Starfox Multiplayer Shooter

[fritzgryphon]

It'll be different in the future. 

 

In my wrong brain I envision you will fly to a location on the solar system map, and that 'level' will have ambient stuff to shoot for points (training cone, asteroid, space junk).  Other people will be there, if they are in the same location. 

 

You may be interrupted by pirates/wildlife/hostile players that you can also shoot for points. 

 

Some people will name themselves after canon characters and they will be the worst ever.  They will be talking mad tactical on their teamspeak and just getting trivially smacked down.

 

Use points to buy new ship and/or capital ship that follows you around and repairs/reloads you.  Then someone blows up your ship and you wash, rinse, repeat.

 

Naturally, you will start with this noobmobile. 

 

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

ok so I tested your latest version. It seems that Hard AI is much better than Easy and Medium now (Also better than me with the keyboard lol) So that's an important issue out of the way.

 

My question about the pre-pre-alpha stuff. Is it possible for the user who is testing the game to change their ship model, or are we forced to play with the arwing until further notice?

[fritzgryphon]

In that version all craft have identical performance, hitboxes and weapons, so there is no selection.

 

Next version will have different attributes for ships, a money system, the ability to buy more ships, a map, and more than one level to visit.  It will also be the first to be a standalone program (the webplayer one might still exist, but it won't save your progress)

 

It's a big change, so don't expect updates for a while.

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

So yeah, after finally getting to test this thing again, here's my update

 

Arwing is overall most balanced ship. Nothing really to say here. It works properly. I guess it feels the same as the original "test" versions you put out earlier.

 

CDF standard ship is very nimble...possibly too nimble. Though it's laser seem to be the weakest of them all, it makes up for that in having a very fast firing rate, and on top of that the ship itself has smaller turning radius and smaller hull (than the Arwing, but not the smallest as I will point out), making it pretty difficult to hit it would seem. Slightly lower shields perhaps could balance it with the other ships?

 

Invader/Bogey, clearly has the most difficult laser to use, it fires the slowest, and has the second weakest firepower. For whatever reason, it appears that it fires from a slightly lower position than the Arwing and CDF standard ship lasers, so if I am pulling up to gain altitude as I fire, it seems to shoot under the aiming cursor, and almost go off screen as the lasers are fired. However, it is the smallest of the ships, and way too fast in my opinion. I understand it is to balance things out, but this is beyond broken in terms of how easy it is to zip around and avoid incoming fire. But it is fun to use as it is a challange. The health and shield feel like a good fit to make up for the small size of the ship. But the speed needs to be decreased somewhat.

 

Wolfen is really interesting. It is the slowest ship I think for movement (and somehow a wide turning radius?), yet it has the most firepower and highest health points/shield. The laser is similar to the Invader/Bogey, but it fires at a slightly faster pace. That being said, it is still difficult to hit with because of that possible positioning issue with the aiming cursor for that laser type.

 

As things are, the ships are well balanced on paper, but in practice, the CDF standard and Invader/Bogey seem far too nimble for the Arwing and Wolfen to keep up. (It could also be my playing style, so who knows if they really as overpowered as I think they are?) More tests and adjustments will be needed to see what needs to and whether changes should be made. As of now, CDF standard is my favorite ship, as it seems strong enough to outlast in a situation where both targets are taking lots of hits, and fast enough to outmaneuver almost anyone. It seems like the perfect fit for me, so thats why i may be exaggerating a bit.

 

As for the AI, all the problems I was pointing to earlier are gone, such as the Hard AI getting beaten all the time. Now it seems like the Hard AI will win over the lower levels much more often, but not always, (it is a simulator after-all, so there are things that come into play). So in short the AI seems about right at the moment. I have not seen anything yet where the random selection of ships has impacted combat between AI, so that will take a while to analyze properly.

 

All in all, a great update for version 0.0.8.  Looking forward to the next one. I'll keep helping you out as long as my input seems helpful to you.

