Post by: mineteaser on July 11, 2008, 02:49:15 AM
I only have one suggestion, but I guess a whole thread for people's suggestions would be a lot more appropriate and cut back on meaningless topics.
My suggestion is to add planets in the mix of asteroids. The planets would be slightly bigger than the asteroids and obviously would have larger benefits than asteroids if owned such as more trees, better stats, and other such qualities. The planets would also orbit the sun, making you have to wait for the right time to strike. There obviously wouldn't be a lot of planets (probably only 3 or 2). I know this is a simple game, and planets might be a little complicated, but maybe you should add it as an option.
EDIT: Oh, and I would like to see procedural trees where they would randomly have between maybe 2-5 branches or maybe every time a tree branches out it has a different number of branches. Like it starts off with 3 branches, but those branches branch out to 2 branches and those branches branch out to 4 branches. I think it would be a very interesting visual effect.
Post by: Rollins B. on July 12, 2008, 01:59:55 AM
Quote from: "mineteaser"
EDIT: Oh, and I would like to see procedural trees where they would randomly have between maybe 2-5 branches or maybe every time a tree branches out it has a different number of branches. Like it starts off with 3 branches, but those branches branch out to 2 branches and those branches branch out to 4 branches. I think it would be a very interesting visual effect.
http://http://www.omni-labs.com/
If you look a little down the page, Alex put up a video of new tree code he is working on.
The only problem with the planets would that they would have to be extra hard to conquer. Or you might even have to do something like break a little outer shield before you reach the core.
Post by: Alex on July 13, 2008, 08:06:05 AM
With the asteroids, we're going to vary their size, with several gameplay implications resulting from that. You'll see when we do another release
Post by: ryandaniels on July 21, 2008, 02:46:19 PM
1. Be able select a percentage to take from a asteroid, because somethimes you need alot, but taking everything just means the guys you are attacking will just run away from the fight to the exposed asteroid, which makes you have to run back and forth trying to catch them. I would suggest maybe having this accomplish by when the player left clicks and drags, he has the ability to scroll with the mouse wheel to select what percentage to send, 100% by default.
2. Mass move orders; Be able to conscript a percentage of all your forces to a certain astreroid(s).
Oh, and I just wanted to post a screenshot off my first game, I was taking my nemisis's last, and possibly home, asteroid;
(http://http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/5834/dysonvictory1aha9.png)
By ryandaniels (http://http://profile.imageshack.us/user/ryandaniels) at 2008-07-20
Post by: Rudolf on July 22, 2008, 04:44:19 AM
Nice screenie! I love moments like that in the game.
Post by: Kaze on July 24, 2008, 08:04:42 AM
- Multiplayer! Yes! This would be amazing!
- Higher contrast between race colors; I've found myself playing against the same colour (Or similar colour) a few times.
- A larger world! Perhaps you could include more asteroid belts? Or maybe an infinite sized game world?
- Saving/loading
Post by: Rollins B. on August 01, 2008, 12:55:57 AM
Quote from: "Kaze"
- Multiplayer! Yes! This would be amazing!
- Higher contrast between race colors; I've found myself playing against the same colour (Or similar colour) a few times.
- A larger world! Perhaps you could include more asteroid belts? Or maybe an infinite sized game world?
- Saving/loading
Multiplayer? That ... would be ... AMAZING! The only problem would be setting up a server to run the games. I don't know if you guys have any spare servers sitting around, but what could work is PC Based servers. Soldat (http://http://www.soldat.pl/) comes packaged with a program that runs a game server on your PC while you play. The only problem is the guy that designed the game is Polish, so you might not be able to get much help from him. Of course, I'm sure you'd be able to figure it out on your own.
The infinite sized game world would be something awesome to implement too. Maybe it could scale up from Asteriod Belt>Solar System>Galaxy. Ever stage has to be accomplished from the ground up. It would afford hours upon hours of game play.
Post by: mineteaser on August 03, 2008, 10:40:35 AM
Quote from: "Rollins B."
Maybe it could scale up from Asteriod Belt>Solar System>Galaxy.I really, really, really like that idea. You guys should implement it.
And MULTIPLAYER! AWESOMENESS! Maybe even powerups >_> or not, I don't care about those as much. Also, I think the star in the center should have some use as well. I don't know what that might be, but it just seems as if it's missing something...
Post by: Alex on August 03, 2008, 03:41:56 PM
Post by: Rollins B. on August 21, 2008, 02:51:08 PM
Quote from: "Alex"
there's definitely something similar to Sins if a Solar empire in the way Dyson works.
After playing SOASE, I needed about a hundred aspirin. Everything was way to complicated. Dyson is definitely like SOASE, but about a million times more user friendly.
Congrats on the $200 cash in. It got me thinking though. Do you guys have a paypal? If you do, I might be able to "convince" my parents to give a little cash to help you guys along.
Also, I find it weird that the same spambots join the Omnilabs and Dyson forums at the same time.
Post by: Alex on August 22, 2008, 08:12:04 AM
Post by: Vlad on August 28, 2008, 08:39:44 AM
Mostly, I'd love to see some sort of territory system, or maybe just beef up the defensive capabilities of an individual asteroid. As-is, I can have an asteroid with a full six trees, 100+ seedlings, and even with a force that size, the AI only needs to take out a single tree and get maybe 10 seedlings into the core to take the planet over. Now not only have I lost a good source of production, but if I want to retake it, I've got to sacrifice enough seedlings to take over the core, plus another 50 to plant the additional five trees again. Perhaps make it so that the asteroid can't be captured until all trees are destroyed, giving trees more value than just production.
The whole idea of "territory" comes from the fact that aside from one playthrough of the game, every attempt has come down to huge swarms of AI fighters floating around the map and swarming all over my territories as soon as I move enough ships off it to take it over. I can't order the ships back until they get where they're going, so I have to pull them from surroundnig territories, leaving them exposed. So, when the attackers see the cavalry coming to them, they always take off running and end up capturing at least one or two of the asteroids that the other ships came from. And since it takes far fewer attackers to take over an asteroid than it does to re-establish one, I end up slowly losing ships at best, or in a long, drawn-out stalemate at worst. I was thinking that maybe some sort of bonus for adjacent asteroids would be useful to help with this: You could capture any asteroid at any time, but having adjacent ones to the one you're capturing will make it easier (less ships to take the core or something). This way an enemy could still attempt a risky attack into the heart of your turf if they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to completely steamroll your defenders as easily as they can now. Similarly, this could also be helped by making ships orbiting asteroids attack passing enemies. You could then just stack certain asteroids with ships to defend certain areas.
Trees: It'd be nice to have a list of the current tree status on a given asteroid on the prompt on the lower right (the one with the "plant" button). As-is, if I'm rebuilding an asteroid that just got attacked, I have no idea how many trees it has without either zooming way in or mousing over the asteroid itself. On a related note, I think my most wanted feature is some sort of "always on" indicator of how many trees an asteroid has. You can get a good feel for the number of ships orbiting an asteroid by the density of dots surrounding it, but when I'm controlling half the map and just had ten random asteroids attacked, I hate having to mouse over every single one to make sure that they're all at 6/6.
Post by: Pfhortipfhy on August 29, 2008, 07:28:58 AM
Post by: ryandaniels on August 31, 2008, 05:26:49 AM
Quote from: "Vlad"
Count me in the "loving this game" camp, but I also have a few suggestions to throw in...
Mostly, I'd love to see some sort of territory system, or maybe just beef up the defensive capabilities of an individual asteroid. As-is, I can have an asteroid with a full six trees, 100+ seedlings, and even with a force that size, the AI only needs to take out a single tree and get maybe 10 seedlings into the core to take the planet over. Now not only have I lost a good source of production, but if I want to retake it, I've got to sacrifice enough seedlings to take over the core, plus another 50 to plant the additional five trees again. Perhaps make it so that the asteroid can't be captured until all trees are destroyed, giving trees more value than just production.
The whole idea of "territory" comes from the fact that aside from one playthrough of the game, every attempt has come down to huge swarms of AI fighters floating around the map and swarming all over my territories as soon as I move enough ships off it to take it over. I can't order the ships back until they get where they're going, so I have to pull them from surroundnig territories, leaving them exposed. So, when the attackers see the cavalry coming to them, they always take off running and end up capturing at least one or two of the asteroids that the other ships came from. And since it takes far fewer attackers to take over an asteroid than it does to re-establish one, I end up slowly losing ships at best, or in a long, drawn-out stalemate at worst. I was thinking that maybe some sort of bonus for adjacent asteroids would be useful to help with this: You could capture any asteroid at any time, but having adjacent ones to the one you're capturing will make it easier (less ships to take the core or something). This way an enemy could still attempt a risky attack into the heart of your turf if they wanted, but they wouldn't be able to completely steamroll your defenders as easily as they can now. Similarly, this could also be helped by making ships orbiting asteroids attack passing enemies. You could then just stack certain asteroids with ships to defend certain areas.
Trees: It'd be nice to have a list of the current tree status on a given asteroid on the prompt on the lower right (the one with the "plant" button). As-is, if I'm rebuilding an asteroid that just got attacked, I have no idea how many trees it has without either zooming way in or mousing over the asteroid itself. On a related note, I think my most wanted feature is some sort of "always on" indicator of how many trees an asteroid has. You can get a good feel for the number of ships orbiting an asteroid by the density of dots surrounding it, but when I'm controlling half the map and just had ten random asteroids attacked, I hate having to mouse over every single one to make sure that they're all at 6/6.
I like your ideas, but, just on a strategy note, right now the game is really offense-based, and so defense doesn't work very well. You have to go on the offensive. I can take the whole belt in about 20 minutes by just sending out scouts as quickly as I can to all the asteroids, finding the ones that are uninhabited. Then, you start end out teams of around 10 to 20 seeds to every one of those asteroids, not even planting any trees. You use the seeds that are too far from the frontlines to be of any help in offense to plant a few trees on the choice asteroids, and build up large militias, which you then you use those to squash roving bands of enemies and the local asteroids they own.
Post by: Rollins B. on September 02, 2008, 12:45:20 AM
Quote from: "ryandaniels"
Quote from: "Vlad"Count me in the "loving this game" camp, but I also have a few suggestions to throw in...
I like your ideas, but, just on a strategy note, right now the game is really offense-based...
I have to agree with Ryan that the game is a lot about offense, but Vlad's ideas are pure gold. I do find it frustrating to see a swarm of AI opponents pass 3 feet away from an occupied planet and my warriors do jack s**t about it.
What I'd add to Vlad's defense idea's would be the capability to run patrols. The game could actually do this for you. It could simply take about a third of an asteroids population and distribute it to any close by asteroids. If it does this again and again, you'd end up having a practically endless flow of seedlings patrolling around your owned territories. Of course, this system could be super hard to implement, so it might just be a better idea to have a player controlled patrolling mode.
Once you selected the size of your patrol force, you could chose a path for them to continuously take. They'd proceed to skip form asteroid to asteroid, pausing at each for a couple of seconds, and continuing on if no enemies are detected. The only problem I can see right know is how to select said patrols for reassignment or otherwise. Another panel bound to a certain key, lets say "P", could be popped up and down to see all patrols currently running. They could then be individually selected for editing or to be called of for a more specific task.
Post by: Rudolf on September 02, 2008, 04:44:10 PM
It is nicely progressing and we will keep you posted on when a new vesion will come out
Post by: Preachieved on October 14, 2008, 02:46:22 AM
Post by: Alex on October 16, 2008, 10:13:24 PM
Sorry about the spam bots.
Post by: Suprsim on November 06, 2008, 02:53:18 AM
Anyways, this is a suggestion thread so on with the suggestions!
A way-point system. I don't mean you should be able to set way-points for a group of seeds, so that they attack asteroid after asteroid (that would seem to defeat the limited moving range in the new version) but if you could set an asteroid to have any newly spawned seeds move to an adjacent asteroid would be interesting. This would help with endgame movement, I think.
While I imagine, and as I've seen suggested by others, you are coming up with more trees to grow on the asteroids, you never know what has and hasn't been thought of:
-shield: despite some of my best efforts, it always happens. The enemy sends in 150 seeds to attack my asteroid that has 400 seeds guarding it. While I know I wont lose it, they still manage to destroy all my trees and take it over for a few moments. Whether or not this could be built at a more expensive cost or perhaps acquired only after certain prerequisites are met (3 out of 4 trees used, or all current trees grown to 75% of their maximum height or something) as I could see building a shield right away as being slightly lopsided.
-Artillery: While having trees that defend my asteroids are nice, perhaps a tree that can attack a nearby asteroid might be neat to try out. They could be used defensively too, aiding nearby asteroids that are being attacked.
-Core defense: have a "root" which protects an asteroid from capture, even if one of the tress is killed and the enemy has access to the core. It could help improve energy regeneration, or kill enemies who make it inside the asteroid
I recall reading something about an editor being put in place, all procedural of course, but I think it would be neat to design custom maps, down to the last detail. It would be fun to design interesting scenarios, say with 2 major choke points, or a player starting with many asteroids while three teamates work to bring him down. That being said, the generated ones do provide excellent replayability!
I know multiplayer has been suggested already, many times, and I'm sure you don't need to hear it again, but just LAN would be fantastic!
I don't know how the game is gonna play out as it progresses, but these are just my thoughts ^_^ Please make the game to be your very own! I really enjoy Dyson so far and I look forward to future developments, so clearly you know what your doing so far!
P.S. A donation, or maybe even a "pre-buy" option (Like Cortex Command or Mount&Blade might be something to look into. I'd be all over that!)
Post by: Thymouspanis on November 17, 2008, 01:42:56 AM
The only part of the current version that must to be "fixed" is the movement control, particularly for sending specified numbers. Forgive me if you've already come up with a solution, but I thought of one: when an owned asteroid is clicked and held, lines appear connecting it to its reachable neighbors; releasing on one of the asteroids sends the whole garrison there, and releasing partway along the line sends a fraction proportional to to how far along the line the mouse is. Of course, the number to be sent would appear next to the cursor when mousing over the line. This would reduce the time commitment to sending part of a garrison, and free up the right mouse button. Way-points would also help a lot late-game, as was just observed, but seedlings should only be sent automatically when there are more than a certain number present, defined either manually by the player, or simply how many are present when the way-point is set.
Any changes other than relieving the movement frustration are in the category of improvements.
In terms of aesthetics, some procedurally-generated visual elements naturally occurring on asteroids would give them more character and could be used to show their composition in a natural way. I realize that real asteroids don't look any more interesting than their shapes, but features like random polygonal rocks, biological plants, relics, or particle effects (I recommend geyser-like), are definitely within creative license if you are willing to take it in a bit of a fantastical direction.
In terms of gameplay, diversity of situation and of appropriate strategy should take precedence over well-tuned difficulty. The difficulty of a level seems to vary depending mostly on how the AI factions interact in your absence. My strategy of planting only dyson trees almost exclusively on large, red-yellow asteroids did not require alteration on any level. The difficulty can be improved much more simply than the strategy by having the game "cheat" on undiscovered planets in response to how the player, or maybe just the AI, is faring. Improving the strategy is a complicated task that can be taken in so many directions, though I think it should still be secondary to what I mentioned at the beginning of this post. On this topic the only suggestions I'd make are to make the red circle much bigger around small asteroids than around large ones, which would nicely diversify their function and make small ones useful, and to add more variables to composition and/or other varying asteroid features that effect their strategic significance.
I noticed that trees stop producing seedlings on heavily-populated asteroids. The game shouldn't do this hoping the player won't notice; it should be an apparent gameplay element. This could be done by introducing a third tree whose product a seedling must periodically consume to remain, introduced with a few number changes.
Post by: hummumgerr on November 17, 2008, 01:52:35 PM
I have two suggestions, for what they're worth.
First, unlike some of the other posts in this thread, I would try to avoid or eliminate any numerical values in the game display wherever possible. I enjoy the ambient, otherworldly feeling of this game and all the numbers take away from that, in my opinion. For example, instead of "1/3...2/3...3/3" to indicate the number of trees growing on an asteroid, you could use empty and filled-in circles, or some other graphical representation of the same value.
Second, your game reminded me strongly of an SF short story by David Brin called "Lungfish". It's available to read for free on his website at http://http://www.davidbrin.com/lungfish1.htm - If you have a chance to read it, I hope it might spark some inspiration for this game.
Best of luck!
Post by: Alex on November 17, 2008, 05:56:07 PM
Quote from: "hummumgerr"
Excellent game. I'm glad I stumbled across it & good luck at the IGF!Thanks for this, I'll have a read later :) It's scary how many people are coming up with suggestions that are in line with our plans for the game.
I have two suggestions, for what they're worth.
First, unlike some of the other posts in this thread, I would try to avoid or eliminate any numerical values in the game display wherever possible. I enjoy the ambient, otherworldly feeling of this game and all the numbers take away from that, in my opinion. For example, instead of "1/3...2/3...3/3" to indicate the number of trees growing on an asteroid, you could use empty and filled-in circles, or some other graphical representation of the same value.
Second, your game reminded me strongly of an SF short story by David Brin called "Lungfish". It's available to read for free on his website at http://http://www.davidbrin.com/lungfish1.htm - If you have a chance to read it, I hope it might spark some inspiration for this game.
Best of luck!
Post by: Lediur on November 30, 2008, 10:06:21 AM
Post by: ForceField on November 30, 2008, 10:29:15 AM
I frequently require the use of a "retreat" function to withdraw seedlings I have just sent to attack a neighboring asteroid to come back and defend my asteroid. This is especially important in the beginning of the game when I send out 1 seedling to each neighboring asteroid to explore them. I noticed that when you try to recall seedlings in an un-owned asteroid they will not return until all enemies/trees have been cleared. Another scenario where this is useful is when sending out a capture party of 6-10 seedlings to an uninhabited asteroid. Meanwhile, my asteroid gets attacked so an "emergency recall" would be useful in sending them back.
Other minor/optional features you may want to consider:
- Ability to speed up time
- Map editor/creator (with the ability to mod/create additional levels)
Previous ideas I agree with:
- The addition of multiplayer (as this would perhaps make replayability limitless and would provide for a different game experience). This also adds more value to the game itself if, as you mentioned, you decide to sell this game.
- A way point feature that directs newly spawned seedlings to an owned asteroid of your choice. For this feature it would be best to allow seedlings to travel outside the red ring of influence, but only to owned asteroids (on a connected path only).
- An easier way to select a specific number of seedlings to send (e.g. via keyboard digits). For instance, if an asteroid has 1000 seedlings, and you wish to attack 3 surrounding asteroids simultaneously with 200 each, it would be impractical with the right mouse button.
Note: I have only tried the latest version 1.08
EDIT: Wow, to the previous poster that beat me by 20 minutes as of my post on retreating
Post by: Candlejack on December 01, 2008, 05:45:50 AM
Post by: AriesT on December 02, 2008, 12:38:33 AM
I've been playing your game for a while and after I offered Alex to help you with the game, I decided to write some thoughts down which came during my session.
Alex did already tell me that the game is far from being complete or perfect but I hope my suggestions can help you a bit.
- The Asteroid
In my opinion, the interaction with the asteroid itself should be better. Maybe you can make the game more tactical if you can deside where to build the trees.
- The Seedlings
The idea of directing them indirectly is nice, reminds me of Darwinia, but defining the amount of seedlings should be solved in a different way. In dangerous situations, when big green ones attack for example, clicking the right mouse button and holding it up to 30 or 40 can waste a lot of important time.
Like candlejack already wrote, there should be a more detailed control of the Dysons.
- attack of the enemies
Alex already said that the respawn time still has to be balanced.
But it can be very frustrating if the "strongest" asteroid is next to yours in Level 1 and you get killed after 5 minutes.
Maybe there has to be kind of a visible classification of which asteroid has stronger enemies than others.
This maybe can be shown with the size or the color of the asteroid.
Also you could make it that only the asteroids around your own can attack your enemies. So the game is not unfair anymore in some situations (I got attacked by 4 enemies at the same time in Level 2)
Thats it from me right now, I hope my post is helpful.
Post by: AriesT on December 02, 2008, 06:30:55 AM
- Difficulty
I got huge problems in starting Level 2 because the enemy already has got a lot of units and they are stronger than mine. So in my last session, I couldn't even reach a second asteroid before they attacked my base and I went game over, yeah, after 4 minutes. And not just once, no, four times in a row.
Maybe you should integrate a parameter to avoid enemy attacks during the first 3 minutes - or until the player starts moving to another asteroid - so the seedlings can grow.
- growing time
maybe you should regulate the growing time. It takes a bit too long to actually start to take over an asteroid because you have to wait very long to have at least 30 seedlings to start any attack.
Just my 2 cents.
Post by: Rudolf on December 02, 2008, 08:00:54 PM
I am going to update the FAQ soon to reflect some of our plans so watch this space!
Post by: AriesT on December 02, 2008, 09:04:12 PM
Quote from: "Alex"
With the UI, I'm in full agreement. We've had to use a certain extent of text and numbers just to get the information out there. Developing a completely symbolic UI I think will be time consuming, and so far we've not had enough time, or had higher priorities. But yes, In keeping with the ambient aesthetics of the game, iot would be good to have as little "HUD" as possible, incorporating all that info seamlessly into the game's graphics.One suggestion referring to the Core Energy.
In my opinion just a number is not interesting here. What about making a green energy-circle around the core to indicate the cores energy?
Kinda like that:
[attachment=0:396a51uv]core_energy.png[/attachment:396a51uv]
(I can't draw)
Post by: Squonk on December 04, 2008, 08:25:24 AM
I've been thinking a possible way of selecting chunks of seedlings, would be with a kind of mouse gestures. Say you hold the button and scoop out a portion of seedlings from around an asteroid, and you get an approximate percentage. I guess you could even mark groups of asteroids in this way, for example to set a common way point (send all spawned seedlings from all these asteroids to this one asteroid).
Trying to imagine new kinds of seedlings and trees is of course tempting. But again, some of the immediate appeal would disappear if the player had to learn to understand a big rule set. I think one way to do it, would be to work on differentiating the asteroids more. There is already the system with force/strength/speed, which is a bit sketchy in the current version? I'm sure there are other ways to make asteroids interesting, as well. For example, different asteroids could have varying degrees of fertility within one map. In a barren galaxy, you might see asteroids that can only hold two trees (but maybe even an occational four). This could make certain places more lucrative to invade or use as a base. It also struck me that a weed might be an interesting feature, that doesn't involve a higher degree of complexity to the player. Simply a tree that sprouts and occupies one "tree slot" of an asteroid, but doesn't spawn seedlings or serve any other purpose (that sounds easy, but I'm sure it would lead to some very difficult design decisions). Thinking of the Little prince, I guess Baobab tree would be the right name (:
Very well. I'm just adding a cheer to the crowd, and hoping you can get some inspiration from my ramblings.
Post by: Candlejack on December 05, 2008, 11:38:50 AM
Post by: metarinka on December 06, 2008, 05:38:14 PM
I wonder if you have any plans to document the scripting/ expand it.
visuals
slight variations in asteroid color? perhaps when a faction owns an asteroid it will glow that color (right now the trees send out beautiful spikes, they are a nice touch)
perhaps some interesting particle effects for the the seedlings themselves? I'm thinking along the lines of contrails or glows that increase with the more seedlings you have clumped together.
random back ground or asteroid color. maybe just subtle variations of what it has now? I think the game would lookg dood with a blue pastel background
Post by: Alex on December 08, 2008, 04:04:59 AM
With the HUD, we've got some thigns in store which should help things a bit while also reducing the amount of text we're using.
The idea was to have a level scripting system, which hopefully we can still do. Currently there's not a great deal you can do. I'll put up a post now.
