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EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 v2.1

For public discussion of all things EXU2.

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User avatar WhirlWindWabbit
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 [9/22/10]

Post Posted: 06 Oct 2010, 22:49

Just to keep it brief on my part:

I usually go with "the best of both worlds". I agree that while playing a first person shooter game (or a fast paced game as well), I don't want to stop for 60 seconds to read on something. 60 seconds may not seem like much, but trap a player in an uneventful environment for 60 seconds, and you'll be surprised how much that single minute will affect them. We perceive time differently while playing a game, both positively and negatively. On the other hand, there are people who enjoy reading things in games, even in a first person shooter. So the optimal solution for this is that the core of the story is presented to the player within the game itself; just enough to make it clear what is going on and what kind of a message you want to send across to the person playing your game. How you do this is entirely up to you. Translator messages, audio logs, kinematics, you name it. On top of all that, you can opt to include additional information for the people who are interested in reading up on more, either with unlock-able content, hidden messages etc; the sky is the limit. This also increases the replay value of a game.

But in your case I still recommend you leave things fairly simple, since it's a project for an old game, and even though it is way too awesome already, I think you are better off spending more time on the game-play rather than just on writing up the backing storyline, as most people will (probably) just want to play EXU2 (maybe because of the nature of the game, it being a sort of a mock-up on the old shooters and people don't expect much of a story in such a game?).

All in all, the biggest factor is how well you have a thing written; nobody will read boring stuff, while people can read through a 500 page book in a single day if they find it interesting. But it is impossible to find a solution that will please everybody. So just think about your target audience, and adjust the rest accordingly. That's what is usually encouraged at my work place as well, and it builds the base of the mind set we try to have for our games.

I could go on, but let's leave it at that :) So much about being short :P Oh, before I forget, thank you for bringing the SCP Foundation to my notice. I love it! :D
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 07 Oct 2010, 16:46

Thanks, Whirl. Just curious, where do you work? Also: you're welcome. There's some pretty cool stuff on that site.


OK, next up: let's talk about the horrific inventory [mis]management going on in EXU2!

Later on in the game, if you don't actually USE the crappier flares you pick up earlier in the game, you start to accumulate a huge variety of them and they just take up space. This makes scrolling your inventory a REAL PAIN IN THE ASS. I'm thinking up ways to address this; some may be doable for the patch, but other, more advanced solutions will have to wait until the final.

First, let's look at our items (not all of which are in the demo) and see what's what. Keep in mind there's more items I haven't even made or designed yet.

Green = Useful and pretty much indispensable
Yellow = Has its uses but largely is just extra bulk
Red = Really shitty and ultimately useless or redundant compared to better items, or could be removed/replaced/redesigned without major gameplay issues
Blue = Rare but extremely powerful, worth carrying until the right moment

THE ITEMS (Jesus christ look at this rainbow of discord. It's like fucking unicorns vomited and shat all over the place):
  • Battle Seeds
  • Combat Seeds
  • Armor Seeds
  • Magic Armor Seeds
  • Seed Seeds

  • Jump Boots
  • Invisibility
  • SCUBA Gear
  • Firestorm Generator
  • Missile Backpack
  • Flashlight
  • Old Searchlight

  • BioFlare
  • BiohazardFlare
  • BouncilaserFlare
  • ClusternukeFlare
  • ClustershockFlare
  • CNadeFlare (Clusterfuck 'Nade Flare)
  • DemonballFlare
  • DemonblastFlare
  • DemonFlare
  • DemonSaturationFlare
  • FlakFlare
  • FlakballFlare
  • FreezeFlare
  • GaskillFlare
  • HyperballFlare
  • HyperFlare
  • NadeFlare
  • NapalmFlare (Incomplete; will be much more useful when done)
  • NuclearFlare
  • MegablastFlare
  • PlasmaSprayerFlare
  • RazorFlare
  • RocketballFlare
  • RocketFlare
  • SeekerMissileFlare
  • ShockballFlare
  • ShockFlare
  • ShockSaturationFlare
  • SuperFlare
  • UltraDemonFlare


This gives us four lists:

SHITTY ITEMS THAT SUCK: (Not necessarily weak or 100% useless, but nowhere near as good as better versions of basically the same thing)
  • Battle Seeds
  • SCUBA Gear
  • Flashlight
  • BioFlare
  • FlakFlare
  • FreezeFlare
  • NadeFlare
  • RocketFlare

