general.





Another factor has been the website redesign, as well as the (still in progress) work on redoing our site store.  That takes an amazing amount of time, but it's been something we've sorely needed for a couple of years now.  Now was finally a time where I felt like I had enough breathing room to do it (there's always other stuff to be done with games, but if I never set aside time to work on these other side things then they simply never get done -- I've been really wanting to do this site redesign since something like 2012, because Joomla really wasn't working out for us).





Another factor is that I've been trying to work on better steamworks integration for our games, particularly for linux.  TLF's steam achievements don't work on linux, and I also want to get steam cloud support on our steam games in general.  Once I get that working, then I want to get Valley 1 and 2, Skyward Collapse, and Shattered Haven all ported to linux.  Tidalis will remain PC and Mac only, and AI War's linux port will come after 8.0 comes out in August.  So that one will be more delayed.





Yet another factor is that I'm trying to plan an easier way to install expansion packs for our games, without requiring an actual installer.  "Just unzip into your main game folder" works for windows machines, but on OSX and possibly linux there is not a merge-folders-when-unzipping natural behavior.  Instead it just blows away entire folders, which is, ah, a big problem.   It's not remotely insurmountable, though, as our normal in-game updater already solves that.  So I just want to make a form of expansion-unpacker that more or less does the same thing.  This will be important for our non-steam non-windows customers coming up when with the TLF expansion, as well as with our other games that have existing expansions when we do updated packages for them that include other OSes, etc.





And lastly, when it comes to the actual updates to TLF itself, the time that I do have for that has been temporarily spent on the expansion.  Some of that actually has gone to other changes to the base game, but there are substantial changes to underlying systems there, and so I want to make sure and get all of that in at once, and then do those as a beta update rather than an official update so that we can have a set runthrough of testing all at once rather than having to go back and forth between beta and official updates a lot, or stay in beta versions for a long time.





<strong>What Will The TLF Update Schedule Be Like In The Future?</strong>





As with AI War, that's really going to vary depending on the time period.  There were some periods in the history of AI War where we went 6+ months without an update because it was in good shape and we were working on other things.  Then we came back into periods with updates every 2-3 days for a month or two.  And then many other extended periods with a release every 1-1.5 weeks or so.  That's the current expectation for TLF from our end, given the level of interest the game has had.





When the TLF expansion comes out into its beta form, which should be within 2 weeks (I said that before, I know, but some other stuff came up as you note above -- apologies, that usually does not happen), then expect a flurry of updates every 2-3 days again for a while.  Focusing both on tweaking and balancing the expansion content, as well as making generalized improvements to the base game.  When the expansion launches officially, most likely in August, then the base game will be considered 2.0 alongside the new expansion's release version.





After that... right now it's too early to say, but I'm expecting that we'll likely be in a period of releases every 1-1.5 weeks for a while, as we'll be working on Spectral Empire in the main.  Assuming interest remains high in TLF, then at some point we'll work on a second expansion for TLF, and during a month or so period there we'd see heavy development again with tons of updates to both the base game and then of course work on the expansion.  If you look back at the history of AI War updates, you can see that's more or less how it works out.





Completely as an aside, we tried the approach of not doing expansions and just doing tons of free updates to the base game with Valley 1.  Valley 1 sold very well at the start, but partly because of our persistent post-release work without any sort of paid additions, we're still very much in the negative for having made that game (aka, it cost us a hundred-ish thousand dollars more to make than we have made selling it).  With AI War, we've been able to balance things out more, having it be very profitable on an ongoing basis (5 years now!) partly thanks to the expansions, while at the same time using that to help fund updates to the base game, free for everyone, all through that time.  And frankly that covered the losses we took on other titles that were not financial successes -- it let us have a bit more freedom to experiment.  Some of which led to great results, and some of which led to results that the market at least deemed not as great.





Anyway, so that's our update model and the reasoning behind it, which is all super familiar to long-time followers of AI War.  Any questions, always feel free to ask!


For years I've avoided posting here because I messed up my user name, but I feel compelled to respond to this one. Most developers just don't take the time to explain things to their customers like that, and I do appreciate it. I've been playing AI War since it was new, and I still haven't beaten it on 7/7. TLF is really good, but perhaps because I'm accustomed to the level of depth and polish available in AI War I certainly felt like TLF could use some more depth, and I'm glad to see that it will apparently get such depth. Keep it up!
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 09:32:58 pm
Quote from: Gelatious Cube on June 25, 2014, 09:05:29 pm
For years I've avoided posting here because I messed up my user name, but I feel compelled to respond to this one. Most developers just don't take the time to explain things to their customers like that, and I do appreciate it. I've been playing AI War since it was new, and I still haven't beaten it on 7/7. TLF is really good, but perhaps because I'm accustomed to the level of depth and polish available in AI War I certainly felt like TLF could use some more depth, and I'm glad to see that it will apparently get such depth. Keep it up!

