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Messages - Hammish

#331
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 26, 2014, 03:34:33 AM
Nice!  Will look forward to it, then, along with the new ship.  Anything else major coming in terms of the way the weapon scripting works?  (That's been the majority of work I've been putting in on my little side project; am actually very close to dropping a version 0.1 down for people to test out the new light-class weapons and a slightly-revised skill tree for them.)
#332
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 25, 2014, 10:06:30 PM
That's about how I figured it worked, it just... doesn't seem to work in-game. :)

I actually get the same thing when I try to use the default Scatterpacks.  The mine seems to float out like it should for second and a half, looks like it explodes, but I never see any scattered projectiles come out.
#333
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 25, 2014, 03:07:17 AM
Slightly more involved question for today!  (By the way, no rush on answering any of my questions.  I don't want to get annoying or take away from work or game dev.)

How do scattering munitions work?  I see that for the Scatterpack mine, it basically just has an additional projectile field with the quantity and properties of submunitions (5 smaller mines for the Scatterpack).  It also has a Scatter Time attribute tag, but for lack of a better term I'm not really sure what each of the attributes does.  So, a few basic questions!

1.  Does the scattering take place whenever the first projectile is destroyed?  (IE, let's say I take the mine and make it a shell.  When I shoot it at something and it impacts on the hull of an enemy, will it still scatter or is it just lost?)

2.  If not, what determines when the weapon goes into 'scatter mode' and separates into the submunitions?

3.  Do weapons that scatter need to be destructible objects, with an associated .obj file, or can they be simple sprites?

Thanks in advance for any answers, or if you have an easier way to explain the process behind scattering weapons. :)
#334
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 22, 2014, 11:10:16 AM
Quick question of the day: armor value, is that a percentage of damage nullified or a flat amount off every shot that lands?  IE, if a ship has 20 total armor, is that -20 damage/attack or 20% less damage to hull?
#335
Anything you want to use, go ahead and grab it for the regular, natch.  I'm just using -your- LEGOs to build something, after all. :P

I'm looking to put a little polish on it this week as work projects allow and then toss it up early next weekend, like Friday night CST or something.  Give people a chance to play and leave comments on balance, ect.  Then I can move on to some of the other modules that are mostly just number-crunching.
#336
Figured I'd give a show of stuff I've been working on as time allows. :D

Basic weapon classes have four weapons, each at light, medium and heavy varieties.  (Still working on mines.)
Beam laser: Much like default.
Pulse laser: Much like default.
Tachyon repeater: Much like the default light plasma.
Plasma cannon: Single-shot, low speed, high damage.
Rotary AC: Much like default MG.
Burst Rifle: Fires 3-9 shell bursts, decent alpha but low DPS.
Mass Driver: Single-shot, low speed, high damage.
Clustergun: Much like the default X8 shotguns.
Rockets: Much like the default SRMs.
Guided Missiles: Much like the default LRMs.
MLRS: Fires 3-9 rockets in a short sequence, decent alpha but low DPS, about half the tracking of LRMs.
Rockets (Pod): Rocket shotgun.  Fires 10-30 rockets in a short sequence, very long reload.

Then the hybrid weapons (these require two branches of tech knowledge, i.e. Large Ballistics and Large Missiles):

Energy Torpedo (Energy/Missile): Fires a high-damage, semi-guided torpedo.  High burst, low DPS.
Fusion Beam (Energy/Ballistics): Fires a beam that does low initial damage but builds up over the span of 1.5 seconds.  (Accomplished by using multiple beams that stack with longer durations than the refire rate.  Each subsequent beam has a larger width so the fusion beam appears to 'grow' as it gains intensity.)  High energy cost, spool-up time.
Gauss Cannon (Ballistics/Energy): Long range shell, not quite hitscan but close, decent damage but low DPS.
Gyro-Stabilized Cannon (Ballistics/Missile): Rapid-fire MG with shells that have nominal guidance on them that will curve slightly toward locked targets.  (Good for larger, slower ships in trying to handle fast-moving targets.)
Fission Missile (Missile/Energy): Highest per-shot damage in the game, semi-tracking, low speed, very limited ammo, very taxing on energy systems.  (Not happy with this weapon currently, if it's possible to do it using events I'd like to make this something special like a damage-over-time from fallout or AOE.)
Kinetic Missile (Missile/Ballistics): Moderate damage, very fast speed, good tracking, massive impulse on impact.  (Designed for less combat-style characters, this weapon is designed to keep pirates off you by knocking them away.  It's actually pretty funny to use or watch.)

The general focus I've been working on is that the hybrid/high end weapons are slightly better than the base weapons, but not by much.  More importantly to me is that they all come across as unique in the end and bring something special to the table like the fusion beam, gyrostab cannon or kinetic missile.

And here's a small preview of some of the icons I've been working on.  Have had some issues with antialiasing and would welcome help with fixing this (part of it, I know, was that the actual icon files are larger than what the in-game engine uses, so it auto-scales them):

#337
Been tooling around with modding at this a bit, figured I'd toss a shout-out and see if anyone might be interesting in forming a full-on group for the development of something serious and polished.  This is such a robust yet easily-configured engine, I figure it's a shame not to do something awesome as the AT team toils away and makes regular improvements on the base game. :D

Few of the things I've been thinking about or experimenting with in terms of balance or more customizable gameplay:

Energy weapons that can replenish ammo as quickly as they use it, but with a much higher refill cost; forces a player to make some hard choices when it comes to power management and how much their gear is eating up (better shields and engines use a lot of global power limiting the amount available for guns, might make the armor option for shield slot very attractive);
Energy weapons that are the inverse, with a very slow replenish but very high DPS, making them great burst weapons but lousy on sustain;
More projectile/missile weapons that make use of the ability to program weapons that fire in salvos;
Exotic weapons: I've already come up with a few that I think are interesting, and have been running the numbers on for balance.  Standardized pulse lasers instead of the current front-loaded version, an MLRS system (that actually looks very cool when shot, IMO), and a gyro-stabilized smartgun (low DPS, but the shells have a very minute amount of tracking, great for larger ships).

