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Topic: Aftermath (Read 98902 times)
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RDH_An-R-Kist
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Great job!!!!
Pandemic, where have I heard that name before?
(sorry, I'm a little sleepy)
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Swage
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Each revisit to this tread surpasses my expectations by far.
Congrats on getting a Job in the game industry Madgap. Show the monoculture-game designers what innovation is all about. Keep your spirit. I am looking forward to a new space opera game since i finished SC2, that was back in the eightys i belive ^^
In fact, we all do, we weren't here if we wouldn't. Good Luck in LA.
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thatsteveguy
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Well, I've been remarkably busy lately with the whole just-moved-and-I-don't-have-a-steady-job-yet however, that doesn't mean I'm not paying enough attention to make sure this thread doesn't drop to the second page.
Just in case anyone's interested I'm doing another starbase so that there will be some variety in the next release during the moments that I have free time... sigh. Oh well. Maybe I'll put up some screenies some time soon.
-TSG
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Badday
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Just wanted to chime in and add another "omg Aftermath's awesome!" to this thread. 
Can't beleive you did almost all of it yourself, my hat's off to you, sir. I tried to learn programming at one point, but lacked the self-discipline to stick to it. My loss. I shall continue to view projects such as UQM and AM with envy. 
Very much looking forward to future releases! And please, get your own forum so we don't get on the UQM Staff's nerves, here. Hehe.
Since we're here, though, and i'd hardly be the first, i do have some (hopefully) constructive feedback to add. Admittedly, i did not read all 19 pages of this thread, so forgive me if some of this was covered already. Your own forum would go a long way to avoid this, though... *coughhintcough* 
I figure you already are well aware of the fact that the weapons need to have much more price variance, and some need to be tweaked, and still more need to have mine required added. But i'll point out some glaring ones, to be Master Of The Obvious (tm).
Meteor is grossly overpowered. Disgustingly so. Needs to be removed or cost changed to something REALLY high like 20,000 with several mine requirements. Also needs to consume MUCH more energy, and maybe have its RoF (rate of fire) lowered and range reduced. Destroying starbases out of their firing range, and QUICKLY, is just... wrong. I figure you must know this already though, and it's likely in its current form for testing purposes only or just lack of time, which i can certainly understand.
Auto Laser: It would be nice if this weapon targeted hostiles automatically, so it could be used like the PDL on the Earthling in SC. It's so short range, that having to switch targets is annoying, as it's not really any good for offense, causeing you to lose your target AND possibly causing rapid shifts in screen focus.
Heavy Auto Laser: Extremely overpowered, i hate to say, as it's my favorite weapon. But it kinda precludes the use of anything else. Heavy Cruiser with two of these is IT. I have cleared entire Ur Quan systems, Starbase and all solo with these bad boys. This is, i feel, against the spirit of the game. The energy use should be about double what it is now, range shorted a little, and cost ramped WAY up, along with mine requirements.
Starbases: These need to be significantly more difficult. Their weapons' ranges should be about 50pct longer, and have alot more health. They're just so easy to destroy with a single Heavy Cruiser packing long range weaponry like Heavy Nuke. Or even NOT long range weaponry like HALaser. Starbases should require you to have a FLEET to destroy, since the whole purpose of AM seems to be around building up a strong fleet. Unfortunatly, there doesn't seem to be any purpose to having a big fleet other then completely destroying any challenge at all. Which is sad, considering how close this game is to being an EXTREMELY fun fleet version of SC. But it simply needs more challenge. You go against a Starbase you shouldn't even want to CONSIDER it without several ships, and even then you should have to EXPECT to lose a few of your ships before the base blows up.
Ships: Again, pricing/requirements should be looked at, here. No point in using most of them, that i can tell. I could very well be missing something, though. Heavy Cruiser seriously needs to be more expensive. It's cheaper then a Yehat... i know the Yehat comes with a shield, but so?
A ship-related idea that JUST occured to me is, what about including some very expensive high-requirement ships, that are a more powerful then the rest, but you can only have one. This could be like your fleet's Flagship. Not overpowered, just slightly better then the rest. Like 20pct more armor/battery or something and a unique look. Maybe a 3rd weapon port, but then you'd have to add controls for that etc etc etc.. well whatever, just an idea. Most of them are bad.
I don't envy your position when it comes to cost balance factors... how do you make the game non-trivial and not kill the fun by making it so you spend 90pct of your time doing mindless mining? Tough call. At least you can raid enemy systems for cash. That's a huge plus in AM's favor.
Speaking of which, i can't seem to capture enemy cargo vessels. It worked before with the flashing indicator, but pressing B didn't get the menu to pop up as i've read? Now the purple indicator around enemy cargo vessels doesn't even flash. I must be missing something. "ActionMenu: B" is present in the Keys.ini.
