P.U.R.E. RC4.2 - Page 10

P.U.R.E. RC4.2

WolfeGames and projects headed by Argh.

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Otherside
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Otherside »

im at work also so cant check these things

but ill post feedback on each of the individual SDZ's to see whats up with the huge file size
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smoth
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by smoth »

lol we are both postin from work.
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Eman
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Eman »

The heavy mech producing energy is wrong. Good eyes on that. Things like that are what we need to know.
Google_Frog wrote:By the sound of things Argh and Eman think pure has reasonable balance and everyone else who's played it doesn't. I think we need some 1v1s so Argh can either see how we're doing it wrong or get some useful feedback if it turns out we aren't.
I seriously doubt it is currently balanced. I have played hardcore RTS's enough to know that some things do not come to light until hardcore players get busy torture testing everything. If you have found one in the heavy mechs; 1. I'd like to see it and 2. thanks for finding it. I am DL'ing the replay as I type.

As to the time zone thing - what time is good for you?
smoth wrote:I think it will be difficult you need an experience group to really start showing the high level exploits. Unfortunately, eman might not cut it as you two know each other IRL and he probably plays similar. fuck what I am talking about you know all that shit, I guess it is mainly for people like google. He looks like he might make a strong sandbag. What about it google?
I agree that we need feedback from a experienced group of players. If anything, it has bothered me a lot that we have not received any until this last series of posts.

I figure that if people aren't finding exploits, it is not that they are not here; it is that not enough people are trying hard enough. One thing I am fairly sure is not balanced is the resistance trucks AA gun option. For fun you might try building a mess of them and just driving them into your opponents base and planting them.

Personally, I am willing to play with anyone who wants to give it a try just about any time. I look forward to losing - it means progress is being made.
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Otherside
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Otherside »

the problem is first getting a playerbase (even a small one)

whats happened is even though argh has tried his hardest on all of the PURE launches they have all failed in some way.

There is no playerbase :S at all (even 0.55 gets hosted/played more than the new revision)

more stuff will come to light when you get more players.

i think the distribution method is at fault and lack of proper auto updating (replacing a base content file doesnt cut it) and the lack of version numbers causing alot of desyncs (also a ton of sdz's isnt nice either especially when trying to solve desync issues)

Imo get an autoupdater running maybe even an SD module (for the spring playerbase) and get some form of playerbase then the game can improved once it gets proper play

Lack of Beta is also hurting PURE imo (i mean MP beta with a decent ammount of 1v1 games by more than 2 people like SWIW and s44)
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1v0ry_k1ng
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by 1v0ry_k1ng »

good luck getting a playerbase at 350 mb download

people bitched enough about having to download the newest ca version regulary, and that was just a few MB over SVN. hell, most people bitch about having to download a new map and take about an hour to do so, and maps are 30mb average.
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Eman
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Eman »

Shrug. I do not know if the raw size can be helped much. Inside spring that seems like an issue, but it the wider world of demos, it is kinda small.

That said, I do agree that an auto-updater/less sync issues would help a lot.

Outside if the above, If PURE was your mess, how would you go about the BETA?
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Otherside
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Otherside »

generate more intrest within the spring community imo.

the problem with getting beta testers to play PURE (compared to SWIW/S44)

Argh is fairly unapproachable and hard to get through to. So its a bit off putting to beta test for PURE. The s44 and SWIW team seem more approachable (also the fact they are making content Based on a popular franchise and era of history helps alot). I dont think much can be helped about BETA now.

But more work should have been done prior to this.

An autoupdater similar to how the CA updater works on SD would be the optimal solution imo. One SDZ or two one for World buider(easier for desync problems) a one off big download with minor increments to download whenever theres an update. Even if you only update once in a while an autoupdater is very useful especially when fixing critical bugs.

If you discover something gamebreaking you can automatically patch it and not have to wait to upload or notify anyone.

Imo just get an autoupdating system running ASAP the closed beta phase is long gone and i dont think PURE could live through another relaunch (if argh really wants players)
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lurker
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by lurker »

I would put out a low-def version too, probably without music, with all the whining.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

Ok, watched the demo. Both players made very serious errors in play. I want to emphasize that the following remarks aren't meant personally, I'm just reviewing the demo.

