MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing

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MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing

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Topic: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing (Read 4013 times)

JHGuitarFreak
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MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« on: August 22, 2019, 04:03:42 pm »

So I've been in the process of making several modes for the MegaMod and have come up with a few interesting things.

Hard Mode: Which adds a degree of difficulty to various aspects of the gameplay
Easy Mode: Which removes removes degrees of difficulty
Nomad Mode: Starbase is inaccessible with a few creature comforts added in to make survival mode more tolerable
Extended Lore: This mode is where I decided to plunk down all the extraneous Lore from 0xDEC0DE's Extended Mod plus my old Thraddash survival mod

Here's the changelog with the additions for all the modes: https://github.com/Serosis/UQM-MegaMod/blob/master/MegaMod%20Changelog.txt

What I'm hoping is that we can decide what things are unnecessary or too unbalanced for the different modes.
Possibly come up with even more ideas that we can jam in there to make things more interesting.


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PRH
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2019, 05:25:52 pm »

There was a bug in the MegaMod that I didn't report back when I played through it. The Umgah showed up in the outtakes after the game, even though their dialogue has no lines for the outtakes. They played the HWLD_PRE_ZOMBIE_HELLO_1 line.

I really want to try this hard mode along with the extended lore mod. I already saw how hard the game becomes after the Spathi ships leave your fleet as they slave-shield themselves.


« Last Edit: August 23, 2019, 05:05:38 am by PRH »	Logged

JHGuitarFreak
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2019, 06:49:05 pm »

That wasn't a bug per se, for some reason that followed from the HD-Mod and I haven't bothered to correct it.

Perhaps the HD devs were planning on adding another outtake specifically for the Umgah or they felt the Umgah needed a presence in the outtakes.
But I can remove it.

EDIT:

Well I thought it was from the HD-mod but the .diff patch I have for it doesn't show it in there so now I don't know where it came from.
In any case I removed it.


« Last Edit: August 22, 2019, 06:57:37 pm by Serosis »	Logged

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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2019, 04:30:13 pm »

And here's the first bug I've encountered in the new version of the MegaMod. The subtitles in Fwiffo's conversation are mistimed - some of them last too long, others change too quickly. Most of them lag behind the speech. I assume this has something to do with the Nomad mode? Just a wild guess, I have no idea why it all changed all of a sudden.

Also, there is another minor problem. The speech sometimes stutters when it starts or ends.


« Last Edit: August 24, 2019, 04:42:58 pm by PRH »	Logged

Shiver
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2019, 11:34:38 pm »

Hard mode seems like something to could use a lot of iteration to find just the right level of challenge/misery.

Quote

- Slylandro Probes dodge projectiles

Ohhhh dear. It's the super melee Slylandro, invading the campaign. This one might be more fun for people if it has more crew instead of that.

If I were to write some alternate AIs or ship variants, would you use them? I doubt I have the time for yet another Star Control project, but you never know.


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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2019, 01:42:46 am »

Quote from: PRH on August 24, 2019, 04:30:13 pm

If there were a tool out there that would help me adjust the timings while playing back the audio I would do it. Otherwise I'm not touching those .ts files.

Quote from: Shiver on August 24, 2019, 11:34:38 pm

If I were to write some alternate AIs or ship variants, would you use them? I doubt I have the time for yet another Star Control project, but you never know.

If I could get the changes to only show up in the story mode, for sure.


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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2019, 10:10:52 am »

Quote from: Serosis on August 25, 2019, 01:42:46 am

If there were a tool out there that would help me adjust the timings while playing back the audio I would do it. Otherwise I'm not touching those .ts files.

Both the .ts files and the .ogg files in the MegaMod are exactly the same as in other UQM versions. So they are not the problem here. But if not, I'm completely at a loss what might be the problem.


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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2019, 03:33:12 am »

Decided to try something out and it seems MegaMod is ignoring the .ts files.

I set all the timings to 1 which should mean the subtitles instantly cycle but they proceed at the same rate as if the audio weren't there.

So this is an in-code bug I'll have to work out.

EDIT:

Though that doesn't explain why other subtitles are aligned with the voices perfectly.

EDIT AGAIN:

So the code is loading the .ts files for some but not all the voices and I double checked to make sure all the directories were correctly spelled out.

This is a fascinating one.


« Last Edit: August 26, 2019, 03:47:06 am by Serosis »	Logged

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Krulle
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2019, 10:46:06 am »

And with "fascinating" you mean: hard to track, should be impossible, don't really know what could even cause it,....

Good luck finding something!


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PRH
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #9 on: August 26, 2019, 03:47:18 pm »

Quote from: Krulle on August 26, 2019, 10:46:06 am

And with "fascinating" you mean: hard to track, should be impossible, don't really know what could even cause it,....

Good luck finding something!

Well, since he called it "fascinating", I assume he enjoys tracking down particularly elusive bugs.


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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2019, 09:45:09 pm »

Yep.

Having to comb through the differences between my code and Vanilla to figure out what's going on.

UPDATE:

So I fixed the Spathi on my end.

PRH, Am i correct in assuming you were you using the latest MegaMod binary for testing?
If so then what happened was that I added a dialog option for the Spathi in Nomad mode called (join_us_nomad) that reuses Fwiffo's dialog so Spathi ships can join your fleet when allied.
And I was simply ignorant of the fact that I had to put that in the timestamp file. But now that I know what needs to be done I can test the rest of the dialog files that I've heard were out of sync to see if that's the case.

Standard UQM protocol is that when a single thing goes wrong in a file to just yeet the entire thing out of the system.

EDIT:
Oh, and to fix it on your end just add this:
#(join_us_nomad)

To the last line of spathi.ts inside the 3DO voices content file.


« Last Edit: August 27, 2019, 04:50:47 am by Serosis »	Logged

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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #11 on: August 27, 2019, 12:33:37 pm »

Quote from: Serosis on August 26, 2019, 09:45:09 pm

PRH, Am i correct in assuming you were you using the latest MegaMod binary for testing?

Yep, that's correct.

I've tried your fix and it worked. Thanks.


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darklord42
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2019, 09:22:47 pm »

So excited to see you are still plugging away at this. Keep up the great work!


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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #13 on: August 31, 2019, 03:30:51 am »

Hoping to do a full release before the end of next week.


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monkie
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Re: MegaMod: Hard/Easy/Nomad Mode balancing
« Reply #14 on: April 24, 2020, 10:43:53 am »

ok, i should say that sounds rather fascinating regardless of the tracking issue (however, I think IRRELEVANT LINK REMOVED program could help you with that one). I think there might be a faq and you can look through some common bugs and problems))

and well.. how is your progress going?)


« Last Edit: May 21, 2020, 06:20:29 pm by Death 999 »	Logged

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