Visuals variation - hopefully this will get pretty interesting
Post by: octavian on December 13, 2008, 04:40:46 AM
I can think of dozens of really interesting things you could implement in this game. I see no need for “asteroids” and “planets”, it’s supposed to be abstract, minimalistic and visceral, why not take in inspiration from all sort of places like, for instance, cell biology. Bacterial growth patterns i.e. slow growth followed by exponential growth ending with a stationary phase. Cell division would be a really interesting thing to implement.
Agent-based model? I want to see that. In a flock of birds all of them try to fly towards the centre while avoiding collision and matching speed with other birds. Three rules. Awesome visuals.
Or talk about neurons and you have discharge patterns, polarity, synapses and the list goes on and on. You don’t even have to know what polarity in neurons is/does. It can just click in your mind, and make you say neuron polarity, heck if I know, but I know how a magnet works and it would be neat if we could implement polarity in the game. Now that’s interesting. Pesky minus seedlings attacking? Just send in some plus seedlings and watch them stick. Or send some minus ones... just because you’re feeling evil.
And there you enter the realm of physics. Again, purely intuitive, it doesn’t require research. Atoms, electrons, ionization, fission, fusion, waves, particles and so forth.
Post by: vdgmprgrmr on December 18, 2008, 11:39:38 AM
Another thing that I don't really have a suggestion for fixing, but know is a problem, is that there seems to be only one winning strategy; spread quickly and destroy what's left.
Once a player figures that out, the game pretty much becomes a grind. They know what to do, how to do it, and they can do it easily, then they win. Would it be possible to, maybe, give the AI players random "strategy" attributes?
Perhaps give each team a preference for which attribute they value the most, so they'll show preference for asteroids with that attribute, and make some teams follow a "spread and destroy" tactic while some set up a stalwart spot in the belt and slowly expand, and some amass fighting forces filled with fast, weak seedlings, while others' armies consist of slow, brutishly strong seedlings, while others' might have average seedlings that can take tons of damage. But you would have to make sure that the two strategies (or more) don't easily overcome any of the others, like it is now. A good way this might be done would be to allow seedlings to attack mid-flight. Expanding on the suggestions for patrols, you might be able to incorporate it into the Spheres of Influence; mark one asteroid as a "patrol asteroid" and have a certain percentage of its inhabitants go around to each asteroid in its range, then if a large group of enemy seedlings enters any of the patrolled asteroids' ranges, the patrol would either take the whole of itself and follow the intruders or just send a percentage of itself to follow them and attack them. Of course, it might also be useful to not have seedlings chasing down enemies, if the enemies just stay in place to fight off the attack, and you don't have a huge group patrolling, but a line of smaller groups, it would form a sort of reaction; small infringements on the patrol would only take a few seedlings to take down, and the few seedlings would be able to do it before a huge back-up was caused, while large infringements would cause huge back-ups and the patrol line would naturally form into a large attack force.
A good feature for potential patrols might also be the ability to set up stationary patrols; just groups of seedlings that hang around in space and attack enemies that come near.
Alright, so now let's hope someone high up can make use of my rambley post...
Post by: Rudolf on December 21, 2008, 05:57:59 AM
The game will indeed develop the organic theme more, and this will actually tie in to some of the gameplpay hopefully eliminating the grind aspect. (Mysterious I know but we have some very cool plans we are working on)
Post by: topmo3 on December 21, 2008, 05:54:16 PM
It may be graph of various values in time as colored line for each team (total population, numbers of asteroids, total energy strength etc).
Post by: Sejster on December 23, 2008, 10:02:15 AM
Consequent simplicity in graphics, clear and meaningful visuals
They really correspond to the ruleset. Please stay with them!
Don't add much more detail without function. (Organic, varied asteroids may be borderline, too. :) (Though I'd really like to play Dyson with the Wii controls.)
All in all, I rather wrote what you shouldn't do. ;)
Post by: Rudolf on December 23, 2008, 06:44:49 PM
For what its worth, we are just as happy with feedback telling us what you guys gals/don't like as feedback on things you do. it all gets looked at and all gets evaluated alongside our own plans.
Post by: Rudolf on December 23, 2008, 06:46:27 PM
Quote from: "topmo3"
May be other peoples like me will want to see some statistics after win or loose level:
It may be graph of various values in time as colored line for each team (total population, numbers of asteroids, total energy strength etc).
One of the things we are looking into is to have the info box display general game info when you have nothing selected.
Post by: polyp on December 25, 2008, 12:18:30 PM
I would like to point out that this game has many congruencies with natural phenominon. It really reminded me of coral (check out this article: http://http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/coralcare/a/coralcompetitio.htm)
this thread got me thinking about what I would like to see added to this game:
*If you capture an enemy asteroid and there are still trees on it, I think it would be cool if you could capture those trees intact.
*If you wanted to change the type of tree I think you should be able to either transform the tree into the other type or transform it into seedlings (which would let you use the scorched earth policy if trees could be captured).
*Another feature I think would be interesting, would be allowing seedlings to have the abilities to retreat, and to attack enemy seedlings that fly a path to close to them.
*Yet another idea would be to have large planets that have multiple capturable "energy centers" so you could own a fraction of a planet and have a war over it.
*I would like to see other types of seedlings/trees, for example: ranged warfare seedlings that shoot projectiles life defense trees but take more time to grow (and defense seedling grower trees); carrier seedlings that have projectiles and could help synchronize attacks; melee defense trees that have more attack power and/or health since they lack range, they would also stick to carrier seedlings and deal damage over time...
*my last suggestion would be to have a variety of lifeforms other than dyson that could be procedurally generated... ex.-A giant space whale/bird/thing comes out of nowhere and attacks you; you land on an uncaptured planet only to find that it already supports some strange form of life that resists you
Thanks for listening. Remember these are not even suggestions, just ideas. Oh and did I mention how great a game this is?
Post by: Candlejack on December 25, 2008, 02:09:42 PM
Post by: mihalidis on December 29, 2008, 06:04:41 PM
i posted this in another thread, but after thinking it through i decided to re-post it here to keep all the ideas in one place.
The problem
To me being able to build limitless armies makes the game too easy.
Just keeping an eye out for that 32 seed cap and then amassing them on a nearby planet makes it just too easy to overwhelm NPCs.
The only way to lose is if you're getting overrun in the very beginning, after that its a no holds barred contest.
idea #1
A simple idea would be to introduce the concept of disease or sickness, having half you population wiped out because some contagious disease goes from seed to seed forcing you to quarantine a planet or something. This would make it possible for you to lose halfway into a game.
Generally speaking, the idea of something being passed from one seed to the other could be exploited much more.
These seeds could be seen as biological things so its not implausible.
For example power ups could be distributed
idea #2
Make the seedlings have a limited age.
Biological things right? They wont live forever, so after some time they die out.
Keeps you from building armies too big.
Here too is room for experimentation, in the beginning a seedling could be 'young' and without much power, in their prime they could reach full power levels, at the end they get old and, well, you get the idea.
Just my thoughts
Post by: dbltnk on January 09, 2009, 11:00:17 PM
Still, I've got a few suggestions that could improve the gameplay a lot without cluttering it with new features.
a) There is a need for automated movement of your seedlings to other asteroids. At the moment it's very boring and time demanding to keep your supply coming. But there is no need for a complex waypoint system to solve this. Just do one-way links from one asteroid to another. It could be a s simple as this: Hold shift and drag-and-drop (by holding the left mouse button) from one asteroid A to asteroid B. This will instantly and from now on send all your seedlings who are located on asteroid A onwards to asteroid B. By linking asteroids in this way, you could easily automate your support routes. Shift-Drag one planet into the empty space clears the supply route. Beware: If you intend on relying on micro-management to make the game more difficult, this will make it easier. =D
b) There needs to be a faster way to select large numbers of seedlings. This could be solves like this: holding CRTL while left-clicking on a asteroid selects [20/50/100] (whatever the playtests suggest) seedlings. Click again to add another [20/50/100].
c) There needs to be a display of your tree's hit points on a asteroid. Currently, it's hard to see how fast the enemy is damaging your trees. Similar to how you did the visual feedback on the seedlings' attributes, I would suggest to just let your trees shrink (maybe branches could break away) when they are losing hit points.
Post by: Candlejack on January 10, 2009, 08:41:50 AM
Anyway, I think you should make the Dyson tree trunk and branches get thicker as they get older. I also think the background could be spiced up. Maybe add giant roots linking to the center of the asteroid belt to give the feeling that the world of Dyson is factual.
Post by: crazeh.monkeh on January 11, 2009, 01:54:11 AM
The ability to tell an asteroid that all of the seeds it produces should be sent to this asteroid. Maybe even down to a tree-by-tree level, say, if you wanted half of your seedlings to migrate to this asteroid, and the other to that asteroid. Going along with that, a patrol system might be nice, but I am not as sure about that one.
I think the aging of the seedlings and the trees would be good. Seedlings die after they reach a certain age, trees stop producing seedlings after a certain age.The trees dying would make people pay more attention to there first few asteroids. BUT if the trees are dying I think we should have some way of removing trees. Maybe not get your original seedlings back, but destroy them, somehow.
I think a disease idea would be kind of cool, but idk. Some Kind of random disaster, though would make things interesting. Make it something in the level, though. That way it is up to the level designer whether to have one or not, and what the frequency is.
A retreat option would be nice
I like the idea of each color of enemy using a different strategy, and I am really glad you already have that in the works.
I think that is it for now. I may edit in more if I think of it in like, an hour or so.
Post by: ccjav on January 11, 2009, 06:15:34 AM
Post by: Rudolf on January 12, 2009, 07:30:27 AM
Post by: Candlejack on January 13, 2009, 10:00:31 AM
Post by: HydraEclipse on January 18, 2009, 12:16:45 PM
However I think that the biggest problem with the game is that there doesn't appear to be any way to save a game in progress,
so the game becomes somewhat resistant to short play bursts. I was just wondering if this is something that is being worked on, or if it is too difficult to put into the coding at this point, as to me all asthetic and gameplay suggestions are secondary to this feature.
Post by: Rudolf on January 18, 2009, 06:34:05 PM
Post by: Ballisticsfood on January 18, 2009, 11:51:38 PM
Two suggestions, one is aesthetical and one is gameplay related.
Firstly: Colour selection. I don't know why, I just find it really weird moving from green to purple to blue back to green throughout the levels. Having a colour selection box would be great.
Secondly: Waypoints/supply routes. Several times I've ended up with asteroids deep inside my territory just accumulating seedlings and I've had to micromanage them to the front lines where they're actually needed. Having a waypoint system that let you automate routes for the seedlings to run on would be a great help. Maybe if you used control left click to establish an automatic route and then had it disengage if you moved any seedlings from the asteroid.
Post by: OboeNerd on January 24, 2009, 06:02:41 AM
And maybe a custom colour selection too, that would be nice.
Dyson's a great game, keep it going.
Post by: Candlejack on January 24, 2009, 08:05:48 AM
Post by: Yblad on January 27, 2009, 09:02:53 PM
I have two things to say. Firstly, I suffer from a slight glitch in which anything which attempts to display over the game flickers crazily, is this a known problem?
As for suggestions, I think it would be great if it was possible to make some sort of alliance with other colours when you are both threatened by a larger enemy, or some kind of non-aggression pact for a set number of minutes that the AI would only agree to if it was under threat.
Keep up the good work :)
Post by: AriesT on January 27, 2009, 09:14:21 PM
The ability to select multiple asteroids to use in an attack at once in the same way Phage Wars does it.Or - like some others suggested - make rally points where you can concentrate your Dysons for attacking, if you want.
Post by: totally on January 28, 2009, 03:17:38 AM
Here are my suggestions:
Things I want to see in the 1.09 version:
(1) Ability to turn the sound OFF -- separate volume bars for effects and music.
(2) Waypoints: for example hold down the SHIFT to enter multiple waypoints when moving through your own asteroids (one enemy asteroid can be included in the path). Pressing the opposite mouse button cancels the order.
(3) New graphic for the check box, I can hardly tell when it is on or off.
(4) The size of the asteroids determines how much trees can be constructed on it and how fast they grow (bigger asteroid -- more trees, faster tree growth). Also max size of the tree depends on the asteroids size.
(5) Same limitations for the AI in terms of movement -- it is very annoying when AI can move across the map and take over your asteroid which is deep inside your territory.
(6) Planting tree animation: seedling dont disapear but gather in one place on the asteroids ground and mutate themselves into a tree root which then grows into the core.
For future versions:
(6) Different shapes for asteroids: smooth surface, but not a perfect circle. Asteroids with moons?
(7) Moving or even ROTATING asteroids.
(8) Choosing your colors.
Maybe rethink the basic dynamics of the game.
(9) Asteroids with resources: tree pumps oil (or food, or something) from the core and converts it into seedlings. Core oil slowly regenerates. The idea is to expand to other asteroids in order to gain more seedlings quickly.
(10) Currently the process of overtaking enemy asteroids is not very organic. The part when seedling travels through the roots of an enemy tree and attacks the core (when the enemy tree is the enemy) is not very clear to me. My suggestion: attacks starts as usual (seedlings attack the upper part of the tree), when it is gone, seedling (one at a time) start eating the enemy root, when the root is eaten away, the hole collapses and your own tree can be planted on surface. Seedling can eat finite length of the enemy root before dying. Of course the enemy root keeps growing all the time so when you run out of seedlings, the enemy tree will eventually grow to the original size. Tree root thickness in determined by the age and size of the tree.
Keep up the good work, the final game is gonna be awesome.
Post by: crazeh.monkeh on January 28, 2009, 05:54:01 AM
(4) The size of the asteroids determines how much trees can be constructed on it and how fast they grow (bigger asteroid -- more trees, faster tree growth). Also max size of the tree depends on the asteroids size.
This one would be cool, but I would make it so that big planets can have more trees, but they grow faster on small planets. or have that determined in the level coding. Just so that there is some strategic reason to capture the small planets.
(5) Same limitations for the AI in terms of movement -- it is very annoying when AI can move across the map and take over your asteroid which is deep inside your territory.
THIS. I never even thought about mentioning it, but he does have a point. There doesn't seem to be any sort of limitations set on the AI's movement. they can go from one side of the belt to the other without taking any asteroids in the middle.
Post by: totally on January 28, 2009, 06:43:30 AM
(4) The size of the asteroids determines how much trees can be constructed on it and how fast they grow (bigger asteroid -- more trees, faster tree growth). Also max size of the tree depends on the asteroids size.
This one would be cool, but I would make it so that big planets can have more trees, but they grow faster on small planets. or have that determined in the level coding. Just so that there is some strategic reason to capture the small planets.
Yeah, that is true. On smaller asteroids trees can grow faster cause they need a smaller root to get to the core. Also smaller asteroids are more likely to be used as defence stations (with defence trees only), which is one more reason to limit AI movement capability.
Post by: Candlejack on January 28, 2009, 07:00:48 AM
The ability to select multiple asteroids to use in an attack at once in the same way Phage Wars does it.Or - like some others suggested - make rally points where you can concentrate your Dysons for attacking, if you want.
You could always select multiple asteroids and send them to a single one for the same effect.
Post by: crazeh.monkeh on January 28, 2009, 10:56:48 AM
(11) Idea for selecting multiple seedlings (but not all): move cursor over your asteroid, hold down the right mouse button, while holding scroll up (starts from 1) with mouse middle button, move cursor over another asteroid, release right mouse button. Pressing left mouse button or releasing on empty space cancels the order.
Now let me see you do it on a laptop.
/Or maybe my track-pad-thing is just tiny
//But I don't think it is
Post by: totally on January 28, 2009, 11:32:08 AM
(11) Idea for selecting multiple seedlings (but not all): move cursor over your asteroid, hold down the right mouse button, while holding scroll up (starts from 1) with mouse middle button, move cursor over another asteroid, release right mouse button. Pressing left mouse button or releasing on empty space cancels the order.
Now let me see you do it on a laptop.
/Or maybe my track-pad-thing is just tiny
//But I don't think it is
What? Your commodore 64 doesn't have a mouse? :)
The command can be doubled via keyboard shortcut or something. Now, this feature can be expanded to work with waypoint system, so every waypoint can have different number of seedlings moving. For example we start with 50 of seedlings moving from A to B, then say 10 seedlings from B to C, and 30 seedlings from C to D and so on.
edit: noticed that idea to select certain ammount of seedlings was already posted couple of pages ago.
Post by: Rudolf on January 28, 2009, 05:26:46 PM
A few things:
Waypoints.
This seems to be THE discussion point so I will comment on this first. We are still improving and adding features that affect the way that seedlings travel between asteroids. Once we have implemented all this THEN we will decide if we need anything like this. We have some things planned that may eliminate the complaint altogether. We will see.
For now we have made some improvements to the game that should make this slightly less lacking. This will appear in the next build.
Selecting multiple seedlings/more control over seedling selection.
We have had designs for this for a long time now, but we haven't gotten to it yet. No worries, this will be addressed
Picking your team colour
Keep an eye on this space ;-)
Multiplayer
Will not be part of this development cycle of Dyson.
(Who knows, we may do a seperate multiplayer version of Dyson. we may not, but for now we are focusing our attention on singleplayer.)
For those of you who are REALLY annoyed by this; I am also a developing a multiplayer only game called Neopolis.
Placeholder site here: www.neopolis-game.com (http://www.neopolis-game.com) News when it occurs also here: www.omni-labs.com (http://www.omni-labs.com)
I generally don't talk about it here as this is the site dedicated to Dyson and I don't want to detract from that.
Asteroid sizes being related to tree numbers
We have been talking about this for a while and probably test the feature together with some other improvements over the conquest model.
Hope that helps people, thanks for all the time spent playing hte game and giving us your feedback. it is all used to make the game better!
Post by: Candlejack on January 29, 2009, 04:07:59 AM
Post by: totally on January 29, 2009, 07:58:06 AM
Asteroid sizes being related to tree numbersAsteroid sizes being related to tree numbers AND tree size would be even more awesome.
We have been talking about this for a while and probably test the feature together with some other improvements over the conquest model.
Another one: how about small obstacle asteroids (tree planting disabled)?
Different shaped asteroids will rock -- a perfect circle is a bit boring.
Post by: Candlejack on January 29, 2009, 10:09:15 AM
Post by: Golbez on January 31, 2009, 10:51:21 AM
One thing I would like is making the starting points of you and your enemys less random.
I know randomness is a great thing in this game, but it can make the game too hard or too easy depending where your opponents start.
Also, mission number 2 should be a later mission, since it seems to be the hardest one :)
Post by: hairybuddha on February 01, 2009, 08:25:06 AM
One idea I thought I might share: You could give the asteroids atmosphere dependent on their size, and seed health could diminish over time depending on altitude. So a seed at ground level lasts forever/slowly regenerates, but higher up would start to use up its energy reserves against the cold, and in space would die quickly. Asteroids atmospheres could then brush against each other to link them, while still giving players the option of cutting across space if it was worth it. It would also mean seeds with different properties were able to survive different journeys. Atmospheres wouldn't even need to be visible, just implied by how high the Dyson seeds naturally flew.
Other requests: Random maps so players can generate small levels for a quick game and larger maps with clusters and filaments and loads of bottlenecks for more epic encounters.
Finally: Any plans for a mobile/cell phone version?
Post by: Alex on February 03, 2009, 03:28:57 PM
Post by: colonyan on February 04, 2009, 01:43:05 AM
concern- Game becomes rather easy if you succeed in initial build up
Size Control
To nerf down the growing momentum in size, add a factor called "Stress".
Once population exceed some point, factor "Stress" kicks in that asteroid.
(like 32 for each asteroid)(its already implemented right...?)
More population exceed the limit, greater the "Stress".
Greater the stress, seedling dies more.
If there's several hundred of them, they should die pretty fast.
Deadbodies
Deadbodies should give negative hygien effect.
This will trasnlate into slower seedling hatching/birth.
Also, deadbodies translate in to more "Stress".
Deadbodies disintegrate with time.
Habitacle improvement+Aesthetic
GreenPlant to reduce the stress factor. Max reduction must under 50%
They also disintegrate deadbodies faster.
Will be planted using some seedlings.
Canbe represented as asteroid aestetic for visual variation.
By the way one specie's plant can be stress for enemy specie.
Solar Flare Captor
If particular asteroid produces strong seedlings, invest on that asteroid, to improve the
fertility on that planet. (Lets suppose whole map is always rayed by sunlight)
Build "FlareCaptorLeaf" using seedlings(a lot, like 45~60). It will grow like tree without using
dyson tree slot. As it grows it adds extra speed for seedling spawn of its asteroids dysontree.
Only one "FlareCaptorLeaf" per asteroid.
**Investment option means better defence required**
Unexpensive growing spider nest like structure which only capture and hold enemy seedlings
for brief time. Combine with defence tree, one bomb can kill several.
Investment option means special purpose units required
I'm offending game taboo of adding more unit/tree type.
"workling dyson tree"- They produce faster but they fight pretty bad.
They can be used exclusively to fasten up the investment on asteroids.
Since they spawn faster, you can save your fighters for front line.
All above adds extra job for ai coding.....
Maybe in future.... when multiplayer comesin....
Single player mode
Already mentioned event like spreading virus deseases and stationary and migrating
space monsters would be fun.
Single player mode2
Give handicap to ai like production speed up?
Difficulty setting?
Thankyou for reading!
Post by: Alex on February 05, 2009, 04:55:38 AM
I like the idea of stress. We are still thinking very hard about population limits. The whole thing with the corpse decomposition and the atmospheric plants is a great trinity of ideas. Great work! I can't say we'll include it but I love the idea anyway :D
Post by: Zeh Don on February 05, 2009, 07:32:28 PM
I don't really want to suggest too much, as judging from how the game has progressed (limiting the movement radius between asteroids was a great step) you guys seem to be headed in the right direction. However, I wanted to point out that an apparently unstoppable strategy in the current version of Dyson is to take a 'corner' and collect all of your seedlings on a handful of asteroids before moving them out and tearing up the other Asteroids. I've successfully managed to complete the game using this strategy without failing once. The A.I. only appears to attack in small swarms of seedlings which, against an army of 500 seedlings, is destroyed time and again. I'm not sure of your intended vision for the game, but you need to introduce either mechanics or seedling types to counter this strategy for the game to balance out against sitting back and gathering units. I'd recommend either introducing an Asteroid size to maximum seedling count ratio, preventing the player from moving 500 seedlings around the map. This would create bottlenecks by using small clusters of the smaller Asteroids within the Asteroid fields preventing the player from moving their one massive swarm around the entire map, sort making "bridges" requiring the player to either divide their units temporarily and move them, or make smaller groups of seedlings but have multiple groups as opposed to a single, massive swarm. Just a suggestion, however.
Also, I've noticed that there is not much player feedback from the U.I. - for example, 32 seedlings appears to be the maximum allowed on a planet before production is halted, however this information isn't shown to the player. And when moving too many seedlings, over 540 or some such appears to be the limit, they won't move when instructed however the reason for this isn't explained to the player. These small ques help first time players get used to the rules of your game, as well ensuring a player is always able to make the best decision about their situation which is very important in strategy games such as this.
Despite my criticisms, Dyson is a fantastically original game and already feels very polished and the only reason I've pointed out such small flaws is because you've done everything else so very right. You should be very proud of your game, I'm not an easy person to addict to any one game, but you've done so effortlessly.
Post by: Rudolf on February 06, 2009, 12:50:59 AM
We are very aware that the game is fundamentally unbalanced at the moment, this is mostly because we have not yet implemented/finetuned those mechanics that will cause attrition in seedling numbers. while travelling or encountering enemy AI. The AI will also be completely revisited and a big part of that is this exact problem. So yeah, agreed, and we are on the case :-)
Post by: chrisa52 on February 06, 2009, 03:27:17 AM
1. It would be great to set up PATHS between asteroids so you could shuttle fleets up to the main action easier.
Spending time moving fleets around does not allow you to concentrate on the action.
