Yeah, no sounds yet. We need GPL sounds. I have a microphone, but somehow lack laser-robots to tape the sounds they make. I'm sure we'll find something until final release.NOiZE wrote:wow, really nice work here, only the sounds are missing or?
Kernel Panic
Moderator: Content Developer
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Blizzard 2
- Posts: 20
- Joined: 30 Sep 2005, 14:26
We could make a turret with a hard limit of 2 or so...
I have no idea how mex scripts know how much metal is under them. If I did I could make a turret that only works on metal patches.
Another idea would be to let the Kernel build a unit that just causes a huge explosion that destroys everything except for pointers but takes 50% or more off the health of the Kernel or a flying gun turret that has a limited lifetime but can kill a few enemies before it goes down. Overall I'd say Kernels and Sockets need more health than I gave them. Not sure if they need actual defenses, after all it's the player's job to prevent the enemy from reaching your buildings.
I have no idea how mex scripts know how much metal is under them. If I did I could make a turret that only works on metal patches.
Another idea would be to let the Kernel build a unit that just causes a huge explosion that destroys everything except for pointers but takes 50% or more off the health of the Kernel or a flying gun turret that has a limited lifetime but can kill a few enemies before it goes down. Overall I'd say Kernels and Sockets need more health than I gave them. Not sure if they need actual defenses, after all it's the player's job to prevent the enemy from reaching your buildings.
As in, you can only build two of them? I though that wasn't possible in spring. If it is, I like that idea very much.KDR_11k wrote:We could make a turret with a hard limit of 2 or so...
Both those things sound cool, especially the first one. Something like an omnidirectional d-gun.Another idea would be to let the Kernel build a unit that just causes a huge explosion that destroys everything except for pointers but takes 50% or more off the health of the Kernel or a flying gun turret that has a limited lifetime but can kill a few enemies before it goes down.
Yeah, but the problem is the following. If one player builds an assembler early on, and another player only builds bits and bytes, until the socket of the one player goes online there will be a window of time where the unit-building player will win for sure if he attacks.Overall I'd say Kernels and Sockets need more health than I gave them. Not sure if they need actual defenses, after all it's the player's job to prevent the enemy from reaching your buildings.
In BA or XTA, that is countered with LLTs and the commanders dgun. In KP we have neither. That's why I believe we need to arm the Kernel somehow, that relly early attacks with just a few units don't become to viable. Rushing is fine, but other strategies should be viable too.
Thinking about it, I really like the "build a unit that reduced health by half but kills all units in a large radius" thing. I think that would perfectly solve the problem I described above.
My idea (one I'd been planning for another mod)
Do the commander as an immobile unit instead of a building, and let him build the building. Then you can arm the commander with light and heavy weapons. Put a unit limit on the construction building if you need.
Thus the commander can have a nice defense and map-wiper as suggested. He could build the map-wiper as a placed, immobile unit (and thus control it's distance from the Comm so that it will take half his health pretty consistently) as well as other core, central structures that should only be near the command-tower.
Do the commander as an immobile unit instead of a building, and let him build the building. Then you can arm the commander with light and heavy weapons. Put a unit limit on the construction building if you need.
Thus the commander can have a nice defense and map-wiper as suggested. He could build the map-wiper as a placed, immobile unit (and thus control it's distance from the Comm so that it will take half his health pretty consistently) as well as other core, central structures that should only be near the command-tower.
This might be a good idea. Allow him to assist the kernel as well, so its a critical choice in the early game whether or not you rush some units or get up your defenses.Do the commander as an immobile unit instead of a building, and let him build the building. Then you can arm the commander with light and heavy weapons.
That doesnt really matter though, as the problem is construction denial- he can kill anything you try to make before you finish it.As an alternative (or maybe added to that), one could make it so that bits and bytes cannot harm kernels and sockets, so you need pointers to kill them.
Putting a shield on the kernel would fix this, and protect what he is building.
Great idea in principle, but limiting it by taking 50% health wouldnt work very well. Any player worth his salt would just leave a unit or two outside of the blast radius when rushing. In order for this weapon to be effective, it would need to have such a large blast radius that any backup units would take more time to travel to the kernel than it would take the kernel to build a few defenders. Thats a pretty massive explosion! Even then, it simply becomes a matter of having more units outside the blow-up zone than the kernel can build in the time it takes for them to travel there... with it taking 50% HP, this would just speed up the destruction of the kernel.Thinking about it, I really like the "build a unit that reduced health by half but kills all units in a large radius" thing. I think that would perfectly solve the problem I described above.
A solution to this would be to have the weapon take resources to construct/fire. So the defending player can wipe out the enemy army, but he needs to wait for the weapon to recharge (So it CAN be overwhelmed). Alternatively, you could have the kernel not regnerate the resource at all- so you have a limited number of these super weapons you can use, throuought the game.
I remember that there was a "metal-extracting turret" in an old version of a TA-styled mod, but I forgot what mod it was, and I'm not sure id it's still there.KDR_11k wrote:I have no idea how mex scripts know how much metal is under them. If I did I could make a turret that only works on metal patches.
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Guessmyname
- Posts: 3301
- Joined: 28 Apr 2005, 21:07
manored: Mods folder.
bwansy: I can work that from any mex script.
