Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Ideas and suggestions for how to improve the Warzone 2100 base game only. Ideas for mods go in Mapping/Modding instead. Read sticky posts first!
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WZ-DEV-AI
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Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by WZ-DEV-AI »

Just a few suggestions, because what you are doing with the game already looks strange.

1) Put all original features and technological paths back into the game.
- The 3.1 technological progress is better because you get .50 cal tower only after you discover .50 cal technology.
- Shooting range and unit positioning options in the unit menu is important, because it's micromanagement of the battlefield and it entertains hardcore players.
2) Only improve or add things that do not break classical original concept and only make it more logical. For example, you can add more realistic technologies like uranium shells, uranium armor, but nothing like "super mega ultra blasters". Improve AI and difficulty levels, make it smart and tactical. Add more maps.
3) Do not make your own game under the official title of Warzone. If you want it, start your own game and call it your own way.
4) If you need to remove original stuff from the classic game, make a separate version, call it Warzone 2100 Reduced and do your experiments with it.

Other suggestions:
a) Nice improvement for the game would be to add additional armor layers. 3 additional layers of armor can be added when create a tank design and you can add for example 2 kinetic armor layers and 1 thermal. So you can micromanage your armies and create special brigades to deal with an opponent who uses a lot of thermal weapons.
b) Weapon damage depends on the wheels, tracks of the vehicle. But why for example hypervelocity 80mm cannon shoots better on wheels than on tracks? Tracks already have disadvantage in speed, but cannons must shoot better on such solid platforms. Can you improve this thing?
c) Add more faction colors, more natural colors like green, sand, dirt, navy colors.
d) Add more green maps. Urban and sandy maps are annoying without green color.

You have taken the responsibility to continue the project that you did not create and which has earned big credit and formed the whole community before you even started doing anythign with it. That means the game had all the features needed for success. Now, you are working on it. Working to make it even better.
cRiMiNaL
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by cRiMiNaL »

There is a way to download the original Warzone without the improvements Here
You can request maps to be made for v1.0 if you want more maps
WZ-DEV-AI
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by WZ-DEV-AI »

cRiMiNaL wrote: 08 Feb 2019, 07:24 There is a way to download the original Warzone without the improvements Here
You can request maps to be made for v1.0 if you want more maps
Original version does not have anti-aliasing settings and other things are not improved there. At the same time in newer versions with a few things improved, for some weird reasons developers decided to remove something from the game and also you can't be sure that they will not remove anything else that you like in the game just because somebody decided that the game does not need that. Why would somebody want to remove game functionality? It does not take screen space, does not make game unplayable, it does not interfere in any way, why would someone remove even those buttons for long short and optimum unit range? What were the reasons to even try to change that?
cRiMiNaL
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by cRiMiNaL »

From what I have read there have been a few complaints about the buttons for the range selection

I am personally very happy with what they have done so far
I would love to see a full graphics upgrade
I have downloaded ARMOD which updates a lot of the graphics but I think it's kinda hard on the game engine as on my gaming computer it tends to be a little laggy

Though I would agree the range selector could be useful
More than 3 tile-sets and more scenery would be nice too; More variety

Unfortunately the WZ2100 community isn't very big any more, we're all in our 30's with jobs and families
The project is a hobby basically as it can not be financially profitable

As far as me personally, I know nothing about coding
All I do is use 3rd party software to make maps
Am about to start experimenting with tile-sets though

Hopefully someone with more experience with coding will get on this thread and shed a better light for you
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vexed
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by vexed »

For what it is worth, (not speaking for the team, just my personal beliefs) I do think that all versions of Warzone 2100 should maintain the same game play & design as it always had, and we should be sticking as close to the original as possible while still enhancing things as we go along.

Improving Gfx/Sfx and all that would be a enhancement.
Removing orders / range is a regression.
Adding things is acceptable, depending on what it is of course. I mean, I don't want to turn Warzone 2100 into Warcraft or anything like that.

Do I think it was a mistake to remove the unit orders and range buttons / code? Yep.
Is it easy to revert that? Nope.
Do I still want them back? Yep.
Will I do it? No time these days. Barely touched the codebase at all for over a year now. :oops: :(

It was mentioned before, but, all funding for this project goes directly to what is needed to keep the server alive. That is it. Nothing else. Nobody gets paid or anything like that, and the people working on Warzone these days are still volunteering their time to do it.

