Chronicles of Chernobyl - I am looking for testers

[Tyler21]

Hi everyone,

in the last weeks I have created a minigame in CW3 that was inspired by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout series.

Since almost everything is different from vanilla CW3, I'd like you to test the tutorial, whether it's straightforward enough for casual CW3 gamers. And of course I encourage you to report bugs or glitches since it contains 17K+ opcodes and it's impossible to test every situation alone.

The reason why I uploaded it here first is that I didn't want to upload a version to CS that is unclear, too difficult or contains a major bug.

Thanks in advance!

IMPORTANT: check "Do not show game event notification tags" in the game menu / MISC, otherwise the notifications will be really annoying.

*** UPDATE2 28 March 01:17 pm
Known issues
- at the maximum zoom level the 'Units' tab is selected instead of the 'Buildings' tab if the cursor is over the lower half of the 'Buildings' tab

Changes (compared to update1):
* Fog of war script is completely changed, causes much less lag, removed the 'low quality' option
* Drone
   - image offset issues fixed
   - landing location issues fixed
   - landing and takeoff speed is 2.5x faster
   - is not damaged by radiation anymore, but its health is very slowly drained while in air therefore it needs a regular maintenance at a helipad
   - will automatically go to the nearest free helipad if has low health or no AC
* Ground units
   - automatic redeployment to previous waypoint after refill (note that if  the unit or the player sets a new waypoint while the unit is heading towards the first aid or a supply crate, the unit will redeploy to this new waypoint after refill)
   - radiation does less damage to units, contamination is even more weaker, but damages health proportionally to max health, instead of a constant value (so if contaminated, each unit will have the same time to be healed, scientists will no longer die quickly, unless they get large amounts of immediate radiation)
   - units immediately get the radio signal
   - retargeting is not lagged during radio lag
   - increased scientists' speed
* Interface
   - 'KEY controls' available when players press 'H' for help
   - research activation doesn't require confirmation anymore
* Radio tower
   - decreased consumption: the initial CN can now support two radio towers instead of one
   - increased 'ammo' capacity: radio towers will be less affected by energy shortages
* Decreased general building cost in order to speed up the gameplay
* Digitalis grows no more if it is not connected to its supporting fissure
* More info about units in tutorial texts, introducing the Specialist and the Elite before facing the core fissure

[Karsten75]

I've not started playing it yet, but HOLY SMOKE!  Nice job.


I'm kind of stuck, not sure if I missed something.  I don't seem to get any AC.

[Tyler21]

You have to select the AC tank and upgrade it to a refinery first by pressing 'U'. Then you have to build a new tank next to the refinery. Did you receive these instructions before you built the tank?

[Karsten75]

Hmm.. I thought it told me to build a AC tank near the ore deposit, but not right on top of it.

So that worked, but then I lost my scientist near the fissure. I guess the radiation got him, but now I can't build another. Let me restart from a save.

... then I get lost of "sprayer Lost" notifications.

[Tyler21]

Thanks for reminding me on the notifications... as I always play without them I did not even think about them. Is there a way to turn them off without setting this in the game menu?

[Karsten75]

Not sure about notifications. Not a biggie, IMHO.

I think there's something funny with the tutorial pop-ups. I thought it was my imagination before, but it just happend again and it may explain why I didn't get instructions to upgrade the AC tank. Some messages seem to disappear all by themselves. I was about to click next on a dialog when it disappeared and was replaced by a different dialog.

and... I've lost all my scientists... :(

[Tyler21]

I think it has to do with the order of triggers... it's possible that you did not trigger the events in the right order, maybe you sent the soldier already to the East? - Anyways, I'll have to fix this to prevent players to trigger events too early as multiple events can cause this problem with the messages.

- Did your scientists step on digitalis maybe?:)

[warren]

Well, I couldn't complete the tutorial. Unit build times, copter landing and takeoff, scientists all suddenly dying of inexplicable radiation poisoning, radio towers eating massive amounts of power and stop operating at the slightest shortage, no way to get more power, far too little time to move units into healthcare range, massive lag even with low quality fog.

