ID:116980
 
I've updated the demo again, the updates are as follows:


Ver 0.6
-Added Assist Turret*
-Further Balanced the tanks**

-Added Fade in/out overlay for booting, map selection and respawns. It looks lovely.
-Added an automatic Music changer. Fades out and starts a new song every minute.
-Added "Score to win" selection in Startup Config. Range: 10 - 100, increment: 5
-Upated most Turf icons with new textures
-Added a temporary fix for screen lag bug (Fixed for Byond 490). Pressing "~" (Tilde) should clear up the lag.
-Modified the way icons are saved. The game now generates it's icons at runtime through a loading screen. Filesize is now much smaller.
(ten minutes later)
-Modified the way icons are saved, again. The game now generates them only if the current files do not match the files needed for gameplay. A short resource check is run at startup.


*Assist Turret: The assist turret plays a lot like the medic in TF2. Holding down primary fire will slowly heal all nearby teammates and yourself. The only weapon on the assist Turret is the secondary machine gun.

The AI works with this better than I expected. If there are any nearby teammates the AI Assist tank will actively heal and follow one of it's allies. However, if an enemy gets too close, or if there are no allies nearby, it will use it's secondary gun to defend itself. It still openly engages in combat, let me know if you would prefer that it flees.

** Balancing: Slowed down the faster tanks and sped up the slower ones, the changes are not very noticeable but they make a difference. The faster tanks also have less health, and the overpowered weapons like the shotgun and the spike chassis do less damage now. Heavier tanks also gained a bit more health.

Edit: Also, I modified the city map to make it a bit harder to spam the bottom left corner, though it didn't help much I think.


Let me know what you guys think ={P (Fuck yeah, Mustache!)
Looks awesome man, Good job.
Love it as usual. Seeing your work and how you improved from your ISO naruto to games like darkness and tanx makes me want to start taking my developing seriously for a change.
I would've stuck with the iso Naruto game if it didn't turn into such a clusterf*** of bugs and glitches. Besides that, It would have needed really good effects and I'm not the kind to icon detailed animations. The tanks are about the best I can do.
Oh also, multiplayer should work just fine, try it out if you'd like!

Just remember to press " ~ " to fix the visual lag bug.

If you can't find the ~ key, it's on the top left of your keyboard, just under Escape (usually)
I think flamethrowers are bugged. they don't seem to deal any damage at all.

I like the changes to spikes, much more balanced. For the ranged weapons, you might want to try coming up with some sort of scale to help you balance power/speed/etc. It seems like the heavier hitting weapons(sniper rifle especially) tend to be near useless because of the low fire rate and slow as balls aiming speed. With how unreliable they are, they would have to be able to pretty much take out lighter tanks in 1 shot to be of any real value. The shotgun fires a bit faster than I think it should, IMO. the shotgun should be firing more the sniper's speed, especially considering its spread and moderate damage output.

The assist tanks seem to have some pretty wonky AI, they like to hover near you, but just out of range so you have to chase them into a corner to get any repairing done.
1. They do damage but I've been thinking it might be a bit too low for a while now. Thanks for confirming my suspicion, the damage for flamethrowers will be boosted.

2. I'll speed up the swivel and firing speed of the sniper just a bit and I'll lower the firing rate of the shotgun, just a bit though. Hopefully I hit a sweet spot for them with the next version.

3. The Assist AI is running off the same tracking code as the enemy AI, it just targets friendlies instead of enemies. I'll fix this so that it comes in closer so that it doesn't wander off.

Since this is mostly balancing stuff, I'll release 0.6_1 in about ten minutes, I'd like to get it as good as I can for the night.
Cool, I'll be here to go through it again.

How long do you figure it will be before we can choose our own loadouts(and thus really test the balance of things). As it is, I have to play through 2-3 rounds to play around with all of the weapons, and even then I occasionally die almost immediately before getting a chance to try it out thoroughly. I played for 10 minutes and got the shotgun once, then was thoroughly trounced by 2 spike tanks not 15 seconds later.
Well, I'm eventually going to implement a weight system as well. Your speed will be based on the weight of your turret and the weight capacity of the chassis (excluding the spike chassis).

Your speed will initially be very high and depending on the weight cap of the chassis it will be reduced. If you go over the weight cap, your speed is automatically halved after all the normal calculations. So putting a sniper onto a tri base won't be a good idea, however putting on a Mk.II or the standard base will still be reasonable. And then if you put a light turret on a heavy base, you're looking at a lack of firepower.

I'm hoping to get this system working by 0.8 (maybe 0.7). Then you'll be able to freely choose your turret and base for the next round.
Very nice, though I still suggest some kind of balancing scale if you don't have a solid one aside from the weight method.

The only established one I've ever really looked at was, IIRC, called a zero sum scale, wherein every stat is given a value, either positive or negative, and you try to balance those stats so that the total sum is 0(or some positive/negative number depending upon the tier of the piece of equipment).

