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Author Topic: Raise the difficulty?  (Read 10468 times)
lightman
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2004, 03:25:57 pm »

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I love the idea of making new starcontrol stuff, but I'd prefer it went into some new starcontrol game. Sequel, prequel, something completely different like my shofixti first person rpg.
...

If we are talking about a new game, many people will point to Timewarp. A new SC game would be great, but I like the idea of making modifications to UQM, now that it is possible.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2004, 05:11:11 pm »

Maybe we could fork the project? If the current UQM team is okay with that, I'd be interested in looking at ways to make (minor) changes to the game.
Maybe call it "UQM 0.3+" ?

Is anyone else interested in hacking up some old code?
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Chrispy
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #17 on: February 14, 2004, 05:57:51 pm »

To make serious changes, wouldn't it me more than just hacking up code.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #18 on: February 14, 2004, 11:42:37 pm »

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To make serious changes, wouldn't it me more than just hacking up code.


It depends on the change. Changing the amount of time you have to play as a difficulty factor, for example, would probably be easy. Changing the amount of RUs moduals cost would also be fairly simple. Making a new race, like the Black Spathi would likely be quite a bit harder.
Adding in hyperspace ships that run away from you, would again, be difficult, I think.

However, back to the questions of:
1. Would the UQM team be okay with that?
2. Is there anyone crazy enough to try?
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Deep-Jiffa
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #19 on: February 15, 2004, 05:42:47 am »

I am crazy enough, but I don't have the knowledge to do it! Yet....
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lightman
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #20 on: February 15, 2004, 08:54:24 am »

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Maybe we could fork the project? If the current UQM team is okay with that, I'd be interested in looking at ways to make (minor) changes to the game.
Maybe call it "UQM 0.3+" ?

Is anyone else interested in hacking up some old code?

I am interested in "hacking" the code, but why would the UQM team be against it? The code is GPL'd, so anyone can tinker with it.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2004, 09:33:11 pm »

I dont think anybody is against it.
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Zeep-Eeep
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« Reply #22 on: February 16, 2004, 02:12:39 am »

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I am interested in "hacking" the code, but why would the UQM team be against it? The code is GPL'd, so anyone can tinker with it.


In some circles it is considered rude to take/change/fork a project without asking the developers first. Being as the code is GPL'ed it is certainly open to change, but helping the current project and forking a new one are a little different.

Add-on: I just read the Contributing file. Since it says to "feel free" to start a project fork, I guess that takes care of that concern. Many thanks to the UQM team for that blessing.
« Last Edit: February 16, 2004, 02:22:37 am by Zeep-Eeep » Logged

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lightman
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Re: changes
« Reply #23 on: February 16, 2004, 02:22:08 am »

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In some circles it is considered rude to take/change/fork a project without asking the developers first. Being as the code is GPL'ed it is certainly open to change, but helping the current project and forking a new one are a little different.

Fair enough. In this case, I was thinking more along the lines of an add-on style modification, rather than a fork.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #24 on: February 17, 2004, 01:59:27 am »

Krulle brought up some interesting ideas for higher difficulty mods in the "play challenges" thread.  I've got a psuedo-related one:
Make resources from destroyed ships into actuall materials that you have to carry in your storage compartments.  Every ship has like 1 kiloton of antimatter (they all use antimatter for fuel, see commander comm logs), and mostly commons and base metals for the rest.  This way, the Captain has to make more use of the "dump cargo" feature, and it's more realistic.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #25 on: February 17, 2004, 02:29:18 am »

More realistic, but also more complicated. Well, not really.
Go for it.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #26 on: February 17, 2004, 01:09:07 pm »

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Krulle brought up some interesting ideas for higher difficulty mods in the "play challenges" thread.  I've got a psuedo-related one:
Make resources from destroyed ships into actuall materials that you have to carry in your storage compartments.  Every ship has like 1 kiloton of antimatter (they all use antimatter for fuel, see commander comm logs), and mostly commons and base metals for the rest.  This way, the Captain has to make more use of the "dump cargo" feature, and it's more realistic.

