XTA Development discussion - Page 6

XTA Development discussion

Discuss game development here, from a distinct game project to an accessible third-party mutator, down to the interaction and design of individual units if you like.

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Better then v7?

Poll ended at 08 Nov 2006, 03:04

Yes
23
82%
No
5
18%
 
Total votes: 28

Chojin
Posts: 141
Joined: 04 Oct 2006, 11:22

Post by Chojin »

2 issues (maybe) not mentioned yet:
* Core radar jammer is called "Radar Tower"
* Brawlers cannot attack air-units, that have landed on the ground.
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hrmph
Posts: 1054
Joined: 12 May 2005, 20:08

Post by hrmph »

I think this this would make a good tip. Its a good one that isn't used as often as it should be in my opinion:

"Airdrops can be used to bypass your enemies' defensive lines and destroy valuable structures within."
pintle
Posts: 1763
Joined: 19 Dec 2005, 16:01

Post by pintle »

stuff for tips:
(im too tired to type this nicely)

artillery
radar jamming artillery makes them survive longer
use air scouts to spot for your artillery
give em AA support blah blah

bombers
use the area attack command on ghosted buildings, to avoid planes spotting target then coming back for a bombing run: with area attack they come in full speed
try to keep bombers secret till you have enough to take out your target, normally a lab, fusion, or particularly nasty defence

kroggies
NEVAAR give an enemy a krogoth corpse, they have more than enough health to be able to run away and be repaired.
If an enemy does throw a krog at you unsupported, gunships, annihilators, or mass snipers can take it out. Either reclaim or ressurect it, it is an obscene amount of metal to leave lying around
Send krogs in pairs, split up, so when someone tries to dgun one, the other takes the com out (might need to set to return/hold fire to be sure the head laser hits com)
Give em AA support (duuuh) and considering the immense cost, a few jammers and radar vehics behind costs peanuts and helps loads.

TBH i think krog tips are a little irrelevant, you barely ever see em in game

some tips about things like maker ai, radar needing los to work, the high e cost of running mohos etc could be a good idea. Ill try and think of more when i am less tired
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MR.D
Posts: 1527
Joined: 06 Aug 2005, 13:15

Post by MR.D »

Seems to be alot of geometry problems with models.

Mostly Double sided faces, where there should only be 1, things of that nature, windmills stand out the most, but there are tons of errors on a whole bunch of models.

Just thought I'd let ya know.
[KnoX]ElementalGizmo
XTA Developer
Posts: 266
Joined: 24 Aug 2006, 01:33

Post by [KnoX]ElementalGizmo »

As far as moddeling goes, i have one person for that [KnoX]P3374H. He re-sized the decoy-commanders for me. If there are problems for the models feel free to try to fix them yourself and shair the outcome :-)

I see my job as a ballancer, i do not moddel and my photoshop skills have much to be desired.

Gunships:
No there not firing at fighters. If you bother to see the change log you may find this!

********************************[GUNSHIPS]
ARM Brawler -14% attack damage.
CORE Rapier -14% attack damage.
Won't attack air units, won't chase air units.

The gunships couldnt hit fighters for toffee, they never could. I noticed quite a few players conplaining about it, and that the gunships would get confused chasing down fighters whilst a single MT would slowly tear them up.
This way they are now more focused, only consentraiting on ground targets.

If there on the ground its your fault for not putting them on patrol.
[KnoX]ElementalGizmo
XTA Developer
Posts: 266
Joined: 24 Aug 2006, 01:33

Post by [KnoX]ElementalGizmo »

ow and aGorm ill need thoes pics from you for the next vertion! Ill try to do some more work on the mod 2night after work.

knoxian@hotmail.co.uk
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aGorm
Posts: 2928
Joined: 12 Jan 2005, 10:25

Post by aGorm »

I'll send them over tonight, I'll also add a few more with some of those new hints:

Airdrops can be used to bypass your enemies' defensive lines and destroy valuable structures within. (mainly cause I can get a cool ass shot, and yoru right no one uses it enough.)

and
artillery
radar jamming artillery makes them survive longer
use air scouts to spot for your artillery, as there accuracy is greatly increased.

bombers
use the area attack command on ghosted buildings, to avoid planes spotting target then coming back for a bombing run: with area attack they come in full speed
try to keep bombers secret till you have enough to take out your target, normally a lab, fusion, or particularly nasty defence

were the ones i was gonna add.