1. Resistance lost large chunks of productivity during early play due to errors in the BO. It should have had infantry on the north and south flanks before Overmind could arrive there, and the fact that the Overmind player didn't finish them off is mainly due to bad playing on their end.

Eman and I have beat the timing to death on this, it's like playing Dust in CS. The use of the Ancient sacrifice to speed up your BO won't change the basic timing any- it'll just mean both factories can build their initial troops without impacting mine construction.

2. Overmind player should have built Sniper Shells, for buildings he wanted to hold as a defensive front, they'll kill Heavy Mechs with some support, and the buildings can be repaired with BuildTowers.

Never, ever forget- Sniper Shells can use buildings too!

3. Overmind has LaserCannons. They outrange all of the Heavy Mech's weapons.

4. Overmind has Artillery Shells, which also outrange all of the Heavy Mech's weapons, have a high rate of fire, and will hurt them. Stick them behind an occupied building that has Sniper Shells in them, and they aren't going to advance like that.

5. Overmind could have expanded south, and should have had a second factory up before Resistance.

6. It appears to me that "eating" the Ancients gave Overmind a rush boost, but cost them the ability to tech up later. Eman has tried this, and says that you can have a Tier Two factory almost immediately with this play, but we're both dubious about the speed benefit if you do this on Mesa.

Overall, the Overmind should have won that game, easily. They had a rush into Resistance's territory, and could have easily wiped out their resource production.

That Overmind didn't win was mainly due to serious errors.

Instead of finishing the rush, or consolidating their early victories with defenses and gaining access to more buildings, the Overmind played a winning hand very poorly, and lost mainly due to not using the full mix of weapons available to them. Not because Resistance used a better strat, had a better economy, etc., or because they were using a unit that was massively OP.

Now... is it OP for cost, the goof on Power production aside (and that's major, obviously, good catch there)?

Meh, I'm not sure about that. I do know that Overmind has various defensive counters. However, I'm not entirely sure about 1:1 tradeoff meeting-engagement counters, and that's worth some thought.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

Ok, looking at the rest of the issues:
Please at least make it possible to play on the standard spring maps. There is really very little reason to customize PUREs economy so that it only works on maps with 10x the metal of standard Spring ones. Having to spam mexes all over due to the solid metal map is relatively irritating to begin with. At least include a metalmult mod option.
1. You can play on standard Spring maps, you just can't play the same way.

2. I have no intention of changing the way that mines work. We got that feature from LoTR2, and it works. You have to hold real territory, not just a few spots, to out-produce your enemies.

It's a fundamentally superior model of gameplay, and it frees us from the "tyranny of the map" which dominates metal-spot map design.

Also, making P.U.R.E.-compatible versions of popular maps wouldn't take very long at all, with SME available. I'll do a DSD and Tabula version for people, but not today.
Units should not try to shoot through buildings if they have another, viable target. I know this may be hard to code but its pretty essential and a pain to micro, esp if you waste a rocket volley on a building.
That can be fixed, now that we're not allowing reclaim. However, I'm not sure that the results will be pleasant- most of the time, you want to be shooting the buildings, they're your enemy's most important resource!
Everyone who joins always desyncs because they dont have the latest version. This is a pain in the butt and often takes ages to fix for new players (wasnt a problem for google and i though).
There is no way to reconcile the "too many SDZs" complaints with this. Having multiple SDZs is meant to keep it possible to deliver smaller packages of updates, in the 6MB range for final tweaks and balance stuff, and small add-ons for future releases of new units.

I'm separating World Builder content from the core as well, so that changes there don't require a complete update of World Builder.
Last edited by Argh on 17 Mar 2009, 20:52, edited 1 time in total.
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lurker
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by lurker »

But you can have plenty of little archives just fine if you update the version number. Do you not update the version number or something? Or are you referencing archives by filename instead of internal name, a bad thing to do?
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

Meh, I goofed, when I released the last one, and forgot to update the version number. That's what the complaints in that regard are about- I didn't perform QA entirely correctly, and since people have no easy way to tell the difference... yeah.