SEMI-SHITTY ITEMS THAT COULD BE REPLACED OR REMOVED:
  • Invisibility
  • CNadeFlare (Clusterfuck 'Nade Flare)
  • DemonFlare
  • FlakballFlare
  • NapalmFlare (Incomplete; will be much more useful when done)
  • RazorFlare
  • RocketballFlare
  • ShockFlare
  • ShockSaturationFlare
  • UltraDemonFlare
  • HyperFlare
  • NuclearFlare

GOOD STAPLE ITEMS TO KEEP:
  • Combat Seeds
  • Armor Seeds
  • Firestorm Generator
  • Missile Backpack
  • Old Searchlight
  • BiohazardFlare
  • ClusternukeFlare
  • ClustershockFlare
  • DemonSaturationFlare
  • MegablastFlare
  • SeekerMissileFlare
  • ShockballFlare
  • SuperFlare

RARE BUT STUPIDLY-POWERFUL CRAZY SHIT EVERYONE LOVES:
  • Magic Armor Seeds
  • Seed Seeds
  • BouncilaserFlare
  • DemonblastFlare
  • GaskillFlare
  • HyperballFlare
  • PlasmaSprayerFlare


Still with me? All right.

Now, obviously, it's extremely unlikely you'd have one or more of every single one of these items all at the same time, but the fact remains that it's still way too much bullshit to cart around. Selecting certain items is ANNOYING when you have this much shit. Unreal's inventory system was never designed for this level of idiocy. Even if you get rid of most of your early flares by the time the later ones come into play, there's STILL too much bullshit! Fuck!

Some items, like the Jump Boots, Firestorm Generator, Missile Backpack, etc. now allow you to bind a key to their usage, but that doesn't hide them in the scrollable inventory list.

Other items like SCUBA Gear and Invisibility are undoubtedly useful, but they don't really help out THAT much, and they may not be worth the space they take up. Some are redundant or weaker versions of better items, like Battle Seeds vs. Combat Seeds. The former could be replaced with a smaller number of the latter, for example. Same goes with many of the flares.

Flares are a bit trickier. There's a lot of enemies with varying damage types in the game, so a Demonball Flare might not be as effective at clearing out a room as a Rocketball Flare if it's full of Demons. But that doesn't really make the Rocketball Flare much more useful; it's still just a redundant alternative that does basically the same thing, only against a different damage type with a slightly different mechanism (spraying out rockets instead of using a single damage radius per impact). Some flares are just 100% garbage and are only useful because they're the only flares you have early on, but could still be replaced with a smaller number of better, more powerful, and more fun flares. Like Razor Flares vs. Super Ball Flares, or Bio Flares vs. Biohazard Flares.


OK WAFF ENOUGH WHINING WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT THIS YOU STUPID BASTARD

First of all, I am NOT GOING TO DELETE ANYTHING. No classes will be removed from EXU.u; that would just be stupid.

I'm planning to cull unnecessary, redundant, or useless items from EXU2: Batshit Insane ONLY. Flare Crates will still spew out all kinds of shit, randomized flare mutators like Loathsome's will still work, etc. This will only affect the level design of the campaign maps. Anyway...

SOLUTION 1: GET RID OF ALL THIS STUPID SHIT
I could go through each map and delete all instances of all the crappy (red) items and replace them with a smaller number of better items when applicable. Yellow items are tougher to handle, as some of them really are helpful (Shockball Flares in Map 8 are a godsend but quickly become less effective). Any ideas on what to do with these?

SOLUTION 2: DESIGN A NEW INVENTORY SYSTEM AND KEEP EVERYTHING
This would be a lot harder, take a lot more thought, and definitely won't make it into the patch. It would require new HUD elements, a lot of code, etc. I'm unsure how feasible it even is.

If I went this route, I would group Flares and Items separately. Items would be anything that has a charge and doesn't just get tossed out in front of you, like the Old Searchlight, Missile Backpack, Jump Boots, etc. THESE items, because they are much fewer in number than the flares, would appear on a separate bar on the HUD. You would only see these items appear once you got them for the first time. When expired, the icon would be transparent or grayed out or otherwise made to look different, indicating that you're out of it. You could select these items like you do the current inventory system, but it would require new key bindings to do so, as well as a new activate key. You could still use these items with custom keybindings to activate them directly even if they weren't selected. Flares, seeds, and any other shit would remain on the normal inventory bar.

