SurvivalXtreme: Version C.01!

Discussion of all aspects of multiplayer development: unit balancing, map development, server development, and so forth.

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Clonkinator
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SurvivalXtreme: Version C.01!

Post by Clonkinator »

Hi there, I thought it would be nice if there was a thread about SurvivalXtreme, and so I finally made one. :?
Well, for those which don't know SurvivalXtreme yet: It is a pack of several scenarios in which you try to survive until the turn limit is exceeded or until all enemy leaders are defeated. The tricky thing here is, however, that you only have one unit - you chosen leader - to do this. This unit can be enhanced and equipped with new weapons and armor at the shops. The gold therefor is earned by defeating enemies and finding treasures. And by the way, whenever you kill an enemy you may move again (otherwise these maps would be impossible to beat...)! So let's see, how long can you survive? 8) There are many improvements in this new version - 1.6.
Now let's get to the point: SurvivalXtreme is fun of course, but I feel there still are some things that could be better. So this thread is for people to post suggestions how to make SurvivalXtreme better, and to report bugs. Oh, and by the way, if you like SurvivalXtreme, have a bit of spare time and want to do yourself and others a favor, what about creating even more maps for SurvivalXtreme and posting them here? With the new macros in 1.6 creating new scenarios for SurvivalXtreme isn't that hard, and always playing only the same three maps is a bit boring after some time. SurvivalXtreme itself can be found at the campaign server. Have fun! :wink:
Last edited by Clonkinator on January 16th, 2009, 7:27 pm, edited 27 times in total.
Phoenix
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Post by Phoenix »

when someone leaves the game all the enemy leaders sometimes get changed to ai1, ai2, ai3, ect. instead of computer player or what ever they were before.
This would have something cool if i actually had anything intersting to say or write.
Kernigh
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Games with too much gold

Post by Kernigh »

Clonkinator released version 1.7 and posted to this forum, before we lost that post during the week of lost forum posts http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16554 . I have played 1.7 and hope that you will upgrade before I would join a game that you host.

Meanwhile I would like to comment on those games where the host grants everyone a large amount of gold. I have seen SurvivalXtreme games where each player begins with 400 to 600 gold, even 800 gold (with level 4 players AND +20 income)! These games tend to be very easy, with players immediately going to offense.

I tend to host games using the default setting of 225 gold, with level 1 or level 2 players. In SurvivalXtremeAdvanced, this causes the most exciting play, as the five players must withstand the incoming drakes and achieve extreme survival. Though some of these games go well, some go very badly, and players come to believe that the default settings are too difficult. However, I prefer to play in a game of 225 gold at level 2, or to play in game of 300 gold at level 1, then to play in a game of 500 gold.

Interestingly, some players have the opposite reaction, and come to believe not that SurvivalXtreme is too hard, but that it is too easy. This probably started with those players who selected the Ghost and dominated the map. Eventually, I joined those players who preferred the "no Ghosts" rule. In recent versions, Clonkinator removed the Ghost as a choice.

However, I still encounter other rules. "No berserk" and "no drain" and "no regeneration" seem to be common ones. I believe that these rules are less available, because though I allow myself berserk or drain or regeneration, I often choose not to use them.
Clonkinator
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Re: Games with too much gold

Post by Clonkinator »