At any rate, I'll be making sure that doesn't happen with RC5.
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Otherside
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Otherside »

forced build orders is fail

and thanks for proving my point of why PURE has no players/beta testers :p
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

forced build orders is fail

and thanks for proving my point of why PURE has no players/beta testers :p
Could you explain both points in more detail?

I mean, I wasn't being rude, in my analysis of the play. Or at least such was not my intention. So, is this mainly a problem of tone? When I say "errors", I mean them in a game-designer's sense of the word- it's not like it's a moral judgment or something. It's just a review of the facts.

But if players aren't using the tools available correctly, that's something I can only correct through education.

Or do you guys not want me to tell you when you're doing it wrong? I mean, it's no biggie to me, if you want to play the game incorrectly, but I figured that Google_Frog and Saktoth, both being fairly serious players, would appreciate my god's-eye POV on this, and maybe review their play themselves, to see what I'm pointing out.

As for "forced build orders"... well, I'd like to hear more about this. There are multiple BOs which can be used to generate victory, and a wide variety of tactical options become available at Tier 2.
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Pxtl
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Pxtl »

Otherside wrote:forced build orders is fail

and thanks for proving my point of why PURE has no players/beta testers :p
Every base-building RTS has a fixed set of build orders that are optimal for a given map, and the player is really just selecting a path within those. That's hardly specific to PURE.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

Um, yeah.

There are optimal starts in practically any RTS where people are playing seriously, there are optimal starts in pretty much any team-based FPS shooter... there are optimal starts in Chess, for that matter, although nobody's sure which start is perfect, because all of the permutations haven't been calculated yet.

And there are very viable options within those starts- whether to sacrifice Materials later, for immediate Materials through a sacrifice of the Ancients is certainly one of them, as is the choice of whether to rush for early econ choke or to take and hold key defensive positions.
Google_Frog
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Google_Frog »

Eman wrote:As to the time zone thing - what time is good for you?
GMT9:00am-1:00pm usually. And right now for about half an hour.
1. You can play on standard Spring maps, you just can't play the same way.

2. I have no intention of changing the way that mines work. We got that feature from LoTR2, and it works. You have to hold real territory, not just a few spots, to out-produce your enemies.
You can't. Floaty things produce no resources because there are so many and mexes produce 0.2m. There is no difference between your metal map mode and discrete metal spots spaced evenly around the map except that the evenly spaced mexes are much less annoying to place.
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SwiftSpear
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by SwiftSpear »

1v0ry_k1ng wrote:good luck getting a playerbase at 350 mb download

people bitched enough about having to download the newest ca version regulary, and that was just a few MB over SVN. hell, most people bitch about having to download a new map and take about an hour to do so, and maps are 30mb average.
CA updates every 10 minutes though.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

You can't. Floaty things produce no resources because there are so many and mexes produce 0.2m.
I'll have to up it on non-standard maps then, I haven't been testing on them, so I must have screwed up their formula under those circumstances.
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Argh
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Re: P.U.R.E. RC4.2

Post by Argh »

Ok, just got done playing with Google_Frog. 3 games, Overmind in the north, Resistance in the south, Mesa.

I had fundamentally the same results, it just took longer. Nothing else Google did seemed to be really awful or OP, and I certainly didn't see anything on Overmind that looked incredibly powerful for the price. Among other things, he did a nice raid with the Heavy Troopers that cost me a lot of micro getting fixed one game, among other things.

But I couldn't hold the buildings, even with Sniper Shells, and got hosed. Going to have to look at my play, to see if there was anything I could have done differently, but it looks like no, that just works too well, after the nerf on Artillery Shells made them a less effective counter.

Heavy Mechs in groups were able to take down the buildings without serious problems, by jumping out of range to recharge their rocket barrage, which isn't really meant to be an artillery substitute, but worked that way in practical terms. So I think I'm going to nerf that range a bit, see what happens when they have to close and get pounded.

Also, it really felt like the GunTank wasn't able to hurt them enough for what it costs. I'll probably buff that a bit, I don't want to re-buff the Artillery Shells, they were obviously OP in RC4.
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