Well, I've got the latest version running, and there's already some interesting developments...I had a lucky run on the RNG so I'm really able to test out the mod without having to scrape for cash....and it feels like there's a potential difficulty imbalance with the charon: Their strongholds are VERY hard, but when you kill one, there's a high chance you'll end up with a serious arsenal of missiles from the guards. I'm seeing how it plays out.
I'm also pleased to say that as of the next version, outlaw miners will no longer keep using those pathetic hammerhead-II guards way past St.K's. They'll have something a bit stronger.
I'm also going to be porting the work I did for Elemental Shift into a different form, reworking bits of it, then sending it to RPC for possible use in Sandbox.
Shrike's Ultimate Overhaul (DEV)
Balance is still right out of whack with the charon (I know WHY though, so I can fix it...later.). Testing's on hold for a week while I get university stuff finished. That said, the mod is looking good now I've sorted some of the more glaring price-balance issues. I'm considering a tweak to the Arena to make the slicer battle more valuable to the player....possibly involving an auto-drop of the PM6 cannon (which, it turns out, is particularly effective against Drakes even as particle weapons go). I also plan to start bringing the planned korolov tweaks back in once I've got everything *else* working. This will hopefully make the opening battle in Charon slightly less one-sided. I can see how I could really fix it even more, but I'm not fluent in script (by any measure), so I actually can't understand half to two thirds of the code I'm looking at...which means I have to brute-force stuff with what I *do* understand. On the other hand, the Messenger launcher is now very, VERY good. Maybe even too good....but I'm working on that.
I'm considering, depending on when the Mod Exchange is introduced into Transcendence, whether I could use S.U.O as a fundraiser: Charge a dollar or so for downloads for a month or so, then make it free. See, I've got myself into a rather expensive volunteer trip to Costa Rica in November-January (With International Student Volunteers, to be precise)...so if ME is up before I run out of time for paying, I might attempt use it to cover a little of the costs. It's the whole "Go out there for a month and a bit, learn some spanish, experience front-line work in conservation, and have fun" type experience. Gives me a bit of experience in field conservation work in an entirely different ecosystem to what I'm used to*, with totally different problems**, and looks rather good on my CV. I'm aware the community is really too small to charge for mods (which is why I'd only charge for the duration of the fundraiser, then drop it down to 0), but someone's gotta test the system.
Anyway. That's just an idea at this stage, may happen, may not happen. But in case it does happen, I've now given advance warning.
*Very important to my career, my degree is IN conservation (and ecology), so seeing how they do stuff would be a pretty neat help to me.
** Also important. I know the NZ conservation scene pretty well..but we're kinda odd in many ways.
I'm considering, depending on when the Mod Exchange is introduced into Transcendence, whether I could use S.U.O as a fundraiser: Charge a dollar or so for downloads for a month or so, then make it free. See, I've got myself into a rather expensive volunteer trip to Costa Rica in November-January (With International Student Volunteers, to be precise)...so if ME is up before I run out of time for paying, I might attempt use it to cover a little of the costs. It's the whole "Go out there for a month and a bit, learn some spanish, experience front-line work in conservation, and have fun" type experience. Gives me a bit of experience in field conservation work in an entirely different ecosystem to what I'm used to*, with totally different problems**, and looks rather good on my CV. I'm aware the community is really too small to charge for mods (which is why I'd only charge for the duration of the fundraiser, then drop it down to 0), but someone's gotta test the system.
Anyway. That's just an idea at this stage, may happen, may not happen. But in case it does happen, I've now given advance warning.
*Very important to my career, my degree is IN conservation (and ecology), so seeing how they do stuff would be a pretty neat help to me.
** Also important. I know the NZ conservation scene pretty well..but we're kinda odd in many ways.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Once I've got the latest IRL work out of the way, I could do with someone to help track down a crash bug.
