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Author Topic: Problems with the game?  (Read 3955 times)
Captain Smith
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Problems with the game?
« on: August 09, 2003, 10:43:57 pm »
What do you see as problems with the SC2/UQM games that could be changed?

Personally I think the Pkunk ships are a game balance issue.  If they resurrected half the time I sure don't believe it by observation.  Either it doesn't at all or does it all the time (4-7 times usually in my experience), and when it does it all the time, ships start to go down just out of endurance-sake. Syreen, Traddash, and Chmmr really are the only ships I have that can hang long-term with the Pkunk - all the others go down after 2-4 resurrections.  Maybe this points out an irregularity in the PRNG sequence used for SC2/UQM and the Pkunk, possibly?

The thought I had maybe is to do something like half the chance of resurrection for each subsequent resurrection, then maybe you wouldn't run into Pkunk that think they're the Terminator so much?

Any thoughts on gameplay/lack of balance issues you have with the game?
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Chrispy
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2003, 11:02:53 pm »
i never noticed that with the pkunk.

2 bones have to to pick are that u cant have a full fleet in melee, and the noise when u get sucked into a black orb is really long and really annoying
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2003, 11:03:47 pm »
As far as UQM "problems" I really don't have any. But about the Pkunk regeneration, Fred as stated that it's 50-50 chance of regeneration which makes 4-7 renenerations not impossible. However, Fred also hints at the fact that it's not really 50-50. What it is I don't know, and would be interested to find out.
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Krogoth255
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2003, 11:36:08 pm »
It's 50/50 it's just the Pkunk Fury's real special ablilty. It's the only reason the Fury is worth 20 melee pts without it the Fury wouldn't be as effective or popluar to use. The only improvement IHMO for balancing reasons is it can only resurrect itself up to 3 to 5 times  
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2003, 12:33:24 am »
iv noticed 2 things about the regeneration.
if ur fighting the samatra u regenerate more
and in sc3 its got something to do with how much fuel u have, but im not sure if thats true in uqm[glow
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Orz Brain
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #5 on: August 10, 2003, 01:07:42 am »
I reacently started playing sc1 and I noticed that in the meele mode there were severel areas that the gfx and ai were better than the ur-quan masters.
(1) There is a way to exploit the ai in the ur-quan masters so that an earthling cruser can beat a dreadnought 75% of the time. The way you do it is this: it only works if you warp in a ways away from the ur-quan, when the game starts, start heading toward the bottom or top of the screen (which ever is farther away from the dreadnought and closest to you) and for some reason the screen will keep expanding even though the dreadnought should be going faster than you. After a few moments the dreadnought will turn around and start heading away from you toward the edge of the screen thats closest to it. At this point you want to IMMEDATLY turn around and begin thrusting toward the dreadnought. The dreadnought will head off the the edge of the screen and the screen will flip and, walah, you will be moving away from the dreadnought and the screen will be expanding and pretty soon the dreadnought will turn around and you will turn around and begin thrusting and you can keep this ad-infinitem. Fire off some nukes during it and you got yourself a fried ur-quan.
(2)There about ten times as many frames of animation in the captain portraits in sc1 vs the ur-quan masters which just switches between 2 pictures, an on picture and an off picture. In sc1 on the other hand the stuff in between is animated as well.
(3)Small objects in the ur-quan masters apperently come equiped with cloaking devices that work only from when viewed from certain angles. Items with this ability are as follows: parts of the Yehat shield are always invisible, Yehat gun shots are invisible about a quarter of the time and finally ur-quan fighters are invisible about a third of the time (this is by far the most annoying for instance you are flying a Syreen ship verses a dreadnought and are flying through an area of space that looks perfectly safe and suddenly you notice your crew dropping rappidly and small white lines appearing beside your ship).
« Last Edit: August 10, 2003, 05:20:55 am by Orz_Brain » Logged
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #6 on: August 10, 2003, 02:59:34 am »
yep, that is annoying
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2003, 08:43:50 am »
Better animation would be nice *hint hint*.
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Krogoth255
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2003, 09:50:45 am »
coming in V0.3 there will be better Anti-Allasing in Melee which "does" help remedy the problems with pixels dissappering. I have been using Striker's latest complied CVS for windows it does feature this. But at some cases rare cases it can happen stilll mainly for with Dreadnought's figthers dissappearing. The problem is all the art in melee in UQM was design for 320x200 resolution. Increasing resolution just causes resizing problems with rendering engine that UQM uses as far as I understand
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Deep-Jiffa
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2003, 12:05:21 pm »
Well people to tell you the truth, i think it has something to do with the combat battery mode. If it is full you will probably return to life, but if it is empty the pkunk is lost. Anyway it is 0-100 when i play but if i play against somone else it is 100-0 to him  Angry :-/ :-/ :-/
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Nic.
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2003, 01:22:24 pm »
The code that controls the Pkunk "phoenix effect" is in a function called pkunk_preprocess().  It is a simple "50/50" test against a random number.  No more, no less.  If you want to believe that other factors control it, go right ahead, but the code says what it says.

What is truly interesting part about Pkunk respawning is that whether or not the ship will respawn is determined BEFORE the fight even starts!  This really makes me laugh when I think of all the times I'd try to "influence" respawning by holding down keys as the ship exploded.  Silly hunam, the decision was made long before then! Smiley
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Deep-Jiffa
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2003, 01:54:18 pm »
Then explain how i never get the pkunk back if the dynamos are empty?
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2003, 03:11:53 pm »
The human mind is an odd thing...  If I told you that there is a magical well in which when you drop a quarter into it, the spalsh resulting would say 'thanks'.  Most likly if you believed me at all you would here it.

The human mind likes to figure things out, find patterns, make sense of things.  You just remember every time you respawn with a empty battery (or at the sa-matra, or when you are wearing a green shirt, etc) and forget all the times that you don't.

Its the same principal that lets people believe psychics and such.  They remember all the 'hits' and forget all the misses.

Nifty huh?
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2003, 03:22:21 pm »
Ok you know what? I have just did a test and check this. From 10 times only 1 time i respawned. Once only. Bad luck or the game just hate me?
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Re: Problems with the game?
« Reply #14 on: August 10, 2003, 03:44:47 pm »
Bad luck.
You have a 50% chance each time you die of reviving.  Thats it.  10 tests is hardly a giant sample.  If you did it 1000 times, it SHOULD be about 500 revives.  But it could be way off, you could go 20 times without reviving once.  Just trying flipping a quarter, see how many times you get Heads or tales in a row.

I just did a test of my own picked 10 ships heres the count:
Times revived: 17
Times not revied: 10
Total: 27 tests
Which is pretty much 63%
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