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Post by Lap on Feb 8, 2009 13:24:47 GMT -5
This new version is almost like the jump from addon to gamemode. There are so many improvements and changes that I have to roll them out in one big package. This creates a sad little lull, but it'll make the release come faster.
Surprisingly, what will make the release come faster are screenshots. I need lots of these for the new manual and making them are time consuming. It would help if you try to get screenshots that are relevant to a certain concept, strategy, or single unit, but full battle screenshots are appreciated as well.
I'll be bunkered down with some other work today, but I'll be back working WarMelons on Monday.
As a little teaser, I'd like to let everyone know that I've added a survival/tower defense type mode that can be played either alone or with friends against AI. High scores are kept as well. The best thing is that I think it's a mode that both competitive and casual players will find amusing.
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Post by Lap on Feb 15, 2009 16:33:17 GMT -5
I had an epiphany last night and I decided to pound out a new feature I just thought of. Real-time score graphs! All the features I want for the Score Graph aren't yet finished since I need to do some other stuff right now, but what is there works perfectly. Things I'll be adding: -a legend -buttons to switch between team NRG amounts and score throughout the match -buttons to turn on and off certain teams. -buttons to save graphs to the harddrive. -buttons to load stats to a graph. -notifications on the graph of special events like a player being destroyed, or a new player joining.
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Post by Lap on Feb 26, 2009 8:24:07 GMT -5
I've made a lot of changes that I want to show everyone, but this latest "Invalid Steam Key Size" bullshit has had my server inoperable for the last week. All fixes just cause me to freeze while loading the map. Whenever Valve fixes this I should have the server up.
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Post by Lap on Feb 26, 2009 19:06:04 GMT -5
Test server back up at 76.26.27.2:27016. It's go time!
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Post by Lap on Feb 26, 2009 21:29:41 GMT -5
-All bomb types can now be turned into mines.
-Added another type of payload to bombs: Slime Slime bombs explode in a gooey mess that does no damage but halves the speed of nearby melons for some time. Perfect for slowing down invaders, outrunning chasers, or helping outmaneuver enemies.
-Any non kamikaze/commandable bombs can be made at outposts to help players rearm their vehicles and bombers.
-Changed the trails of light fighters and strikers to better distinguish them. Strikers smoke is thicker and light fighters now have a very thin, team dependent laser trail.
-All melons will pop up the name of their class if you move over them at close range. You can also hold the jump key to see their class at any range.
-Player's can easily open the corresponding encyclopedia entry or any melon they are targeting with the touch of a button.
-More lag reductions
-Score board is more efficient and has a lot more options.
-Fixed a long standing visual bug with the microwave laser's laser freaking out.
-Health is visible for all superweapons.
-Melons can now have alternative materials to make differentiation between types easier.
-Barracks, Heavy Barracks, and Munitions Factory were given much better textures. They are much easier to see against other melons or props.
-Spawn points and outpost given a better texture so that melons near them can be easily identified.
-Spawn points now have a build time though the build time is waived if you are building your first free spawn.
-Free spawns are per team and not per person, preventing some teams from having way too many spawn points.
-Variant designers may now select how many free spawn points each team is given.
-The WM Encyclopedia is fully operational though missing some pictures. It is very easy to add to articles to it and it will automatically detect broken links and updated articles.
-Barracks can now make as many melons as the user defines.
I shut the server down for the night. This small session was exactly what I needed to test a bunch of stuff out. Thanks for testing everyone. The server will be back up tomorrow.
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Post by Lap on Mar 2, 2009 17:29:15 GMT -5
Release of WM:RTS postponed indefinitely due to garry failing really, really hard and breaking every addon and gamemode than matters.
/panic over. garry is going to revert that last change. WM:RTS is all good again.
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Post by Lap on Mar 5, 2009 22:47:37 GMT -5
As far as gameplay is concerned there is little difference between tiberium versus a static resource node. The only differences are that it damages nearby units (gimmicky and has no major effect on gameplay either way), and that it can regenerate after being drained. Matches don't need to be any longer than they sometimes go.
The main reasons for not having tiberium are that it bloats the gamemode file size and it lags.
