SurvivalXtreme: Version C.01!

[MCP]

Can't even make my deadline.
I think management is going to be restructering your ass out of a job.

[Mabuse]

btw, uh oh -

with every unit i place on the map the dimension to my mind:
its a bit insane.

it still will take a good number of hours, after placing (tons of) cave and water enemies, i now have to place 200+ guardians (not to mention i must give em values and such.)

thx good i have the coordinates already

and then i must prepare some other things too.

[Mabuse]

btw, all units basically placed -

what now is left is moving boss selection, stat editing, and get rid of not nessessary stuff

additionally i need to make a little "trick" that disables later/far away parts of the map unless something is accomplished, since the sheer number of units and stuff brings the engine to its limits, and it sucks to wait a lot for ai turns,

so i have to think about a solution here.

all in all progress is good though

[MCP]

I dunno what to say, I guess I'm just waiting for you to finish. I'll subscribe to the topic, so any posts should net me an email, and then I can help test if needed.


'Ready for action' - duke nukem.

[Mabuse]

btw, im definately working like an idiot on this map

there are atm about 500 (maybe 10/20 more or something) enemies placed (include bosses, guardians and other, minor enemies) for some resaons i had to make it so that not all are displayed at the same time, instead as the players progress parts of the map will be "unlocked" and the "fix" enemies will be spawned

spawning bosses not included.

the players have to fight 10 leaders altogether.
map size is 160x125

many new enemies, and you will hate them all i guess.

actually im working on some details, stat editing has partially to be done yet, spawning bosses must be set

well, and then the map is ready for the first test play.
as said its difficult to evaluate things, but i hope i can make the balance about as right as possible

also i ran into some theoretical "problems", but i hope i can solve them conveniently -

important for me is that the map plays smooth because it really sucks if you have to wait 2/3/4 min for ai move, so i try to reduce this amount as much as possible, although i cant exclude serious speedproblems when the players unlock the final part of the map, especially taking into accout that ai calculates longer with stronger creeps (creeps = non fix enemies)

we will need to test the overall playability


btw, slight balance change:
--------------------------

terrain training will cost 50 gold now, and you have 3 slots free to train -

[Golbeeze]

Sounds like a big project! I hope you manage to fix the lag issue, this map sounds like its gonna be good.

[Mabuse]

btw, the graphics from the new units, terrain come from

extended era, era of magic, era of strife, neoskel, quietus and synxerr

and various other people i forgot to note their names (and recovering them woudl take also quite some time ), in any case i raided the graphic-library for useful stuff, and yes, also took graphics from "under the burning sun" and "invasion fromthe unknown"

some graphics got edited (changed colors, darkness, contrast and stuff), also mainline stuff

i dont know if i need to name them explicitly, in any case i can say that i did not do any of the "new" graphics for myself except editing them slightly

[Mabuse]

Sounds like a big project! I hope you manage to fix the lag issue, this map sounds like its gonna be good.

btw,i guess i have found out what MAY cause a huge part of the lagging problem.
i have litterally placed hundrets of units on the map, though only a few seem to cause "problems" in terms of using up "ai-calculation"-time (which should be used almost exclusivley forthe spawns). the most units are just skipped. the units that cause problems are the ones that are placed by the OLD SX macros

as you may (or may have not) noticed, i included a few new macros to place "attackers","cave-defenders", sea-defenders" and so on. beside that some of them can only move on certain terrians, they all use the "guardian" flag for ai. that means they get only active if an enemy comes withoin their sight. the ai dont need to spend time for it calculating what to do with the unit.

i think i will "equip" all sx macros for "not-moving" (whcih are basically all, except the spawning bosses,or units hidden in traps (which can be activated if the trap is triggered ) bosses with ai-special guardian to reduce the ai-calculation A LOT.

need to test that

hehe, and then i got rid of the problem. becasue i cant imagine that placing 500 units that shodl beasicaly just stand where they are causes so much trouble for any modern computer.

lets try this

[MCP]

That should be much more efficient if it keeps a pool of active and in-active units.

I am not looking forward to ice man.


are you just ripping off mega man?
I mean are you gonna have us go through an non-linear progression of bosses, each one called "X man", where x is ice, fire, light, cut, pedophile, bubble, metal, crash, etc?

And finally doctor wily.

[Mabuse]

ummm, something like that

btw, ice man (or better said "Ice Demon") is the smallest problem i guess, some well placed fire-balls and he is gone.

berserk alone wont be an option anyway, some good ranged support is absolutely nessessary. in front of the many units that have pierce damage cavalry seems also the be at a disadvantage. but we will see, of course a zerker is always good to rip a mage into pieces, or to smash some archers in no time



btw, the "ai-guardian" thing works perfect. you almost dont even recognize anymore that there is an ai turn . definately < 30 sec (or something, but dont pin me on that), < 30 includes that it may be just 10 seconds or 20 or whatever, in any case its acceptable short enough for me to enjoy the game

thats how it should be

the nice thing is it will also speed up the old maps, and now i may place even more enemies --- ahh wait, no. first i have to do stat editing for guards (= balancing basically), then i make the spawning bosses, then i look for soem details and add things if needed.

[Mabuse]

some more statistics, as mentioned enemies are not all.
of course we must keep the players at bay with lots of nice things to loot:


21x shop

46x yellow potions
25x red potions (full heal, carryable)
57x blue potions (+150 HP, +5move, +1 attack, carryable)

75 x chests 30 gold
37x chests 50 gold
6 x chests 75 gold
10 x chests 100 gold

+ 12 special items

are ready to support the players in their quest

(of course it would be illusionary to think that there is a realistic chance that the players will get these things, muahrahrahar )

[Mabuse]

of course a zerker is always good to rip a mage into pieces, or to smash some archers in no time

or basically everything you are resistance against. for all the other things you need support that is able to deal with them. sure, zerker is perhaps "needed" (to get certain enemies done in time) and a good thing. but i wont rely completely on it

[Mabuse]

i added a 13th Item for the players

ring of darkness, it will create a dark aura around the player and all adjacent enemies suffer -25% attack strengh -

thanks to sapient i now have a use for his hint how to change unit-halo. additionally i think its a nice item to have

[Clonkinator]

...well, I actually got pissed by losing two month's work, but I guess this little update doesn't take very long anyway.

I simply cannot believe I forgot to add the guardian-tag to the enemy guards and never noticed it by myself. Anyway, this is fixed in the newest version and should reduce the lagging, especially on larger maps. The new version can be found on the addon-server, just as usual...

I guess this will be the final update for the "standard"-SX... ...and I won't be around for a while, if ever again. See you, guys.

[Mabuse]

hi, nice update.

well, i never noticed it by myself too (or maybe i noticed that it isnt there, but never considered it as very important), because so far it was not really needed , and wasnt essential for the guards to work

and i hope to see you again