Wow, I didn't expect anybody would ever post into this thread again :wink:
Kernigh wrote: Meanwhile I would like to comment on those games where the host grants everyone a large amount of gold. I have seen SurvivalXtreme games where each player begins with 400 to 600 gold, even 800 gold (with level 4 players AND +20 income)! These games tend to be very easy, with players immediately going to offense.
Well, I allowed players to choose the settings they think fit for this pack, but the fact that they also have income just shows that they are even ignoring the "Place a check in the default settings box"-advice. I wonder why however, as not doing this causes a bug to appear (random enemy leaders with dumb stats). However, everyone feels differently about this pack. Some think it is too easy, some think it is too hard, and only a few actually think it has the right difficulty. First I have to say: SurvivalXtreme is designed to be challenging or even hard. However, if you feel it is too hard, increase you starting gold and/or your starting level. If you feel it is too easy, do just the opposite.
Kernigh wrote: However, I still encounter other rules. "No berserk" and "no drain" and "no regeneration" seem to be common ones. I believe that these rules are less available, because though I allow myself berserk or drain or regeneration, I often choose not to use them.
I actually don't quite get why people are complaining about these thingies. Drain. I know, drain can ruin the fun as it is VERY powerful, but it actually it starts out so weak and expensive now that you can get hardly good use of it.
Berserk. Choosing berserk here is quite tricky. Sometimes it allows you to rip your enemies apart (Holy Rage on HI), sometimes it absolutely doomes you (Ulfserker VS General). If you like risky things, choose berserk, if you don't like them, hey, nobody forces you to choose berserking weapons/units.
Regeneration. To be honest, this one fizzles me. Regeneration can be useful in the beginning, but later it doesn't really matter anymore as you should have large amounts of HP. Plus, most units that have regeneration have got pretty poor defense, which actually is pretty bad here.

Cheers :)
_Nyogtha
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Post by _Nyogtha »

Hi.

I played quite a lot games.
Mostly on survivalextremeadvanced, but I believe that this can apply to others map.

1. Berserk with default 225 settings are easily abused with drake glider.

Get 1 HP upgrade, rage, ranged damage, if not sure get one chest, and even more hp and damage, this drake has huge mobility and easy kills 10-15 units to get more hp and become invulnerable. Well, killing bosses with rage is a little bit tricky (you have to get pierce and fire resists to 100%). But for drake this cost is only 16 * 35 gold.

Comment: I'd raise the price of both berserk weapons to something like 200+.

2. Difficulty. Well, level 0 150 gold doable (we have survive all).
Level 1 50 gold - doable even solo (with some dwarf).
Level 1 25 gold - never managed to do this even with 5 heroes.

3. Prices. I think prices is way to low starting from the middle of the game, when you beat firsth leaders you actually immortal, I think they should grow every turn, say by 5-10%.

Best regards, and thanks for interesting game.
Clonkinator
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Post by Clonkinator »

Thanks for your comments. So let's have a look at them:
_Nyogtha wrote: 1. Berserk with default 225 settings are easily abused with drake glider.

Get 1 HP upgrade, rage, ranged damage, if not sure get one chest, and even more hp and damage, this drake has huge mobility and easy kills 10-15 units to get more hp and become invulnerable. Well, killing bosses with rage is a little bit tricky (you have to get pierce and fire resists to 100%). But for drake this cost is only 16 * 35 gold.

Comment: I'd raise the price of both berserk weapons to something like 200+.
Whee, I didn't try berserk weapons with a drake glider yet, but this really seems to be a problem. I guess I will raise the prices of these (although I won't raise them to 200 or even more). By the way, did you already get the newest version (1.7)? You can't upgrade your resistances infinitely anymore. 10 upgrades are allowed, that's all, so you will hardly get more than one resistance to 100%. And if you only raise ONE resistance, every enemy that has another damage type will slowly mess you up.
_Nyogtha wrote: 2. Difficulty. Well, level 0 150 gold doable (we have survive all).
Level 1 50 gold - doable even solo (with some dwarf).
Level 1 25 gold - never managed to do this even with 5 heroes.
Well, the difficulty HEAVILY depends on your skills, on how many gold you start with, on how high your starting level is, on how high the exp-rate is etc. Maybe it's doable with 50 gold. That's ok. But I guess it's not gonna be easy like this. If you think gameplay is too easy, think after what might make things harder. Less gold? Lower level? Higher exp-rate? Infinite turns? Some weak character with low level cap? It's up to you to set your own difficulty. I'm (relatively) happy with the difficulty I have got right now. Oh, and by the way, saying even solo is a said a bit badly because, well, it starts out a bit harder if you start lonely, but later it gets easier as you gain ALL the money from the enemies lonely. With 5 players, you start out a bit easier, but end up much harder because all the gold is shared.
_Nyogtha wrote: 3. Prices. I think prices is way to low starting from the middle of the game, when you beat firsth leaders you actually immortal, I think they should grow every turn, say by 5-10%.
I actually don't really want to raise the prices of the enhancements. I'm kinda happy with them. I could, however, lower the gold you get from killing higher level enemies as this probably is the reason why you get so many gold: Because the lvl 3 enemies you slay drop so much gold. I have to think about that.