-Vehicles much less exploitable. There's still some potential for bad stuff here so I'll likely be fixing it again. -Personal melon limits are now different from team melon limits. -Team melon limit is now shown on the HUD instead of personal limit (maybe I should put both but I hate clutter). -More exploit stomping -No more building things in the sky (many WM maps have no skybox so you can technically still build in their ceiling). -Reduced lag of exploit checking. -Reduced the average amount of entities in a WM:RTS match by almost half, greatly reducing server strain and lag. -Optimized some tools.
I'm going to work next on fixing some of the super weapon models and textures to make them cooler and easier to differentiate. If anyone has any ideas for what I should use just let me know. I'm pretty disappointed at the limited types of default effects I have to work with and I don't want to spend a lot of time making eye candy.
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Post by Lap on Mar 7, 2009 17:55:14 GMT -5
-Fixed melons "climbing" to ceilings. (I kept this bug secret for three months until you guys finally found it. Sadly the only fix I could think of increases server strain slightly). -Fixed barracks/factories being able to go past the melon limit -Chaos Cannon now has a better sound, weapon trail and effect. It also throws melons in the area of effect around at random, as well as confuses them. -Chaos Cannon length of confusion increased. -Fixed the hover/thruster update exploit. -Fixed lasers not firing. -Fixed base prop tool creating melons of different teams. -Changed variant appending and naming.
The server is full pretty much all the time, yet no one is submitting bug reports. Instead, people are exploiting them until they are fixed. I'm going to start upping the bans.
I've also got a few more ideas for super weapons that I'm going to try and make before release. The new chaos cannon may actually get its effects split into two different super weapons. I would like to make a repulsor type super weapon that throws melons far away.
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Post by Lap on Mar 12, 2009 20:03:31 GMT -5
Work has been going slow as I've been doing gameplay analysis and backend stuff. Life has also been raping my free time and it's not going to get better for a while.
A lot of minor bug fixes have happened so far, but the main triumph has been the new molecular disassembler. It unfreezes props and can even unconstrained attached entities. No new sound or effects and I'll be changing it's model, but it functions just fine.
Mind control has also had its ability to steal props removed as this new superweapon will handle it just fine.
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Post by Lap on Mar 15, 2009 14:01:57 GMT -5
I fixed the terribly slow flying units. I changed something in the code for all warmelons that accidentally put them under the same "speed limit" I give to all non flying melons. They are back to their normal selves now.Ordering melons at water will now make them target the surface instead of underneath.Previously, trying to make way points and patrols on the see was nearly impossible. Force attack is now also force move.Holding walk while ordering normally selected a target for you. If no entity is targeted than you will revert to the old WM:RTS trace we're all used to. You will target the seabed if targeting water instead of the water's surface. You can also set waypoints at floating resource nodes using force move. Basically, if the normal order trace doesn't target it, force move will, and vice versa.Harvesters made much less laggy & more responsive to commandsHarvesters set to autoharvest will now only go to spawn points, outposts, and resource nodes when they have nothing else to do. This was a main cause of lag. As an added benefit, you can easily move autoharvesting melons out of harms way without switching their stance. They will resume autoharvesting when they are done with your waypoints and orders.Warmup time restrictions increasedMelons will no longer be built at all during warmup time.Constant double clicking of the selector swep improved.Naval improvements are coming next as well as new models for stuff, made by Articus. For those of you who keep bugging me about a to do list I'm going to direct you to my personal to do list (it tends to only grow, not shrink). docs.google.com/Doc?id=ajjpvfhr6skd_84cdc2f9pp
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Post by Lap on Mar 18, 2009 21:48:45 GMT -5
Corrected a serious bug with commanding This was causing some serious confusion as a runaway trace was making units go to unexpected locations. To solve this I had to use an extra trace. Not an ideal solution, but I'll get to a more efficient method later.
Fixed microwave laser The firing animation is finally fixed as well as its damage. It's sound is currently disabled as are many sounds, but that's due to Garry or some recent engine update.
Torpedo launcher implemented Currently set at 5000 nrg, they fire a torpedo about every 6 seconds in a narrow cone from itself. The torpedo will align itself properly to the target, but it will not home. Torpedos are relatively easy to dodge, but a single hit can cause serious damage.
Ballast Tanks are dupeable I apologize for the poor spawning location the current tool gives. I'll fix it later.
