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Author Topic: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters  (Read 6606 times)
CelticMinstrel
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #15 on: December 04, 2012, 07:35:18 pm »

I like most of your ideas, but there are some exceptions.

Lander mineral nodes get two for one mods:
minerals above the lander's max capacity get left on the planet so you never have to worry about wasting a nice node when you're almost full
minerals that are better than what you have in your full cargo bay get picked up to the max capacity of the lander, while those on the main ship get automatically discarded!
I don't really like the idea of automatically discarding anything, even low-value goods. I'd want at least a confirmation, perhaps even the ability to go in and choose exactly what to discard myself (eg, bring up the cargo bay stats with the cargo filled over capacity and require the user to discard things until the capacity is reached).

Make time pass while at a planet so you can't zoom past and take all the resources and avoid a fight despite time passing (planned)
Not too keen on this idea. The implication is that you'll be attacked while down on the planet.

keep hyperspace momentum between encounters? (considered)
Hyperspace momentum? What hyperspace momentum? There is no momentum in hyperspace.

Ideas related to some of yours...

Display ship ID in hyperspace (each valid ship type has a single letter identifier above the little black dot on radar)
Showing the ID on radar isn't a bad idea, but what about using the actual ship icon in the main hyperspace viewport? Possibly instead of the radar, possibly in addition to it.

Display a count of ships remaining to fight in the battle window (currently in the upper left of battle space, though I probably should move that to a different context)
Quote
This is definitely something that should go on the right sidebar, I think. Instead of just a count, what about showing the actual ships? So if you're on the third of five Thraddash Torches, you see two Torch icons in the corner. Then when you're in the encounter with both types of Ur-Quan at once, you can see not only how many are left but also which types.

Planet edge visible at ALL times regardless of distance on combat screen (planned)
I think I prefer the idea of an onscreen arrow pointing towards the planet.

Other stuff...

It would be kinda nice to have a sort of in-game journal for recording dialogue, though I realize it's entirely possible to simply copy essential details to a text file or onto paper.

Lacking the above, it would be nice to have a way to get the Melnorme to repeat pieces of information that you've already purchased. In a similar vein, it would be nice if the Melnorme could eliminate no-longer-relevant info from their supply. For example, if you've already revived the Shofixti without purchasing the relevant piece of info from the Melnorme, they will no longer offer that piece of info. This applies only to info on current events, I think. It sounds like an easy thing to do, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot harder than it sounds...

If you're adding things to the list of what the Melnorme sells, you may want to check to verify that it's still possible to obtain all of them.

I think I had other things to say, but I can't remember what they were, so they'll have to wait. I know I've posted ideas in other threads though, if you care to hunt around a little (yeah, I wouldn't expect you to do that though).
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CheatingZelnick
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2012, 03:08:51 am »

I like most of your ideas, but there are some exceptions.

Lander mineral nodes get two for one mods:
minerals above the lander's max capacity get left on the planet so you never have to worry about wasting a nice node when you're almost full
minerals that are better than what you have in your full cargo bay get picked up to the max capacity of the lander, while those on the main ship get automatically discarded!
I don't really like the idea of automatically discarding anything, even low-value goods. I'd want at least a confirmation, perhaps even the ability to go in and choose exactly what to discard myself (eg, bring up the cargo bay stats with the cargo filled over capacity and require the user to discard things until the capacity is reached).

You already know your cargo hold is basically full. If you continue to run over nodes, or go back to the planet for more nodes, you are essentially saying "take care of this for me". I understand the desire to control the discards, but since the entire value of the elements is turning them directly to resources for building stuff at the starbase, if you wanted to control what you discard, you can do it manually on the flagship. If an updated UQM sequel made different elements and minerals important beyond point value, it might matter. If I can keep focused enough on my mods, eventually you could just turn this feature on and off in settings.


Make time pass while at a planet so you can't zoom past and take all the resources and avoid a fight despite time passing (planned)
Not too keen on this idea. The implication is that you'll be attacked while down on the planet.