By the way, it's hard to balance all three maps with the same concept. While Classic may be relatively easy, as an example, Chambers is already harder just because of the map itself.

Cheers.
_Nyogtha
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Post by _Nyogtha »

I didn't try 1.7, but if resist are only limited to 10 purchases this will solve all of the above I think.

Cause that drake, for example, will be able to get 90% pierce resist. (while staying at 50% fire res), well, he will be able to kill most leaders anyway, but some will cause big problems.

Also, I this a possibility to alter pwnage level, or how it called, from game settings? For example from village gold.

I looked into the code and noticed that creep get more HP and damage over time. Can this be altered when you host?

Thanks for your reply.
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TL
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Post by TL »

I tried 1.7 out with a solo ulfserker on SurvivalXtremeAdvanced and found that buying 100% blade resistance was about all I needed, since most enemies and all bosses use blade melee. I'd take some damage from the ocassional impact/pierce attack but it was easy enough to just refill with a drain attack on something weak.
Clonkinator
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Post by Clonkinator »

_Nyogtha wrote: I looked into the code and noticed that creep get more HP and damage over time. Can this be altered when you host?
Not yet, but I actually thought about adding different difficulty levels to the whole bunch. I just don't know how to make that option window pop up for the host only...
_TL wrote: I tried 1.7 out with a solo ulfserker on SurvivalXtremeAdvanced and found that buying 100% blade resistance was about all I needed, since most enemies and all bosses use blade melee. I'd take some damage from the ocassional impact/pierce attack but it was easy enough to just refill with a drain attack on something weak.
Hm. Maybe you can massacre the leaders this way, but some of the creeps and the additional bosses will be more dangerous this way. I actually am too lazy to give them another damage type.
Clonkinator
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Post by Clonkinator »

Minor Update. Check it out on the campaign server.
meriton
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Post by meriton »

Hi. As you can read in this thread, I have reorganized the code of SurvivalXtreme to speed up scenario loading, reduce the size of savegames and speed up their handling.

You are welcome to integrate these changes in your distribution. (Of course, a line of acknowledgment in the Readme would be nice). I have attached an updated version of 1.7a.

Changes in detail:
- refactored shop logic so it is not duplicated during macro expansion. This massively reduces the size of savegames and contributes to a shorter scenario load time.
- refactored kill bonus to avoid code duplication
- interface: when a kill-bonus is awarded, the amount is shown as a yellow number of top of the killing unit.

Regards
meriton
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governor
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Post by governor »

meriton wrote:Hi. As you can read in this thread, I have reorganized the code of SurvivalXtreme to speed up scenario loading, reduce the size of savegames and speed up their handling.

You are welcome to integrate these changes in your distribution. (Of course, a line of acknowledgment in the Readme would be nice). I have attached an updated version of 1.7a.

Changes in detail:
- refactored shop logic so it is not duplicated during macro expansion. This massively reduces the size of savegames and contributes to a shorter scenario load time.
- refactored kill bonus to avoid code duplication
- interface: when a kill-bonus is awarded, the amount is shown as a yellow number of top of the killing unit.

Regards
meriton
You may have a bug in your code meriton, check the WML Workshop thread for clarification.
meriton
Posts: 77
Joined: March 17th, 2007, 1:17 pm

Post by meriton »

As discussed in the other thread, what governor spotted is no bug. However, there were two other bugs (broken undo, broken resistance buying). I have fixed them, and updated the code attached to my previous post.
Clonkinator
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Post by Clonkinator »

Alright, thanks meriton! :D
I put your work into the new version 1.7b, findable at the campaign server. The new WML slightly confuses me, but it seems to work. Note that I also added a sound to the number you added for displaying the gold bonus. Go ahead and have a look at it! :wink:
meriton
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Post by meriton »

You're welcome. Feel free to ask questions about the confusing WML.
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