I've narrowed it down to the Tenhove 400 auto-sentinel (the EMP version of my standard autosentinels)...removing it from the stations that have it fixes the problem. What I cannot work out, however, is WHY the presence of these ships causes the game to lock up and refuse to generate systems. I think it's either a rather fun bug with the ship itself, something strange about the way I'm setting up stations to create them, or some new and exciting bug in the game itself (unlikely, but always possible). The bug triggers as soon as the game tries to generate a system with this ship in it (it's why the original tweaks to Korolov didn't work....or....ONE of the reasons). Either way, I'm hopeful it'll be a simple fix once the exact conflict with the engine is identified.
I've narrowed it down to the Tenhove 400 auto-sentinel (the EMP version of my standard autosentinels)...removing it from the stations that have it fixes the problem. What I cannot work out, however, is WHY the presence of these ships causes the game to lock up and refuse to generate systems. I think it's either a rather fun bug with the ship itself, something strange about the way I'm setting up stations to create them, or some new and exciting bug in the game itself (unlikely, but always possible). The bug triggers as soon as the game tries to generate a system with this ship in it (it's why the original tweaks to Korolov didn't work....or....ONE of the reasons). Either way, I'm hopeful it'll be a simple fix once the exact conflict with the engine is identified.
Code: Select all
05/07/2012 21:16:10 Unable to continue due to program error.
program state: OnAnimate
program state: enter stargate, creating destination system
game state: leaving stargateMischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Here's a pastebin of the relevant code that's causing problems, if anyone feels like helping me out. I've cobbled it into a standalone minimod, but I did it in under 2 minutes so the UNIDs may be broken a little. Basically....the turrets and sentinels have been causing problems whenever I try making stations spawn them. The turrets got cut out of korolov for that exact reason
http://pastebin.com/m0QcEiiH
The bug fires on system generation whenever there's an outlaw duranium mine in the system (presumably the same would happen on a pteracnium mine). It relates in some way to the stations coding, OR the EMP sentinel itself. It does not occur (on my setup) when the EMP sentinel is removed from the game.
http://pastebin.com/m0QcEiiH
The bug fires on system generation whenever there's an outlaw duranium mine in the system (presumably the same would happen on a pteracnium mine). It relates in some way to the stations coding, OR the EMP sentinel itself. It does not occur (on my setup) when the EMP sentinel is removed from the game.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Since I haven't found it, and no one's really looked at the code, I'm ditching the EMP sentinel and designing a different ship to replace it for korolov-guarding purposes.
New things in SUO 0.55:
-Early-game tweaks to make it easier to get into things.
-Messenger missiles actually work now.
-Outlaw mines now work, and are kinda fun.
-Basic implementation of some "tweaked" enemies.
To-Do for 0.6:
-Final Final balance on Messenger missiles
-Redo parts of SM&M to make the missiles component work as designed.
-Port SM&M parts out into SM&M+
-Get back and see if Lamprey can be made to work.
-Replace hammerheads for late-game miners.
-Ultra secret additions Part 1.
To-Do for 0.65:
-Build some new ships
-Build the korolov guard-ships.
-Start work on changing korolov missions and Charon battle to be more interesting.
To-Do for 0.7
-Get the Australis Cannon working as a weapon that can actually be used, and put it on something.
-New missile for the NAMI launcher as a test.
-Review tinkers and Sapiens.
-See what can be changed about freighters to bring them into line with my concepts.
-Split drakes into two variants: Charon and Marauder. Make marauders suitably terrifying.
To-do for 0.75
-Point Juno reworking
-Rogue Fleet tweaks
-Station rebalancing in general.
-Ultra-secret additions part 2
To-do for 0.8
-Balance everything already in the mod.
-See what's missing.
-Investigate music possibilities.
-Find out how the heck the credits system works for mods so I can accredit people who've helped with stuff.
After that: add stuff in that I've identified as missing, lock content, then bugtest like crazy and release.
SUO is going to get yet another rename before release, but that's for later on. It's moved from weapons-focus to gameplay-focus (although there's plenty of weapons around, they're not the be-all and end-all), making things alternately easier and harder to see what's fun at what point. I think I'm at least half-done right now in terms of content, and about a third done in terms of balance. I now know what I'm aiming to do though, so hopefully I can release it THIS year.