It's a long-term idea I wanted to play with to add a small dose of unneeded realism. It's low priority and would probably automatically recall the lander. I threw it in the pot because I would frequently fly around slower enemy ships, mostly ur-quan ships, to collect minerals. Which was fun, but a little ridiculous.

keep hyperspace momentum between encounters? (considered)
Hyperspace momentum? What hyperspace momentum? There is no momentum in hyperspace.

When you're travelling long-distance in hyperspace, and you get pulled into an encounter, you lose all your forward momentum. Mostly it was an annoyance thing from frequent stops. It's also only a low priority idea to experiment with. All of these are optional modifications, after all. That's part of why my code separates out the different mods, to make it easier (at least for the programmers) to pick and choose. All of my mods should be easily turned on or off by anyone, but at this point I have enough trouble making time to make the base mods.

Ideas related to some of yours...
Display ship ID in hyperspace (each valid ship type has a single letter identifier above the little black dot on radar)
Showing the ID on radar isn't a bad idea, but what about using the actual ship icon in the main hyperspace viewport? Possibly instead of the radar, possibly in addition to it.

That's an excellent idea that I didn't even consider before now. I had originally only thought that your radar would identify something in the signature, therefore minimal information, but using the battle / system ship sprites would be a good option.

Display a count of ships remaining to fight in the battle window (currently in the upper left of battle space, though I probably should move that to a different context)
Quote
This is definitely something that should go on the right sidebar, I think. Instead of just a count, what about showing the actual ships? So if you're on the third of five Thraddash Torches, you see two Torch icons in the corner. Then when you're in the encounter with both types of Ur-Quan at once, you can see not only how many are left but also which types.

Ahh, I was only thinking in context of the main story, and stamping a number on the space window was nice and easy, but that would be a good idea to find room for on the sidebar.

Planet edge visible at ALL times regardless of distance on combat screen (planned)
I think I prefer the idea of an onscreen arrow pointing towards the planet.


That's not a bad idea and something I was considering, but from my limited understanding of the programming, I might have to add in my own entry to the list of all the screen elements to do that. Which is a hassle. My biggest problem is the combo of understanding the game logic and remembering that understanding in between the sessions I've been able to make time for. I probably need to do a marathon documentation of the data and logic flows. Or crib off someone else who already beat me to that.

Other stuff...
It would be kinda nice to have a sort of in-game journal for recording dialogue, though I realize it's entirely possible to simply copy essential details to a text file or onto paper.
Lacking the above, it would be nice to have a way to get the Melnorme to repeat pieces of information that you've already purchased. In a similar vein, it would be nice if the Melnorme could eliminate no-longer-relevant info from their supply. For example, if you've already revived the Shofixti without purchasing the relevant piece of info from the Melnorme, they will no longer offer that piece of info. This applies only to info on current events, I think. It sounds like an easy thing to do, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot harder than it sounds...
If you're adding things to the list of what the Melnorme sells, you may want to check to verify that it's still possible to obtain all of them.
I think I had other things to say, but I can't remember what they were, so they'll have to wait. I know I've posted ideas in other threads though, if you care to hunt around a little (yeah, I wouldn't expect you to do that though).

Some of that isn't necessarily that hard to do, but would be pretty manual, testing flags that see if you have the Shofixti, for example, is easy, but then you have to watch for that when you get to the part about the Shofixti. And then do you not give the history just because you already have them breeding away? On the other hand, I wouldn't mind doing a major overhaul of the Melnorme options where you could have far more control over what you got upgraded (Lander upgrades, weapon upgrades, energy generation upgrades, ho!) in what order, rather than going through the queue in their order. The various historical options might be more vaguely described to preserve the sense of mystery, but otherwise would be the same pick and choose. That would lead to a fairly deep menu tree, I think, but probably not annoyingly so.
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Death 999
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #17 on: December 10, 2012, 03:30:03 pm »

But resetting momentum makes sense. And you accelerate in HS so fast anyway, it sounds like what you really want is no spinup time. In the system view, you get a period of invincibility, so there's barely a mechanical effect.
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #18 on: December 11, 2012, 03:19:48 am »

But resetting momentum makes sense. And you accelerate in HS so fast anyway, it sounds like what you really want is no spinup time. In the system view, you get a period of invincibility, so there's barely a mechanical effect.