It turned the game into an experience in watching paint dry.

Tip: you can remove invisible fog images to speed up the game slightly.
Did you use Virgil's pathfinding algorithm or write your own? Units sometimes make funny pathfinding mistakes, not taking the shortest path.
Remember: tutorials are supposed to be easy.

I disliked the confirmation dialog for everything.
There seems to be an offset problem with the top row of the control panel, put the mouse too low and it thinks you want the middle row.
Where in the tutorial do you say push the B button to drop bombs?
Why does the copter get radiation poisoning? Totally unexpected.
Why does the copter not drop bombs automatically?
units do not redeploy to their previous posts after refueling.
The copter does not return to pad when depleted automatically.
I once landed a copter on a health station, but nothing happened and I couldn't repeat.
Copter position offset seems to be handled improperly. The copter is where you send it, except for dropping bombs, and landing on the pad. It is below where you send it for dropping bombs. It needs to be sent to the pad to land, but must move above the pad to land.
You should add popup text or something to selected unit to list the possible keyboard actions.
It is impossible to multiselect units. Not a big problem if the unit count never goes high.
Retargeting is laggy when unit is lagging.
Unit cannot be retargeted by moving the target graphic.

Well, that's it. That's everything I could find. Excellent job.

[Tyler21]

Thanks warren for your thorough review.

Unit build times, copter landing and takeoff, scientists all suddenly dying of inexplicable radiation poisoning, radio towers eating massive amounts of power and stop operating at the slightest shortage, no way to get more power, far too little time to move units into healthcare range

I agree, I have to reconsider unit costs, energy consumption and speed in order to balance difficulty / playability more carefully.

Did you use Virgil's pathfinding algorithm or write your own? Units sometimes make funny pathfinding mistakes, not taking the shortest path.

Something in between. Ground units call pathfindterrain when they are stationary then take the first step of the path and run the path call again. I implemented this in order to prevent units walking through other walking units or through buildings that are built after the first path call. However, this can result in strange movement orders, especially if the shortests path gets blocked by another unit while the unit was moving on that path. Also note that units take 2x2 map space instead of 1x1 (to prevent overlapping images), this might also influence path efficiency.

I disliked the confirmation dialog for everything.

I hesitated a lot about this, but I think it is less annoying than calling the wrong unit and losing a lot of (or all) radio power. However, research could be modified by skipping confirmation but allowing the player to cancel the current research project (with a full or partial refund). This would drastically reduce the frequency of confirmation dialogs.

There seems to be an offset problem with the top row of the control panel, put the mouse too low and it thinks you want the middle row.

I encountered this too and I have no clue why this happens. Strangely, this issue disappears when I zoom in&out before selecting those buttons.
EDIT: I tested this again, and it happens only at the maximum zoom level... I still have no clue why.

Where in the tutorial do you say push the B button to drop bombs?

Right after you position on the waypoint above the fissure.

Why does the copter get radiation poisoning? Totally unexpected.

Yes, it is not straightforward but I did not want to make the drone invincible. Anyways, I should clarify that the drone can be also damaged by radiation before the player moves it to the fissure.

Why does the copter not drop bombs automatically?

This is for a reason which might not be relevant in the tutorial. Later, some fissures will need a lot of bombs in a very short interval - like pressing B ten times a second, while other fissures will need a slow, but continuous supply of AC to be sealed, for instance one bomb every two seconds. Learning the best strategy against different fissures will be part of the gameplay and I wanted to leave the player the opportunity to control bombings.

units do not redeploy to their previous posts after refueling.

I accidentally commendted that part of the code, thanks for pointing this out!