Ummm, befor I do these (when I get home) can someone make sure there well worded and spelt corectly?

aGorm
Arco
Posts: 75
Joined: 17 Jun 2006, 16:28

Post by Arco »

aGorm wrote:Airdrops can be used to bypass your enemies' defensive lines and destroy valuable structures within.
This is fine.
Hide your artillery with radar jamming to increase survivability.
Use air scouts to spot for your artillery, as this greatly increases its accuracy.
Worded a little better.
Use the area attack command on ghosted buildings, to ensure a smooth, full-speed bombing run without visually confirming the target before attacking.

Keep bombers secret until you have enough to take out a high-priority target, like central economy or high-tech weapons.
I think these get the point across more smoothly. I also think they can be divided into two separate loading screens, since there's a good bit of text there.
Chojin
Posts: 141
Joined: 04 Oct 2006, 11:22

Post by Chojin »

"use air scouts to spot for your artillery, as their accuracy is greatly increased."

The rest is fine, aGorm :)

@Gizmo:
I think you didn't understand me correctly. Brawlers should be able to attack idling air-units, which have landed on the ground.

I told my Brawlers to attack a big bunch Construction Airplanes, which were idling and landed on ground somewhere. The Brawlers went into attacking stance, but just didn't shoot. I tried to attack ground near those Construction Airplanes, but I had to click too far away before they began to shoot.
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Aun
Posts: 788
Joined: 31 Aug 2005, 13:00

Post by Aun »

That can't really be changed, well maybe with a lot of messy scripting...

Ground attack aircraft should never be able to attack other aircraft.
pintle
Posts: 1763
Joined: 19 Dec 2005, 16:01

Post by pintle »

I'm not entirely sure but will this mean (think its the same fix) my beloved ZP!DARZZ wont be able to shoot at landed planes? No biggy really, just wondering

e: how about a tip on maker ai/ 300e for running mohos?
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PauloMorfeo
Posts: 2004
Joined: 15 Dec 2004, 20:53

Post by PauloMorfeo »

[KnoX]ElementalGizmo wrote:... re-sized the decoy-commanders ...
Why aren't the decoys using the same model as the Commander?

That way you wouldn't be running into problems like these, comms and decoys having diferent sizes or whatever.
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aGorm
Posts: 2928
Joined: 12 Jan 2005, 10:25

Post by aGorm »

Is it not because comander with a certain EX grow bigger or somthing (or did i read that else were?) And so the decoy coms needed to be able to chnage size to reflect that or somthing?

(Or was that a drink induced dream?)

aGorm
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aGorm
Posts: 2928
Joined: 12 Jan 2005, 10:25

Post by aGorm »

Load screens are wizzing there way to you now ElementalGizmo...

I'll prob work on some, however I have run out of time for the next week or so to do new ones. (RL is calling...)

aGorm
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1v0ry_k1ng
Posts: 4656
Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

Loading screen tips Ideas:

Level 2 Spy Kbots can use their cloak and invisibility to radar to deploy close to enemies providing Line of sight and accuracy for long ranged weapons.

Dragons Teeth built by the commanders block missles and some low trajectory weapons, use lines of them to infront of defences and vital structures to minimalize damage

Reclaim structures that become obsolete and factories you no longer need for metal to produce higher technologies

Always make sure that the 2nd or 3rd unit you produce is a combat unit to fend off early rushes

Never attack an opponent where they are strongest, If your opponent makes excessive use of static defences make an opening at the edge of his line and bypass them.

In longer matches (20 minutes +) be sure to build an antinuke structure.