[Folcon]

I've only played a bit of it thus far, but to agree with Fana, the ability to adjust the throttle is excellent, especially for helping slow monsters like the Wolfen get around the more nimble ships. (by going all the way down and letting the ship pass you; it almost always seemed to work even for the Hard bot)
Pleasure out of the way now, next time I try the game out I'll be sure to actually look for helpful information to report, haha.

[fritzgryphon]

Maybe Saturday I will put up new version.  Boost and brake now, and actual health bars.  Cockpit is untextured model instead of odd hole.  Land in base that looks like a breadbox.  Shoot inexplicable rocks rolling around for coins that you have nowhere to spend.  Fly to Meteo and also do these things BUT IN SPACE.  There will be bugs.

 

I am going to explore model ripping for level scenery objects, as I don't really have time to populate really beautiful levels.

 

The small/cheap ships will generally be lighter and more agile than the bigger ones, but they won't have the top speed, energy reserves, or expansion slots of the more expensive ones.  The specifics will change, but the first 4 ships are like this:

Arwing: 

Accelerate:  XXX

Top Speed:  XXX

Pitch Rate:  XXX

Lift/Drag:  XXX

Weapon DPS: XXXX

Durability:  XXXX

 

Wolfen: 

Accelerate:  XXX

Top Speed:  XXXX

Pitch Rate:  XX

Lift/Drag:  XX

Weapon DPS: XXXXX

Durability:  XXXXX

 

CornFig: 

Accelerate:  XXX

Top Speed:  XX

Pitch Rate:  XXXX

Lift/Drag:  XXXX

Weapon DPS: XX

Durability:  XX

 

Invader V: 

Accelerate:  XXXX

Top Speed:  XXX

Pitch Rate:  XXXXX

Lift/Drag:  XX

Weapon DPS: XXX

Durability:  X

 

Granted these figures are not really supported in the canon, but they should be different enough to encourage a variety of playstyles.  Additional versions might be added later ('Interceptor', 'Heavy', etc) if, for example, you don't like flying the Wolfen like a FW-190.  Also, the ships with low HP get a big performance boost to make them viable as a player ship.  AI-only fighters might suck in every way, like in the canon.

[Folcon]

Sounds great, now I have another reason to love Saturday, haha.

After playing a bit more, I noticed that if you name yourself as a Bot that it will actually tag a difficulty to you based upon what ship you fly. However, the difficulty is not always the same for the different bot numbers, if that makes sense.

Is this intentional, or just a minor little... well, I don't really have a term for it.

[fritzgryphon]

All ships have bot skill, but it isn't displayed unless the name is 'Bot'.

[Folcon]

Ahh alright that answers my curiosity, thanks for clearing that for me.
So far, I cannot seem to find any real bugs that impair the gameplay, but I'll still look for them.

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

You mentioned something about expansion slots Gryphon. Will this be used more in terms of increasing firepower of weapons, or is it anything regarding vehicle performance?

 

Or to make the question make more sense, will we be able to swap weapon types under certain circumstances, or will we have to "upgrade" them to make them more powerful?

[fritzgryphon]

I plan, ultimately, that

 

Weapons will be swappable for different ones (though this might not be a good idea if they use a lot of power compared to your supply)

-Light blaster

-Medium blaster

-Heavy blaster

-Plasma oval

-Plasma -sphere-

 

Some ships would have a special weapon that could be swapped out for another special weapon, or other device.

-Charge shot (lots damage in a fat shot)

-Sniper shot (faster than your average shot)

-Tractor beam (pulls in nearby powerups and loot)

 

Electronics upgrades might include radar range improvements, improved radar information, radar jamming or targeting improvements.

-Radar range increase

-Radar detection range decrease

-Fancy gunsight

-Improved info on enemy energy

 

 

Hardware upgrades might include additional generators or capacitors for energies, or speed improvements. 

Maybe also consumable weapons, like missiles or bombs.

 

Each ship would have a different number of electronic and hardware slots.  Electronic upgrades would use power (slow down your recharge) and hardware upgrades would add mass (slow down everything else).  I intend you could customize the ship for your playstyle, but not make it extremely better.  The upgrades would be bought trivially at any base with Space Pennies, and would go away if the ship were destroyed.  You could not swap out an upgrade for a different one without losing the original, unless you owned your own garage with talking frog.