SOLUTION 3: DESIGN A NEW INVENTORY SYSTEM AND CULL SHITTY ITEMS
This would be like Solution 2 and Solution 1 combined, but less intense, as the yellow items would now take up less space and still be worth keeping. Red items would still be replaced or deleted outright from the maps because FUCK them.

SOLUTION 4: DESTROY ALL RED AND YELLOW ITEMS, FIND GREEN REPLACEMENTS FOR EACH
This would be fairly dramatic, but would massively cut down on inventory clutter. You'd have a lot fewer items at any given time, as flares would become much more powerful and you'd have fewer of them until the later maps. However, this might further encourage hoarding, which I DON'T want to do. The whole reason this inventory shit is a problem is because of hoarding; I'm guilty of it too! If you just fire off flares as soon as you get them, you probably don't really have any problems with all this crap.

SOLUTION 5: CULL SHITTY ITEMS, KEEP SHITTY FLARES, INSTITUTE FLARE UPGRADE SYSTEM
This would be a bit different. All the worthless ITEMS would be replaced, with the exception of maybe Battle Seeds, and then older items would, at a certain point in the game, be automatically converted into a smaller number of more powerful analogues. 5 Shock Flares becomes 1 Clustershock flare, 2 Battle Seeds becomes a Combat Seed, etc.

SOLUTION 6: KEEP EVERYTHING AS-IS
No fuck you


So, I turn this over to you guys, the players. What do you think I aught to do about this unsightly mess of flares and seeds and bullshit? SOMETHING must be done, and soon! \o/
Last edited by Buff Skeleton on 08 Oct 2010, 05:37, edited 1 time in total.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 07 Oct 2010, 19:39

AT the very least, flares could be separate from main, non-lethal inventory. Like a grenade system you know?

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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 07 Oct 2010, 19:41

Yes, which is more or less one of the solutions I proposed :p

Except making flares separate from the main inventory system is more of a hassle than making the few non-tossable items separate. There's like 5000 flares and 5 or 6 non-tossable items. Making those few items on their own inventory system seems to make a lot more sense. You scroll less and can even bind those to keys, meaning the extra items might not require scrolling at all, while the flares will still need to be scrolled.

I want to minimize ingame keypresses as much as humanly possible.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 07 Oct 2010, 20:00

Waffnuffly wrote:SOLUTION 1: GET RID OF ALL THIS STUPID SHIT


The easiest thing to do on your part I believe. It probably wouldn't hurt the gameplay that much as well. You could just filter the "unwanted" items out of the SP campaign and leave them only for multiplayer purposes. Just a thought.

Waffnuffly wrote:SOLUTION 3: DESIGN A NEW INVENTORY SYSTEM AND CULL SHITTY ITEMS


This is the optimal thing to do, but would also require most work.

Waffnuffly wrote:SOLUTION 4: DESTROY ALL RED AND YELLOW ITEMS, FIND GREEN REPLACEMENTS FOR EACH


This could be nice too, since it would introduce some strategy into how you use your items.

But like you said, Unreal wasn't built for something like this. So, with that in mind, Prophet's idea seems very sound as well. But, again, it's a lot of work. It depends on how much time and resources you are willing to spend on this.

A good thing you can do as well is to completely remove things that are enabled/disabled automatically from the inventory menu (SCUBAGear for instance), and just make them infinite. So the player can stay under water indefinitely for instance. Same with searchlights; just add an option to bind a key to the item and make its use infinite. A lot of games do this now. To add to what Prophet said, you could also make an option to bind a key to cycle through battle flares, and another button to throw them, so they really do act like grenades (e.g. mouse's scroll wheel for instance, could be used for this). People could also bind 1-3 "special" keys for the flares the use the most. Like I said, depends on how much time you are willing and able to spend on this.

Waffnuffly wrote:Thanks, Whirl. Just curious, where do you work? Also: you're welcome. There's some pretty cool stuff on that site.


Yeah, I'm kind of addicted to SCP now :D They form my good night stories, so to speak, and they present a gateway into the fucked up minds of random individuals. The things some people come up with :o I work for ZootFly, a Slovenian game developer.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 04:41

I think that you just have way too much shit. Like...way...way too much of it, for any inventory balancing act to really be easy for the player. You need to cull reds, yellows, and even then you have just way too many green flares. Why not find a good balance with maybe 4-8 flares? Of course, you're obviously asking for sound logistical advice on item managment when it's clear the comedy value is the primary reason why so many of these fucking flare types exist (in any other pack it would be absurd, but making the player cycle through a flare bonanza in EXU is part of the experience, at least in this player's opinion). In this case the solution should be obvious; have a separate system for inventory and flares, and use a lot less flares or combine like types. But just understand why you have so many of these there in the first place and decide whether you want to omit that.