For weapons power, spread, and swivel rate would be positive aspects, while fire rate, reload rate(assuming you implement it), and weight would be negative ones. For bases, weight cap and health would be positive, while speed and bounding box size would be negative.

Obviously, since 2 of the 3 negative aspects aren't actually implemented yet, you can't expect to have a properly balanced system based on this method, but it's something to consider if you haven't already.

And I'm rambling agaaiiiinnnnn. I need to stop doing that. Oh well.
For some reason the tanks' guns refuse to follow my mouse and there is a long delay before I can shoot after pressing the mouse button. I doubt it's because my computer's slow because I can move around perfectly and see other tanks shooting :S
Nah, this is all really helpful so please, go on about it as much as you'd like. I never even heard of the zero scale system so now I'm gonna look into it. Thanks!
It's actually because your comp is slow. The problem is that the mouse uses Javascript to get the screen position. So, unless you're on a dual core, it's going to chug along when it comes to the targeting.

I have the same issue myself, but fear not! I'm looking into it and I expect to have it working much better for 0.7 =P
Well, I suppose I could make up a few examples of it in action.

For Weapons:

Power - +1 point
Spread- +1 point/bullet fired
Swivel- +1 point per 90 degrees/second
RoF - -1 point per .2 second delay
Reload- -1 point per second
Weight- -1 point per unit of measure

Standard gun:

Power = +1 /Total of 1
Spread= +1 /Total of 2
Swivel= +2 /Total of 4
RoF = -2 /Total of 3
Reload= -2 /Total of 1
Weight= -1 /total of 0

This gun would be weak, have low spread, with decent swivel rate, rate of fire, reload speed, and be very light. Great for lighter tanks that are going to play a run&gun or support role in battle and may need to get out quickly. Delay is 0.4 seconds between shots w/ 1 second reload speed.

Sniper rifle:

Power = +5 /Total of 5
Spread= +1 /Total of 6
Swivel= +1 /Total of 7
RoF = -3 /Total of 4
Reload= -2 /Total of 2
Weight= -2 /total of 0

This gun deals very heavy damage, but is slow, both in aiming and in fire rate, takes 2 seconds to reload, and has a moderate weight. Good for long range support and experienced players with good aim.

Chain gun:

Power = +1 /Total of 1
Spread= +1 /Total of 2
Swivel= +4 /Total of 6
RoF = -1 /Total of 5
Reload= -2 /Total of 3
Weight= -3 /total of 0

This gun deals little damage per hit, but fires quickly enough to make up for it. It can aim quickly and pepper an area with light damage, or it can pelt a single tank at full force dealing large amounts of damage. It has a 2 second reload time, and a weight of 3.

Tanks:

Health- +1 point/10 hp(1 hp = 1 damage)
Speed - +1 point per meter/s
Weight- -1 point/deducted from default 4
Size - -1 point/2p added on each side

Standard base:

Health = +1 /Total of 1
Speed = +2 /Total of 3
Weight = -2 /Total of 1
Size = -1 /Total of 0

A small tank with low health and speed. Has a mid-range weight capacity.

Fast base:

Health = +1 /Total of 1
Speed = +3 /Total of 4
Weight = -3 /Total of 1
Size = -1 /Total of 0

A light, fast, tank with low health. Slightly larger to accommodate the parts necessary for higher speed, and with a reduced weight cap to allow for greater maneuverability. It can only equip the lightest weapons.

Huge base:

Health = +2 /Total of 2
Speed = +1 /Total of 3
Weight = -0 /Total of 3
Size = -3 /Total of 0

A large, slow, armored tank that can equip anything, but is an obvious target and can't do much to get out of the way of bullets.


As I made this, I was forced to go back and revise other weapons because I realized that they were either over or underpowered in one area or another and had to rebalance things a few times before I was happy with it. This is probably the biggest reason to use a visual scale for these things, it gives you a obvious reference of when things aren't consistently balanced. It makes you think, wow, why is this at 10 points before I start taking things away, it's going to be really broken.

IMO, something like this is really a necessity for this kind of game, where you want things to be based more on skill than what equipment a player chose, and while it isn't imperative that you use THIS system, you should definitely use SOMETHING to give you a good reference to compare things with.
Damn! I'll look into that o__o

Though I'm not going to be including reloads, so I'll balance it with something else.


As for the pause that happens in and the little "please wait..." that come sup. Yeah.. I just fixed that XD

Turns out it was a while() loop that I had overlooked and ended up bogging it down. All fixed now! There's still the 4-5 second resource check at the start, but I can probably just disable that.
Just updated to 0.6_5.


Ver 0.6_5
-Fixed the startup delay bug
-Fixed the Spike Chassis bug that caused damage to allies
-Fixed the behavior of Assist AI's
-Improved responsiveness of mouse targeting with high mob density.
-Balancing, balancing everywhere.


Enjoy =P