Deus Siddis wrote:The point of this config patch is mostly just to lay groundwork for the linear movement patch that I will release a little later, as well as to replace the difficulty setting with one that affects only physics...
But it needs to be committed before that so the linear accelerations balance patch and any future changes to physics will be unmodified by default. It is like a level foundation physics balancing can build on top of.
Sounds like a good way to change things while maintaining the old and gaining the ability to easily compare current balances
klauss wrote:
Well... regarding that... games since forever have done the opposite. Are we questioning their collective wisdom? I really haven't paid much attention to the issue, but such massive adoption of in-savegame difficulty settings must be due to some rationale worth looking into...
It is to give the game an exclusive feel that I don't think is completely compatible with the open source philosophy. Most popular games now days actually let you change the difficulty at the start of a mission, and most simulators and Open worlds allow it at any moment because games are longer and people have less patience. The only kinds modern games that I can think of that still lock the difficulty right from the start are short classic styles games where the goal is to pass as many levels as possible until defeated. I remember this had started to change when console games started looking real and I was much relieved
Deus Siddis wrote:klauss wrote:
We must distinguish between game start variables and general variables. A damage handicap you should be able to change anytime you wish, it is a general variable because it won't break anything to change it after game start. And the player might only realize a chosen preset is unsavory for himself after he has played for a while.
It might break game balance. Imagine a game like Privateer (where the campaign is carefully crafted and balanced), and imagine I reach a mission I find challenging. Instead of actually winning it, I could set the game temporarily to "easy", go about my way trivially fighting enemies, and then go back to "hard".
There are some really good compromises for this too, like Grand Theft Auto would give you three lives to try to finish a long mission from checkpoints until it would say something like "Game over" then kick you back to your last save point before the mission started. Then you could change the difficulty again.
klauss wrote:If we had a high score or something like that, where those achievements matter, I can see how that would be undesirable. Since we don't... I'm not sure.
There's also the multi-user issue to consider. What if we have many users of the game, sharing instances. Do you want a globally configured difficulty setting there? (in Linux you'd say have them use different system accounts, but Windows land tends to do the opposite).
Really good point about players sharing instances. Eventually I think it would be best do what most games do and have players login to an account before changing settings loading or saving. If users want files separately secured, then that is when they would make a separate account on any operating system. It seems most things should not be moved out of the save file until the .config file turns into user settings files.
Any local high score discrepancies would mostly be caused by cheating on the hardest part of a mission rather than someone trying to raise the difficulty to get more points on a single enemy. So I think the locally generated score would be adjusted by the lowest difficulty used during the mission. Or perhaps the difficulty could not be changed during the mission, which is a more common and transparent practice. An online high score for individual missions would have more credibility anyways if vega strike had a persistant online server.
klauss wrote:Deus Siddis wrote:Starting credits you would only be able to change at game start by necessity. But damage handicap, physics and NPC traffic are things you should be able to play around with and adjust anytime, unless it is technically infeasible.
See above about handicap. About NPC traffic, I'm not really sure you cam actually change it anytime. Ignoring the multi-user scenario presented above, technically, NPC traffic is stored on the save game, generated by dynamic_universe.py. I don't think you can easily switch back and forth between settings, since that data will still be there, and it will take considerable time for the universe to converge towards the new setting.
If it takes time to adjust I think that is good. I would name the variable "spawn rate" in the case that no current units are removed upon loading. It is a bit factor in game performance too.
Deus Siddis wrote:My feeling has always been that if the player really wants to cheat or hack his way through the game then that's his choice. He might even enjoy the game better if he has some way to get around a roadblock mission that seems just too hard and keep playing to experience the rest of the story. I know I do. Hadn't thought of that multi-user aspect at all though. This is a good topic for future discussion.
Truth time! I actually don't play Vegastirke for fun unless I'm testing because any progress I make Is tied into my original settings. I feel like I'm trying to avoid the disappointment of restarting, so I don't play missions hardly at all either. I tried cheating but the the game destabilizes so mostly I just test individual aspects then imagine playing. LOL that's why I joke that the best video card is your imagination.
Deus Siddis wrote:klauss wrote:
Indeed. Current variables are completely unpredictable. That's why I offered to implement specific, limited and well-understood tweaks in addition to current speed settings. Rationale being that Privateer mods probably rely too heavily on those for us to be able to modify them, so we need additional fine-tunning knobs, and we can set the speed ones to neutral values.
Well physics customization might benefit from new specific variables that modify linear speed governors, angular acceleration and angular speed governors.
For now though I am satisfied with a default config that just doesn't modify anything, so that balancing Units.csv is WYSIWYG.
I was thinking eventually that some variables in addition to being in Units.csv should be able to be disabled or adjusted in .config according to the selected "flight physics" mode probably in the way klauss is offering. In particular those ones you mentioned, linear speed governors, angular acceleration, and angular speed. My reason for this is to create a more complete transformation when selecting between "flight physics"
I think defining all possible flight physics would be helpful so here is what I think to be an exhaustive list all physics styles that I am aware have been proposed. I'll use your names because I think they are great.
"Arcade" is what you are calling default now. Since I think any mode could be default, the existing balance should be called arcade, since it was intended to be fun without much regard to realism. The default should not be named default, but rather just labbeled as default.
"Classic" is exactly what you said it was, similar the older games
"Realistic" I think realistic should be default since it should be easiest to balance using reality as a template
Three physics modes are plenty so these next ones should not be nessesary:
"Hard Sci-Fi" sounds like it could be for those who didn't want any exceptions to the governor cap using fictional inertial mitigation methods.
"Ultra realism" For those who don't even like SPEC, in this case the game would have to include a sophisticated auto slowing time compression function that would be usable anytime.
If the game is to be sped up or slowed down it should be a separate option in the configuration. Or as you may know, as long as it is not introduced as a lone solution to travel distances, I have thought it ideal to have optional in game 'time compression' while also removing the cosmic speed limit. It would be a redundent uncannon alternative to SPEC and just a way to speed up the boring parts of travel that have not been fixed in the SPEC system yet.
Time compression could be available in all the "light Physics" modes or just some of the more realistic ones. The slowness in the higher realism "Flight physics" modes, from the cannon real time action, would then be eliviated by this simulator element. "Ultra realism" would then be what ChuckStarcaster once suggested, including his
damming of SPEC LOL X-D. Everyones happy except for the extra work.
To make time consistent in multiplayer, of course these features would be disabled by either disallowing "Ultra realism" as an online option or the time compresson directly. Players would need to be playing under the same physics of course; likly the default.