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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 05:16

Do it Tron 2.0 style. You have an inventory bank menu, which contains a tray of every relevant inventory (or just flare/seed items), and then you can place them in your cyclable, in-game inventory through this menu, thus allowing you to remove them from the scroll while not entirely getting rid of them, or even better if you could combine this with the "upgrading" system, where you can combine a certain amount of one type of flare to get an advanced type or something like that. Lots of code, might be something to test for fluidity with gameplay, but still, I've had little to no problems with this type of system in the past, and it would probably be worth it for those who want to organize their inventory in the even that it becomes too cluttered. Just an idea, mind, but an interesting one I thought I'd bring up.

EDIT: And just to add, making such a menu with a hellish pentagram theme and style would effectively look badass. Just sayin'.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 05:23

Proph: It's too much shit for the SP campaign, definitely. I don't think struggling to use inventory in the heat of combat should be part of the EXU experience. I mean, yeah, it's a comedic mod, but it's not meant to be artificially difficult to play. I've been employing more interesting map design techniques in the later levels because they're set up in a way that allows you to really utilize some items to their fullest, like Jump Boots and the Missile Backpack at the same time (thanks to hotkeys). But If someone DOESN'T use hotkeys, trying to locate these items in a huge pile of flares when it really matters isn't very nice. Putting them on their own clearly-visible panel would probably help a lot in critical situations.

I know WHY I have a lot of flares; I just never really paid attention to the consequences until now. There's a lot because, well, they're fun to make, easy to make, provide comedic results ingame, and can be applied to a whole lot of different situations in combat. The problem was I kept trying to out-do my own designs with newer and better ones (not necessarily more powerful) all while keeping the older ones around. Do this for several years and you wind up with flare soup.

And 4-8 flares... eh, that seems a bit low. 8 might be the absolute smallest possible variety I'd be willing to settle with. If you look at the green list, there's only 10 flares on there right now, with 8 if I took off a couple of the less-unique ones. The blue ones don't really count since they're rare and you definitely don't want to leave them in your inventory for long. The rest of the green list is Combat Seeds, Armor Seeds, and then the Missile Backpack, Firestorm Generator, Searchlight, and Jump Boots, the latter four of which would wind up on their own menu.

The thing about flares though is that they're totally optional. You don't need any of them to beat the game. They just make certain situations easier to handle; how you use them depends on your own judgment. They're basically just an excuse to blow the crap out of a ton of stuff in the most entertaining way possible. Cutting down the variety of that kind of destruction TOO much would be worse than having an overabundance of shit, as far as I'm concerned. I'm looking to find the happy medium between over-cluttering and a boring, homogenized handful of flares that aren't very interesting since they can't be as specific as a wider array can be.

I'm not defending the colossal clusterfuck of items that the campaign currently is starting to suffer from, but I'm not willing to cut out the more interesting aspects of your arsenal just to keep things tidy. Besides, as I said, it's unlikely you'd ever have at least one of every possible flare type all at the same time; if that was the case, it would be because you never used any. And if you never use any, why bother picking them up?

Hopefully splitting out non-tossable items to their own bar will make scrolling the flare/seed list a lot less important since all your combat-critical items will be accessible separately. You can also bind seeds to keys, which makes them a lot easier to chuck for a quick health or armor boost, too.

[Edit] nevermind this sums up the situation perfectly!

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Last edited by Buff Skeleton on 08 Oct 2010, 05:52, edited 2 times in total.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 05:40

Jet: That's starting to add too much interface complexity to an FPS which is all about being surrounded by 300 enemies at a time. You don't have time to be switching shit around, even when it's relatively quiet, because you want to always have your gun ready to shoot while you're pressing your inventory switcheroo keys. I mean, sure, that works in Minecraft, but this isn't Minecraft :p


I'm also thinking that removing any flares which have functions very similar to any of your guns may be in order, including the Hyper Flare. The Nuclear Flare might be better off gone, too, as it's really pretty weak later in the game and Shit Canisters honestly probably do a hell of a lot more damage at the end of the day. I'd probably end up replacing these kinds of flares with ones that do stuff so totally crazy it would be like firing 5 of your weapons 10 times, all at once.