2. The circular playing is kind of boring after a while.
I suggest you create ribbons or circles/ovals ALSO make them randomly sparse, not uniform density of asteroids
The different shape and random density will make specific asteroids critical because you need them to move forward or defend your space.
3. With reference to #2 I would make some asteroids similar to wormholes.
Allow movement from that asteroid to some random? or other asteroid elsewhere in the circle/oval/universe.
This would again make it more interesting, because you would to capture these and defend them for obvious reasons.
4. Other suggestions - have not read/found any detailed directions (so take with a grain of salt).
+ Please allow the ability to recall fleets.
+ I've found the opponent has sent fleets from all kinds of random locations deep into my territory.
How exactly can you do that as player? Are there certain asteroids that can do this?
Some explanation would help. I'll look for directions.
+ I also got the bug where one asteroid had no enemies 300+ units and could not be captured.
I think one of the units must have got stuck in the entrance ???
Anyway, GREAT came, I'm sure it will get much better with all the suggestions from everyone.
Post by: Candlejack on February 06, 2009, 05:18:09 AM
Post by: Ghost_sheep on February 06, 2009, 10:03:55 PM
Goed spel, echt sUper!
Another idea might be to have a circling moving planet/asteroid more to the center of the map. Better would be even to have it move in an elliptic fashion, so it only 'touches' the asteroid belt at 2 places.
In this way you could load up a couple of hundred seeds when it passes by, then they are useless to you for a while because the planet is out of range of the asteroid belt, and then make a surprise attack in the middle of your enemies colony and frustrate his center.
Or....be crushed immediatly because you didn't know there would be
THAT much nme seedlings ;D
Ok carry on, make it work!
Post by: totally on February 07, 2009, 01:39:11 AM
(Seedlings can now be called back to own asteroid. Nice.)
Post by: Candlejack on February 07, 2009, 09:26:37 AM
Post by: crazeh.monkeh on February 07, 2009, 09:59:22 PM
I have another idea for the overpopulation problem. Some seedlings slowly lose their color and slow down on overpopulated asteroids. When they lose all of their color, they lifelessly orbit the asteroid until some seedlings leave(then they start to thaw). All frozen seedlings become the color of the light that thawed them so your frozen army might become your enemies. Also, impenetrable bases set up in corners could be solved by having "lantern seedlings" that can carry swarms across long distances.
I'm not sure how well that would fit in with the rest of the game, but I actually like that a lot... the other idea wasn't bad either. I think you would need a special tree to grow these "lantern seedlings", though
Post by: Candlejack on February 08, 2009, 01:39:43 AM
Post by: Muffins on February 09, 2009, 12:58:12 AM
Post by: Alex on February 09, 2009, 05:19:56 PM
Post by: Crimsoncow on February 10, 2009, 06:02:27 AM
Spawn Speed
The basic idea is that the more powerful the seedling is, the slower the spawn. Spawn speed would be based on the total "points" of the three atributes of the asteroid.
Post by: Muffins on February 10, 2009, 06:05:10 AM
Post by: Candlejack on February 10, 2009, 08:26:39 AM
textThe problem is that you can back into a corner and that asteroid becomes untouchable. That idea would fortify asteroids even more. If we had bigger non-circular asteroid fields, then it would work wonderfully.
Edit: Have you thought about making Dyson 3D?
Post by: Alex on February 11, 2009, 04:41:13 PM
Post by: flowbot on February 12, 2009, 05:48:55 AM
Flowbot
Post by: ab aeterno on February 12, 2009, 06:55:15 AM
Why not be able to create bridges from one asteroid to another in the same vein as the trees growing, except you control which asteroid goes to which asteroid (obviously it would have to be in your area of control), and the cost be you giving up so many seedlings, who "become" the bridge? it's basically the same idea, just given a bit more direction imo.
Imo, make the seedling cost 50
Post by: Candlejack on February 12, 2009, 10:03:15 AM
Post by: ab aeterno on February 12, 2009, 10:45:44 AM
like, instead of
Seed -----> asteroid ----> asteroid ----> asteroid ----> asteroid
you'd click once and drag your seedlings from one asteroid to another, perhaps all the way across the field, to another asteroid, as long as the two are connected by bridges, so it'd just be
Seed ----> bridged asteroid
I mean, don't you get annoyed carrying individual seeds to frontal asteroids all the way from the back of your colony?
which brings up another idea: if you were to design these bridges, why not create a command allowing us to predetermine where our seedlings are going? like,
Asteroid 1 is at the back, but is bridged to asteroid 2 up front. I designate that 20 seedlings will stay at asteroid 1, while any more that are spawned will automatically go to asteroid 2. Would there be a way for you to create something that would allow us to do that?
'cause that's really the only problem I have with this game is that it takes so long to move my seedlings
plus, with these bridges being used by all the teams, it would create much more intense battlegrounds, you know?
Post by: Candlejack on February 12, 2009, 11:16:02 AM
Post by: ab aeterno on February 12, 2009, 11:22:02 AM
if I were to have to think of one way I considered ideal for this kind of thing, it'd be to make you have to use up a tree slot at the cost of 20 seedlings which creates the bridge, and after a while the bridge would start producing hybrid seedlings from the two asteroids.
Post by: Alex on February 12, 2009, 10:53:25 PM
Could we set up a seperate section on the forum for levels, level packs, and level creation? That would be great.Great idea, will do.
Flowbot
Others: Really fun ideas, I love how organic they sound!
Post by: flowbot on February 13, 2009, 03:28:10 AM
Great idea, will do.
Others: Really fun ideas, I love how organic they sound!
[/quote]
Thanks!
Post by: Candlejack on February 13, 2009, 04:26:26 AM
neither do I, which is why I suggested making bridges instead
if I were to have to think of one way I considered ideal for this kind of thing, it'd be to make you have to use up a tree slot at the cost of 20 seedlings which creates the bridge, and after a while the bridge would start producing hybrid seedlings from the two asteroids.
But my idea is prettier and involves keeping track of less seedling types.
Post by: ab aeterno on February 13, 2009, 10:57:24 AM
and who really tracks seedling types
Post by: Alex on February 13, 2009, 05:47:14 PM
and who really tracks seedling typesIn the final implementation, you will be able to track seedling types and we're going to make it so that this will actually be something that will help you win if you do it.
Regarding linking up asteroids, we probably won't do this. It does sound like it might work as a method of improving transportation for the player, so that there's less clicking around, but it's quite an elaborate solution to the problem and introduces problems with attributes (e.g. if two asteroids are linked, what happens to the attributes? if all your asteroids are lined up, what happens then?). It's a cool idea though, be it strings or vines :)
Post by: ab aeterno on February 14, 2009, 11:17:18 AM
Post by: Candlejack on February 14, 2009, 11:31:15 AM
Post by: ab aeterno on February 14, 2009, 11:53:25 AM
Post by: Alex on February 14, 2009, 07:34:59 PM
Post by: Vlad on February 15, 2009, 03:03:59 AM
I don't think we're adding rally points, at least not yet. We're looking at better ways to control the game though :) One of these will be the ability to send seedlings anywhere you actually own or could send to. This should reduce clicking a lot. It's the best elements of the old system and the new system put together.
Woohoo! If I'm understanding you right, that's exactly the solution I was hoping for.
How will it work if you've got seperate clusters of controlled asteroids, though? Say you've got two groups of asteroids, A and B, with overlapping "sending areas". Will you be able to send asteroids from group A to an asteroid within the area of group B, or would you have to join the two groups together first?
<-- Hoping for the latter.
Post by: Alex on February 15, 2009, 06:26:37 AM
Post by: totally on February 15, 2009, 07:40:08 AM
We're not decided on that yet - it's perfectly possible to do either, as the routefinding code we have in the library will let us determine if one asteroid is linked uninterrupted with another by asteroids of the same owner.
Waypoints (like in Starcraft or similar) are still probably the best solution for that. No need to invent a wheel when it is already invented :D I look forward to see how you guys will solve this problem.
I don't know exactly how the other solutions suggested in this topic will work to solve the problem (bridges direct the movement of the newborn seedlings, but what about regrouping and merging groups together?). Different dyson tree structures are a nice idea to bring more diversity into gameplay.
Tracking seedling types (and maybe separeting groups of seedlings based on characteristics)? Very cool idea. I'm all for that. Dividing group with fast and weak seedlings and slow but tough seedlings into two groups will be very useful.
Also please don't add a sun into the game universe. "Sunfree" or "sunless" universes with life are rare and will help to differentiate this game from others. Evolution of the different dyson organisms will be very interesting.
Post by: Alex on February 15, 2009, 10:56:30 PM
Post by: yellowcone on February 18, 2009, 06:12:56 AM
I have a suggestion, similar to a previous poster about moving asteroids, how about asteroids that orbit? As the asteroid/s moves along it's orbit it allows the current occupant to reach different asteroids at different points in time, so a portions of the map is can be temparily isolated. Orbits can be circular or elliptical and one, several or even all asteroids in motion? These moving asteroids will be 'high value' like the current large asteroids with good stats.
Back to another game of dyson!
Post by: spetsnaz on February 20, 2009, 02:28:48 AM
Post by: totally on February 20, 2009, 03:02:59 AM
When the enemy seedlings are attacking your tree, make the branches come off one at a time (instead the whole tree being destroyed at once).
So when the enemy force attacks your unprotected asteroid, it will do immidiate damage to seedling generating capability, even when they will not have the strength to take down the whole tree. This also will serve as an indicator of control over that asteroid.
Post by: Candlejack on February 20, 2009, 03:57:06 AM
Post by: kittehz on February 20, 2009, 02:03:01 PM
Post by: Alex on February 20, 2009, 05:30:11 PM
When the enemy seedlings are attacking your tree, make the branches come off one at a time (instead the whole tree being destroyed at once).Yep, we are going to do exactly this - firstly it will make it look more organic, and secondly it will show you how close to death the tree is and how long it will take to regrow.
Are you working on implementing all of the features you wanted to add when you first came up with Dyson?Nope, we ditched a lot of hte original design and have instead improved and expanded on the design that we ended up with at the end of the original competition.
kittehz: We'll have some kinds of visual things happening here and there, which should make it a little more visually interesting. These may wind up having gameplay benefits too, yes.
Post by: spetsnaz on February 21, 2009, 02:25:36 AM
2)allow the planets' stats to have more influence. right now there is a difference between the seeds coming from different planets but it makes almost no real difference by the end of the game
3)have more types of trees. some which would be heavier with more armour thus better defenders, and others which are quicker, thus better for attacking (this does allow for a tech-tree element, but that would not be advisable to have it, it will make the game too complex and take away from its simplicity and its main charm
4)have seeds move at different speeds around different planets. bigger planets (if my suggestions are followed, will allow more trees and thus will be juicer conquests) should also be slower to move around on the account of gravity. this will make the player think more when choosing which way to send the seeds
5)maps should be generated with bottlenecks and natural barriers (think dust clouds etc) which will allow for more of a strategy.
6)allow players to set up a network of traffic. by this i mean so that every seed produced is sent to a target planet. this avoids the annoying grind of having to manually moved seeds from the back of one's empire to the front line
7)different types of planet. some which have thicker soils so is harder to colonise. some with massive ranges but which can only support 1 tree
8)allow scouting. this is very important, right now when i attack a planet i have no idea if that planet has enemy or not. i cant think about strategy because i have no idea where the enemy has his forces or which planets are more developed than others
Post by: Candlejack on February 21, 2009, 05:30:04 AM
What if something like ants were added that would make a tunnel network? They would be entirely self-run, meaning the player would not even have to notice them. So you would play like normal, and once a planet is held for 30 seconds, the ants would start building a bridge from a nearby planet that already had the ants. They would then make a sweet-looking tunnel network and begin to terraform the planet to allow more trees. If you did this, I would totally buy the game. Or if you made a good set-up for allowing mods to do things like this.
But straight bridges wouldn't look pretty enough.
Post by: Alex on February 21, 2009, 04:33:30 PM
Post by: Candlejack on February 22, 2009, 01:07:53 AM
Post by: OboeNerd on February 23, 2009, 07:19:02 AM
1) I've listened to the music, and I feel it would be great to have it a lot louder - it sounds very nice but it's almost too quiet and eventually gets drowned out by the sound effects and miscellaneous computer noise.
2) More level diversity would be nice. It feels quite 'still'. This is more of an opinion than a problem, though.
3) Is it possible for the seedlings to move between planets in more attractive formations other than straight lines? Like a curve or something?
4) Moving between planets is almost too easy, especially with an arsenal on your side. Barriers between planets could be nice.
Of course, it's great the way it is, but this game has so much potential that I can't help but notice room to grow.
Post by: Jamis on February 24, 2009, 03:55:14 AM
If you make defensive trees much stronger (like I did in level6.level that I will shortly be uploading to the Level Board), then having a huge army of weak seeds isn't going to do you any good. Try attacking a planet with a defensive tree with your weak seeds and see what happens. :)
Also, in general, I think trees need to have more hitpoints. And perhaps, as the tree is being attacked, the seedlings still attached to the tree should be getting blown away as the tree is under fire, which would in turn would make it take longer to recover...having to "regrow" all those seedlings...
Post by: Candlejack on February 24, 2009, 07:34:27 AM
Post by: SnukJam on February 26, 2009, 03:36:39 PM
I will start with TREES ...
I see the trees spawning more seedlings (or seedlings faster) as the tree matures. Since there are more branches to hold more seedlings, and, therefore, more seedlings are mature, it just makes sense that more would spawn at a time. I think, right now, it levels off at ~two at a time while there are other seedlings that are mature that sit and wait for some period of time.
I like the suggestion of having the branches “break” from the tree. Should keep the same disintegration effect as when an entire tree gets destroyed (nice!). This is mostly in line with a suggestion I had … although, I envision this a little differently:
- Colorize the tree. Put the player color within the tree trunk and branches (core), between the darker outer lines. I think this would be a nice effect.
- Have the trees grow by “segments” of branches (still keeping tree growth smooth though).
- Each branch is made up of 5 “segments” (or adjust the number by asteroid type)
- Branches damage from the top down.
- “Segments” turning black at the core when the tree is “hit”
- If the entire branch turns black, the branch disintegrates (along with any seedlings).
- This process can also be extended to the root of the tree and only when it all turns black is it fit to be a pathway to the asteroid core.
- Then, the tree takes time to recover
- Only mature seedlings can launch, if they are on an undamaged branch
- It takes energy from the asteroid core to repair the branches; the same or slightly faster than original growth. As they repair, their color returns.
- Only once a branch is fully repaired (fully colored) will it conduct life to the seedlings. To continue to grow or launch mature seedlings.
- Only mature seedlings can launch, if they are on an undamaged branch
- More developed trees should be harder to destroy (they may already be, I just can’t tell in the current game)
- This concept can also be applied as a more enhanced root system as trees mature.
Other ideas related to trees:
- I definitely agree with the ability to uproot and re-grow trees. This gives the advantage of changing your layout as the game progresses. The penalty is having to wait for the tree to grow – what about also having to wait for the tree to die?
- I go back and forth on the idea of being able to select tree sites on the asteroid. I appreciate the randomness of the placement being part of the game-play. Also, selecting tree sites seems too "micromanagement". On the other hand, sometimes the trees bunch together on an asteroid and make it difficult to see what is happening. Perhaps an alteration in the placement algorithm.
- An indication of seedling maturity. I understand this is done by the size of the seedling matching the mature seedling picture in the menu, but, would it be too difficult for them to retain a neutral color until they are mature, and then they would become the player color? This would also allow the effect of mature seedlings not launching from damaged branches to be more pronounced.
My two-cents about TREES ... more to come on other aspects. This game ROCKS!!!
Post by: totally on February 26, 2009, 10:33:43 PM
There is definitely something fascinating about the organic simplicity of this game, 8 pages of suggestions and 3000 views pretty much prove it.
*waiting for the next version*
Post by: totally on February 27, 2009, 08:16:00 PM
Paypal donations to add motivation. I'm sure that I am not the only one who wants to buy dev guys a latte :D
Post by: Jamis on February 28, 2009, 12:09:06 AM
EG: Seedling trees cost X amount, Defensive trees cost Y amount.
What about if we could "pay" with seedlings the ability to upgrade our trees?
EG: Faster growth rate, higher defense rating for the tree, higher damage reduction, more tree hitpoints, faster seedling/defensive thingy spawn rate, etc.
I would also like my trees to be "planted" starting with the weakest seedlings I have flying around the asteroid.
Post by: smokinjoe18 on March 01, 2009, 05:43:47 PM
Over the last 3 days (30hrs on and off) i've been trying to create new Levels for people to enjoy changing multiple settings available in the level options Eg:-
Amount of asteroids
Start seedlings
Amount of factions/teams
Greys seedlings & probabitlity
Spawn time length of structures (offence & defence)
Structure strengths
Starting planet atrributes (health, strength, Speed)
Cost of trees
Amount of trees
Defence of structures
Grace period
And many more to list in multiple variations
After playing the Levels already posted and the one's I've created it has led me to the following conclusion:
No matter what you change ALL Levels becomes a walkthrough after differing periods of time or you're overwhelmed straight away (if you're quick enough: build,conquer,build conquer until you get an unassailable Swarm of seedlings as all other factions deplete each others as time goes by (poor A.I) then you walkthrough them)
The Major reason for this happening is all settings that i could effectively change applies to EVERY team meaning theres no advantage / disadvantage to anyone.
SUGGESTIONS:
All available Level settings should be changeable for each INDIVIDUAL Faction/Team not 1 setting for all Eg:-
Differing amount of max trees for each asteroid/team
Differing cost of trees for each asteroid/team
Differing damage multipliers for each faction
Differing structure strengths for every asteroid (harder to get to the core if it has stronger attributes)
Must kill everything around the asteroid before attack on trees can commence then all tree must be killed before you can get to the core
Greater A.I. tactics req.
You can see where I'm going Each Team/Asteroid/seedlings should have differing factors to them, then you don't know what you're attacking and the benefits of conquering a certain asteroid eg defensive or attacking gains and how much it will deplete you by attacking it without scouting it, etc..
Hopefully the improvements/suggestions above would give the game more diversity and playability to set certain level goals and greater tactical advantages by scouting for better asteroids instead of wiping everything out all the time.
Suggestions put forward in most of the previous posts would definately improve game playability but making those changes different for EACH Team would increase the use of tactics meaning you could play the same Level and have different outcomes using different tactics.
Hopefully I'm not way of the mark here and I do stress these are just suggestions of direction for them game as the developers wil have there own plans but hopefully some of these suggestions could help.
:D :D :D :D :D :D Would Love to see this game move on and become AWESOME... ;D ;D ;D ;D
Post by: Rudolf on March 02, 2009, 04:46:34 PM
Regarding:
seperate tree values: This is indeed already being worked on
Individual team characteristics: This is on our task list
:-D
Post by: smokinjoe18 on March 02, 2009, 07:38:17 PM
Hope it doesn't take too long can't wait for the next update..
Thanks.. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Post by: wogan on March 03, 2009, 03:01:03 AM
Post by: Rudolf on March 03, 2009, 04:08:12 AM
lol
Yah, we have a lot to do still before the game is what we want it to be. It is a tough choice at times, we don't want to take too long to develop it, but we have a certain vision that we want to achieve. Does mean the task list is rather long.
*cries*
Post by: Meat_Grinder on March 05, 2009, 04:13:51 PM
Have Ctrl or Shift make those movement orders permanent, so that every spawing seedling moves to the specified planet, until changed by another permanent or temporary movement order. It's just that when you have more than 5 asteroids, movement orders become too many and too repetitive. Also I managed to micro my way out of almost being wiped out once, by keeping all seedlings constantly going to the battle point, but I could almost sense my mouse dying from all the click & drag I had to do.
For seedling amounts ~2500+ or so the order queue gets overflowed and they stop listening to the orders(or there's an insane delay, I'm not sure, because I kept repeating them until they started moving). Gotta optimize that thing, or have a unit cap.
Post by: wogan on March 06, 2009, 02:44:38 AM
*cries*
Go for more frequent releases, even if there's just a few incremental improvements over the last version. I'm sure most of us wouldn't mind having to deal with little issues as the game evolved, and I'm sure it'd be a lot more gratifying than holding out until a major release.
But then do come up with an automated patch system...
Post by: topmo3 on March 09, 2009, 08:30:31 PM
if it possible, may would be good to have "Play random level" button.
i mean not random selection from exists levels, but some random generated level with user-selected difficult.
of course, is is not too good as human-maded levels, but it will be good for its constant unsufficiency.
Post by: Mr Frank on March 16, 2009, 03:49:11 PM
The other thing that annoys me is when you send a scout to an unexplored asteroid near the edge of your asteroid's range, and then it is unable to return because home is beyond the newly explored asteroid's range. Anyone thought of a good way to fix that, or is getting marooned just going to be a risk of scouting?
Unlike everyone else who's posted in this thread, I'd actually be opposed to waypoints. The difficulty of moving up backwater seedlings fairly accurately represents the organizational issues of a gigantic empire, and it's the only thing that makes the endgame even interesting. If you could just whip out a near-infinite stream of seedlings from the far side of the asteroid belt without paying attention to it, the late game becomes even easier. Much better for the really far back ones to be almost cripplingly inconvenient so you have to work with what's on hand.
Seemingly contrarily, I'd really like to see better seedling control more than anything else. I know mouse-only control is some sort of theme here, but goddammit I want my hotkeys.
SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.
With those two commands, it would be very fast to control even massive swarms. In the time it normally takes to select ten seedlings, you could split a swarm of 500 in half.
I'd also really make use of any stat-sorting abilities, because seedling stats make all the difference in the world the way I play at least.
Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense (so conveniently right in a row, commonly used, perfectly placed, and make good abbreviations too!) would be awesome. Send the seedlings that are all attack and nothing else to go claim an empty asteroid without giving up the ones that are actually useful for defense, or avoid sending any painfully slow seedlings to go and scout.
Using Q, W, and E or perhaps ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense would also be really useful. I could use my crappy seedlings to build and keep my uber seedlings ready for fighting.
Post by: Rudolf on March 16, 2009, 05:17:35 PM
I've been hooked on this game ever since someone posted about it on the Phun forum (another awesome game). Favorite feature? Procedural maps. Never the same fight twice, love it. Least favorite? Not sure. Probably the AI cheating on sending ranges.
The other thing that annoys me is when you send a scout to an unexplored asteroid near the edge of your asteroid's range, and then it is unable to return because home is beyond the newly explored asteroid's range. Anyone thought of a good way to fix that, or is getting marooned just going to be a risk of scouting?
Unlike everyone else who's posted in this thread, I'd actually be opposed to waypoints. The difficulty of moving up backwater seedlings fairly accurately represents the organizational issues of a gigantic empire, and it's the only thing that makes the endgame even interesting. If you could just whip out a near-infinite stream of seedlings from the far side of the asteroid belt without paying attention to it, the late game becomes even easier. Much better for the really far back ones to be almost cripplingly inconvenient so you have to work with what's on hand.
Seemingly contrarily, I'd really like to see better seedling control more than anything else. I know mouse-only control is some sort of theme here, but goddammit I want my hotkeys.
SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.
With those two commands, it would be very fast to control even massive swarms. In the time it normally takes to select ten seedlings, you could split a swarm of 500 in half.
I'd also really make use of any stat-sorting abilities, because seedling stats make all the difference in the world the way I play at least.
Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense (so conveniently right in a row, commonly used, perfectly placed, and make good abbreviations too!) would be awesome. Send the seedlings that are all attack and nothing else to go claim an empty asteroid without giving up the ones that are actually useful for defense, or avoid sending any painfully slow seedlings to go and scout.
Using Q, W, and E or perhaps ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense would also be really useful. I could use my crappy seedlings to build and keep my uber seedlings ready for fighting.
Good stuff, I will be looking into most of these things for sure. I think that the calls for waypoints point at a more general problem of seedling control and the fact that seedlings are too similar at the moment. (So people treat all seedlings as part of one big force) I am not comitting to anyhting yet untill we have implemented all our ideas on send controls etc and the features that affect it becasue I suspect their ompact will be severly positive :-)
Post by: SnukJam on March 17, 2009, 03:03:26 AM
SHIFT+right click: select five seedlings.
CTRL+right click: select twenty-five seedlings.
Holding A, S, or D when giving a command to preferentially select the seedlings with the most Attack, Speed, or Defense
Using ... ALT+A, S, or D to select the seedlings with the least attack, speed, or defense
EXCELLENT (and simple) suggestions for seed selection - I like it ... this would, in my opinion, greatly reduce the need for waypoints AND keep one of the original facets of "game play" intact.
Post by: Sheogorath on March 19, 2009, 03:37:44 AM
New Tree Suggestions
1. Acorn Trees- These would work off the same principle as the Defense trees, but instead of reducing the heath points of the enemy, they would target your own troops and increase the health attribute above the maximum, and then tag the troops affected so they could not receive multiple health buffs. These would be useful on planets with not much else going for them, because you could use them as rally points that would boost the health of troops stationed there.
Variables- Identical to defense trees and missile variables, but damage would become health boost
Possible Restrictions- Need # Dyson trees to unlock, size of planet would still affect the strength of the health boost.
2. Lightning Rod- This would just be like chain lightning, and would be very effective against enemy swarms that are very numerous. It would be useful in making sure people do not build up too many forces and wipe out all opposition without effort. If the range that the lightning could jump was fairly low, then they would be worse than defense trees against small incursions, but very good against a large charge of troops. the speed would be instantaneous with a longer reload time than defense trees as default.
Variables- Jump range of bolt from enemy to enemy, damage of bolt, trigger range, maximum number of enemies affected in a chain
Possible Restrictions- Need # defense trees to unlock, only one per planet, perhaps would deplete asteroid's core energy as it fires.
Asteroid Suggestions
1. Movement- Asteroids drift in relation to each other, changing the battlefield in a dynamic way. I do not know if this is a realistic suggestion.
Variables- How fast they drift, how fast different sizes of asteroid drift,
Possible Restrictions- I do not know if they would collide.
2. Upgrading Asteroids- Spend Seedlings to improve the quality of the troops produced on the asteroid. This would be very simplistic, it would just increase all stats of newly produced troops a certain amount, but never above the maximum. Different than acorn tree because it only affects the troops from the trees on the upgraded asteroid, and only after upgrading do the new troops start getting better. It would be like adding fertilizer to an asteroid.
Variables- Level of attribute boost, what attributes to boost, Cost in seedlings
Possible Restrictions- Limited number of times to improve asteroid, would carry over to enemy if they take the asteroid,
General Suggestions
1. Multiplayer- Would allow for more complex strategies to emerge.
2. Improved Interface- Perhaps a faster way to tell what type of trees are on each planet without having to zoom in on them and check
3. Wireframe mode- Option to take away everything that makes Dyson pretty and remove limits on number of seedlings at any time, would also reduce lag in end game on big scenarios
Post by: Surcouf on March 19, 2009, 05:25:04 AM
This game is pretty cool.
Here are my suggestions:
As I find the end game too easy, here are the way I thought would make it tougher:
- A population cap relatively low
- Creating another variable that is the amount of ressources you can extract from each asteroid. After ressources are depleted, he asteroid would stop producing seedlings or would only produce seedling with half the stats they would normaly have. The other way of putting this up is that each asteroid gives a limited amount of ressources but the amount of ressources a player posses is the sum of ressources of all his asteroids.
- I would also add some special asteroids that gives the player that controls it a bonus. For instance, reducing spawning times, attack, speed or energy bonus for all unit, higher population cap, regenerate a low percentage of your ressources over time, allows the player to see the entire map etc. Also, those specials asteroid would have a lot of core health but no stats and it would be impossible to build trees on them. So controlling the asteroid is a great advantage but cost a lot of seedlings to conquer and needs a good number of seedlings guarding it.
-Another suggestions is waypoints like suggested before but i'd like to add a dimension to it. We could use the waypoint system to attack behind the enemy lines by sending a large group of seedling on an enemy asteroid and then immediatly skipping to another enemy planet that was previously out of reach. Of course the attacking force would take damage from the passage over the first enemy asteroid but this technique would force players to keep some defending forces behind instead of moving everything forward to attack.
Anyway, Dyson is a great game and I'm looking forward to the next update hoping for some cool imporvement
Post by: Rudolf on March 20, 2009, 04:33:34 PM
Just to warn you guys, Alex and I are leaving for the Independent Games Festival shortly, so it may be a bit hard to properly monitor and reply to your posts for a week or so. We will get back to it when we return however!
Post by: axussriddare on March 22, 2009, 02:21:19 AM
Now, to the suggestions about the game:
I would like to be capable of creating several types of seedlings. Perhaps by customising the stats of an asteroid or by creating different trees. It would also be fun with more story. A info section that describes the dyson life-form, or maybe more missions with more description. Perhaps you could make your own seedling type? I realize that it would be difficult, but it would be fun too. It would be great to have a save capability, since sometimes you just have to quit, but what if you are one minute from victory then? And how about a sort of "random" mode where you chose some settings (enemy count, neutral asteroids and max trees) and then get a fully randomized map. Finally, it would be fun to be able to "merge" several seedlings to create a single, stronger seedling, lifting a lot of strain from the computer on games with hundreds of seedlings.
Post by: wogan on March 22, 2009, 05:20:05 AM
My first suggestion is summarizing this thread, so you don't have to read through all of it. Simply make a list at the beginning or in a different thread with the suggestions so far.
I suggested a suggestions board, one thread per idea. Still nuffin.
I would like to be capable of creating several types of seedlings. Perhaps by customising the stats of an asteroid or by creating different trees.
You can already create multiple types - just capture the right asteroids. As to customising them, the only way to currently do that is by expending seedlings, and seedlings are currently an infinite resource. So given enough time, the game will zero out - everyone will have seedlings of exactly the same stats.
It would also be fun with more story. A info section that describes the dyson life-form, or maybe more missions with more description. Perhaps you could make your own seedling type? I realize that it would be difficult, but it would be fun too.
They (game devs) were working on introducing classes, I think - like scout, soldier, mobile fortress, whatever. I think they want to narrow down the possible variations on seed types, make the game a little easier to play.
It would be great to have a save capability, since sometimes you just have to quit, but what if you are one minute from victory then?
Then press on and win :)
And how about a sort of "random" mode where you chose some settings (enemy count, neutral asteroids and max trees) and then get a fully randomized map.
I think that may be on the cards for a later version. The only real problem is finding a way to space the asteroids. You don't want half your field out of reach :)
Finally, it would be fun to be able to "merge" several seedlings to create a single, stronger seedling, lifting a lot of strain from the computer on games with hundreds of seedlings.
While merging seedlings isn't a bad idea, it probably won't fly - mainly because it defeats the point of having a class system. And have you ever seen how many vertices/surfaces/textures/lighting render points/reflections a single level of HL2 has to account for? :) You could scale up to millions of seedlings in a game, if your coding was efficient.
Post by: Mr Frank on March 22, 2009, 02:54:10 PM
Post by: Rudolf on March 23, 2009, 09:02:07 AM
They (game devs) were working on introducing classes, I think - like scout, soldier, mobile fortress, whatever. I think they want to narrow down the possible variations on seed types, make the game a little easier to play.
Not really, we are planning on exagerating the impact of the stats on the seedlings, which will create stronger specialisation within seedling use.
Seedlings are currently too samey.
Post by: kittehz on March 24, 2009, 11:36:42 AM
----make a good way of organizing the ideas for the forum (mod/level database; moderator-upkept suggestion list).
----make holding right click or maybe middle go up by percentage, not count. I hate splitting groups of 1500 between two planets.
----make it skinnable: I would assume there are .gif's for the three seedling body parts - make these editable. Even better, allow everything to be changed (Like trees-->factories, seeds-->rockets)?
----allow seeds to be moved over any distance skipping off of owned planets. Like in civilization when it shows a 2 meaning the move takes 2 turns.
Post by: Candlejack on March 25, 2009, 06:39:03 AM
<50% Energy = Glow that allows their groups to travel farther and regenerate a little faster.
<50% Strength = Explodes on death and will try to direct the explosion at the closest tree.
<50% Speed = Has a special diving attack the goes through multiple enemies.
Post by: totally on March 25, 2009, 01:21:40 PM
Currently the distance which a seedling can travel from a controlled asteroid is determined by that asteroid size. It works, but it malfunctions sometimes e.g. when a scout is send to another asteroid and cannot get back because that asteroid's moving radius is too short. Also the player wonder is WHY the size of the asteroid is tied to a seedlings moving capability, which currently doesn't make a lot of sense.
Improvement: seedling moving distance from controlled asteroid is determined by tree's control, which is tied to (a) that tree's size and age and (b) tree quantity (c) tree health. So when a tree gets older and bigger, the radius slowly grows with it. (Example: radio station, more powerful station gets more coverage.) More tree's mean longer radius. Also that radius doesn't have to be rigid, when a seedling crosses the line, a tree simply loses control over that seedling (or a seedling can no longer communicate with the tree, or it gets 'lost' etc.). After crossing the radius the seedling doesn't die but starts to live independently, moving randomly. When a tree is attacked, it loses hitpoints which lowers the moving radius of a seedling.
Post by: CdeathJD on March 26, 2009, 02:07:12 AM
Post by: Mr Frank on March 26, 2009, 02:34:30 AM
Post by: wstorm on March 27, 2009, 05:43:22 AM
and i think that ideal strategy should be a system with infinite complexity so anyone couldn't compute precious results of his actions, although theres simple laws(which are interfering on various levels).
Planets should have limited resources for producing.
And gravity to collect killed seeds.
Therefore sizes of planets will be changing in time.
During the game i saw undetermined difficulty of levels and no "restart-the-same-situation" button.
Constant Routes.
Multiplayer.
(Config file)., etc.
This is good game anyway! :)
Post by: Towker on March 27, 2009, 11:15:21 AM
I really loved it, every aspect of it. The visual style, the music, the gameplay and of course the concept. (flying seeds, how awesome can it get? =D (not being ironic))
Though, as previously mentioned: lvl 1 was easy peasy, but lvl 2 took me like 3 tries before I had beaten it. From then on it was actually a bit too easy. (but fun, nonetheless) I'd suggest a smoother transition between lvl 1 & 2 and perhaps different difficulty 'modes'. (I'd love to play on "INSANE" :D)
More trees to choose from would be awesome as well. (ones that would add a sort of shield around the asteroid, trees that affect the asteroid's radius, trees that affect the asteroid's attributes, trees that act as a sort of buff making neighbouring trees manufacture seedlings faster etc etc)
Now if you'd excuse me, I'm going to replay this little gem :3
Post by: FatBaron on March 29, 2009, 07:37:29 PM
I have just two suggestions which would make the game even better in my humble opinion.
In the end there are no more strategic decisions to be made. It’s just sending wave after wave against your increasingly weak enemies. That’s OK, but having so many asteroids results in so much clicking to send your reinforcements from asteroid A to B to C and so forth.
It would be fairly simple to implement an automatic send control. Like CTRL and left click could make a “send seedlings” command permanent. So all seedlings would go to the appointed asteroid. Any other command would overrule that but as long as it is active you wouldn’t have to do it manually twice a minute.
The second thing is even simpler. It would be great if there would be more contrast in the game. Having a quite bright 1:10000 monitor makes it sometimes hard to see my seedlings if they happen to be a bright green with white background. A high contrast option or even a tool to change the color would be great!
And again: Wonderful game. Had a lot of fun playing it.
Greetings from Germany
FatBaron
Post by: kittehz on March 30, 2009, 11:47:06 AM
-My next is probably a bad one, but I think it sounds fun. Make the trees on each planet be pointing towards any other planets owned by the player, and then (as those are used up) any other planets in general, and then just random. Then when two planets are both owned by one player and there are trees of over level 3 pointing towards eachother, make them grow a branch connecting them. It could be a simple line. This line would be visible when all the way zoomed out, and so would make it easier to visualize the layout of the players on the map by showing their home planets. It could also have some impact on gameplay by making these lines uncrossable or making planets with them faster to navigate between (like roads). They would keep with the nature of the game of being simple, though.
-Why are there such cool screenshots on steam but not on this site?
Post by: Ogunwe on April 04, 2009, 12:15:22 AM
I played through this game in a little under two hours with no difficulty, but I do like the concept, reminds me a lot of Sins. Rather than just having a difficulty gauge, you could have specific values the user enters.
For example, you could allow the user to edit the energy, strength and speed of their units and the enemies'. What I mean by this, is the user enters a percentage, say 50%, in the energy box for the user's units. All energy for all seedlings is half of what that asteroid normally gives them.
This is in many ways the same as entering 200% for the enemies' energy. Without a significant cap on the percentages that may be entered (they must of course be at least 100%) it allows users to play in any level of difficulty possible, games where you get a little more challenge, fight just to hold onto your last few asteroids, or a 10 second battle in which 200 of your seedlings are killed by 4 enemies.
Also, without regards to difficulty:
Perhaps asteroids should lose their statistics based on how many trees are on them. They could slowly but surely "dry up" since your friendly colony of murderous mining machines has extracted all the resources available to continue on. This could occur asymptotically so that smaller asteroids don't totally die. Perhaps they lose 1% of their current values every 30 seconds, and currently produced units remain unaffected. This would also apply to enemies, but not to neutral asteroids.
Anything else I can immediately think of can be remedied by a custom map so I shall not delve.
Also, mac version, if you'd be so kind.
Post by: Rudolf on April 04, 2009, 12:27:52 AM
Perhaps asteroids should lose their statistics based on how many trees are on them. They could slowly but surely "dry up" since your friendly colony of murderous mining machines has extracted all the resources available to continue on.This was in the original design, asteroids would eventually be fully mined and exhausted the player would have to go out there and find new resources. The games has changed a fair bit since then and it isn't completely appropriate anymore, but I am experimenting with trees dying of old age to simulate part of that functionality, as it does balance the game a bit more and provides for a more interesting end game.
How do people feel about this concept? I am testing it right now, but haven't made up my mind. :-)
Post by: SnukJam on April 04, 2009, 02:33:28 AM
I would suggest providing a way (albeit at great cost) of resurrecting/reviving a “burned out” asteroid (if you go that route). I understand that the resources from the asteroid will be used up, but that would be, IMHO, a very slow process.
The trees, themselves, would be using photosynthesis as a resource, and, as we all know, energy from the sun is almost limitless. The trees becoming exhausted is a more plausible scenario and would, of course, bite into our resources to create more. Not to give it a “farming feel”, but recycling the trees into the asteroid surface could replenish those items needed from the asteroid – thus slowing the asteroid’s decay even further. ;)
Remember, also, that the trees are in the "sun", converting "sunlight" to energy ... and the tree roots go all the way into the core of the asteroid ... hmmmmm - shouldn't the asteroid stats be going up? 8)
Post by: Candlejack on April 04, 2009, 03:37:15 AM
Post by: Alex on April 04, 2009, 08:31:58 AM
This gives me the idea that things could cohabit to an extent in hybrid atmospheres, but I doubt we have time to make something viable out of that...
Post by: Ogunwe on April 04, 2009, 05:56:55 PM
Perhaps asteroids should lose their statistics based on how many trees are on them. They could slowly but surely "dry up" since your friendly colony of murderous mining machines has extracted all the resources available to continue on.This was in the original design, asteroids would eventually be fully mined and exhausted the player would have to go out there and find new resources. The games has changed a fair bit since then and it isn't completely appropriate anymore, but I am experimenting with trees dying of old age to simulate part of that functionality, as it does balance the game a bit more and provides for a more interesting end game.
How do people feel about this concept? I am testing it right now, but haven't made up my mind. :-)
Perhaps, yes, but they could die slowly, perhaps at the same rate they grow.
Say it takes them 5 minutes to fully grow, 5 minutes of full life, and 5 minutes to die. Maybe give the player the option during the dying stage to remove the tree and replace it rather than waiting for it to go
Post by: Ogunwe on April 04, 2009, 06:06:46 PM
I should probably stop, but just one more ::)
The AI could have some sort of superbug, maybe limited to a single asteroid, which excels at defence, and would generally be on their home asteroid. They could have an attacking bug, perhaps one for every 30 or so generic bugs. I like to think of them as bugs... These bugs merely need to be bigger than normal bugs and perhaps produced exactly the same as trees are, and perhaps grow, like trees do.
Post by: Candlejack on April 05, 2009, 10:55:41 AM
Post by: PONTO on April 10, 2009, 04:46:38 AM
Post by: AManCalledBob on April 13, 2009, 06:03:55 AM
The only changes I would like to see is then end of the game/round, which is a little abrupt. As the game is offencive biased, I would like to be able to completely dominate all the asteroids; to the ability to carry on when the objective has been met would be nice.
Keep up the stunning work,
Bob
Post by: BlueSphere on April 14, 2009, 08:31:12 AM
Post by: FatBaron on April 15, 2009, 02:48:28 AM
That would make it even possible to block entire routes through a certain cluster and stop the AI from constantly deep jumping into your core systems.
FatBaron
Post by: wogan on April 15, 2009, 03:51:48 AM
@FatBaron Territories were raised too, and while it would be cool to have a Rise-of-Nations-style territory-and-attrition system, in my opinion, it would take a little bit away from the game. Personally, I hate it that the AI can simply ambush one of my core seedlings worlds from some distant asteroid - but then again, I take advantage of their gaps when they dispatch all orbiting seedlings, leaving their asteroids vulnerable.
Post by: Jaguar343 on April 18, 2009, 01:40:02 AM
Examples:
Bountiful - can plant 1 extra tree
Strong - Temporary bonus to strength for any seedlings orbiting/Permanent bonus the strength for anything created there
Speedy - same as above for strength
Healthy - save as above for energy
Fertiliser - Faster growing trees
Big and Ugly - Trees planted produce special seedlings (Like a boss or battleship) which are very slow and powerful at a rate of 1 every 5 minutes ish.
I second using the mousewheel to select how many seedling you want to send on right click.
Can you make it so you can hold down right click to send them, rather than right click then left click, as its counter-intuitive.
Is there any way I could help you with development, I can beta test, and I am doing a degree in software development, so know some C++.
Post by: Quetzacoatl on April 19, 2009, 06:17:56 PM
1) It would be awesome if there would be more unique Asteroids.
For Example there could be some Asteroids, who got Impacts from time to time, like weather or atmossphere changes.
Different Shapes, some with other Surfaces.
2) Maybe the Asteroids could get different Atmossphere types, then they glow differently or something.
3) Some Dangerous Traps around the Asteroids.
4) Some "Powerups" that float around, you can achieve them by sending one unit.
For example, the powerup spreads 5 new units.
5) More different "races" of dyson trees.
6) Asteroids where nothing can be build, but if you conquer them, something happens.
Post by: Thomaslje on April 19, 2009, 11:35:59 PM
I want it so that we can build more trees on the planets
That all
GReatings Thomas
Post by: aboy021 on April 20, 2009, 02:41:37 PM
Have you considered implementing a genetic algorithm for the seeds? The properties of a tree could be determined by the seeds sacrificed to plant it, and every tree could have a small random fluctuation in the seeds that it produces. If you incorporated an idea like trees dying you could encourage an evolution of your seeds over time.
I think that once the basic attributes of this model were in place you could quite quickly establish what kinds of strategic models would be appropriate to maintain the interest in the game. I imagine that such a model would encourage conflict, to weed out the weaker seeds, but too much conflict and you won't have enough seeds to secure asteroids.
I'm a C# developer so if you need any help with this idea, even if it's just to help put in the first pieces for a prototype, let me know.
Post by: ultio on April 21, 2009, 02:31:07 AM
So I would like to see three things:
1.) You should be able to coordinate your seeds better. What I was thinking of was that you should be able to give seeds several stopovers, so they can reach other planets better (which would be more comfortable). If you have played RTS games like Supreme Commander you probably know what I mean. There you were able to create these "stopovers" by holding the shift key and pressing somewhere. It works like marking several files on Windows. I made a picture so you guys maybe understand better what I was thinking of: Click! (http://img3.imagebanana.com/view/v5uyy6l5/understand.jpg) On that picture you can see that it would be a lot more comfortable if you could just tell the seeds to go that route to reach the last planet instead of waiting until they arrive at every asteriod on after another.
2.) You definately should be able to save a game.
3.) MULTIPLAYER -> THIS WOULD BE TOTALLY AWSOME, SERIOUSLY. If you add a MP option this game will definately be mine on Steam, that would totally rock.
Post by: Quetzacoatl on April 21, 2009, 04:12:27 AM
Post by: ivanzoid on April 23, 2009, 06:53:10 PM
Excellent game!!!
Here is my suggestions/remarks:
1) Have the possibility to select large amount of seeds more quickly. In 4th level recently I had 2 armies of ~400 seeds in each :) and it takes quite long time to send such amount of seeds just to neighboring planet, it is because I need quite long time when the number of selected seeds increases to maximum.
2) A long uhmm... 'lag' of displaying belonging of the group of seeds to a particular planet. Say I select all seeds and send them to another planet, but if I click the first planet at the moment where seeds almost fully arrived to the second planet it is shown that they still 'belongs' to the first planet. I think it's better make seed 'belong' to planet of destination at the time when they go by a half of their route.
3) Multiplayer will be very very very good :)
Post by: Rudolf on April 24, 2009, 06:18:00 PM
Hi.
Excellent game!!!
Here is my suggestions/remarks:
1) Have the possibility to select large amount of seeds more quickly. In 4th level recently I had 2 armies of ~400 seeds in each :) and it takes quite long time to send such amount of seeds just to neighboring planet, it is because I need quite long time when the number of selected seeds increases to maximum.
2) A long uhmm... 'lag' of displaying belonging of the group of seeds to a particular planet. Say I select all seeds and send them to another planet, but if I click the first planet at the moment where seeds almost fully arrived to the second planet it is shown that they still 'belongs' to the first planet. I think it's better make seed 'belong' to planet of destination at the time when they go by a half of their route.
3) Multiplayer will be very very very good :)
In regards to point 1, do you know you can left click + hold and drag to send all seedlings on an asteroid at once?
(2 is being looked into, 3 is not currently possible I am afraid)
Hope that helps!
R
Post by: Perthian on April 26, 2009, 11:10:33 PM
I like quetz's idea above, shaking a tree to drop all its' seedlings at once sounds like a great little option. i cant tell you how many times i've been flooded by 200+ enemy swarms and stared silently at all those defense pods sitting there, dropping one at a time.
im not a programmer, but i think the shake action could be easily slipped in, seeing as trees already shake a little when damaged by seedlings.