Thank you, it really does mean a lot to hear that! :)
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 25, 2014, 10:20:03 pm
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 25, 2014, 11:17:41 pm
Interesting thought on the racial AI stuff.  Could be something actually pretty easy to implement, and would certainly add a lot of variety and flavor.  Link please?
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: Misery on June 26, 2014, 12:44:04 am
Ye gods, that's alot of text.  Ugh.  Normally I try to read absolutely everything in a thread, but as I'm not in a patient mood today.... or what passes as "patient" for me.... I'll just state my own problems/concerns even if they've already been brought up above.


My own biggest problem is very definitely the RCI.  So very many things are based on it.  But right now, there's no such thing as strategy in dealing with it.... it's up to the whims of the Random Number Gods.  If an RCI value starts to plummet?  There's little you can do.  The RCI values overall seem to be based on a really large "scale", so to speak, with values that are bad or good being in the thousands. 

But the things you can DO about it, and the effects that things like buildings have on it, in other words, the possible rate of any given change, seem to be based on a scale where 100/200, or negative 100/200, are the "really bad" or "really good".  In other words, the numbers are WAY too skewed in relation to each other, and seem to actually be from different sections of the development process over the beta.  It's as if an RCI balance change was needed at some point, and the current scale of thousands was created.... but the numbers in actual EFFECTS were utterly forgotten and simply not changed from the previous model.

Currently this is the core reason why I've not played in awhile.  It wrecks alot of the possible strategies that I may use, and causes WAY too much RNG interference for a strategy game.  Dont get me wrong;  a good amount of RNG is needed here.  But to me, that means things like events, and AI decisions... the RNG should not randomly decide "Okay, for you the player, THIS set of options currently DOES something, but THIS set currently does not, just because".   A game like this is best when the player has ALL options available (providing of course that they have the resources to activate, like credits and influence) yet needs to choose carefully between them.   Having options available that are bloody useless even when you have those resources is nothing but frustrating, and currently permeates every single aspect of the game that isnt combat related.  And given the game's design when working as intended, the RCI seems to be one thing that the player will be dealing with and affecting REALLY often, as it affects so many things, and so many things affect it.

Thus, I consider it by far the worst problem with the game right now.   It's likely to keep my interest low even with the new expansion if it remains in this state.
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: Teal_Blue on June 26, 2014, 01:03:32 am
@Misery,
                       you may probably think i'm a rabidfan for saying this, (which i seem to alternate between and rabidheckler) and to be honest i guess i'm both at different times. Chris said above, and is certainly capable of answering his own questions, but i wanted to pop in and say this real quick...

you are much, much more experienced than me, and so maybe what you are saying is very valid, but abstractly i can see what Chris said above about not wanting the players to 'game' the system, i guess push RCI up, or down as they wanted, any time they wanted. So Chris and Keith made it hard to do that on purpose. Which makes sense to me. But also i'm a newb, so what you are concerned with is probably way over my experience and my head. I hope i haven't offended you, and i'm certain if you and Chris and Keith were to put your heads together you could think of something that would get you to feel ok about it, without having it be easy to exploit afterwards.  Anyway, enough of that, just wanted to pop in and throw out my thoughts.

Take care,
-T

Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 01:39:27 am
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: NichG on June 26, 2014, 01:44:49 am
I'll chime in and say that the RCI Redesign thread is currently in a somewhat unsettled state as of yet, in the sense that there isn't a particular solid recommendation we've all been able to come to agreement on. It may hopefully get more clear in the next couple of days since ptarth and I have been building a sort of toy model simulator so we can pass it around and see what actually ends up surviving the theory-crafting stage.