I don't know if it's even a good idea to allow the Kernel to defend itself, an assault is an assault and you're supposed to stop those with your units. In Dozerz it's appropriate to prevent build lockdown because lockdown means you can't hurt the enemy flag but in KP lockdown and killing is the same action. Of course it's an universal problem with mods that have no real rule for when one unit beats another and only rely on mass (slippery slope game design).
I'd say this should be balanced over the build time of the builder since that unit is a tradeoff between building units now and building more units later (or perhaps it doesn't even need a change, just tell people that they should build the builder later if they don't want to risk an early loss). It's always a gamble on whether to expand your production or produce more, build too early and you may get crushed by an early attack, build too late and your opponent may have been building loads of units in the meantime.
Of course with corpses for the units that'll be much less of a concern, if we tune the new units to the values in 5.1 that'll be maybe 2-3 layers of corpses in a bit against bit fight until someone has to clean up as the units won't be able to get close enough.
Sounds would be best if we could get someone with a C64 plugged into his line-in working the SID...
bwansy: I can work that from any mex script.
I don't know if it's even a good idea to allow the Kernel to defend itself, an assault is an assault and you're supposed to stop those with your units. In Dozerz it's appropriate to prevent build lockdown because lockdown means you can't hurt the enemy flag but in KP lockdown and killing is the same action. Of course it's an universal problem with mods that have no real rule for when one unit beats another and only rely on mass (slippery slope game design).
I'd say this should be balanced over the build time of the builder since that unit is a tradeoff between building units now and building more units later (or perhaps it doesn't even need a change, just tell people that they should build the builder later if they don't want to risk an early loss). It's always a gamble on whether to expand your production or produce more, build too early and you may get crushed by an early attack, build too late and your opponent may have been building loads of units in the meantime.
Of course with corpses for the units that'll be much less of a concern, if we tune the new units to the values in 5.1 that'll be maybe 2-3 layers of corpses in a bit against bit fight until someone has to clean up as the units won't be able to get close enough.
Sounds would be best if we could get someone with a C64 plugged into his line-in working the SID...
The mod, off course, needs more sounds than only the sound of bits being selected 
.
I think that the byte is in fact a little underpowered. It takes around the time of 20 bits to make one, but in a fight between 20 bits and 1 byte the bits won (5 left), and considering the risk you cur by wasting so much time in a single unit he should be stronger than 20 bits (unleash you pretend to alleviate his weakness by making him able to crush and shot over wreck) .
And I really think that the mod needs some radar/spy units. Maybe one spy unit that cannot be detected in any way, but also cannot attack and haves limited lifetime.
.I think that the byte is in fact a little underpowered. It takes around the time of 20 bits to make one, but in a fight between 20 bits and 1 byte the bits won (5 left), and considering the risk you cur by wasting so much time in a single unit he should be stronger than 20 bits (unleash you pretend to alleviate his weakness by making him able to crush and shot over wreck) .
And I really think that the mod needs some radar/spy units. Maybe one spy unit that cannot be detected in any way, but also cannot attack and haves limited lifetime.
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Blizzard 2
- Posts: 20
- Joined: 30 Sep 2005, 14:26
The balancing isn't really implemented yet, 6.0 is based on the test construct I used to implement these models. Also the 20 bit comparison isn't entirely accurate because of the time the bits need to clear the production field. Either way you're not supposed to spam bytes exclusively, 10 bits and a byte are going to do a lot more damage than 30 bits.
Of course bytes could very well be much stronger than the equivalent in bits because you can expand your bit production capabilities...
Eh, balancing is Boirunner's job, not mine.
Of course bytes could very well be much stronger than the equivalent in bits because you can expand your bit production capabilities...
Eh, balancing is Boirunner's job, not mine.
Yup, and I'm working on it as we speak. I have two questions, though: First, how can I effect the distance at which the units are shown at icons? Second, how can I make it so that only certain weapons can actually damage buildings? Or at least get a damage multiplyer vs. buildings?KDR_11k wrote: Eh, balancing is Boirunner's job, not mine.
Oh, and Blizzard 2 modeled some build pics. They look cool, but they might be a big confusing. What do you guys think, is it better to just have the pics of the units (like in the game now or in the first post), or in this style?
Icon distance is defined in the icontypes.tdf, distance setting. I think it's scaled to the unit size (size is the size the icon is drawn at and radiusadjust is the multiplier for the size of the unit when you click on it while it's an icon).
Damages are set in the damage section of the weapon tdf, below the default line add lines armorclass=damage; where armorclass is the class it's sorted under in the armor.txt. 0 means 1, to get no damage use 0.00000001 or something like that. You'll want to exclude immune units from the valid targets of a weapon (OnlyTargetCategory). Overall I don't think immunity of any kind is a good idea, bits could get a lowered damage against large targets (except for the byte) but that's it.
I'm not sure if the high arc artillery is a good idea, they were relatively weak even with low arc fire in my test version, with high arc the shots usually came down long after noone was in the area anymore.
Damages are set in the damage section of the weapon tdf, below the default line add lines armorclass=damage; where armorclass is the class it's sorted under in the armor.txt. 0 means 1, to get no damage use 0.00000001 or something like that. You'll want to exclude immune units from the valid targets of a weapon (OnlyTargetCategory). Overall I don't think immunity of any kind is a good idea, bits could get a lowered damage against large targets (except for the byte) but that's it.
I'm not sure if the high arc artillery is a good idea, they were relatively weak even with low arc fire in my test version, with high arc the shots usually came down long after noone was in the area anymore.