A more clearly-defined sense of size and role for ships and weapon hardpoints.  In default the weapon size tiers general follow a 1x/2x/3x DPS theme; in my current mod version the modifier is 1x/1.5x/2.25x on overall DPS but with larger weapons generally having a stronger alpha/burst.  I've also fine-tuned firing arcs and tracking speeds slightly in a few directions: tracking speed is reduced on all vessels, tracking arc is reduced on small vessels (making facing more important), tracing arc is increased on the larger ships giving them less blind spots but forcing the player to think ahead on aim (those big guns turn slooooowly);

Icon updates: Nothing much here, I've just been snazzying up the icons a touch since I needed to make new ones for the weapons mentioned above anyway.  About the only claim to fame I can make is that I included the class of the weapon on the icon so you can tell at a glance if something is small, medium or large. :)

These are all just ideas, though, and recollections of things that I've done in-mod thus far.  I want more.  I want to make something epic, and it's good coding/number-crunching experience.  So if this sounds interesting or you have some input, drop a line here or we could make a Skype or Steam discussion for it.
#338
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 20, 2014, 12:02:09 AM
Rock on, and thanks again for all the help!
#339
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 19, 2014, 08:48:56 AM
Quote from: Lurler on June 19, 2014, 01:15:39 AM
Tracking is defined in the ships slots and is not linked to weapons themselves.
While homing is a property of a projectile and is specified inside the weapon.

Sorry, chose my words poorly. :)  I've tinkered with the chassis a bit and know about the tracking in there, I was referring specifically to the homing value under the projectile tag, yep.  Just curious as to what the value actually means in hard math.  If, say, a missile has a homing of 50, I figured it meant either it could continue homing if the target was within a 50-degree arc, or it could turn at 50 degrees per second, or something like that... but I wasn't sure, so I figured I'd ask.

Thanks for all of the rest of the answers, they helped a ton!  Good deal on the modding tools as well, that'll help me a ton once you toss it up given the nature I've what I've been tinkering with, mostly just some odd/exotic weapons and modules.
#340
Game discussion / Re: Question about Planets
June 16, 2014, 03:19:12 AM
Quote from: Lurler on December 10, 2013, 03:24:52 AM
This is an interesting idea. But in regards to trading we were actually thinking that a space station would "represent" one of the planets in a star system. So, you can buy things like you mentioned, but on the station, not on the planet. But if you have a particular implementation in mind please share it with us!

I have no idea how the system generator works or anything, but maybe it'd be possible to just have it either put stations over planets or at least small planets under stations.  Functionally the same as it is right now, but it'd look pretty nice and would be high on the realism scale (not that such is really all that important).  It'd have the added effect that if you ever did introduce ground aspects to the game, you now have a nice linking 'portal' mechanic; from a station you could relaunch in your ship or land on the planetary surface.

Of course, that'd also open up options like finding unoccupied planets and building new stations over them, and I think that might work pretty well with the existing systems you have.  Just make a station module or consumable that is super-expensive, and create a planet 'anchor' object since I assume right now the planets are just part of the background layer.  Use a station-in-a-box on a planet anchor and boom, it builds a station there and destroys the anchor so no further stations can be built!

And from there the sky is the limit in terms of what you want to do. :)
#341
Modding info / Re: Modding the VoidExpanse
June 16, 2014, 12:57:49 AM
Any chance you could list out what modding tools you might eventually be releasing?  Just a bit of curiosity on my part.

Without them, and this seems something that would go well on the wiki, it would be grand if we could get a list of what some of the more obscure variables mean and the settings for each.  A good example might be ammo_meter; I assume that 1 means a ballistic/missile meter and 2 means a percentage laser meter, but it'd be handy to have information like that at one's fingertips. :)

One specific one, though: for particle effects in some places it seems to list out four variables.  I figure three have to be RGB values; fourth might be luminosity or something?  Any information on this would be handy as I do a bit of my tinkering.

Edit: Two more quick questions for when someone has a second. :)  First, for homing weapons, is the listed value for homing under projectiles degrees per second of tracking?  And second, if I create an entirely new item will it automatically populate into station stores by itself or do I need to add it to a list of 'shop gear'?
#342
Man, I remember playing so, so much DF.

These days, though, it seems to be split between Stronghold Kingdoms, Wildstar, giving Star Citizen a whirl (Arena commander was just released recently, god it's a gorgeous game) and VE of course. :D  With an occasional bit of World of Tanks or ArmA3 tossed in.
#343
Game discussion / Re: Before we update
May 28, 2014, 06:03:55 AM
Quote from: kyokei on May 28, 2014, 03:55:21 AM
It's a holiday tomorrow and I have a bridge day on Friday... Satisfy my Void Expanse urge Lurler!

Mine too!  It'll -definitely- take me a lot longer to get through any content.. :)