I don't think good (feature-wise) forums attract more posters. My point is that expanding forums should follow the increase of popularity. Once this forum's features are not enough, add a better one. For now it's enough.
In similar vein, don't add forum subsections before popularity comes. Just because you create a subforum doesn't mean people will appear out of thin air and fill it. Add subsections once people start complaining about having to sort out X posts from Y posts. I think it's better to have smaller number of used subforums that a bigger number of empty ones.
I almost forgot this one:
Sling[b]shots[/b] are out of place in this game. Slings are weapons from medieval and ancient ages, sling[b]shots[/b] aren't. Unless you're trying to invent some kind of alternate history where rubber has been invented very early. When I see a slingshot in this game, I think about car tires.
Sling[b]shot[/b] is a 20th century weapon. Some wikipedia quotes:
[quote]Home-made slingshots were popular children's toys for much of the 20th century because the low projectile velocity was generally considered to be safe.[/quote]
[quote]A slingshot can be powerful enough to hunt game such as small rodents and birds at ranges up to 25 meters.(citation needed)[/quote]
[quote]Slingshots have been used as a military weapon, but primarily by guerrilla forces due to the primitive resources and technology required to construct one. Such guerrilla groups included the Irish Republican Army; prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein released a propaganda video demonstrating slingshots as a possible weapon for insurgents to use against invading forces.
Slingshots have also been used by the military to launch micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). One notable example of this is the AeroVironment Wasp UAV. The vehicle was propelled to high speeds by using a Saunders Wrist-Rocket Pro slingshot.[/quote]
I really like arrow trails in Nox. Those in FLARE seem to move with similar speed, so it could be good to implement such trails. Here's a gameplay video from Nox which shows them:
Tiles and graphics in general have very high quality, and the main thing holding them back is lack of even Diablo1 lighting. Even character animations look better than I expected from an open-source game.
Sounds are not as good, but - and this is very nice - they're not annoying and don't get in the way. Some are nice, some are plain at best.
The beds in one of levels look very out of place. They're in pristine condition and everything else is falling apart. And why do skeleton warriors reside in baracks ?
I really like control scheme - keyboard for movement, and mouse which can focus solely on aiming. In Diablo and Nox, both of which use mouse for movement, it gets quite tiresome after a while, and it's very hard to move and attack at the same time. I also like that - so far - spell hotkeys are used for [i]casting[/i] spells, like in Nox and not switching spells like in Diablo. Mouse movement can allow player to run in pretty circles, but it rarely makes for better gameplay I think.
First, at the risk of sounding pedanting, let's not confuse terms.
[b]Lighting[/b] is one thing - it's based on radius and areas closer to player character are brighter. This is what Diablo1 did, in a primitive way.
[b]Fog of War[/b], for me - is something from an RTS game, especially Warcraft 2. It's closely linked to exploration. Areas you've never been to are dark, and once you visit them [b]they stay revealed[/b]. That's what I would like to call Fog of War. Do we agree with this definition ? I think this feature is completely unneeded in a Diablo-like game, because its function is performed by automap.
[b]Line Of Sight[/b] is self-explanatory, but I'll try to describe it anyway. Imagine a line leading outwards from your character. If that line hits an opaque obstacle, everything on that line up to and including that obstacle is visible, and everything past the obstacle is not visible. Line is just that - a line, and it's often used as a way to measure if two beings of a game world can see each other.
[b]Field of View[/b] is just lots of Lines Of Sight spreading in all directions (at least conceptually). This is what makes stuff past corners and walls invisible. Diablo1 does it only for characters. Nox does it for everything, and I think it looks amazing, much better than in any Diablo game (and plays very well):
Note that algorithms that do it this way (calculating lots of lines), particularly tile-based ones, are not necessarily the best ones for the job. In Roguelike games, raytracing and raycasting FOV algorithms are known for being quite slow, and more importantly produce artifacts (like A can see B, but B can't see A). It's nice when Field of View is mutual. If you use a simple tweak and just assume that if A can see B, then B can see A, you're asking for trouble. Half-Life 2 is famous for this. In order to make things "Fair for the player" they've made it so if you can't see an enemy, he can't see you. So if there's an entrenched soldier, you can walk right up to him by walking backwards, or by carrying a crate in front of you. In a fantasy game the exploit could be performed by drinking a potion of blindness. And if you have spells or abilities that allow you to see farther or through walls, it may be detrimental to you.
Rogue Basin, a roguelike development wiki site, discusses a lot of tile-based FOV algorithms used in roguelike games.
The general consensus is that so far there's no holy grail. There are algorithms without artifacts, but they may leave something to be desired in other areas. "Permissive" algorithms can reveal too much, making it hard to use cover against ranged attacks.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup uses this technique - hybrid approach - extensively. The results are satisfying, and the handmade "vaults" as they're called are often semi-random too. Also let's not forget that Diablo1,2 isn't the state of art in random map generation, you can improve it. There are new algorithms and the old ones are more widely known. Today, even DooM has a decent random map generator (Oblige).
I like Python very much, and even though I have no experience writing random map generators, it's something I would very much like to try. Who knows, maybe I could come up with something unexpected ? I'm happy to hear Python can be used for this (is the format XML ?)
Okay, "animations" + "someone may do a modern game with this" is a good explanation for keeping slingshots. Thank you.
I don't think good (feature-wise) forums attract more posters. My point is that expanding forums should follow the increase of popularity. Once this forum's features are not enough, add a better one. For now it's enough.