So that may be a good thing to put off reading for a few days if time is limited.
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: jonasan on June 26, 2014, 03:24:15 am
as a side note to the ongoing discussion.... but in relation to the original post......

thanks very much for the ongoing linux support chris! getting (pretty much) the whole Arcen library on linux will be great!

i hope your able to get things working with SDL 2 so that we can have controller support for the games through steams big picture mode controller configuration..... with that i will be able to play some local co-op shattered haven natively!
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: MaskityMask on June 26, 2014, 03:35:33 am
Thanks for the answers :)

Though, ptarth, I have to say that I kinda figured out that anti federation alliances ARE the end game threat so they would still be important part of the game's arc. I mean, if federation forms before fear empire and federation is composed of races that are willing to share tech with each other, they are going to be much stronger than any non federation race so only chance for non federation races to be a threat is to form alliance as well, but if they dissolve upon creating alliance right away, its kinda anticlimactic. So basically, anti federation alliances are only thing that is going to be challenge after federation has formed, unless you get unlucky and one of federation members get wiped out right after federation is created or you go for sake of challenge to create federation with unusual races. So yes, I'd think that anti federation alliances are bit more important than what you suggest they would be

Anyway, yeah, advanced start game options where you can start with some of anti federation alliances already existing would go long way of creating alternate challenges and even more replay value :) Bonus points if they allow for super rare events to be happening more often and such stuff.

Speaking of super rare events, I get that they are supposed to be rare, but... I'm not actually sure if they work in the game. I mean, since they are so rare that nobody has seen them, I'm not sure if they are actually bugged or not <_< I mean, I've only seen ultimate weapon buildings, acutians using planetcracker on their own and evuc gas giant igniting in versions close to release version. I never even saw end result of acutian planetcracking since they got wiped out.(they don't seem to do it even when they are down to lost planet and have moons left so I don't know what actually makes them to do planetcracking) The ultimate weapon buildings appeared only two playthroughs in different versions, so I don't know if they currently even work or if they just have so obscure conditions they can't form, even if year is 100 years after start, race has all technology and races have -1000 dislike of each other they can't build them, so I don't know if they are just THAT rare or if they are bugged nowadays.

I guess alternate start conditions/scenarios would be one way to solve that problem too. I mean, I get it that game is supposed to be partially random so that each playthrough is different, but I think having some special scenarios available for sake of challenge would be interesting. Like, not just having scenario where one of antifederation alliances already exist, also have scenarios where evucs start with gasgiant, have high possibility of igniting it and their planet is located so that explosion radius kills everyone if they succeed, scenario where acutians are trying to planetcrack someone and you have to stop them, scenario where federation races are both robotics ones and skylaxians have built cyberwarfare ultimate building, thoraxian first race scenario with them having hunter fleet building and having pirate empire already existing so that hunter fleet has something else to do besides hunting the player. So you'd be on timer where you have to win game before thoraxians kill all pirates and start hunting you instead. Etc etc, I can figure a lot of scenario ideas. (Would be also good way of having peltian fear empire scenario along with asteroid perturber :P Since I really want to see those furballs being danger to all life in solar system, I'm still working on creating peltian fear empire which is really hard since they keep getting wiped out. Bonus points for good laughter if the races peltians wiped out to create fear empire are acutians, burlust and thoraxians)

Note: I don't really have context of how uber powerful the uber rare event buildings are since I haven't figured out yet how to artificially make conditions were they are created xP I know that acutian one is really gamebreaking though since -1 economy to all planets per month is a lot. Though I guess it would also make for interesting scenario... Game where everyone but acutians have their economy ruined. Huh. Yeah, I think having scenarios where those buildings already exists from the start might make for good challenge

Anyway, got sidetracked there when I started to ponder about possible options for it, but yeah, I agree that advanced starting conditions would be an awesome option :D

But yeah, I don't know much about RCIs, but I can say that if rci reached low or high end of spectrum, it never goes down or up again so it feels frustrating to player since options make it feel like you are supposed to be able to affect it yet your attempts to put a dent to numbers is meaningless since even if you build all rci buildings, give race all rci boosting tech, tell race to boost rci value and dispatch yourself to raise rci values, you can't make -1000 rci back to zero again since it goes down to -2000 like a snowball down to hill no matter what you do
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: nas1m on June 26, 2014, 04:55:30 am
@Chris: Thanks for elaborating. The vast majority makes sense to me ;).