Well sorry for the novel. Most of which i'm sure you're already well aware of. And trudging through long-winded posts is no fun. But look at the silver lining! People like your program so much they spent the time to WRITE these long-winded posts, rather then moving on to the next thing in 10 minutes.
I see real potential here for a very fun game, and looking forward to seeing where you take it! Good luck! And congrats on the new job!!
PS, almost forgot. Please implement the ability to destroy incoming projectiles, and have the Autolaser target them automatically so you don't have to switch targets. It seems you've started down this road already, as ships and starbases will fire on incoming projectiles.. but currently most/all projectiles seem to be non-destructable, so it does them no good.
Then you could perhpas remove (or drastically reduce) the Heavynuke's acceleration and give the projectile alot of health, so it could slowly make it to Starbases with a fairly decent (but NOT 100pct) success rate, and be even less useful in ship-to-ship combat, as right now it's actually quite powerful in that feild, against the AI, which is probably not a good thing for what's meant to be an anti-base weapon.
Also some minor bugs:
The Yehat can shoot ITSELF with an autolaser if the target is in its rear firing arc.
Autolasers have a hard time firing on Earthling Cruisers. I don't know if it's angle related or what, but often if i have an Earthling Cruiser targeted and in range, the heavy auto laser will only sporadically fire on it, and this is with more then enough energy to sustain fire for a short while.
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« Last Edit: October 14, 2004, 12:47:34 am by Badday »
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thatsteveguy
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Badday,
I fear that most of your crits are actually mostly due to things I've contributed. The meteor is supposed to be for a ship, (If I remember correctly I named it the Earthling destroyer) that was supposed to be ultra expensive yet top of the line, and able to destroy starbases which used to be far more difficult to destroy.
Madgap said that I shouldn't bother with balancing the ships and weapons (Like the auto heavylaser) I was producing because he was going to do it. I think I may have overloaded him though because I've given him 16+ ship models plus a starbase model and several weapons and I haven't heard from him since,(hehe) though he probably is quite busy with the move he just made and his new job.
I actually tried to create a fully balanced Aftermath once but gave up when I realized how much work it was and faced the fact that Madgap was almost certain to change things so that any balancing I did would be a waste of time.
Sigh. I suppose we just need to be patient and wait for him to get around to producing the next version.
-Madgap,
Hope the new job is going well. How's L.A.?
-TSG
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Badday
Zebranky food
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Yea TSG, figured it was mostly obvious stuff anyway. No doubt it's a huge (but probably fun!) job to balance all that.
So that weap was designed for only one specialized ship, huh? Well that's pretty cool. Could be balanced by the ship, then. If the destroyer was pretty slow and had a very slow turn rate, it could serve it's purpose nicely without being crazy powerful against everything with that gun. It would of course rely on other members of the fleet for protection, as most anything could run circles around it (or "c"'s... nothing would wanna go in front  ).
Big slow cap ships with massive guns, what's not to like?
Add to that the making of starbases much more difficult, and restricting such weaponry only to such ships, and everything seems to fall into place, balance-wise. At least on the surface.
Ahh such fun stuff to conjecture about... wish i knew how to do any of this.
Keep up the great work, both of you, can't wait for future versions!
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Madgap
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Hey guys, LA is great (or at least Westwood Village near UCLA since I haven't really been anywhere else). I'll respond to the above posts a little later, but I just wanted to get something down in writing as a way of motivating myself. I will have a new version ready by Monday. I'll spend this weekend adding the original ship sounds back in and balancing the gameplay a bit more. Also, there are a number of cool new models that TSG created awhile ago but have not been released.
I was tweaking the gameplay before I moved, but as that was awhile ago I don't remember all that I changed. I do know that starbases are (in my opinion) a lot more fun to attack. They have many more turrets, and lots of different turret types, but the turrets are weaker. The end result is there's a lot more stuff to blow up, and many more projectiles flying through space. Some have huge knockback effects which are cool too. More later!
-Madgap
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thatsteveguy
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New version!? Monday!!!??  Sweeeeet....
You know, I just realized something funny. You moved to LA CA and I moved NO LA at nearly the same time... Coincidence or giant government conspiracy... you decide.
Can't wait!
-TSG
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« Last Edit: October 16, 2004, 04:45:29 am by thatsteveguy »
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thatsteveguy
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Check the link below to see the new starbase I'm working on. It's almost done, I just need to tweak the uvmapping a bit and it's good to go.
http://www.thatsteveguy.net/screenshot1.jpg
C and C welcome.
-TSG
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thatsteveguy
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Well, the angle that aftermath shows it at the home system darkens it quite a bit. Here's a profile shot from wings.
http://www.thatsteveguy.net/wingshot.jpg
In other systems it will have better lighting.
-TSG
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Madgap
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That's awesome, TSG. I like it so much better than my old steeringwheel one.  I don't think anyone has seen your new asteroid base, so I'll be sure to include it in the release on Monday along with the new ships.
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Cronos
*Many bubbles*
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Asteroid Base?!
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