Snappier Eufloria Default.xml

[Bonobo]

Just played levels 10 and 11 (latter one crashed near the end) and can't say much, but yes, the game is a lot faster, I noticed a larger difference between strong and weaker seedlings so I also differentiated their use more than before—strong ones for besieging enemy-held asteroids and weaker ones for planting trees after the strong ones cleaned everything out. Very nice how fast flowers and laser mines fly now.

But one thing: Please make the laser mines a 3-, 5-, 6-, 7- or whatever-star but not a 4-star, this looks awful to me. But I do like the stronger colours.

And yes, backups I’m kind of paranoind about backups, so I have all that stuff at least double, preferably triple.

Cheers, Tom

[Rudolf]

Thanks for the feedback :-D
Glad it seems to be working and I will see what we can do abou the laser mines. :-)
Gotta get the gameplay right first, then we will fix any  graphic issues though :-D

How was the AI?

EDIT:
There is a new default.xml coming (I reckon tomorrow) which really ties things together and improves the game a lot.
Quite shocked to see a more proactive AI sending in reinforcements and similar fun stuff.

:-)

R

[AWS]

any chance of tweaking the menu screen. ive always had the impression it could be designed much better.
eg, the space on the sub-screens, ie, custom maps, is too small imo.

and the whole aesthetic and overall funness of a menu screen can be improved.

is it just me that is ever so slightly, very slightly!, annoyed at having to work the scroll bar manually?
maybe it would be a good idea to have a piece of code that stores your most popularly played maps at the top of the menu, regardless of name order.

just ideas thrown up by this unrelated but mildly related post!

AWs


PS - sorry i havent been around recently  and wish i could contribute more than i do. if i had internet at home i would be here every week. so, whenever that day arrives, next year probably, ill be here!

[Rudolf]

Hey welcome back :-D

We have a general suggestions thread for that kind of stuff here:
http://www.dyson-game.com/smf/index.php?topic=3.0
 

[Rudolf]

And here is another updated Default.xml

I reckon this is pretty close to the limit of what we can do without code changes, and it does require AI improvements so the AI can use mines and flowers better. We ARE looking into this, but in the mean time the game is a bit unbalanced in that regard.
It is much better in many ways though, so please give her a spin and tell me what you think?

There are some other good additions already in our build as well, we may be able to push that out soon.

[threephi]

Just coming to this thread, I will check out the new xml and let you know what I think...

I have grown very fond of arena level 7 since the setup parameters are so random... sometimes you get a tiny asteroid with very weak seedlings, and overcoming those odds takes some very careful strategy.  I have probably played that level over 200 times.  It will be interesting to see how the new file changes things.

[threephi]

Just played arena 7 a few times, and my immediate impression is that the new defaults go a bit far with the mine speed.  I thought mines did move too slowly before, but now because they can reach and orbit an enemy asteroid very quickly, a mine is almost guaranteed to wipe out any flowers there, and that is far too imbalanced IMO.  On the one hand, if you don't have a mine, you're totally screwed if one gets to your asteroids early in the game.  On the other, erasing flowers means that the mines themselves will be wiped out very quickly and thus the game will rapidly tilt in favor of whoever owns the last upgraded defense trees that survive the great purge.  I would say, yes make the mines move faster than before, but only a little.  Also, I think by far the most influential factor in determining the strategic impact of mines is the frequency with which flowers are generated.  Any change to mine attributes will lead designers to rebalance the flower generation probability so I think it's a net wash.

I do however like that flowers move quickly, since that lets you send them where they will be useful instead of "wasting them" on a small planet only because it would take too long to reach your powerhouses.  There are still a few outstanding bugs in how flowers are handled however, and if those could be addressed, it would help to make flowers more logical and consistent in how they affect strategy (upgraded defense trees on on a captured asteroid no longer produce mines if the mine is destroyed after the asteroid changes ownership; the AI will plant multiple flowers on one tree).

I don't know if I like the idea to make weak seedlings weaker and strong ones stronger, either.  If anything, I would have voted for narrowing that gap.  There is something very satisfying to me with the "ants devouring a caterpillar" strategy if you can pull it off.  For Arena 7 in particular, trying to win with a weak starting asteroid surrounded by strong ones was a nice challenge.  It was difficult, not guaranteed, and took a lot of strategic thinking.  With the new default settings, it seems you need slightly larger forces in general to take an asteroid, and doing so with weak armies is now much harder.  Seedling economy is still the most important element in Eufloria, so even with the change, whoever has the most seedlings will win.  

I also like the tree roots planting faster, but maybe you could slow that down a little.  The length of the root path is a meaningful random factor that can have a big influence in the early game as it affects how quickly you can get your asteroids pumping out seedlings.

[Rudolf]

It is a tricky balancing act. I have given the mines an extra laser as well, so that contributes to their added power, and maybe they are a bit strong now, but you know what? They can be countered with defensive trees, which I have also made stronger. This makes them more important which I think is a good thing to do. The problem with making seedlings more alike is that it removes even more strategy from the game. It just becomes a matter of farming huge armies, and I prefer that there can be nasty surprised if you just concentrate on pumping out seedlings without considering the level circumstances. Having said that I will look at the mines to see if I can make them less unbalancing yet still more fun. :-)

There are some additions coming for the PSN version of the game that will trickle into the pc version as well, so there will be more to balance the currently lopsided gameplay. Sorry to be vahue about that.