Added three new maps to the rotation The brand new wm_island_v2 is an amazing map with both land and naval battles. df_basin is a carry over from Dogfight and currently emphasizes huge vehicular gameplay. I will add a smaller variant for this one later. gm_tropicalwaters is a six island map of purely naval combat.
All harvesters are now natively immune to water This may only be temporary. We may have water only harvesters or an amphibious option that costs more later. For now, enjoy the improved harvester.
Order cores are now half price A bug of unknown origin has been causing the physics of my test server to different from the identical live server. The live server has order cores seeming almost 10x weaker than normal. I have slashed the prices while I investigate this.
All props are now metal. Don't worry about having to use certain types of props for boats, tanks, or whatever. They are all the same now.
Repulsors, naval tweaks, and some features for larger maps are coming up next.
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Post by Lap on Mar 20, 2009 23:24:10 GMT -5
Bombs are now free of air resistance and will fall much faster than before. They will also fly farther and faster when launched from contraptions. Try out your old siege weapons and see if they are more to your liking now. Bombing is now more effective. Mine health may be raised soon with bomb health decreased to compensate for their faster travel speed.
Lasers received quite the nerf.
Reduced laser damage from 30 to 25 Increased delay from 2 to 2.5 Reduced range to 800 from 1200. Increased weight from 250 to 300
The range decrease should solve the major problem of laser vehicles destroying everything from out of range of most units.
Bombs and Mega Bombs set to offensive will now explode on contact with anything.
Bombs and Mega Bombs set to berserk will explode immediately.
Mega Bombs start off with hold fire by default. No more exploding in base or on transport.
Fixed the typo causing mines to never explode.
Bombs created from factories whose stance is set to defensive will now spawn with hold fire as default. This makes them much safer to have lying around waiting to be loaded or fired from something.
Factories and Barracks now have their offspring match their stance as well. I don't know why I didn't do this before. I must have forgot and never had this brought to my attention. Anyways, it should help out a lot for people who know how to use it.
Launchers work fantastic and are pretty much just in alpha testing right now for balancing. I'm waiting on some models to get finished and for me to get some more free time. Repulsors will probably be next.
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Post by Lap on Mar 24, 2009 16:17:11 GMT -5
Radial menus implemented
Stance selection can now use radial menus.
The radial menu will automatically pop up as you hold down reload on the selector gun, provided your not holding any modiifer keys (sprint, walk, use, duck, jump).
To use the radial menus with any key you like simply bind something to "+wmstanceradial" and hold it down. You won't be able to use hotkey combinations to instantly select stances though.
For the l33t among us "wmstanceselect" will still allow stance selection by a combination of hotkeys or by selection of the actual stance. "wmstanceselect 1" would make all units defensive instantly on hitting the key.
If you have any thoughts on how I could make the use of the concommands or hotkeys better let me know.
I'm looking forward to hearing any suggestions for more things to use radial menus since they are so user friendly and I can easily pump more out now.
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Post by Lap on Mar 26, 2009 20:40:02 GMT -5
New features might be delayed a day or two. Gmod was having extremely stupid issues with the new spawn points. I've been trying to help Terminator and Mp6 get their maps tested by players, but errors and lots of people being unwilling to DL the maps has made it difficult.
Be patient and let the maps DL or go to gmod.org. They're always there as well. An sv_download server is in the works.
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Post by Lap on Mar 28, 2009 23:10:51 GMT -5
Since the last couple GMOD updates have been raping the server and screwing up client file downloads, please inform new players of that fact. No the gamemode isn't a piece of shit, it's the GMOD update.
I've implemented some changes, but it's pretty worthless explaining them when half of them are clientside.
On a more positive note the fast download server is working great and means a lot less waiting and having the server empty because of a big map.
I've also reinstated some of the EMP maps that were amazing, but hefty in filesize and custom textures. WM_conquer is up on the server now and is ideal for very quick battles and conflict. A larger version is planned for later.
wm_industrial_flooded has been added to the rotation since I had time to make a variant for it. wm_industrial_v2, wm_quadlake, new versions of all the old maps will likely be up tomorrow. A lot more GMS maps have been added to the rotation since downloading them is such a breeze now. Enjoy the new maps and be sure to give feedback to the authors.
Tomorrow won't be a big work day, but Monday-Wensday I'll be spending a lot of time on it. After that I'll be busy and then on vacation until the next Monday. Then, there will be almost a week of straight WM development.
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