The copter does not return to pad when depleted automatically.
I once landed a copter on a health station, but nothing happened and I couldn't repeat.
Copter position offset seems to be handled improperly. The copter is where you send it, except for dropping bombs, and landing on the pad. It is below where you send it for dropping bombs. It needs to be sent to the pad to land, but must move above the pad to land.

These issues are all unintented, they will be solved.

You should add popup text or something to selected unit to list the possible keyboard actions.

Currently the players can see this information by pressing 'H', but I agree that a popup would be more straightforward. But wouldn't it be annoying for experienced players? I mean the constant flood or popups everywhere? I don't know.

It is impossible to multiselect units. Not a big problem if the unit count never goes high.

It won't, there will be other enemies that will guarantee that the player will always have at most 15-20 units :)

Retargeting is laggy when unit is lagging.
Unit cannot be retargeted by moving the target graphic.

Actually retargeting happens immediately, only the target graphic is lagging. But I agree that it would be more straightforward if the graphic would also move immediately.
First I tried to allow retargeting by moving the target itself but then I had the problem of overlapping targets. There are only two solutions: the player either selects all units when target graphics overlap (like in sporetower target control) or selects one unit at random (well, technically not random, but the player would experience it as random). I thought that both solutions are worse than the current design so I decided to not allow retargeting by moving the target.

[warren]

Thanks [...] for your thorough review.

NP

... popup [...] But wouldn't it be annoying [...]?.

You should try it. It would not annoy me. Keep it terse:
"u upgrade
s special"

I tried to allow retargeting [...] problem of overlapping targets.

I thought units could not be overlapped? This would imply that targets cannot be overlapped. Vanilla CW randomly selects an object when multiple are overlapping, never going with the target if an actual unit is there.

I think that V's pathfinding weights diagonals the same as orthogonals, and performs a clockwise search, creating obvious bias.

[DestinyAtlantis]

I'm currently playing the original and i'm kinda stuck at the final fissure, where i'm constantly blasting with 2 elites, 1 soldier, 2 specialists. (built AC tank, ammo thingie, and health-care thingie on that flat ground)
I was stupid enough to not figure out that rocket launchers=mortars when i read the specialist help, so i lost 3 scientists, so it will take a bit, but it's doable.
Awesome map.
Btw, currently i do support 2 Radio towers, more or less and 1 ammo thingie, the industry help said that levels 2-9 or something inreased CN reactor energy, so i upped that.
I don't mind the confirmation that much.
Hm, maybe i didn't get that specialists=anti-digi, because one of the last dialogs appeared for only a second, and i'm not sure if it had a next button, though i did read it.

Btw, how is digi supposed to act? The digi that got to the middle annoyed me to constantly have to put back 1 specialist, so i decided to cut it off, but it continued to grow, it only behaved like cut digi, when my 2 specialists left it about 5 cells long, though maybe the AC killed the "radiation" that was feeding the digi?

[Tyler21]

Digi is supposed to grow only if it is connected to the core fissure (or any other core that supports digitalis) so this one is definitely a bug that will be fixed.

Does anyone know what is the default value for CONST_SUPPORTSDIGITALIS in the case of crpl cores? I hope it's false.

[warren]

Nope, default is true. All the defaults are on the cheatsheet, if not listed in the main reference.

[Tyler21]

Ah, so that caused the unintented digitalis growth...

[DestinyAtlantis]

I thought so too, some random core, maybe for the fog of war overlaped with the digi and thus allowed it to continue to grow, but since supporting and creating digi are 2 different things, it didn't create any, so it wasn't that apparent.

Oh, and another bug that i experienced only once and wasn't bad, but in some super difficult mission may ruin someone's run:
Sometimes the Radio Tower doesn't recognize an unit, (with me it was a scientist), and turning it off and on didn't solve it, well, when he finally managed to go to the second Radio Tower, it was fixed. I have no idea if he ever went back to the first tower's range to see if the bug was still there. (the original reason he went there was for his "research", which btw, i don't like my scientists going on digi to "research", but that was intentional probably?!