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Post by Farbs on May 21, 2014 10:12:17 GMT 10
Huh. I thought so! How do you control the aspects of a sector, by the way? I'm curious how all the gears turn and click behind the scenes. I have a class called VerseDescriptor which handles most of this. "Verse" is the word I ended up using in code to mean Sector, simply because I thought at first I would have only one (so it represented the universe). Here's a list of the members in the VerseDescriptor class:
// general members
public var displayName:String;
public var rootSeed:uint;
public var playSeed:uint;
public var depth:int;
public var builder:VerseBuilder;
public var builderFlags:Vector.<Boolean>;
This is all that's required to build a new sector. It's nice to have this abstracted out into its own little class rather than as part of the Verse object, as it means I can use VerseDescriptor objects at places like wormholes to describe other sectors without having to build them. The rootSeed and the playSeed are used by the seeded random number generators used to build the sector. The root seed for a sector should always be the same, which is why everyone sees the same stations in the same places etc. The play seed changes each playthrough, so in the past I've used it to control things like AI types and spawn locations. The builder is a class used to lay out the sector. This allows me to create completely different algorithms for sector independently of the Verse class. So far I've used subclasses of VerseBuilder to manually lay out the intro sector, to run the general layout algorithms used by the main sectors, and to build the (empty) end sector. The builderFlags are just a generic array of booleans, which each VerseBuilder can use however it likes. The GeneralVerseBuilder uses these to determine if a level is spelunk, inferno, devout etc. |
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Post by Ozzatron on May 21, 2014 10:26:42 GMT 10
So playSeed is used to control the specific enemies in any particular enemy cloud, isn't it? That's why in, say, a Echo <-> Golf cloud, I see various numbers of the different tiers every time I reboot the game? But the fact that there is an enemy cloud there at all, along with that it has 5 to 8 enemies of Echo to Golf tier with some particular flavoring of modules/alignment (say, twin boosters and regular lasers, mostly Balancers), is controlled by rootSeed?
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arien
Bravo Rank
Posts: 18 
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Post by arien on May 21, 2014 13:15:17 GMT 10
Oh interesting stuff. I have noticed that if I'm trying to get certain bits off an enemy and I accidentally destroy too much, I can leave for a bit, come back and the same dude will be there as long as I didn't destroy him. Also, SO EXCITED for the new ship rendering bizzo! I can't believe you're doing all this stuff weekly. But as you said, this part of it has been building up for months. Appreciate all the work you put into this  |
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Post by Ozzatron on May 21, 2014 13:24:14 GMT 10
Yep. Actually I've had that occur in the inverse way, which is extremely annoying: someone speeds by me, shoots at me a bit, I shoot at him, he maybe gets rid of half of my shields and I tear his ship in half. Then the half that lives speeds away far enough offscreen that -- get this -- he respawns and speeds in again, fully repaired, as if nothing happened. And my shields don't recharge.
I've actually had this happen with the same enemy ship several times in a row. It was hilarious though, because it was a merchant with Primary Boosters (this is always hilarious to some extent). He dashes towards me some, stops firing the Primaries, then fires torpedoes, and activates his Primaries again, ramming straight into them and spiraling out of control, going offscreen less than a second after he came in.
Then he does it again. And again. Cue the Benny Hill theme.
Farbs, I think merchants with Sprint or Primary Boosters should stay, no matter what you do to this game. They are one of the most entertaining parts of it.
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arien
Bravo Rank
Posts: 18
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Post by arien on May 21, 2014 13:55:01 GMT 10
Haha that's amazing. I have only seen primaries on the lower teirs. It kinda pays to hang onto them and upgrade later. I experienced my 2nd death last night but I was being reckless. I was so caught up on exploring the north-west corner but it was a deathtrap of aggressive photon lance beasts. I was pinned against a station and was desperately shifting my weapons around just so i'd at least survive. My own stupid fault. I'm really being careful to map the route I advance so I can build up gradually. Once I grab a decent laser though, I get cocky. Like in build #3 when I found an India laser in a Charlie warehouse. It was like "OMG SCORE!!" But yeah, the lack of Oxy stations in certain patches makes advancing more tricksy, and the scrapyards seem a lot more scarce. It does feel a bit more punishing than say, Jameson 0.5, but I am enjoying it.
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Post by Farbs on May 21, 2014 18:51:24 GMT 10
Also, SO EXCITED for the new ship rendering bizzo! I can't believe you're doing all this stuff weekly. Heh, you might need to hold on to that excitement for a little while. I'm still working on the art pipeline & preprocessing work, so there won't be any new render tech in the game itself this week. I have Farbs Jr tomorrow due to an asthma flare-up, so I won't get much done then either. I might see if I can take him out for a photoreference mission, which'll give me something to show in this week's video. This week's build should include a few bugfixes and tweaks, and of course a new seed. |
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Post by Ozzatron on May 22, 2014 1:19:54 GMT 10
"Photoreference mission"...? Is this a real thing, or is this a joke that I completely don't understand?
Looking forward to the new seed, because that alone is enough for me to slog through the game again. I don't understand why it has so much replayability for me, it just... does!
Tweaks and bugfixes are nice too. I'm one for very minute details (if you couldn't tell from my very specific comments about Photon Lances and Ramming Spikes a ways back), so every little change is exciting for me.
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Post by Admiral Kirana on May 22, 2014 6:20:50 GMT 10
"Photoreference mission"...? Is this a real thing, or is this a joke that I completely don't understand? Looking forward to the new seed, because that alone is enough for me to slog through the game again. I don't understand why it has so much replayability for me, it just... does!Tweaks and bugfixes are nice too. I'm one for very minute details (if you couldn't tell from my very specific comments about Photon Lances and Ramming Spikes a ways back), so every little change is exciting for me. I'm going to assume he means "take pictures". But yeah, also waiting on the new update with some eagerness (if I could get through the darn game, it'd be a lot! xP). |
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Post by Ozzatron on May 22, 2014 8:59:53 GMT 10
Perhaps the "beginners" thread should actually have beginner's help in it? I guess I could cobble together a bunch of hints but I fear that they'll all just converge to say "play the game like Ozzatron does" and I don't want that -- The Dawn Star is about creative strategies! Either way, I can't do it because the thread has gone way off topic now.  |
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Post by Captain Michaela Nul'dolaer on Aug 7, 2014 12:41:36 GMT 10
Yep, so what do we do with this thread now?
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