That... was a lot of work. =) This is the problem with my "one-night coding experiments", they always turn into some bigger monster. (Crafting started out as one of these, too...)
I think these upgrades will contribute greatly to the Invasion event. There's more challenge, more options, and a much smarter reinforcement system, among other things. =) Right now, though, I'm going to go contribute greatly to my pillow. zzzzzz
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
We've already obtained far too much!
Update 5/26...
This is why they kept screaming 'Protect the Warlocks!!!'. =)
Note #1: This is not live yet. Keep your eye on the MotD, I should be able to get this live tomorrow at some point. It's a little diversion I started coding during the weekend between binges of Scar work.
Note #2: This is now live. There are some kinks to work out, especially with NPC response time; I'll work on that tonight. Enjoy, and keep Ruushi safe... if not for the principle, then for the fact that the less damage Ruushi takes from the invaders, the more platinum reward Commandant Vai-shan is able to deal out. =) I'll probably eventually expand on this event by adding desirable merchants and services that 'flee the city' when Ruushi suffers too much damage; that's for the future though.
Note #3: The 5/27 update gave the event a major upgrade. =) Theres a scrounger in Ruushi who'll stick around as long as the city is defended, dynamic scaling so that the reinforcements that arrive are the type of invaders that are most needed for the players that 'run out', there are huge rare-spawn bosses that drop heads that... well, lots of stuff. =)
This is why they kept screaming 'Protect the Warlocks!!!'. =)
Note #1: This is not live yet. Keep your eye on the MotD, I should be able to get this live tomorrow at some point. It's a little diversion I started coding during the weekend between binges of Scar work.
Note #2: This is now live. There are some kinks to work out, especially with NPC response time; I'll work on that tonight. Enjoy, and keep Ruushi safe... if not for the principle, then for the fact that the less damage Ruushi takes from the invaders, the more platinum reward Commandant Vai-shan is able to deal out. =) I'll probably eventually expand on this event by adding desirable merchants and services that 'flee the city' when Ruushi suffers too much damage; that's for the future though.
Note #3: The 5/27 update gave the event a major upgrade. =) Theres a scrounger in Ruushi who'll stick around as long as the city is defended, dynamic scaling so that the reinforcements that arrive are the type of invaders that are most needed for the players that 'run out', there are huge rare-spawn bosses that drop heads that... well, lots of stuff. =)
Monday, May 18, 2009
I haz a flavor
Some abilities are developed from a function-based core ("this class doesn't have a spammable attack - let's give it one"), while others are designed more from a thematic, flavorful standpoint ("man, nojohrs should be able to slap down a whole GROUP of chumps"). The best ones (from a how-fun-is-it-to-design standpoint) are a mixture of both.
I know I've got a flavor-leaning ability on my hands when I realize I'm having way too much fun writing the output, hehe.
You formulate a plan - block the pointy bits.
You formulate a plan - yell louder.
I know I've got a flavor-leaning ability on my hands when I realize I'm having way too much fun writing the output, hehe.
You formulate a plan - block the pointy bits.
You formulate a plan - yell louder.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling
The Scar is complete in the skeletal AI structure, which is very exciting for me. =) That is, I have a live setup which successfully does event initiation, player recruiting, event scoring, player contribution accumulation, event scoring/conclusion, and cleanup. (So basically, I can play against myself in an empty roomdescriptionless area! Whee!)
It'll be even more exciting when I can actually get this live, hehehe. Right now I'm working on the internal AI - the mobs inside the event that provide support, missions and such. Seems like every time I sit down to work on it, I come up with another idea I want to test out for inclusion. =)
I'll still be working on our overarching class/ability improvements in the meantime, as well. The most "complete" partially coded/tested new skills I have currently are for the barbarian, marauder, and paladin, so those are likely to come soon (no promises as usual, hehe). Over-100% masteries are always on the table and in development as well.
It'll be even more exciting when I can actually get this live, hehehe. Right now I'm working on the internal AI - the mobs inside the event that provide support, missions and such. Seems like every time I sit down to work on it, I come up with another idea I want to test out for inclusion. =)
I'll still be working on our overarching class/ability improvements in the meantime, as well. The most "complete" partially coded/tested new skills I have currently are for the barbarian, marauder, and paladin, so those are likely to come soon (no promises as usual, hehe). Over-100% masteries are always on the table and in development as well.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Just a quickie
New abilities now live:
Cleave - a little bit of nojohr defense, a lot of glee in large-scale combat.
Immaculate Retort - a simple automatic poliir tactic, designed to wear you down.
Poliir lost a little bit of their burst offense, but gained some good sustained benefits. Life also got a bit easier for small poliir (cheaper focus sphere, and a cheaper awakening of the guard with a nifty beyond-100% bonus...)
The Passage of Dark Summoning boost is a ton of fun, too. The "secret" part is somewhat uncommon, but exciting when it does happen...
Cleave - a little bit of nojohr defense, a lot of glee in large-scale combat.
Immaculate Retort - a simple automatic poliir tactic, designed to wear you down.