One issue I've come up with: is there any way to convince the game to do hiteffects correctly on modded lasers? I'm sorta sick of my high-powered blue laser giving off bright red flashes when it hits debris/missiles.
New things in SUO 0.55:
-Early-game tweaks to make it easier to get into things.
-Messenger missiles actually work now.
-Outlaw mines now work, and are kinda fun.
-Basic implementation of some "tweaked" enemies.
To-Do for 0.6:
-Final Final balance on Messenger missiles
-Redo parts of SM&M to make the missiles component work as designed.
-Port SM&M parts out into SM&M+
-Get back and see if Lamprey can be made to work.
-Replace hammerheads for late-game miners.
-Ultra secret additions Part 1.
To-Do for 0.65:
-Build some new ships
-Build the korolov guard-ships.
-Start work on changing korolov missions and Charon battle to be more interesting.
To-Do for 0.7
-Get the Australis Cannon working as a weapon that can actually be used, and put it on something.
-New missile for the NAMI launcher as a test.
-Review tinkers and Sapiens.
-See what can be changed about freighters to bring them into line with my concepts.
-Split drakes into two variants: Charon and Marauder. Make marauders suitably terrifying.
To-do for 0.75
-Point Juno reworking
-Rogue Fleet tweaks
-Station rebalancing in general.
-Ultra-secret additions part 2
To-do for 0.8
-Balance everything already in the mod.
-See what's missing.
-Investigate music possibilities.
-Find out how the heck the credits system works for mods so I can accredit people who've helped with stuff.
After that: add stuff in that I've identified as missing, lock content, then bugtest like crazy and release.
SUO is going to get yet another rename before release, but that's for later on. It's moved from weapons-focus to gameplay-focus (although there's plenty of weapons around, they're not the be-all and end-all), making things alternately easier and harder to see what's fun at what point. I think I'm at least half-done right now in terms of content, and about a third done in terms of balance. I now know what I'm aiming to do though, so hopefully I can release it THIS year.
One issue I've come up with: is there any way to convince the game to do hiteffects correctly on modded lasers? I'm sorta sick of my high-powered blue laser giving off bright red flashes when it hits debris/missiles.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
You set HitEffect to a custom unid, which you define as a different colored laser hit effect. Look at the turbolaser and x-ray laser code in StdWeapons.xml, look at StdEffects.xml, then make your own explosions.
Download and Play in 1.9 beta 1...
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
Drake Technologies (Alpha): More hardware for combat in parts 1 and 2!
Star Castle Arcade: Play a classic arcade game adventure, with or without more features (like powerups)!
Playership Drones: Buy or restore exotic ships to command!
Other playable mods from 1.8 and 1.7, waiting to be updated...
Godmode v3 (WIP): Dev/cheat tool compatible with D&O parts 1 or 2.
The latest test of the Charon system has gone extremely well. There's a few things to tweak: Too many Corsair II's are showing up, and the attack on the korolov station is currently nearly impossible to drive-off. There's also a fuel shortage. On the other hand, the battle in general is pretty good, and the problems that cropped up were ones I already knew about, mostly.....it'll be fixed soon, once I've gone and done the other stuff on the roadmap.
Screenshots of a cheated run (like I'm gonna be taking screenshots while actually fighting this kind of battle) in the current build. NB: If you do this in the actual mod without dark matter armor, you will die. They're not brilliant, but they're the best I can get while being pushed around the place by the missile launchers on the frigates, corsairs and the fortress itself:
(There's currently a separate issue involving friendly-fire from the fortress killing off most of the weaker guards, but it only happens if you get this close with a lot of guards around [aka: try really hard to commit suicide]. That viking is probably only alive because it's a random-encounter viking-II from a marauder station.)
Important note: Blue beams are bad if they hit you. Well, technically you'll find that any beam/missile/whatever is bad if it hits you, but this one could be considered very bad if it hits you. Don't be hit by the blue beams.
Edit: Fixed images. I've also patched the game to change the difficulty. There's now a lot more guards, but they're a bit easier.