[Edit] Did some shuffling. Now there's only 8 green flares and a ton of yellow ones. This is good, as it de-clutters without removing too many good items and it still leaves room for me to add a couple more really awesome "staple" flares later in the game, if they become needed or I design something so hilariously awesome it can't NOT be used (like how the Megablast flare came to be). I'm starting to think I might replace the Nuclear flares with some Megablast flares, even in the earlier levels, because why not!

Also, just FYI, I'm not going to delete any of the old flares from the maps. I'm just going to set their OddsOfAppearing to 0. This will save me a shitload of headache if I ever want to add some of these back.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 07:58

Waffnuffly wrote:
And 4-8 flares... eh, that seems a bit low. 8 might be the absolute smallest possible variety I'd be willing to settle with. If you look at the green list, there's only 10 flares on there right now, with 8 if I took off a couple of the less-unique ones. The blue ones don't really count since they're rare and you definitely don't want to leave them in your inventory for long. The rest of the green list is Combat Seeds, Armor Seeds, and then the Missile Backpack, Firestorm Generator, Searchlight, and Jump Boots, the latter four of which would wind up on their own menu.


I suggest 4 to 8 because there is a reason why games that implement grenades stick to a quantity around this range, and your current predicament makes light of the same issue; balance. You know this of course. It's why we get the basic frag grenade, the flashbang, the emp, and then the more outrageous stuff like napalm grenades, grenades that administer electric shock, ect. When you get to the point that you are collecting grenades that explode in megatons, or grenades that do your taxes you are obviously in parody mode, which is where EXU is. I suggest 4-8 because that's just what seems feasible to ME, in my experience as a gamer that's played games with one too many or one too few grenades at my disposal...and also as a modder who is including a grenade system in a pack for the first time and is trying to consider them for my own gameplay (ours will probably be a 4-6 type system, with limited quantity capacity). You of course have to find your own balance, and figure out what number feels right. It also pays to remember that your flares do not really have quantity limitations either. By imposing a carryable limit on grenades you force the player to manage them better, and that could help you out in filtering out less powerful flares that aren't worth the trouble compared to better varieties.

Waffnuffly wrote:The thing about flares though is that they're totally optional. You don't need any of them to beat the game. They just make certain situations easier to handle; how you use them depends on your own judgment. They're basically just an excuse to blow the crap out of a ton of stuff in the most entertaining way possible. Cutting down the variety of that kind of destruction TOO much would be worse than having an overabundance of shit, as far as I'm concerned. I'm looking to find the happy medium between over-cluttering and a boring, homogenized handful of flares that aren't very interesting since they can't be as specific as a wider array can be.

I'm not defending the colossal clusterfuck of items that the campaign currently is starting to suffer from, but I'm not willing to cut out the more interesting aspects of your arsenal just to keep things tidy. Besides, as I said, it's unlikely you'd ever have at least one of every possible flare type all at the same time; if that was the case, it would be because you never used any. And if you never use any, why bother picking them up?




If you put it in a game a player will pick it up as long as they are able to pick it up, you always have to consider this. They may not need them. They may not even want them. But they will pick them up. Take me for example. I recently completed MGS4, and it's a game where I rarely use weapons or lethal attacks. But by the end of the game I still had a full collection loadout because I still picked everything up...and didn't use 90% of it. Players will ALWAYS do things you think they won't and they will touch everything they see and try to take it with them if you allow it to be taken.

It really pays to take that into account when managing your supplies. In RD we're going with an open offensive collection method, where the player can find a variety of weapons/inventory but can only carry a certain amount of guns, grenades, and other items at once. It imposes a conditioning system. All the choices are there with a variety of options, but the player is never cluttered with more than a small arsenal to operate with.

Perhaps you're looking at it wrong, is what I'm getting at. Maybe you don't need to cut down on your flares, but instead reevaluate your collection system. You're still playing by Unreal's inventory rules even if the gameplay you're aiming for is far beyond what Unreal's systems were meant for. The HUD, the item limits, the weapon loadout...it's all Unreal's formula. Maybe you need to try a better way to do this stuff for EXU. Keep it within the style of the game, of course, but find a system that works for EXU. What I would do is look at games you like and also games that are similar to EXU in terms of gameplay and see how they did it.