A couple of quick notes:

RCI
- Not being able to dispatch to influence RCI might well reduce frustration. I see a couple of issues, though:
-- Currently RCI for any given planet seems to either snowball to any of the extremes or stay roughly at equilibrium fast without changing much after that during the course if the game - leading to games feeling samey once RCI has chosen its path
-- Dealing with the Boarines might become frustrating if nothing can be done by the player to influence RCI
-- All of this might be mitigated by a new quest that allows to adjust a planet's RCI *significantly* e.g. by the hundreds
-- In general more quests would go a long way improving the game imho
-- Being able to hurt RCI referred to adding a new dispatch, not being disgruntled about a preexisting one that has been removed ;)
-- ptarth's quick and dirty approach to improve RCI doesn't look to shabby as well ;) - if keeping RCI as something the player can manipulate is okay with you

Planetcrackers, Gas Giant Ignition, Ultimate Buildings
- I definitely feel that the probability of major events (planet cracker, gas giant ignitions, ultimate buildings) should be increased or be configurable - I have not yet seen *any* of these in my games :(!
-- An Advanced start Option to Control this would be totally sufficiant

Variety and Warlike races
- Thoraxians and burlusts still have a huge amount of trouble to fullfill their designed role as the menace of the solar system - they get tanked by the skylaxians/arcutians in each and every of my games...

Community Interaction
- In general the polls set up by ptarth would be a great place for you to start regarding Community questions

- Finally, thanks for looking into my gripes ;D
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 26, 2014, 08:56:13 am
Quote from: Misery on June 26, 2014, 12:44:04 am
Ye gods, that's alot of text.  Ugh.  Normally I try to read absolutely everything in a thread, but

Now you know how I feel! ;)  Minus the ugh part, but there is just overwhelming amounts of stuff.


Quote from: Misery on June 26, 2014, 12:44:04 am
My own biggest problem is very definitely the RCI.  So very many things are based on it.  But right now, there's no such thing as strategy in dealing with it.... it's up to the whims of the Random Number Gods.  If an RCI value starts to plummet?  There's little you can do.  The RCI values overall seem to be based on a really large "scale", so to speak, with values that are bad or good being in the thousands. 

But the things you can DO about it, and the effects that things like buildings have on it, in other words, the possible rate of any given change, seem to be based on a scale where 100/200, or negative 100/200, are the "really bad" or "really good".  In other words, the numbers are WAY too skewed in relation to each other, and seem to actually be from different sections of the development process over the beta.  It's as if an RCI balance change was needed at some point, and the current scale of thousands was created.... but the numbers in actual EFFECTS were utterly forgotten and simply not changed from the previous model.

Really what we did at one point was uncap it, as originally it was based on a -100 to 100 scale, as you guessed.  So was influence and attitude, eventually.  The severe effects from RCI were not introduced until later, though, so it's most likely actually just an artifact of us going a bit overboard with making RCI meaningful after people complained they were meaningless.

As for the buildings, earlier in the beta they were a flat addition to RCI amounts, which turned out to be a really bad model.  So we shifted them to the current model, but made them conservatively slow.

Quote from: NichG on June 26, 2014, 01:44:49 am
I'll chime in and say that the RCI Redesign thread is currently in a somewhat unsettled state as of yet, in the sense that there isn't a particular solid recommendation we've all been able to come to agreement on. It may hopefully get more clear in the next couple of days since ptarth and I have been building a sort of toy model simulator so we can pass it around and see what actually ends up surviving the theory-crafting stage.

So that may be a good thing to put off reading for a few days if time is limited.

Gotcha, makes sense.  I think I may a couple of stabs at it based on some comments in this thread, though -- mainly splitting out the controversial bits into some options in Advanced Start, so that people can experiment with it in the game.  If something is so widely loved that we think it needs to be there for everyone, then we can take away the option and merge it in.  Of course that still may not suffice in terms of my first guesses here, but since this is such a hot topic I figure that some low hanging fruit are something that I should aim for.

As an aside, I'm planning another TLF release today, so I'm going to try to get to a lot of the things you guys want. :)

Quote from: jonasan on June 26, 2014, 03:24:15 am
as a side note to the ongoing discussion.... but in relation to the original post......

thanks very much for the ongoing linux support chris! getting (pretty much) the whole Arcen library on linux will be great!

It's my pleasure!  I'm not presently a linux user, but I have been at various points in the past dating back to RedHat 5.  And I used to run Mandrake DNS and file servers.  I use so much stuff that is windows-dependent that I can't reasonably make a switch, but like so many people I really wish there was an alternative, and I see linux as being that eventually.

Quote from: jonasan on June 26, 2014, 03:24:15 am
i hope your able to get things working with SDL 2 so that we can have controller support for the games through steams big picture mode controller configuration..... with that i will be able to play some local co-op shattered haven natively!

I'm not sure on that bit, as I haven't checked out that part of the code in the steamworks framework at all, but at some point it would be nice for sure. :)  Probably that's something we might approach when developing Airship Eternal, since it would make good use of it.  And then we would backport that to our other titles that use controllers in a meaningful way.  First I have to get my hands on one of the steam controllers, though, heh.

