TW RPG in development

[gdugwyler]

People who have been around a few years have heard this probably one too many times, but, eh, there's an RPG-style-stats game in development for TW. This doesn't mean people are roleplaying that they're Han Solo or any such thing ... basically the idea is that you kill people, you get points, you upgrade your ship the way you see fit, and those stats save so that when you come back 4 months later you have the same ship(s). Everything based around normal TW stats, with the possible exception of the levi -- though I'd personally like to see the levi stay in there...

Anyhow, looking for input. It's about 55% complete and doesn't have a map yet.

Stuff that's decided:
- Stats will start at 50% of normal levels, and at best can get 50% above. This makes the math a lot easier, and makes for easy standardization.
- Everything prized back to you after each death, with a small delay between each (~100ms?) so TWCore doesn't shit bricks
- Each ship will have special abilities above and beyond what the normal ships can do.
- Some kind of flagging system that is semi-representative of TW basing. Dueling should and will be an active component of this game, but if you don't hold flags, your kills will be worth far less points, adding back in the team element and all that happy rainbow team player stuff you know you love
- Everyone starts with a WB, and you can purchase other ships as you go along. This will make other ships a status symbol, especially in the earlier parts of the game. Also, 3 (maybe 4, can't remember) of the ships will have to be unlocked, and only then will then be available for purchase.

Need to be decided (by suggestions here preferably):
- What the map'll be like. It can work with one or two flags. Normal TW base plus extras may be cool. Dunno. Help. Would prefer something slightly different.
- How to make it fair for sharks and terrs. These guys need love, too, and what would really do this game in is for nobody to play terrs and sharks because they don't go up in level fast enough. Support ships might earn more per flag tick?
- What kind of flag game to use. Flag time as seen in pub might be easy because round ends are clear. Could also do some kind of a time race, but I get the feeling that when one side is extremely far ahead the other may just sort of give up. Could also have no kind of game, and just rely on the fact that the flag(s) is/are the only good source of points. But it would be cool to have a small jackpot at the end of a round that would keep people there.

I know this will take a long time to tweak, to actually get right. Oh well. It'll be fun.

It's time to get those WoW fuckers back to SS, basically. All ideas and suggestions listened to distractedly

[Money]

yay?

[Evul Fly]

it's about 55% complete...

97% 98% 99% FAILED!

[Xog]

evul u just reminded me of diablo II :/

[gdugwyler]

it's about 55% complete...

97% 98% 99% FAILED!

55% is a conservative estimate: most of the bot work is done. It reads and writes to the database, allows joining and leaving factions, calculates point increases, handles buying and selling upgrades, etc etc. A good bit of time went into the skeleton to make sure it will work, and it's been tested and does. Just need to flesh it out now.

So mostly what's left is planning, which is fairly unusual in an implementation of a game. Fortunately anyone can plan. This thread is a pre-emptive strike: asking for opinions now so that once everything's done there isn't a bitching thread with 300 posts. Since it's automated and 24/7 it'll be helpful to have it work as well as possible when it comes out. And it will come out, possibly even before your dad does.

[Evul Fly]

lets hope that this isnt another ssce hyperspace

[Blueblaze]

People who have been around a few years have heard this probably one too many times, but, eh, there's an RPG-style-stats game in development for TW. This doesn't mean people are roleplaying that they're Han Solo or any such thing ... basically the idea is that you kill people, you get points, you upgrade your ship the way you see fit, and those stats save so that when you come back 4 months later you have the same ship(s). Everything based around normal TW stats, with the possible exception of the levi -- though I'd personally like to see the levi stay in there...

Anyhow, looking for input. It's about 55% complete and doesn't have a map yet.

Stuff that's decided:
- Stats will start at 50% of normal levels, and at best can get 50% above. This makes the math a lot easier, and makes for easy standardization.
- Everything prized back to you after each death, with a small delay between each (~100ms?) so TWCore doesn't shit bricks
- Each ship will have special abilities above and beyond what the normal ships can do.
- Some kind of flagging system that is semi-representative of TW basing. Dueling should and will be an active component of this game, but if you don't hold flags, your kills will be worth far less points, adding back in the team element and all that happy rainbow team player stuff you know you love
- Everyone starts with a WB, and you can purchase other ships as you go along. This will make other ships a status symbol, especially in the earlier parts of the game. Also, 3 (maybe 4, can't remember) of the ships will have to be unlocked, and only then will then be available for purchase.

Need to be decided (by suggestions here preferably):
- What the map'll be like. It can work with one or two flags. Normal TW base plus extras may be cool. Dunno. Help. Would prefer something slightly different.
- How to make it fair for sharks and terrs. These guys need love, too, and what would really do this game in is for nobody to play terrs and sharks because they don't go up in level fast enough. Support ships might earn more per flag tick?
- What kind of flag game to use. Flag time as seen in pub might be easy because round ends are clear. Could also do some kind of a time race, but I get the feeling that when one side is extremely far ahead the other may just sort of give up. Could also have no kind of game, and just rely on the fact that the flag(s) is/are the only good source of points. But it would be cool to have a small jackpot at the end of a round that would keep people there.

I know this will take a long time to tweak, to actually get right. Oh well. It'll be fun.