IMO the shake option would not ruin the game (ie super increase the amount of micromanagement) but give players a little more room to move in terms of swarm actions, and make bigger trees with more branches, and hence more fully grown seedlings on them, more valuable.
defense trees grow really big. like my example above, dropping the 20 or so pods onto that opposing swarm is likely to decimate it, giving me a chance to fight back and not be resigned to losing my precious asteroid. likewise with seedlings, if i want to quickly mass a huge attacking force i could shake all the trees i wanted to amass an army.
i can see the balance problem though. So then, imagine that a tree once shaken would slowly grow back all its 'leaves', and not pump out more seedlings UNTIL all of the spots on the branches are filled with fully grown seedlings, how the tree would have been like had no shaking occurred. this would effectively make a barren tree a prime target - if you shake all the dyson trees on an asteroid and move them someplace else, a small enemy force could capture the asteroid with no losses.
the shaking mechanic would add a new layer of strategy to both the medium and long term games, where its just building a massive force to overwhelm the enemy; specifically, what to do with the TREES rather than only seedlings. also i see defensive trees taking on more of a purpose (right now they're more of a waste of a tree slot) and home asteroids more fortress-like.
however, i just realised this mechanic could be used to cheat the 32 production limit cap. so any suggestions or comments on how to make this shaking thing work?
Post by: Dnst on April 28, 2009, 05:40:29 AM
The trees could send out every unit after being destroyed.
The problem is the balance.
Post by: nocsha on April 30, 2009, 03:58:20 AM
Post by: axussriddare on May 02, 2009, 04:51:43 PM
First new thing is the seedling anatomy. I realize that the quality is comparable to cow dung, but blame it on my choice of drawing program (MS Paint). I hope it is interesting enough to take your attention from the low quality though:
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3612/3387815388_3d38a06e33.jpg?v=0)
The seedlings fly through space using a form of combustion engine, for which the fuel is created from water and various gasses (the oxygen is taken from the water). A lot of the energy is received by solar power, but the propulsion is combustion-based. The idea for this was partially stolen from Alien planet (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrial_life_in_Alien_Planet#S (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrial_life_in_Alien_Planet#S)).
The seedling is covered by a chitin-like material. A hole is quickly filled by the body fluids that contain some cells and fluids capable of repairing holes. The firing (yes, I noticed my spelling mistake on the picture) is done by a yet to be described process (perhaps we should leave it at that, in order to avoid technobabble) in the organ behind the "nose". The "nose" targets the shot and also contains certain sensory organs.
The seedlings have three senses: balance (to know what's down and what's up), smell (to find certain gasses) and sight (probably needed to detect enemies in space). They communicate with pheromones (or an equalivent) and visually. If a seedling runs out of resources, it dies.
There are four "sexes" among the seedlings. There are two "female" sexes, regular and defensive, and two "male", regular and defenders. The male is your ordinary seedling (see the picture). Both females are three times larger than the males. They cannot "shoot" with their nose, instead it is used to burrow into the ground and start "planting". Behind it there is a large "root" instead of the firing processing organ. They also have an additional, smaller, propelling organ near the base of their wings. That is turned the opposite direction and used to slow down when "landing". The seed organs are larger (in proportion to the rest of the body), and work fundamentally different.
When mating, the female calls for males to "seed" her. They release their seeds onto the female, and then burrow around her to aid her in gathering solar energy. The female collects the seeds with her collection organs. After that she lands and "plants" herself. Her body becomes the base of the tree. The two sexes each form a different type. The regular females form a regular Dyson tree, and the defensive females form defensive trees.
The trees produce a lot of the gasses needed by the seedlings, and take up the remains that they need for themselves. Regular Dyson trees produce all female seedling types and the regular males. The defensive trees produce defensive male seedlings.
Defensive males have an even more primitive "brain" than the regular males. They sit on their trees until given the signal to attack. They find a target and follow it until they ram into it. They have much larger fuel processing organs than the other males, and have three small "wings". These wings contain "fuel". When they ram into a target, they shoot their wings into it and then start an explosion, usually destroying both. A defensive male cannot land, and it destroys itself if it can't find enemies. That way the other males and the females can take up the gasses and materials for their own use.
So, here is how to add it into the game:
Each asteroid has an atmosphere. It is simply two variables attached to each asteroid that tells the balance of the gasses (burnable gasses and burnt). Seedlings take up the burnable and use it to move and attack. Thus each have a variable saying how much gas they contain. When the seedlings use gas, they exhaust burnt gasses. Those gasses are taken up by the trees, and turned into burnable gasses again.
This immediately adds a limit: a Dyson tree can only process a limited amount of gas per "tick", thus making the burnable gasses slowly decrease if there are too many seedlings at the asteroid. If you also make the trees produce slower if they lack the burnt gasses, you will force the player to maintain some seedlings at each asteroid, thus limiting amassing of armies further.
Then each asteroid can have an "earth" value. This slowly increases for each tree, but decreases when trees or seedlings grow. This should also go down (or grow slower) when the trees can't get the burnt gasses. Finally, you can have a core value which always slowly increases to a maximum value. Trees should use this for everything, meaning they will slowly drain the core if there are too many. Then you can have a much higher tree limit.
There are a few more changes and rules needed if you intend to stick to my theory:
* Defensive seedlings cannot gather their own gasses, they only send out used ones.
* Defensive seedlings do less damage the less gas they have left.
* All seedlings die when they run out of gas.
* Trees go into a coma when they can't get enough gas.
* There should be buttons for production of females.
* There should be a menu where you can chose what types of seedlings are to be selectable (so you can chose to move only males or all seedlings).
* A seedling's maximum gas depends on its size.
* The size of the wings also changes the agility of a seedling.
There are also changes and rules that could add more depth and fun into the game:
* A system for way points with rules (when seedling count exceeds X move new seedlings to asteroid Y) that they player can define.
* A rule system for production (stop production when seedling count exceeds X) that is also controlled by the player.
* More graphics! Examples: Visible flames from engines, visible atmosphere (colour balance can depend on gas balance) and more on that theme.
* More stats, such as agility, energy-efficiency and regeneration.
* An advanced regeneration system. Each seedling would have a certain amount of "fixing materials". When a seedling is damaged, it uses some of this to "repair". A powerful first attack might take a seedling out, but it could still keep fighting if it has a high amount of fixing materials.
* Background life. Plants that work like Dyson trees with resources, plant eaters (who know well not to try to eat Dyson trees), predators and perhaps peaceful passing creatures.
* Communication between seedlings (with pheromones).
I realize that it will take a lot to include all of this, but keep it in mind when considering limitations.
Post by: Amorfous on May 03, 2009, 08:08:00 AM
Post by: Rudolf on May 03, 2009, 07:44:42 PM
You can even change the colourschemes yourself. Every level gas aan RGB definition at the beginning of the level file, you can change it to whatever you like) :-)
Post by: Evark on May 08, 2009, 09:25:10 AM
Anyway, I like the new build update, and I haven't read through this thread since lurking through it several weeks ago, but I wanted to toss some of my suggestions into the mix:
- Asteroids? Make 'em drift. I think they should be orbiting something, at least presenting the opportunity for a dynamic playing field within the span of one level.
- Maximum tree size/max live dysons per asteroid being directly proportional to asteroid size (I don't like how mini asteroids can have huge trees and level 3's enormous asteroid dwarves the max tree size)
- Inclusion of roots to determine tree HP? (roots grow almost like the branches, just with the emphasis on spreading out more than growing up)
- A way to destroy your own trees. The only thing I don't like about the recent build update is that you're STUCK with whatever stupid decisions the AI made for defense/dyson tree placement. I think it would make sense to only be able to destroy your own trees with a defense tree, that way, you're ALWAYS stuck with at least one defense tree that can't self-target.
- The addition of grass makes it that much slicker. I think grass should play into an atmosphere element to the game. As atmosphere develops, your asteroid's max trees go up. So an asteroid can only initially hold x trees (based on size), and as atmosphere is created that number increases.
Anyway, I now that I'm looking below the post box, it seems as if others are also interested in the ability to destroy your own trees. CHOP CHOP ; )
Thanks again for the great game.
Post by: ivanzoid on May 09, 2009, 02:09:00 AM
In regards to point 1, do you know you can left click + hold and drag to send all seedlings on an asteroid at once?
(2 is being looked into, 3 is not currently possible I am afraid)
Hope that helps!
R
Thanks a lot! :) Missed it from the help.
Post by: AriesT on May 09, 2009, 05:58:28 AM
Post by: Hunter0000 on May 09, 2009, 06:03:10 AM
Get rid of the abitrary 32 seedling limit for production!
This limit just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't actually limit how many seedlings you can get, it just makes it so you have to constantly manually gather all of them so your production doesn't stop. I perfectly understand the need for a limiting factor on the number of seedlings, but I think it should be done with a global population limit tied to the number of trees and asteroids you control. As it stands the 32 seedling limit is just enforcing needless micro.
Make old trees worth protecting.
Right now older trees are just a bit strong and produce a slight bit faster (I know these can be changed with xml settings, but a solution with more depth might be preferable). Giving trees more stages might help in this regard, but I think the most interesting idea I've seen thrown around in here is making trees generate atmosphere, which in turn would have some other benefit like increased production or stats on the seedlings produced there. I also think that attacks should have to destroy all trees before taking an asteroid, otherwise these advanced trees would probably become a liability.
Make defending possible.
I think this can mostly be done with better default settings, as Jamis' maps seem to have stumbled on the right idea. Right now weapon range is way too low for seedlings to effectively help defend, also having the standard defence trees stronger should help.
This is probobly on the list already but
Add some automation controls.
Nothing too fancy. Basically I'd envision a useful system something like this: each asteroid as a 'reserve' number which shows how many seedlings will stay around that asteroid no matter what automated orders are in place. Once any seedling is produced (or arrives) which is over that limit AND an overflow asteroid is designated, that extra seedling would be ordered to move to the overflow asteroid. This would allow players to make a sort of 'supply line' with fixed garrisons of various sizes at the asteroids along the way. Allowing for multiple 'overflow' asteroids and waiting till you had one extra per asteroid would also allow for some interesting behaviour without complicating things (I'm thinking patrol routes).
Post by: Alex on May 11, 2009, 03:13:47 AM
Hopefully some of your other concerns will be addressed in the final game too.
Post by: spazzle on May 17, 2009, 06:31:16 AM
1) Have more building options for asteroids. This would allow for more play styles and options
2) Make the building costs scale with the number of asteroids you have. This means that someone with a smaller number of astroids actually has a chance to catch up with a larger player
3) Make defense a viable choice. As it stands right now it is too easy to bypass chokepoints either by simply flying past them or just sending seeds away once they hit a defended location. Maybe make it so you can only retreat to a friendly location.
A couple other comments. There doesn't seem like there is much that distinguishes asteroids except their location and launch range. The effective difference between strong attack and strong defense seems pretty minimal (one kills faster but the other survives longer so they even out, might as well condense them into one statistic and add seed variability in other ways.
Post by: TatManTat on May 18, 2009, 05:22:47 PM
fast forward button because some seeds move so slow its not funny ;D
upgrades for individual trees like growth rate and upgrade asteroids stats
trees grow bigger according to asteroid size (i don't know if it does this already havn't been playing for very long)
and finally more colour on asteroids
i do not mean to be a pest but i'm just suggesting things
and+ maybe you could design your own colours and leaves and trees and branches
heard about the game from PCPP australian gaming magazine well worth the 8/10 it got ;D ;D ;D ;D
Post by: whitebear on May 20, 2009, 07:47:02 AM
First I would like to suggests some balance things.
For some reason I find going for the speed extremely rewarding.
A. Speed gives extreme mobility. Quickly during attack when someone sends units to your asteroid you can move units for defence with ease. Not that I don't like the idea... I just think other aspects are too weak to balance for it.
B. Speed can turn an asteroid full of seeds into one of those blade saws. They circle so fast that no matter how low energy they have they can still kill all units before they actually get on the planet.
C. All other aspects for units are simply secondary preference. Speed is a must and Energy and Strength are just things good to have.
D. Defence trees are waste of resources. What is the point of having so many "flowers" if they don't activate fast enough.
Now that's enough all the negative thinking. Lets go for the interesting suggestions.
You ever played on of those board games where you conquer other players planet and have to draw a "trait/perk" card at the beginning of the game by random.
It would be awesome to have random speciality and to see if you can use it well for your advantage. Things like:
| Virus | 25% chance to covert the enemy seed on kill instead of actually killing it. |
| Ensnare | Having seed in enemy asteroid halts all production on it |
| Spontaneous | Can build on enemy asteroid without owning it. This does not ignore the tree limit. |
| Fly By | Can attack even during travel from asteroid to another. |
| Vitality | Growing a tree requires only 10 seeds |
Also I too think it would be great to see multiplayer on this epic game.
Some AI ideas.
Aggressiveness:
Scout - Check for planet stats first with one seed. Compares enemy seed amount and value of the planet to his own.
Rush - Sends all units on one planet and takes over no matter what is there.
Questioning what is to the AI most important. Randomized list of the three planet stats in numbered order. If aggressiveness is low then it checks most worthwhile planet to attack by valuing the planets stats. But for intelect AI the need to judge SPEED of the planet grown units on owned planet is high considering any units sent from there even when it's empty can come back at almost any time so possibly judge it by number of unit trees and branches they have.
Post by: Chiz on May 25, 2009, 03:49:15 AM
Post by: megagoten on May 25, 2009, 07:40:02 AM
I won't bother quoting everything.
Post by: im in ur closet on June 01, 2009, 12:56:48 PM
Shouldnt suggestions be here?:
New Posts The OT
Off topic discussion - all your youtube links, funny pictures, roflcats, 'shops, rants, raves, stories and stuff goes in here :) 133 Posts
9 Topics Last post by megagoten
in Re: [Games] The Screensh...
on May 31, 2009, 07:33:55 PM
No New Posts Dyson discussion
Discuss Dyson, its development, its future. 781 Posts
95 Topics Last post by Moja
in Re: Translations
on May 31, 2009, 06:49:14 PM
New Posts User levels and modifications
Download levels made by the community. Find out how to make your own levels. Post your levels for others to play! 159 Posts
20 Topics Last post by buckingham_green
in Re: Jamis: Level6.level ...
on May 31, 2009, 12:27:58 AM
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Enter if you are having trouble running Dyson. Post if you found a bug! Thanks! 292 Posts
47 Topics Last post by Reneg_AIDS
in Game lost even though I ...
on May 31, 2009, 11:11:07 PM
It would let people start up their on topics on their ideas, things would be cleaner and it would be easier to find things.
Post by: Alex on June 01, 2009, 04:03:25 PM
Post by: im in ur closet on June 02, 2009, 05:08:41 PM
OT
Dyson Discussion
User levels and modificationss
Support/Troubleshooting/Bugs
Is there should be a
Suggestions
It would be just like the Dyson Discussion and OT etc. but it would be based around Suggestions.
It would let people start specific topics, find topics easier, not derail a topic that could keep being discussed and it would look neater.
Post by: matt on June 02, 2009, 10:45:56 PM
i love the simplicity, but I want longer games. longer games will result in endless moving resources.
any chance of supply lines?
also, some of the missions end before total domination. i want the WIN. I feel robbed when a level ends before all roids are mine.
Post by: megagoten on June 03, 2009, 10:31:38 AM
Post by: im in ur closet on June 03, 2009, 11:40:37 AM
i love the simplicity, but I want longer games. longer games will result in endless moving resources.
any chance of supply lines?
also, some of the missions end before total domination. i want the WIN. I feel robbed when a level ends before all roids are mine.
What im in your closet wants is a simple Suggestion huh.... how do I say that... place. There's an off-topic, general discussion... bla bla bla.Thats kinda what im talking about. The thread gets a bit disjointed because matt is trying to start a new topic and megagoten is trying to reply to a previous one. So both topics both get slightly thrown out and one will may be ignored. Thats why we need seperate topics.
Post by: Alex on June 03, 2009, 06:15:35 PM
Post by: im in ur closet on June 03, 2009, 08:08:53 PM
My Ideas are:
Possibly have small forests grow up on the asteroids, getting bigger with each tree grown.
Maybe an atmosphere? As with forests atmosphere's would be created with each level of tree grown. The changes for an atmosphere would be entirely cosmetic, the only affect on this would have on the game is that the seeds would be drawn closer to the asteroid.
And I heard (saw?) someone say (write?) something about a random map generator. I think this is a brilliant idea. ;D
Post by: Alex on June 04, 2009, 01:43:44 AM
Random levels will go in to an extent - every level will be different every time you play anyway, but we may be doing some more generative stuff if there's time.
Post by: im in ur closet on June 04, 2009, 05:54:20 PM
Post by: Spaff on June 08, 2009, 09:37:09 PM
I don t know about everyone else but currently i play the game like this. upgrade a asteroid with 5 trees, get a second one, do the same, start stacking the seeds in on asteroid and steamrolle the map once i have 300 seeds. Not very strategic if you asked me.
For suggestions now to counter this (game play):
1) Limit the number of seeds in an orbit. Currently it seams to stop production at 32 but you can just send indefinite seeds from other asteroids. I would make the sice of the orbit depended on the asteroid sice. Also the number off attackers should be reduced (but of course larger then the number of defenders to account for "towers") - this would deal with the issue I described in the beginning and encourage a bit more strategy
2) Scale the price for trees - currently its 15 per tree. Maybe a more sensible progression would be 10,15,20,25,30 (towers costing maybe -3). This would encourage fast expansion since upgrading a single asteroid becomes more expensive the more it is developed.
3) Make the number of trees available on a asteroid depended on the sice of the asteroid
4) New trees. What is so charming about the game in my eyes its the simplicity but I feel its a bit to simple. My suggestions would be to give each asteroid 2 additional slots for special "trees" [So a asteroid has 5 slots for trees and 2 slots additional for some special trees]
These slots should be like upgrades to the asteroid. My idea at the moment would be that you have 3 different trees to increase the statistics of the seeds growing on the asteroid - one for each attribute. So you can decide to offset a weakens of the seeds or enchant there strengths. Maybe another option for a new tree would be something that ingresses the number of seeds in the orbit and there range that they have to reach other asteroids. Or another one which prevents enemy doing a flyby as it is currently possible.
Maybe a nice idea would be to not have trees but flowers instead which emit pollen, as upgrades. Would also look nice on the asteroids
And suggestions concerning other issues
1) Moving units - is a pain in the ass - how about a pop-up menu Neverwinter Nights (nothing wrong with copying if its good) style where you can select 1,5,10, half, all - that might be faster and more comfortable
2) Displaying the range of the seeds to other asteroids - rather then these ugly circles a nice fog effect would be nice
Keep up the good work - a Fan
Post by: megagoten on June 11, 2009, 10:35:19 AM
Let's start talking about your suggestion shall we?
And your strategy is used by a lot of people, not very strategic but it is very efficient in finishing the game in a few minutes.
1) By the way, sice is actually size. You almost confused me a few times :P The first part, support. The number of the attackers... nan. That what's make the game exciting when you are getting completely overwhelmed. Maybe we could put an "hit point" to the trees. So you could see the "Final Countdown :P"
2) You lost me in towers.... towers? The stronger the planet is, the more seedling you need in order to plant a tree. Support. Though, I still need to understand the "tower" part.
3) That would be great. Though, I would hate seeing a giant planet stacked with 5-10 defense trees >.< But it would spice things up. Support.
4) Ohhh that is an awesome suggestion. I guess I don't' need to say anything except 101% support.
Concerning other issues...
1) I believe Alex/Rudolph has already posted somewhere that the "beauty" of the game will be arranged later, after they take care of everything that is on top of the list.
2) I don't get this one. (Yes, I know that I Epic-Failed right now)
Nice job. Most of these are good suggestions. I still believe we need something special to really, make it exciting. I mean that we could easily stack a few hundred seedlings on a tree then charge in the rest of the planets. It's too easy.
Oh, one of my favorite part of the game is when you can't attack, because you are attacked, and you could easily lose. Kinda like level.... 4-5 or six, not sure. At the beginning, thousand of seedling comes toward you... I think it is in the custom game called 'CTF'
Post by: kiryx on June 20, 2009, 06:22:58 PM
However the only thing I really miss in this game are rally points.
Each planed should have an option to assign a rally point to another planet. So as soon as there are free seedlings on the planet (either freshly grown from trees or ones that just arrived from another planet), planet would send the to it's currently set rally point.
Late game players would be able to create sort of network (like directed graph) between planets.
Just like in Anno 1602, that concept was brilliant there, seeing the whole map, zoomed out, was like "damn It's alive!".
And it would actually balance the importance of defense, which game lacks a bit currently. With rally points your "farm" planets would be empty all the time so defensive trees would value a lot more.
Someone may say it's gonna be even less to do now in game. I say: make the planet busy by forcing player to fight (and make decisions) on two or three front lines at the same time. Right now in late game 70% of time is just "getting reinforcements from the old planets to the new ones".
Sorry for the broken english. Good luck.
Post by: wuthi on June 22, 2009, 06:17:51 PM
- Tree health: When I'm attacking an asteroid, or I'm being attacked, I have no idea of how quickly a tree is being killed, or how much health it has left. Do trees recover health over time? It's especially a nuisance when attacking a strong asteroid.
- Seedling Speed: When attacking another planet, speed seems to be a disadvantage. Playing one game I conquered a planet which was quite good (>150 core energy and almost full Energy, Strength and Speed stats) however, when I used the seedlings from this planet to attack I found they couldn't take a planet very well because they flew too fast to shoot at the trees and so it would take a long time to take one out.
- Moving a specific number of seedlings:The number of seedlings to send increases too slowly at first while holding right click. It should reach close to full speed by about 7 seedlings, not 15 as it is at the moment. It slows game play moving seedlings around, and also is a nuisance while under attack. You're forced to wait while the count builds up slowly, send all which usually results in the then empty planet being attacked, or manually increment which is faster at first but not as good once the speed builds up on the count.
- A Global Stats Overview: An overview of some stats, mainly total seedling count, perhaps players asteroids, number of trees, and number of empty tree spaces could be included as well but the latter three may just add to bloat.
- Being stuck on unclaimed asteroids: I can understand the point of this - to stop players from exploring the entire universe straight away - but it is quite annoying. Especially if I send a force of strong seedlings to take the asteroid from neutral enemies, and then want to use weak seedlings to plant trees on the asteroid. I can't because I can't get my strong seedlings off the asteroid, so I'm then forced to use the good seedlings to make a tree. I suggest just making it so that the player cannot send seedlings outside of the range of claimed asteroids.This results in stopping the player from uncovering the entire map, as well as allowing them to move seedlings around freely.
- Fullscreen Resolution/Video controls: I can understand this not being in yet, but with my low powered graphics card (Radeon x300) the game runs slowly at 1280x1024 (probably ~21 fps). It would be better if the game just took on desktop size by default.
- In game instructions: These are a bit lacking, and particularly don't explain defence trees very well. Perhaps a tutorial level could be made to supplement the instructions.
There is of course more that could be added to the game, but at the moment I think it's better to get down a smooth, flawless interface and game play experience.
Post by: Rudolf on June 23, 2009, 04:32:43 PM
Great game, just finished all the levels however there's some things that'd really improve the play. I didn't read through the whole thread though, so apologies if these things have been said before. Perhaps you could keep a list of suggested ideas in the first post, anyway on to my suggestions:
- Tree health: When I'm attacking an asteroid, or I'm being attacked, I have no idea of how quickly a tree is being killed, or how much health it has left. Do trees recover health over time? It's especially a nuisance when attacking a strong asteroid.
- Seedling Speed: When attacking another planet, speed seems to be a disadvantage. Playing one game I conquered a planet which was quite good (>150 core energy and almost full Energy, Strength and Speed stats) however, when I used the seedlings from this planet to attack I found they couldn't take a planet very well because they flew too fast to shoot at the trees and so it would take a long time to take one out.
- Moving a specific number of seedlings:The number of seedlings to send increases too slowly at first while holding right click. It should reach close to full speed by about 7 seedlings, not 15 as it is at the moment. It slows game play moving seedlings around, and also is a nuisance while under attack. You're forced to wait while the count builds up slowly, send all which usually results in the then empty planet being attacked, or manually increment which is faster at first but not as good once the speed builds up on the count.
