Why are you forcing the tiny resolution upon people who haven't installed the hi-def packages? What happened to the scaling options? It's especially jarring because the option to choose the scaling method is still there even though it's clearly completely ignored.

They scaling methods work all right:

Select 320x240 as your resolution, then select one of the "Stretch gfx?" options. For instance, selecting 320->800 will stretch the original 320x240 graphics to 800x600 graphics. Then you can select the softening scaler (biadapt, hq, etc...) as you please.

The stretched lo-res graphics are in a separate menu item since 0.2.1 since many people found it confusing to have them in the same menu item as the hi-res graphics.

Thanks for the input!

Giving a longer range for the Foon-foon primary, when charged up, is an idea worth trying. It was also voiced by one of my friends I was playtesting with. Unfortunately that suggestion came only a day before the release of 0.2.. At that point I didn't dare put anything new and untested stuff in the code, lest I break something.
A long-ranged powerful shot would present the player yet another tactic for using the Foon-foon. But there's also the risk of turning the ship into another Thraddash, so the range shouldn't be too excessive.

Baul can also deal some nice punishment to Chmmr and Kohr-ah in its current incarnation, which I think is refreshing! Whereas I've found Mycon quite difficult to tackle with Baul - and this is good, since Mycon was a sort of loser ship in SC2.

Good to hear that you like 'em overall!

Bumpity-bump.
OK, folks, v0.2.1. is available, with massively rehauled Foon-foon and Baul ships!

I'm not gonna describe in here the differences to 0.2.0 since a) I want you to experience them yourselves b) I'm a meanie.

Let me know how you like 'em now and I can yet again tweak them more for the 1.0.0...

sigundo: Great to hear about your experience with the exploding critter That was my little touch of magic there.

Everyone:
Go see the infamous http://code.google.com/p/project6014/wiki/Downloads ...
Demo 0.2.1. is in da house! If you're running OS X, it's your lucky day!

Heh heh heh, it was fun thrashing the 300 point armada with all Baul + 4 FF ships fleet!

Although it was much because the AI is pretty stupid against the Baul gas:  Yehat & Kohr-Ah come straight at it, relying on their specials to handle them. Ah well, gotta change that.

Anyway, the forward-shooting gas made the ship much more fun to play IMO. The ship has still freshness because it still has its two-component action and can deal damage to self.

Ok, guys,
judging by this thread and some more or less constructive criticism at star-control.com's boards it seems that the Baul is
a) lacking some aggressive attitude
b) too similar to Lurg gameplay-wise.

This is why I'm trying this kinda thing:
The Baul gas shoots forward quite fast and after that, gradually slows down to total halt.

This way you can play both offensively and defensively: You can lay out a minefield and play the waiting game, or you can engage the opponent, pepper him with some gas clouds and the finish the bastard off with your primary spray!!! HA HA HAA!!!

I also eliminated a bug which reduced the effect of the chain reactioning shockwaves... this resulted in the explosions being perhaps even bit too strong now.

But. Those of you that can: Download the latest updates, compile & try it out. See if you like it better! (I do )

Yup, Damon, the reason the FF & Bau AI fared so poorly against you is that there is no AI for them!

Currently FF only has vanilla basic AI which means it can't use it's secondary weapon at all. Baul has currently copy-pasted Thraddash AI which means it's able to lay its gas clouds, but doesn't have the intelligence to shoot at them. So both of the new ships are incabable of using their strongest weapons on AI. No wonder they get their asses kicked.

I do agree with you that the ships are ALMOST there. Quite fun, but not yet splendid.
-Maybe Baul needs that faster acceleration to defer Chmmr's tractor beam. Or faster turning rate to make a bit more viable against any ship.
-There are so many good ideas here for the FF primary weapon that it's hard to choose which one of them we should start implementing!
-The idea of Lurg bubbles affecting also the Lurg ship itself (after a certain time period) is interesting. It might make the Prawn less obnoxious to play against, forcing it to move more.

What about making the standard weapon capable of charging up like the Melnorme? Instead of firing out a larger beam, it grows a larger ball (indicating the size of the beam), then unleashes the fury?

Not quite as ridiculous as this, but it gives you a general idea:
http://elmundotech.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/iron_man_photon_cannon_bmp_jpgcopy.jpg

My only problem with making the Foon-Foon weaker is it already feels like a pretty weak ship. 
Also, I always imagined the FF saber as something that would need to be charged up.  The ship starts to spin faster and faster, then hit the direction and it would fly across the screen with its beam out. How that would actually work in melee though, I couldn't tell you.

6014 still hasn't (IMO) released a ship as devastating or fun  (other than the non-canon ISD) as any of the big behemoth ships like the Dreadnaught, Maurader, or Avatar.

