Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

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jrb00001
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby jrb00001 » Wed Jul 13, 2016 5:24 pm

Offlithium wrote:for a wiki we can use Wikia. I think I made a RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 wiki with it (but I have gotten banned a few years ago because apparently Captain's Edition doesn't have a cheese missile yet.)(and yes it is FREE)

It looks like wikia uses the same syntax as mediawiki but I prefer a fully featured mediawiki. Wikia isn't free (as in speech), it is only free (as in beer).
EmpressLexi
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby EmpressLexi » Wed Jul 13, 2016 10:06 pm

Gencool wrote:
Thoughts?




I absolutely love what you've made, it looks so cool and the ideas for the races and abilities for each are absolutely amazing~
kcd.Spektor
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby kcd.Spektor » Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:18 am

Gencool wrote:Thoughts?

1. Overall - all ideas and sprites are good, but for a standalone game.

2. Problem is that in Tachyon sprites have only 4 directions.
In the combat mechanic that you suggest all sprites can be rotated towards mouse pointer at any time.
Example: If I look to the right but I click on the bottom left corner, where should the laser projectile fly, and what angle should it's sprite have?

3. The idea for different movements speed is good, and I already have this planned, but it will probably be added when I implement mob fighting, or even later.

4. Best thing I like here is the special attacks, like grenades and such. I will try to take this into consideration when I'll be implement the mob fights.

5. Also we already have races defined in the first post. And they are a bit different.

But I really like that someone actually started giving suggestions.
kcd.Spektor
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby kcd.Spektor » Thu Jul 14, 2016 7:20 am

Also ideas are welcome for how you see the combat mechanic and controls for it.
Let's have a brainstorm, trow out any ideas, so we can com up with the best one.
Manters
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby Manters » Thu Jul 14, 2016 9:34 am

kcd.Spektor wrote:Also ideas are welcome for how you see the combat mechanic and controls for it.
Let's have a brainstorm, trow out any ideas, so we can com up with the best one.


I was thinking about some ideas, and I came up with some things.
If we use rifles, it could work like this: Press CTRL to rotate player sprite to the mouse on screen and right click to fire weapon. I'm not sure if the engine could acutally do it, but can't the debris sprites rotate on their own? I'm pretty sure we could replicate that for player aiming.

I also had an idea for speceals, but not as grenades. I wqs thinking they'd be more like an item that modifies the tile it was deployed on. EX. The humans would deploy a barricade, the spiders would deploy a web that slows/traps players for a little while.

The grenades, if we keep them, could have a throw meter. You hold right click and the meter builds. If you tap right click, it throws a grenade two tiles in the direction the player is facing. If you charge, it goes from three to five. It also passes through open doors, and grenades fall to the floor at a closed door.
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Gencool
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby Gencool » Thu Jul 14, 2016 9:47 am

Ha, no worries! I love coming up with stuff like this.

I figured the point was to eventually turn this into a standalone game? Also, I actually based the ideas on the suggestions from the first post (they didn't seem fleshed out yet)
They're written with playable races in mind, so I appreciate that some of it might be tricky to implement with AI, but it's probably a good idea to solidify what the races are going to be before starting on mobs, and part of that is figuring out how they work for the player. Hopefully each is unique enough to make them interesting (and distinct from FTL)

With the aiming, you don't need to rotate the sprite- if you look at ranged combat in FTL, they have u/d/l/r and a sprite aiming into each corner. The crew uses the sprite that fits the best, while the projectile moves at whatever angle it needs to.
This could only be turned on when aiming/extinguishing (each race would have a visible 'attacking' stance when holding shift), leaving standard movement as is.

That said, I think having interact tied to the mouse and it's direction from the player, rather than the players walking direction, might help make navigating ship doors feel a little bit smoother.

With twinstick shooters, you can generally aim and move in two different directions (check out Gungeon). In your example, the sprite would use 'aim d/l', but would move right. Since it's moving backward, the spite could also use a walk cycle (4 frames) played backwards. Best bit is, being a literally top-down view, you only need to animate 2-3 sets of walk cycles for this, the rest can be handled by rotating the sprite 90 degrees (either in the sheet or in-engine)


Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read the suggestions, I know I didn't comment for a few hundred pages then sprang out of nowhere with an essay, I just got over excited ^^
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff
kcd.Spektor
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby kcd.Spektor » Thu Jul 14, 2016 11:47 am

Problem is that having sprites rotated crates issues.
The only rotated sprites I use are weapons, projectiles and debris.
And you may have noticed that when one of these sprites goes close to the window border the rotation is not applied.
This is due to the fact that I need to cut off parts of the sprites when they are rendered inside an ingame window that is smaller than the entire game window like sensors system interface foe example.
If I don't cut out part of the image then it would stick outside of the sensors screen.
The engine than I'm using does not allow to first take a sprite, rotate it, then cut out part of the rotated image.
Technically I think there is a way to do this but this means I would need to create new rotated images many times per sec, and that makes the game lag out as shit.
So I decided that I will keep rotation only for debris, weapons and projectiles, and only apply rotation when a sprite fully fits the window that it is rendered in.

So sadly this denies the possibility to use sprites rotated to mouse.

Way I see it is that when you shoot - the projectile from your gun will only fly in 1 of 4 directions in a straight line.
And I'm struggling with making up the combat mechanic based on this limitation.
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Gencool
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby Gencool » Thu Jul 14, 2016 2:15 pm

Ok, it got buried in words, but watch what happens I'm FTL when you walk through a room with enemy crew in it. This is the best solution.


I.e.
8 directional sprites (u/d/l/r/ul/ur/dl/dr)
Projectile fires in a straight line to target

It's not visually perfect, but it fits the best of both worlds - full 360 aiming, no sprite rotation.
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- Gencool (aka Puppetsquid) -- I make weird stuff
Manters
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby Manters » Thu Jul 14, 2016 4:21 pm

Suppose we could do it without sprite rotation, let's say that we have three sprites per direction, and the one closest to the pointer being used.

Let's say for facing right. One sprite for upper right diagonal, one for forward facing, and one for downer right diagonal. And they snap to the direction you fire for about 10 frames, let's say, if you're moving in another direction.

But, the small arms fire is weapons fire, so you could apply sprite rotation to that, could you?
jrb00001
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Re: Hurray! Another multiplayer clone project. :)

Postby jrb00001 » Thu Jul 14, 2016 6:01 pm

kcd.Spektor wrote:The engine than I'm using does not allow to first take a sprite, rotate it, then cut out part of the rotated image.

Wrong! You can use FBOs to render to a texture and then render it again without any noticeable performance hit (everything related to FBOs is handled by the GPU).