In similar vein, don't add forum subsections before popularity comes. Just because you create a subforum doesn't mean people will appear out of thin air and fill it. Add subsections once people start complaining about having to sort out X posts from Y posts. I think it's better to have smaller number of used subforums that a bigger number of empty ones.
I almost forgot this one:
Sling[b]shots[/b] are out of place in this game. Slings are weapons from medieval and ancient ages, sling[b]shots[/b] aren't. Unless you're trying to invent some kind of alternate history where rubber has been invented very early. When I see a slingshot in this game, I think about car tires.
Sling[b]shot[/b] is a 20th century weapon. Some wikipedia quotes:
[quote]Home-made slingshots were popular children's toys for much of the 20th century because the low projectile velocity was generally considered to be safe.[/quote]
[quote]A slingshot can be powerful enough to hunt game such as small rodents and birds at ranges up to 25 meters.(citation needed)[/quote]
[quote]Slingshots have been used as a military weapon, but primarily by guerrilla forces due to the primitive resources and technology required to construct one. Such guerrilla groups included the Irish Republican Army; prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein released a propaganda video demonstrating slingshots as a possible weapon for insurgents to use against invading forces.
Slingshots have also been used by the military to launch micro unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). One notable example of this is the AeroVironment Wasp UAV. The vehicle was propelled to high speeds by using a Saunders Wrist-Rocket Pro slingshot.[/quote]
That's it ! No more military use !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingshot
Ancient/medieval sling has no elastic material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_%28weapon%29
I feel very special. Apparently I'm among the very few people who don't feel dizzy playing Nox ! I wonder what extra talents I also possess.
And this [b]single player[/b] video is unique because the player doesn't suck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NU3u9sSjE&feature=related
I really like arrow trails in Nox. Those in FLARE seem to move with similar speed, so it could be good to implement such trails. Here's a gameplay video from Nox which shows them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om8IdqCZVoo
Vim is good for you :-)
And some languages, notably Python, don't really need an IDE.
While we're at it, could you check your private messages, Clint ?
b]More feedback.[/b]
Tiles and graphics in general have very high quality, and the main thing holding them back is lack of even Diablo1 lighting. Even character animations look better than I expected from an open-source game.
Sounds are not as good, but - and this is very nice - they're not annoying and don't get in the way. Some are nice, some are plain at best.
The beds in one of levels look very out of place. They're in pristine condition and everything else is falling apart. And why do skeleton warriors reside in baracks ?
I really like control scheme - keyboard for movement, and mouse which can focus solely on aiming. In Diablo and Nox, both of which use mouse for movement, it gets quite tiresome after a while, and it's very hard to move and attack at the same time. I also like that - so far - spell hotkeys are used for [i]casting[/i] spells, like in Nox and not switching spells like in Diablo. Mouse movement can allow player to run in pretty circles, but it rarely makes for better gameplay I think.
First, at the risk of sounding pedanting, let's not confuse terms.
[b]Lighting[/b] is one thing - it's based on radius and areas closer to player character are brighter. This is what Diablo1 did, in a primitive way.
[b]Fog of War[/b], for me - is something from an RTS game, especially Warcraft 2. It's closely linked to exploration. Areas you've never been to are dark, and once you visit them [b]they stay revealed[/b]. That's what I would like to call Fog of War. Do we agree with this definition ? I think this feature is completely unneeded in a Diablo-like game, because its function is performed by automap.
[b]Line Of Sight[/b] is self-explanatory, but I'll try to describe it anyway. Imagine a line leading outwards from your character. If that line hits an opaque obstacle, everything on that line up to and including that obstacle is visible, and everything past the obstacle is not visible. Line is just that - a line, and it's often used as a way to measure if two beings of a game world can see each other.
[b]Field of View[/b] is just lots of Lines Of Sight spreading in all directions (at least conceptually). This is what makes stuff past corners and walls invisible. Diablo1 does it only for characters. Nox does it for everything, and I think it looks amazing, much better than in any Diablo game (and plays very well):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGbJvbDMEf8
Note that algorithms that do it this way (calculating lots of lines), particularly tile-based ones, are not necessarily the best ones for the job. In Roguelike games, raytracing and raycasting FOV algorithms are known for being quite slow, and more importantly produce artifacts (like A can see B, but B can't see A). It's nice when Field of View is mutual. If you use a simple tweak and just assume that if A can see B, then B can see A, you're asking for trouble. Half-Life 2 is famous for this. In order to make things "Fair for the player" they've made it so if you can't see an enemy, he can't see you. So if there's an entrenched soldier, you can walk right up to him by walking backwards, or by carrying a crate in front of you. In a fantasy game the exploit could be performed by drinking a potion of blindness. And if you have spells or abilities that allow you to see farther or through walls, it may be detrimental to you.
Rogue Basin, a roguelike development wiki site, discusses a lot of tile-based FOV algorithms used in roguelike games.
http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=FOV
The general consensus is that so far there's no holy grail. There are algorithms without artifacts, but they may leave something to be desired in other areas. "Permissive" algorithms can reveal too much, making it hard to use cover against ranged attacks.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup uses this technique - hybrid approach - extensively. The results are satisfying, and the handmade "vaults" as they're called are often semi-random too. Also let's not forget that Diablo1,2 isn't the state of art in random map generation, you can improve it. There are new algorithms and the old ones are more widely known. Today, even DooM has a decent random map generator (Oblige).
I like Python very much, and even though I have no experience writing random map generators, it's something I would very much like to try. Who knows, maybe I could come up with something unexpected ? I'm happy to hear Python can be used for this (is the format XML ?)
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