[ian-reeds-games] Re: Another draft version of my map pack and Re: Multiplayer
- From: "Allan Thompson" <allan1.thompson@xxxxxxx>
- To: <ian-reeds-games@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 23:05:22 -0500
Hey Craig,
I was int he middle of writing an email back, but once again things happen,
sigh.
Anyway, yeah, the bug is everywhere. I just found out my bro in law got knocked
down by it, literally. Before him my other brother in law had it, and most
likely he gave it to us for xmas.
Anyway, Yeah, I think that is going to be a really neat flag.
Thanks for trying the starship maps. I beat the first six, and I am currently
tweaking the last four or so so they aren't offical in any way.
One of the things to remember is how the ai works, and how you can equal the
playing field with some of the skills you have.
Also on some of the levels are special reports. On the lyran level the engineer
tells you something very useful. On the stolen starship level, you are given
something important by your first officer. They are skills, they don't cost
anything to play, since they are only audio, but they come in handy.
Thanks for clueing me in about the turbolasers on the capital ships.
Randomness with dice rolling is going to be a huge game changer for those who
wish to implement it! I think that might add dimensions to all sorts of maps in
all sorts of diffrent ways. especially that flak feature you are talking about.
That will be very cool.
Back in the old caveman days of video games, like circa 1983 or so I had a
Mattel Electronics intellivision. It was the competition against against the
huge atari 2600.
Anyway, Intellivision had this cool thing called a voice module. It then
released several games that had literal talking voices, very understandable
voices. Male, female, even one with a southern accent. It was fantastic. Well,
they had made this game called b17 bomber. You flew a b17 during ww2 from
england to germany and dropped bombs on their low resolution 8bit nazi
supporting pixels! During the trip, you had to fly the plane, but if you ran
into german air screens, you had the machine guns at four positions, namely
front, back and either side. The germans would fly acorss the screen shooting
at you, and you would try to shoot them down. If you blew it, you got three or
four bullet holes in your screen and that gunner was toast.
When it was time to drop you played navigator, and your ability to drop bombs
were based on how high or low you were, and how fast, so it was always tough
to estimate where the bombs will drop.
Now, it was possible for the navigator to bite the bullet, which means you
don't get any crosshairs. If the plane gets really shot up, you have to try to
keep it level and up in altitude and that was nerve wracking. You had to worry
about your gas, and there was a number of times that I coasted back over the
channel on fumes. It was perhaps the best game the system ever had.
Well, the whole point of this was the flak. When you got closer to your target
in europe, you started to get flak. Sometimes it hit the plane, and you would
get the rumble and alert, and someone telling you to "watch for flak". It
would show up like black puffs and you could see it thru all the diffrent
screens of the plane.
Naturally, the higher you were in altitude, the less flack you got, but also
the slower the terrain underneath passed, and it became really hard to judge
where the target will be. If you fly closer, the flak literally becomes crazy,
your plane gets multiple hits all the while you are trying to drop some bombs.
What that has to do with star wars? I don't know. I just thought I would tell
you about it, cause of the word flak. So I see where you are going with that
more or less and I like it alot.
Multiplayer is one of those things that I am not interested in, but for the
sake of the game, might be a necessity to reach a broader group of people. How
that will work is really kind of tough. I would imagine it would not be two
people facing off real time, or maybe if it was, then maybe there would be a
real time option for those who want to go head to hhead at a specific time, or
a more by move game where one player moves his units, the other gets the update
at some point later on and then makes their move and vice versa.
As long as my prefered one player play is not disturbed, it doesn't bother me.
al
"The truth will set you free"
Jesus Christ of Nazareth 33A.D.
----- Original Message -----
From: Craig Brett
To: ian-reeds-games@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 6:05 PM
Subject: [ian-reeds-games] Re: Another draft version of my map pack and Re:
Multiplayer
Hi Allan,
That sounds pretty rough, hope you're all better soon (or by now).
There's a lot of nasty bugs going around here in the UK (though it's
entirely possible you live here too).
I don't blame you, the Death Star test will hopefully eventually turn
into a pretty cool boss map. You won't have to kill it outright, don't
worry! I'm thinking just the Ties that come in later on. But I'm not
even sure about that, yet. Then... well then you have to go into the
trench.
No, you're not supposed to be able to attack Tie Fighters with the
standard main gun of the cruisers. I'm going to change that from an
attack to a turbo laser cannon of some kind so it's a bit more plain.
The cruisers use anti-fighter flak on fighters that share the same
space as them. This flak uses a different action type to normal, since
it's all done automatically by computers and stuff. Cruisers could
fight fighters and large vessels at once. This will be even better
if/when random comes in, if I can make flak hard to hit but very
damaging if it does.
I tried your Starship battles campaign. It looks fun! I can't beat any
missions yet, it just means I have to try harder lol. I like the amount
of different actions you can perform. There's a fair amount of strategy
that could go into a battle, except, it would seem, from me.
The new not moving until seen thing will come in handy for me I'd
imagine. I'll give it a try if ever I get some free time :) Good work
Ian.
Regarding multiplayer, as much as it would be cool, I feel as if it
would add a huge new dimension to things. Maps will go from simply
getting around AI challenges to trying to keep things either evenly
balanced or in some way fun for both players. Not necessarily a bad
thing, but it would involve whole new map packs needing to be written
as well as the code.
Which model would we want for multiplayer: A single server somewhere
where people connect and challenge each other or look for random
opponents, or a person to person connection where you type in the IP of
another player to connect to directly? The second is the one that was
requested in the original feature request, but there's definite bonuses
to having a central place for everyone to connect. Something to think
about. From an audio games perspective, to compare the two approaches,
Swamp uses a server approach whilst Top Speed used a person to person
approach.
I hope you're all well,
Craig
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