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Philo

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Happy new year also in this thread :) 

We have to organize a few things which pilled up over new year, but very soon we're continuing with the Racing Update. I'll post new screenhots/videos as soon as I have something nice to show :) 

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There's a thought.  Make us make a dancing drone.  Have waypoints you have to reach, and a constricting circle ensuring you reach each checkpoint with the music, arrange them so your drone has to dance to the music, or die.

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On 1/7/2019 at 7:36 AM, Lurkily said:

There's a thought.  Make us make a dancing drone.  Have waypoints you have to reach, and a constricting circle ensuring you reach each checkpoint with the music, arrange them so your drone has to dance to the music, or die.

How would the game detect that the drone was “dancing” instead of “spazzing”? Computers aren’t very good at that kind of thing.

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Just hitting the checkpoints in time.  The dance would come from changing checkpoints in time with the music, instead of changing checkpoints the moment you reach them.  It's a whimsical idea, not entirely serious.

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I started working on new drone parts that might be useful for the racing update :) 
This is a proximity sensor with configurable angle, range and detection type:

proximity.gif.336526d3199d2e75619c7221eb0de9f5.gif


We plan to open a test branch on steam soon to get some feedback. (Probably by the end of the month if all goes well)

 

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25 minutes ago, Micha said:

This is a proximity sensor with configurable angle, range and detection type:

I have wanted this for forever and a half.  This is awesome.  Thank you sir, and thank you again.

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Here is another new thruster I'm working on:
The afterburner, it's about 7 times stronger than a normal thruster, but can only be activated at a high velocity.

This was on a high air-resistance planet. Therefore I used jump thrusters to catapult the drone to a high velocity and activate the afterburners.

afterburner.gif.d04e234436bb35515825994dc48e65bf.gif

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I like the VTOL thrusters - do they only follow the mouse?  If they are actuated like hinges, then we'll definitely need a new control paradigm to control them effectively - which, on the upside, would also likely be applicable to hinges.  Would it be possible to link them to a directional sensor, so that they're aways facing to/away from gravity?

My vectored thrust assemblies always require a directional sensor on the hinge, which has always made them either unstable, or unresponsive; that much weight on a hinge is hard to manage, especially with the clearance (thus distance from the parent part) the sensor needs, so that the hinge can turn freely.

Those afterburners are going to be much-abused in Sumo, I think; it's another step towards buffing up brute-force solutions. 

I realize you're focused on race mode and drone parts to support that, but I'm curious where thinking currently stands on gentling the punishment for having more logic in a sumo/race drone.  Has any thought been given to reducing the penalty for using logic in Sumo, such as reduced part count (logic costs 0.25 parts?) or the 'processor' ideas that let you back three logic parts in a 1x3 processor? (I like those numbers, because it doesn't eliminate the chance that drones will wig out with logic damage, but still reduces part count and the space that logic occupies.)  I really would like to see smart builds be rewarded more in sumo, race, and other asynchronous/autonomous game modes.

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VTOL thrusters have all the settings a normal directional sensor has. The VTOL thruster does not rotate by itself but only applies thrust in the direction of the target. You can imagine a normal building block but with a rotatable thruster on it. This means that things attached to such a thruster don't automatically rotate towards the target.

It was also our first idea that the afterburner will be abused in the sumo tournament. So far I think there a bit too many pushers in the higher rankings to my taste. This thruster might bring even more pushers in high-ranking area, but that also means that early quick-evading with jump-thrusters is a good strategy in general.

An idea to circumvent/control this behavior is that with the higher level you play, the more the area changes. For example, beginning with the 5th round, a obstacle could spawn in the center of the area. This way, if you really want to get better and get higher, other additional strategies must be used. (drawback: you still have to evade pushers in the first 5 rounds :) ). Not yet sure what's the right way and we'll check out the feedback from the soon coming preview-branch, so nothing is fixed yet. Game development is very tricky :D 

I really really want to award logic-focused players, and I hope one of the new gameplay modes will be more interesting to those players (because it's slightly more tricky than sumo),but as always it's hard to predict. The singleplayer race-mode was developed with the intent to provide interesting challenges to players without the need for programming and allow players which have trouble with the sumo to find other fun experiences. So maybe the racing mode at the time being is slightly more focused on easier side but the more hardcore logic part will come sooner or later - maybe just not in full form with this update.

 

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I don't expect tremendous overhauls here; (except for the things you're currently focused on, of course, racing is big,) I'm more just curious as to where the team's thinking is on some things.  I'm glad that making Sumo require more thought is a big concern. 

An obstacle in the center may inhibit more than chargers, though; spinners and any other center-seeker will have to be concerned about that.  You would have to find a way to ensure that smushing your core against the center obstruction until the constricting circle kills your opponent doesn't become a dominant strategy.

I have a feeling that introducing obstacles won't provide so much of a challenge; I think instead people will use it as a tool to make it impossible to dislodge their drone.  Perhaps if the obstructions were semi-random and/or in motion, it might be a fairer test, as you wouldn't be able to plan for the arrangements that you knew were coming.  It might also help if they were repulsors as well as just obstacles; like trying to force like poles of a magnet together, trying to brace a drone with the obstacles would be a slippery task.

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SQUEEEEE!  I know I harp on detection criteria and sweep a lot (even way back in closed alpha) so this is definitely appreciated.  Mixed criteria are also very much beloved. 

With sensors getting so much love, any chance of a few criteria going into Directional Sensors, too?  Maybe trackers?

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I can't say anything about future updates (because we simply haven't decided on anything in the future yet), but for this update we have not scheduled something like trackers or "nearest enemy" (directional sensor). The system for directional sensor is internally also a bit different than the distance/proximity sensor so there's not much logic/features it can share. We implemented those details because we thought those were needed to easily detect all those new objects (like speed boosters and danger zones). The old system was just not suited for this task.

Not sure what drone parts @Micha will conjure up in the last minute (what he often does) but I think for this racing update such parts are not high on our list, I'm sorry. But they will (very likely?) come in the future.

 

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2 hours ago, Micha said:

@Lurkily Psst, don't tell markus

Woot woot! Can it track a SPECIFIC tracker, or, like cameras, do all trackers figure into its targeting?

3 hours ago, Markus said:

but for this update we have not scheduled something like trackers or "nearest enemy" (directional sensor)

I'm actually most concerned about trackers, the hopper, and things like geopositioning. (Rotate the directional sensor's reading to match your rotation around the planet.) 

Nearest enemy/enemy structure/mission target/collectible/etc would be nice, but I'm not sure it's crucial.  It may be the case that it's not as much fun to provide that information; no exploration rewards.  As for autonomy, I think autonomous bots should have to be capable of everything a human is -- like exploring -- so I'm not certain they should get a pass on looking around.

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1 minute ago, Kitten said:

I'm thinking of getting Nimbatus but my dad would really like it tbh, maybe i'll buy it for him

Nimbatus is great for guys with a toolshed full of half-finished projects. :) 

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If I got that right (from what Micha said, haven't tested it yet): There are as many trackers as you want. You can activate or deactivate trackers. The directional sensor (or VTOL thruster) will automatically choose the closest of all active thrusters to point towards.

Maybe not the ideal behavior (as you might want to permanently point towards a specific target), but that might come at a later time (meaning, if Micha has time to simply build it without telling anyone ;) )

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