Screenshots of a cheated run (like I'm gonna be taking screenshots while actually fighting this kind of battle) in the current build. NB: If you do this in the actual mod without dark matter armor, you will die. They're not brilliant, but they're the best I can get while being pushed around the place by the missile launchers on the frigates, corsairs and the fortress itself:
(There's currently a separate issue involving friendly-fire from the fortress killing off most of the weaker guards, but it only happens if you get this close with a lot of guards around [aka: try really hard to commit suicide]. That viking is probably only alive because it's a random-encounter viking-II from a marauder station.)
Important note: Blue beams are bad if they hit you. Well, technically you'll find that any beam/missile/whatever is bad if it hits you, but this one could be considered very bad if it hits you. Don't be hit by the blue beams.
Edit: Fixed images. I've also patched the game to change the difficulty. There's now a lot more guards, but they're a bit easier.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
-
Star Weaver
- Militia Commander
- Posts: 311
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2010 10:20 pm
- Location: . . . between the stars and the warm black sky . . .
Two things that make screenshotting a live game easier:Shrike wrote:Screenshots of a cheated run (like I'm gonna be taking screenshots while actually fighting this kind of battle) in the current build.
1. Take your faveorite screenshot program and sit it to capture client area on like, ctrl-alt-f12 or something silly and out of the way. Then get AutoHotkey and bind an unused key near shoot to mimic that key. (For me, shift = fire, z = missile, x = pause, ctrl = screenshot).
2. Pause the game and then screenshot. When paused you can hit . or anything bound to stop to do single frame advance and try to catch that missile explosion at just the right time, or whatever.
The "Killing the charon" part of SUO is locked in and finished.
I accidentally had a worst-case scenario ingame, and it's evil...but beatable. If you know when to run.
I accidentally had a worst-case scenario ingame, and it's evil...but beatable. If you know when to run.
Note: All frigates bar one were fought in the first 5 minutes of charon. On average you're killing about 15 ships per minute on this particular RNG "screw you" situation, where the game throws INSANE numbers of gunships at you until you can kill a few strongholds. But it does that anyway in vanilla, so this isn't too bad.COMBAT
Enemy ships destroyed 447
Enemy stations destroyed 7
ENEMY SHIPS DESTROYED
pirate ship Kronosaurus 1
Charon frigate 5
Drake-class missileship 27
Corsair II-class gunship 52
Viking-class gunship 129
Corsair-class gunship 227
+ 6 strongholds & the fortress.
Last edited by Song on Fri Jun 08, 2012 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
It's official: Saving the korolov base in Charon is now possible. It's been a long time in the works.
It's not easy, and the freighter has a big problem with it. I'm working on it though.
I've also started work on making XMH armor less of a joke. It's going to be hyper-specialised though...in a way that is slightly, but not entirely, somewhat obeying a few of the laws of physics.
It's not easy, and the freighter has a big problem with it. I'm working on it though.
I've also started work on making XMH armor less of a joke. It's going to be hyper-specialised though...in a way that is slightly, but not entirely, somewhat obeying a few of the laws of physics.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Charon is now (almost) finished. I have two more tweaks, some testing, any tweaks coming out for that......and then that content is locked down.
I'm considering an initial release of SUO1 (including some of the weapons content and the charon changes) some time in July. After that, I'll continue work and release SUO2, with more content that would take a long time to get done by itself...as well as any fixes to SUO1. And it's not going to be called SUO on release...I'm working on getting a good name for it.
I'm considering an initial release of SUO1 (including some of the weapons content and the charon changes) some time in July. After that, I'll continue work and release SUO2, with more content that would take a long time to get done by itself...as well as any fixes to SUO1. And it's not going to be called SUO on release...I'm working on getting a good name for it.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
Charon is pretty much locked except for a few basic tweaks, and I'm adding in some changes to the Commonwealth Fleet, including a new attack cruiser that's not-quite-comparable to the Cometfall (it has seriously heavy guns, but weaker missiles). Currently there's only one in the game though..and it's on your side. I may change this later though if I can work out how ship-spawning code works. I also need to start pruning features that won't be in the initial release...the code's somewhat bloated right now with things that aren't needed.
