For this week I’ve been exploring network and energy models. Things like optimizing when to show paths, decoupling energy production from network nodes, etc. Additionally, I’ve been exploring ways of dealing with emitters other than the CW3 “blow them up” model.
are those solar panels? and is that a freeze ray stopping the emitter from spawning in creeper?
Well, it’s advanced tech from a different time – there may not even be a sun for “solar” … 🙂
it appeares to me that the nullifier just stops creeper production at the emmitter instead of blowing it up. if that is so it sounds neat.
Yea, until you run out of energy. 🙂
Yeah. Kinda like the whole ‘capping an emitter off’ thing in CW1, except with a nullifier instead of a cannon (or 2 cannons in double down mode). The solar panels look line it’ll stop us from collecting energy near the front line and make protecting from spores harder, since we won’t be able to build weapons in the energy gathering area/’green ground’. (huh. That could be an interesting challenge run, actually. Be forced to use relays instead of collectors for transmitting packets, having to put holes in energy collection for SAMs and drones… *loads up CW1*)
So if there are solar panels, will there be a day and night cycle system added? At day solar panels will face towards the nearest sun (if there are multiple suns) and produce energy. But at night, they do not produce energy.
So, the weapons that used to require arrays of nuclear reactors will now run off a few solar panels?
Surprised that you have yet to implement mortars. Also, the panels give me flashbacks to CW2 Reactor farms, which I guess might be interesting in 3D. Also, if they are solar, you could adjust their efficiency in different levels.
Honestly, I don’t know for sure how those will work in CW4. It seems simple, but I imagine there will be a LOT of behind the scenes calculations to take care of- e.g., what if the mortar lands in creeper with higher-up creeper next to it? How much creeper does it remove upward? How are the waves changed by the mortar landing? How many voxels deep will the mortar go before exploding? How many voxels deep does the explosion go? If it lands next to a wave of creeper, does that change how the blast is distributed? How do you decide where is the most efficient spot to target?
So many behind the scenes things, honestly I would only be mildly surprised if V had to skip out on Mortars entirely.
Well, targeting shouldn’t be too difficult I’d think. And explosions already exist when structures blow up. In general, mortars are such a staple of CW that I’m sure we’ll see something like them at least. They are the sword to the Blaster’s shield, taking out thick creeper while Blasters keep it at bay. You saw how many cannons Virgil needed to get anywhere in the video. Still, I get your point that they’re more difficult to make than before. Still, their wave-causing should be examined soon, to see how it affects gameplay.
With regards to the emitters, how about something akin to an oil well head but it costs energy to maintain. But if you overlap your power network…. Thar she blows!
Give me!!!
Thoughts on different “solution” to the emitters …. have a converter (researched sometime in the story?) , convert the emitter to emit AntiCreeper, but at the MINIMAL rate? perhaps some upgrades later to increase an emitter output, at the cost that it increases ALL emitters? so even the regular creeper emitters would get stronger and build up even faster in the time-frozen areas?
I realize though then that you’d have to have that fairly early in the storyline maybe, then you’d have to find whole different methods of creating future “worlds” to combat that possibility…Maybe limit it to only being able to convert one emitter per level? maybe more with story progression / tech research? Ugg, sorry, thought it’d be a good idea, but that seems more like a super-weapon / end-game alternative solution to “capping off” an emitter.
Huh, if nullifiers permanently require a constant supply of energy to keep an emitter pacified, that means your progress through a level is no longer either stalled or forwards—it could go way backwards if, say, late in a level a flying something destroys or cuts off a nullifier holding down an early emitter, causing a sudden outpouring of creeper in your backline that starts a chain reaction by destroying or de-energizing other nullifiers.
That would result in an incentive to try to remember to save at regular intervals, which hasn’t really been necessary in the past.
Or perhaps it’s an incentive for Virgil to disallow saving at regular intervals?
*insert dramatic music here*
CW4 has gone Tesla.
CW4 is starting to really get fleshed out. Love these little announcements!
Sometimes I swear I miss important things. How did I know hear about this till now, this looks like hype to me.
Tjgalon,
I do not like to challenge others, but I will say I do not think it looks like hype!
Virgil does a GREAT job creating some of the most fantastic games I have ever
experienced.
It takes a lot of expertise, time, energy, money and other things as well to develop these
superb games we Love to play.
I and many others wait patiently for the smallest bit of news you call “hype”.
When Virgil can take the time out of his busy schedule to give everyone an
update on how the game development is proceeding, I certainly appreciete
knowing about it.
I believe Virgil’s periodic updates also help to move game development
along since many members of the Knucklecracker community like to
post messages about Virgil’s updates — people can ask questions to
clarify issues, post opinions pro, con or otherwise about any
concepts in the game. Without Virgil’s “hype” updates, both Virgil
and the potential game customers/players would be in the dark
about what makes a Great exciting game which we will all Love
to to play when it becomes available.
If you don’t like the “hype”, go search someplace else for the
kind of game you like! and best of Luck finding it!
I really love the fact, that gameplay from above looks similar to CW3 but have option to look at everything from different angles. Cannot wait to try parallel to creeper cam. <3
Have You considered option to divide energy by percentage for building/fighting? Like on your Odin city, just set 30% of all energy is prioritized for building. It would help a lot on this small, micro-intensive maps. I had to micro soo hard sometimes, just to get 2-3 packets to go for building. Sometimes You can't shut down fighting packets even for 5s, but cutting it by percentage would make it doable.
A possible thought in regards to emitters. Some form of pull push force projector that allows the emitter to be moved back a few tiles. Possibly something with logic gates that allow pinging an emitter back and forth. Not sure if that is useful.
Thanks for all your work btw. Your games have always been very stress relieving.
Solar panels, huh? Clearly this is the eco-friendly edition of Creeper World, lol. I’m okay with this. I assume that there will probably end up being a Reactor analogue too?
Actively capping/blocking an emitter is neat, but I’m not sure I’m sold on the exact implementation. Visually, mostly. Maybe something that you build elsewhere and then drop onto the emitter itself, literally capping it? (Requiring energy of course, and probably being vulnerable to being destroyed if there’s still a ton of Creeper around. Probably about as sturdy as any other weapon.)
I don’t know if this is too cheating but could there be an option to mark an area as energy and then is fills it with panels and connecters automatically.
Like you press a button to enter “select energy area mode”. Left click paints, right click removes and scrolling change the brush size. Then you click a “fill selected area with connectet panels” button and it calculates a optimal placement and shows a preview . Then a “OK” or “Start building ” button wich places the panels and leaves the “select energy area mode”
A bit like when you paint an area to select in photoshop.
The feature I miss the most from the third game in the earlier games is the ability to drag and build multiple structures at a time. And having a way to do it automatically would take time away from boring clicking and planning to actually playing the game.