If your opponent is relying upon building a single powerful unit like a popup to defeat you, build energy storage, attack with all your assets and cloak the commander in the middle of the group. Use him to D-gun the powerful unit.

By the time you have a firm economy (15 minute mark) you should be using almost entirely l2 units: they are much more cost efficent.

thuds and hammers can fire in high trajectory for extra damage at the cost of innacuracy versus moving targets.

annihlators and Doomsday machines are very costly, but once contructed are very difficult to remove without artillery.

The commander is the most powerful unit in the game, worth estimated 30,000 metal. He can be used as a bomb, but this is a waste early game as you cant possibly destroy his value in metal with him.

Use anphibious l2 tanks and l2 Kbots ability to move underwater to attack from unexpected directions to get the most from their cost.

Once you have a stable l2 economy, begin reclaiming your metal extractors and replacing them with Moho mines: moho mines require 300 energy to run but extract 6x more metal.

The most cost efficent method of defeating large swarms of gunships or bombers are fighters, l2 fighters especially, as are inexpensive and can quickly react to attacks.

Zippers and freakers can use their speed to out manuver defending units and attack vunerble structures. use the long range and tracking ability of spaced out missle towers and inexpensive l1 Infantry kbots to safegaurd important structures from zippers.

Farks and Necros have a very powerful nanolathe, and on assist build several times faster than even the commander.
Last edited by 1v0ry_k1ng on 01 Nov 2006, 22:26, edited 1 time in total.
colorblind
Spring Developer
Posts: 374
Joined: 14 Mar 2005, 12:32

Post by colorblind »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:Once you have a stable l2 economy, begin reclaiming your metal extractors and replacing them with Moho mines: moho mines require 300 energy to run but extract 3x more metal.
Why do it yourself? You'd better use MexUpgraderAI to do it for you :). I know, I should really make some loadscreen tips for all of the groupAIs ('cause I bet there aren't many players that use the RadarAI, ReportIdleAI or EconomyAI actively).
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aGorm
Posts: 2928
Joined: 12 Jan 2005, 10:25

Post by aGorm »

Wo there pickel.... (name that TV show!)

Bare in mid each screen shot adds to the file size that has to be downloaded, and as each screen shot is 1024 x 768, there not exactly tiny files. The 7 I have done add a meg and a litttle bit to the file size at the mo. I dont think we can justify more than 2 meg of screans realy do you?

I rekon I might fiddel around with teh compresion settings a bit to see if I can't reduce the file size a tad. But It wont alow for that many extra shots! I rekon, once this release is out the way we go back and worek it all out p[roperly.

aGorm
Chojin
Posts: 141
Joined: 04 Oct 2006, 11:22

Post by Chojin »

The hint about Fast Assist-Repair Kbots and Resurrection Kbots would have been pretty useful to me, since I only learned about them after several games.
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1v0ry_k1ng
Posts: 4656
Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

agorm, is anyone going to complain is the file is 2-3 megs bigger? anyone with broadband (and im guessing that that is pretty much anyone) can download a meg in less than 10 seconds on a slow connection. lets say it makes 2 minutes longer to download. lets say you play XTA 8 about 200 times. each time you watch the loading screen for about 20 seconds.
which means, its worth waiting 2-3 minutes longer to download a file if it means less loading screen boredom and more useful tips, as you may well be spending 4000 seconds, 66 minutes, staring at them. I thing a few meg of jpeg files is a small price to pay for more variety.

@ colourblind, yeah I forgot about the group AI. its very useful! In most games I dont actually tech to mohos though, I put my whole eco into the frontline and try and push the opponent back while they tech, using reclaimed metal for resources..
pintle
Posts: 1763
Joined: 19 Dec 2005, 16:01

Post by pintle »

tbh agorms screens are so shineh i will find any excuse possible to have more :)

Maybe a mention that you should (can) cloak your anti nuke would be handy. I've been playing for over a year and only found that a few weeks ago.
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