- A Global Stats Overview: An overview of some stats, mainly total seedling count, perhaps players asteroids, number of trees, and number of empty tree spaces could be included as well but the latter three may just add to bloat.
- Being stuck on unclaimed asteroids: I can understand the point of this - to stop players from exploring the entire universe straight away - but it is quite annoying. Especially if I send a force of strong seedlings to take the asteroid from neutral enemies, and then want to use weak seedlings to plant trees on the asteroid. I can't because I can't get my strong seedlings off the asteroid, so I'm then forced to use the good seedlings to make a tree. I suggest just making it so that the player cannot send seedlings outside of the range of claimed asteroids.This results in stopping the player from uncovering the entire map, as well as allowing them to move seedlings around freely.
- Fullscreen Resolution/Video controls: I can understand this not being in yet, but with my low powered graphics card (Radeon x300) the game runs slowly at 1280x1024 (probably ~21 fps). It would be better if the game just took on desktop size by default.
- In game instructions: These are a bit lacking, and particularly don't explain defence trees very well. Perhaps a tutorial level could be made to supplement the instructions.
There is of course more that could be added to the game, but at the moment I think it's better to get down a smooth, flawless interface and game play experience.
Tree Health
We have a solution planned for this
Seedling Speed:
Yep, this will be fixed too
Moving a specific number of seedlings:
This is definitely going to be fixed.
A Global Stats Overview:
We have discussed this... we may or may not have time for it... Ve vill zee....
Being stuck on unclaimed asteroids:
You can send your seedlings back from where they came in most cases.. We will probably make it more clear though when a one-way situation may occur.
In-game help
The help system will improve a fair bit!
Post by: Spaff on June 24, 2009, 05:53:53 PM
Tower = defense trees (come one - strategy games defensive structures = towers )
Post by: Vanger on June 27, 2009, 07:59:00 AM
I strongly disagree with most ideas about adding more content or diversity into game - it is not so balanced as it is.
From my point of view, the main drawback now is the movement system.
1) Amassing armies is very dull and repetitive in the endspiel.
Idea of waypoints or rally points has been proposed five or six times already. I will be sixth or seventh, I guess.
Ability to send seedlings to any place that is within reach from any asteroid in empire is good and reduces number of clicks, but doesn't eliminate the problem.
You see, the main point in waypoints is when you're conquering a large map, and have many asteroids in your rear that will never ever be attacked, you can just set a waypoint from safe asteroid to the frontline asteroid to transfer seedlings and never think about safe asteroid again.
There is no need, I think, in complex waypoint, patrolling, just if ((A.waypoint_max)&&(A.seedlings.Count()>A.waypoint_max)) A.seedlings.GoTo(A.waypoint).
2) You can't order your seedlings to move forward from an unconquered asteroid. AI player can, human player can't. Well, that effectively ruins most efforts to create a "runaway" map. You just can't amass a hundred seedlings and search for a new (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) home, you must conquer everything on the way.
I think, allowing player to move forward anabasis-style or evacuate defeated garrison from lost asteroid will add more tactical possibilities to the game.
Post by: nr22 on July 03, 2009, 06:04:51 PM
a couple suggestions I've thought of:
1. show seedling health, this could be blurry when numbers go very high but it is helpful.
2. I've seen that the seedlings can't turn they rather bump into the asteroid and with the force of repulsion turn, seems rather unprofessional.
3.One time, one of my seedlings attacking an enemy asteroid dug his own way into the core and seizing control over all of the trees (without wrecking one), I thought this was pretty cool and would like to see more of this.
4. Everyone said about moving certain number of seedlings but I want to have control over the kind of seedlings, like have an option to attack only with the big seedlings and populate using the little seedlings, and have speedy seedlings automatically go defend neighboring asteroids.
Post by: Kehah on July 10, 2009, 08:39:27 AM
I understand the creator wants this to be a chilled out experience, with minimal UI and controls, but I'd say this game has potential to be one of the most balanced "RTS" games, showing which player got the best macro skills. I'd play the seed out of this online, if it had a few changes.
1. Multiplayer! I'd love to face other people opposed to the AI. The game was fun, but no challenge at all. It came down to infesting roids and grinding down enemies. What I'd love to see is 15-30 minute long multiplayer battles, 4-12 players and about 50 roids to infest. To start the game quicker, the starting planet would allow about 8 or so trees.
2. Rally point system - it's annoying to have to move every seed manually from roid to roid. Let us make rally points :)
3. Quick select, the most annoying thing right now is having to wait while holding the right mouse button, to select all seeds. My suggestion is double right click and type how many seeds you want to select, or push A for all on the current roid.
4. A bit quicker gameplay, 33% or so.
5. Different colors of roids depending on what seeds it's capable of producing.
6. Scaling cost of trees, first tree costs 5 seeds, and each after costs one more. This would force players to more strategically choose which roids to infest, rather than claim them all as they go.
7. Defensive trees don't work that well, in my opinion they should be trees that create unmovable seeds that orbit the roid normally. Let's say maximum number of seeds produced is 6 plus one for each defensive tree on a roid. These seeds wouldn't stop the production of attacking seeds (if the limit is reached).
8. Simple UI that shows total seeds, moving seeds, orbiting seeds, total roids and such.
If multiplayer cannot be coded into the game (which I doubt), I'd at least love to have a huge random generated skirmish maps with a saving option. The game is great already, but it can always get better. Also I disagree with people wanting more types of trees / seeds in the game, I think having just one type of unit has its charm.
Post by: sice on July 11, 2009, 12:48:45 AM
i posted this elsewhere but:
i am loving this game done all six of the levels on the main screen in a couple of hours, i really like games like this.
have you considered porting onto xna for the xbox 360 arcade, with a couple of bits added to make it multiplayer over live , i think you guys would have a hit.
also someone asked in another thread about planets, though i think it would make a person too powerfull you could have slightly raised areas indicating land masses instead and youcan take over a land mass. which then would help build a solar system- system for multiplayer.
and as for stacking it would make you too powerful. but as i said i do like the idea of planetoids, but with land masses anyone can take over then your seeds fight it out on the planets too.
don't change the look, it has a kind of retro and neat look to it, just like another strategy game called n+.
but if you do, put in the menu a classic or new look button so you can switch and all it would do to it would be asthetic.
Post by: Bellerophon on July 15, 2009, 01:11:12 AM
Defensive Trees: I think they should be stronger, since at the moment the game seems weighted to seed trees and offense, leaving very little advantage to defensive trees. But I'd suggest that you change the way they work too: instead of having them release one missile at a time, have every branch able to release a smaller missile which immediately begin to regrow. The smaller missile does less damage than the current ones but the sheer number of them consitutes a decent swarm threat. This would scale their effect on weak/strong enemy seed pods (weak needs to consume less missiles than strong).
If you are planning to have smaller or larger asteroids have different growth rates or seed spawn rates, may I suggest a method of visually showing that: have the glow in the middle pulse periodically, which moves up the root and causes a growth effect. Different pulse rate/intensity for different sizes.
Currents of just-visible wind (particle effects? Distortion effects?) in space making movement in a direction faster or slower: this is just a random thing that could make it more visually interesting without seeming more cluttered and add a bit of strategy.
Right click to pick a number of seedlings: How about also if you click and hold right mouse button, you can move the mouse up and down to move the number up and down quickly, like an invisible scrollbar? Just a convenience thing. Also, as you right-click (or right-drag if you so choose) the ones you selected could glow slightly, so you can get a sense of proportion of the overall amount.
Tree growth over time: I'm not sure if this is already implemented, but having trees grow stronger and more effective over time would work well. Damage would knock back size, and they could be damaged by a capture, reducing their size and immediate effectiveness, as well as just by being blasted.
Tree per asteroid limits: Perhaps larger asteroids could hold more trees, which has already been suggested. What about the different tree types taking up different amounts, so you can have more defensive trees than seeds. Probably no real need for this. But you'd switch from a simple /5 limit to a /100%, with the different types taking up different amount of, let's call it dirt, signified not numerically but visually; perhaps with the inside of the asteroid 'filling up'? And trees that grow over time could consume some 'dirt' and grow more quickly, which would take up less asteroid 'dirt' per amount of effectiveness (rate of pod spawn) than if you spawned down a whole lot of trees at the start. An asteroid you never bothered filling in the back of the lines would slowly grow to use all by itself. There's a bunch of different ideas in this paragraph, but I can't really seperate them out.
People have pointed out that you there are effectively different classes by different types of seedlings, but there's no way to differentiate them to send fast but weak this way and strong but slow this way. And there's very little strategy to laying them out, as you pretty much just cluster them all at the front lines regardless of type. Perhaps have fast ones able to move more distance as well as faster? But that would require being able to seperate out the fast ones in some way. Hmm. Perhaps the slow or fast could orbit at different heights above the asteroid, and you could drag and sweep your mouse through seeds to 'grab' them. Also, it'd be nice if there was a way to make it so that it was better to have, say high energy ones much better at defending and high strength ones attacking, or some differentiation. I just think that different stats should all have their own, viable but distinct use.
Population Limits: This is a tricky one. At the moment, the hard limit means that I just designate a 'cluster' asteroid that's small somewhere near the front lines that has useless stats, grow only defensive trees, and just spend most of my time in the game routing new seeds to that asteroid. Thus, the population limit of 32 on each world has little effect beyond annoying the player, and no effect on strategy; features that only exist to annoy the player are rather bad gameplay design. A new method of population control seems to be in order. An idea I like is the idea that the trees produce at a constant rate no matter, but seed pods wither and die slowly over time. This produces a different kind of hard limit, since you'd hit a point where the death rate matches the growth rate. They could wither faster when there's too many in orbit; you could show this by have a glow of atmosphere that gets muddy and contaminated when there are too many seeds 'feeding' off it.
I really wish there was a rally point system in place. If you got rid of the 32 population limit for another system like the one above, that would remove what I suspect is a major reason for wanting to avoid a rally point. Moving things to my front lines is so tiresome.
I'm against the idea of adding too much complexity, like new trees, kind of seed pods. Anything that can't be represented easily and artistically visually shouldn't be included, and you should avoid adding numbers or buttons or more requirements than a mouse and two buttons . This game should stay fairly abstract.
(Also, can you put in the 'how to play' section the fact that 15 seeds makes a tree? It took me a while to figure out why that button worked sometimes and sometimes not)
Post by: brut on July 17, 2009, 08:44:47 PM
-Add to options menu
*Levels of difficulty. There are game levels, but why not improving replayability introducing selectable reproduction rates and improved stats for enemies.+10%..+20%...etc...that makes all more challenging.
*Speed level. This way, people can adjust the overall speed to their like.
-Rank or score system... people like to know how well they have played. It is a little boring to replay the same level, if you don't feel you can do it better. Speed, number of trees, difficulty levels if they were ever set could be taken in consideration for ranking. It doesn't need to be numerical. Also the possibility of uploading rank or score.
-Somehow balance defense and attack. I never build defense trees, because they are not needed.
-Perhaps also adding a mixed tree, which produces seedlings at a slower pace and helps defending when planets are attacked?
-Level designers should be able to control stats for each planet. I like the idea of core points being distributed unevenly in defense/attack treepower, ie. if value for attacking trees is set to 0 players can only build defense trees. Also planets can only produce seedlings or defense trees if one of the values is set to 0. That would improve level design strategy. Also implement variable reproduction rates depending on the planets.
well keep up with the good work
Post by: alastair_jack on July 18, 2009, 10:23:47 PM
Post by: Babd on July 19, 2009, 09:20:07 AM
Post by: blankthemuffin on July 28, 2009, 07:13:47 PM
When you win, it'd be nice to do a World Of Goo kinda thing where you can continue conquering the world until you decide to move on.
Post by: Rudolf on July 29, 2009, 04:52:50 PM
I hope this hasn't been noted before, but I don't really feel like reading through 14 pages. :)
When you win, it'd be nice to do a World Of Goo kinda thing where you can continue conquering the world until you decide to move on.
This has been looked at and it is on our list of potentials. We will see what we can do :-)
Post by: Grnd on July 31, 2009, 07:06:27 AM
...4) New trees. What is so charming about the game in my eyes its the simplicity but I feel its a bit to simple. My suggestions would be to give each asteroid 2 additional slots for special "trees" [So a asteroid has 5 slots for trees and 2 slots additional for some special trees]These slots should be like upgrades to the asteroid. My idea at the moment would be that you have 3 different trees to increase the statistics of the seeds growing on the asteroid - one for each attribute. So you can decide to offset a weakens of the seeds or enchant there strengths. Maybe another option for a new tree would be something that ingresses the number of seeds in the orbit and there range that they have to reach other asteroids. Or another one which prevents enemy doing a flyby as it is currently possible...
I agree with him on this, new trees (or mybe new units) would be kinda cool. It would kill the idea of this being an indie game and make it a strategy game, but hell lets face it, you play indie games when FPS's become stupid and you can't find a good strategy game to lay into. Also those enhancement trees...good idea but...I don't know, you'd have to limit the ammount of enhancement so that it does not completely eliminate the need to find a good asteroid with a lot of whatever trait you need to breed the seed you desire.
Post by: Rudolf on July 31, 2009, 06:22:55 PM
Post by: Widget on August 08, 2009, 03:05:31 AM
I do feel the game as it stands is striking a pretty fine balance, especially given that level-designers can affect the behaviour of the trees. Holding the asteroids as a constant feels fine, when the trees can be considered as a variable; and the seedlings, of course, are defined by the asteroid's parameters.
Post by: hamai on August 15, 2009, 07:14:19 AM
Post by: Zach on August 16, 2009, 02:07:19 AM
Post by: odd on August 21, 2009, 01:41:01 AM
But I have one suggestion: if it is in the game, then make it important. For now it doesn't matter what kind of tree I grow. Maybe defence/attack trees could ver slowly attack other asteroids or something, because now they are redundant.
Anyway, i would Dyson right now, just add some new levels (well, not levels - objectives) and im sold.
Post by: Orion on August 23, 2009, 04:03:46 AM
Post by: laserbeam on August 26, 2009, 03:57:19 PM
I will obviously skip obvious suggestions like multiplayer or better sending more units at a time (easily be done by popping out a bar to drag on when pressing the right mouse button on the target meteor and dragging to determine how many / what % of seeds to send).
- Please split the seed counter for each meteor... it's annoying to think that you have 90 seeds on a meteor... but 80 of them are in the air, moving to another one. Either only show how manny are actually on the planet, or show 2 counters on each meteor which say how many are on the planet, and how many are being moved.
- Add some sort of "fertility" field to the meteors.
This field will determine how fast seedlings are built, a value between (x, 1] which would be multiplied to the speed the seed is growing (x would be different for each meteor). Every tree would slowly drain the meteor, and combined with the tree growth, there would be a curve in seedling production which first increases (because of tree growth), than decreases shortly (tree growth was in balance with fertility drop, but not anymore) and towards the end remains constant (fertility reached minimum level).
- Decompose:
Sacrifice some seedlings (lets say 10...) to increase the fertility of the meteor (should not be increased above 1...).
- Meteor commands.
The simplest command: automatic seedling forwarding. Turn the meteor into a production facility that sends all incoming units (either produced or from another meteor) to a specified meteor in range.
- If you make trees randomly... why not meteors? They're all circles... why not give them some sharp edges and make them more meteor-like.
- Don't make all seedlings from one planet exactly the same... if for example the planet has 70% strength level, make the seedlings randomly between 65 - 75% (or make even a larger error to make it more interesting....).
- I'm not sure if it's done like this... but speed should have a small influence on attack rate.
Post by: Alex on August 27, 2009, 05:17:41 PM
Fertility is nice because it doesn't break the resourceless aspect of the gameplay. And the decomposition is somewhat similar to a feature we were/are planning already, actually.
Post by: MasterShake24 on August 28, 2009, 12:51:25 PM
ok so the thing that i am guessing attracts people to this game is its simplicity, and dont get me wrong, i love that! but to me the game seems a bit TOO simple, and i understand that you need to find a balance of this to keep the game fresh... however the game is so simple at the moment that gameplay gets repetitive because there are a very limited number of scenarios that can happen, limiting the replay value of the game a LOT. one thing i think would improve the gameplay without making the game too complex would be add a NEW kind of tree, i dont care what kind, maybe it produces bigger, stronger seedlings, but it takes a lot more seeds to make, or the current "defensive" trees have a range instead of only being able to attack what is on there asteroid, that way if a mature defensive tree is on an asteroid neigboring another one of your asteroids, its "bubble" of range will also protect your other asteroid. truthfully i dont give a seed what you guys add, but the game definately needs a little something extra to keep it entertaining me for more than 20 minutes at a time (after the first hour of obsession)
the only thing that annoys the seed out of me about this game is that maturity of trees doesnt appear to mean anything! i think that the maturity of a production tree should allow it to produce seedlings faster, or give it more health, preferably both, because a tree smaller than a rat dick should NOT be able to produce space ship things with lasers JUST as fast as a tree the size of the asteroid its growing on! and maybe defensive range is increased with the defensive tree's maturity! idk but you gotta try something with that because damn! i want my oldest asteroid(homeworld) to have some value greater than other asteroids of equal size (older asteroid= older trees= faster production rate)
and
Quote
I really wish there was a rally point system in place. If you got rid of the 32 population limit for another system like the one above, that would remove what I suspect is a major reason for wanting to avoid a rally point. Moving things to my front lines is so tiresome.
you a smart guy!
i mean the people who created this game must be geniuses enough to figure out that dilemma so i am not EVEN gonna write another paragraph on my stupid seeding ideas.
Post by: odd on September 01, 2009, 04:05:03 PM
Post by: Yog on September 22, 2009, 08:55:48 AM
1. The game is a little easy once you get used to it. You just need to conquer as fast as you can and once you get to maybe 7 or so asteroids winning is basically just a formality.
2. I find no need to create defense trees as the benefit of having all of the trees as seedling trees is just too much. They provide enough defense and they provide offense.
3. The game needs a map creator.
4. It would be wonderful to play in a multiplayer mode. Perhaps you could even have a ladder and compete for the top spot.
With everyone's suggestions though I fear the game might become too complicated. The game is so good because it's so simple...adding a bunch of stuff I think would take away from it.
I do think one more type of tree could be added, an offense tree. Boost the power of the defense tree so that it can destroy any seedling in one shot and create an offense tree designed to destroy defense trees. Tweak the power of the seeds so that you need all three in the game, not necessarily on every tree but at least in certain locations. Perhaps the defense seeds should also be mobile within your "empire"?
Post by: Capn Darwin on September 27, 2009, 01:21:20 AM
1. When I click on a astroid it would be nice to see the range circle for it even if it is unknown for content. This would give me a better idea of defensive planning if I can see lanes of attack early on.
2. I agree with the shift/control click for a 10/100 fast selection of seeds.
3. The ability to select seeds on astroid A and have them autoroute to a selected astroid B that is out of range. Assuming there is a valid path.
4. Number of trees based on size of astroid.
5. A key to speed up the action. Needed early on in a level.
6. Hot key to bring up staus on each astroid on map (seeds, trees by type, enemies, core).
More later.
Post by: Morphuess on October 08, 2009, 08:19:49 PM
Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but yea 15 pages is a bit to go through. Maybe someone can compile a list of all the suggestions made and make a new sticky thread with them.
Anyway, on to my suggestion. I suppose this would be a feature for a custom mission, but for a maps where there are a ring of asteroids, you could have the asteroids all orbit that object. Asteroids in the outer (or inner ring) could orbit faster or slower, changing the distances between asteroids. This could add a new level of strategy for a mission of this type, as eventually.
Or you could go even more crazy, with multiple rings of asteroids all moving at different speeds (think frogger but in a circle)
Post by: Rudolf on October 08, 2009, 09:05:09 PM
Post by: NightCabbage on October 20, 2009, 07:37:24 AM
- more plant types (!)
- drag-box selection of asteroids
- auto-waypoints that can be set up to automatically move seedlings to a specified destination
- ability to change plant types after you've created the plants
Post by: BC wins on October 20, 2009, 07:46:29 AM
- ability to change plant types after you've created the plants
that would totally ruin a very important strategic point of the game
that you need to choose wisely :)
Post by: NightCabbage on October 21, 2009, 09:03:51 AM
ie. if you capture an enemy asteroid with 5 defense trees, then you only get 1 dyson tree... fail...
Post by: Rudolf on October 21, 2009, 09:37:57 AM
:-)
Post by: Tixx on October 21, 2009, 03:47:09 PM
1. It would be useful to move the camera with left mouse button too, if MouseDown on the free area.
2. I really don't like arrows. Can it be optional? Coz they jump from a planet to a planet and destroy meditative atmosphere :\ Dyson's arrow design was better, i think.
But anyway - that is the best game ever =) I hope new updates soon....
Post by: FatBaron on October 21, 2009, 03:58:41 PM
- drag-box selection of asteroids
- auto-waypoints that can be set up to automatically move seedlings to a specified destination
Both features would decrease Micromanagment and let the player later on in the game focus more on strategy than on every 20 seconds clicking 30 asteroids and sending reinforcements to the front. Auto-waypoints could be made visible in the game via transparent arrows from asteroids to asteroids.
FatBaron
Post by: mechanoid on October 21, 2009, 10:29:27 PM
Some suggestions from me:
- a link to the (very good) pdf-manual from the main menu (hard to find in the steam folder)
- fast forward button
- as said before, the game needs auto-routes!
Post by: Uncle Nick on October 21, 2009, 10:54:42 PM
There's a thread about buggy "big roots" in the support forum: http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=239.0
Personally, I think this looks fantastic! Would there be any way of deliberately making this happen in the game - maybe have one or two roots grow "between" asteroids once you capture them? As well as looking nice (to me at least), you might be able to say it creates a "unified colony" visual effect and enhances the definition of "territory"... ;)
Post by: FatBaron on October 21, 2009, 11:45:06 PM
There's a thread about buggy "big roots" in the support forum: http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=239.0
Personally, I think this looks fantastic! Would there be any way of deliberately making this happen in the game - maybe have one or two roots grow "between" asteroids once you capture them? As well as looking nice (to me at least), you might be able to say it creates a "unified colony" visual effect and enhances the definition of "territory"... ;)
That's a nice idea. Perhaps these inter-asteroid roots could grow between very old trees. That way they could define your oldest core region. Perhaps they would make travel faster for seedlings, too. Like motorways if you like.
I definitly like the idea.
That and auto-waypoints naturally. :-)
FatBaron
Post by: Chaemera on October 22, 2009, 02:41:57 AM
I admit, sometimes I just like zooming out to what I call "spark view" levels, where you can't see the wings and such, just little dots of color, and watching the colony move. It's relaxing.
Post by: FatBaron on October 22, 2009, 05:45:35 PM
Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between friend and foe. See screenshot.
More contrast would make the game more fun to play.
FatBaron
Post by: BC wins on October 23, 2009, 09:04:17 PM
Post by: Rudolf on October 23, 2009, 09:20:14 PM
Post by: Hazen on October 26, 2009, 04:08:03 PM
Besdies Multi-player a glaring issue I see in the control system is there being no way to have your seedlings build up on each hop before going to an enemy base.
Example, I have 10 Seedlings on Rock A, 10 on Rock B and 10 on Rock C and wish to invade Rock D.
As it stands, to make a good sized wave the "best way" to do this is to have Rock A and B seedlings assemble on C and then attack,
I propose however that through the use of a modifer eg Shift key, you can set a destination from from A > D and on each rock inbetween all the seedlings there would automatically join the rest of the seedlings passing through so that 10 leave from A, then 20 leave from B and 30 leave from C to invade D in one movement.
Now, this may seem as making the game "too easy" but come multiplayer, such a "shortcut" could obviously backfire on the careless player.