Next big steps however are to make the AI cope with the new settings, and to make the levels fit them as well. I may spend some more time tweaking though.

Does the AI (with exception of handling flowers and mines/super seedlings) feel a bit more reactive, or even proactive, now? It does to me but hey, it is quite a fuzzy system.

[Rudolf]

I am currently making the mines slightly less devastating, but importantly, I am making them more subject to asteroid attributes, just like seedlings. It will still make them useful, but there will be more strategy involved in where you create your mines as it will heavily impacct that strengthh and speed. The speed value of asteroids especially becomes more important now, which is actually a really good thing to do as it isn't enough of a factor I think. Healt and strength are more impactful at the moment.

Speed will mean also you can get you flowers and mines to the right places quicker, which is useful indeed. :-)

[Bonobo]

So, because of my problems with the Honourifics/Achievements I have installed anew and now I am playing all the levels again, using the new Defaults.xml file.

Feels as if the gameplay is different, though I can’t tell what exactly it all is. Strong laser mines are quite helpful. More flowers are very helpful, too.

And I have the feeling that the AI is somewhat stronger, often quickly making counterattacks when I attack them.

[threephi]

The AI definitely feels more aggressive, and I like that.  I'll have to play a few more levels to get a better feel of how it changes things.  I do like that laser mines are stronger, and point taken about defense trees being more powerful, but the mines' sheer speed in the new default file means they can largely outrun those defenses, and zap away flowers before being hit enough times to be killed.

I also totally agree something needs to be done to make strength and speed more effective against energy.  I don't envy you that chore, it will probably take some very, very fine tuning to get it right.  But overall, I honestly think the game is fairly well balanced as it is, and any tweaks should be subtle.

And I guess I'm the lone voice in support of weak seedlings   That probably comes from playing arena 7 so much.  That level really gives you a feel for how to make something out of very poor starting conditions.  I like feeling that I have a chance to win that level no matter what kind of seedlings I start with, and the current defaults make that significantly less likely with weak seedlings.

Keep up the good work though, I am still playing Eufloria regularly so you've done something right

[threephi]

The problem with making seedlings more alike is that it removes even more strategy from the game. It just becomes a matter of farming huge armies, and I prefer that there can be nasty surprised if you just concentrate on pumping out seedlings without considering the level circumstances.

I get the feeling I'm being a little bit of a gadfly, but I hope you don't mind a few more thoughts on the subject, which I offer in the spirit of honest and (hopefully) constructive feedback:

I totally agree with that goal, and in no way do I feel that seedlings should become homogeneous.  But I firmly disagree that making weak seedlings a little stronger would take away strategy, in fact the opposite.  So long as weak seedlings have a chance to take down an asteroid or opposing seedlings with stronger attributes, the player will incorporate the "zerg rush" tactic as an option in his/her strategy.  If weak seedlings are less competitive, they will have less strategic use.  Any change in either direction should be small though--maybe tweaking the relative impact of energy/strength/speed as you are doing will accomplish that on its own.  Another point is that asteroid (and thus seedling) values aren't determined by the player, but by the level designer, so from the player perspective, you have to make do with what you have.  If you are given weak seedlings, I feel they should be competitive.

But here's my brainstorm for this post, and I realize it's completely outside the realm of tweaking values in the default.xml file:  What about adding a new type of special unit that affects seedling growth rates?  Maybe an upgraded dyson tree can produce a special kind of flower, that when you send it to explode on an enemy asteroid, it resets an opponent's trees to a newborn state, or drastically (temporarily, or not?) slows seedling generation?  And I think I've seen the suggestion elsewhere, but what about giving the player the ability to upgrade an asteroid's stats?

[Rudolf]

Hah, you are not being a gladly, we really need this kind of feedback. We will do what we think is best for the game, but part of that is making sure we understand how people experience it. :-D

I get your point, but I think I will see how things pan out a bit more before I raise the strength of weak seedlings. (Not ruling it out, but I think I will let the current changes sink in a bit so we can really assess the longterm impact. They still have strategic use for example by using them to plant trees and thefore use them as "currency". If they have good speed they make good scouts as well. :-) I am adding another default.xml btw, with more balanced mines among other things.

Regarding your other ideas. We actually have a fairly comprehensive list of additions that we will be working on becuase of the PSN version of Eufloria we are doing, and several of these features will trickle down onto the pc version. :-D Some of what you suggest is covered by these additons!

Right, so here is another Default.xml
Please keep in mind that the AI is not yet able to take this stuff into account as much as we like (Although much improved over previous iterations) and that most levels are not optimised for these settings. I will be doing this at one point, but until then the levels I point out at the beginning of the thread see the most positive changes I think.

[Bonobo]

Level 11 doesn’t crash anymore, it seems. Level 15 crashed once near the beginning, second time it didn’t crash.

Arena 5 <correction> Arena 4 “Abundance” </correction> crashed twice when game had progressed and I had almost won.

<edit>

Some of the levels felt more difficult, a few times I needed a second or third attempt to win.

</edit>


<edit 2>

Seems as if enemy asteroids with defense trees are quite hard to conquer now, I noticed that I needed a lot more seedlings to conquer all those bristly 'roids in Dark Matter level "Forest".

</edit 2>

[Rudolf]

UPDATE:

Not sure yet when we can share this but Alex has added some AI code (and other polish) that makes the game play pretty darn well with my current set of tweaks.
Really pleased how this is turning out. :-D