Waffnuffly wrote:Hopefully splitting out non-tossable items to their own bar will make scrolling the flare/seed list a lot less important since all your combat-critical items will be accessible separately. You can also bind seeds to keys, which makes them a lot easier to chuck for a quick health or armor boost, too.



Hot keys could work, sure. My only concern is that any more than 8 flares and you might run out of keys to assign, given all the other keys you'll be using. Then again using too few negates the need for hotkeys. That has it's benefits though.

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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 14:28

IMO number four or five would be best. In my demo 3 playthrough I had such a quantity of different flares I ignored most of them because I either wasn't sure what they would do (although the names usually were a big clue) or I had other flares that did the same thing better (and in bigger quantities a lot of the time too). Cutting them down would probably simplify it without taking anything away, but upgrades could work too (so they could be provided in the early game without being overpowered). I did accept the huge amount of flare types as just part of how EXU is OTT, but like you say it does make the inventory get pretty cumbersome.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 15:12

Good stuff, thanks for all the feedback guys. I'm not going to do anything drastic too quickly but I'll be thinking a lot about how I want to handle this problem.

As far as players willingly picking up whatever you offer, that makes perfect sense and I do it too in stuff like SOTN, but what I guess I didn't expect is for people to pick up combat-friendly items and then just never use them. Probably because the first several classes of flares you would get aren't really that great. Maybe if your first flare is a Megablast flare or something really ridiculously fun to use people wouldn't be so conservative with them? And adding a carrying capacity might be another good idea. "You can only have 10 flares of any type so you better use them if you don't want them to go to waste" might be a way to encourage heavier usage, kinda like ammo for your standard weapons.

Mister_Prophet wrote:Hot keys could work, sure. My only concern is that any more than 8 flares and you might run out of keys to assign, given all the other keys you'll be using. Then again using too few negates the need for hotkeys. That has it's benefits though.

lol don't get me wrong, I wasn't suggesting that people would bind FLARES to keys - just the reusable items and a couple of seed classes; that's it. I mean, sure, I could make the flares be key-bindable as an option, but if people actually put a flare toss command on every possible key that's going straight into clowned-out flight sim territory. :P

Mman wrote:IMO number four or five would be best. In my demo 3 playthrough I had such a quantity of different flares I ignored most of them because I either wasn't sure what they would do (although the names usually were a big clue) or I had other flares that did the same thing better (and in bigger quantities a lot of the time too). Cutting them down would probably simplify it without taking anything away, but upgrades could work too (so they could be provided in the early game without being overpowered). I did accept the huge amount of flare types as just part of how EXU is OTT, but like you say it does make the inventory get pretty cumbersome.

Hmm... four or five types would be really hard to narrow down to, but I guess I can try working in that direction. I might even combine some classes together, like say:

Clustershock Flare + Shockball Flare = Turbo Shock Flare: On impact, spawns 10 Shock Flare explosions in rapid succession AND ejects 5 bouncing Shockballs with only 5 or 10 max wall hits (unlike the single Shockball from a Shockball Flare which has a much higher number of max wall hits).

Nuclear Flare + Biohazard Flare + Napalm Flare = Nuclear Shit-Firestorm Flare: Spawns a Nuke Flare shockwave, a Biohazard shit+biogel explosion spray, AND a huge fire pillar that lingers for a few seconds.

Stuff like that, maybe? It would make what flares you DO get extremely over-the-top and insanely powerful, but it just might make carrying the bastards a little easier. Thoughts?
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 15:20

Slime Rocket Flares. They would make a room green!
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 15:26

I meant option four or five, not the number of flare types.
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Subject: Re: EXU2: Batshit Insane - Demo 4 - PATCH APPROACHETH [10-6-

Post Posted: 08 Oct 2010, 15:28

Oh, durr, yeah that makes sense, my bad. So 8-10 varieties would probably be ideal, possibly with a max carrying capacity of 5-10 flares per type?

All the same, I'm starting to like the idea of combining flares into super monstrosities of their original designs. You might not have as much to play with, but you can rest assured that when you DO use them, they're going to tear shit the fuck up! Make them behave more like an entire fireworks show instead of a single bottle rocket, so to speak.

Also, since I'm leaving the flares in the maps but just setting their odds of appearing to 0, this opens the gates for some crazy gameplay mode for the final: Flare Nostalgia Mode. Sets ALL flares' OddsOfAppearing back to 1, so you can play with an insane variety again if you want to \o/
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