Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

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Shadow Wolf TJC
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Shadow Wolf TJC »

Per wrote:One thing I've been thinking about, is that it is hard to really apply any skill in playing this level, because you have so little to work with apart from overwhelming force and sending damaged droids back to base to do nothing until you get repair turret next level. I think I would like to swap flamer and engineering tech artifacts on this level, so that you have a chance to research repair turret before the level ends...
I forgot which techs you get from this mission, and in what order, but perhaps we could have the 1st base contain the Machinegun Tower, and the 2nd base contain the Mobile Repair Turret?
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by NoQ »

While having unlimited (that is, more than 8 minutes) time on this mission, you'd always prefer to spare the base at the north-east corner and go straight to the repair turret; then get yourself repaired before the next mission and finish off the last base, also keeping your tanks close to the next mission's action.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by aubergine »

@Shadow: The techs in cam1a are:

Code: Select all

Artifacts.list = {
	artifact1:  "R-Wpn-MG-Damage01",
	artifact2:  "R-Wpn-Flamer01Mk1",
	artifact3:  "R-Defense-Tower01",
	artifact4:  "R-Sys-Engineering01"
}
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Per »

Ok, I committed a swap of the artifacts at base 2 and 4. This should allow you to research repair turret before taking on base 3.

I also added a bonus power on mission end, equal to what you would get if you had spent all that time drilling for oil on your existing derricks with a 25% bonus to power income. (Too much?)

Still remaining to do is add more units for higher difficulty levels, and possibly adjusting the mission timer down.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Goth Zagog-Thou »

I'd like to "dress up" the Campaign areas along with the changes above. For example, add one or two more encounters, possibly another Scav base, etc but not add more artifacts or anything. Think of Tomb Raider versus Tomb Raider Anniversary -- the objectives are the same, but there's been a MASSIVE overhaul of the areas and some things become easier to do while others are a real challenge.

And I LOVE the idea of using USM and Contingency in the mix somewhere. :D
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Lord Apocalypse »

A thought.

If we view everything from the opening video (the commander leaving project HQ) we can get a better sense of how all will play out. Everything falls under an away mission. From the very first to the very last mission you are away from home base. So, thinking on that (and how easy the first mission is) here are a few ideas.

1. On mission begin we have a transport bring the project equipment in from the east. On landing transport unloads and units proceed to original starting points (or perhaps a new starting point)

2. Instead if waiting for the first video trigger (and first baba trigger) we could have 3 small groups of baba infantry come charging in. Nothing larger than 3 groups of 5. Put some pressure on the player but not so much they will get wiped out immediately.

3. Create scav patrols. It should not be to difficult to create a patrol or 3 of infantry or trikes to roam parts of the map and if the bases send out a distress call these patrols could be made to look as if they are flanking the player. Would give a hint of a smart tactical AI to the player even though we all know how dumb it really is.

4. Provide a way for babas to take cover behind terrain features (rocks, wrecks, houses) and get a cover bonus so they don't die so quickly (mentioned earlier but no one commented on it). Some of this may have to change in the code and not the script though.. Not sure which though.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by aubergine »

I tried creating something that would make units hide behind terrain obstacles and wrecks but struggled with the math and lack of data about map topology. We'd almost certainly need a way to get details about map tiles -- what terrain they are, height, etc. We'd then need some way of saying if enemy is at x1,y2, and we are at x2,y2, where is nearest thing to hide behind from viewpoint of enemy.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Per »

Cover bonus - an interesting idea, but it needs to be visualized when a unit is in cover and when it is not somehow, and I struggle to come up with anything useful there that is not a ton of work to implement.

Initial transport to place the units... I like that idea. I'll look how hard that it is to add.

I think the initial harass timing is quite well done as it is, in that you get attacked the moment you build on your first derrick, giving player a little bit of time to mess around with the unit menus and build stuff before going into hostilities. (On harder difficulty, however...)
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Lord Apocalypse »

Well, one would think that the scavs would see your transport fly in and investigate. Not a serious encounter, but enough to give the player a paranoid feeling until the base is secure.

As for when the first wave attacks. I think it is a trigger even based on passing the line the derrick follows rather than building the derrick itself. Haven't looked at the code so not really sure.

The cover idea is more on targeting. If you are using raytracing in the engine for any collision detection or targeting this could come into play.

Also, to find cover in the scripting... Doesn't map features such as rocks, wrecks, etc have a call function already, or at least an entry in the object list for each map?? You could have units (in this case babas) make a call to something like getNearestFeature(type, max distance) so each baba could look for something within one or two tile units and hide behind it.

Since houses, buildings, cars, etc.. can be destroyed the game should track their location in the map somewhere. If this is already exposed to the code it wouldn't take much to just add a new function to call and search for it. At least not the call... searching is another matter.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Per »

I think you misunderstand my concern. I am not at all concerned about the performance of finding cover and resolving targeting. The problem is visualizing what is going on to the player. If all cover does is make babas take another few seconds to kill, from the players' perspective, then nothing has been gained. So I think this is more of graphics problem than a coding issue.

Yes, the attack trigger is based on proximity to the derrick, not actually building on it.

Another thing I'm really missing, is a better way to tell such small bits of story between cutscenes. The current mission briefs given in a full screen/window dialog, which in effect requires you to go away from the game to see them, work very poorly, IMHO.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Lord Apocalypse »

So visually all the babas need to do is run toward and kinda hide behind the object. Would be nice for buildings to have the scavs run toward a building, disappear, and then have them fire from inside the buildings.. For other objects though the babas would need to be positioned on either exposed corner.. Not sure how that could be worked out though. For cars and rocks this wont matter as they should be able to fire over them. The truck wrecks are another matter though.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Lord Apocalypse »

Per wrote:Another thing I'm really missing, is a better way to tell such small bits of story between cutscenes. The current mission briefs given in a full screen/window dialog, which in effect requires you to go away from the game to see them, work very poorly, IMHO.
Is there a way to play the mission briefs in a window . Say have a small box in the top right corner play the brief as some other RTS/Flight Sims do. Not sure if you could use the current video file or not.. but worth a looksee maybe.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by aubergine »

A DORDER_HIDE would be most useful if possible, AIs could use that in skirmish games as well. Basically it would instruct a unit to hide behind something from perspective of the enemies that are shooting at it - either a terrain obstacle (cliff, slope, etc) or a feature (tree, log cabin, etc).

As for playing mission brief in a window, that would work OK for shorter briefs. But there are also some longer briefs that you need to watch fully (at least first time you play the cam) to get vital infos and those are better suited to current methodology.

It would be great if we had a playVideo(filename, fullscreen) function. That would also allow removal of the hackAddMessage/hackRemoveMesage functions.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Shadow Wolf TJC »

Perhaps we should split off ideas for a cover system in another thread and focus back on Campaign 1, Mission 1, ok?

Anyways, I suppose that we could have Scavengers attack the base, either after a set period of time has passed (like, say, 5 minutes), or if any droids enter the area with the Oil Derrick. Moreover, perhaps we could have the Scavengers (and in later missions, other factions like the New Paradigm or NEXUS) attack in larger groups on harder difficulties? It could provide some incentive to stop adjusting the various factions' bonuses/penalties to HP and firepower (though maybe not necessarily any power multipliers) in favor of more competent AI scripting, as a less cheap means of providing more difficulty.
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Rman Virgil »

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Exactly what Black Project did with his "Hardcore Campaign Mode Mod", just give it a difficulty setting of "Insane"... is my suggestion.
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