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 26, 2014, 03:35:33 am
Thanks for the answers :)

You bet. :)

Quote from: MaskityMask on June 26, 2014, 03:35:33 am
Speaking of super rare events, I get that they are supposed to be rare, but... I'm not actually sure if they work in the game.

It's true that those are definitely a bit too rare, heh.  Some of those secret weapon buildings need to be something that come about in a different fashion.  I have it currently set in a certain way that they unlock and can be built, but the main building queue conflicts with them a lot.  Not in the sense that they are bugged, but in the sense that it is just... really unlikely for them to build them, even as a last-ditch effort, and they should be less rare than THAT, heh.

Quote from: nas1m on June 26, 2014, 04:55:30 am
RCI
- Not being able to dispatch to influence RCI might well reduce frustration. I see a couple of issues, though:
-- Currently RCI for any given planet seems to either snowball to any of the extremes or stay roughly at equilibrium fast without changing much after that during the course if the game - leading to games feeling samey once RCI has chosen its path
-- Dealing with the Boarines might become frustrating if nothing can be done by the player to influence RCI
-- All of this might be mitigated by a new quest that allows to adjust a planet's RCI *significantly* e.g. by the hundreds
-- In general more quests would go a long way improving the game imho
-- Being able to hurt RCI referred to adding a new dispatch, not being disgruntled about a preexisting one that has been removed ;)
-- ptarth's quick and dirty approach to improve RCI doesn't look to shabby as well ;) - if keeping RCI as something the player can manipulate is okay with you

Adding new quests to help and hinder RCI by the hundreds might be some good opportunities to provide some good variety and whatnot, and new power to the player without it being an "always there" option.  I like that.

Having the Boarines manage their own RCI better might be something of interest, too, we'll see.

Quote from: nas1m on June 26, 2014, 04:55:30 am
Variety and Warlike races
- Thoraxians and burlusts still have a huge amount of trouble to fullfill their designed role as the menace of the solar system - they get tanked by the skylaxians/arcutians in each and every of my games...

Huh, that's interesting, that's not what I was seeing.  But I will have a look.

Quote from: nas1m on June 26, 2014, 04:55:30 am
Community Interaction
- In general the polls set up by ptarth would be a great place for you to start regarding Community questions

- Finally, thanks for looking into my gripes ;D

Good point!  And sure thing. :)
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 26, 2014, 09:05:33 am
Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 01:39:27 am
  • re:Racial AI
    • And thus we see what happens when I try to be funny. I was suggesting this would be Arcen's next major announcement.
Ah, I see. :)

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 01:39:27 am
  • Further develop a "mental state" for each race. Allowing them to measure and evaluate the past, present, and future of the system (other races strengths and weaknesses). Then give them the ability to use that information to their own ends.
  • Currently the races are not active participants in the game. They don't have a goal they are seeking towards. They have sometimes end the game by military dominance of the system, but they aren't making choices designed to get them there. It just happens. This could be changed. Designs goals for the races and the mechanisms to obtain that goal. This would characterize their behaviors in game and then the player has to decide how they are going to deal with the race as it reaches toward that goal.
  • For example, the Thoraxian Queen (in a particular mood) might be dedicated to the idea of a conquest victory of the solar system. Currently she can be warlike, but she doesn't do anything except make her attack more often. Deeper goals she would evaluate her goal, determine her strengths and weaknesses, and then compare it against the strengths and weaknesses of the other races. She then might end up plotting a way to get the Skylaxians to suicide their great armada into the Acutians thus enabling her lesser fleet to take over both of their empires. Or she might decide to bide her time and continue to build up armadas. Or she might think to ally herself to the Skylaxians and to get them to share technologies increasing her own strengths, get the Skylaxians into wars and steal the planets taken from the enemies and gradually build up her own strength at the cost of the Skylaxians. Then once she is big enough, she betrays them and takes all their stuff.

The tricky thing with traditional AI like that is that there are just so many edge cases, and there are so many ways for the player to figure out what the current mental state is, and then exploit it.  I don't like coding overarching central AI for those reasons, and I instead prefer to code distributed AI that is more reactive in the moment and thus dynamic, etc.  I've written (and lectured to other AI developers) at length about it in the past, actually: http://arcengames.com/designing-emergent-ai-part-1-an-introduction/

Myself and the traditional AI approaches just don't meld well, because I just don't believe in them.  Keith, on the other hand, has had a lot of success in AI War building traditional AI mechanisms on TOP of my distributed AI approaches, and that hybridization has been super powerful.  But the core thing is that it's something that doesn't try to control the entire AI, it's just a more complex subroutine in the distributed decision making, so to speak.  That's kind of what I would envision here.