There are other threads that express the unit order removal (and other stuff), so you can hunt for those yourself.

The only way to prevent things like that from happening again is to keep downloading the master builds, and check up on what people are committing.
/facepalm ...Grinch stole Warzone🙈🙉🙊 contra principia negantem non est disputandum
Super busy, don't expect a timely reply back.
WZ-DEV-AI
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by WZ-DEV-AI »

I didn't know that the community is the same as it was initially, those who played it on PS1. I though the crowd was kind of growing and active, more guys like students or like that who actively program or work on this game. I think original developers should have kept the project and develop it, although they were not financed and the publishers rejected to support them. The game was a great breakthrough in conception and implementation, especially the variety of weapons and technologies and the fact that it is about actual modern technologies, modern weapons, armor types. I can only name Civilization 2 as something similarly entertaining.
Bethrezen
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by Bethrezen »

The game was a great breakthrough in conception and implementation, especially the variety of weapons and technologies and the fact that it is about actual modern technologies, modern weapons, armor types.
i don't know about that as someone who has the original game on both the pc and play station, and as someone who has spent a lot of time helping to test and fix the campaign for the latest release, i can tell you that even v1.10 which was the last official patch for the pc version still has a massive amount of bugs, and there are things that where never implemented, more over the graphics are actually quite poor as well, although certainly no worse than any other game from the same era.

As for the tech actually there is a massive amount of duplication for example take lancer, tank killers, scourge they are all basically the same weapon just under different names with slightly different stats, the same holds true for the light cannon, medium cannon, heavy cannon, assault cannon, hyper velocity cannon, Needle gun they are all basically the same weapon and really you don't need them, all you need is the light medium and heavy cannons, and then the stats changes can be done by damage buffs, as you go through the tech tree, the same applies to the machine-gun, twin machine-gun heavy machine-gun, assault gun again they are all basically the same weapon and you could simply do away with the duplication and just have machine-gun and then just keep buffing that as required the same is true for your scanners you don't need to have a half dozen scanners it would be better to just have 1 scanner and then just add the relevant upgrades to give it new abilities as you go

doing this would make maintenance and balancing way easier, since the tech tree would be significantly smaller and easier to manage without all the duplication, granted you might loose a little flavour but as far as game play goes it wouldn't actually make that much difference

what you would end up with is a build list something like this

machine-gun
light cannon, medium cannon, heavy cannon
mini rockets, rockets
mini rocket artillery, rocket artillery, artillery
anti aircraft gun, anti aircraft missile

now you can see right there by simply removing the duplication the tech tree is now much smaller, because you don't need zillions of different versions of the same weapon, from a development perspective i don't get why Pumpkin did that because it makes no logical sense its a lot of extra work for little to no benefit, save for maybe a little flavour, which is exactly the reason no other RTS game does that.
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Berg
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by Berg »

This game has a feel about it and the tech tree is part of that feel.
Warzone is no other RTS its unique.
If you go removing features functions or tech paths you diminish the Game.
With the different weapons it is that which makes or breaks your tactics pick the wrong path and your lost so you have to decide what weapons on low oil your going to use.
Let us Not dismantle a perfectly good game one that is not just killing and not thinking like many other games.
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WZ2100ModsFAn
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

Can we also revert the skip quit menu? I miss the old menu with the credits.
It's a great feature.
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Berserk Cyborg
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by Berserk Cyborg »

WZ2100ModsFAn wrote: 05 Sep 2019, 00:15 Can we also revert the skip quit menu? I miss the old menu with the credits.
It's a great feature.
No. Exit should mean exit, not force the player to click the screen a second time to close the app. But... perhaps the credits backdrop could become a random backdrop like the others.
Forgon
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by Forgon »

Berserk Cyborg wrote: 07 Sep 2019, 20:38 [...] But... perhaps the credits backdrop could become a random backdrop like the others.
There's no need for that. I don't miss the credits screen at all.
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WZ2100ModsFAn
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Re: Old features, new features, remarks and advices

Post by WZ2100ModsFAn »

Forgon wrote: 07 Sep 2019, 20:47
Berserk Cyborg wrote: 07 Sep 2019, 20:38 [...] But... perhaps the credits backdrop could become a random backdrop like the others.
There's no need for that. I don't miss the credits screen at all.
Actually I think it's a good idea if you don't have to click a second time. It just closed after credits for you.
Maybe just like 1.10 but a shorter delay then it takes for 1.10 for credits to drop.
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