TW RPG in development

[DankNuggets]

if you're still planning on starting with the 4 ships (wb,jav,spid,terr) and keeping the shark as an initially locked ship--

i like the idea of giving the terrs/sharks a higher % of the flag bonus as they're often the only ships that are solely working for flag. terrs in pubs now may not fall into that consideration, but i get the feeling that there won't be much LT'ing or other options for terrs to earn points w/o staying in base in the new arena. however, (correct me if i'm wrong) flag bonuses in purepub don't give you points directly, just increase your bounty; so an idea might be to give terrs a direct point bonus from the flag where other ships just get the increased bounty from it. They'll still get plenty of kills with bursts and if they continue to receive greens from teammates, they'll be working with a higher bounty when the get kills, giving them more points per kill than most other ships.

I'm not sure how the points are going to be allocated- if points can be used to upgrade anyship, then you might be better off reducing the cost for terrs, but if they're specific to the ship you earned them in you could do something like i mentioned above. This is mainly to keep people from terring at first to earn a lot of points and then using them to upgrade another ship w/o have to work that hard at it.

with the sharks, since only a limited # of ppl could be sharks, they might be fine with just getting kills off of mines b/c there won't be an option to quickly change to shark, repel the mines, and then change back to another ship. Theoretically, the first person to be a shark might go 100-0 by mining alone since no one can repel the mines.

wow that's a lot to read at once so here's my bottom line: since the shark is unlockable i wouldn't reduce the upgrade costs, and i wouldn't reduce the terr's either unless it is unfeasiable to simply give them points for controlling flag

[gdugwyler]

Working out the stat increases -- terrs and sharks will have cheaper upgrades, probably significantly cheaper, and have maybe a 50% bonus on flag-holding jackpots ... But this still means they'll need to earn much of their upgrades by making kills, which is not all that frequent. I know that mines do make their share of kills when placed properly, and bursts work pretty well for a terr, even if they don't come up that frequently. (Terrs will have to start with a burst, it looks like, or else their chances of making many kills from the beginning will be crippled badly.)

Question is, how much cheaper should shark and terr upgrades be, in direct relation to how often they're able to make kills compared to, for example, a WB -- which is probably a good middle ground between spider and jav in the hands of an experienced player in base. If a WB is 100% cost, would terr be about 50%, and shark 60%?... help me out here; will save a lot of time in the long run.

[gdugwyler]

i know its still in development, but any idea when some form of the tw rpg will be out to play in? end of summer? end of the year?

I want to have a testable version rolled out by the end of the summer, maybe end of August if things go right. Things are busy at the moment, but still mulling it over a lot.

It'll probably come out with 4 ships available at the start: WB, Jav, Spider, and Terr, with Shark unlockable. This will make it a bit easier, concentrating on the core basing ships.

The map is essentially done. Took the pub map and modified it fairly significantly, but recognizably. A lot of the changes are scale -- lower base is smaller, but with the left and right entrance tubes easily accessible and sometimes as much as 4-5 tiles wide for easy passage. This will make mid much more accessible, so mid has been made both wider and taller. Finally the FR has been opened up slightly, and ears are 1 tile larger in each direction. Safes are removed, all tiles are completely reworked (looking unusual but damn good), and -- there's an upside-down base to the south which will hold the second flag. Might work it out so that this flag is only accessible when there's a certain number of people in the game, probably 40+. I think it won't be needed at all while it gets off the ground ... having a second flag in an entirely different base will actually most likely hurt play for too small a number of people .. but having it as an option will give the game room to grow.

Another thought is having one team spawn generally higher than center, and one slightly lower. This would give one team a natural inclination to go to the top base, and the other to the bottom, so that you could sort of have a home base you generally guard, and an assault base to try to take. This might fix the problem with a small number of players and two bases... it could still have tension even with only a few people around -- real turf to call your own.

Other news: levi modification is going well. Without any hints, this ship will require some thought to unlock... It will be a heavy EMP ship, meaning sharks will not have EMP (but will get some light gun options to compensate). This means it can disable almost the entire base for a few seconds ... a very desirable teammate. The damage will be low, but it can still make kills with this close to the point of detonation. Compensating for its loss of standard heavy bombing, the levi now has decent (not great) rotation, and a very high top speed (!). The top speed is balanced by a very low thrust, making the ship still unmaneuverable ... though if it has a straight line to travel in, it can get out of a bind.

[DankNuggets]

i know its still in development, but any idea when some form of the tw rpg will be out to play in? end of summer? end of the year?

[Nickname]

I get to be Gandalf, called it bitches!

[gdugwyler]

Thanks for the tip re: the zone on Cosmic Rift. Sounds interesting, maybe a little something like the Empires mod for BF and CS:S? With this particular idea I'm not really trying to create anything particularly new or different than what is essentially TW pub basing. It remains, at least for me, one of the most enduringly enjoyable forms of play -- to be honest the only thing in all SS zones (short of an occasional event) in which I can take any kind of joy whatsoever anymore. Basically I'm looking to adapt that already fantastic concept that has been tuned and refined over the years into something that involves incremental improvements ... something that makes each kill and each successful base seige and defense worthwhile.

As which frequency/army you are on will be fixed, it may also encourage recruitment of particular players based on their upgrade choices and skillsets for large amounts of credits to other armies (perhaps even private ones, hard though it might be for them to take and hold flags).


