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Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Some random thoughts - Deathmatch idea


From: Ian
Subject: Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Some random thoughts - Deathmatch idea
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:11:06 -0800 (PST)

"Perhaps it would make more sense if each player started with, lets say 5 life points, and the game ended when a player had lost all his lifes. This could also give it a bit of an edge, if one player had one life point left, while another was down at zero.

This is just talk, but it seems a bit negative the way LW6 deathmatch mode is focused on each players failures (numbers of deaths) instead of their archivements. Games generally lure the player into an illusion about extreme succes - for instance they say "You have reached high score!" but they don't mention when the player manage to fuck up a level worse than anyone else. But the traditional positive frag concept just don't fit into LW."
 
From what I gather, the idea of the deathmatch is simply that once you've died, you respawn, and others can join the game whenever they want, right?
What if, instead of counting deaths or ending the game after a preset time, you simply give a point to whomever is in the lead every minute (or 30 seconds or some adjustable amount), and, maybe, you lose a point (or more) whenever you die. The timer would then count down from 60 [or whatever] seconds, and once it hits 0 seconds, the point is awarded. If deaths occur quickly, it might be as low as every 10 seconds (although I see no reason why you couldn't do each second as well). In the event of a tie (if possible), probably pick either no one, or the last person to be in 1st place in the previous few centiseconds.
 
After someone achieves, say, 10-20 points (or more if you're awarding every second), the match ends (or you could always go on forever...)
 
Would this work better?


From: Kasper Hviid <address@hidden>
To: "Main discussion list for Liquid War 6, a unique multiplayer wargame" <address@hidden>
Sent: Mon, January 11, 2010 7:50:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Some random thoughts

Hello again,

so far, the future cursors in LW6 will consists of:

1) cursor.png - the basic cursor graphic, transparency included.
2) cursor-color.png - adds the players color to the cursor.

If you think other files are needed for the cursors, please tell!


2010/1/10 Christian Mauduit <address@hidden>

On Fri, January 8, 2010 1:13 am, Kasper Hviid wrote:
> THE AREA OUTSIDE THE MAP
>
> Seing my 4:3 levels displayed on my laptops 16:9 screen has irritated me a
> bit more than other 4:3 games I have played on my laptop. I think I have
> figured out the reason.
2 workarrounds:

- in style.xml, set "background-style" to "void"
- in config.xml, set "display-background" to "false"

You're right, but that would also kill the background in the menu. Still, it would be rather easy to implement. I feel a bit wierd about that you don't give any opinion feedback on this one, but maybe you just don't have much to say.
 
> While most game shows a black color outside the game area, Liquid Wars
> maps
> are seen on top of a 2½D parallax-scrooling background. Since the animated
> 2½D background has a higher level of realism than the non-animated 2D map,
> the levels illusion is broken: It looks exactly like a jpeg-file flowing
> underwater. Also, movement attracts the eye naturally. I think a black
> background would work better. More like, "there's nothing here".

> WINDOW MODE
>
> How about that when in window mode, the game-window keeps the natural
> aspect
> ratio of the level? It don't makes much sense to let the window be wider
> or
> highter than the map.
mmm, I tend to disagree. This might be the case in a given mode which is
"non-streched map" in a 2D context, but it's not always the case (think
about zooming, unzooming, technical hud which might reserve some space). I
would tend not to fiddle too much with window size from the program
itself. If one plays windowed, the window is resizable, period.

Dammit, I hate when you're right! :-)
 

> LW6 MOVEMENT
>
> When I play LW5, the movement seems to be more smooth than LW6. I can't
> exactly point at the difference, but it is like the movement of LW6 seems
> more jagged somehow.
I suspect this is because 1) there's a slight lag between the actual move
of the cursor and its move on the screen and 2) LW6 calculates moves in on
thread and displays in another, the result is that sometimes it moves
twice before being displayed and sometimes it can display twice the same
position.

> I think it is because of the difference between arrow key movement and
> mouse
> movement. In LW5, the cursor and the liquid had almost the same speed,
> which
> caused them to move along together. In LW6, the cursor can be anywhere on
> the screen in less than a second. The jumpy movement of the mouse is
> transfered to the fighters movement.
Probably, too. Third reason.

> Maybe we could smooth out the movement of the fighters. So maybe they
> cannot
> make a straight U-turn, but will have to slow down, maybe slowly change
> direction, then speed up. The theory is that if each fighter acts in the
> spirits of the laws of physics, the whole flock will move in a more
> natural
> fashion.
This is a very interesting idea. As I understand it we would give some
"inerty" to fighters, and this would automatically smooth things. I'll
seriously think about that one (but it's a serious hack).

Cool, I have added it to the task section at savannah! Remember that I once suggested a blender effect, which were dependent on each fighter behaved according to a newtonian physics algorithm? I think that idea is kind of connected to this one.

 
> INPUT DEVICES
>
> Personly I have 5 available input devices: The mouse, the touchpad on my
> laptop, my cintiq and my old wacom. Would it be somewhat possible to
> assign
> each device to a different cursor in lw6? It could be practial for local
> multiplayer.
mmm, I should look if SDL supports several mouses. I suspect it does, but
would need to check.

> THE TIMER
>
> What is the purpose of the timer? I think of it as some kind of a natural
> emergency brake, to stop fights which has been going on for too long. Some
> kind of deadline for the fight. Also, it can give a fight a bit of an
> edge.
> However, this is only the case in one-life matches. In deathmatch mode, it
> should either be off, or represent how long we want to play before we
> declare a winner. Perhaps there should both be a deathmatch and a one-life
> timer?
Well, in deathmatch, it also makes sense IMHO, since you have to stop at
one point and say "OK this is over let's count points". The other
alternative would be to wait until one has a given frag count but this is
somewhat weird since LW counts "negative frags" (indeed, it's very hard to
know *who* killed someone when it's trivial to know who died).

Perhaps it would make more sense if each player started with, lets say 5 life points, and the game ended when a player had lost all his lifes. This could also give it a bit of an edge, if one player had one life point left, while another was down at zero.

This is just talk, but it seems a bit negative the way LW6 deathmatch mode is focused on each players failures (numbers of deaths) instead of their archivements. Games generally lure the player into an illusion about extreme succes - for instance they say "You have reached high score!" but they don't mention when the player manage to fuck up a level worse than anyone else. But the traditional positive frag concept just don't fit into LW.


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