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 01:39:27 am
  • This is obviously not very detailed or particularly useful.
  • Some brief organizational thoughts
    • Planetary and Racial AIs will have to be separated at some point.
      • Grand Strategy will be the Role of the Racial AI
        • Combat Strength: Current and Future predictions, relative to the strengths of the other Racial AIs
        • Research Strength: Current and Future predictions, relative to the strengths of the other Racial AIs
        • Manufacturing Strength: Current and Future predictions, relative to the strengths of the other Racial AIs
        • Racial Relationships: Who we should try to be friends/enemies with, who we should make our enemies. And who there friends/enemies are.
        • Alliance Relationships: What sort of assistance can we get if we make alliances with others, also pro & con federation.
        • Tactical War AI: Where our ships should go and what they should do there. When do we start building drop ships versus fleets.
        • Strategic War AI: How our allies and our combat strength fares against our enemies combat strength.
      • Planetary Strategy will be the Role of the Planetary AI
        • How the planet is faring
        • What can be done to make the planet better
        • Trades and other ways to make the planet better
        • Telling the Racial AI what we have and how that it fits into what it wants.
        • Budget Allocations
        • Fleet, RCI, building, population representations
    • Give the Planetary AI the ability to "understand" RCI.
      • We need more production = Increase Economy
      • Our hostile planet is killing us = Increase Environment/Planet Habitability
      • We need more fleets = Increase Public Order
      • Our people cannot maintain a stable population - Increase medical
    • Give the Planetary AI the ability to respond to changes in RCI need by building buildings, asking the Racial AI for tech priorities, asking the Hydra player for help, allocating budget to RCI improvement.
  • Once Racial and Planetary AIs are created, then you can add personality weights to shape the different Races to behave differently.
    • The Acutians will promote Industry and be less concerned with the environment.
    • The Burlusts will be eager to go after the weakest races even if their is a chance of intervention.
    • etc
  • I'm not sure how useful this is, but you asked.

Sure, I appreciate it!  Generally speaking that sort of AI control is kind of the antithesis of how I do things, but in your original comment and to some extent above, there's a lot of interesting kernels that can be adapted to the sort of systems that I do use.  For instance, races don't need memory -- in fact, having memory is demonstrably bad, because it makes them predictable.  But how races weight various options and react to specific circumstances is something that would make a lot of sense to make more unique along the lines of what you are saying.  There is already a fair bit of that that is completely random (in terms of a race choosing a favorite technology group to pursue at the start of each game, for instance), but there's not enough, and certainly not enough that is specific to the flavor of a specific race.
[/list][/list]
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: Riabi on June 26, 2014, 10:00:22 am
Quote from: x4000 on June 26, 2014, 08:56:13 am
Quote from: Misery on June 26, 2014, 12:44:04 am
Ye gods, that's alot of text.  Ugh.  Normally I try to read absolutely everything in a thread, but

Now you know how I feel! ;)  Minus the ugh part, but there is just overwhelming amounts of stuff.

Yep, I used to feel this way too. Now that I don't work here, I get to pick and choose what I want to read. :)
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: TheDarkMaster on June 26, 2014, 02:31:24 pm
With the major events, I started a whole thread discussing what I thought would be a good idea for them: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=15846.0

In short, the idea is that these are the things that should flavor each game and make it distinct.  They're things that make the player have to respond to them and change their playstyle so that once you figure out one strategy that works you can't just do only that strategy and always win.  Having how frequently these events can happen be tied to the difficulty level or a different option in the menu isn't a bad idea, but they really are needed and you need to make sure that at least one or two trigger near the start of the game to give you a good reason to play the game after you've beaten it once or twice without intentionally sabotaging yourself.
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 03:57:14 pm
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: x4000 on June 26, 2014, 04:40:59 pm
Quote from: Riabi on June 26, 2014, 10:00:22 am
Quote from: x4000 on June 26, 2014, 08:56:13 am
Quote from: Misery on June 26, 2014, 12:44:04 am
Ye gods, that's alot of text.  Ugh.  Normally I try to read absolutely everything in a thread, but

Now you know how I feel! ;)  Minus the ugh part, but there is just overwhelming amounts of stuff.