SUO's version of Charon is both pretty similar, and pretty different to the Vanilla version...and I've worked hard on it. While I'm not spoiling too much, here's a recap, in case anyone's reading (say something!):
-Drakes now have a tactical weapons setup, and you have a weakspot to find (it's not that hard, so you don't *have* to look at the XML). Note: This is not a non-critical/critical system. You don't HAVE to hit the weakspot to kill it.
-Charon stations, in theory, do not spam as many attacks in the Charon system. In practise, this is not always the case.
-The charon fortress is completely rebalanced, and has a completely different defense profile.
-Mystery Happy Surprise Funships will be trying to kill you in Charon. In small numbers. You'll notice them.
-Stronghold-B's now have better defenses
-The Korolov station has better survivability
-Korolov rewards are changed to be a little nicer.
-Korolov will now give you a charon base map to help you out when you save them.
In short, charon is VERY different, but the basic idea is the same. Save the base (or not), kill the charon, get your reward.
What I haven't been able to fix is one of my least favourite vanilla problems: if the player kills the Kronosaurus in the Charon system and clears the system before docking at a Korolov base the player will not get the "you killed the krono!" screen, and thus cannot get Volkov. I'm not sure where to start on this, code-wise...even though I have ideas for where to fit it in, I'm worried it might result in glitches giving the player TWO volkovs. Which, while cool, is not what I want for a balanced/quality mod. I'd like to fix the problem though, so it's going to be a fun little problem for the scripting-illiterate biology student.
SUO's version of Charon is both pretty similar, and pretty different to the Vanilla version...and I've worked hard on it. While I'm not spoiling too much, here's a recap, in case anyone's reading (say something!):
-Drakes now have a tactical weapons setup, and you have a weakspot to find (it's not that hard, so you don't *have* to look at the XML). Note: This is not a non-critical/critical system. You don't HAVE to hit the weakspot to kill it.
-Charon stations, in theory, do not spam as many attacks in the Charon system. In practise, this is not always the case.
-The charon fortress is completely rebalanced, and has a completely different defense profile.
-Mystery Happy Surprise Funships will be trying to kill you in Charon. In small numbers. You'll notice them.
-Stronghold-B's now have better defenses
-The Korolov station has better survivability
-Korolov rewards are changed to be a little nicer.
-Korolov will now give you a charon base map to help you out when you save them.
In short, charon is VERY different, but the basic idea is the same. Save the base (or not), kill the charon, get your reward.
What I haven't been able to fix is one of my least favourite vanilla problems: if the player kills the Kronosaurus in the Charon system and clears the system before docking at a Korolov base the player will not get the "you killed the krono!" screen, and thus cannot get Volkov. I'm not sure where to start on this, code-wise...even though I have ideas for where to fit it in, I'm worried it might result in glitches giving the player TWO volkovs. Which, while cool, is not what I want for a balanced/quality mod. I'd like to fix the problem though, so it's going to be a fun little problem for the scripting-illiterate biology student.
Mischievous local moderator. She/Her pronouns.
"SOMETHING!" OK, I said it. Do I win something?
Nice that you're fixing all this. I always thought the whole Charon business was convoluted and weird. Took me a while to know what the the whole 'You killed the Kronosaurus!' thing was all about. First game I played I killed it and didn't notice. Thought it was another Frigate
I figured it was clearing Charon that got me Volkov. I figured it out in the end (after a couple more games...)
EDIT: Also played quite a few times since then and have once managed to save the station... and yes, it was a disappointment. Be interesting to see how the results change with your alterations.
Nice that you're fixing all this. I always thought the whole Charon business was convoluted and weird. Took me a while to know what the the whole 'You killed the Kronosaurus!' thing was all about. First game I played I killed it and didn't notice. Thought it was another Frigate
I figured it was clearing Charon that got me Volkov. I figured it out in the end (after a couple more games...)EDIT: Also played quite a few times since then and have once managed to save the station... and yes, it was a disappointment. Be interesting to see how the results change with your alterations.