Thanks ducky for a cool event and posting this thread! And yes, always down for another party
My thoughts:
Tuning Fork:Numbers, I dig the vibes your levels give off, like abstract but still with symmetry and some futuristic/sci-fi themes. Cool stuff. We were able to break the level a bit, and a couple turrets didn't have regen, but that should be easy to patch up. Once I got the hang of where to go it was cool. Definitely more of a small group map, like 1/team, 2 tops, but given the amount of people we've had lately that's perfect haha!
Team Meteors:Honestly I had a good time on this map, creative to lock the asteroids into walls as most maps have them floating around. Feels kinda like that Forcefield Crossing level (by sam686?) where you take the outside edges or gamble a bit working through the middle. It's pretty fun for a simple 2v2.
Pressure Cooker:This map definitely grew on me, at first I would just camp with the flags in the bases, but once I actually went out tried to play some offense/defense it was pretty fun. I'd suggest seeing if there was a way to prevent or discourage camping, maybe a back alley route that players could take to then shoot at campers in the bases. 3 flags was a good choice, for our 2v2 games it ensured there was a bit of strategy in terms of how much to attack or defend, etc.
Keepaway:This is kind of like a foldable phone, first iteration isn't that great but hopefully will improve in future iterations.
For starters I originally had each team having to hide 6 asteroids. Unfortunately when I set the game mode to -6, as soon as someone dies the round ends instantly, so that doesn't work. I had to settle with just one asteroid, which definitely isn't as entertaining as having to hide/hunt for several objects.
I also wish there was a way to kill enemies so you could play proper defense. However any way to kill enemies is also a way to either kill your own asteroid or kill your own ship and win the round.
These issues could maybe be solved with levelgen.
I definitely think there is some interesting gameplay potential here with trying to hunt down an object. I have been playing around with limited spawn tickets so as you touch an asteroid and die you use up one of your spawn tickets. Except with this game, once you use you all your spawn tickets you are led to a room with a flag and can win the game. That solves some issues, but has a serious flaw if someone were to join the game mid-round and use up a spawn ticket that way.
Honestly asteroids might not be the best mechanism for this type of object hiding game mode. I have a pretty cool map in the works that uses a resource item instead.
Evasive Maneuvers:I was hoping this would be a bit more fun, flying around pushing enemies into asteroids and pushing asteroids toward enemies. I might need to tinker with the amount and concentration of asteroids some more.
One aspect I am pretty proud of is the "disappearing" spawn gate. There is a laserbeam gate at the start so you can get your bearings and don't just run smack into an asteroid. The emitters for these are somewhere to the left, which you can only vaguely see with the commander's map. However, once the laserbeams are destroyed, the commander's map shrinks to only focus on the arena, as though the spawn gate was never there to begin with.
No levelgen is used to achieve this effect. Rather, it's a simple turret shooting at a resource item with a laserbeam planted in its way.
The key is that there are no walls used to mount the turret/forcefield. This was inspired by a map furbuggy made where instead of walls as boundaries there are just neutral, empty forcefield emitters strung about. There's an interesting effect where they don't show up on the commander's map until your ship passes by them. So it creates kind of a hedge maze effect where as you fly around you discover more and more of the area on the commander's map.
So in this case I just have free floating turrets, free floating laserbeams, and a resource item, none of which show up on the commander's map by default. You see it at first since you see the laserbeam, but once that's destroyed, the commander's map shrinks to just what's seen in the middle which is the arena.
I could have just brought the turret/emitter closer to the arena. However then you'd spend the whole game listening to the turret shooting at an empty emitter, so I wanted to avoid that, while still not having the commander's map show useless information to the side.
Bore:This map is awesome, definitely my favorite of the lot. It plays very smoothly and is a great use of team asteroids, getting to use them as cover and even to push into enemies. I also found that armor + shield was surprisingly effective and had a lot of fun with that!
Bolt:I like it, I was a little irritated with the laserbeam contraption on the sides that too often seemed like a get out of jail free card for the flag carrier, but overall had a good amount of fun on this one!
Asteroid CTF:Asteroid shooter mechanic still needs some work but it's coming along! Would help if the asteroids didn't immediately fling themselves in a random direction immediately after spawning lol.
Advanced Dungeoneering:Whoa, haven't played a new dungeon in years! This was a lot of fun, had to use some creativity and skill to get through parts. The conveyor belt of test items was very cool, getting physically moved back was an interesting mechanic, literally could not power your way through just had to dodge them.
Mon Aug 09, 2021 12:55 pm 