Resetting momentum does make sense. I hadn't decided whether to try to implement this one. And it's really unnecessary if I have a proper encounter blocker available. There have been plenty of times where I wanted to kill Pkunk from a thousand encounters in a row where I was wasting my time saying bye to them. It's more understandable, but sometimes annoying, when I would go into the Ur-Quan territory and have to fight a very long succession of each side's ships, because I couldn't get any speed to escape. I'm not a huge fan of the combat, especially not mandatory over and over like that. In a similar vein, I've considered disabling the red alert sound delay every encounter with a potential enemy.

  Mostly I threw it on the list as a consideration only. It would be about dead last on my list of desired mods, but might have been tried because it would be easier than my loftier ideas. Chances are that I will skip it, especially with arguments against it.
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CelticMinstrel
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #19 on: December 13, 2012, 05:48:20 am »

You already know your cargo hold is basically full. If you continue to run over nodes, or go back to the planet for more nodes, you are essentially saying "take care of this for me". I understand the desire to control the discards, but since the entire value of the elements is turning them directly to resources for building stuff at the starbase, if you wanted to control what you discard, you can do it manually on the flagship. If an updated UQM sequel made different elements and minerals important beyond point value, it might matter. If I can keep focused enough on my mods, eventually you could just turn this feature on and off in settings.
Might be sorta interesting to make it toggleable in-game, from the devices menu...

When you're travelling long-distance in hyperspace, and you get pulled into an encounter, you lose all your forward momentum. Mostly it was an annoyance thing from frequent stops. It's also only a low priority idea to experiment with. All of these are optional modifications, after all. That's part of why my code separates out the different mods, to make it easier (at least for the programmers) to pick and choose. All of my mods should be easily turned on or off by anyone, but at this point I have enough trouble making time to make the base mods.
I still thought hyperspace didn't have momentum... that's why you come to a stop when releasing the thrust, instead of continuing on in the same direction...

That's an excellent idea that I didn't even consider before now. I had originally only thought that your radar would identify something in the signature, therefore minimal information, but using the battle / system ship sprites would be a good option.
Another mod already did it actually, so it might be as simple as copying code over.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind doing a major overhaul of the Melnorme options where you could have far more control over what you got upgraded (Lander upgrades, weapon upgrades, energy generation upgrades, ho!) in what order, rather than going through the queue in their order. The various historical options might be more vaguely described to preserve the sense of mystery, but otherwise would be the same pick and choose. That would lead to a fairly deep menu tree, I think, but probably not annoyingly so.
My only objection to this is that it would drastically change the way you play. Also I think there really are a few cases where some things should not be allowed to be obtained before others; for example, forcing the weapons to be obtained in order of increasing power.


Resetting momentum does make sense. I hadn't decided whether to try to implement this one. And it's really unnecessary if I have a proper encounter blocker available. There have been plenty of times where I wanted to kill Pkunk from a thousand encounters in a row where I was wasting my time saying bye to them. It's more understandable, but sometimes annoying, when I would go into the Ur-Quan territory and have to fight a very long succession of each side's ships, because I couldn't get any speed to escape. I'm not a huge fan of the combat, especially not mandatory over and over like that. In a similar vein, I've considered disabling the red alert sound delay every encounter with a potential enemy.
Oh, yes, something to avoid the infinite tunnel of battle after battle after battle that is all too easy to fall into in Ur-Quan space in particular, even with maximum thrusters, and even in other spheres of influence if you don't have maximum thrusters. I think some form of encounter blocker would be better than this confusing thing about momentum that I don't really get... in a sense, a delay between contacting a Hyperspace bubble and being sucked into it... thus allowing escape in situations where it's currently impossible.
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #20 on: December 13, 2012, 08:33:41 am »

Another mod already did it actually, so it might be as simple as copying code over.
Ooh, which? I'm all in favor of being lazy and merging someone else's code. Which I still need to do with the escape mod, but...