Poliir lost a little bit of their burst offense, but gained some good sustained benefits. Life also got a bit easier for small poliir (cheaper focus sphere, and a cheaper awakening of the guard with a nifty beyond-100% bonus...)
The Passage of Dark Summoning boost is a ton of fun, too. The "secret" part is somewhat uncommon, but exciting when it does happen...
Monday, May 11, 2009
Blessed are the cheesemakers
Blessing of the meek is pretty rockin'. =) It's a new fallad/daja spell which basically gives hope to the weak and the face-ganked. It caps incoming damage; the lower your hp, the lower the damage cap, meaning you take less. Works great on folks who are being seriously oppressed, or on people who just don't have a lot of hp training yet. (It's also super-fast preventionwise if used on someone smaller than you.)
It's a really good effect; the recipient can be made pretty resilient at low hp. Because it's a damage cap affect (per attack), massive damage increases such as rite of virility aren't gonna help bust through it much; on the other hand, increasing the number of attack sources (e.g. with radiant awakening or just saving a bunch of kick-style preventless attacks) can ruin their day.
There are other pros and cons to it, but I'll leave it to our friendly neighborhood healer classes to play with. =)
The Scar is coming along. I have the AI in a semi-functional state - it's very exciting to see the gears start to turn in my local testing. It might sound a bit silly, but the point where I can boot up a new event/area and actually interact with the NPCs is always a big deal for me - it's like they're coming to life Pinocchio-style. (I'm sure that's not creepy at all.) Right now, the big challenge is making the whole event reboot-proof (the way the Trials resume after a reboot).
This week, unfortunately, is going to be a heavy one for me in terms of rl responsibilities, and so I'm pretty stuck for time until this weekend; I'd expect the Scar to take at least another week or two before it's release-ready.
It's a really good effect; the recipient can be made pretty resilient at low hp. Because it's a damage cap affect (per attack), massive damage increases such as rite of virility aren't gonna help bust through it much; on the other hand, increasing the number of attack sources (e.g. with radiant awakening or just saving a bunch of kick-style preventless attacks) can ruin their day.
There are other pros and cons to it, but I'll leave it to our friendly neighborhood healer classes to play with. =)
The Scar is coming along. I have the AI in a semi-functional state - it's very exciting to see the gears start to turn in my local testing. It might sound a bit silly, but the point where I can boot up a new event/area and actually interact with the NPCs is always a big deal for me - it's like they're coming to life Pinocchio-style. (I'm sure that's not creepy at all.) Right now, the big challenge is making the whole event reboot-proof (the way the Trials resume after a reboot).
This week, unfortunately, is going to be a heavy one for me in terms of rl responsibilities, and so I'm pretty stuck for time until this weekend; I'd expect the Scar to take at least another week or two before it's release-ready.
Monday, May 4, 2009
After the Rain
Just for those who have been wondering, my short-term priority after the Scar is released will be on class development. I have a lot of new abilities and mastery improvements on the table, and a lot of work to do in light of the recent discussions, so when this area is done I'd like to take a little time to focus solely on that area. And after that - back to the Divide. =)
This is, of course, subject to change on a whim.
This is, of course, subject to change on a whim.
The Hallowed Scar
An update on what I've been working on recently:
The AI functionality mentioned a couple of entries ago seems to be working perfectly; as of last Thursday I've completed all of the necessary structure and a good deal of testing. I have not put the code live yet, however; it's a big update and I have the perfect project to serve as a rigorous test before I upload it - the Hallowed Scar.
Thus, I've spent this past weekend trying to get this area into shape. This is the PvP-based Trials extension that I mentioned previously. It's basically an event triggered with each Trial win; completing a Trial grants a rally effect which allows the player to access the event.
The area itself is a fairly sizable zone, with four main subsections. The central section is a small shrine to Illanielle, the goddess of fertility; however, the shrine itself has been damaged and the land around it shattered, obliterated by the dark magic of a vengeful rival goddess, Ashabelle. The dark scar left behind by Ashabelle's bolt carves a deep impassable slash throughout the zone, splitting the land around the central shrine and forking outwards.
Illanielle's shrine serves as one of the zone's four points of control, alongside her militant disciples' garrison to the west, a flattened caldera which once held a great amphitheatre to the north, and a nearby irontree forest stretching to the east. What was meant to be a spiteful, crippling strike on Ashabelle's part has instead resulted in the rallying of the forces of both immorality and morality - the former bent on gloating over the dark side's conquest and looting the remains, the latter determined to extract triumph from tragedy and to demonstrate the resilience and drive of the light.
While the event is active, players with the appropriate rally effect may enter the Hallowed Scar and contribute to the glory of their respective sides. While there are NPCs to interact with (and combat) within the zone, the main focus of the zone is on the players themselves. Simply being present in one of the four zones of control will constantly contribute to the control points which that player's side has accumulated for that zone of control; at the end of the event, the side with the most control points in each zone of control claims that subzone. The side which has claimed the most subzones is the winner of the event. (Ties, in both control points and subzone claiming, are automatically given to the side which won the last set of morality Trials.)