I like that one.

For thos who missed it, I'll repeat my post from the "play challenge" here, where it fits better (as we are talking about a higher difficulty level being programmed into UQM):

Quote
4. No reason for that! Who will guard those planets? And why? Another problem is the Melnorme. If they know ships guard some planets, they will want to know why. And after they find that they guard on Rainbow Worlds they won't need you to find Rainbow Worlds for them.
Add even more difficulty here:
After the third planet, have the Melnorme say, that they found out what the pattern is and means, and that after this trade they will leave the sector to follow the Precursors.
3x Rainbowplanet is enough to buy everything necessary to win the game, but no more fuel on your trips afterwards.

Maybe you can have one single trader left in this region of space, but finding it is difficult, since Blueish not only crosses from planet to planet, but also from system to system. Thus further trade will become very hard.
And yes, calling for Melnormes in Hyperspace with your 'Caster not only brings one Melnorme coming in 15 minutes, but also a lot of Heirarchy battlegroups patrolling all of Hyperspace, as well as some Kohr-Ah Death-groups. And additionally, normal Hyperspacefluctuations prevent you from collecting the Debris if your were travelling in Hyperspace before combat (never mind the fact that you are pulled into realspace before the fight starts, you simply jump back automagically and thus loose the debris).

Loosing the Slylandro Debris completly makes it a very hard start into the game.

Enjoy!
Krulle

BTW: I do not have the skills to program my own suggestions, but since these ideas are not as hard to implement like a second Precursor tug as "small boss", i think if someone starts up a branch of UQM with a higher level (which i wouldn't do before UQM has reached the final file-structure, otherwise upgrading the higher level to newer UQM-versions might need reprogramming), then i think these ideas can be considered as well.

An idea for an easy level: Your lander has by default already half the immunity of the upgrades.
But that's really not necessary.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2004, 01:14:43 pm by Krulle » Logged
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #27 on: February 17, 2004, 02:30:47 pm »

You try to raise the difficulty by adding more ships, fuel cost, upgrades but you are forgeting the one small problem this game has: THE AI SUCKS!!! Creating new AI, and good one will make this game MUCH harder than it is now. It is silly you can take the entire fleet of koar-ah with Fwiffo since they are stupid to run into your BUTTs.

Think about it.
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #28 on: February 17, 2004, 03:36:51 pm »

Yeah, i know, but i tried to give ideas which do not need a lot of programming when implemented.
And you can say what you want, if the debris is lost, a lot of money/ru is lost as well. you then have a real incentive to go to the Slylandro, since you cannot collect debris from the probes to rebuy lost crew. So in the fights you are only loosing time and crew, but not winning any resources.
And waiting 15 minutes for your melnorme rescuetrader is what in game-time? 6 months??? A damn lot of time to wait, which is simply wasted.
These ideas are easier to implement and thus earlier available, if someone took the time to do so.

Programming and implementing a new AI would be fine, but really isn't easy to implement. And seeing Timewarp (which has only general AIs, no specialized ones), i must say, with SC2/UQM the programmers did a great job.

Enjoy!
Krulle
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Re: Raise the difficulty?
« Reply #29 on: February 17, 2004, 04:25:10 pm »

As someone who has "hacked" a fair chunk of UQM code in the past, I would strongly recommend holding off until 0.4 before forking the project.

Why?  Well, for one, Michael's "road-to-0.4" posts seem to indicate that there will be some fairly fundamental paradigm shifts in a number of key areas in the UQM code.

Secondly, the gist that I've gotten from several of the core team's posts is that 0.4 is going to be breathtakingly close to the 1.0 release - this means that when 1.0 does hit the streets, it won't take a great deal of effort to bring the fork up to the same standard.

None of that should stop the thoughts from flowing, though!  The last couple of weeks have seen some really strong ideas come from a wide range of people - enough to inspire me to lend a hand on the 0.4 fork, should we ever get that far.
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