Cheers,
Post by: PTTG on October 28, 2009, 01:54:57 PM
While it would be worthless when dealing with three or for words, having a dozen planets behind a strong, safe bottleneck gets annoying.
Now, this is a little bit out there, but being able to assign several targets for each asteroid and having departures split evenly amoungst them would allow for pretty complex rotations, even patrols.
Naturally, gather points would not trigger when an asteroid is being invaded.
Post by: Mr Frank on October 29, 2009, 12:15:36 PM
Post by: Yowza on October 30, 2009, 12:52:56 PM
Also, one thing I still love to do when I buy a new or play an old RTS game is to play skirmishes, setup teams whether free for all, 3vs1 2vs1 2vs4 where you can play with an NPC to either help or protect them, or they protect you etc and being able to set AI to different difficulty settings aggressive, defensive,easy, medium, and hard. The more settings the better, partical growth/speed, plants per asteroid, etc. A save option would be ideal. Without these ideas I still find the game very fun, but without more options or maps to toggle how one likes to play I find myself waiting for custom levels, patches and or an expansions to keep me wanting more. Hats off though guys, I wanted to add my 2 cents for a great game that I and many other people think can be even greater; especially with seeing how involved you both are with the community - Cheers!
Post by: ToketsuPuurin on October 31, 2009, 11:03:43 AM
anyway, I've seen this suggestion mentioned elsewhere and I definitely want to reiterate it: more seedling selection filters. especially in the cases of the super-glowy/flower enhanced seedlings vs regular ones.
what might work is to let the user create selection presets, because with 3 seedling stats, plus the enhancement that creates a whopping mass of possibilities. so aside from the three seedling power type buttons they get three self defined buttons. they can set them up in the menu once and then use them in any game.
Post by: cinemabaroque on November 02, 2009, 08:05:46 AM
Post by: blueskirt on November 02, 2009, 12:55:28 PM
Do you plan to play users' mods and levels and compile the best ones into level packs? I know for sure that I won't have the time nor the motivation to search and play every mods and levels posted on the forums, but I know for sure that I will certainly regret it if I missed mods or levels where, as Morphuess suggested, the asteroids orbited a sun or any of the other zany mod ideas posted here.
Post by: Mr Frank on November 08, 2009, 10:11:03 AM
Post by: FatBaron on November 14, 2009, 04:27:24 AM
Awesome game all in all I have to say. Thanks Alex and Rudolf for the experience.
But there are a few things that would make the game better in my eyes. Since these small independent game developers have the audacity to set up a forum to give us the chance to throw suggestions at them, I will.
First: Box selection.
This is something that would incredibly streamline the game. Especially in large games it is quite tedious to collect troops by manually selecting dozens of asteroids twice a minute. Box selection would decrease micromanagement considerably. This would even make auto-waypoints obsolete.
Second: Increased difficulty.
The game simply is too easy I think. True – the beginning can be hazardous when a group of a hundred enhanced grey seedlings attack, but after a while it becomes increasingly difficult to lose. And in the end it is just a question of micromanagement to send hundreds and thousands of seedlings into the fray. So the difficulty could be increased by AI-improvements (probably difficult) or by giving the AI advantages (for one idea see number 4).
Third: Stats.
Perhaps it is because I do belong the generation “Valve”, but I kind of miss stats in the game. How many seedlings died? How many enemy seedlings did I kill, how many asteroids did I loose or conquer? If I play a game twice – can I do better next time stats-wise? That would probably rather easy to implement and would greatly enhance the long term fun – at least for me.
Fourth: Diversity.
The game really got more interesting because of the laser mines. They are a very useful tactical tool and enhance the gameplay tremendously. I would love to see more of that. To increase both diversity and difficulty one idea I had was a comet that would traverse – visible for all players – the playable area and crash land on one asteroid (randomly chosen). It would then – because of all the yummy minerals in it – increase production on that asteroid by say 500% or even 10 times for a couple of minutes. This would give one species an advantage and would make the game more challenging I think. I go that idea because the most fun I always had with Dyson when the time limit kicked in increasing production on the enemy asteroids (http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=237). This resulted in ridiculous amount on enemy seedlings and would make epic battles possible. If one could recreate that ….
Other ideas might encompass different types of trees (like shield trees protecting an asteroid for a certain amount of time), or upgrading of existing trees (for a hundred seedlings one could get an enhanced defensive tree or a higher production rate).
There are numerous possibilities. I don’t know the plans of Alex and Rudolf, but perhaps we will see more content in Eufloria in the future.
Thanks for reading all this by the way. ;D
FatBaron
Post by: Gnarler on November 30, 2009, 02:53:10 PM
PLEASE! that is the only thing that will make this game perfect. Set speed and how many rocks you own before launch, some sort of wait room just for ipx connections tcp udp too and rely on a secondary service like Kali to launch the game. Thats it! a days worth of work from a programmer.
Post by: HKK on November 30, 2009, 03:11:27 PM
a days worth of work from a programmer.And how many years of programming experience have you had? Bringing Multiplayer into a game like this is a lot of work if it hasnt been already prepared. The time it takes jour dear development team depends on how much experience they have with internet connections really. Plus, you have to make the clients talk to each other -- until now, the game has always decided on its own what the AI will do. But now suddenly there will be at least one player that the local game has no control over and thus has to receive instructions on what to do with it (namely: depicting its moves so the local player can react to them).
I very much look forward to a multiplayer mode as well, but honestly, all in its own time.
~HKK
Post by: Alex on December 02, 2009, 06:45:58 PM
M U L T I P L A Y E R
PLEASE! that is the only thing that will make this game perfect. Set speed and how many rocks you own before launch, some sort of wait room just for ipx connections tcp udp too and rely on a secondary service like Kali to launch the game. Thats it! a days worth of work from a programmer.
A day, haha. Something tells me you are not a programmer.
Post by: EcoMaster21 on December 07, 2009, 06:50:19 AM
A minor annoyance, but this would be much appreciated.
Post by: Bonobo on December 07, 2009, 06:55:40 AM
All I need is a warning ping noise when a player's asteroid is invaded. [..]+1
And: Gamespeed slower/faster with + and - would be cool. I guess I'd only need faster ;)
Post by: UKLN5245 on December 07, 2009, 10:07:49 PM
Post by: Joebok on December 07, 2009, 10:48:17 PM
What I love about Eufloria is the "organic" kind of feel to it. I think an approach more in line with what I perceive as the feel of the game would be to have some kind of "accumulator" settings that would influence the behavior of the spores. Something like the ability to set an "attraction" value for an asteroid. Then have the spores spontaneously leave the asteroid they are orbiting to go to another with a higher value - the probability of the move would depend on the relative values of the "attraction" scores of nearby asteroids.
I see the game play would then be managing these values to accumulate swarms at key points for attack/defense etc. To me, that would add a level of interest - to create a scheme to get the spores where I want them without having to keep dragging spores up to the front lines over and over and over...
Post by: HKK on December 08, 2009, 12:11:17 AM
That is an interesting idea.
But i think that would complicate gameplay a lot, making it harder especially for beginners to grasp the game mechanics.
I think one of the main plusses of Eufloria is the fact that playing it is very simple.
Regards,
~HKK
Post by: w4tc on January 03, 2010, 12:31:07 AM
I do not know if this has already been said
but it occasionally rained down on the asteroid
it would be cool.
but if it rained then the trees will create a temporary Super Seedlings
what do you think about it?
Ps:
This is separate idea about the idea in the top:
with another example: when it start to thunder etc, it is dangerous to the trees,
but perhaps there are positive aspects, such as the Seedlings will contain more engerie...
Post by: Chattermouth on January 07, 2010, 05:50:09 AM
Post by: Vanger on January 08, 2010, 10:06:57 AM
Make sure your display can do 120 Hz.
But I doubt you'll feel any difference, as Eufloria is deliberately 2D.
Post by: Chattermouth on January 09, 2010, 11:31:56 AM
Was just hoping for some more depth, no biggie.
Post by: Ally The Cat on January 17, 2010, 10:39:36 AM
Post by: Bonobo on March 24, 2010, 10:34:42 PM
- something like a stopwatch so that I'd easily see how long I needed for a level
- speed up/slow down with +/-
- automated "alleys" so that I can tell one asteroid to send all seedlings to a specific other asteroid
- perhaps "copy" some stuff from Galcon: double-click selects all own asteroids, and a choosable percentage (w/ scroll wheel) of the number of seedlings to send somewhere
Post by: annikk.exe on March 26, 2010, 05:11:25 PM
- speed up/slow down with +/-
That functionality actually already exists :> You have to turn developer mode on to use it though - I don't think the game is designed to be speeded up during normal play.
If you want to know how to turn on developer mode then clicky:
(click to show/hide)
Post by: Bonobo on March 26, 2010, 08:13:00 PM
More wishes:
- Save game … but I guess this is not trivial.
<edit>
BTW, Annik, I'd like to thank you for all your contributions here, Tutorial, User Levels, etc. I know I ought to have thanked you in each and every of those threads where you write, but I'm not the avid forum user I used to be a few years ago, I've "retreated" a bit for more Real Life. So please accept my general thanks for all the good and friendly work you do here, for the good of all Eufloria users.
</edit>
<edit 2>
- speed up/slow down with +/-
That functionality actually already exists :> You have to turn developer mode on to use it though - I don't think the game is designed to be speeded up during normal play.
If you want to know how to turn on developer mode then clicky:(click to show/hide)
For German users w/ a Parallels Desktop virtual machine on a Mac w/ extended (USB) keyboard: after using <see spoiler> you have to press + on the num pad for speeding up and ß for slowing back down.
</edit 2>
Post by: Eternal Flame on April 12, 2010, 08:35:47 AM
Post by: envelope91 on May 25, 2010, 11:32:10 AM
I have some suggestions but they might already have been posted, i have not read the entire thread yet!
I think it would be cool to unlock the ability to have colored backgrounds on your Scimrish and single player games, (not the Dark Matter, of course)
Not some extreme GREEN color, just something that looks like a color, but maybe more like a texture, i mean,, a bold simple color looks horrible (except for black i guess, witch looks cool), but other then that... yeah..
More painjobs for the seedlings!
I think it would be adorable to be able to change to more, unique, color-schemes.
Multi player function, i realize this might be extremely hard to do.. but it is a very basic game.. if it would be possible to somehow start a random map with 1-on-1, playing against your opponent on the other side of the map.
But of course, that might be to much to ask XD
Anyhow just wanted to leave my greetings and feedback, love the game, take care all!
Post by: Alex on May 25, 2010, 11:43:31 PM
We originally wanted to have different textures for different seedling empires and stuff but we didn't have time.
Multiplayer is unfortunately not going to happen, no time to do it and even if I did not sure how easy it would be to sync 5000-odd objects over the network...
Post by: envelope91 on May 26, 2010, 06:16:46 AM
Oh yeah i kinda realize now that all those things are not exactly a walk in the park, pretty much just said what was on my mind *bonks head*, hehe, anywho thanks for the fast answer, take care of yerself!
Post by: Alex on May 26, 2010, 11:43:14 PM
Post by: Alexc26 on June 19, 2010, 08:57:09 AM
And as someone mentioned before It would be nice to as you said have some kind of Sim City type thing, where you can just build the tress and get them bigger and grow more etc, would be nice, maybe you could have it as DLC or something ?
Post by: peace on June 21, 2010, 04:43:06 AM
Eufloria just continues to be my favourite game. But there are three small things which could make the game easier to use imho. (Sorry if they were suggested before)
1. when sending seedlings across multiple asteroids, they should avoid those occupied by enemies, even if the way is longer. I always have to send them to some other friendly asteroid in between and wait for them to arrive there, just to send them further. This distracts from the actual gameplay.
2. you should be able to have a "rally point" option where you can make asteroids send every seedling on them to a certain other asteroid. That would make reinforcement a lot easier to handle.
3. this may contradict to the game's mechanics, but it might be useful to be able to draw boxes around asteroids to make collective move commands. That would be helpful in defensive situations when you want to send a lot of seedlings to an asteroid which is under attack.
Post by: lightstriker on June 21, 2010, 12:30:00 PM
In addition, we currently have the ability to select seedlings with very high values of ___. If possible, I would love the ability to only select seedlings with very LOW values of ____, so that we can filter out our "junk" seedlings for building trees. Thank you!
Post by: splendidtree on June 28, 2010, 02:57:16 PM
What would be nice is if you can get your seedlings to attack certain trees on an asteriod, it is annoying sometimes because I can see them attacking things which might not be the most useful thing to attack that that time
I very much agree with this. If they could all focus on that new enemy tree instead of dividing evenly, even to the defense trees, it'd be a lot easier.
Playing my own devil's advocate, it could be said that we're lucky those little seedlings listen to us at all considering most seeds I've ever seen don't have a brain, and that they probably don't have the "intelligence" to listen to very specific commands. :P (Still, it'd be nice.)
Also, I just bought the game during the Steam sale and just had the game crash on me in level 11 after two hours and I was within 5 minutes of beating it, so (for the millionth time) this would be great:
We are planning to have a save function. It can take a long time to do a level, so it would be unfair to disallow saving of progress.
Post by: Pilchard123 on July 04, 2010, 04:13:57 AM
If you change the size of an asteroid, you get the same sort of problem as with moving asteroids. See this post (http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=774.msg5235#msg5235) for more details, particularly the picture.
Post by: jobutl on July 14, 2010, 05:57:24 AM
Do you have any smartphone dev plans in the future?
Thanks, John
Post by: Bonobo on July 14, 2010, 07:06:09 AM
Post by: Alex on July 14, 2010, 09:16:42 PM
Post by: slifin on July 20, 2010, 06:59:52 AM
Post by: Ytaker on July 27, 2010, 10:19:13 AM
Firstly, when playing with large maps, and large forces, you have to repeatedly select and click on planets to gather enough forces to attack an enemy. The game is slow paced enough that this isn't difficult, but it gets repetitive, and breaks up the relaxing flow of the game. You should have some sort of option like, if you triple click, you can select a circle of planets, and tell them to send all of their units to a set point. Rally points are slightly complicated, but if you just expand the current mechanism to select different units, it should be simple enough.
Plus, whatever algorithm controls moving, it should be set to avoid enemy planets if possible. It's annoying hastily sending some troops to aid a faraway battle and seeing an enemy annihilate them. And after that first time, it's just more clicks to get them to go where you want them to go.
The strength/ speed/ energy selection thing is a bit awkward to select. It could be faster. I suggest you connect scroll/ right click to a f/e/s icon, which would allow you to select one kind and send them off with a normal click. This would make the strategy of removing all strong/ fast ones after opening a hole in an asteroid for the energy ones easier.
In the game, I'd often set myself challenges to make it more fun- like, on event horizon, I built up a force strong enough to defeat the enemy counter attack on the main asteroid, and then quickly take their planet. I'd love to see distictive messages from the mother tree when you conquer places in different ways- crush everything, rush to objective, use a lot of dysons, use a lot of defence trees- signs that the mother tree cares what I'm doing. Some messages from opposing mother trees would also be nice- you will regret defiling our garden, growers forgive us for what we are about to do, etc.
The difficult of the game is very mild. In almost all missions, you simply have to build up a large force and rip through every enemy. This is why the above mass select thing is needed on large missions. It would be nice to see some optional minibosses- say, large planets with good stats, good flowers, that the mothertree orders you not to attack, because you'll be annihilated- like the giant planets on the mission where you get the laser mine. Give them an order not to attack unless 10 of their units are destroyed- a serious assault- and then attack with a very aggressive AI. An optional challenge, that people who want it can take.
An optional mode where you have random events would be fun too. So, say, a solar storm, where everyone gets instakill. Passing comets with tree slots*5 weak units that appear late game, and try to take over your carefully hoarded empire, or the enemy's. A flash of light that temporarily removed the fog of war. A period of enhanced growth that sped up everything. Things like that. That would make a great unlock after completing the game, and add a lot of variety to replays.
To add a sense of continuity, a very mild rpg element might help. Say, after each mission, the top 5-10 units by stats are selected to go into the next mission. Maybe an enhanced avatar plant, which is 2-5 times more effective than a normal plant, which very very slowly grows and upgrades by time spent playing. Nothing that wouldn't die very easily if thrown at an enemy. Just something to help you feel that it's one continuous campaign, rather than a set of unconnected events. This would have the added benefit of rewarding people addicted to your game, like me.
That's everything I can think of. Thanks for the great game.
Post by: Rudolf on July 27, 2010, 04:19:23 PM
I've played through the game. It's a generally excellent game, but there are a few simple things that would add a lot to the playing experience, and the replay experience.
Firstly, when playing with large maps, and large forces, you have to repeatedly select and click on planets to gather enough forces to attack an enemy. The game is slow paced enough that this isn't difficult, but it gets repetitive, and breaks up the relaxing flow of the game. You should have some sort of option like, if you triple click, you can select a circle of planets, and tell them to send all of their units to a set point. Rally points are slightly complicated, but if you just expand the current mechanism to select different units, it should be simple enough.
Plus, whatever algorithm controls moving, it should be set to avoid enemy planets if possible. It's annoying hastily sending some troops to aid a faraway battle and seeing an enemy annihilate them. And after that first time, it's just more clicks to get them to go where you want them to go.
The strength/ speed/ energy selection thing is a bit awkward to select. It could be faster. I suggest you connect scroll/ right click to a f/e/s icon, which would allow you to select one kind and send them off with a normal click. This would make the strategy of removing all strong/ fast ones after opening a hole in an asteroid for the energy ones easier.
In the game, I'd often set myself challenges to make it more fun- like, on event horizon, I built up a force strong enough to defeat the enemy counter attack on the main asteroid, and then quickly take their planet. I'd love to see distictive messages from the mother tree when you conquer places in different ways- crush everything, rush to objective, use a lot of dysons, use a lot of defence trees- signs that the mother tree cares what I'm doing. Some messages from opposing mother trees would also be nice- you will regret defiling our garden, growers forgive us for what we are about to do, etc.
The difficult of the game is very mild. In almost all missions, you simply have to build up a large force and rip through every enemy. This is why the above mass select thing is needed on large missions. It would be nice to see some optional minibosses- say, large planets with good stats, good flowers, that the mothertree orders you not to attack, because you'll be annihilated- like the giant planets on the mission where you get the laser mine. Give them an order not to attack unless 10 of their units are destroyed- a serious assault- and then attack with a very aggressive AI. An optional challenge, that people who want it can take.
An optional mode where you have random events would be fun too. So, say, a solar storm, where everyone gets instakill. Passing comets with tree slots*5 weak units that appear late game, and try to take over your carefully hoarded empire, or the enemy's. A flash of light that temporarily removed the fog of war. A period of enhanced growth that sped up everything. Things like that. That would make a great unlock after completing the game, and add a lot of variety to replays.
To add a sense of continuity, a very mild rpg element might help. Say, after each mission, the top 5-10 units by stats are selected to go into the next mission. Maybe an enhanced avatar plant, which is 2-5 times more effective than a normal plant, which very very slowly grows and upgrades by time spent playing. Nothing that wouldn't die very easily if thrown at an enemy. Just something to help you feel that it's one continuous campaign, rather than a set of unconnected events. This would have the added benefit of rewarding people addicted to your game, like me.
That's everything I can think of. Thanks for the great game.
Some very good suggestions there. Some we are already working on, others are good to keep in mind. We certainly want the game to be less click heavy. I like the idea of optional challenges,and we have been discussing these kinds of things to a degree already. The running commentary by the mother tree (Or the enemy mother tree) is interesting. It could be really nice if done tastefully, and I actually did a mini design for this aaaaages ago. It may need a colour coded pop up box if we use multiple "voices"
Post by: Bonobo on July 27, 2010, 11:12:53 PM
And yes, I’d love to see more comments by “Mother Tree” or the enemies, this would give the illusion of a more verbose and interactive game.
Post by: AWS on July 28, 2010, 12:03:33 AM
i like it.
this game keeps on progressing and growing. its great! i desperately want to release my latest map with Pilchards rally poiint code in it as the clicking can get a little much at times.
ive also been thinking about how you're doing with making a mobile version of this game. i saw someone playing a game on their iPad (not that i like Apples) and the screen and general movement looks like it was practically MADE for eufloria!
Rudolf - how big is the dev team for this? i kind of get the impression its just you and alex sometimes!
Post by: Pilchard123 on July 28, 2010, 12:19:31 AM
Post by: Bonobo on July 28, 2010, 01:48:50 AM
[..] i saw someone playing a game on their iPad (not that i like Apples) and the screen and general movement looks like it was practically MADE for eufloria!
I for one LOVE Mac OS X ;) and I’ve worked with more OS than I have fingers on my hands (no, I'm no mutant).
The game you mention must’ve been Galcon (http://www.galcon.com/), methinks.
Quote
Rudolf - how big is the dev team for this? i kind of get the impression its just you and alex sometimes!and
Dev team is Alex, Rudolph, and the music guy, whose name I can't remember at the moment.
Yeah, I guess that’s what it is about “indie” developers, usually no huge team and no huge income. But often in close contact with a very faithful fandom ;)
Post by: Rudolf on July 28, 2010, 07:02:27 PM
Dev team is Alex, Rudolph, and the music guy, whose name I can't remember at the moment.
Yep it is just Alex and myself on core dev ;D , whith our pal Brian Grainger doing the music and the raw sounds. (I edit them further to fit with game events)
There are of course many superb fans who have helped us tremendously! :-D
Post by: Rich_Zap on July 30, 2010, 03:15:55 AM
Concerning multiplayer, I came up with a concept game similar to this a long while ago and in order to sort out the multiplayer issues (i.e. trying to sync thousands of seedlings) I decided the best route would be not to try. Essentially you would have all players machines running a local simulation of all seedlings, the player who is hosting would have the master copy of what is going on. When seedlings die/move on the hosts simulation the server sends an update to the other players. Their simulations then play the results out, so if the server reports 10 dead seedlings in a battle then on the client the next 10 shots that hit the matching seedlings would kill them. Outside of the received instructions the battle would be pure fluff with seedlings shooting each other and doing no damage on the clients machines.
Its likely you would have a time-out as well so that if an order hasn't managed to get carried out (a particular seedling that NEEDS to die hasn't) then you would simply terminate said seedling and until you do that seedling would not be able to receive any other orders.
This way the total network bandwidth requirements are very low only requiring periodic or irregular updates from the server as to the transfer or destruction of the number of types of seedlings.
Its likely you would see artefacts every now and then (what multiplayer game doesn't though...) but all in all it should work relatively smoothly. Not that I have tested it, but I think its sound in theory.
Post by: raziel on July 30, 2010, 09:48:27 AM
Multiplayer!
Save/load
And please will it be possible to select several planets in order to get the seedlings from all to go to a designated planet? Could work like selecting objects on your desktop. Left click hold - drag selected. Then one would point to the planet and all those tiny little seedling would fly away....
Am I explaining myself correctly? What I have been doing is clicking from all planets to the same destination. Annoying when its from 10 or 20 planets :(
Post by: Alex on July 30, 2010, 04:14:09 PM
raziel: yep - all features that have been asked for before, the clicking is definitely something we want to reduce. MP isn't going to happen. Save/load may happen in the future but it's complicated by the scripting system.
Post by: Rich_Zap on July 31, 2010, 03:52:57 AM
Post by: Ytaker on July 31, 2010, 12:56:26 PM
Yeah, I guess that’s what it is about “indie” developers, usually no huge team and no huge income. But often in close contact with a very faithful fandom ;)
Yeah. It's pretty cool. Indie has something no big company can have. If you want to get a bugfix, or see a new feature, you can talk to the developers. You can't do that with Bethesda or Crystal Dynamics. You can get someone, possibly a robot, but all the useful people are away doing work. Here you can speak to the CEO.