Yep, I used to feel this way too. Now that I don't work here, I get to pick and choose what I want to read. :)

Happy belated birthday, by the way! :)

Quote from: TheDarkMaster on June 26, 2014, 02:31:24 pm
With the major events, I started a whole thread discussing what I thought would be a good idea for them: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php?topic=15846.0

In short, the idea is that these are the things that should flavor each game and make it distinct.  They're things that make the player have to respond to them and change their playstyle so that once you figure out one strategy that works you can't just do only that strategy and always win.  Having how frequently these events can happen be tied to the difficulty level or a different option in the menu isn't a bad idea, but they really are needed and you need to make sure that at least one or two trigger near the start of the game to give you a good reason to play the game after you've beaten it once or twice without intentionally sabotaging yourself.

Nice!

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 03:57:14 pm
  • Quote
    As for the buildings, earlier in the beta they were a flat addition to RCI amounts, which turned out to be a really bad model.  So we shifted them to the current model, but made them conservatively slow.
    • In my search for the history of RCI I don't recall seeing why they turned out to be a bad model. Can you clarify?
Hmm... I'm not sure how much was documented, and when it was.  May have been during alpha.  For a long while it was a "+20 to RCI" value on buildings, and it would just be a flat boost.  I shifted away from that because the very concept of that is just a little odd.

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 03:57:14 pm
  • Rare Event Rarity
    • I believe the major problem is that games still don't last long enough or turn out to have such dire situations to force the interesting Rare Events
    • Instead we get: Burlusts are again able to defend their rock with 1TB of troops. You have to spend 20 years of intense population destruction to make any progress
    • Part of that problem comes from the primarily multiplicative combat strength mechanism being combined with the high birthrates of the Burlust(and their super building).
    • By being able to either finish games more quickly or make the end game more interesting than Burlust eradication, more players will see more rare end game events.
Right, this is true.  A lot of the rare events are actually time-gated, too, so that they don't stomp new players.

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 03:57:14 pm
  • Traditional Decision Tree AI versus Individual Agent AI versus hybrid AI.
    • I feel I'm being mischaracterized here.(I don't think that means we have to duel to the death, but I might be mistaken. Please consult my second if this is the case for further arrangements)
    • The initial description was system-neutral not favoring nor endorsing any system of AI organization.
    • The second more in depth characterization was definitely hybrid in nature, the same system you speak about in your AI war thesis.
    • I'm blaming it on my lack of clarity, I need to use more bullet points.
    • Racial Memory -I suppose it depends on what you mean by memory. This is getting far afield, so I won't pursue it.
    • Randomness - This one seems to be a hot issue given your posts and articles on AI. There is a range of AI behaviors, for which you want some randomness. However, making true random behavior is not desirable (and the point you bring up in your own article). However, on a simple reading you come out in saying that you don't want predictability.
    • Quote
      having memory is demonstrably bad, because it makes them predictable
    • I believe you are caricaturing your case here. You want AIs that provide a range of behaviors when there are many reasonable options, however when there are not, you do want a predictable AI. That's inherent in the probabilistic agent-based AI approach. However, as it read, you sound like one of those GOG extremists (per other thread where GOG extremist was inadvertently misused leading to massive walls of text over the misunderstanding).
Apparently we are both being mischaracterized. ;)  In terms of memory, I really am not a fan of it for AI in the main because it makes them slow to react.  I prefer AI that looks at the current state moment by moment and makes decisions based on that.  Obviously some memory is needed in terms of "what was I just doing?" so that the AI doesn't just flail about.  But that's more about following through on one action than something else.

The way that I understood your note was to try to use data from past actions of the player and the other AIs to predict their future actions.  That... gets very dangerous.  It's really easily abusable because players can do one thing for a long time, then immediately switch what they are doing and the AI will react slowly because the vast bulk of its data tells it to.  Either that, or it is having some special overrides to make it react more specifically to specific cases.  Either way, you wind up with mounds more code, mounds more bugs, and typically more exploits.  If the AI is making choices that are in the range of optimal rather than always optimal, and then remembering and following through on those once chosen (to a certain extent), then you get the ideal behavior, in my opinion.

The example from dumpsterKEEPER, if I recall it correctly, was the AI sending ships back and forth through wormholes indecisively.  That was a great example of the AI itself not remembering what IT was trying to do and thus causing problems by not committing to a decision.  Versus trying to anticipate traps based on your past decisions, which instead tends to make it actually easier for you to set counter-traps if you are a good player.  Even with the whole "commit to a decision" thing, there has to be some threshold after which the AI abandons a decision if it no longer thinks it is a good one.  Otherwise, again, you get an AI that is sluggish to react.