Anybody find a ship comparable to the Foon-Foon Typhoon or the Baul ship?

Hahah, well that Iron Man's gun is the definition of going overboard, if something!!

Funny - some people have felt the exact opposite: that Foon-foon is pretty strong ship, because of its speed and the amount of damage the dervish attack deals. I actually lean a bit on this side too: It's easy to wipe out the zapsats from AI-controlled Chmmr and also the fighters from an AI-controlled ur-quan + kill the Quan itself. That's the reason I deducted its crew capacity from 20 to 12.

I haven't tried the FF against a skilled human player though so it's hard to say anything about that.

Did you mean the primary weapon would shoot the charge ball specifically as a ball? Or as a saber/beam?
'Another World' comes into mind (see the mega-lazer at 0:14)... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcD4KeYO30o&feature=related
Something like that could be fun, it would make the primary and secondary weapons more distinct from each other.

I really like concept of Baul ship, but I think that AI is just to weak to handle its mechanics.

If Baul can become enemies in full game, it really needs to be improved.

Foon-foon's ship is fun to use too, especially secondary attack. Maybe even too much... I pretty much use it exclusively, without touching primary fire. Fly by, and use "lightning saber". Easier then aiming primary weapon. But I like it.

Great that you like 'em!

The Baul (and Foon-foon) AI weakness stems from the fact that it's just a basic AI without any ship-specific modifications. Too bad we didn't have time to make a proper AI since our dedicated AI guy had some pressing Real Life (tm) matters...  I'll try to give the new ships some decent intelligence for the next update, but it'd be so much easier if we had a programmer on board, that was focusing only on the ships.

Yup, Foon-foon is pretty much all about the secondary
We thought of making the primary weapon a bit different since it's a bit dull now. Maybe make it act like Arilou beam - a "stuttering" laser, also make it a bit more powerful. How'd that sound?

I have  one comment about the Dervish thing - it's triggered by only left turn key, but not right. I find it a bit strange.

Hmm, that's odd. It's supposed to work on Special+left as well as special+right.
Both of these combos work on my Mac as well as on my PC. Maybe your keys are conflicting? Have you tried using a different key for your special and see what happens?

Ok, guys!

Those of you that have tried out P6014 0.2.0 must've tried the 2 new ships: Baul and Foon-foon. (And those of you who haven't: Go do it already!)
I'm the guy responsible for programming them *ahem*. (Although I can't take the credit for most of the ideas for these ships - Kwayne & Benjamin have been the really creative souls)

I'm asking you to give some feedback on a couple of things we've been thinking with the gang:
- Should Baul's gas explosion shockwaves damage also the Baul ship itself? Currently they don't. If they did, it'd be required to also increase Baul's primary weapon's range to avoid hurting oneself too easily.
- Is Baul's turning rate ok?  It's a bit slowish, but making it too fast would make it too powerful...
- Does Foon-foon's spinning blade attack deal too much damage? Should it be nerfed down? Or is it good as it is?
- Do the ships have enough / too many / too few crew? What about other balance issues?

 

OS X people: I have a treat for you.
http://code.google.com/p/project6014/wiki/Downloads

I'm still waiting for an assignment!

I sent you PM, check it out!

hey all, i have just begun to decide to replay ur quan masters (last time i was 4 playing/watching my dad play the original, so not sure that counts anyway) and found the p6014 mod/sequel, and downloaded it. (i got the content and music files in the resources folder, maybe music should go in add on folder?) Anyways, i'm running a new mba with Lion, and UQM 0.7 seems to work fine but P6014 crashes on launch. found this thread via google, just wondering what the status was with lion support and if anyone else is having issues or if there is a fix. I can copy the error report but its very long and i have no idea which part of it is important.

Hi!

Sadly, Lion wasn't yet out when we finished 0.1.1.  - The P6014 demo 0.1.1 is compiled on 10.6 (and has been tested on 10.5 also).

We are getting a new OSX programmer on board with Lion OSX installed though, so the next demo should be 10.7. compatible! The exact date is still to be set, but P6014 demo 0.2. is going to come before the end of this year...

Hehe. Good luck with those wishes. We could use some better instructions for compiling on OS X though. Balance Mod still needs to be built on OS X.

I got a balance mod compilation working on my OSX. Dunno if it'll work for the rest of the world though. I'll send the .app to Shiver!

That is useful, but mostly we could use some guidance in the compiling as there might be a new version every week or two.

Well, yeah, I see your point. It would be pretty burdensome for me to start compiling for you every week
Why don't we do the following? If you run into problems with attempting to compile the balance mod on OSX, send me PM (or mail, at least Shiver has me address) and I'll try to help you out. That way we can nail problems as they appear and can write some sort of manual in the process.