It's time to get those WoW fuckers back to SS, basically. All ideas and suggestions listened to distractedly

Why not just make the arena work like Octabase/Warzone. Instead of being so focused on getting the highest score, the focus will be on getting the best ship for the flagging game. To reward sharks and terrs, possibly give them an extra bonus if they finish on the winning freq. Make the map a very large setting though, might as well use the whole map and keep things interesting. Might want to create a whole town or village (not as packed with buildings as TWCity, more open spaces, as well as bigger and better fortresses for bases) for the arena to be played on. Just my thoughts, hope you guys finish it :P

[deathking]

MK lookalike?

[DJSlayer]

If you take blueblazes idea, yes

I think if you listening to what is actually being planned, it will be smaller, it wont look so fancy, (he's basing it on tw anyway, so same ships, same sort of settings etc etc) and its gonna incorporate basing. I dont think you could use the whole map AND incorporate basing, too many people wouldn't bother basing and do other shit imo.

Make it a bit bigger than pub maybe, but not the whole map

[Necromotic]

levi should be some type of oremining ship
if you ever played silent death online, youll know what i mean (that game was 10x better than this)

[D1st0rt]

dugwyler, do you want the old hyperspace bots?

[Reaver]

Since there were so few on topic helpful replies, I'm going to throw out quite a few ideas. I'm certain some of them will be poor ideas but just to get the creative thought process flowing:


Rather than having a base that is only difficult to get into at times because of the enemy stopping you, how about a part, or parts of the base that are difficult to get through either because of navigational (close walls) reasons or because of wormholes. Kind of like a ?go ballance idea incorporated into the base to make it a little difficult to get there, but also making terriers more important, and hopefully more desired to play. This could be incorporated in many ways, you could even setup hotspots at the end of the difficult journey that warp players into the FR.

I've been to a zone recently that had bot-run automated turrets. They were stationary but rotating turrets but they would fire at you when you came in range, and with great accuracy too (Spiders seem like a prime candidate for the bot-run turret if we were to do something like that in TW). I'm not up to date on what limitations we have based on TWcore, etc but I would definitely consider putting in some of these turrets in key locations. Either set it up so that the turret is on a separate frequency and fires at all teams, or possibly set up the base with 2 flags, and put the turrets on freq 0 and on freq 1, when you get within a certain enemies base, you not only need to battle the team but also get through the turrets.


As for making sharks/terriers more appealing, I'm no settings guru but is the effect of the wormhole on the ship determined by individual ship settings or the wormholes settings (meaning they're universal)? For starters I'd make it so that sharks and terriers are less affected by wormholes. As you said, more points per flag tick will help as well. Sharks could be the next ship necessary to play after warbird in order to unlock another ship, etc.

I'm not really sure what to say about the time race question. But if we were to go through with the stationary bot-run turrets, the turrets could be set to only fire at people on the freq that's kicking ass. Kind of like a handicap for a team far behind.

I'll try to come up with more idea's for you to think about but someone from TW Dev is more likely going to know some interesting answers.

[Edify]

Wait, who are you really, dugwyler? I'm either really really new compared to this guy or I just don't know who the heck he is. I really don't think this will attract WoW people back, but eh, it's your show.

[gdugwyler]

Cool ideas. I don't know quite about the base obstacles, but it would definitely make support ships more valuable. Ideally the map would be a pleasure to navigate, in the same way that the standard pub map is presently. The turrets are doable, though would most likely require separate logins, but the code for that sort of thing has already been written, if not well-implemented.

Might just go with the original idea for the map: modifying the present pub base somewhat -- widening the FR and mid, shortening/making more accessible the lower -- and making a mirror copy upside down for a second base. Having two flags in small games would slow things down a bit ... but perhaps the bottom one would be disabled in smaller groups? The bot turret idea could be implemented for both of these. A time race between the two flags, or a "hold both flags for x consecutive seconds" with jackpot at the end could work here. Could also make it so that the jackpots are far more beneficial to sharks and terrs, make close flag grabs worth some points, etc.

One big question is the levi. Bombs work like this: regardless of bomb level, all bombs do the same amount of damage on contact. The only real thing that changes is (besides energy firing cost) the amount of distance from the center of impact in which players receive damage, which can be customized.

There are a couple of options I can think of for the levi, both of which are a little overpowered. But it'll be one of the hidden/unlockable ships, and also cost a good bit more than others to upgrade, which hopefully balances... levis will also not share prizes with team members, there will not be safes to squat in, and players won't be able to freqhop to green. Options:

1) Basically what it is now. Its biggest upgrade (think about someone playing solid for 6 months) from present state is L4 bombs, and potentially prox. In this case the bomb affect radius would be reduced per level so that L4 is only a little larger than standard levi L3 bombs.

2) Disabler: lower blast radius (probably would start with L1), but has an EMP effect. Slightly increased bomb speed. Maybe shrap. Prox at higher levels. Bigger kickback effect for bomb firing. Moves and turns *slightly* faster, but nothing grand here.


Another idea: some ships advance more quickly, but have less total upgrade options -- for example normal ships might have 10, and these just 8. Or some ships may start with stats closer to their "normal" (mid) level but have upgrades not provide as much of a difference. Would be nice to have unique upgrade advantages and disadvantages for the crafty to attempt to exploit...

[kthx]

This used to work on my old mud, have a room that nobody can find except for the best two players on the mud, make it no-exit, and give one of those players extremely powerful healing, damage reducing, and damage doing prayers, and give the other one incredibly damaging weapons. Then give one of those players *warpto. Hey.. the birth of Quicksand go figure. EZ