True randomness has never been my goal, and nor have I meant to sound like it is.  But programming decision trees is perhaps the antithesis of my general approach.

Quote from: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 03:57:14 pm
  • I do not accept your response that the AI behavior is good (splitting and sending some ships to die).
  • I tentatively accept that it may be good enough(for an AI with the level of resources AI Wars AI has) and for the time commitment to further AI development.
  • I will suggest that the the better answer is that the AI needs to have agent accessible information about all systems.
  • To limit it to the specific issue, it needs to have "retreat plans" for every single system.
  • It should know how dangerous it is to cross through any system with ships.

Interesting that you don't find the AI good in AI War.  But, ah well.  I seem to recall you are one of the uber players, so I'm not surprised you would find that opinion.  AI War is designed to be good up to a point for most players, and then be situationally difficult for people like yourself.  Basically getting into the "good enough given the circumstances" area there.

None of what you're saying there about agent-accessible information like escape routes and danger estimates and so forth is at all at odds with what I am saying.  The AI already does that sort of thing, and that's not a decision tree.  Rather, that's weighting of information.  The thing to do then is take something like the top 10% of good options, and choose one of those at random and then stick with it.  If the quality of options has a massive drop-off past some point, then ignore all those options, which may of course leave you with one.

That's actually more or less how the AI in AI War operates in a number of circumstances, but it hasn't been built up more because it hasn't really seemed needed by the playerbase.

Anyway, I guess the argument that we were pseudo-having (where we both thinking the other was saying the other was not, so actually we were more or less arguing on the same side against imaginary copies of ourselves):

False you: "As an example of the racial AI, the AI should calculate retreat paths, and then choose one, and then stick to it.  This should be something that is done very rigidly, and precalculated too soon, so that there is a high chance of the path becoming outdated and nonoptimal by the time it is needed to be used.  Also, always find the exact ideal path that is obvious, and take that."

False me: "No, it's stupid to make plans.  The AI should just run in random directions and see what happens.  Any sort of planning or target evaluation is holding me back, man!"

Actual both of us: "Given time and resources (which is always an iffy given), doing more complex and accurate evaluations of a larger variety of things is a good thing."

Actual me: "And that should be something that is done on the fly, and then kept as the instructions for a certain amount of time, unless the situation turns X amount bad, in which case things should override the normal 'stick with this' logic."[/list][/list][/list]
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 05:16:03 pm
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: NichG on June 26, 2014, 07:59:11 pm
On the AI thing, I sort of like the idea of some particular predictability in TLF because the various racial AIs aren't actually the player's enemy, they're part of the system that the player is playing. E.g. since the player is embodied as this super-manipulator who can get planetary governments to dance to his tune, it makes some sense to expose behavioral information to the player beyond what you'd want to do in something like AI War because the player's character having special abilities with regards to that kind of manipulation is a premise of the game.

That said, to avoid the 'false me' interpretation, I would say that those particular vulnerabilities should be very specifically chosen rather than just being a happenstance because the AI was susceptible to manipulation. Furthermore, exploiting those vulnerabilities should be something that costs time and resources to the player, so its not just a 'okay, I know how the AI will be dumb so I just have to minorly tweak my activities'.

For example:

- The first time the Acutian Economy drops below -50, they will almost always start a campaign of all sorts of ecologically destructive actions to repair it - trashing their own planet and those of their allies.

That's a sort of decision-tree like case, but its only one layer of the full decision-making process (that involves choosing which actions they'll do, what planets they'll target, and also side things like how much emphasis they're going to give on their armada versus infrastructure or whether or not they'll start a war or whatever). It also has a trigger which isn't trivial for the player to hit (e.g. the player can't just play Rock 20 times and then play Scissors 40 times like in the AI with memory example).

If the AI is too impenetrable, then that kind of meta-strategy becomes hard to formulate (and since there are a lot of easier and more effective strategies out there, players will tend to gravitate towards those instead).
Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: ptarth on June 26, 2014, 09:03:27 pm
This sort of behavior can be naturally produced by agent-level AI (as per x4000's approach). It is also the type of thing I've been continuously promoting as Planetary AI and lower level mechanisms.

To illustrate your example:

Title: Re: About The Recent Schedule, and TLF Updates
Post by: NichG on June 26, 2014, 11:21:34 pm
I actually meant to literally have a message that says to the player 'if you get Economy to -50, they will do X' and then follow through with that. Like the way the Federation joining conditions are presented now.