Only exception I know of is Apple. They have genius bars which fix your problems. Which is cool.
With regards to multiplayer- how about a highscore table for level times? It's not quite horde on horde, but it's still pretty good. Doubly enhanced if you could have some sort of recording device. To record either everything the player sees, or just the entire map.
Post by: raziel on August 01, 2010, 10:42:15 PM
Post by: Ytaker on August 16, 2010, 02:49:00 AM
It would be fun to see more of the influence of these growers. I'm sure you could think of other examples- but on the mission 200, why not make it so that the reason you are doing that is because "This has long been a contested region. You will take it for the growers, and resume orders. Our enemy's lust for war has long prevented us from sending the seedlings the growers need."
It would also be good to see some in game explanation of irrational game behaviour. For instance, the seedlings will attack all trees with equal numbers, and thus take longer to break them, often break the wrong trees. I assume this is for game balance. You could have an early mission say "The seedlings minds are simple, unlike yours. They will attack all indiscriminately, and you will need far more force to take a garden planet." Something should definitely be there, and early. When I play it, I expect to be able to focus fire. By not fulfilling my expectation, you create stress, and lower my view of the value of the game. Likewise with the fact that you can't remove and replant trees.
That issue of you not fulfilling expectations is another reason why you should definitely have some sort of mass select. A lot of the value of the game is in how it's simple to play, yet has depth of strategy and beauty. These sorta issues pervert that idea. There are lots of little conflicts where you expect something to be simple to do, but it's not, or where you expect to be a grand general but micromanagement bogs you down.
I'd also recommend this strongly.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ATasteOfPower
Give some large mission early on where the enemies are numerous and potent, yet your forces are five times as large, and you crush them. The game should be front loaded with cool content. A lot of the special stuff is only at the end. Have some easy missions at the start which showcase some of the cool stuff. Maybe a mission where you can, on an easy timer, smash through several planets with 300 super seedlings- say, a mission at the core, home planets, near the mother tree.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/eufloria/critic-reviews
The reason you got a low ranking on steam, in all but a single review which wanted multiplayer and another about the lack of a speed up key (you should definitely incorporate the +speed key into the game), was because your content was backloaded. You have to play through the game to get to the good stuff. The easiest way to remedy that is to have grand battles, where hundreds or thousands of seedlings die in under a minute.
It would be hard to dismiss the game as "A glorified Iphone game" if the second mission was a battle with the seedling limit raised, and 10000 dead seedlings.
Post by: Pilchard123 on August 16, 2010, 06:00:36 PM
Thank you very much. </sarcasm>
Post by: Ytaker on August 17, 2010, 08:37:57 AM
I just spent an hour and a half on tvtropes.
Thank you very much. </sarcasm>
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArchiveBinge
"Picture the scene. You're just idly surfing the web. You find a webcomic and read the most recent one. You laugh. You decide to read the previous one. That's funny as well. You read a week's worth and laugh at all of them. You feel the urge well up inside you. It's time to go on... an Archive Binge. "
Only an hour and a half? Get back there.
Post by: Pilchard123 on August 17, 2010, 05:18:34 PM
Post by: Bonobo on September 07, 2010, 04:06:38 AM
- Better navigation in custom levels; I’d recommend doing it like the Mac OS X file browser, with 2 or 3 columns, this way it would be easy to see (and select) what’s above but also the innards of the selected folder.
- And, please please, make this scroll wheel sensitive, it’s a PITA having to move the mouse to the scroll bar and click/drag when we live in 2010 ;)
Cheers, Tom
Post by: ChrisGW on September 13, 2010, 04:12:04 AM
It can be thought of as a form of the model-view-controller architecture pattern:
The controller takes the input from the UI and networks it so as to produce a sequence the same on all machines for input to the model. To do that, the game has to respond to the local user with a slight delay (except for some instant UI feedback), long enough to have time to get data over to the other machine(s), but that would be acceptable in a game like Eufloria.
The model needs to run deterministically such that the same sequence of commands from the controller produces the same outcome. Making the model determinstic can have tricky gotchas (such as with floating point maths on PC), but at least there's no actual networking code in the model (it's all isolated in the controller).
The view is basically the graphics and audio. It's allowed to be different on different machines, but therefore mustn't affect the model. Ideally faster machines should be allowed to provide a better view (e.g. by interpolating the data from the model).
Post by: Ytaker on September 15, 2010, 12:25:39 PM
You'd both play on the same map, on different computers. You could send any number of seedlings into the portal. Once in the other land, they would be controlled by a strong, aggressive AI, which would try to destroy all enemies. You'd have a map with everything your seedlings were doing in the other world. If certain conditions were met, like a timer, all asteroids controlled by one player etc, it could be declared a stalemate.
Multiplayer is always a huge boon. Playing with friends makes a game more fun. For the PSN game, I'd strongly recommend you include some aspect of it. If nothing else, allowing a second controller to fire flowerpower from a distant cannon, and aid someone playing with it. That means that the game can be a family,friend, or romantic thing as well.
Post by: Rudolf on September 16, 2010, 06:44:15 AM
In case you ever do consider doing a multiplayer version, are you aware of the approach of networking only the user commands? This is a suitable approach for games where where you have a large number of objects in the game and don't mind a bit of latency in the response to player actions.
It can be thought of as a form of the model-view-controller architecture pattern:
The controller takes the input from the UI and networks it so as to produce a sequence the same on all machines for input to the model. To do that, the game has to respond to the local user with a slight delay (except for some instant UI feedback), long enough to have time to get data over to the other machine(s), but that would be acceptable in a game like Eufloria.
The model needs to run deterministically such that the same sequence of commands from the controller produces the same outcome. Making the model determinstic can have tricky gotchas (such as with floating point maths on PC), but at least there's no actual networking code in the model (it's all isolated in the controller).
The view is basically the graphics and audio. It's allowed to be different on different machines, but therefore mustn't affect the model. Ideally faster machines should be allowed to provide a better view (e.g. by interpolating the data from the model).
I must say this is intriguing!
Post by: maria22hzn on October 06, 2010, 11:53:48 PM
Post by: Bonobo on October 07, 2010, 01:38:34 AM
Post by: TorchFire on October 14, 2010, 02:22:30 PM
Post by: bryseron on October 22, 2010, 09:59:10 PM
Why is my mine unretrievable when it's 5 meters from my asteroid? Why can't it switch course?
I totally understand why they get caught behind enemy lines sometimes, I'm only talking about when a mine is moving from asteroid A to asteroid B, and I want it to return to A because there's a swarm coming.
PS: I did read a lot of this thread and this wasn't mentioned in the first 3 or last 2 pages.
Post by: fl69 on November 06, 2010, 05:18:50 AM
For example, if I have planet that has slots for 3 trees it would be incredibly cool to be able to sacrifice all trees or 100 seedlings to make new extra slot (lets call it asteroid upgrade).
It may make play even more interesting and will add a player more options to advance by taking over more asteroids or by upgrading the one that he already has.
For now I am more asking if this is possible at all, than suggesting anything...
Remember, good seed happens :)
Post by: Pilchard123 on November 07, 2010, 04:04:16 AM
Post by: Gazz on January 05, 2011, 06:26:07 AM
The reason is that after an invasion you always get a Dyson tree, sometimes killing a defensive tree,
So after an asteroid has changed hands a few times, you have only dyson trees left and you cannot build defensive trees at all. No way, no how.
Basically, the "build tree" buttons should never be greyed out if you have the full complement of trees on an asteroid - unless there are 4 defensive trees on a 4 tree asteroid. Then you can't build those, obviously.
When using that feature, the game razes the youngest tree of the other kind and builds one of the kind you clicked.
The obvious drawback is that you're starting with a young tree of the other kind.
Interface-wise the buttons could have a "safety" built in so that razing/building a tree only works if you press and hold the button for 3 seconds.
Post by: blueskirt on January 14, 2011, 09:28:01 AM
That's the only suggestion I can think of beyond the usual, moar levels, skirmishes and achievements. A small campaign where you play as the gray would be sweet. The advantage of the gray being that they control anything that's not owned by another AI and can attack from many fronts, the disadvantage being that they are generally spread in small groups and cannot plant a single tree, the only way they can increase their armies is to conquer roids with 2 or more dyson trees.
Post by: annikk.exe on January 14, 2011, 04:24:53 PM
Quote
Even if I'll be done with the game by the time it's implemented (I'm replaying the game with the new, more aggressive AI),
Have you tried any custom levels? :>
Post by: Gazz on January 16, 2011, 06:56:54 PM
Even though it's not a real campaign mode by any means, there is some resemblance of "progress".
A campaign mode could be nice but that would require the ability to zoom out to a strategic level where each "playable level" is a point of the map and you could progress along several paths from mission to mission.
Conquered "levels" would also have to have some sort of benefit in supplies or boni.
Starting a level with 100 % of what you had in the previous level is right out because you'd arrive there with 500 seedlings all the time.
That would obviously be limited. Probably by the entry conditions of a sector, because each one has to be balanced for gameplay, after all.
Holding a certain "supply sector" in the vicinity would allow you to start other missions with 5 more seedlings so there would be a strategy to how you progress. Other boni could be speed/strength/whatever, tree/flower grow speed, etc...
Post by: annikk.exe on January 16, 2011, 07:26:49 PM
There's a thread here (http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=1200.0) which lists all the custom levels. :> Just download the level files and place them in your Eufloria\Resources\Maps folder and they'll appear in the custom games list.
Post by: Gazz on January 17, 2011, 10:20:23 PM
For X3TC I created over 20 mods, nearly all feature / AI / UI related. That some of them totally own their vanilla counterparts is a simple fact.
Yet I use very few "content" mods myself.
Post by: Pilchard123 on January 18, 2011, 02:31:33 AM
EDIT: Ah, interesting...
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/bbshowpost.php?bbsubject_id=9281
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=4960
Also, http://www.lua.org/pil/21.html
Post by: Avaguard on January 25, 2011, 03:45:35 AM
Post by: annikk.exe on January 28, 2011, 07:04:06 AM
Post by: Aino on February 09, 2011, 03:41:46 AM
Post by: annikk.exe on February 09, 2011, 07:06:17 AM
Post by: Aino on February 09, 2011, 02:33:44 PM
Post by: AWS on February 10, 2011, 09:10:11 PM
It's because Alex is scared of your AI's mad 1337 skillz =Dwhats this then??! ??? ;D
Post by: Aino on February 21, 2011, 10:09:05 AM
Post by: annikk.exe on February 21, 2011, 03:59:13 PM
Post by: Aino on February 21, 2011, 06:31:45 PM
Code: [Select]
function OnMouseLeftDown(x,y)
for i = 0,Numberofroids do
if x > GetAsteroid(i).position.x + GetAsteroid(i).radius and x < GetAsteroid(i).position.x - GetAsteroid(i).radius and y > GetAsteroid(i).position.y + GetAsteroid(i).radius and y < GetAsteroid(i).position.y - GetAsteroid(i).radius then
CCSelected = nil
end
end
endBut doesn't seem to work, and it will generate an invisible square around the roid, not a circle... how do I make it circle?
Post by: annikk.exe on February 21, 2011, 07:34:33 PM
The way to do the proper check it is to find the distance between the X / Y coordinates that were clicked on, and the asteroid's X / Y coordinates (see below for how to do this). Then, you compare that distance with the asteroid's radius. If the distances is less than the radius, the player clicked on the asteroid. If it's more than the radius, they didn't click on the asteroid.
If you then check that NONE of the asteroids was clicked on, we can then say confidently that the player clicked in empty space. :>
To find the distance between a point (x,y), and an asteroid's X/Y, you do pythagoras. :> (yep, it crops up again and again!)
The general equation for pythagoras is:
a^2 = b^2 + c^2
Where a = the distance we are trying to find, b is the difference between the two X's, and c is the difference between the two Y's.
We want a, not a^2, so we reorganise it to look like this:
a = math.sqrt(b^2 + c^2)
Now, to find b and c.
b = GetAsteroid(i).position.x - ClickedX
c = GetAsteroid(i).position.y - ClickedY
Finally, for efficiency's sake, you might prefer to not use a square root, and just do b^2 + c^2. Then, when you do the comparison, check if b^2 + c^2 is more or less than GetAsteroid(i).radius^2.
That results in a cheaper set of calculations (because you never have to use math.sqrt) so the code will run faster. :>
Hope this helps!
Post by: Aino on February 21, 2011, 07:36:08 PM
Post by: annikk.exe on February 21, 2011, 07:37:05 PM
Post by: annikk.exe on February 21, 2011, 07:42:23 PM
Post by: Aino on February 21, 2011, 07:43:00 PM
Post by: HySpeed on February 26, 2011, 12:52:02 PM
Hi,
I like your game. I enjoy it on Classic setting. It is great to see a couple of indie developers have a success of their work.
I have a few suggestions. (I didn't read all 22 pages, but I did scan the last 5, so please pardon repeats.)
+ Tree Replacement: As others have suggested, a way to replace a tree is very desirable.
. . Perhaps Ctrl-Left-Click on the unwanted tree. Maybe a confirmation dialog that can be disabled in options.
+ Hotkeys: I'm a keyboard focused person, so I use hotkeys a lot. My suggestions:
. . Next asteroid / Previous asteroid ('+' / '-' )
. . . . The sequence of asteroids isn't important as long as it is consistent within the owned asteroids at that time. If the contents of the vector were static, then simply loop through them. But because an asteroid can be removed from the player's list of asteroids, then re-added, it would just be added to the end of the vector. So the behavior of the of the list will be erratic - that would just have to be an accepted behavior by the hotkey user. A bonus would be to have a sound that plays when the player has reached the initial asteroid. Clicking on a different asteroid or on nill would reset the 'current hotkey asteroid' to 0. See Civilization 5 for an example of this behavior.
. . Plant Tree ('Y' / 'F')
. . . . Y would plant a dYson tree and F would plant a deFense tree. These choices eliminate a mouse click and speed things up a bit. Obviously, 'D' would be a double hit, so good UI design requires it be avoided to prevent confusion. (Yes, I've written UI guidelines.)
+ Routing: I think a way to route seedlings to another asteroid would be great. I have seen requests for a click-drag method to select and move seedlings, but that might be tough to do with controlled zoom UI you have. I suggest something like Shift-Right-Click would cause all seedlings orbiting selected asteroid to the clicked asteroid. The Hotkey could be R. If you wanted to get complicated, you could have two options - one for seedlings spawned at this asteroid and another for seedlings routed to this asteroid. I would keep it simple though. Note that these routings would not effect seedlings that are just passing through. Perhaps a thin colored line would indicate that a routing is in effect. Deleting a routing could be done by routing back to the source asteroid. Or perhaps Ctrl-Left-Click on the route path. If you use that for 'delete tree' it could be used for 'delete routing'.
+ As with others, I would like to be able to grab and re-direct a flower or laser mine while it is in transit.
+ Have flowers pulse when grown but not picked from a tree. This would help draw attention to unused flowers.
+ Full Indicator: It took me a while to realize that an asteroid will not spawn new seedlings if the current number exceeds 10x the number of trees. Once I realized that, I saw a need for an indicator that an asteroid was "full" or at "maximum capacity". My suggestion is the make the outline of the asteroid hollow and "fill" it as the number of seedlings approaches capacity. It could change to yellow at 75% full, orange at 90%, and red at max. Perhaps a sound when an asteroid becomes full. However, if you implement routing, this feature wouldn't be as valuable / helpful.
(One final point on hotkeys. If you choose to go with a 'grid layout' (c.f. StarCraft), just go with whatever Q / W / E / A / S / D / Z / X / C that feels good.)
Thanks again for a great game - I am really enjoying it and have recommended it to several people.
Post by: Pilchard123 on February 27, 2011, 12:15:59 AM
Post by: Aino on March 28, 2011, 12:15:03 AM
"Empire 'icon for the empire': number of seeds" which would be the grays for random purposes, now that one would be exactly like the normal one, but what about several empires on one?(this is the main point xD) Now several Empires will pop up on the list and will tell how many of each there is, now you can go to you attack positions, look at how many the enemy have sent out to attack/defend and you can attack on the other side to...
Hope you got my point...
Post by: Aino on March 29, 2011, 10:26:56 PM
Taking it short:
1. Make several maps, be aware of adding them in the correct patter(1,2,3,4,etc...)
2. Add them into a zip file
3. Run the zip file from Eufloria
4. As you finish the first map, it will jsut go on to the next. When you exit and go in again you will start again.
About 4:
Maybe it can save the progress you make in a file that is name exactly the same as the zip file but is a txt which just has a simpel text like the name of the map you are on? Maybe the game will ask if you want to start again or continue?
Post by: Pilchard123 on March 30, 2011, 02:11:24 AM
Post by: Aino on March 30, 2011, 02:15:33 AM
Post by: Pilchard123 on March 30, 2011, 03:17:41 AM
Post by: Aino on March 30, 2011, 03:23:43 AM
Post by: Pilchard123 on March 30, 2011, 06:44:07 AM
Post by: annikk.exe on March 30, 2011, 07:37:37 AM
Post by: Aino on March 30, 2011, 09:29:29 PM
Post by: Aino on March 30, 2011, 10:09:00 PM
Post by: dragoonreas on March 30, 2011, 10:35:29 PM
If you want to look into using the I/O Library built into Lua, I suggest reading chapter 21 (http://www.lua.org/pil/21.html) of this (free!) online book (http://www.lua.org/pil/index.html) to see how it works.
You can then have a look at part 5.7 (http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.7) of the Lua reference manual (http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/) if you want a full list of commands associated with the library.
Post by: Aino on March 31, 2011, 12:51:34 AM
I will tell more soon...
Post by: Aino on April 10, 2011, 07:52:45 AM
Post by: Aino on April 10, 2011, 08:59:18 PM
So because of this, I'll just finish everything else and hope it works nicely... Now to the building part :D
Any1 wants to see the progress I've made?
The picture might not seem interesting, because... Well it's a stone cold picture, what do you expect? In the game the workers will move around and some cool thing like that, and if you click any entity(dot) there will come up a square around it, over the square there is a green/red box(dependinig on hp) which shows the healthpoints the un it have; this also includes trees and iron ore!
If you select a worker, it comes up text saying how much the worker have gathered and when you select the HQ(this is soon to come!!) there will be squares under which tells what you can build. You can build within a certain area around your structures, just like in RedAlert... Hope I cleared alot up an this acctually doesn't fit into a suggestion topic, but whatever? :)
Post by: Aino on May 12, 2011, 08:43:54 PM
Post by: Aino on May 12, 2011, 08:58:31 PM
So this can be useful to kill half of the enemies army with your heavily defended asteroid which never gets attacked cause they are ga<thering units, after removing roughly 50% of the army you can attack and they're defeated. And you may get it from having two flowers on one defense tree, so you'll n eed to get mines before attractors..
EDIT: Myabe attractors can be used for rallying, to do that you can double flowerup a dyson tree... At the same time you'll still get Superseedlings :)
This is just an idea though :)
Post by: Aino on June 21, 2011, 08:45:04 PM
I'm thinking more of an open menu:
You'll have a new Custom Map Menu, it got a Map Selection section to the left on the screen:
*All spoilers have increased text size to make it easier to read the compacted text :)
(click to show/hide)
On the right side there are a Map Information section, it fills the rest of the screen in the same way as the Map Selection Section.
(click to show/hide)
Sorry, but you might need to use your imagination for now, I can't visualize it for you yet :/
Post by: Gevaarlijk on July 24, 2011, 09:31:05 AM
Post by: Rudolf on July 24, 2011, 11:32:44 PM
Post by: Bonobo on July 25, 2011, 07:06:41 AM
Something like that is coming :-):-o
And: On the Mac? iPad? <jump>
Post by: SolarFlare on July 25, 2011, 12:10:17 PM
Post by: Aino on August 10, 2011, 05:34:22 AM
An extractor is basically a root, it stretches to the core like any other tree, but the body is also a "root" which connects to the closest tree, that tree is enhanced by extra production speed, since the extractor gives extra resources from the core. With that bonus, it's limited by ((cores current energy/100)*3) in seconds, but it enhances(divides) the time space per seedling by 8 in the "enhancing period". The enhancing period is delayed by the period time*3...
It's alot of math here, but I hope you get the idea :)
Post by: Pilchard123 on August 10, 2011, 08:35:12 PM
Post by: annikk.exe on August 10, 2011, 09:59:29 PM
Post by: Aino on August 11, 2011, 05:53:51 AM
Staright forward: It's a root, acting like a flower which improves production speed over a time dependant of the CURRENT core energy.
Post by: Orion63 on September 01, 2011, 05:41:49 AM
Code: [Select]
function SeedlingFleetLaunched(EmpireID, NumberOfSeedlings, FromAsteroidtID, ToAsteroidID)
Pretty self-explanatory, but here goes:
Whenever someone(either human, or bot), sends seedlings from a planet to another, call this function, which will tell you the ID of the empire that send those seedlings, the number of seedlings, the asteroid ID that from where the seedlings are departing and their destination ID...
Why?
Useful to AI, weird dynamics, and game logs(which is something that I just might start to work on).
Post by: Mv.c9 on September 17, 2011, 05:19:06 AM
Is there a possibility to make a black hole? its logically possible, I think, something like this:
A moving asteroid that will suck in seedlings on nearby asteroids it approaches.
New Tree
And then again there is the new Flower and Trees:
Fortifier Tree: Increases Asteroid Energy 20%
Fortifier Tree with Flower: Increase speed and damage 10%
User Interface
More elaborate user interface:
1. A (Minimuzable) side widget to show total number of Seedlings with doubble click to show many of each type.
2. From the widget (mention above) be able to send all of the seedlings to a particular asteroid.
3. Multi selecting asteroids: be able to select multiple asteroids with their seedlings.
New Asteroids
Different Shapes: I understand the circle is atm the only thing possible, but how about new shapes
Asteroid Rotation: Asteroids slightly rotate (very slow, just to make it look smooth) because if fast, it will make your head spin
Im a modder myself (http://www.moddb.com/members/mvc9/mods), and I know half the things I wrote are almost impossible, but I spent most of my time breaking limits, and I know eveything is possible eventually, so . . . what do you think?
Post by: Pilchard123 on September 18, 2011, 06:07:47 PM
Post by: Mv.c9 on September 18, 2011, 06:37:20 PM
I did black holes to a degree. Any seeds that were sent to them got killed. The map is somewhere around.
And how about the appearance? or logo? are you able to set a distict logo? for instance a balck swirly design, on a very small moving asteroid?
Post by: Aino on September 19, 2011, 04:33:58 AM
Also, maybe A&R can add the possability to make your own trees, it would be very much to do, but in the end it's porbably worth it!
Post by: Rampancy on January 02, 2012, 02:53:40 PM
Has there been any thought or consideration to tweaking levels? I've made the mistake of gifting a few copies of the game to people for the holiday season, and each one is coming back to me and reminding me how level 11 is objectively broken in terms of difficulty.
Post by: Pilchard123 on January 02, 2012, 06:48:18 PM
Post by: collapsoul on January 02, 2012, 07:12:10 PM
This thread is a bit old, but I'll ask anyway:try parasite tactic (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=19120594&postcount=3), at least that's how I beat it at pc version without any trouble
Has there been any thought or consideration to tweaking levels? I've made the mistake of gifting a few copies of the game to people for the holiday season, and each one is coming back to me and reminding me how level 11 is objectively broken in terms of difficulty.
Post by: Rudolf on January 03, 2012, 05:41:26 PM
Post by: Pilchard123 on January 04, 2012, 01:11:58 AM
A tweaked level 11 will be included in the next pc patch!
Which will be when? Any tentative date?