DP, thanks for the offer for testing. The game will definitely need a small core group of players to make sure everything is working and balanced. Possibly a credit bonus can be given to these patient individuals at the official opening, making them a bit ahead of the pack at the start -- maybe they'll look a little like the heroes of an army, who knows ... (given at least enough to buy one of the needed support ships, such as a terrier). If anyone else is interested, please drop a note. It might be a little painful at times, as fair warning, but good fun as well.

[Cracker Jack Man]

Taking most of this project on personally. The basic functionality of the bot is done and working, and coordinates with the database. The initial release will see a small featureset, though all ships implemented ... if the project is successful and enough people want to play, development will continue post-release.

www.cosmicrift.com

Look into the Rogue Trader zone.

If you think Cosmic Rift is a copy of Subspace, your right. The same person that made SS made CR (and Infantry for that matter). CR just became free again because Sony realized no one would pay for a 2d space game.

[Cracker Jack Man]

lets hope that this isnt another ssce hyperspace

I went to school with one of the coders for that... he got hired by Nintendo right out of high school. I think thats why it failed.

[duel pasta]

If you need people to test it, I'll be glad to help

[gdugwyler]

Taking most of this project on personally. The basic functionality of the bot is done and working, and coordinates with the database. The initial release will see a small featureset, though all ships implemented ... if the project is successful and enough people want to play, development will continue post-release.

[roxxkatt]

who have you chosen to do the bot coding?

[gdugwyler]

But make sure there is a way to "sell" back stuff you buy with those points.. if that's the sort of system you are developing. That way if I want to toss the points around... no penalties.

Was it Guild Wars that has an interesting system for doing that?

The upgrades will be scrappable, so you can sell them back, but at a loss. At the moment the amount of loss is not decided. For the sake of fun it might be placed at a higher level to encourage some stat play. But I think that the buyback rate shouldn't also be 100%, to encourage some thought in how points are allocated. Here's generally how it will work:

Total energy
Recharge
Top speed
Rotation
Thrust
(Guns if available)
(Bombs if available)
X-Radar (available to all players but at dramatically different costs -- for terrs it's an upgrade early on, but if a WB would like it, it's probably one of the last things the person will choose due to budget)
Special abilities 1-4

The cost of the 5 main stats will double with each purchase, and for each ship the costs will be different. For example, the costs may be 15, 12, 21, 17 and 14 for the first level of each, making second level be 30, 24, 42, 34, and 28 ... it will become more advantageous to upgrade certain things earlier rather than later because of this. The costs probably won't be quite so varied as pictured here, however.

At the moment players will earn 1 point for every kill if they do not hold the flag, points equal to the "level" of the player killed (up to a max of 10 levels above) as determined by number of upgrades, and I believe double the first number if they hold both flags. There will also be some kind of jackpot when your freq holds both flags for a certain amount of time. The amount of time needed may be dependent on the number of players in the arena.

wow if you get this up and running tw might lose all its players, i know i'd make the switch

It'll be in the subarena distension, so no worries there. Might draw away from other arenas, though, you're right.

just a thought about reduced starting stats: if you were to start all ships that have bombs with lvl one bombs and force them to upgrade (if you can even make it so that you can upgrade bomb lvls) it wouldn't make too much of a difference with the jav but if the levi started out with reduced speed/rotation and had to deal with reduced bomb radius it would make it rather difficult to not get annihilated by the "beginners" in wbs (assuming they've got lvl three bullets).

Only javs, levis, and sharks will have bombs, since the idea of this game will be to maintain the large distinction between ships that I think makes TW one of the most entertaining zones to play. However, yes, bombs will be upgradeable. I think javs are slated for L3 bombs (very costly), though if this is the case the radius of effect will not be as high as it is currently, with L4 having a radius similar or slightly higher to current L3, and just available to levis, which may become more of an EMP-based ship, and sharks given something (perhaps light guns) to replace their lack of EMP. The levi in turn would be made slightly faster, and would be able to attach from starting bounty.

Also maybe throw in a Thor's Hammer every now and then?
oh and you could give sharks higher level mines as an incentive or maybe burst

Not to give too much away, but WBs will have a thor available later on in their development. Sharks may have upgradeable mines, but the jump between the two levels might be too much. We'll have to see... they'll receive quite a few more points from jackpots at any rate.

Re: Priit releasing the code, while it's misleading as a sentence I wouldn't actually want to be involved in the project, short of some ideas, which everyone will have and want to contribute I'm sure. The "we" was more meant to mean "the community," despite the phrasing.

[duel pasta]

I was a bit slow to notice this .... but why we? Are you implying you would be one of the people trusted with the code? :P "They" would be more appropriate.

Dugwyler can be trusted witht he source, I'm sure.

[DJSlayer]

Or when Priit finally releases the code to Cont to a few trusted coders so that we can overhaul it and update it with all everyone's learned over the past 10 years about designing.

I was a bit slow to notice this .... but why we? Are you implying you would be one of the people trusted with the code? :P "They" would be more appropriate.

[Doc Flabby]

Or when Priit finally releases the code to Cont to a few trusted coders so that we can overhaul it and update it with all everyone's learned over the past 10 years about designing.

Hopefully before someone hacks the client apart & creates a new one in the mean time.