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind doing a major overhaul of the Melnorme options where you could have far more control over what you got upgraded (Lander upgrades, weapon upgrades, energy generation upgrades, ho!) in what order, rather than going through the queue in their order. The various historical options might be more vaguely described to preserve the sense of mystery, but otherwise would be the same pick and choose. That would lead to a fairly deep menu tree, I think, but probably not annoyingly so.
My only objection to this is that it would drastically change the way you play. Also I think there really are a few cases where some things should not be allowed to be obtained before others; for example, forcing the weapons to be obtained in order of increasing power.[/quote]

Naturally, the Melnorme are going to maximize their sales by selling you weapons in slowly increasing order. Tongue And yes, it would affect play some by making it a lot faster to upgrade your favorite parts, but my goal with these mods is to affect the play considerably. ;P

Resetting momentum does make sense. I hadn't decided whether to try to implement this one. And it's really unnecessary if I have a proper encounter blocker available. There have been plenty of times where I wanted to kill Pkunk from a thousand encounters in a row where I was wasting my time saying bye to them. It's more understandable, but sometimes annoying, when I would go into the Ur-Quan territory and have to fight a very long succession of each side's ships, because I couldn't get any speed to escape. I'm not a huge fan of the combat, especially not mandatory over and over like that. In a similar vein, I've considered disabling the red alert sound delay every encounter with a potential enemy.
Oh, yes, something to avoid the infinite tunnel of battle after battle after battle that is all too easy to fall into in Ur-Quan space in particular, even with maximum thrusters, and even in other spheres of influence if you don't have maximum thrusters. I think some form of encounter blocker would be better than this confusing thing about momentum that I don't really get... in a sense, a delay between contacting a Hyperspace bubble and being sucked into it... thus allowing escape in situations where it's currently impossible.

My encounter blocker, while an ugly hack, mostly does allow avoiding a flood of encounters, but only takes affect when you can get a proper escape button press off. More searching for the best implementation of that would obviate the need for worrying over hyperspace momentum. Of course, I need to get a nice block of time to study the code. Hopefully that'll be soon.
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CelticMinstrel
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #21 on: December 13, 2012, 07:45:31 pm »

Ooh, which? I'm all in favor of being lazy and merging someone else's code. Which I still need to do with the escape mod, but...
Extended Edition. I think it's based off an older version of the code, but I imagine things would still be similar enough to at least copy the general logic of it...

Naturally, the Melnorme are going to maximize their sales by selling you weapons in slowly increasing order. Tongue And yes, it would affect play some by making it a lot faster to upgrade your favorite parts, but my goal with these mods is to affect the play considerably. ;P
I see. By the way, you forgot an opening quote tag on that quote.

My encounter blocker, while an ugly hack, mostly does allow avoiding a flood of encounters, but only takes affect when you can get a proper escape button press off. More searching for the best implementation of that would obviate the need for worrying over hyperspace momentum. Of course, I need to get a nice block of time to study the code. Hopefully that'll be soon.
Perhaps what you could do, then, is work on this ugly hack and evolve it into something that's less hacky but still has a similar effect. Tongue

...wait, that's what you just said, isn't it... well whatever.
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #22 on: December 14, 2012, 05:50:54 pm »

Ooh, which? I'm all in favor of being lazy and merging someone else's code. Which I still need to do with the escape mod, but...
Extended Edition. I think it's based off an older version of the code, but I imagine things would still be similar enough to at least copy the general logic of it...

Naturally, the Melnorme are going to maximize their sales by selling you weapons in slowly increasing order. Tongue And yes, it would affect play some by making it a lot faster to upgrade your favorite parts, but my goal with these mods is to affect the play considerably. ;P
I see. By the way, you forgot an opening quote tag on that quote.

My encounter blocker, while an ugly hack, mostly does allow avoiding a flood of encounters, but only takes affect when you can get a proper escape button press off. More searching for the best implementation of that would obviate the need for worrying over hyperspace momentum. Of course, I need to get a nice block of time to study the code. Hopefully that'll be soon.
Perhaps what you could do, then, is work on this ugly hack and evolve it into something that's less hacky but still has a similar effect. Tongue

...wait, that's what you just said, isn't it... well whatever.

I saw that I missed the quote, but perfection isn't my goal. I also misspelled "effect", at least in its primary usage. Smiley
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CelticMinstrel
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Re: New / old mods for Ur-Quan Masters
« Reply #23 on: December 15, 2012, 12:39:53 am »

Well, you can always edit old posts, but whatever... <_<
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