 

Also there will be a full length feature film as the intro movie.  You cannot skip this.

[fritzgryphon]

0.0.9 is out. 

 

You can get money by shooting rocks and enemy fighters. 

 

You can buy additional ships.

 

You can become a criminal by attacking friendly units.  They do score any money, so there is no point to do this (in the future there will be valuable salvage).

 

Any comments on bugs are much appreciated.  Note that lots of stuff is rough and broken looking in this stage and this is normal.

 

Deadzone, curve and sensitivity for axes can now be altered (if you have a wandering right thumbstick like me) in the settings.cfg file, but not in the exquisite in-game configuration menu.

 

http://preendog.com/lylatonline009.rar

[Folcon]

Perhaps I'm just being a dork here, but is there a specific program needed to run this version that wasn't needed for the last version? Because I can't seem to do anything more than download the thing five times in a row, lol.

[Ori]

WinRar is required to decompress the files inside the download.

[Folcon]

Oh, haha alright, thanks greatly.

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

Theres a problem. Apparently my firewall thinks Assembly-CSharp.dll is a bad program and keeps removing it...obviously i cant run it with that removed

 

And apparently, its the ONLY file that my firewall does not like....i mean really?

[fritzgryphon]

I don't have any suggestions except make an exception or disable the firewall. 

 

Also uploaded the package again (with the same name).  The last version had Quality set to low causing texture blurriness and sound distortion (I did not know there were quality settings).

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

I cant use the file though...so how do I test it now? It freezes upon start up

[fritzgryphon]

You will need to download it again.  All 10 megs of it.

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

Out of curiosity, have you made any changes to the program since we last communicated?

[fritzgryphon]

The next version will have basic ship customization(various weapons, electronics and performance upgrades), special weapons(homing shot and zapper cannon at first), ship repair, item inventory, buy items, better aerodynamics, better chat, and other things. 

 

It will rough in most of the core features, and maybe be done next weekend. 

[fritzgryphon]

New version in first post.

 

-Very- rough, but I think it will run without crashing. 

[StarFoxfan-FUR_ever]

Ok so....first things first. I gotta say, I love the new throttle system you implemented. The only issue I see with it so far is how when I'm using a gamepad, it shifts up and down more than it should, ie: It might be a bit too sensitive at the moment. Otherwise it works very well with the "boost" system you set up. So I'm not quite understanding yet exactly how this thing works with the random enemies and almost indestructible allies. Is there a way to make money? I mean, my ally keeps stealing my kills XD

 

So far the only minor glitches i see..... is that every time my ally shoots someone down, the game will give me a message saying that my ally "Bill" was shot down after dealing whatever amount of damage. For some reason when I try to press the "travel" button to go to Meteo, it wont give me a prompt and only works sometimes. It seems a bit hard to land and stay landed for some reason to enter the base. As for the "base/shop" menu, it seems that sometimes when i click an item, it will not give me a description on what the item is, until I click other items and go back to it later. I havent been able to test how well purchasing/altering parts works yet since i have yet to make money.

 

That being said, HUGE glitch. When Meteo starts to load, it crashes so hard. I mean, I can go back into the shop screen, but I cannot go back to corneria, forcing me to restart my profile and game from scratch. Nothing from the HUD will pop up for instance, and my ship will be stuck in that animation as if it was on the runway prepping for take off. The wheels are sticking out in other words. I can't move, so therefore i am stuck in Meteo.

 

So far though, its nice, flying feels hard which is a good thing i suppose to make it seem like you cant take advantage of AI behavior so easily. If Meteo could work I would have given you feedback on it. Corneria level, i noticed on the ground there are meteors that are clearly supposed to appear in Meteo (brown with red dots) for some reason....so yeah otherwise great job so far.

[fritzgryphon]

The market doesn't really work, so press Ctrl-G in the base to 'give all' items.

 

I'll be starting night school soon, so development is be on hold for the foreseeable future.