Anyone interested in a Modding Competition?

[Ttech]

P.S. This is my 1000th post

congrats!

[PM]

Another cheap trick: Custom ship sprites and bitmask that are completely (empty) black. Who cares how big the sprite is if the missiles pass through the (invisible) ship.

I agree with Atarlost that it is a "cheese competition".

[RPC]

Well, if it is a "cheese competition", how about I heighten the stakes then?
Proposed rules:
1. You can only use a Vanilla gunship.
2. You can add weapons (up to level 7 and no more than 40 levels combined on a ship)
Instead of capital ships, managing multiple ships is a lot harder. Therefore:
3. You can have a squad of 5 gunships, with each device on every ship counting towards the limit.
4. The only changes with script can be made using an event handler.
Anything I missed?
If the rules are ok, then I suggest one week to code and plan and judging should be done by having an invisible ship (no targetable and all shots pass theough) viewing the battle, and the .sav file should be uploaded for peer review.
All entries should enter in a tournament-style elimination.
Since T can have multiple results from one configuration, a panel of 5 judges should view each battle, and squads that win 3/5 matches should advance.

[Drako Slyith]

That all sounds good, but why does all coding have to be done in an event handler?

[RPC]

I'm trying to make it portable (event handlers also have limitations on some events, so it's partly to limit some sort of cheating) so that I can use some nifty AI tricks if the competition turns out some great AI

[Drako Slyith]

Yeah, but how about this:
-Code can be put on either a ship or an event handler
-Code cannot edit the ship in any way (not armor, not weapons, not cargo hold)
-Code can teleport ships, but only once every 16 seconds, and the ship must have a jumpdrive counting towards the level total (each jumpdrive cuts the time in half, but counts toward total)
-Code cannot spawn more ships
-Code cannot edit the other ship in any way

Essentially, all it leaves is AI, but you can do both squad AI and individual ship AI.

[RPC]

Ok, sure. Just finalize the rules and set the time then

[Drako Slyith]

One thing though that I'm worried about is the ship maneuverability balance. A small ship with high maneuverability will beat a larger ship with the same equipment. There should be some sort of limitation to the maneuverability and speed which scales to the maximum level. The only solution I can think of is to have a stock ship everyone uses (or a small selection of them) and then have everyone equip their ship as the want. I'd rather allow more flexibility, but I can't think of how.

[RPC]

One thing though that I'm worried about is the ship maneuverability balance. A small ship with high maneuverability will beat a larger ship with the same equipment. There should be some sort of limitation to the maneuverability and speed which scales to the maximum level. The only solution I can think of is to have a stock ship everyone uses (or a small selection of them) and then have everyone equip their ship as the want. I'd rather allow more flexibility, but I can't think of how.

I think that's an okay thing to have, and the designer should take that into consideration. If a larger ship has issues shooting, then it should use beam weapons and/or Omni weapons.
If the player can exploit either of those things, I think it's ok if the AI does too.

[Drako Slyith]

I really do think that there has to be some limitations to maneuverability. Maybe set it so you get 28 total levels plus 1/2 the maneuverability. Then you can have a fast ship but it has to limit its equipment, or you can have a massive ship that can have many weapons (but we have to limit it, so you can't make an invincible ship with 100000 maneuverability. Maybe 70 maneuverability - which gives 63 levels.

[RPC]

Ok, sure.

[RPC]

Ok, did this idea die?

[Drako Slyith]

I don't think so, it's just that someone needs to get around to writing out the official rules and then hosting it. I can do this if no one else wants to.