Thus, it is in each side's best interest to occupy as many zones of control as possible while driving out the players on the opposing side. There are no rank restrictions to join the event, since even the smallest player can contribute to zone occupation by avoiding the enemy team (albeit at a slightly slower rate than a high-ranking player); the overall event is, however, rank-controlled to ensure that the total ranks on each side are fairly even. The event will automatically "expand" the rank restrictions to allow more people in if there are players on both sides who can't get in due to rank caps.
I'll save the reward system for another day, except to mention that it's a pretty deep and unique reward set based on accumulating favor (which is earned constantly as a player contributes to zone control, and in larger chunks for the event's winners).
Anyway, this zone is what I have been working on over this past weekend, as both a demonstration and a rigorous test of the capabilities of the new AI functionality. There's a lot to do, but I've also got a lot of it completed and ready for testing, and the new functionality greatly simplifies many of the tasks required. As of tonight, I have the barebones AI nearly ready for testing and the physical structure of the area completely built. Over this week, I'll be working on testing and adding to the AI; once that's done, it's just a matter of implementing the reward system and whipping out the final details (room names and descriptions, etc.) I expect that I will need at least another weekend to finish all of this.
Your over-100% mastery discussions are not falling on deaf ears, by the way! We have already gotten a lot of great feedback from the players, and we look forward to more. I can promise you that of your feedback, absolutely zero percent is being overlooked or ignored; even if I feel initially that I disagree with your analysis, I am still making the effort to check the code and test out your observations locally, and sometimes that ends up changing my initial opinions. This takes time, but we will get to every class. I've got a lot of exciting plans for all of the varied classes of Nodeka, and all I need to let them unfold is a little time and your patience. =) Thanks for your support, folks!
The AI functionality mentioned a couple of entries ago seems to be working perfectly; as of last Thursday I've completed all of the necessary structure and a good deal of testing. I have not put the code live yet, however; it's a big update and I have the perfect project to serve as a rigorous test before I upload it - the Hallowed Scar.
Thus, I've spent this past weekend trying to get this area into shape. This is the PvP-based Trials extension that I mentioned previously. It's basically an event triggered with each Trial win; completing a Trial grants a rally effect which allows the player to access the event.
The area itself is a fairly sizable zone, with four main subsections. The central section is a small shrine to Illanielle, the goddess of fertility; however, the shrine itself has been damaged and the land around it shattered, obliterated by the dark magic of a vengeful rival goddess, Ashabelle. The dark scar left behind by Ashabelle's bolt carves a deep impassable slash throughout the zone, splitting the land around the central shrine and forking outwards.
Illanielle's shrine serves as one of the zone's four points of control, alongside her militant disciples' garrison to the west, a flattened caldera which once held a great amphitheatre to the north, and a nearby irontree forest stretching to the east. What was meant to be a spiteful, crippling strike on Ashabelle's part has instead resulted in the rallying of the forces of both immorality and morality - the former bent on gloating over the dark side's conquest and looting the remains, the latter determined to extract triumph from tragedy and to demonstrate the resilience and drive of the light.
While the event is active, players with the appropriate rally effect may enter the Hallowed Scar and contribute to the glory of their respective sides. While there are NPCs to interact with (and combat) within the zone, the main focus of the zone is on the players themselves. Simply being present in one of the four zones of control will constantly contribute to the control points which that player's side has accumulated for that zone of control; at the end of the event, the side with the most control points in each zone of control claims that subzone. The side which has claimed the most subzones is the winner of the event. (Ties, in both control points and subzone claiming, are automatically given to the side which won the last set of morality Trials.)
Thus, it is in each side's best interest to occupy as many zones of control as possible while driving out the players on the opposing side. There are no rank restrictions to join the event, since even the smallest player can contribute to zone occupation by avoiding the enemy team (albeit at a slightly slower rate than a high-ranking player); the overall event is, however, rank-controlled to ensure that the total ranks on each side are fairly even. The event will automatically "expand" the rank restrictions to allow more people in if there are players on both sides who can't get in due to rank caps.
I'll save the reward system for another day, except to mention that it's a pretty deep and unique reward set based on accumulating favor (which is earned constantly as a player contributes to zone control, and in larger chunks for the event's winners).
Anyway, this zone is what I have been working on over this past weekend, as both a demonstration and a rigorous test of the capabilities of the new AI functionality. There's a lot to do, but I've also got a lot of it completed and ready for testing, and the new functionality greatly simplifies many of the tasks required. As of tonight, I have the barebones AI nearly ready for testing and the physical structure of the area completely built. Over this week, I'll be working on testing and adding to the AI; once that's done, it's just a matter of implementing the reward system and whipping out the final details (room names and descriptions, etc.) I expect that I will need at least another weekend to finish all of this.
Your over-100% mastery discussions are not falling on deaf ears, by the way! We have already gotten a lot of great feedback from the players, and we look forward to more. I can promise you that of your feedback, absolutely zero percent is being overlooked or ignored; even if I feel initially that I disagree with your analysis, I am still making the effort to check the code and test out your observations locally, and sometimes that ends up changing my initial opinions. This takes time, but we will get to every class. I've got a lot of exciting plans for all of the varied classes of Nodeka, and all I need to let them unfold is a little time and your patience. =) Thanks for your support, folks!
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